If you’re wondering why I haven’t written about my vacation, it’s that the Wizarding World of Harry Potter is complete sensory overload and putting it into words is not the easiest thing in the world. Your brain goes haywire the moment you walk into the park, because in terms of describing it in writing, where do you even start? It’s having eighty thought processes running at the same time, and on the page, you only have room for one. Everything you’ve heard about the park is true; you step out of modern day Orlando and into Diagon Alley and it feels so real because you can literally reach out and touch it. All the shops in Hogsmeade are exquisitely done, and the only one I didn’t go into was Madame Puddifoot’s Tea Shop, because I spent most of my time eating dessert, anyway… and when I wasn’t eating dessert, I was eating lunch and dinner… and second lunch and second dinner. I know it was because I was with my dad and sister. I don’t really eat when I’m alone, unless I realize either that I haven’t eaten all day and I need blood sugar, or my stomach reminds me of it. Eating socially is so much easier for me, and I took advantage of this fact. I’m not sure I’ve ever eaten more in my life.

In addition to eating my weight every day, the rides were spectacular. I haven’t been on a roller coaster in years, and interestingly enough, the Dragon Challenge had the most comfortable seats- and was just about the scariest ride I’ve ever been on, which meant that I could have spent a whole day riding it again and again. I didn’t, because there was so much to see, but just for the record, if you like roller coasters that scramble your brain into your stomach, it is totally worth it. The other rides are stomach turning as well, but not like roller coasters. They move, but mostly you’re watching a screen like IMAX so your heart drops, whether it’s riding alongside Harry on a Quidditch pitch or escaping from Gringott’s bank. Gringott’s has a dragon on top that shoots fire, and the first time I saw it was at night, and nearly jumped out of my skin because it came out of nowhere.

As you can imagine, the gift shops are fantastic, but I only got one souvenir. It’s a baseball shirt with a minimalist design that has the street sign for Grimmauld Place. There were many, many things I liked, but my inner design/font nerd fell in love quickly. It is totally the Jakob Nielsen of fashion. That being said, I spent more time in the SpongeBob SquarePants store than anywhere else, even though I didn’t buy anything.

All of the parks within Universal Studios are done as well as WWoHP. Walking through Jurassic Park was probably my second favorite. The rides aren’t as intense, but it really feels like you’re there. Incidentally, that day I was wearing my DC United jersey, but under it was a t-shirt picturing a T-Rex trying to eat a piece of pizza that says The Struggle is Real. It seemed appropriate, even though that wasn’t the only attraction we visited that day.

At The Simpsons park, I tried Duff Beer, but was more impressed with Buzz Cola (Duff Beer is awfully close to PBR, which is why I only took a sip… not a Portland hipster anymore). I think it’s cola with strawberry Squishee mixed in… but of course, it’s proprietary information so I could only guess, but I think it’s a good one.

I was also going to save this for my autobiography/case study, but I’m going to leave a breadcrumb here. The book is entitled Staring at Myself, which I believe Dana named because I told her that the only 3D I could see was both sides of my nose at the same time. The breadcrumb, given the last sentence, is that when we emerged from the King Kong ride, I was absolutely sobbing. You’ll have to wait for me to finish the book to find out whether they were tears of joy or frustration.

Outside of the park, we spent time talking about my mother, and Lindsay brought me the one thing I asked for from her house- my old Postman Pat doll I got in London when I was eight… and then she surprised me with my Yakko Warner plush. It was dad and Lindsay’s idea to have a vacation in memory of my mother, because not only did we have a great time, it was good to reminisce. Some of the stories I’d heard before, and some were new… it didn’t matter. Family stories are supposed to be told over and over.

The other piece of good news I received is that Lindsay’s job is going to be bringing her to DC and Annapolis (not sure if Richmond is in her territory) a lot more often… just balm for my grief, and I’m sure for hers. Because Lindsay has worked on mayoral and congressional races, it was not lost on me that if I moved here, she’d either be here often or move. I am so glad that of the visions I’ve had, this one has come true. It was even better than realizing I’m a Hufflepuff.

 

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The copy of the slideshow on DVD came with a case that has her picture on it. I keep it in the top drawer of my dresser, where I keep my meds, so I “have” to look at it every day. Have is in quotation marks because I could move it, but I don’t… even though every time I open the drawer, I get a frightened feeling in the pit of my stomach like I am seeing a ghost for the first time, every time. Shock and disbelief flood my body every single time, because I simply cannot believe that she is dead. Logically, of course I can. Emotionally, especially because I haven’t seen her in so long, it is as if she is still in Houston and we just haven’t talked in a while… but we will when she’s not too busy at the teacher’s center making her little cutouts of jazz musicians and eighth notes. Logic does not override emotion very often, and there have been several times that I have thought of burning the suit in effigy that I wore to her funeral. I haven’t- in fact, I wore the pants to church week before last… but I can’t put on the jacket.

It’s a Tommy Hilfiger, so under the collar, there is trademark red, white, and blue plaid. In my eulogy, I got a laugh by turning around, popping the collar, and in my mother’s Southern drawl (having been raised in NE Texas, so her accent was much thicker than mine), imparted the image of my mother shopping with me, saying something when we got home like “now that’s nice… I didn’t even notice THAT.” Everyone laughed because both the impression and the characterization were spot on, as if she were in the room. In that moment, nothing felt real because I’d taken enough Klonopin to ensure that I could speak without emoting too much. I wanted my sendoff to be memorable and funny, because that’s what I do in front of a crowd. I am comfortable in front of one person and a thousand, but hardly ever at a party… the former is too close, too personal, the latter a feeling of looking into a small city where nothing is. I am trying hard to find middle ground, but so far, I got nothin.’ I can either be leslie, heart on my sleeve, or Leslie Lanagan,™ suiting up for “battle.”

I am not completely inauthentic when I’m wearing the mask of protection, but there’s only so far I will let people in before the fence and barbed wire shows up unannounced. When I am speaking confessionally in front of a crowd, sometimes it’s like I’m speaking about someone else to get through it, because who cares if an entire congregation knows personal things about me, because they are unlikely to respond.

Although some do. It’s always a shock when people quote me to me. I am glad that I have imparted something meaningful to them, but tend to crawl into my shell after the conversation is over. When I’ve manuscripted a sermon, sometimes I know what they’re talking about. When I don’t, as the adrenaline wears off there are times when I have no idea what I just said. Martin Luther King, Jr. always said about preaching that if you have something important to say, write it down. However, more than one person has told me that when I preach off the cuff, I’m much more engaging. To me, though, it’s hit or miss. Sometimes I’m brilliant on my feet, and sometimes I walk away thinking, “well, that was awful.” The interesting thing is that sometimes when I think something has been a disaster, those are the quotes people remember as meaningful. Sometimes, I get nervous and talk a little too fast, which is probably why people tell me that off the cuff makes me more relaxed and easily relatable. Sometimes, with a manuscript, there are just too many words. Three of the sermons I’ve preached while manuscripting have been huge hits… but only one of them has made it to this web site because I didn’t save them… so even when I write it down, there’s a chance that later I won’t remember what I said…. but they will.

I have an incredible ability to read a crowd, and when I notice that people are staring into space, the feeling that I’m losing them, I can change tactics on a dime… and perhaps that is the point of preaching off the cuff. I am not looking down. Even though I am off the cuff, I can still remember the diamond pattern I’m going for, because as my dad has told me (I don’t remember whether it came from him or whether he was quoting his homiletics professor from SMU), in a sermon, you are competing with everything from a sunny day to lunch afterward to the memories that come to people’s minds as you’re speaking. In order to combat this, you have to tell them, tell them again, and close by telling them again. It helps to have a really good line that people will remember, especially if you say it three times during the course of your sermon, because at least one of those times, people will be present in the moment. It’s also not the repetition itself, but three illustrations of the same point, repeating the thesis statement either before or after each one. The diamond pattern is the three illustrations and the conclusion that ties all of them together… and sometimes, you unpack three seemingly dissimilar ideas and the puzzle pieces fall together at the end with what is hopefully a huge AHA! moment, something which usually leads people to come up to me afterward and say, how did you do that? Usually complete with fist bump and assurance of a mic drop, again, along with the deep knowing that I have no idea what I just said unless they tell me. Even with a manuscript, I have to go back and look it up.

However, just because I am speaking off the cuff, that doesn’t mean that I’m just winging it. In fact, it takes more preparation to speak off the cuff because you have to memorize everything you really want to get across without forgetting in the moment. There’s nothing worse than the feeling of stepping back down from the pulpit and remembering all the things you meant to say.

I didn’t manuscript for my mother’s funeral because I started and I sounded like a writer. Too many words for something spoken, so that there wasn’t one main idea, but many. No one would have remembered anything I said, because I wouldn’t have been able to keep people in the present. I could only do that by looking at the crowd, judging their emotions, and knowing when to show grief and when to be hilarious. At a funeral for one’s mother, those memories come in equal measure. You don’t just mourn the dead, but celebrate their lives. I think it worked, because I talked about how I was sad that my mother wouldn’t get to attend my own church… two pastors at different times came up to me at the reception and said, “in order to be a successful preacher, you have to have it… and whatever it is, you’ve got it. I’m going to hear great things about you, and your mother would be so proud.” It was interesting how two different men at two different times used the same words nearly verbatim.

What my mother wouldn’t necessarily be so proud of is the way I have completely fallen apart, because she never would have wanted her death to hold me back from getting out into the world and creating new experiences. I don’t mean that she wouldn’t have wanted me to miss her, just that she wouldn’t have wanted me to completely stop functioning, walling myself off in grief and taking to my room like a hermit. However, sitting alone in my room without trying to numb myself out has probably led me further in my grief process than anything else ever could’ve. If I’d been a social butterfly, I would have drunk more and thought less… not that there’s anything wrong with a glass of wine with friends, and sometimes necessary. I probably haven’t done enough of it, because while there is room for deep introspection, there’s also room for distraction from it for a few hours. I’ve completely skipped over that part, except in the confines of my own room, watching videos or playing games.

Because sometimes distraction with friends is not helpful, so therefore I am afraid of it. I am afraid of those moments when people don’t know what to say to me that will help, and they unintentionally gut me… and if there is anything I hate more than sitting alone, it’s being hurt and inconsolable in public, afraid to come undone… because what would people think? Why do I even give that part of it attention?

Because I’m afraid of becoming the woman whose mother just died, treated differently and with kid gloves, everyone asking how I am doing way too much… because the answer hasn’t changed in the last few months, much less the last few minutes. I am afraid of it because it’s happened before, not an unfounded or untested fear. I think it’s because only one of my friends, Dan, has lost a parent, so therefore my other friends have absolutely no frame of reference as to what I might be going through. What’s interesting is that people think they have to say something, when the reality is that just hugging me and sitting next to me in my silence is enough. I don’t need them to do or say anything, just to show up… because there is nothing to say. There’s nothing that’s going to make anything better, there’s nothing that’s going to bring my mother back, and there’s nothing that won’t tap into my entire range of emotions, which at times I feel as if I have no control. There’s nothing I’d want less than to isolate the friends I already have, showing emotions that have nothing to do with them because of redirection. They may not be able to see that I am having a hard time with my disbelief and take it personally, when it was never personal.

I am afraid of letting shit roll downhill, also not an unwarranted or untested fear, because in the last few years I’ve lost both the great romantic and the great platonic loves of my life… people I counted on to be my family and both cut and ran when it all became too much. I am not blaming them for anything, because it was too much. No one should be expected to stay in a relationship no matter how bad it gets. I can’t apologize enough, I can only take the lessons I learned and put them into practice now. It’s no excuse that I was not mentally well, because just like an alcoholic, the fact that my disorder spiraled me out of control doesn’t mean that I have no culpability for my actions. I can make amends all I want, but it is not up to me that they accept them, or even acknowledge their existence.

This creates a drive in me to never let it happen again. I can’t afford to lose more friends, because I am already in deep grief. To add to it at my own hand is unacceptable to me, and always will be. As I have said before, James told me that if I stopped writing about my grief regarding Dana and Argo, it would stop feeling like death by a thousand cuts… and as I replied, true change does not come from seeing the cuts they left, but by emotionally taking a chef’s knife to myself, cutting out the parts that made me capable of my own actions, because there’s nothing I can do or change about theirs. They did what they needed to do for them, and I see myself as no different. When you have a tumor, generally a surgeon cuts it out. When you have an emotional mass, it is imperative that you cut it out yourself… because with emotional wounds, the responsibility of surgery does not fall to someone else.

One of the lines that I keep repeating to myself came in a letter from Argo, who said that my bedside manner sucked. It unlocked me, and I sobbed for hours when I read it.

First, do no harm…

Coming from a medical family, not respecting the Hippocratic oath and knowing deeply that I’d done it was the first cut, damn near cracking my chest. Of course, in my illness, it didn’t change me overnight, but I didn’t forget it, either. Now that I’m stable, those words mean even more as my future begins to take shape. It is as if those words from Argo opened a door that had been locked for decades, one that had remained closed for far too long. My defense mechanisms were at Defcon Oh My Fuck, even though the stimulus for it was gone… emotional fibromyalgia that got a lot worse before it got better… indescribable pain, fear, guilt, and shame even though I’d seen the thing that caused the PTSD and surgically removed it so that there was never a chance it would come back.

It is in those moments, thinking about what happened, I realize my own shortcomings in knowing what to say to people, speaking off the cuff and causing more hurt than I know. I am just as fallible as those who accidentally hurt me with their comments regarding my mother’s death, because even though the subject matter is different, the reactions are the same. With Dana, because she was not a writer, speaking off the cuff has led me to forget a lot of what I said to her… perhaps the reason Argo has gotten more of my attention in my grief because there’s a manuscript, so that when I forget what I’ve said to her, I can go back and look it up. I think it’s for the best, though, because with a written record, I have benchmarks for how far I’ve come and just how far I still need to go to make the wrong path into the right one.

But the first step is admitting there’s a problem, and I did that long ago. Now, I just have to say the words for the first time out loud that I will say in perpetuity until they work.

I have made all the amends I can, and now I forgive me, because at least I can say I tried.

I have accepted all of my flaws, failures, and vulnerabilities.

I am popping my collar to expose the plaid, hidden unless you are looking for it.

I am looking for all the words I meant to say, and didn’t.

My Galentines are the best ever, from the ones I know well to the ones with whom I’m beginning great friendships. I would be completely remiss not to thank them publicly, because their love has sustained me through an epic shitstorm, especially over the last three or four years. The ups and downs of both chemical and situational depression haven’t made me the easiest person to love, and yet, they still SHOW. UP. They are my poetic & noble land mermaids and my beautiful, talented, brilliant powerful musk oxen all at once.

I had a lot to process and get over this year, and they were there every step of the way, even when it got difficult. There’s nothing more I’d like than to be able to buy them all the waffles they could eat, or at the very least, love them by sneak attack by sending presents of unknown origin. But last year I was in a way better financial place than I am now, so you’re all getting presents, they just still live at Amazon.

Besides, there’s nothing that I could buy you that would say thank you enough for your words, hugs, and memories that stay with me, helping me to walk a little taller one day at a time. Because of you, I’ve learned that I am indeed lovable, and it isn’t necessary to keep cutting switches with which to beat myself up. I can let go of the past and make room for the future, in no small part due to the conversations we’ve had where you’ve looked into my eyes and let me see your hearts as well as you’ve seen mine. I hope that I have been even a fraction of the friend to you that you’ve been to me.

Things can’t have been quite equal since losing my mother, because you let me have so much room in our relationships to talk it over and process it out. Rest assured that I will never forget this fact, so that when your life is going sideways, I’ll be there, holding space for you, too. If there’s been any realization I’ve had over the past few weeks, it’s that living in community is far better than isolation, and when I isolate, it is a function of my illness and situational depression, because as my friend Phil says,   depression lies… and it always knows the very best lies to use against you.

For me, that lie is that I’m not worthy of your company, cleared up immediately when I am actually in your presence. You allow me to be, well, more than I am. Funnier, more relaxed, and never wearing the mask of “acting as if.” When things aren’t fine, I can say so. You call me on the bullshit of humor deflection, or at the very least, laugh and say, “let’s get back to the real issue here.” You are the ones that can pull me out of my own head, and it is something for which I am more grateful than you will ever know.

It is because of you that I know I have room for a family in my life, because it won’t happen in the future. The future is already here… my family of choice along with my bio family, joining together in an amazing safety net. But the other thing I’ve learned is my limitations, knowing when to talk to friends and when to talk to doctors. It’s a lesson I had to learn the hard way, but often what is worth it isn’t easy. I know now when I need a friend and when I need a professional, sometimes because I can feel it and sometimes because you’re not afraid to call it to my attention.

You are the people I trust to be my Board of Directors, because sometimes I have my own back and sometimes I need a little help reminding myself that I am powerful enough to take charge on my own… but everyone does, no? Sometimes the best course of action is not to overthink a situation, but just to laboriously breathe through it and let the answers come organically over time. You remind me of this fact, that I do not have to keep tapes running at the forefront of my mind, that sometimes the back burner is even more helpful… or that after a good night’s sleep, a so-called problem is gone altogether.

You’ve sat with me through an enormous amount of pain, because there are no scars from joy… therefore harder to focus on it until you remind me that it is always there, around me and within me… that I am capable of letting chaos swirl around me rather than internalizing it. I pray to be the eye of the storm, because I cannot control it, or anything, really. I can only control my reactions to tropical storm wind.

My answer lately is to try and become the storm, because there are so many people out there that need help. To not try to help “the least of us” is contrary to my nature, and you’ve helped remind me of my bigger purpose, that when I cannot leave my room because of anxiety and fear, I can leave because my sense of social justice overrides it. I meet you at marches, taking in the power that people have when they band together, particularly the strong bonds of women who support each other. Though I have times through grief where I just cannot even, nevertheless, I persist. When my heart is in the right place, everything else in my life flows from its ability to beat, loud and strong.

From the personal to the political, there are lots of storms I’ve walked through and am preparing many more, but I wouldn’t have gotten here without you, your footsteps next to mine, occasionally dragging me into the future when I am lost in the thoughts of things past.

When my mother died, I sent Susan an e-mail saying, “sitting on the tarmac at Hobby, awaiting what comes.”

In that moment, the best thought in the world is that I was not sitting alone.

Thank you, deeply, with great sincerity, for picking me up when I feel like everything hurts and I’m dying. On this day, I wish you love, care, and waffles with extra butter and syrup.

You are mine, and I am yours.

I hate to keep harping on the people that say stupid things to me, but today after the funeral at the reception, someone I barely knew in the congregation came up to me and said, “I know you lost your mother a few months ago. Is your father still alive?” WHISKEY. TANGO. FOXTROT?  I told her yes, that my parents were and are very young, and that my dad is really healthy now that he’s mostly done with surgery (one facial reconstruction left, and it’s minor). In my infinite snarkiness, I wish I’d said something like “yeah, he’s still alive, but most of the time he’s too drunk to come to the phone.” I can’t take credit for that one. One of our church members at St. Mark’s, a perpetual trouble maker, used to tell me to say that to people when they called the parsonage. I must have been in grade 7 or 8. I never did it, of course, but in the moment soda came out of my nose and I thought I was literally going to die of laughter.

I did, however, answer the phone “Lanagan summer home…. summer home, summer not…” a few times. When I was in the car with my dad, I used to answer his cell phone “David Lanagan’s rolling office, how may I help you?” Incidentally, I come by this snarkiness naturally. When the church was empty and it was just my dad working in his office and I was upstairs in the youth room playing pool, the way he told me to come downstairs was to get on the loudspeaker and you could hear “attention, K-Mart shoppers, we have a Blue Light Special…” ringing throughout the austin stone cathedral.

I know this woman meant well, I really do. But the way she said it irked me just the right way and I hope my face didn’t show it. I think she was just making conversation, but if I had a piece of advice, it would have been not to lead with that.

Now, if it had been someone I’d actually talked to more than twice (if that- I didn’t know her name and it was clear she didn’t know mine, either), I might have been a little more gracious in my thought process. Outwardly, I said I was going on vacation with my dad and my sister next weekend. On the inside, I was all like, “who does this bitch think she is?” I also wouldn’t have minded if we’d been engrossed in conversation and it naturally came up. Let me tell you, it was not the greatest of opening lines.

The thing is, though, I don’t get to write the scripts. I just get to choose how I react. Most of the time this is stuffing down whatever I’m feeling and using my preacher’s kid patois as to act unaffected by idiocy. It comes in handy. I just hope that I can keep at it, because the last thing I would want to happen is to come unglued on some poor unsuspecting little old lady.

Oy gevalt.The amazement and shock I feel as I walk through the world reciting the Kaddish feels akin to being hit by a bus. Sometimes this is because I am lost in my own little world and someone has interrupted it. Most of the time, it’s that someone has caught me completely off-guard with something so insensitive that it burns, but, of course, they have no idea that it’s insensitive. It’s the only reason I’m not angry and bitter when it happens. Very few people know what to say to the grieving, and I just have to rely on the feeling that they mean well, even when my inner impulse is to look across the room and say, “oh look! I have to go. I see better people.”

So, the county came out and checked our house. We got the official report that there were no violations re: overcrowding and no drugs… and in fact, the county official told us himself that our nosy neighbor needs to mind her own business…. that the house is large enough we could fit a few more people… which is good, of course, because Tanner’s room is for rent.

I’m hoping that I get a good, stable roommate this time. I feel like I’ve been through the wringer and I’m ready for a teacher or a student that keeps to themselves and doesn’t cause any trouble. Perhaps we need to look for someone with a job that already piss tests so that there’s no way drugs will be brought into the house, anyway. It’s a thought.

Yes, weed is legal in DC, but not in Maryland. And besides that, it’s still a violation if you’re renting out a room that there is any kind of smoking inside. Of course Hayat cares whether we’re on drugs or not, but it’s more than that. She could be shut down by the county and the family I’ve come to rely on could have to kick me out because of something that someone else did. I would be inconsolable after the year I’ve had, because I don’t want to live alone, and I also have reticence about getting back on Craig’s List to find shared housing. Even when I can afford a place of my own, I don’t want to because it’s so much better for my savings account, and watching it grow is one of the few things that makes me ridiculously happy in this world.

The things that my mother left me are priceless family heirlooms, so I cannot and will not sell them to provide for my future. So now it’s time to get on the bandwagon with FAFSA and try to get grants as well. I am in a good place to do those things, because I have long been independent from my parents, so their income will not affect my own. There are plenty of UCC scholarships for grad school, but getting undergrad paid for is almost entirely on me. It’s a good thing I don’t lack much and will only be in debt for the year and a half it takes me to finish and not the entire four years.

I’m singing for a funeral today, not as a soloist but in the choir. I have some trepidation about it, because the last funeral in which I sang in the choir, I cried all the way through it because even though I didn’t know the deceased, I was dealing with a lot at home and it was redirection onto something else. I’m in a better place now, but I remember what it felt like as if it were yesterday, and I am not eager to repeat it. What is different is now I have anti-anxiety medication on board, and I feel good this morning. I am hoping it lasts.

Although if it doesn’t and I arrive at my house crying, maybe Gladys Kravitz will call the county to make sure I’m okay.

You’ll have to excuse me for my lack of content lately. It’s been a rough haul, and I find myself not wanting to think about anything. Submitting resumés and applications doesn’t require me to think, and neither does watching “television,” in quotes because I don’t actually own one. I use Kodi, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, and Seeso. I do have cable, but the line running to my room isn’t working (really must have that fixed), and because I already have so much to watch, I don’t really care about it enough to get it repaired. I am happy enough with things like Santa Clarita Diet and The Fall. The former is ridiculously funny, kind of a send-up of The Walking Dead. The latter is scary AF, and stars one of the most handsome actors out there, Jamie Dornan, who you’ll probably recognize as The Huntsman from Once Upon a Time. It also stars Gillian Anderson, and that is the last piece of information you’ll get out of me about those shows, because you just have to watch them. Trust me.

All of these things are taking me away from thinking about writing, because generally what I have to talk about is grief and mourning, and I’m just done with delving that deep most of the time. I know I need to get it all out, but at the same time, I can’t live that way all the time. Distractions help, and I’ve been using a lot of them.

I’ve learned through Never the Same, by old friend Dr. Donna Schuurman, that so much research has been done on grief since On Death and Dying by Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross was published that we understand grief a lot differently. Kübler-Ross was correct in that there are five stages of grief, but they are not linear and sometimes all hit at once. That is certainly what I am experiencing, although I do not feel anger. There is nothing that can be done for an embolism. If the greatest surgeon in the world had been standing next to my mother when it blew, there’s still nothing that could have been done. I feel like I have done everything I can to look at her situation clinically without emotion, because it was just a freak thing and there’s no one to blame, nothing to be angry about. I don’t feel like I need to rage at the heavens that she is gone. I don’t feel anger that she’s not going to be there for the future I have planned, I just feel indescribably sad & depressed. The best reason I can give for having no anger is that she didn’t leave me on purpose, and I know for sure that if she indeed had any awareness that she was dying (I don’t think she did, because she passed out first), Lindsay and I were her last thoughts.

I also take comfort in the fact that a few days before she died, we had a two and a half hour conversation on the phone, nothing left unsaid, no unfinished business.

As far as deaths go, it was the best possible thing that could have happened. She passed away quickly with no pain at all. The only thing that makes me truly jealous is that a lot of people get time to prepare for the death of a parent, because their illness is drawn out long enough to get used to the idea. I have said this before, but nothing hits you harder when someone dies suddenly that “here today, gone tomorrow” is a thing. It’s a cliché until it happens to you.

My life is so different now. My mother’s death has rewired all of my neurons so that most of the time, I am relaxed and easygoing. You’d think it would be the opposite, but I feel that the worst thing that has ever happened to me is done. Nothing can rattle me now. My grief regarding Dana & Argo not being a part of my life now seems like a dream that happened long ago in comparison.

The only time that particular grief hits me is that they used to be the people closest to me, and I wish I could talk to them about everything that is going on in my life right now, and that I care about them and wish I could know what is going on in their lives, too… because friendship is not a one-way street, or at least it’s not if you’re doing it right.

I am just glad that I’ve been able to create my own urban family here, so that their absence is noticeable but not ever-present. I have other people to lean on, other activities to pull me into the present… although sometimes I have trouble showing up for them because I am reluctant to get into a crowd of people and come undone. The only people I have truly let in are my church choir.

My truth is that I haven’t shown up for either church or choir for a while now, because I just couldn’t handle being around other people. Last Sunday, I showed up with my heart on my sleeve, and instead of making up some ridiculous “acting as if” excuse as to why I hadn’t been there, I told them straight up that I’m bipolar and taking medication for it, along with anxiety meds, and that even with all those things on board, the situational depression of grief cannot match what I am taking. I get overwhelmed easily, especially in church, because it’s so meaningful that it cuts deeply.

However, I realized something important. Sam lost her father and her mother, and she’s still showing up every Sunday. When I told Leslie #1 that, she said it wasn’t necessary to create another stick to beat myself up, and I told her it wasn’t about that. It was about living in community. Everyone has been there for me, but I haven’t returned the favor. She told me that it was a good way to look at it, and I thanked her for being “my person.” She told me “thank you for letting me be your person… probably the sweetest thing anyone has said to me in months.

Because Leslie lost her mother, too, she understands explicitly and I don’t even have to talk. She can tell with one look when to put her arm around me and when I need a hug. She was a bit older than me when it happened, around 52, but she still feels the pain of her mother dying too young, just like mine did. Of course, every child is going to feel on some level that their parent(s) were taken from them too young, because all children, even adults, cannot remember a time when their parents weren’t there for them. Now, I know that for lots of children who’ve had toxic/abusive relationships with their parents, this is not the case. But for the stereotypical nuclear family who is generally close, I haven’t met anyone yet who doesn’t feel that level of pain, because no one knows them better than the people that raised them.

It is not an easy path to walk. I feel that it would have been easier to accept my mother’s death if she’d been 86 or something… at least the feeling that she’d lived a long and fruitful life and 86 is not too young to die. In the years that my mother was alive, she indeed lived a fruitful life, but the trees were not finished blooming, heavy with oranges, her favorite.

Her memory lives on, not just with us, but with all the children in her music classes and the parents who were grateful for her influence. She was one of those people who could make you love music, especially if you’d never had any exposure to it before. She took kids on journeys through classical, jazz, blues, you name it… starting in kindergarten and working upward through show choir for fourth and fifth graders.

I am grateful that she was also a substitute teacher, so she was my own music teacher in third grade and my social studies teacher in fifth. Years earlier, she and my dad went on a tour of the Holy Land, and one of her lesson plans was to “take us” as well. She brought in all the souvenirs she’d gotten in Egypt, arranged the chairs like a 737, and projected images she’d taken on the screen. She also made us passports we could keep. No detail was left out, and that’s just who my mother was when it came to education. Her drive to be impeccable was strong and intuitive to what children would want and need in the classroom.

She was always there for Lindsay and me in both our academic and musical pursuits. She was my accompanist both as a trumpet player and a singer, and when Lindsay made it into the children’s chorus at Houston Grand Opera, she never missed a single rehearsal or performance.

She helped me with my homework inasmuch as she could, because neither of us understood math. Her father, a former Algebra teacher, tried to help me, and it was my mother’s idea to make him my tutor. There was nothing that she wouldn’t have done for me, going above and beyond every single time.

Time.

There wasn’t, isn’t enough.

The old saying is that “time heals all wounds,” but I do not think that it stands up in terms of a parent dying. You don’t ever get over it, you just learn to absorb it, make it part of your DNA, never forgetting what happened… simply trying to emotionally relocate those memories so that you can make room for the future instead of being stuck in the past.

I’m not finished being “stuck” yet. It doesn’t show in terms of memories that constantly come to mind, but in the weight of grief that slow down my movement in the world. The best thing I’ve done for myself is to clean my room so that it is once again uncluttered, and I feel, as Oprah has said, that my room rises to greet me when I walk in the door. I take comfort in being organized, but my mind is still cluttered. There are entire days where I cannot get out of my own head, even though I know that new experiences take me out of my grief and add happiness to my world. There are just lots of times that I don’t want happiness. I want to sit in my loneliness at having one less person to call when I am truly “in the weeds.” I feel guilty that I hadn’t made the effort to visit, so that by the time my mother died, I hadn’t seen her in over a year. But at that time in my life, when it came to Houston, I could not even.

However, she came alone to DC to visit, and we had a spectacular time together, something I will always remember as a highlight. She also left a card on my dresser that I didn’t find until a few days after she left thanking me for being the perfect host, and a gift card to Macy’s so that I could buy new clothes. I am still looking for the hoodie that I bought with it, because it’s the warmest thing I own. I think I may have left it somewhere, because there is no stone unturned in my room or my car. It’s the most I’ve ever spent for a jacket, but it was worth it for the double weight during DC winters… and I must have told her a thousand times how much it meant to me. I hope that it will turn up one day in the place I least expected to find it, because it’s too early to give up hope that it’s gone… or that if it is, it has been picked up by someone who truly needed it.

That’s the kind of thing that would have made my mother happy… that if I lost it, a homeless kid found it. There will be other jackets for me, but I often wonder what I can do to keep the homeless warm. I don’t have a lot of extra money, I don’t have coats to give away, but surely there is something I can do even with my limited resources.

If my mother has anything to say about it, it’s go find out.

The thing I’ve been avoiding talking about all day is here, and I realized it was more painful not to talk about it than to just get it out. Today is my ninth legal anniversary with Dana, because she told me that she would file with Multnomah County, and I’ve used it as an excuse not to do it on my own for a year now. I don’t think I can explain why. It’s not like I want to be tied to her any more than she wants to be tied to me emotionally. But last year I said that it would have been our eighth anniversary, and this year I realized that due to a lack of paperwork, past tense is… inaccurate.

Perhaps both of us are too ADD to remember to file, but I think that is a five cent explanation for a hundred dollar problem. I don’t think either of us wants to acknowledge that a relationship like ours could come apart, and that piece of paper is the one thing tying us together. I don’t think either of us is ready to admit we failed, so we stuff and deny. The ADD thing can’t be overlooked, however, because we were famous for sending Christmas presents in April and I’ve been carrying Lindsay’s Galentine in my purse for a week now. It’s addressed and stamped, but have I gone to the post office? Nooooo….

Of course, this is all conjecture on my part about her feelings, but it is definitely the reason why I keep putting it off… and we think alike enough that we used to joke that we shared one brain, and that was extraordinarily difficult when we were separated for 18 months as best friends while I went back to Houston and worked with my family in my stepmom’s medical practice. Neither of us were sure which one had the brain on any given day.

The situation feels, as Deadpool would say, breathtakingly fucked. My whole world smelled like “Daffodil Daydream” rather than Mama June after hot yoga. It’s been almost two years, we’re both ready to move on, and this piece of paper sits in my subconscience like a rock. Writing this may be just the motivation I need to take matters into my own hands. At first it was the principle of the thing, that Dana said she would take care of it and I trusted that she would. Now it’s just embarrassing how badly we’ve both ignored it, and at least on my part, hoping it would go away on its own. She’s been to DC at least twice since we separated, and didn’t want to see me either time. I’ve been back to Houston once, for my mother’s funeral, and she didn’t want to see me then, either.

I don’t know why, because we did talk on the phone as soon as I got the news and the conversation was both amicable and hilarious during a time when I desperately needed to forget what I was about to do for a few minutes, at least. But that’s as far as it went, except for texting a picture of us at my aunt’s Thanksgiving that I thought she might want to have. Maybe she thought I needed my wife, but I didn’t. I needed my friend, and the fact that all of it is gone weighs heavily on me… perhaps more than she knows, or perhaps exactly how much because it weighs on her, too. I take nothing away from her own feelings, I just can’t objectively talk about them because I don’t know anything about her life anymore.

For me, it’s how do you say goodbye with finality to that amount of closeness? Emotional relocation of our memories so that they aren’t quite so haunting has been ridiculously hard, because I remember just how good and how bad we got. Two years ago, about a month before we separated, I wrote I do, with everything I am and everything I will ever be. It’s amazing how much a difference two years makes.

I miss her every day, multiple times a day, and yet, I don’t think anyone can bounce back from physical violence. I couldn’t help but be reactionary when she pushed me with force, so I can’t go to the place that I deserved everything I got in that fight. I just went off like a rat dog with a Napoleon complex. But what I can do is take responsibility for letting the situation escalate instead of getting in my car and running away. We were fighting about money, and the bait and switch in order to not talk about it was to bring up Argo and make her the focal point of the fight when she was never in the game. We were working on our own issues, and it was a masterful deflection. I didn’t want anything but facts, and it turned into everything I’d done wrong for a year. It was the Mento that dropped over the Diet Coke, and I can forgive her, but forgetting is so much harder.

Argo was a light and flirty wordplay crush that delved deeper under my skin than I ever wanted it to, because our connection was explosive both for evil and for awesome. I leaned on her too much for emotional support because she was my sounding board in all things, the eventual goal to put strict boundaries in place so that Dana couldn’t use her as an excuse anymore. Those strict boundaries are in place, but they just didn’t come on Dana’s timeline. I found them on my own. Looking back on it, I’m not even sure that would have been enough, because when Dana would use Argo to disengage, I just became irrationally irritated and on some level, I think it pleased her to have an RPG that would explode everything so that we could avoid talking about what was really going on with us.

It took over conversations about everything, because when Dana didn’t want to open up, it was a cheap shot to get me to recede into my own head and write to Argo even more, because if I had anything to tell anyone, she was my go-to. Little felt real until she replied. It was never validation that I was right- sometimes she told me she thought I was being a jackass and said so.

She stopped replying after a while, and later I got an e-mail from her saying that one of the reasons she pulled away was so that she wouldn’t be Dana’s excuse anymore. I told her thank you for picking up what I couldn’t, and it was a good call. When I told Dana this, she apologized for my friend feeling that she needed to ghost because of her, and it was perhaps the last moment of clarity that we had about the situation. She wasn’t immune to the fact that Argo was a sounding board for my own frustrations with our marriage, just like she had to blow off steam with her own friends. My steam just happened to dissipate while writing, and hers by talking. She wounded me by saying that my virtual world left no one to hug me, which wasn’t true by any means but it sounded good?

I loved that Argo wasn’t a part of my daily life, didn’t know the people involved, and therefore could honestly inject some objective truth into the situation because she didn’t have a horse in the race. It wasn’t a competition, but if it had been, she won. I grabbed on to Argo’s belief that I would do and be everything I set out to do, as opposed to Dana’s view that I would never amount to anything. When your wife tells you that to your face, it’s time to get out. It might have been something she said in anger and didn’t really mean, but it played into my own worthlessness loop and it was kicking me while I was already down- below the belt in every conceivable way.

There was also another dealbreaker conversation for me… a night in which I was feeling the need to reconnect romantically and instead of saying “I have a headache” or “something good is on TV,” she said that she thought I was being aggressive. It hit all my psychosexual/emotional abuse buttons at once, and I slinked away with my tail between my legs and cried in the shower for 45 minutes, not knowing what the hell to do, but knowing that being hit that hard and that fast emotionally was a category of hurricane for which I was unprepared.

The next few days were awkward at best, because my own worthlessness was reinforced. Not only did I feel the weight of being a “bad wife,” she started a tape in my head that I was a rapist… when again, a “no thank you” would have done it. She agreed with me that it was a low blow, and apologized, but after that I couldn’t bring myself to touch her because I didn’t want that repeating tape to become what I thought of myself. Again, it pushed me further into my own head and away from her. I sat in my office alone and played my horn with my headphones in to try and create signal out of noise.

I needed to get away, and DC seemed like the safest place to do so, because our connection wouldn’t be severed… just perpendicular instead of parallel. But even with no contact, DC is the right place for me to just be, because our tie to each other was so strong that I couldn’t break it without a physical boundary. For about a month after I moved, we talked occasionally in our best friend patois, but in the end it became too painful to contemplate. No contact was not what I wanted, but it was what I needed to return to wholeness within myself, taking away that feeling of sharing a brain took months, because even though we’d been terrible to each other, there was never a question in my mind that we didn’t have the capacity to be friends after an adjustment period, but being married was a whole different committment.

Physical relocation made emotional relocation so much easier. The thing is, though, hurt people hurt people, and shit rolled downhill with Argo at an alarming rate. At times where I could have used support, I lashed out. At times when I could have used love, I asked for it in the most unloveable of ways. I was a complete wreck of a human being, and losing both of them at the same time was hitting rock bottom and realizing that there needed to be some drastic changes in my life so that even if burnt bridges couldn’t be rebuilt, I’d never have relationships again that ended like they did… one with physical violence, one with emotional. I couldn’t handle everything coursing through my veins, and shit rolled downhill. I can’t help but think on some days what might have happened between Argo and me had I just managed to calm the fuck down. I didn’t need to connect with her romantically, but I could have used a burger and a beer night. I remember the days when we looked forward to meeting on the ground, and I kick myself mightily that it never happened, and probably won’t.

Because even though burnt bridges can be rebuilt, there’s no room for new construction, mostly because of my absolute self-destruction, in all things, really. Now I’m just rebuilding the bridge back to my old self, the one that feels the most like me, with extraordinary room for growth and development so that I don’t continue to believe that I’ll never amount to anything.

The first step is getting in touch with Multnomah County, because I am tired of waiting for a piece of paper that may never come. I have to release myself from this enormous thunderstorm of emotion, and that legal document holds in the rain, rather than letting the sun come out and shed its warmth on my mood and behavior. It’s hard to make room for something new when I am wrapped up in the past, and I don’t mean romantically. I mean kicking myself for everything I did wrong so that I think I don’t have anything to offer anyone, so why bother?

I am lucky I have friends who love me despite all my flaws and failures… ready to give me a hug when I need it, or answer an e-mail when I am too sad to people. It’s a spectrum, a duality that lives in me and always will as a writer. Because some things are too painful to process in the moment verbally, but reading this after some time has passed and there’s some distance from it will ultimately remind me of the journey I’ve taken to become the Leslie I want to be. I have a long way to go in order to be the person I want to be or think I am, but the main point is that I keep trying. Persistence is kind of my thing, as is bouncing back from failure.

It will happen as long as I keep putting one foot in front of the other, and not letting there be a ten.

I’d just gotten out of the shower when Samantha said she needed to talk to me and she’d wait until I was decent. After I finished yesterday’s entry, I took a shower to give my allergy medicine time to kick in before I started tackling my room. Plus, taking a shower or washing my face really helps to get whatever’s bothering me off my skin. But anyway, I was really unprepared for what she had to say.

My roommate, Tanner, turned out to be a heroin addict, which is probably why even though he lived right next door to me, we never met. Even when we passed in the hallway, he was silent… which makes sense now that I know what kind of opiates he was taking. Apparently, he and his girlfriend had pre-filled syringes and they’d shoot up while the rest of us were going about our lives. I kick myself for not noticing, but to be fair, as I have said before, when I have my headphones in (which is most of the time) a bear could rip off the side of the house and I’d never notice.

When I was at the Women’s March last week, Tanner overdosed (as far as I know, he’s okay now). When 911 was called, my other roommates, both nurses at Holy Cross, stayed with him until we had emergency vehicles up and down the street. We have a zero-tolerance policy with drugs around here, so Tanner was kicked out immediately. However, a nosy neighbor called the county on us, and next Tuesday, the police are going to inspect the whole house for drugs. When they came the day of Tanner’s OD, they searched his room for anything and everything, and apparently either all the drugs were used up or removed from the house before they got here. They told Samantha that the kind of opiates Tanner and his girlfriend were using could leave particles on bedclothes, furniture, etc. and the person breathing in the room could get high. So Samantha searched the room again and Hayat bought all new bedclothes, pillows, everything for that room. It’s no problem that the police are coming again. I have one hotel bottle of Stoli Orang that I’m keeping for a snow day when I just can’t get warm, because at Autumn and Dan’s Christmas party, a five-pack of hotel vodka bottles was my white elephant gift. I told the group that I didn’t drink much, and asked if anybody wanted one. I only had one taker, so I gave the raspberry to my friend Hyde and took the rest home. They’ve been invaluable on the nights when it was so cold I shivered violently, because one shot is enough to make all my capillaries dilate and the warmth starts to radiate from within…. which is why I still have one left. It just hasn’t been cold enough to justify drinking the last one… special to me because Stoli Orang was the shot we took to send Dan off to Russia.

So, the police can go through everything I own, and that’s fine. But “Gladys Kravitz” is a retired DC cop, and apparently got the wrong idea that this was an isolated incident and not normal for “our family.” Tanner didn’t even last a month, and Krystle lasted two or three days, because Edu and I both caught her smoking weed in the house, even though she was told up front that any drugs were a dealbreaker. I suppose that these things are par for the course when you advertise on Craig’s List, because everyone is nice in the beginning. Tanner lied to Hayat’s face and told her he was in recovery…. apparently, not so much. He didn’t have a relapse so much as never being in recovery in the first place. I was very lucky that I got a room here after only talking to Hayat on the phone for about an hour and a half, because I moved in sight unseen, and it was perfect. Just absolutely perfect, the place I needed to be at the time I needed to be here. It has worked out well, because despite the fact that sometimes my room is a wreck, I’m a great roommate in terms of keeping public spaces immaculate. As these two roommates have come and gone, I feel more and more sane all the time. #smallblessings

Samantha gave Hayat a good piece of advice…. that for the next roommate, make sure they have a job in a place where they piss test, because that makes it so much more unlikely that they’ll have any sort of problems with drugs. It’s been a weird road lately, but there was no way to prepare for the future until it arrived.

It gave me even more motivation to buzzsaw through my room, and I’m almost done. Yesterday was a bear, and I have muscle aches in places I didn’t know I had. There was more recycling than I thought, because I didn’t realize that empty cans and bottles had found their way under my dressers and bed. But like I said, Thursday is trash day, so I was able to carry everything down to the curb instead of letting it sit around. The only thing that’s left is laundry, including my bedclothes, and a good sweep. It feels really, really good to be so far along in the project, and I had the motivation before I found out about the police search. That was just an added bonus. My plan is to put my clothes back in my dresser and take them down to the laundry one basket at a time so I can wash my clothes for free, even though it would be far more efficient to put everything in garbage bags and wash it all at once in a laundromat. I just want my clothes to be out of the way in case I can’t finish my laundry by Tuesday, because today and Sunday are so busy, along with other people having to do their laundry as well. I will wash everything, but there’s a lot I need to give to Goodwill because I’ve lost weight and some of my clothes don’t fit anymore. I don’t like wearing over-sized clothes because there’s no sense in looking bigger than I really am.

So, I’m taking Marie Kondo’s advice and donating everything that doesn’t give me joy, as well as preparing all of the things I want to take on my trip. I think I’ve said this before, but I’m meeting my dad and my sister in Orlando to go to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. I’m sure I’ll have some great pictures to post along the way, both for my Facebook feed and this web site, which does an excellent job with photo galleries. I think I’m going to bring my laptop along so that I have the ability to edit them before I post, because some of them will look cool with filters, etc. and some of them will need cropping. I can do most of that on my phone, but I truly rely on GIMP to give me the best outcome. It’s basically an open source version of Adobe PhotoShop, and there’s a version called GIMPShop if you’re so familiar with PhotoShop that you don’t want to learn everything fresh. Basically, it comes with a .bat file that changes all the keyboard shortcuts to what you would use if PhotoShop was installed.

I used to use Google Picasa extensively, but they’ve retired the program and I am extremely sad about it, because it was a great image organizer and basic retouching program. There weren’t any bells and whistles, but I didn’t need them. Taking out red eye, cropping, and sometimes adding filters or warmth to improve skin tone was enough. I also liked the fact that you could organize your photo library and have it sync with your Google Drive so that you never lost a photo. My photo stream automatically backs up to Google on my phone, but it’s just not the same.

Maybe fuming about it is how I’ll finish getting everything sorted about my room. Anger is a beautiful thing because nothing says venting like taking it out on innocent baseboards.

Because they are coming.

One of my favorite things, right up there with Jesus giving me a hug, is nose spray with menthol. I’ve loved it since I was a kid, because my father was devout in his use. This may not be the case anymore, but it was then. I follow the directions carefully, because all ENT (ear, nose, and throat) docs will tell you that if you use it too much, you’ll get what’s called “kickback,” the phenomenon of having to use it more and more. I take it at the same time as my Sudafed and Zyrtec, so that by the time they kick in, I can breathe easy. The only other time in my life that I’ve felt that kind of relief was when I went to an ENT who had this thing, not unlike a soda gun, that reached up past my nose into my sinuses and blew decongestion/allergy meds right into my mask. I also take generic Humibid, which thins out my secretions so I can get them out easier. It stops both the congestion and the queasiness from accidentally swallowing them. I figured out that I do not have a cold. I just have bad allergies right now, which is ridiculous when it’s this cold outside. I mean, where are the allergies coming from?

My guess is that my room is dusty in some places, because when I went for the allergy test where they put allergens under the skin to see what makes you react, dust blew up four of the other samples (incidentally, as a lesbian, I am relieved to know that I am not allergic to cats. I don’t have one, but 95% of the dating pool will have at least one…. stereotypes come from somewhere…). Anyway, it’s time to find the dust, and I think a good bit of it is on my ceiling fan. I’ll get some Pledge and go to it, because the more expensive brands will actually repel dust so that you don’t have to spray as often.

I really am that Marie Kondo simplicity Virgo, but when I get depressed, I just can’t hack it. Today I can make a serious dent in the mess that’s left over from my other attempts at organizing, because tomorrow is trash day. After I finish this entry, I am feeling so much better that I’ll have the energy to buzzsaw through.

I was inconsolable yesterday, because CCC needed rental income and rented out my office before telling me and stashed all my stuff in Matt’s office. If I’d known they’d needed income, if I could’ve found the resources, I would have paid it. My office is the one thing that will get me out of the house… or, at least it was. I haven’t been there in a few weeks because my depression took hold mightily and I couldn’t leave my desk at home. Sometimes I feel that I’ve gotten a bit agoraphobic, which is pretty normal for someone who suffers from both chemical and situational depression. Staying in my room reinforces staying in my room, because the longer I go without human interaction, the more I become afraid of it.

Last night I made steps to improve my life by buying both my sister and myself a copy of Never the Same, written by my friend Donna Schuurman. It is specifically written for adults who have lost a parent in childhood and have never dealt with it, but there are so many parts to the book that resonate with me now and I couldn’t pass it up for either of us. Losing my mother suddenly at 39 feels just as traumatic (I think) as losing a parent before age 18, because my mother’s life was cut so short. She just retired last school year at 65, and I was looking forward to the next 15-20 years with a passion. I don’t grieve so much for the past, but for the lost future. Yes, sometimes remembering past memories make me sad, but it is nothing compared to the sadness that we were starting to rebuild this close, intimate relationship and it wasn’t finished yet… not that we’d ever be finished with the journey, but we didn’t get enough steps together and now all of it is gone.

I have written before about how the piano was our lighthouse in the fog of my youth, and I am grateful that she left it to me. However, there is no room in my house anywhere for a baby grand. I told my stepdad that we could leave it at his house (because the piano is just as meaningful to him as it is to me) until I have a space big enough for it. I remember when we moved to a small apartment (or, more accurately, when my sister and my mother moved to a small apartment and my dad and I moved to an even smaller one), the piano sat in the dining area and we ate on TV trays or joked about setting the piano for dinner. So maybe the space I need isn’t as large as I think. My aunt Beth asked me how I was going to get it to DC, and I joked that I was just going to tie it to the top of my two-door hatchback…. what could possibly go wrong?

I took group piano at University of Houston, but mostly I play by ear. I can pick up things easily by listening to it, but reading two rhythms on the page is extraordinarily difficult, especially since I can barely read bass clef (you don’t really need it as a trumpet player or a soprano). However, even with just ear training, I used to play for hours… mostly from Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue album, or John Tesh’s Live at Red Rocks or Avalon (shut it- those are the only ones I like). I’ve also come up with my own arrangements for a few things, but put sheet music in front of me and it’s a foreign language. I’ve decided that when I have the room for said piano, I should take a few more lessons… at least enough to learn bass clef. That might clear up a few things. 😛

For someone who’s taken music theory, group piano, and spent hours upon hours playing the piano both at home and at UH’s lab, I’m still such a n00b. Like I said, I’ve come up with my own arrangements for things, but I couldn’t notate them if my life depended on it. I sort of cheated on my final exam for group piano by having my mother play my piece over and over so that I could learn it by ear and memorize it rather than actually having to read off the page. That’s a memory I’d forgotten that makes me smile. She was invaluable to me during that semester, because I had to have a performing arts class for my degree plan. Why I didn’t choose choir or band I’ll never know. Probably because I didn’t really know how to play the piano and I at least wanted to be able to play parts while learning hymns, etc. I still haven’t gotten there…………. #shatnerellipsis #prayingonthespaces

I know why I didn’t choose band. It embarrasses me every time I pick up my horn that I am no longer as good as I used to be. I was never the best, but I have won first desk at several auditions in my life, and that is no small feat, especially at HSPVA. I embarrassed the hell out of myself in a Portland community orchestra when a trumpet player was absent and I volunteered to take his solo while he was gone, thinking that I could pull it off because hey, I’ve played solos my whole life. It did not go……. well.

By that time, I realized I should put my energy into singing, and I became a better singer than I ever was a trumpet player, and I kicked myself for not going the choir route. I made All-District choir my junior year of high school, and All-Region auditions were the same day as the All-State marching contest. I couldn’t make a hole in the trumpet line in good conscience, so I didn’t go. But I wonder to this day how far I could’ve made it. In terms of the All-State marching contest, we played a suite from On the Waterfront, one of Leonard Bernstein’s great film scores. We came in first with four out of five judges, but one judge rated us a lot lower, so we ended up coming in fifth. The bus was absolutely silent going home, because we were all so angry that one person could affect the entire outcome. Now, fifth best marching band in the entire state of Texas is great, but it was no consolation then.

In symphonic band, we beat out hundreds of bands to perform at TMEA (Texas Music Educators Association). It was one of the highlights of my musical career, because we were given the Sudler Flag of Honor by the John Philip Sousa Foundation, which recognizes outstanding high school concert bands. It was the second time in my life that I have accidentally ended up in a better place than where I originally started. I didn’t get into Johnston Middle School, at Clifton we beat the pants off them in contests. At Clements, we beat the pants off HSPVA.

Because my mother was an elementary school teacher, she was already in San Antonio where TMEA was held, so I got to see her a lot. I can’t remember whether she was at our concert, because I think she had a workshop at the same time. But we went through the “fair” together, where I got to try at least 20 trumpet mouthpieces and 50 different horns. She also bought me a pair of knee socks with music staffs circling upward.

Speaking of which, Lindsay and Forbes are going with my idea for my mother’s headstone, which is to put a music staff on it that plays Amazing Grace. They’re also going to put a marble piano bench modeled after her own near “our tree.” Now I have to confess that I didn’t come up with the idea on my own. It’s from a ring I’ve always wanted from James Avery. However, I don’t think anyone’s ever thought of it for a headstone before, so I hope that it turns out as unique as she was.

The ring itself is retired now, so they are extremely hard to find, and sometimes outrageously expensive. I don’t think there’s a single link I’ve found for this piece that hasn’t said “sold.” So it’s an idea that I remembered from my teenage years…. I don’t think they’ll mind. If they do, too late now.

On that “note,” time to get to cleaning the dust off my ceiling fan. I’ve taken an antihistamine to hopefully combat the extreme reaction. #fingerscrossed

It’s been reported that border patrol is now looking at Facebook for people with political views opposing their own. Come get me. I dare you. My Bible tells me that I am supposed to welcome the stranger in every possible way that I can, and that message is echoed from the Jews to the new church. I’m sure those border patrol agents don’t remember that Jesus would have been dead as a toddler if Mary and Joseph hadn’t been able to get into Egypt. That now he wouldn’t even be able to get into the US because despite popular belief, racial profiling would cut him off at the pass. What, he’s the only European-descent white guy in Israel/Palestine? #dumbassattack

If Paul needed to evacuate his mission after his conversion near Damascus, had it happened in present day, he’d be just as screwed as everyone else trying to get out of that dystopian shitshow of a country.

I’m impressed by all the hypocrisy around here these days. For someone who rails at the sky that no one believes he’s a Christian, Trump isn’t doing much to prove it. It takes a lot of gaslighting to get people to believe that you follow religious principles when you’re clearly suffering from delusions of grandeur. Religion, in its purest form, is the examination of the self… the realization that if there is a God, it’s not you. It’s meant to push your ego out of the way, and if there is anything that is NOT happening in the White House, it’s the submission of ego for the greater good of many.

Trump’s racism is unprecedented, because there are plenty of white terrorists running around already here. We’re not banning white people from coming here, I assure you. The difference is that there’s not as many immigrants from European countries because they aren’t under constant threat of having civillian neighborhoods bombed either out of spite or a missed target…. plus, all of the sudden, and I’m sure no one can figure out why, people in European countries seem to be really happy staying where they are.

Perhaps it’s that the US is getting more self-destructive by the day, and it’s not going to get any better until we have a president that understands what the job entails can form coherent thoughts and sentences. I’m not even sure that Trump can understand the words as they’re coming out of his mouth, and he’s not a detail-oriented policy wonk. Reading the headlines and using soundbites to form opinions seems to be enough… even with security briefings from people who are probably doubled over in pain trying to dumb it down enough for comprehension. Or maybe they just do what they do and give him a coloring book. Who knows?

I’ve long thought that there was a shadow government that really runs the country, and I can only hope that their main job right now is to keep Trump from running off the rails. But Trump seems to fire everyone who thinks about it, so public agents that disagree with him are gone. I can only hope that undercover agents still have their sanity intact. It is obvious to me that White House senior intelligence is now just an oxymoron. I think senior intel in the White House serves at the pleasure of the president, so once the transition team was out of there, we lost any modicum of sanity around a megalomaniac of a President.

Now that there’s starting to be a rebellion in the Republican Party, our hope has to be that it spreads. Maybe this will be the event where working across the aisle is restored after The Hammer destroyed it.

Not everything is a nail.

I’ve got the beginnings of another cold, and this time, I know it’s because there’s something in my room that I can’t find that’s making me sick. Perhaps it’s a dish I forgot to take downstairs that got pushed under the bed while I was trying to organize and missed it. But whatever it is, people don’t get sick this often, and I think a deep clean with Fabuloso™ is necessary. As I quote often from Ralphie May, Fabuloso gets out third world dirt. If I end up taking the road of full-time job with laptop tether, I’d like to find a housekeeper, for two reasons. The first is that obviously, my room would always be organized. The second is that I tend to keep it up so that I’m not embarrassed when the housekeeper comes over. I’d like to hire someone who could really use the money, and I couldn’t care less if they’re legal in this country or not. I just don’t know how to reach out to someone like that. But that is putting the cart before the horse, because I need enough money to hire an employee before I hire an employee, capiche?

But thoughts of coming home at night with my room spotless and my laundry folded are deep motivation for finding any sort of job, and I am sending out resumes and filling out applications like a fiend. I am blessed in that my rent and bills are the cheapest I’ve ever had, so even if I worked at Safeway, I’d still have enough money to pay someone else. This is because I don’t really spend money on anything. When I left DSI, I had three and a half months’ worth of living expenses saved up because I wouldn’t leave the house. Most of that was because not having a car made it where I was so exhausted from my commute that I didn’t have room in my life for anything fun. The rest was that my savings account meant more to me than leaving the house.

Because I had that cushion, after I lost my mother I came home and completely decompensated. I couldn’t even make myself take a shower and get dressed some days, and though I have graduated into wanting to get back into real life, I ponder the re-entry greatly. At this point, I will take anything to make my savings account happy, but I do not want to be distracted from going back to school. The only reason I’m just now thinking about it is that I haven’t needed a degree to get where I wanted to go previously, and now I do. I need two of them, actually.

Because I want to work in the inner city with the homeless population, it is possible that I could get grants for loan forgiveness with grad school. I don’t know about undergrad. I am going to make an appointment with a counselor at Howard to see where I need to go from here. It’s not important that I go to Howard for undergrad, but it’s where I want to go to grad school, so I will start there and branch out. There are a few courses I could take at a community college, because even though I am a second-semester junior at University of Houston, there’s a couple of first and second year classes that I need to take care of… like a math class and and a sophomore English class like “Intro to Writing.” I am not worried about passing English. I took freshman comp at Wharton County Junior College and on the first day, our professor said that she just wanted a benchmark for where we were in our writing ability, so she gave us 30 minutes and a topic. She thought it was so good when I was finished that she made me read it in front of the class. I wish I could remember what it was about, but I’ve slept since then.

But back to Howard….

Howard’s divinity school is United Church of Christ, which means that I could get all of my denominational requirements done at the same time I’m taking classes. If I went somewhere else, I’d have to go to school first and THEN work out how to get ordained in that denomination. The only reason I find it a bit sad is that so much of my soul is Episcopalian, but I just cannot even. I know that the Episcopal church would be a good fit for me, but there is no changing the liturgy under any circumstances, and as I’ve pointed out before, I am a writer. It’s what I do, and it’s what I’d like to continue to do with my bulletins. When I was at Bridgeport UCC in Portland, when I preached, I also put together the orders of worship, so that the calls and responses were something I’d come up with myself. I enjoy preaching a great deal, but to me, what was even better was hearing 150 people read out loud something I wrote, because as a writer, all we want is for our words to be read.

That being said, it doesn’t mean I don’t want the choir to wear cassocks and surplices, either. 😛

I have so many ideas, and at this point, no where to put them. But that will change over time as I achieve one goal after another. The hardest part is finding momentum in the midst of deep grief, because as I was telling one of my friends, the hardest part of losing my mother is that people expect me to get back to normal, and there is no normalizing this. There can be a new normal, but the grief regarding what normal used to be is often overwhelming. My natural depression is made so much worse by the added situational depression of losing a parent, and it’s not something you can explain to anyone that hasn’t lost a parent themselves. They just have no frame of reference for it. I actually had one friend tell me that they didn’t want to hear about my grief because they didn’t even want to imagine losing their own mother.

And another said I didn’t seem that sad, and it would have been so much worse if I’d lost my father instead. I said, “because it would have been so much harder to lose my right arm than my left?” That shut ’em up.

It’s hard not to feel internalized rage at the stupid things people say to me, but I have to remember that again, they have no frame of reference for what I’m going through and won’t until one of their parents dies. In the words of Jesus, forgive them Father, for they know not what they do. The comment about losing my father over my mother absolutely undid me for days, because the idea that I “didn’t seem sad enough” was heartbreaking. What is “sad enough” supposed to look like? I’m already metaphorically tearing my clothes and refusing to engage with anyone on most days. Is that sad enough for you? There are days when I can’t even pick up the phone, I’m so depressed. There are days when, because I don’t have anywhere to be, I don’t get out of bed. There are days that when I do, I regret it. It’s been since October that my mother died, and except for a few outings, I won’t even go to the grocery store regularly. My appetite fluctuates between EAT ALL THE THINGS and eat nothing for a few days until my appetite returns. IS THAT SAD ENOUGH FOR YOU?

In fact, right now I have to send a text message to Hayat and tell her that since I haven’t been grocery shopping, everyone has taken up all my space in the fridge so that if I did shop, I wouldn’t have anyplace to put my groceries. What does that say about how long it’s been since I’ve bought milk, eggs, etc.? What about that? IS THAT SAD ENOUGH FOR YOU?

What about being glad that Dana and I are divorced so that I don’t have to engage with anyone unless I want to? That I don’t have to take care of a marriage and my grief at the same time? Glad that Dana doesn’t require my attention and love so that I can be as absolutely selfish with my time as I want, even though I know she would have been so supportive of me that I wouldn’t have even had to sigh before she was johnny-on-the-spot with a hug? IS THAT SAD ENOUGH FOR YOU?

What about on my deepest, darkest days, feeling like going to college and grad school, getting remarried, having children (my own or my partner’s), etc. is pointless because my mother won’t be there to see it? IS THAT SAD ENOUGH FOR YOU?

I started this entry with so much hope for my future, but something got under my skin and I just spiraled into all of the anger I feel. But again, very few people are equipped to deal with others’ grief, and I have to be loving and forgiving because they really don’t have any clue what nerve they’re hitting on any given day. Being sad enough is not something I feel I should need to prove, but because it runs under the surface, people are apt to comment on it. But it doesn’t take much to make me come undone.

Which is why I don’t engage. I want to be by myself as all this processing gets done, because others’ input is often not helpful, because again, they have no frame of reference and are just trying to help…. and can’t.

I need to reach out to my friends who have also lost parents, because they understand that absolutely helpless place…. the one that says despite external appearances, I am DEFINITELY SAD ENOUGH FOR YOU.

Leader: Show me what democracy looks like!
Crowd: This is what democracy looks like!

This was the chant of the day, repeated like a mantra as I marched on Washington for the first, and hopefully not the only time.

I started the day at Autumn & Dan’s house, where Autumn made breakfast and coffee for the five of us (Lindsay & Kai were there as well… Lindsay of “don’t look, but that guy over there is David Sedaris” fame). In order to avoid parking issues, we parked in Alexandria and walked to the Braddock Street Station, where crowds were staggered going up the escalator so that the train platform wasn’t overcrowded. It took a while to get upstairs, but once we did, it was a festive atmosphere. Every train that came through the station was already jam packed, and only a few people from Braddock could get on at a time. And every time a train left the station, the cheering and whooping and hollering would start all over, because it was one more train headed to the march. I don’t know how we managed to get all five of us onto a train at once, but we did, and as I whispered to Lindsay, “if we were any closer, we’d have to get married.” I also told her that of all the mental health issues I have, I am glad that claustrophobia is not one of them. The crowd was so tight it was hard to breathe, and I am sure that both weight and number limits were exceeded by a large margin. No one cared… or if they did, they were too polite to say so because they recognized what a gargantuan feat was being pulled off yesterday.

I have to give a YUUUUUGE shout-out to WMATA, because lines were long, crowds were frustrating, and they did the best job they possibly could… because let’s face it. No matter how you plan for something like this, there is no easy way to get 400,000 people around a city. I hope they made enough in fares to cover the extra trains, because it was so gracious of them to step up frequency and open early.

Though it continued to be more and more uncomfortable with every stop, because like I said, no one was getting off the train, we made it to Federal Triangle unscathed. From the moment we entered the station, the streets were just as crowded as the train. We tried to find alternate routes, but with that many people, there were no alternate routes. We made it to The Mall, where we could breathe and walk around. If you see pictures of The Mall, you’d think that the protest wasn’t that large, but it was actually on the surrounding streets, with onlookers packed onto the steps of every federal building and Smithsonian museum. I hope that I was able to capture the spirit of the march on my Facebook feed, but I wasn’t able to get high enough above the crowd so that everyone could see the scope. It was massive…. just absolutely crazy busy with activity. The people, united, will never be defeated.

The best (non-offensive) sign I saw was I’ve seen better cabinets at Ikea. To me, the worst protest yell was hey hey, ho ho… Donald Trump has got to go. The reason for this is that Mike Pence is an actual legislator, and I think his rollbacks are even scarier than what Trump might do…. conversion therapy, funerals for every abortion, shutting down federal funding for women’s health even though none of that funding goes toward abortion, etc. Although, who am I kidding? Whether it’s President Trump or President Pence, there will be a lot of changes because the legislators around President Trump know for sure that he has no idea what he’s doing, and will capitalize on it regardless. The second-best sign I saw, which rang so much truth it hurt, was we are the 51% minority.

As I “walked,” I wished that President Obama could have remained in office while we tightened cybersecurity and voted again. If Trump won again, fair and square, it would at least be what the people wanted instead of the proven ability of Russian intelligence and the possibly infiltrated FBI to sway an election.

All of the sudden, The Americans doesn’t seem like a TV show anymore, but a documentary. All you need to know about the show, and you can watch past seasons on Amazon Prime Video, is that it is about KGB operatives pretending to be Americans embedded in the DC suburbs to look as normal as possible, despite doing things like bugging a clock in Caspar Weinberger’s office. It does not take place in present day, but it seems as if history is repeating itself as the “woke” and politically active are doomed to watch.

Dan brought up the point that it was a shame that we weren’t protesting for anyone. It’s not like anyone from the administration showed up to listen. In fact, as we passed Trump’s hotel, there wasn’t a single face watching from the windows out of curiosity. However, the power was not in getting the administration to listen. The power was having almost half a million people show up for safe space, peaceful congregation that no one could take away from us. It made us all feel better that President Trump’s awful deeds did not represent us, and there was no way we were going to stop fighting. There will be more protests, but this was a “welcome to your first full day” present. If you look at the pictures from the inauguration, there seemed to be an exponentially larger crowd right at his front door.

Not only were there Americans walking the streets, but Canadians who’d driven or flown down, and a contingent from Ireland as well. I am sure that many more countries were represented, but the Canadians were wearing easily identifiable maple flag clothing and the Irish had protest signs to make them equally noticeable. I also wished that somewhere, somehow, the Obama family was watching, not able to attend because they would have been mobbed… not in a bad way, but more like people attaching themselves to their pant legs and begging them not to go. The Secret Service could never have prepared enough.

The police and military presence was on point, not there to interrupt but to observe, and I thanked the military (as I always do) for their service. At one point, the car that was parked in the middle of all those people was called away, and I couldn’t help but think that of all the units they could have called, the car stuck in the middle of hundreds of thousands of people wouldn’t have been my first choice. It was slow going for them because there was no room to move out of the way. And first, all the protest signs had to be removed from the windows. The cops joked with us that the signs had to come down because they’d been called away, but we weren’t the ones they were worried about in terms of turning over or burning out their car.

It was amazing how many different perspectives were represented, from listening to religion over science to pro-choice to immigration and welcoming the stranger in accepting refugees. There was not one message, but ALL THE THINGS. It felt good not to be a single-issue march, but solidarity in all beliefs.

As an INFJ visionary, I was constantly reminded not of how things are, but how they could be. Even I was astonished at my ability to rise above my introverted nature, willing to join in because I knew I was making history and writing about it all day in my head. I wished I had Wil Wheaton’s “I’m Blogging This” t-shirt, but it was too cold at some points to wear it without layers. At others, the people were so jam-packed that I had to take off my jacket and sweater, because even though it was in the 40s, the crowd was so tight that body heat was radiating everywhere.

I sort of felt bad that I hadn’t bought an outfit especially for the march, but I did try. I was walking through a store and found the perfect long-sleeved t-shirt, which said “Fight Like a Girl….” However, it was not in the women’s section and though boys’ clothes fit me, girls’ clothes do not. They did not have my other perfect t-shirt, a famous conversation between Mia Hamm and her coach:

Coach: You run like a girl.
Mia: If you ran a little faster, you could run like a girl, too.

Women power was self-evident, empowering and humbling at the same time. I took all my women friends with me, the angels on my shoulder. Dana and Argo and Notorious and The L___nator and Lindsay and my mother. I carried them with me in spirit, because the idea of carrying them physically was just too funny… a lot of ass and a little shoulder.

There were so many people I wanted to see that I just didn’t run into, impossible in a crowd of that size. Giles and Zaid brought their male babies with a sign that said “Two Dads, Two Sons, Four Feminists.” For those just joining us, Giles was my voice teacher at University of Houston, and I couldn’t be prouder that he’s here now… one of the people truly trying to make a difference. Giles’ home country is Canada, and though there are plenty of Conservatives there, I wonder every day what our country would be like if our Conservatives, like theirs, could just get past the politics of kindness. Universal health care, women’s rights, and gay marriage are done. There’s no fighting about it anymore. How far along would we be as a country if those things were settled as well?

I am pretty sure that they would be had the Republican Party hadn’t just been bodyslammed by crazy, trying to convince people that Donald Trump is a Christian with those values at heart. I think the Two Corinthians would disagree. What the pro-lifers don’t seem to get is that with universal health care, the fear of bringing a baby into the world in poverty is alleviated, thus resulting in less abortions. It seems as if pro-lifers think that all people who seek abortions are well to-do and using abortion as mere birth control, not trying to avoid a situation where a mother cannot possibly take care of her child. It has always been my belief, echoed by others, that if Republicans were really so concerned about children’s lives, they’d be lined up around the block with bottles and blankets for the poor children already here… never trusting the science behind abortion, trusting in their religion that life begins at conception, when Judaic law offers so such limitation. I believe that the “point of viability” argument is a reasonable compromise, with the exception of aborting fetuses that would never survive outside of the mother’s womb. As Molly Ivins pointed out, there are no mothers who don’t anguish over a late term abortion, as if they waddle past a Planned Parenthood clinic after carrying a baby that long and deciding parenthood just isn’t for them. When we talk about late-term abortions, we are talking about children whose brains and organs have not developed, not carelessness.

I also don’t understand why you can’t be pro-life and pro-choice at the same time. Pro-lifers seem to equate pro-choice with pro-death, and try to legislate all women’s choices for them. For a lot of people, including cases of rape, an abortion is just not something they can wrap their brains around, but at the same time, believe wholeheartedly that it is not their job to make those choices for all women, because they cannot imagine the situations under which abortion might make sense for others, and don’t want or need to try. It’s not their job, and they know it. Just because those laws have become popular does not make them correct.

Even Barry Goldwater (AuH2O) tried to warn us:

Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they’re sure trying to do so, it’s going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can’t and won’t compromise. I know, I’ve tried to deal with them.

The Religious Right is neither, and we are fighting a “divine right of kings” mentality. It’s one of the reasons these marches are so important. The Republicans may not be listening, but it’s about getting people fired up for change, especially in the Midterms, where checks and balances might be restored. People are beginning to pick up the phones and call their Congressmen, even people who hate the phone, because it is far more effective than an e-mail or a letter.

My feelings about this are muddled and clear at the same time, because while I am all for getting in touch with Congress, it feels like two years is so far away. I have never felt more disenfranchised and more powerful at the same time.

It’s only been a few days, and already I am exhausted…. but not a fatigue that will stop me from joining the fight. Hope is not dead, and Jesus dealt with governments much worse than this (the Sanhedrin & the Romans). Especially as an introvert, my Jesus is distressing me out of my comfort.

We ended the day debriefing at Los Tios Grill, which is never bad.

My brain has been scrambled and fried since I lost my mother. This is the first time in a very long time that I’ve been on an “up,” hypomania that allows me four hours of sleep a night, if that. The flip side is that I am very productive during these hours, so it is not all bad. It’s kind of like a superpower that I don’t know when or if will come. Most of the time, my Bipolar II presents as a down with very few ups. I do not cycle more than a few days a month, and sometimes I skip it entirely. I do not know whether this is my natural cycle, or if my medication helps (sarcasm because downs are sometimes intolerable). But I do know that when I swing upward, I am happier. It feels good to be productive, to want to go outside, to want to live life to the fullest rather than sitting in my room hoping that something will happen.

It will make me feel a lot better about being in a huge crowd this weekend at the Women’s March. I haven’t decided who I’m going with, because I might go with the UCC, and I might go with my friends. They’re trying to decide if they want to march with another group, or if they want to get their own group together. However, if I go with the UCC, it’s not like I won’t be with friends. I don’t know who from our church will be there, but I’m guessing Matt will, and that is enough. I am greatly hoping that men do not feel excluded from marching for women’s rights, because some of the best feminists I know are male UCC ministers.

It comes from an example that Jesus taught in one story about Martha and Mary. Martha gets hacked off that she’s doing all the cooking and cleaning (as Larry Gipson once said, churches love Marthas… not the hacked off part, but those that see cooking and cleaning as ministry, because it is). But Mary wanted to sit at Jesus’ feet with the rest of the Disciples and listen to what was being said, and Jesus welcomed her, even though in that time and place it Was. Not. Done. Jesus’ feminist example has echoed through time as Christianity has become more and more progressive, although there are still pockets where women are not allowed to preach, being “relegated” to Sunday school teachers because that is what’s seen as women’s work. I recognize that teaching children is perhaps even greater than preaching to the masses, but it is also an incredible glass ceiling (*squints hard at Fundamentalists*).

However, society will leave them behind, and that version of Christianity must change or die.

I have my own feelings about becoming the kind of person God has asked me to be, because sometimes I feel entirely unworthy, and at others, I know that unworthiness is unwarranted because no one in the Bible that Jesus ever called in the New Testament, or God called in the Old, was ever the type person you’d expect to wear the mantle. My saving grace is that I keep working on myself so that I am becoming a vessel instead of focusing on the parts of my heart that have turned black and need cleansing, because I am realizing one day at a time that those black spots can be cleaned with hard work. I have a long and interesting history of being emotionally messed up, and it is my goal before I am finished with grad school to be able to work without passing on my flaws to others.

It is already beginning, but there is a staircase, and I am somewhere in the middle of it, ever climbing toward the top. Perhaps it is Jacob’s Ladder, and perhaps I am building my own spiral. I can promise you that the pericope of Jacob wrestling with the angel resonates with me deeply, and in some ways, my emotional “stuff” to deal with are where God has touched my hip. I can only hope to heal the limp… Ironic only because my sciatica is a constant reminder physically of the road forward in therapy.

Every day, I make a choice to leave my past behind, or to continue to ruminate about it, trying to figure out where and why I went wrong. It is the natural dance of intimacy, getting closer to finding my true self and alternately running away from it. I know that I have been running since I was a teenager, and now it is time to stop. I have an incredible wealth of resources at my disposal now that Vesta takes my insurance again. Perhaps today is the day I will go back, because I have to take advantage of the productivity while it lasts.

The rest of the time, I am content to sit at my computer and send out resumés, because that takes barely any energy at all. I have also sent out applications for things that make money, but don’t require a lot of brain power, like working at a grocery store. I don’t know that it will make me happy, but what I do know is that I can save my brain power for writing as opposed to being tethered to my laptop 24 hours a day. I am capable of that life, and have often done it, and what I have learned is that it keeps me busy enough that I don’t have time to think about where I am going and whether it is a direction or a distraction.

I will have time to think about it on vacation. I haven’t had a vacation in probably ten to fifteen years, and my father and my sister want me to meet them in Orlando to go to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. I have tried copycat recipes of butterbeer, and I am hoping that the real thing is better. I also hope they have a bar, because I would like to try a Firewhisky… even though I am very particular about whisky and scotch. Peat moss makes me gag, because the nose is what I call “Band-Aids,” or at least the smell when you used to have to open the old tins. So, my particular advice is to stay away from Islay. I am the type person that will try anything once, but in this case it did not work out in my favor.

And it’s not like I didn’t try the best of the best. My friend David bought me a shot of The Balvenie, so if you’re going to try peat flavored whisky, I started at the top. It just wasn’t my thing. I would rather have a Diet Coke.

I’m excited about going to the park(s), and will definitely bring my Chuy’s “Expecto Burrito” t-shirt. Speaking of which, my dad got me a gift certificate for Chuy’s for Christmas, and though I did have two meals, I spent most of it on t-shirts, because their design team is so fabulous. One has the fish with Walter White’s hat and sunglasses and says “Heisenchuy.” One says “Super Tex-Mex Brothers,” and is a recreation of Super Mario Brothers in 8-bit for the original NES.

Before I go, I want to get a pair of cargo pants, because even though they’re not in fashion anymore, I would prefer it to carrying a bag through the park, and my stuff would be kept safe with snaps and buttons on the pockets. I may also activate my old iPhone 5c(heap) for the trip, because my Samsung is *huge.* I’d look like I had a tumor. Actually, perhaps I’ll get them today because they’d be handy for the march on Saturday as well. If, God forbid, I get arrested, I’ll at least be comfortable while I’m waiting for my buds to bail me out. I can’t imagine that with 200-400 thousand people that it would happen, but stranger things have happened, and strange things tend to happen to me. I’m also planning on going to the Metro station to fill up my card so I won’t have to wait in line for the machines. The tourists alone, oy vey.

I really want to write more because we haven’t talked in a while, but I need to get moving. Possibly more later- we shall see.

Love you miss you mean it. 🙂

When I was in middle school, we got the call on the Saturday before a holiday that my mother’s father had died. My mother had a children’s choir program the next morning, so there was no way we could take off for Lone Star immediately, about a five and a half hour drive from Houston if you’re going the speed limit…….. My mother, instead of calling everyone and postponing the program (which everyone would have understood), got up like a champ and conducted the hell out of that program. It is one of the times that I remember her as a true hero, because she was able to put away her grief for a few hours, an impossible feat, and get it handled….. literally the Olivia Pope of choir directors.

I wish I could remember more specific details, like what the program entailed and whether my sister was a soloist (I think she was, actually, and that might have gone into her decision as well). But the take-home message is just how much my mother worked with grace under fire. Unlike my mother, my grandfather did not die suddenly. He’d been diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s Disease, the aggressive kind where it started with his throat muscles and worked down so that he could not eat without a feeding tube. Because of this, my grief was tempered, because I had a long time to process the situation… unlike my mother, who we learned from her autopsy that it was indeed an embolism that blew in her leg which killed her almost instantly.

Our family friend, Suzanne Wales, came to the funeral and played the piano, and accompanied me as I played Amazing Grace on my trumpet. As usual, I was calm during crisis with an immense delayed reaction. Perhaps I take after my mother more than I thought.

These memories are why I am praying for my choir director today. She has made the decision to show up and conduct despite receiving the news that her father died. Grace under fire just as my mother was all those years ago. We have bonded over losing our mothers recently, and knowing her is painful and cathartic. The only time I ever really cry at church anymore is when she is playing a piano solo, because she sounds so similar to my mother that it gets me every time.

Praying for her is my way of letting art flow through me, whether it’s hers, mine, or ours as a collective choir. There is nothing in the world that would keep me from church today, because I know her pain. I have seen it with my own eyes. I can only hope that my love for her shines in them, because on days like this, it’s important for her to see it. She has supported me beyond measure as I sing through my own grief and pain. Now it’s my turn to return that favor.

Please join me in prayer, all over the world, because the art of prayer is the thread of humanity that runs through us all, the art that sustains us through good wishes for others in their distress. I know I have felt all sorts of energy from the rest of the globe, from the UK to Australia to Romania to Africa to Scandinavia. All I ask today is that you send it her way, too.

Amen.
#prayingonthespaces

I didn’t fall asleep until about 0400 because I made the mistake of watching Snowden at 2100. I thought I didn’t care about privacy because I didn’t have any, anyway (I’ve had a wallet stolen and Dana accidentally gave my passport to Goodwill). However, this was beyond my wildest dreams in terms of the power of the NSA/CIA/DIA/etc. As you can tell by the time of this posting [Editor’s Note: I started writing at 0830.], it didn’t take long before I woke back up just as freaked. If there’s anything that the movie points out, it’s that just because something is ruled illegal doesn’t mean that the intelligence community won’t do it, anyway. I’m not worried about access to my Facebook account- it’s all public, anyway. But access to every e-mail I’ve ever written, my phone, and my web cams on both my laptop and desktop? I am doing my best to remain in chill mode, because I have been sure since the Internet became mainstream that I didn’t have private information anymore. I just had information. But there’s one scene where the NSA is watching a Muslim woman and she starts to take off her clothes and they don’t not watch, because they’ve activated her web cam from their SCIF (Secure Contained Information Facility). The scariest part is that this could be dramatization for a movie, or it could be exactly the type behavior that Snowden was trying to highlight. The things that Snowden told the public were being fought internally, and nothing changed. I can’t necessarily support “telling family secrets,” and I can’t decide if I am better off for having seen the movie or not.

Because it’s Oliver Stone, there are real news clips mixed in with the dramatization, and I can’t recommend it highly enough as a good movie. I can promise that the issues it presents are complicated and there’s no easy answer. I have friends on both sides of the aisle, those that think he’s a traitor and a hero. I don’t know what the hell to think. I am able to see both sides of the equation, and just how involved the dialogue must be. Thus, my sleep last night was mostly reduced to sneezing and my eyes closed for a second. Who knows if I am a third or fourth connection to someone that deserves to be watched? How would I even know? I am glad that I am taking anti-anxiety medication, because even if I can’t turn off my brain about this, I’m not having any physical reactions to it. When the credits rolled, though, I was nauseous. By then, my medication had worn off and I couldn’t take any more until this morning. I have to be really careful with the clonazepam, because overuse tends to cause addiction and that is the last rabbit hole I need in my life. It would be easy to accomplish given the amount of stress and grief I’ve been under lately. Even with my mother dying, I still managed to get my savings to last until recently, because I greatly underestimated the time it would take me to get a job. Being a freelancer helps, but it’s not enough. The best I’m doing is expanding my network in hopes of meeting someone that can point me in the right direction.

It’s the same in terms of working for the church as a volunteer. It may also lead to something paid because on the social communications committee, I’m meeting other people who do what I do, which for the church is responsible, measured responses and in my own life, whoring my dirty laundry for money (explain your job badly). But the thing is, I don’t write for anyone else but me. If money comes from it, it’s a blessing, but it is not in any way necessary. Although I have to say that my favorite donation came from a woman who said you must have custom fonts. At the time, my reaction was you get me. You really, really get me. 😛

This is because any money that comes through goes right to WordPress.com and professional development. So far, I’ve been able to upgrade to the pro version of WordPress and get a subscription to LinuxJobber.com. Speaking of which, I need to create a CentOS virtual machine… more of a reminder to myself than telling you about it. That’s just an added bonus to hold me accountable. Although, wait. I don’t have to install anything on my local hard drive, because I can get a free VM in the cloud thanks to LinuxJobber and Amazon Web Services. It would just be nice to be able to learn stuff when I’m offline. It doesn’t happen often, but if my internet goes down, I’m not SOL, either.

This won’t make a lot of sense to non-computer people, but my computer has this inane thing where access to the extensions that make it possible to run a 64-bit guest operating system are soft-coded into the BIOS, and I Googled it, and there should be a BIOS update that fixes it, but so far, all of the BIOS updates I’ve downloaded haven’t included that one feature I really need. However, my computer is fast enough and has enough RAM that I can run a 32-bit guest operating system, and I have. Right now I’m running Windows 10 and can’t decide if I want to dual boot or just install VirtualBox. I had to switch back to Windows when my wireless adapter didn’t work natively in Linux and I have to install the Windows XP driver to get it to work, which reduces my download speeds to absolute shit. In order to properly use my internet connection in Linux, I have to tether my Android, which comes with two problems. The first is that I can’t use file transfer and tethering at the same time. The second is that there’s a large chance I could burn out my phone battery from keeping it plugged in so long. My laptop is fully capable of running multiple operating systems with VirtualBox, but I took it to the church so they wouldn’t have to provide a computer for me, and I got a refurbished desktop for Christmas, which is why I had to add USB wireless in the first place. Overall, I am extremely happy with it. Windows 10 doesn’t suck, and I’ve missed Fallout 3. The second is that the browser plugins are just better… I can use any browser for anything, which is important because I switch between Chrome and Firefox *a lot.*

It is shameful for me to admit this. It really is. However, if I upgrade to the Anniversary edition of Windows, I can install BASH, which won’t mean anything to you except that I’ll have a linux shell inside a Windows environment, and can run all the applications I’ve come to know and love that don’t make an open source Windows version. The easiest solution would be to take my desktop to the church and bring my laptop home, but my desktop is much, much faster than my laptop and has 3x the RAM. Plus, in Linux, my printer works perfectly, but the scanner won’t work over wireless… and I think it is lazy and pointless to buy a printer cable.

The entire reason I got an Android was to work in Linux natively, and I am surprised that the one feature that doesn’t work in Windows that does work in Linux is the media transfer protocol. Nine times out of ten, when I plug it in, it won’t even show up as a drive so I can’t drag and drop my music and videos. Regardless, it has a lot of features that my iPhone wouldn’t even touch, like having a fingerprint reader that allows me to log into my phone, Bank of America, and LastPass. I feel that feature alone was worth the price, even though I didn’t pay it… it was a Christmas present, too. Although it was a deep discount to get a refurbished one and take it to AT&T rather than upgrading my phone there. It’s not the latest and greatest phone, but it is to me. The fact that iPhones do not have an expansion slot is crazy. Mine is 128 GB so that it will last for a while. I use Handbrake to convert my movies to Android size, and I have a habit of using a LARGE amount of space for podcasts so that I don’t have to stream them in the car. Handbrake is invaluable because it backs up encrypted DVDs and Blu-Rays, although I do not have a Blu-Ray drive in my desktop. Perhaps that is one of the next orders of business, but first is a TV card so that I can run my cable through Kodi and record my shows onto my 3TB external drive. Thank GOD it comes in a Windows version that is identical to the Linux version, because I would be lost without it. It doesn’t have plugins for Amazon, Netflix, and Hulu, but there are so many video addons I do use, and here’s a list:

• ABC Family (Freeform)
• Crackler
• TED Talks
• Syfy
• Travel Channel
• Geek & Sundry
• Linux Gamecast
• This Week in Tech
• PBS
• PBS Kids (even at 39, still addicted to WordGirl)
• WABC
• WCBS
• WNBC
• YouTube

There are also programs called “Scrapers” that will download the subtitles and movie posters for my movies, which makes the interface beautiful. The OTA channel plugins often post shows before Hulu, because they’re recorded live. I also really, really love the PBS plugin, because my favorite show in the entire world is Frontline. Second to that is Mercy Street, because most of it takes place in my old hood, Alexandria, VA… and if there is a third, it’s American Experience. With the Travel Channel plugin, I have access to No Reservations. The last episode I watched was Finland, because my favorite episode of NR is Iceland, where Tony basically bitches the entire time about the cold/food and it is seriously entertaining.

I was looking forward to more of that, but as it turns out, he liked Finland much better. I would totally move there in a heartbeat if I wasn’t tired of moving and I know I would be gobsmacked by the weather- considering even though it was a lot warmer in Portland, the constantly grey skies undid me. After ten years, it was time to come home, whether it was Houston or DC. I do like their approaches to education, health care, a living wage whether you have a job or not, and the fact that if I got pregnant, my baby could live in a cardboard box. Also, there’s one train that serves beer and wine so you can have one on your train ride home. What’s not to love except for the soul-crushing weather?

Plus, Linux was invented in Finland. How can I not love that? Although ironically, Linus Torvalds lives in Portland now.

In other news, I am meeting an old, old friend at SBUX this afternoon. She was in my 7th and 8th grade classes at Clifton, and now works as a journalist here. I’m excited because she introduced me to an organization working to mobilize Montgomery County in terms of calling Congressmen and just generally trying to decide what we’re going to do over the next 2-4 years. I have a sneaking suspicion that the Midterms are going to be exciting. The hardest part we face is that this area went blue, so in some ways, we are preaching to the choir.

If this organization is non-partisan, just trying to combat injustice rather than being a mouthpiece for the Democratic party, I want to include Matt and Christ Church to it… because this was not a typical election. Even some Republicans are terrified, because this is not about a Republican administration, but decency and humanity. I don’t think we’d be this outraged had someone like Mitt Romney or Jeb Bush won. They have their issues, but they have two things going for them. The first is that they are not batshit crazy. The second is that I doubt either would have turned the country into a theocracy, because gay marriage and abortion were settled by the Supreme Court, and I doubt either one would try to overturn those cases.

I agree with President Obama, though. If the Republicans can come up with a solution to health care that is actually better than the ACA, I will personally support it. I believe that chance is less than zero, though, and perhaps by a large margin. I am grateful that I am covered by state Medicaid, and even though that may be affected, too, it stands a better chance of existing than the federal Affordabe Care Act. Nicknaming it “Obamacare” is both excellent and terrible. It reminds people that POTUS was responsible for passing legislation that truly helped a lot of people… and mobilized Republicans to paint Obama as the anti-Christ for changing the way health care is handled in this country. Before I applied for Medicaid, I got a federal stipend of $250, which made my insurance 37 cents a month. I can easily afford it, but the truth is that Maryland’s Medicaid program provides so much more coverage for free. There’s no deductible, my doctor’s appointments are free, and my medication costs are reduced to a dollar a bottle. Any insurance I’ve ever gotten through work has never been that good. If, God forbid, I have to have surgery or something, I will not have to file for bankruptsy in the process due to co-pays. With surgery and major illnesses such as cancer or an autoimmune disease, co-pays go up to thousands of dollars.

I am a huge fan of single-payer, because it takes away the Golden Handcuffs. No one is stuck in a job they hate because COBRA is ridiculously expensive. Also, when I was working for Marylhurst University, because Dana and I weren’t married her insurance had to be taken out of my salary at full price, which was $600 a month. I gladly paid it because she needed it, but it was still a huge pain in the ass when my straight coworkers paid a tenth of that to add a dependent. Alert Logic was on point. I was able to add Dana, and even though it was taxable income, it was also a tenth of the price at MU.

Single-payer would have saved us a ton of money, although I am sure that’s been changed since national gay marriage is a thing…. for now. Right now, it pays to be single, because if I get a job, not adding a dependent will make my health insurance either free or greatly subsidized.

I am terrified of a Republican president and a Republican Congress all at once. There are no checks and balances on repealing the progress that has been made over the last eight years, and I’m glad that President Obama is remaining in DC until Sasha graduates, because it will enable him to campaign on a huge platform for the midterms.

I am also greatly disappointed that Merrick Garland and President Obama will not become Supreme Court justices, because especially with Obama, as a Constitutional Law professor, it’s a job he might have enjoyed even more than being President. I’m not sure that he even wanted to be nominated, but at the same time, I don’t think it is any less true that he would have made an incredible “Supreme.”

I’m also incredibly disappointed that Ben Carson is such an idiot, because I think it would be interesting at this time in our lives to have an MD in The White House. But Carson seems to have gotten his medical degree from Bob’s College of Medicine & BBQ Pit. If Tiffany Anthony ever had any interest in becoming President, I’d vote for her in a heartbeat (see what I did there?). It also wouldn’t hurt to have a doctor on the Supreme Court… because there are no qualifications for being a Justice. It is traditional for them to be lawyers, but that’s just precedent. Anyone can be appointed if they make it through the vetting process, because in the Constitution, they are literally just Nine Guys in Robes (thanks to Ken Wall for that description). I’m not even sure that you have to have any degrees if you are smart enough.

It’s interesting to think of me getting a government job right now, because I am sure I would be a part of the rebellion that is starting as we speak, especially if I was a White Hat hacker, able to discover vulnerabilities and find SQL injections, rootkits, etc. Rootkits are of the devil, because you can actually overwrite memory as they’re working, so you can’t even see the running process. I am just not a math and science brain. I can teach someone how to use a computer and offer incredible tech support, but I am not the type person to whom programming/reverse engineering comes easily. However, maybe that wouldn’t matter in this administration. If Trump is any indication, I am qualified for any job. Any of them.

If I had aspirations in that area, it would be to work for “No Such Agency,” the only government institution that cares enough to listen. #tshirtwisdom I’ve seen it in two places. The first is the gift shop near Old Ebbitt Grill, and the second is at the Spy Museum. Especially after watching Snowden, it may go on my birthday list.

I do have a CIA baseball cap because my great uncle was a badass hero before I was born. However, I don’t wear it a lot because even though it’s just a tourist gimmick, I’ve noticed that other people look at me suspiciously, as if the CIA actually advertises. The rules for being in the intelligence community are roughly the same as Fight Club. The second is that it is black, and gathers all kinds of dust bunnies and dog hair, and I haven’t managed to get it clean in years.

And on that note, it’s time to get ready to meet “Ace.” I’m looking forward to sitting at the “cool kids’ table.” I finally think I’m worthy of it… and to be honest, it is exciting to think about my future in social justice rather than the grief that is threatening to undo me every single day. My mother would be so proud.

#beastmode engaged.