One of the best and worst parts of someone dying is that you learn things that they thought about you that they never told you themselves, and now you can’t respond to them. For instance, Lindsay told me that my mother read my blog religiously, and would say things like, “did you read that funny story Leslie posted?” or “She sounds good right now, doesn’t she?” or, the one that made me laugh the most, “Who is that Argo woman and what has she done to my baby?”

The short answer to that is “nothing,” but mothers do not believe that their children aren’t perfect, and anything I did to convince her of it wouldn’t have worked, anyway. Believe me, Argo wasn’t the problem. I was. But try telling that to a tiger mom.

Lindsay’s main point is that my mother never left me, even though I wasn’t physically in Houston. She kept tabs on my life even when I was too weak to call back… because now that I’ve lost her suddenly, I regret the times when I couldn’t see past my own anxiety and just pick up the phone. She never commented on a single entry, but would call with her thoughts, which were never about craft, or even about content. It was just, “are you ok?” I always was in front of her, with very few exceptions.

Those few exceptions were monumental in my growth and development, because she was the one that wanted to know how I was really doing, as opposed to the “I’m fine” you give in a “ladies who lunch” setting.

I just wasn’t comfortable sharing myself with her, because I was so practiced at guarding myself around her. The walls that were starting to come down never will.

I wish I had been more brave. I wish that I could have realized earlier that she really could handle everything I had to tell her, that there was no scenario on earth in which she’d say I was anything but perfect.

It’s just that if there’s anything my mother wanted me to be, it was healthy and happy, and showing her that I wasn’t caused her so much empathetic agony that I wouldn’t open up… but it wasn’t just that.

I’d decided as a teenager that my mother was never going to accept me for who I was, and that I had to find other people to fill that role. Those feelings didn’t completely go away until my 36th birthday, and after that, I was a little more comfortable regarding needing her mother love, but reticent to activate her mirror neurons. She felt more deeply when I was hurt than she ever did with her own scrapes and bruises.

I think I know now why I am such an empath today, picking up every emotion in the room. One of the reasons that this is “theantileslie.com” is that in person, I am very much the empath that just wants to fix all the things, and when I write, I just want you people to get off my lawn.

I don’t think my mother ever got to the point where she’d had enough. She just gave until she gave out. She didn’t even go to the emergency room when she first fell. She waited until it was impossible to avoid telling someone she needed help before she actually did it.

When I think about my 36th birthday, I think about how much that last paragraph echoes my own story, the one where I waited until every possible sign that I was about to have the “holy shit I am going down” parade had already passed and an unspoken want had to be expressed. I am embarrassed to need, in exactly the same way she was.

She asked her husband to call the ambulance, and for that to happen, I can only imagine how bad and/or weird she must have felt.

So many parallels in my own life that I cannot even. I am her blood, she lives in me. It is an impossibility that some of the things I feel are things that she felt during her relatively short life.

Her relatively short life.

DAMN IT.

I’m not supposed to be writing this right now. I’m supposed to be telling you all the things we’re going to do when she comes to DC, because we’d set aside an ENTIRE DAY for Mt. Vernon.

I want to be able to tell you about her hopes and dreams for the denouement of her life, rather than having to face the fact that “here today, gone tomorrow” is a thing.

There were so many things that my mother thought about me that she never told me, and thank God Lindsay is able to fill me in on some of them. I just wish that she hadn’t had to have so many conversations about me…..

because I didn’t pick up the phone.

The other funny Christmas story is that my mother knew Dana liked football, but didn’t know which team. So one year my mother got her a Cowboys jersey (or maybe it was me and it didn’t fit). Either way, there was now a Cowboys jersey in our house, and to Dana’s credit, she did not burn it on our front lawn in effigy.

Hail to the Redskins. May their name eventually rest in peace.

IF there is anything I would like to say directly to Dana & Argo, it is that through our conversations, my mother got to have three full years of hearing every day that she was right about Diane and me, that it never should have happened, and that I’d gaslighed her into believing two things; the first is that I was okay. The second is that it was over. Because of you, my mother and I were able to reconcile on a deeper level than we ever had before, because I was able to atone for a number of things that weighed deeply on me, the biggest one being when Diane and I separated from each other permanently…. as I told Diane directly, “don’t you see that I left her for you and now I don’t have either one? Can you see how much it is killing me inside?” It was the resurrection in the middle of the mess, in the words of Dr. Susan Leo.

Our last conversation lasted two and a half hours. There was nothing more to be said, no unfinished business. The grief is for the future, the fact that she is left out from seeing the enormous dreams I have for myself come to fruition. She was wholly supportive of me going into the ministry, because if her ex-husband was any indication, there’s no way I would fail. She’ll never see “The House that Leslie Built.” She won’t be at my graduation from Howard. She won’t be at my UCC ordination service. She won’t work for me until I find a choir director. She won’t play the piano in my sanctuary, as she did one Sunday when I was preaching at Bridgeport. Lindsay and I cried all the way through her solo, and then she cried all the way through my sermon. So, the memory of it happening once has to be enough, even though it was only a pulpit on loan.

In my grief I am feeling absolute disgust at the fact that all I want to do is hug Diane and cry and get snot all over her shirt because we both have such deep, ingrained memories with her. Despite her distaste for Diane in some ways, she was also her accompanist and they used to have a blast together. In fact, as I have said before, Diane came to visit a week before my 16th birthday and my mother was accompanying Diane at a funeral (I think). She knew that we’d want to spend some time alone catching up (because she didn’t know we were actually talking all the time), so she let me go to the church early before they were supposed to meet and said, “I should let you drive so you can show off for Diane.” I was trying to play it cool and said, “no, that’s ok. I’ll walk.” She looked at me and said, “is that what you’re wearing? You usually dress up for her.” That’s how I knew my mom had my number way before I did.

Confidentially, I think she was smarter than me.

I’m speaking for two minutes at the funeral. I decided in the car that I would manuscript, mostly because even with mood stabilizers and Klonopin on board, I’m still not sure how I’m going to feel at the funeral. If I manuscript, and then I start really bawling, I’ve got someone to read it and the story still gets out. Plus, I can publish it here when the funeral is over or have someone video it. Fuck it. If I lose my snot on camera, I don’t mind being shown as grieving. I am not planning on a spazz attack, I’m just planning because planning is logical in a time when grieving people are not.

Although I am so cerebral that I am planning this logically. It’s what I do. I am cool, confident, and capable until everyone else has had their meltdowns and I’ve coached them through it. Then, when everyone else is well, my delayed reaction is immense, but I may not be able to have it until I get home. Right now, adrenaline is high. I am betting that I will need some time for it to dissipate, but I know for sure that my experience of grief will evolve over time, especially since I left town at 22 and have rarely looked back. I feel bad that I could never settle into a routine here, that my nerves were always completely lacking in myelin because some parts of the city rattle me into a cold sweat. I never had to go by St. Mark’s or Bering that often, but since I lived in SW Houston, I was really close to Diane’s old house. I never went by it, because I remember the one and only day I was there with extraordinary clarity.

I remember the pained way my parents’ eyes looked, because on the one hand I knew for certain that they had doubts about bringing me to Diane’s send-off in the first place. On the other, they realized it was important to me to say goodbye in person. I think they thought it would introduce some kind of finality for me, the way seeing my mother in her casket will provide an enormous amount of closure…. opposite of my experience with my “other mother,” who continued a relationship with me for many years even though my biological mother forbade it.

I was caught in the idea of mother love for many years, because since I was so young when Diane and I met, that’s mostly the way I thought of her at the time. Part of abuse is the sunshine, and because our story is one of dichotomy, it made ours a great platonic love story because we’d each met a kindred spirit. My falling-in-love butterflies were rooted in so much more than attraction. We were both young musicians. We were both interested in the same types of music. Diane was a professional opera singer and I wanted an entire brain dump every time she sat next to me in choir. I was hungry for singing lessons, but I chose to take trumpet lessons instead because I was getting two singing lessons a week by watching someone who even Pavarotti said had a good voice at the Met auditions in Dallas. IF there is anything that I carry with me every day of my life, it is the shared flourishes we learned to sing together.

In fact, I don’t know if you Bridgeporters will know this or not, but church was “shake and bake….” and because she was up in front of the congregation, I got to be “Ricky Bobby.” When we were singing the hymns, if they ended with a high G or high A in the accompaniment, Diane would put up one finger if she saw me in the crowd. When we were next to each other, I would lean into the fullness of her sound, picking up her style so that even the grace notes lined up. It was also fun when Terry (the primary conductor at St. Mark’s) was out and Diane took over, because one of the introits in the Methodist Hymnal is “Blow Ye, The Trumpet Blow,” and both Terry and Diane wanted me to play the first line, but when Diane was conducting, I was always less nervous…. she was the face I looked to for love.

We just “got” each other. Diane admitted up front that I was often older than she was despite me being almost 12 years younger, and the fact that she looked to me for advice really meant a ton. We were always the closest when she was single, and for me, Diane meeting Susan was a mixed bag. I wasn’t sad that I was so much losing the chance to marry her myself, I was sad that now someone else had her primary attention. Relationships, particularly between two women, are insulated. It is the coccoon we choose, because since women tend to be more emotional than men, they choose that one intense emotional relationship that comes with sex over the emotional intensity of several relationships that straight women have with their wine and yoga pants girlfriends….. oh, wow, that line just hit home for a number of reasons.

And through all of this, my mother was grinning her teeth and bearing it. The more she tried to get me to separate from Diane, the more I rebelled, thinking that she was being homophobic and she just needed to get over it. I couldn’t have been more wrong, but I forgive myself. I only had so much processing power at that age.

During that time, the only thing that really connected us came on at 4:00 PM. We couldn’t discuss my homosexuality, and because I felt alienated, that’s why Oprah is one of the people in whom I see the face of God. For five solid days in a row for 25 years, there was one full hour a day we had something to discuss. We talked about her hair, her weight, and all the superficial things that everyone talked about above and beyond the content of the show. I don’t think my mother ever knew I was running the game…. that by talking about superficial things, I knew that the deeper message was sinking in. She even watched “The Puppy Episode” of Ellen because Oprah was in it.

Through Oprah, my mother became more and more accepting of the fact that gay just happens. She no longer felt responsible, as a lot of Christians do when they hear that homosexuality is a sin and now they’ve gone and fucked up their kids.

I don’t think that she ever fully understood the idea of two women being married to each other, but that didn’t stop her from spoiling the hell out of Kathleen and Dana. They always got just as big a Christmas gift as me, and even though we lived far apart and there was no family picture, her tradition was to send us a Target gift card so that we could buy matching pajamas to wear after Christmas Eve services It was one of our favorite things about Christmas, with both of “my girls,” because as a soprano I would always stagger in the door after Christmas Eve services, having literally worked my abs for three hours, and having fresh, new pajamas renewed my spirit. And, of course, the tradition got deeper with Dana, because we had seven Christmases.

[Editor’s Note: Keep Seven Christmases in the back of your mind for a Dana-centric title]….

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I actually wrote a lot more than this, but WordPress did not save my changes and published an earlier draft. I’ll try to recreate what I said and post again.

These are words that I figuratively never thought I’d have to write and realistically thought I’d have another 15 plus years before I had to say them out loud… my mother is dead.

I do not say she passed away. I do not say she has passed on. I say that she is dead.

It’s not for anyone but me, because I need the finality of those words, not to gloss over this fact, because when I do I remain in the doe-eyed shock that this is not real, that she is coming back, and this is all just some sort of cosmic joke that will eventually end with God laughing and saying, “gotcha!”

Truth be told, God is weeping with me.

My mother had a bad fall a couple of weeks ago, where she broke her foot and hit her head. Therefore, we will not know until the autopsy comes back whether it was a slow bleed from hitting her head or an embolism from her elevated leg that ultimately killed her, but neither thought is comforting. The thought that she slipped out of consciousness and died quickly without pain certainly is.

I will always remember that she died on a Sunday, because when Lindsay called to tell me that an ambulance had rushed her to the hospital, I was writing a blog entry on how I’d actually made it to choir, thinking that I could not take one more Sunday in those uncomfortable pews because the choir has nice chairs…. and how much my mother would have loved the music and how I wanted to send her every piece to order for her own choir, and how when she came to DC I wanted her to accompany me if I was singing a solo that week.

Lindsay called back before I was even finished with the entry to tell me that she was dead, and the file sits on my home computer in Silver Spring as I write this from my iPad on a blow-up mattress in my sister’s living room, praying my frayed, “end of the rope” prayer…. SHIT, GOD!

When I got off the phone with Lindsay (the only sister I share biologically with my mother, five and a half years younger, for those who are just joining us), time sped up in a frenetic, manic burst of energy. I threw my dop kit and my medication into a backpack, ran to my landlady, and said “I need you to take me to the airport. My mother has died.” She said, “which one?” I said, “it doesn’t matter.” She said, “I’ll take you to BWI. Give me five minutes.”

Just then, my dad called and said that he was so sorry, and I told him my plan. He said to let him check on flights, when my plan was just to show up at the counter and buy the first ticket available. I ended up letting him help me, and he called back and said that the next flight out was at 8:45 from BWI and he’d see me at Hobby at 11:00.

It was a wonderful thing that he did, but now there was time to kill, or in my mind, waste. I couldn’t DO anything. Even packing seemed like wasted breath, so I didn’t. I called Dana. When she picked up, I said, “thank you so much for picking up.” She said, “I would never just not pick up… I figured if you were calling me, it had to be for something important.”

It was.

When Dana started to cry, the shock wore off a little bit and I started to feel some real emotion about the subject, whereas previously it had felt like those few minutes after you break a bone and the impact is so jarring that you don’t feel anything due to shock. My dad called back, and I told her I had to take it, but I would indeed call her again. By the time I got off the phone with my dad, my clinical separation was intact, and Dana and I spent my remaining time in Silver Spring laughing and joking and catching up on each other’s lives. It helped me to forget what I was about to do, and comforted me in our ability to put negative emotions away and just enjoy each other so that I didn’t have to think about the enormity of what I was about to do.

Because I didn’t even know what it would entail, but I knew it was enormous.

When it was time to leave, I grabbed my backpack and ran.

When I went to passenger pickup at Hobby, it was my sister that picked me up and not my dad, wherein we proceeded directly to Spanish Flowers for some comfort food. The food tasted different, just one of the many things that was different now.

Yesterday we spent time with the minister, the funeral home, and driving to a local cemetary to see if we liked it. In this garbage dump of a situation, it was as much fun as it could be, and I mean that literally. Lindsay and I, along with my mother’s husband, Forbes, and Lindsay’s husband, Matt, had a good time picking out what we thought she would have wanted.

As good a time as can be had when the world has shifted violently and without warning, anyway.

The entire day can be summed up in “this is lovely, but now I have to go scream.”

Lindsay has been open in her grief, and I haven’t cried once. I am having bouts of internal thunderstorms coupled with mind-numbing shock, because it still doesn’t feel real.

The visitation is in the quiet momemts, where I remember all the things I loved and didn’t about our long and sometimes strange relationship. My father, in his UMC pastor days, said something to me that I am trying not to let ring true to myself, that “death is 50% anasthesia for the living.” Meaning that they try to assure themselves that the person who has just died is some sort of saint, and the truth is that in a lot of ways, my mother absolutely was. But I don’t want that to be her entire narrative. I want to remember her AS SHE WAS.

Over time, those stories will come out, but right now, they are locked deep inside as I actively try not to cry, try not to feel so that I can function. I will break down later, when the business of death is over.

For now, I can only concentrate on the Beautiful Memory Picture™ Jessica Mitford told me I’d get.

I don’t want to tell this story on myself because I don’t even want to think about it. But I need to have it here, in this repository, for me to reflect on later in order to forgive myself, when it has been long enough that it feels like I was someone else. I am so self-aware that I cannot get away from this mistake, and I am beating myself up quite handily. The good news is that I am about to get a real, live, in the flesh therapist as opposed to Talkspace,™ which has worked very well, but is not the same… it was sort of foolish for me to do it in the first place, knowing how I feel about the Internet rabbit hole… but at the same time, I thought I might be able to better divulge what was really going on with me if I had a layer of anonymity between my therapist and me. That layer of anonymity really, really makes it where I can look at my own landmines without the blast radius an in-person conversation would have. I don’t shake and cry. I can get the words out… and even if I have to shake and cry, I can get up from my desk and come back to it, rather than wasting time in session. It’s a mixed bag, knowing this AND knowing that I crave connection with real people.

But I digress.

In what seems like a galaxy ago (perhaps a year and some change), I added Argo to my Google contacts… not because I wanted to talk/text her in the slightest. Because I wanted to know if she was contacting me… for instance, Diane and crew are still in my Google contacts as well, so I could choose whether or not I wanted to answer the phone (I wouldn’t, for anyone, really… just stay with me) rather than being shocked by a totally anonymous number. I am terrified of the phone. I didn’t know what to expect when I got here, and all I can say in my defense is that it seemed like a good idea at the time. Being caught off-guard is not one of my strong points, but I would like to believe that I would have been Southern and polite about it, anyway. As Kumar points out in Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, “just talk to her once and it won’t be weird anymore.” However, it has never been my call to make. I made so many mistakes with Argo that I couldn’t even fathom needing that number for any reason except avoiding being shaken.

All of that came crashing down on my head when I got a new phone for my birthday, because Android works off of your Google account and not iCloud. So, without even realizing it, her number was now on my cell phone instead of just the phone number associated with my Google account, which for the record is (503) 770-0818. It’s not my real cell phone number, just a Google Hangouts passthrough, which is why I don’t mind publishing it.

Again, I digress… mostly because I am anxious AF and am really having a hard time getting all of this out, even though it is necessary because this is not an experience I want to forget. I have, however, kept it from ever happening again by erasing her contact completely, even her e-mail address, because it lives in my memory and not online.

In the Android operating system, your messages appear in the same box… both ingoing and outgoing. Without realizing it, I “butt-texted” Argo twice, and because I did not know this about Android, I thought she was trying to send me a picture or something, because both messages said “multimedia” without anything attached. Why I went there, I do not know. In retrospect, it seems like the stupidest idea ever in the history of the world.

So, like the cowardly lion that I can be at times, I texted back and asked her if she was trying to send me something without admitting that I knew who it was. It was fairly innocuous, just asking if she meant to send me something, but of course when I said who I was, she saw right through me, as if this was some elaborate plan to get in touch with her when in reality, I genuinely thought she was reaching out. When that boom came down, I was so fucking scared that I couldn’t admit that I did know who it was, and I acted like a fucking jackass… not that I said anything inappropriate, just that it was inappropriate to feign ignorance in the first place.

Humiliation complete.

I thought about it, and I realized what a dick move it was, and wrote to her and said so. My heart was already crispy thinking about everything going on back in Houston, and I couldn’t take adding Argo being angry on top of it, so I lied to protect myself… an ingrained pattern over years and years of metaphorically putting my arm over my face and emotionally saying “I don’t want to get hurt.” I was so afraid of her reaction that I leaned back on that unhealthy tape, instead of just being upfront and saying who it was and why I was contacting her in the first place and how I got said number, because we’d talked about talking on the phone, but she didn’t hand over her cell number herself. It wasn’t any internet voodoo shit, it’s public information.

In trying to protect myself from future hurt feelings, I stepped into it up to my ass, and it’s all my fault. I was just in this small, hurt space and reached back into faulty wiring instead of the woman I’m trying to become. I don’t know why I can be so cagey about the truth at times and so bleeding heart at others. Nadia Bolz-Weber says that we are all sinners, all saints, all of the time. I have to believe it… because what actually happened is that I was so embarrassed that I forgot all else and just retreated into my cave of a room and didn’t talk to anyone all day… meaning that I forgot to call the one person in my life that truly mattered at that moment… my dad.

All of the light and sweet I was supposed to be sending him landed somewhere left of Albuquerque because I was so lost in my own mistakes that I couldn’t reach out. My get up and go got up and left.

I think that’s because I didn’t realize just how ingrained those faulty, negative, harmful patterns are in my life, where I protect myself to the point that I can’t see other people in their need of me. It is not intentional. It’s a worthlessness loop that says “now that I have made a mistake, I will just keep making them, so it’s better to stay away and not take the chance that I will hurt someone else.” My misguided and fragile heart was trying to cut off a fight at the pass, and I sort of did. No reply at all is better than having an RPG launched right back… even though I truly and honestly did not mean to launch one. I just had that piece of sensitivity to her feelings cut off in my need to avoid.

I avoid a lot. I am comfortable in my room with my bed and my computer, and I will stay here for days without moving if I let myself. It’s all about controlling the amount of damage I inflict on others, even when they don’t see it that way. I know that in person, I get a chance to feel love that I just don’t on this medium, but it is extraordinary the lengths I will go to in order not to feel it…. because I keep bad things out at the cost of letting light in. I have said this before, and it is no less true today.

Yesterday was one of those days where I really wished that “snap out of it” was a thing. Because if I could have risen above, I would’ve. But I didn’t. I gave in to that small, frightening place that says I will lose everything if people really knew the truth about me, when in reality, it is amazing at how open the heart can be with a large amount of honesty. I know I would have forgiven me if it had been someone else, but by the time the whole ordeal was over I was shaking under the covers, thinking that it was the end of the world… making a mountain out of a molehill because Argo has made it clear she doesn’t have any fucks to give anymore, so I doubt that I lingered on her mind, but my behavior lingered on mine for far too long… an endless rumination about what a horrible person I was and how insurmountable this rewiring into healthy patterns seems at this moment.

I went back into the truly shitty feelings of sitting in Dr. Goodman’s office, where she told me that she thought she was too old to take me on, that I needed the same therapist throughout the whole process and she thought it would take five to ten years. That came across to me as “wow, you are way too fucked up for me to help you.” So I take those words and beat myself with them often, that there’s no way out in the immediate future and hanging on is a task in and of itself at times. I just have to keep feeling gratitude for the smallest things, like the smell of the air today.

The world isn’t going to end, even when I think it might, or think it should, because something embarrassing has happened and I cannot deal. My faith slaps me in the face all the time, and yesterday was one of those days where I realized that in order to make room for love, I had to leave fear behind. Shame and regret will only bind me to my bed and my Netflix even further, because the more I feel it, the more I regress into wishing for some sort of zombie apocalypse, or that the earth would explode prematurely so I could go the rest of my life without having to…… emote.

Because the more I do, the more I worry that I am somehow pissing someone off, even when it’s entirely unwarranted…. and when it is, I go into overworry mode, unable to let go. In this case, the mistake was serious, but it isn’t always so. The littlest things set me into fight or flight and I just have no coping mechanisms for it. I still regret things I’ve done in childhood, as if it still matters. I have to start learning that the statute of limitations does run out on beating yourself half to death with your own insecurities… and it also runs out on friends who are willing to bear with you when you’re down, because as Dana has said, “being in relationship with you is just too hard. As if I don’t feel unlovable enough.

I suppose the thing I have working in my favor is that I recognize these ingrained patterns and am willing to do something about it… some people never get that far. I suppose that I am blessed with the desire to unpack my own emotional baggage, as painful and real as it is.

I feel better today, but I feel like I acted like a child and covered it up in douchebag…. wait… strike that…. reverse it.

I’m seeing Pri-Diddy on Tuesday, and I know that will lift my spirits more than anything in the world at a time when I could desperately use it.

Sometimes enormous spiritual gurus come in tiny packages. If there’s anyone that consistently gives me the gift of thinking I am lovable and worthy, it’s her… and of course, my friends in the cloud, but I’m talking about the love that comes with being wrapped up in hugs.

I isolate so much that I rarely touch anyone, and perhaps that is part of the problem. It’s hard to feel loved when you don’t give love, either… and in no way am I talking about romance. I’m talking about a shoulder to lean on, an arm around yours when you’re depressed, someone that will feed you to death with vegan delights and send you home, full-bellied and warm-hearted once again…. beauty and simplicity from a fire that sparks within.

Amen
#prayingonthespaces

Remember a few weeks ago when I said that I had a knee-jerk reaction to moving to Houston? Well, the things I could not tell you are public now, and though I am making my peace with them, I am glad that I am released from keeping the secret. It’s time to process everything I’ve been feeling since my dad’s last trip to DC.

I spent every moment memorizing his face, whether he was aware of it or not. I spent every moment wondering what his new face would look like, and whether he would still look like my dad when his plastic surgery was finished. He’s not having anything fun like an eye lift to make him look 30. He’s got a tumor in his nose, and surgery is the best option… and not a small one. In fact, it may take several before it is all said and done. He will go in for the first surgery to take out the tumor, and then they will let that heal before they take a flap from his forehead and recreate a nose. The pictures I’ve seen of others who have had this same surgery look relatively similar once the surgery is done, but not THE SAME. And then this comment on his Facebook page made me crumple in agony when they said, “will you still be able to play the trumpet?” I hadn’t even thought of that.

Six weeks before my dad’s senior-year-of-high school All-State Band audition, he had to have an appendectomy. He spent the entirety of his recovery working on fingerings without even putting his horn to his lips… and ended up winning first chair, which means that his senior year of high school, he was literally the best trumpet player in the state of Texas for the 18-and-under crowd. He got 26 scholarships, from Julliard to Curtis to University of Florida, an invitation to tour Russia with the great Frederick Fennel. He’s kept up his chops, and is still one of the greatest players to ever pick up a horn, even though he knew he was going into the ministry by the time he got to college and never pursued a place in a symphony. When he was a sophomore in college, he was invited to give his senior recital, because as his then trumpet teacher said, “I have no more to teach you.” The thought of these surgeries ruining his embouchure is a gigantic loss if it happens, but I know for certain that if there’s a way, he’s got the will in spades. But that comment, tho…. Nothing like having the shit scared out of you this early in the morning.

Only time will tell as to whether he’ll be able to play, because I can’t imagine him “tooting his own horn” the day after surgery, but again, if there’s a way, he’ll find it.

The reason he came to DC in the first place was to see me before he was stuck in his house for months in recovery. We did some sightseeing, but mostly we just broke bread together and talked. While I was at work, he toured DC on his own, taking incredible pictures and finding out of the way gems in places like Rock Creek Park. He taught me how to use Air Drop on my iPhone, because even though I am a computer person, my dad knows more about Apple products than I’ve forgotten. As he sent his pictures to my phone, it was a metaphor for the brain dump I was trying to acquire, because I knew it would be a long time before we saw each other again. Letters and text messages can only go so far, and I imagine there will be a lot of video calling once he’s well enough to talk on the phone.

I have much less feeling about my dad’s face looking different than I thought I would; it’s more that I hope the surgeons get clean margins on the tumor before it has a chance to spread. However, I am trying hard not to look into the future, because there’s no way to prepare for it except worry, and that always does a fat lot of good. I’d just be sitting and stewing in my own misery, afraid of the unknown, when in reality I need to be trusting of the process and waiting until the doctors tell me I have something to worry about. No need to worry preemptively, as it will do nothing but make me miserable when in reality, there may not be anything to be miserable about. The best I can do is to move on with my own life, checking in as we go along.

My father’s Facebook post about the subject started out with take a long look at my face… I was already asleep when the notification came through, and the buzzing under my pillow woke me up, and that sentence has rung in my ears for hours… because when he was here, it was all I could do.

My sincere thoughts and prayers are with my family as I sit 1800 miles away, in a small and helpless place. I am glad that I have such good friends here that are willing to catch me when I falter, because I talk a big game in terms of not worrying… and the reality is that it is not ever-present, but comes in waves. He is one more person to add to my prayer list as it grows, sending light and peace and joy through the chord that runs between us. I wish I could do more than that, but at the same time, even if I was in Houston, there would be a limited amount I could actually do for him… he is in his oncologist’s hands, and not mine. I’m not a surgeon, and even if I was, I wouldn’t be allowed to work on my own father, anyway.

Again, I just have to trust in the process, trust in his doctors that they will always have his best interests at heart, and hope that things like possible infections are resolved quickly and easily. At times like this, prayer flows ceaselessly from me, but I also turn to writers like Atul Gawande, whose words of comfort in the world of medicine bring me comfort in the chasm between concern and hope.

It also leads me to thoughts of my own mortality, because at this point, both my grandfather and my father have had cancer in different areas of their bodies, this being my father’s second bout. But I am not being selfish about it- this is not about me, and never will be. But when someone you love is going through something traumatic, it reminds you just how precious life is and continues to be with enough gratitude for small things… like how one day, we will be together again, my father’s face regenerated like my precious Doctor.

It is here that I place my hope and fears in the hands of The Great Physician, hoping that His influence will extend to the doctors on the ground…………………………

Amen
#prayingonthespaces

I finally got up the courage to send a message to the woman from Ireland and laid it all out there- that I’d been looking at her profile for months trying to think of a way to ask her out just so I could listen to her talk. Yes, I really did say that. But I also acknowledged just how drooling fangirl that sounded. It’s all about balance. Hey, if geeks can’t be awkward when asking girls out, WHEN CAN THEY BE AWKWARD?

I just realized it’s nearly midnight. I need to go to sleep. I’m not used to staying up past 9:00. You were going to get this great entry and then all my energy just zapped out of my body at once.

But I at least think I placed that zap of energy in the right direction while it lasted.

She’s cute.

Today was my first ITIL v3 Foundations class, and it was a blast. Everyone except me worked for the government, and as we were talking about upgrading old systems, I said something about, “yeah, ’cause Bob’s about to retire,” and that became the running joke of the day. This one guy talked about this old Army system that a few people know how to run, but they have no idea how to extract the data “because Bob’s dead.” My only reply to that was, “they say you can’t take it with you… but apparently, you can.” Bob became an icon for all old technology that’s fading because it is no longer worth the cost of upgrading, or perhaps has to be printed out and retyped because the database no longer matches up to anything in the modern world.

Later on, the instructor gets up in front of the class and says, “let’s talk about CIA… and I don’t mean those guys from Langley.” It’s an acronym, and it stands for Confidentiality, Integrity, Availability. Basically three questions:

1. Is the data restricted from those who should not have access to it?
2. Is the data complete and legible to those who do?
3. Is the data accessible?

The last question has more to do with network connectivity than the data itself, but you get the picture. It’s more a question of network drive redundancy in several different physical locations, because you have to take into account things like Acts of God (in the insurance sense…. I doubt God cares much about your PDFs). In terms of computer support, it means a “follow the sun” approach, something I first experienced at Alert Logic when I worked in Houston and the Cardiff office opened so that I wouldn’t have to stay up all night… so when you have questions about why you can’t access your data at three in the morning, it’s not three in the morning for the people answering the phone.

All of these things prevent disaster recovery, because it’s much easier to set up failover devices preemptively than to rescue a dead hard drive.

This is going to be short, because I have homework to do for tomorrow. I don’t think I’ve had homework in ten years. I bought a new pencil and everything.

More tomorrow once I’ve finished the class and the exam, although I won’t know my results for about three weeks. I better pass, though….

Because Bob’s about to retire.

 

If this is going to be a Christian nation that doesn’t help the poor, either we have to pretend that Jesus was just as selfish as we are, or we’ve got to acknowledge that He commanded us to love the poor and serve the needy without condition and then admit that we just don’t want to do it.

-Stephen Colbert

If you are really paying attention to the Gospel today, and I mean REALLY, it will lay out for you everything you need to know about what it means to be Christ in the world, because this scripture does not address sin, but sin of omission.

It means something to see suffering and just walk by. It means something to be okay with letting poor people eat the food you toss in the garbage. It means something to hoard away video game levels‘ worth of money and ignore everything else because hey, you’re not one of them. We are all guilty of grouping together poor people in order to keep them at bay. It’s much harder to know someone and not help them than it is to lump them all in one category because then it’s not personal. They are wholly other, set apart in their apparent lack of work ethic and inability to pick themselves up by their bootstraps and grab on to all the things we have, as if it were just as simple in practice to do so as it is to say those words out loud.

Maybe that’s why this parable is the only one Jesus ever told where someone was given a name. He didn’t say “poor people.” He didn’t say “homeless.” He didn’t say “the sick, the friendless, and the needy.” He used a man’s name… and to GREAT effect.

The man’s name was Lazarus, a variation of Eleazar, which means “God is my help.” Every day he laid in front of the gate to a rich man’s house. The rich man is not named, but over time, theologians have called him “Dives,” which literally just means “rich man.” And we are not talking about just any kind of rich man. We are talking about somone who wore dyed purple robes, hideously expensive even by today’s standards. Someone whose gate was not just a wooden fence, but the kind you’d imagine at a celebrity’s house. Someone who ate Michelin star meals every day in a land where people were lucky to get meat once a week.

By contrast, Lazarus could not get up, so covered in sores that he could not even keep the dogs from licking them. In terms of begging for food, we are not just talking about the crumbs under the table. In those days, there were no napkins or utensils, and it was common practice for everyone to wipe their hands on pieces of bread that were then thrown out. If you’ve ever seen a homeless person taking a cheeseburger out of a trash can and wiping off the coffee grounds first, you get the picture.

The best part of the whole story to me is the first line… “Jesus said to the Pharisees…” It is the ass-kicking they so richly deserve, because these are exactly the people that Jesus is talking about when he mentions “Dives.” Whether or not the Pharisees picked up on the fact that Jesus was talking about them or not is moot. It brings an evil grin to my lips just thinking about it.

In the parable, both men die. The rich man is in hell, and Lazarus is in heaven, and they can see each other. What becomes immediately clear right off the bat is that “Dives” knows the man’s name. He knows Lazarus. He has walked right by him every day, so this was not an unknown person to him. Did “Dives” sin outright? I mean, he didn’t tell him to leave. He didn’t mind that Lazarus ate his trash. But Jesus clearly wants more from us than that.

“Dives” begs for water, and Abraham is unmoved. According to Jesus, Abraham says, “my child, remember that you have received what was good in your lifetime, while Lazarus likewise received what was bad; but now he is comforted here, whereas you are tormented.” “Dives” isn’t tormented for all the things he’s done, but for all the things he failed to do. He walked around with blinders on his whole life and it cost him dearly.

And here is the crux of the gospel that continues to this very day. Jesus preaches Abraham with words so sharp you could pierce steel. Write them down.

Moreover, between us and you a great chasm is established to prevent anyone from crossing who might wish to go from our side to yours or from your side to ours. He (“Dives”) says, “Then I beg you, Father, send Lazarus to my father’s house, for I have five brothers, so that he may warn them lest they too come to this place of torment.”

Abraham says that the brothers already have the Torah and the prophets, and “Dives” begs, “but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.”

Abraham’s reply is so chock-full of reality that the words resound today. If they will not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded if someone should rise from the dead.

The chasm between rich and poor is still here, and we are still so ignorant of it that mummies could dance before our eyes and even then, it might not change our behavior. Charles Dickens was the only person we know of that actually changed someone by making Jacob Marley resurrect, but let us not forget that Ebenezer Scrooge was a fictional character.

And, of course, there are always exceptions to the rule. Jimmy Carter is the first person that comes to mind. But there are so many more Christians that say the words rather than putting in a quarter of the shoe leather he does.

We are on a ledge with this election, not in terms of candidates, but in terms of issues. Republicans want to rip apart an already tenuous social safety net aimed to help poor people when they cannot help themselves, particularly the homeless who are mentally ill and often unable to hold a job because of it, thus continuing the problem of homelessness as they go untreated. Democrats support these legislations, but the problem still remains as to how to get money allocated efficiently so that resources go directly to the people they’re trying to help rather than being tied up in overhead.

Many people say that there should be no safety net under poor people by the government because charity organizations exist for people to give privately, but the truth is that they don’t. Charitable contributions are down across the board as the chasm between rich and poor gets deeper and the once great middle class has no extra to give… and the richest of the rich avoid paying taxes due to a series of loopholes so that all the Lazaruses of the world are just left out in the cold. There is no easy way to solve this problem, especially when there is no state in the union where working 40 hours a week leaves enough income to rent a two-bedroom apartment, and God help anyone who’s trying to buy a house.

Where is the hope in all of this? Where can we find succor?

It starts from the inside out, deciding what kind of people we want to be. Do we want to be the type people that think it’s ok for others to eat out of our trash, or do we want to be the type people whose eyes are open wide to the Lazaruses of the world?

Our choice is not to blanket stereotype “poor people,” and learn their names. Learn their histories. Learn what they need, rather than trying to guess.

Because of this chasm between rich and poor, our choice may not be to give money, but we can give time at local soup kitchens. We can see homeless people and buy an extra entree to give away on the way out of a restaurant. Tiny things add up, because what might be a widow’s mite amount of money to you might mean the world to someone else.

Amen.
#prayingonthespaces

I’m in a bad way today. My stomach is still torn up, even though I have finished all the Tamiflu and am still taking the Zofran. But it’s not just feeling physically ill. I found a Facebook memory that took my breath away, and this morning I could not get out of bed, because I just wanted to hide from it and hope it went away.

The physical is much worse than the mental, which is why I decided not to go to the book fair. There is nothing more embarrassing than being out and about in town and realizing you need a bathroom RIGHTNOW. RIGHT THE FUCK NOW. This was not a case of psychosomatic illness, but the after-effects of not being quite over the flu yet, and I didn’t want to push it.

But I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t tell you what the Facebook memory was:

Favorite tongue in cheek comment so far, because I love my friends: “I didn’t watch the video, just saw that it existed. I just felt like someone who caused you so much trauma probably wasn’t the best person to tell teens that “it gets better.”

It was Diane Syrcle’s It Gets Better video made at Oregon Ballet Theater. In response to the post, I said something about loving that video, because it showed her without The Mask.™ Then I realized I hadn’t seen it in years, and when I made the egregious mistake of watching it again (at that time, not today), I ended up with vomit on my shirt. That’s because the new context in which I saw it made all my kid nightmares/fears bubble up to the surface and I could not ignore them anymore, as I had for so many years previously. I haven’t watched it since, because things certainly did not get better for me. Only more muddled, more fear-induced, more protection mode for someone who didn’t deserve it.

The same friend in the above quote said that one day she would have no more power over me, and when that day came, I felt a freedom I hadn’t felt since I was 11. There are still selected moments in time where she can still rattle me, but it has more to do with destroying old tapes than it will ever have to do with trying to reconcile something that never should have happened in the first place.

For instance, about a year and a half after I left Portland, I got an e-mail from her that contained a photo of her with a Timbers scarf and a program autographed by every player that said without my influence, she never would have become interested in soccer. My reaction ran thusly… everything I had to say about all the emotional abuse I’d suffered as a teen was already out on this web site, and I have no doubt that she’d followed every word closely. Because I knew this, I said, “we haven’t talked for almost two years and this is the first thing you want to say? Go fuck yourself.” It was a reaction and not a response, but I doubt after thinking about it I would have said anything differently. Pretending like nothing had happened and just wanting to be buddies creeped me the fuck out, and always, always will.

That’s been the hardest part of this whole process… discovering ways in which I felt entirely creeped out and was powerless to do anything about it… and later discovering I wasn’t powerless, it just seemed like it. If I’d been willing to talk as a teenager, I wouldn’t have spent years pouring meat tenderizer on my skin, trying to get the poison out.

It is not a shock to me that I got so ill I had to be hospitalized, because that’s not something that should have happened as an adult. That’s something that should have happened about the time I turned 15, and yet kept everything locked inside until I exploded. I was so lucky that I had a gaggle of women ready to catch me when I fell, but ultimately, it was up to me. Argo gave me a swift kick in the pants when she said, why do you think it’s everyone else’s job to fix you? When she said that, I was on the phone with my insurance company within the hour. I didn’t just need medication by that point, but a cohort of people who’d been through similarly horrifying experiences with which to debrief in a very real, no bullshit sort of way.

I had leaned on Argo & Dana long enough, because they weren’t trained in dealing with mental health issues this severe, and I don’t think I realized the toll it was taking on them to try and be my support system…. because how do you do that when you’re in the situation and not looking down on it? I couldn’t make myself have enough out of body experiences to be able to look at the situation logically, because even though I could disconnect from my emotions, it wasn’t always in the healthiest of ways. Sometimes I thought I was coolly calculating my next move. In reality, I just made things a whole lot worse for myself, and have had to dig myself up from enormous emotional holes that I spent a lot of time digging, not realizing that if I didn’t stop, the earth was going to swallow me up… not in terms of dead, but in terms of losing everything I held dear and not being able to repair those relationships because too much had happened for them to feel safe with me.

The two sentences I have had to give up thinking that mean the most to me are:

1. Hey Argo, can I buy you a beer? I’ll make good on Aaron’s promise since he isn’t here. 😛
2. Hey Dana, let’s go away for the weekend and see if we can come to some sort of understanding, a working relationship not tinted with the past.

With both of them, there is everything to say and nothing. What could I possibly have to offer them that wouldn’t end in what a piece of shit I was to them previously? What could I possibly offer that would say “I am not perfect, but I am trying?”

It’s all connected, this creepiness I’ve felt over my lifetime except for the first 11 years. My psychosexual dysfunction has crept into every relationship ever, and working with a therapist has helped enormously, and why I didn’t think of it before is something I’ll regret until the day I die.

Life is all about putting away regret and shame, but there are always those cuts and wounds that stay with you, healed over into scar tissue that hopefully makes you stronger. But sometimes, just sometimes, the scab gets ripped off and that part of healing has to begin again.

What I lost in the transaction with Argo & Dana is a lot of laughter, for a lifetime, really.

I am still trying to gather what I gained in terms of life lessons and perspectives. I have a great big tapestry to look back on, but that doesn’t always help. Sometimes, I giggle through our memories, and sometimes really tough ones come to mind and I lose myself in the rumination of what should have happened instead of what did.

Knowing myself is the key to moving forward, but that doesn’t make it any easier to live with, day by day by day by day by day, Sisyphus pushing as hard as he can only to have the rock fall night by night by night by night.

I wish I could have their grace and mercy, but at least I know I’m working toward my own. And, in the end, that’s what has to matter most. I hope that this is the part of my life meant to propel me into the person I’m supposed to be, because I don’t have any desire to keep repeating mistakes. I at least want to switch to new ones.

• Are you named after someone?
  • Yes, but not anyone I know. My mother saw the name “Leslie Diane” in a church bulletin once and thought it sounded pretty. I think she was the organist.
• When is the last time you cried?
  • I don’t remember. I could make up something, because I cry a lot, but at the moment, nothing comes to mind.
• Do you like your handwriting?
  • I like the weird way my handwriting starts to look like the person I’m thinking of while I’m writing… like, say I’m thinking about Meagan. Involuntarily my handwriting goes into block capital letters.
• What is your favorite lunch meat?
  • It changes all the time, but right now it’s brown-sugared ham.
• Do you have kids?
  • Not that I’m aware of……. ;P
• If you were another person, would you be friends with you?
  • It depends on the day I met me. How did we see each other the first time? Was I laughing or sitting in a corner? It matters.
• Do you use sarcasm?
  • I don’t so much use it as bathe in it daily.
• Do you still have your tonsils?
  • Yes, but I am not sure that this is necessarily a good thing.
• Would you bungee jump?
  • I think so. I’d have to get the opportunity to say yes or no first. However, the fact that I have not put down money on my own says it’s not necessarily a life goal.
• What is your favorite cereal?
  • Multi-grain Cheerios straight out of the box.
• Do you untie your shoes when you take them off?
  • I have to- I wear Chucks and Docs, neither of which lend themselves to kicking them off by bending the heels.
• Do you think you are strong?
  • Only after the fact, never in the moment.
• What is your favorite ice cream?
  • Spumoni
• What is the first thing you notice about people?
  • Whether or not they hold my attention intellectually.
• Red or pink?
  • Why choose? I wear them both, but rarely together.
• What is the least favorite thing you like about yourself?
  • I have to pick just one? I hate the extraordinary lengths I will go to be “right,” and even then, I’m usually not. Just leading the charge into hell, anyway.
• What color pants and shoes are you wearing right now?
  • You mentioned nothing at the beginning of this survey that said I needed to be wearing pants…. That being said, I still have my red plaid pajamas on, and I am barefoot.
• What was the last thing you ate?
  • A miniature Mr. Goodbar
• What are you listening to right now?
  • Mostly silence interrupted by cars passing outside.
• If you were a crayon, what color would you be?
  • Cerulean, which is the color of most of my wardrobe, too.
• Favorite smell?
  • Dr Pepper, with the soda close enough for the bubbles to tickle my nose.
• Who was the last person you spoke to on the phone?
  • My dad- I was telling him about Google Allo and Google Spaces
• Favorite sport to watch?
  • Baseball…. Always baseball.
• Hair color?
  • Brown, but with more and more grey with each passing haircut. It looks distinguished. I like it because I look less like a ten-year-old.
• Eye color?
  • Brown, although I like to call it “limpid pools of espresso.”
• Do you wear contacts?
  • I would if I could, but there are prisms in my glasses.
• Favorite food to eat?
  • I’ve been on a potato chip craze lately. Found Ketchup Chips at 7-Eleven Thursday and I haven’t stopped thinking about them since. THANKS, CANADA.
• Scary movies or happy endings?
  • Yes.
• Last movie you watched?
  • The Secret Life of Pets. It was ok.
• What color shirt are you wearing?
  • Multi-colored. White background with rainbow letters that say “women’s rights are human rights.” It’s from the Clinton campaign, and it’s got her signature stamped on the back.
• Summer or Winter?
  • Having lived in Houston for so many years, I will always choose winter. I’ve had enough deep heat to last my whole life. MD/DC/VA can be just as hot, but not for as long.
• Hugs or kisses?
  • From whom?
• What book are you currently reading?
  • Too many to list, because I have a Kindle and just pick something based on my mood.
• What is on your mouse pad?
  • I don’t think I’ve owned a mouse pad since the early 2000s… perhaps late ‘90s.
• What is the last TV program you watched?
  • Breaking Bad….. again.
• What is the best sound?
  • Someone saying “I’m sorry” and/or “I forgive you.”
• Rolling Stones or The Beatles?
  • Who are the Rolling Stones?
• What is the furthest you have traveled?
  • Off meds- and it was memorable enough to realize chemical imbalances are a thing.
• Do you have a special talent?
  • I have plenty of them… not all for publication.
• Where were you born?
  • In Tyler, Texas, at Mother Frances Hospital with the statue of Jesus directing traffic.

Well, that was anticlimactic. Any other questions? Just ask.

It’s finally starting to cool down around here, but not by much. However, it is a welcome change. I love the turn of the seasons, and this weekend holds an enormous amount of promise. I’m going to see Sarah Vowell & Bob Woodward at the Library of Congress book fair, and unfortunately all of their books are on my Kindle… however, I might bring a sharpie to have Woodward sign the back. It just depends on how “drooling fangirl” I feel when I get there. My favorite book of his is easily Obama’s Wars, but I believe i have read them all. Having read that book introduced me to the idea that you don’t have to wait to be president in order to get national security sitreps, the candidates get them, too. I can only hope that Donald Trump’s sitreps are just a series of SpongeBob coloring books. Having Donald Trump know actual state secrets sounds like the Worst. Idea. Ever.

If I can find a cheap copy, I might take a DVD of The Incredibles for Sarah Vowell to sign. 🙂

There are many other authors I’d like to see, but they’re at the top of my list. The biggest “name” that’s going to be there is Stephen King, but I’ve never read any of his books (I don’t think), so even though he’s known the world over, he’s not that big a draw for me.

The biggest draw for me would have been David Halberstam, but he won’t be there. He’s the one author I would literally follow into the ocean if he asked, but he was killed in a car accident years ago. I believe that when he died, he was the first author death in which I literally fell to pieces.

Some people’s words stay with you for a lifetime, and his are enormous.

I could use a little inspiration from great people about now, because I’m on a ledge ready to jump and hope I fly. I have enough savings that it’s now or never. School is important to me, obviously, and I need to get back to it if I want to achieve my dreams. Back in the day, I made an egregious mistake by leaving UH before my coursework was done, and here’s why. I paid for Kathleen’s last year of school in terms of rent, books, food, etc. because I was the one with the full-time job, on the agreement that she’d pay for me to finish up at George Mason, because it was right down the road from XOM. That deal lasted a grand total of when she graduated, and DC was so expensive that we both had to have jobs. We both got them, and I was going to go to night classes. Before that happened, she broke up with me…. no contract signed, no nothing. She definitely got the sweet end of that deal. I’ve been playing catchup ever since.

I was making good money with a computer career, which is why I’ve been able to live comfortably without a degree. I believe that the college model is woefully outdated when it comes to technology, because by the time the books are printed, the information is out of date. Learning on the job has always come easily to me, and I have just socked away money by being the biggest hermit ever. It isolated me from friends, but watching my accounts fill up didn’t suck.

Then, when I moved to Houston, I met a woman that I thought was The One.™ The exception being that she isolated me from all my friends, and told me I couldn’t go back to night school because she was afraid I was going to fall in love with one of my professors and run away with him. Anyone who knows me knows how ridiculous this was, and it was the same with my doctor. She wouldn’t let me see her anymore because she thought I’d run away with her, too. In retrospect, it was classic dry-drunk behavior… all of the manipulation, none of the alcohol. Not marrying her was dodging the biggest bullet you can possibly imagine… but the thing is, she was a junior high school counselor, so everyone thought she was perfect, the one who had her shit together while I was just twisting in the wind. But no one saw what went on behind closed doors, especially when she’d laid down the law about me not going to night school and then having the audacity to tell me that she really wanted me to finish my degree so that she wouldn’t think I was such a flake. I also got an internship at the HRC in DC during that relationship, a three-month contract writing national Sunday School curriculum. She didn’t want me to do that, either, because again, it wasn’t about furthering my career. It was all about me running off with someone else and never coming back.

If I’d had any damn sense, I would have done exactly that.

We were the perfect couple to everyone but me.

She even hated that I was getting my paralegal certificate, comforted only somewhat by the fact that my sister and my dad were in the class. She raged that I wasn’t available on the weekends, even though it was only four or five. All of these manipulations started to add up, and I was entirely beaten down.

I went to extraordinary lengths not to be alone with her, because that’s when the emotional violence was at its worst. I finally broke up with her when Dana put her foot down, because she could be logical and I could not. I was visiting with Dana and I noticed that my girlfriend was tracking me through my bank account, noting the address of every transaction and beating me over the head with it every night… because obviously, I didn’t have any other friends in Portland except for Dana…. and I was going to run away with her, too. That didn’t cross my mind until much later.

Eventually, I did, but not before seeing what a freak show of a relationship I’d gotten myself into, and watching Dana hurt for me. There were a lot of times that I watched Dana hurt for me, and it is something for which I will always be grateful, even though it is time to move on. But no one can take good memories from me, and I choose to focus on that fact.

My then-girlfriend came by emotional violence honestly; her parents did two unforgivable things. Maybe she has forgiven them, but I have trouble. The first was that when she came out, her parents pretended she was dead for a year. A year. The second is that they were running low on money, and took out an enormous amount of credit in her name, and refused to pay it back, calling it “the gay tax.” In my case, shit rolled downhill.

I don’t know why I didn’t tell anyone how hurt I was until I was neck-deep… used to it, I guess. But I knew something was horribly wrong, and I was at a loss as to how to fix it, because I’d made promises… it took realizing that I shouldn’t be expected to stay no matter how bad it got, and I would never realize my dreams if leaving the house meant a fight about how every outing was an opportunity to cheat… I did nothing to deserve this scrutiny- Argo or anyone like her wasn’t even a twinkle.

And even when Argo came along, there was only one adjective in my vocabulary that fit- stupid…. just all the way around. And perhaps I am being too hard on myself, knowing that it wasn’t just my issue to deal with in terms of that relationship. It was also Dana’s continual jealousy that something was going on that wasn’t. Argo made me feel like fifty billion dollars when she told me that she pulled back so she wouldn’t be Dana’s excuse anymore. I told her thank you for picking up something I could not, because again, I was too emotional and not so much with the logical.

I needed time to sit with my feelings and work them the fuck out, which now I have. It hurts that I had to do it alone, and at the same time, is extraordinarily freeing. I have had time to make room for light. I have had time to forgive an enormous amount of shit, not for them. For me.

So I will go to this book fair, and take in all the light that published authors have to offer… because one day, I will join them.

Sitting at a Starbucks as per my usual in the morning- the title only being funny because I am having a green tea Frappucino. Reminds me of when we moved into the parsonage at Christ UMC in Sugar Land, because our phone number had originally belonged to a coffee shop called “Beans and Leaves.” We got calls for them all the time, and we had a sneaking suspician that they were selling more than tea leaves, just based on the calls from the clientele. Because of course the new preacher’s family had a phone number on their land line connected to a drug front. It’s the kind of thing that would only happen to us. After a while, the calls stopped coming, once they realized that the shop had closed. I can only imagine how. SLPD, probably. Whatever it was, we were extremely relieved. Perhaps they just changed their phone number, and that’s ok, too. But I never saw a physical building around town, so I doubt it.

Later on, we got a coffee shop called “The Daily Grind,” only funny because it’s the same chain in the TV show “Weeds.” Everything is connected.

Speaking of drugs, I’ve started watching “Breaking Bad” again. It stands up over time. I am enthralled by every twist and turn, just as I was the first time around… and in fact, there’s a lot I’ve forgotten, so it’s like getting to see it fresh. The idea is to turn Walter White from a mild-mannered chemistry teacher into Scarface, and if you haven’t seen it, it’s worth a look. I was hooked from episode one, even though I have never and will never try meth off the street. Prescribed Adderall was quite enough.

In other news, I signed up for an ITIL class, which will further me in my career, and I did not choose the online version. It was only $995 for the 2-day class and the exam, and I will be sought after like a boss because not many people have that certification. If I like it, I can graduate into project management later on, which seems to be more my style than programming, because I just do not have a math and science brain. However, I do have the ability to manage, delegate, and come up with excellent ideas. I am a big picture sort of person, and to be honest, coding is lonely. The class starts next week. #fingerscrossed

I don’t want to leave DSI, but I am hoping that with this ITIL certification, I can get a job at a school with tuition waivers…. particularly Howard, but not necessarily because I’d have to change my major. Not too much of a problem because I have so many hours in psychology, but political science has more bearing on theology than you might think, because it teaches you more about how people are influenced by many factors in how they vote, faith being one of them. It’s not my job to teach people how to vote, but to determine how everyone comes to those decisons and how to reach all of them. I don’t want to base my church on the Democratic party, I want it to be inclusive of all. But there are certain things for which I will not stand, which is the idea that Jesus was somehow for bombing people… and that reaches across party lines. We all get up in our feelings regarding terrorism, and our feelings direct our votes when we’re terrified. Being Christ in the world is not about embracing retribution on either side of the aisle, as many did on Sept. 12th. I don’t think we completely thought that situation through, and if there’s anything Jesus taught, it was thinking all the way through a problem before acting on it. Bombing the hell out of Iraq was a kneejerk reaction, and not limited to Republicans in the slightest. It was a reaction instead of response, and the difference between the two is time.

It is a lesson I have learned over and over, with both success and failure laid out like bricks in Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado… because I didn’t do anything except box myself in with the enormity of my failure to think things through. My heart broke in terror when I saw the bricks rising to my neck…. avoidable if I had taken the time to respond rather than react. But as always, hindsight is 20/20. My next move is taking down the walls I’ve built, because while it is keeping bad stuff out, it’s not letting good stuff in, either. I wallow in the mistakes I’ve made, unable to forgive myself. I am hoping this course is making room for the future, because I can command an even higher salary that will allow me to sock away money to graduate without debt, even from grad school. It’s something that I desperately need, because you know, pastors make SO MUCH. 😛

But the important part is not the money, but the ability to lead as the ultimate Nouwen wounded healer. I will never be able to approach ministry as somone who’s not. People know too much about me to believe that the light of Christ shines through me with perfection, only by breaking open my flaws to let light in…. filling the cracks with gold to make the broken more beautiful.

Sometimes you just have to show your crack… that was a joke…. it’s funny.

At least I am well enough to joke. It’s been a rough few days, but I am making it, step by step along a deep and winding road.

Amen
#prayingonthespaces

There’s really nothing like your sister finding old pictures of you that make you either laugh or cry…. sometimes both. I can’t get over my clothes, my earrings, my lack of punk hair, earrings that make me look 40 when I am 17 or 18 in this photo. You can tell by the “mall bangs” I am trying to pull off that have fallen in the Houston heat. My dad sent me some more, but since this is the only one that’s just me, I decided to leave their embarrassments to them. The one that’s the most fun is Meag wearing a sweatshirt I still wish I could steal… red with the “Roots” logo that they probably don’t make anymore, but could probably find on E-bay if I was industrious enough… but I’m not. I’m happy with the clothes I have, which are few and thus, easy to manage.

The clothes in this picture are probably me on my way to church, because St. Martin’s was and is very formal. I am sure this is also some kind of interview outfit, but I do not remember for which job. I hadn’t started my career at UH yet, and I doubt this is what I wore to Chili’s…. always a Chilihead at heart. Hand over the fries and no one gets hurt.

It was Meag, in the end, that convinced me to go punk. She looked good in it, so why wouldn’t I? Even in my late 30’s, it keeps me young. People don’t look at me and see 39. Mostly they see hipster chic, for which I am grateful. Preppy with punk edge is my jam…. but never this preppy ever again if I can help it. I ride the line between having my girly moments and rejecting them outright…. although I have noticed that kids’ clothes wear faster than adult, which is disheartening because I am buying the top of the line… “Tommy H,” as Meag would say. Nautica. Ralph Lauren. Calvin Klein. I am crispy to a fault, including my nerdy “Ira Glasses.” Where the punk comes in is Chucks and Docs for every occasion, as well as ball enclosures for my regular earring holes as well as my cartilage. I could also probably pull off an eyebrow ring because my eyebrows running unchecked are enormous (as you can see from this pic), but at the same time, I like having a job. It’s the same with neck tattoos. I could probably do something amazingly pretty that would make employers (and my mother) roll over and die. For instance, I think Kat von D is one of the sexiest women on the planet, but I can’t pull that off. I don’t think anyone else can. But it looks good on her.

The only tattoo I have had drawn up but haven’t actually had inked yet is a dragon burning the ever-living fuck out of my dragonfly. The dragonfly stays… it can’t not. It reminds me of a different time in my life… but it stands for something different, so it has to change and not die. I want to change it so that it is burning and slowly turning to ash, because that point in my life is fixed in the timeline of my grown and development as a human being. The drawing has stayed with me for years, and there’s no reason to change tracks now. The original tattoo was just a memory, marking a significant time in my life, as will this be, too.

So much has changed since then, but again, it is a fixed point in time… a memory that I want to keep. The only problem is that it will be on my back, so trying to look at it will involve a series of mirrors. But I can’t change where it is and will be. It’s one of the reasons I have tattoos on my left forearm and right wrist. I realized that all the tattoos I was getting were ones that were impossible for me to enjoy, as well. The drawing as it stands does not have a little of the dragon’s tail looping up onto my shoulder, but perhaps it needs to in order for me to have a chance to get strength from it, rather than the few times a year I can actually see the others. I just know they’re there, rather than actually getting to check and make sure. 😛

The ink on my dragonfly tattoo is so faded that if it can’t be saved, I have other ideas as to what should go in that spot, but I’m not ready to let go of what it might be. I just know that the dragonfly tattoo has run its course, shattering the illusion that it is sacred and truly meaning to me. But I don’t think it will be a problem. I think it will be one of the most cathartic and healing experiences of my life, and that’s what tattoos are all about- marking time and creating conversation pieces in one breath. A dragon is meaningful to me because its fire allowed me to return to the Virgo that I am, able to relax with deep breath into soil that had been enriched in ash. Perhaps a phoenix would be more appropriate, but I do not want everyone and their dog to ask me where I got an AMAZING Harry Potter tattoo…. just like my friend Jac, who upon passing the bar, got the scales of justice tattooed on her ankle and everyone thought she was a Libra.

Not that there’s anything wrong with a Harry Potter tattoo, mind you. I’d just rather have, no lie, SpongeBob SquarePants if I was ever dumb enough to get a cartoon inked on my body. Perhaps that’s being too harsh, because plenty of cartoon characters speak to people, but I’d rather have pictures of them. Maybe one day I will write The Gospel According to SpongeBob SquarePants, because his everlasting positivity and deep friendship speak volumes about Christ’s message…. sometimes better than I do…. a lot of times, actually.

The things I am willing to ink on my body are much closer to The Illustrated Man, someone who marks his body with the stories of his past, hoping to never forget. There are again, fixed points in time that cannot be changed for me, and it is those fixed points that I’d like to never be given the chance to forget. Even broken relationships aren’t let go from their meaning, which is why the dragonfly will always be there, but it has to look different, has to reflect the next fixed point in time that is even more meaningful than the day I got the dragonfly tattoo in the first place. The only reason I haven’t changed it yet is that I want to be debt-free before I start socking away money for it, and I am SO CLOSE I can taste it. So perhaps in the next few months/weeks/years. Priorities matter.

This is because in order to do what I really want to do instead of half-assing it, it won’t be cheap. Cheap tattoos are the worst thing you can do to yourself, because it’s like seeing what it could have represented, and misses the mark so poorly that you need to head immediately to one of those clinics where they can take it back off. Thank God those exist.

I’ve thought a few times about getting my Celtic knot removed, only because it matches Dana, and then I realized she was also a fixed point in time that I never wanted to forget… and it’s not like it says “Dana” on it. I’m Irish. It just fits no matter what, and she will be precious to me until I take my last breath, and none of our time together was wasted. To look at it that way is bitter and unbecoming of the depth and breadth of my feelings for her.

In the end, our relationship had run its course, but that doesn’t mean that the last decade of my life didn’t mean the world to me as it was happening. I just realized that I was not comfortable with the amount of partying we were doing to avoid pondering our real problems…. issues that I am sure could have been resolved had we put in the shoe leather, and I kick myself every day for not seeing that fact. It is devastating that I could not make her see that I loved her as much as I did, could not convince her that I would never be on my way out the door, it seemed that way to her and I will not take her feelings away from her, because they matter just as much as mine.

On the flip side, I feel like I was running toward my destiny in DC, and I wouldn’t take that away from myself, either. I never would have left had I thought there was something between us, but I knew within myself that it was over. Time had run out to try and solve anything, and she made that perfectly clear. Knowing that allowed me to “get the hell out of Dodge” without ever feeling bad about it. She robbed me of any regret with her words. She made a choice as to who she wanted in her community, and I made a choice as to who I wanted in mine. Prianka and Elena folded me into their family from the first day I arrived, screeching like a howler monkey the first time I saw her face. I got to see my college best friend, Giles, and have watched him grow into the husband and father I always knew he would be.

Plus, Houston to DC is an easy trip, and I see a lot of my family as opposed to how often they came to Portland because it was so obscurely out of the way… although it’s interesting that now Lindsay goes there all the time…. but she comes here a lot, too, so I’m not too bitter. 😛

I don’t regret leaving PDX for a second, because all my friends still talk to me via social media, and one of the people closest to me from that time in my life is now in school in New York City, a mere four hours from here… and my 7th-8th grade boyfriend lives in “The Dirty Jerz,” which is even closer. Being close enough to road trip up into New York and New England means a lot to me, as well as being able to take off for Montreal, Ottawa, and “Toronno.” It was the right move at the right time, having nothing tying me to Houston anymore except family that’s willing to travel here just as easily as I could make it down there.

And if it isn’t wrong to think of Dana as family given the long history of being best friends for almost four years before we got married, perhaps one day, when all our pain has passed, I’ll get to show her around “my DC,” too. I don’t hope for much, but I do hope for that. I don’t think we could ever get back together- too much negative history between us to keep us from lapsing back into old and painful patterns- but that doesn’t mean I don’t treasure her for all she’s worth, and regret that I had serious failings in showing it to her.

Most people have chided me for moving here to see what would happen between Argo and me, but that’s not true. I moved here so that the tie between Dana and me would never be completely severed unless we both wanted it that way. I tried to put some dirt back into the hole I’d dug with Argo, but as I have said before, I pictured an “on the ground” meeting as easily as I pictured getting to know the president as a close, personal friend. Those two things were equally impossible in my mind, and have stayed that way. The hole was too deep, the dirt “a little too little too late” (my words, not hers, but still extraordinarily true). But if that had been the focus of my move, I wouldn’t have found a community that I adore and vice versa.

My blog lags behind my real life as I process the past, and that’s all it is. I am not working toward reconciliation with Dana or Argo, just trying to understand the gargantuan mistakes I made and how to affect change in moving forward to leave them behind, because how they see me takes my breath away in ways that ignite flight or flight (or freeze, take your pick), and rip apart the happiness I have found here because I am too focused on how to fix things instead of how to overcome them.

I am aware that I have huge flaws, and the ability to create negativity, placing it where it never should have been. If there’s any hope in this garbage dump of a situation, it may not be them reminiscing of happier times and wanting to reach out…. but it MUST be learning the lessons from the situation I helped create, trying to make a better me for the new friends that come along.

I have to forget about the former, and create drive for the latter. That way, if there is reconciliation down the line, it will be a complete surprise, and not something for which I was pining and just didn’t get. There cannot be disappointment where hope does not exist.

There can only be hope in the redemption of the self.

Amen.
#prayingonthespaces

Every time I hear the word “wheezy,” I picture the old Comedy Central show Viva Variety. When my doctor said it as he was listening to my chest, my mind went to the old commercial advertising the show where the two main characters are standing in front of the Jefferson Monument, and a female character in a deep Russian accent says, “dat statue don’t look nothing like George Jefferson… and where da heck is Weezy?” It was nice to laugh through pain, as I am wont to do… I don’t feel any better, but laughter is great as opposed to crying my eyes out that I really am as sick as I thought. There is nothing like that feeling in the pit of your stomach that says strange things are afoot at the Circle-K… flipping into another movie quote because it’s what I do. There’s a movie quote for everything. I wish I had gone to Urgent care on Wednesday, but like I said earlier, the true depth and breadth of my weird shitometer didn’t go off until Friday, and by that time, I slept for almost 24 hours straight. There was no way I could gather enough strength to drive myself over until that happened… another reason it sucks being single. Every single one of my girlfriends would have leapt into action, so this is not about missing Dana. It’s missing her role in my life, as well as anyone else who has been kind enough to tolerate dating me. 🙂

The Zofran is working… sort of. The Lomotil is helping immensely. For all the doctors in the crowd, please let me know if I can up the dosage on the Zofran, which is 4mg i BID. In fact, it was funny. When I got into the exam room and my doctor came to see me (Roscoe Adams at the Urgent Care in downtown Silver Spring- AMAZING), I told him that I needed to be tested for the flu, but regardless I needed Lomotil and Zofran. He said, “you took the words right out of my mouth. Thanks for making my job easy.” I told him that after being a doctor’s kid and a former medical assistant, I’d picked up a little along the way. He said, “you’ve picked up way more than a little. Thanks for doing your homework.” If by “doing my homework” he meant doing absolutely nothing but drawing on my history, then by all means. Let him think I pored over WebMD.

My personal victory in those days was that the doctor and I both had red hair, and looked a little similar because of it. I walked into the exam room, and the patient, thinking I was the doctor, dropped her pants. After getting over the initial shock, I saw the familiar pattern of shingles. I went to the nurse’s station and said, “Doctor, I think it’s shingles.” She came out of the room and said “good pickup…” which, to a medical assistant is like a hug from Jesus. I walked on air for several days over that one.

Medical assistants rarely get to do more than take vitals and a chief complaint. It’s rare that we get to take a shot at a diagnosis. But I remembered a line from the doctor, that the rash generally rides along the nerve that goes from your belly button to the small of your back. It doesn’t always present this way, but if you have sores running around your body like that, it’s an excellent guess… which is why medicine is an art sometimes and not an exact science. Some things have clear indicators, others you have to study hard to find out what might be wrong. Rheumatologists have it the worst, because autoimmune disease patients often get sent to 10 or 15 doctors who have no idea what it is until they get to you… and insurance companies pay little to get you to think, but a lot when you have to cut something out. This is one of the reasons that being paid a salary by a medical group is so important. If your practice is mostly Medicare patients, running your own business can sink you into the ground, running the practice at a loss.

And then there’s the people who walk away from medical debt entirely, rendering the doctor into “working for free,” because the Hippocratic Oath means more than a check. “Bank” on it.

Single payer health care is the only way to go in terms of making sure that doctors get to do what they do best- getting paid for practicing medicine. There are no classes in medical school that deal with running your own practice, although that may have gotten better over time. But the business aspects take away from everything for which you’ve trained, because you didn’t study business. You studied medicine. Salaried doctors are where it’s at. It’s gotten so bad that the only way doctors can make money is if they don’t take insurance at all, and/or become one of those “concierge doctors” that will make house calls. For instance, let’s say a new patient appointment with a specialist is $200. Medicare makes an art of taking those claims and maybe sending you back $35. This makes no sense when medical school can cost upwards of $110,000 for somewhere decent.

My friend Keith went into the Navy to help pay his student loans, and it still took him 10-15 years to erase it completely. Of course, this is the same Keith that when I went to see him, immediately told him I was a lesbian and there was no need to run a pregnancy test and he called me “sassy.” Probably one of the cutest and most accurate compliments I’ve ever gotten. 🙂 I call him my friend as well as my doctor because that’s what happens when you have a doctor in the family. The same doctors that treat you invariably show up in social occasions as well.

Plus, even if you’ve never gotten sued, malpractice insurance on top of student loans is on the ridiculous.

I want to treat doctors well, because they’ve always treated me in kind.

I owe Dr. Adams a finely-crafted cocktail with appetizers. It’s a shame I won’t be able to give it to him, because he totally deserves it. I’m better now. Not perfect, but on the mend.

The flu just royally bites, but thanks to him, I won’t suffer too much longer… and that’s worth its weight in gold.