This morning,the Facebook status that made me laugh was, “Dana Bamberger Lanagan is going to KILL me when she wakes up.” It was a joke, and I wish I could remember what it was about. I did say that there would be sushi penance later, but it could have been anything from rearranging the furniture to something I posted on Facebook. I’ll never know, and that’s ok. It was great for a laugh.

It’s interesting how much she makes me laugh every day even though she’s not here, thanks to the Memories section. It’s like little morsels of remembrance, especially since I moved here almost a year to the day. In fact, I think tomorrow is my “anniversary.” It’s had its ups and downs, but for the most part, very positive. I am not glad that it took me such a long time to find a job, but I am glad that I had the time to make every appointment, both psychiatry and psychology, and that I had a chance to recover from most of the grief I felt from the divorce and continue my journey into wholeness. It didn’t take all at once, and still creeps up every day, but it is not the fustercluck it was when I first got here.

The best I was hoping for was a kitchen job, and the fact that my CEO took a chance on me is something I will never forget. They’d combed my blog and my Facebook page and they wanted me ANYWAY. In fact, that was one of the things that drew the company to me, that I was capable of crafting words and coming up with good ideas.

I am also learning SQL in leaps and bounds. I started a Virtual Machine with Ubuntu installed so I could learn to use a LAMP (Linux Apache MySQL Python) stack, and install my own local version of WordPress, because that’s the backbone of our web site. I also use PHPMyAdmin to add databases and manage them, which makes my life a whole lot easier for those of you in the audience that actually knows what that means to me. I don’t have a static IP, so I run everything on localhost, which works out nicely because I don’t want to work on a production machine. I have done that before, and it is like walking on a tightrope across Niagra falls without a net or a balance bar.

And then afterwards, I come home and get some rest for the next day, so I’m fresh. Last night, I watched Star Trek: Into Darkness, and I thought it was awesome, although you should have seen my face when Mickey (Doctor Who) and Sherlock appeared onscreen. Also worth it for the Leonard Nimoy cameo.

Plus, Zachary Quinto. Seriously.

I really thought Kirk had had it and we were about to get a new captain, but I should have known. Chris Pine is too much of a box office draw for them to get rid of him that quickly.

Tomorrow is dinner at Scales’ house, and SO EXCITED. I would give up a little extra sleep for that. I cannot underestimate how good I feel when I am with her, because it is a solid move toward getting away from the past and making room for whatever the future holds. I am still not ready for anything more than friendship with anyone, and so this is not a pick up chicksth sort of situation. But it *is* the best thing that has happened in a long time in terms of my self-worth. Having that person who is my go-to e-mail and phone call and visiting person is amazing in and of itself. It gives me confidence one day at a time that I am worthy of more than the depression I feel at everything that has gone on for the past several weeks (years?).

I miss Argo and Dana more than words can say, in that order only because of the alphabet, because it’s hard to say which one has meant more to me over the course of the divorce and aftermath. Of course Dana wins at being a spectacular wife, but once that relationship broke down, it was Argo who helped pick me up, even though we’d spent a majority of the time fighting and we reached out to each other despite it. It’s how I know that our connection transcended the bullshit we levied toward each other in the moment and she was willing to get in the weeds with me, something I won’t forget even as I let go.

There are so many things that I won’t let go. I can let go of future contact, but I will not give up my memories, especially the amazing ones. I have a lot to be grateful for, more than I can say grace over, and those are the things I will take with me…. just like Dana and the way she makes me laugh instead of cry on a daily basis.

I don’t want to focus on unpleasantness, because the way to wholeness for me is not processing all of the negative feelings I have toward both of them, but the amazing laughter and intimacy we shared, which Harville Hendrix rightly called “into me see.” Intimacy with a friend is different than intimacy with a wife, but they both meant the world to me, and not something worthy of putting away. I just don’t want to feel sad anymore. I want to feel all the joy they brought into my life as I move forward, because it is fuel.

When I think of bad memories, it puts me on the floor. When I think of good memories, I imbue myself with a sense of peace. Things will never be the same, but perhaps that is for the best. If I cannot get either of them to see who I really am, there is no point in trying.

I should have moved on with Argo long ago, but it took me until now to really be able to process it…. what it would mean to me to lose her. It’s enormous. Simply enormous. In a way, it hurts more than losing Dana, because of the two relationships, at the time I thought mine with Argo was the healthier of the two, fights and all, because we are both so justice-oriented that I thought we were well-matched in terms of our mutual fuckedupedness. And in the end, it blew us apart rather than bringing us closer together. Even if we never met on the ground, I would have loved to be that person she could count on, because sometimes letters carry just as much weight as hugs and an arm around your shoulder when you’re depressed.

Not meeting on the ground is its own baggage, but there’s no way it would have happened without an enormous amount of work that I’m not sure she wanted to do. I proved myself to be a right jackass, and that’s the image that stuck, when in the beginning, I was the one with great insights and I will never forget the day I lost that weight in her heart.

But perhaps I never did, given that when I reached out honestly, she’d come back around. I just didn’t realize how much it was hurting me to do so, because inevitably we’d go back to fighting and it would just rip me apart all over again.

I finally had enough, and enough to call it good and start to bless and release the relationship into the ether. However, I did not want to go out with anger, so I sent her a letter saying all the things I’d learned from her over the years, and how much she meant to me.

And if that is all there ever is, I appreciate the fact that we were once friends who could open up to each other, even though it was painful and real. You don’t get that with many people, and perhaps our opening up to each other was what caused the rift in the first place, because we could only handle “into-me-see” up and to a point.

It’s ok. I understand.

It’s been 13 days of no contact with Argo, and it gets easier with each passing night. I have decided that I am not dark and twisty, I am adorkable, something I couldn’t see when the thing that was being reinforced for me is that I was some kind of dark and twisty stalker, which I never was to begin with, but it made a great story. We both e-mailed each other really shitty things that neither one of us could have said had there not been a wall between us that led us to see each other as Internet trolls and not real people with real feelings. There are so many things that I wish we could have talked about face-to-face rather than trying to pick up what the other was saying over mere black and white text. I went way overboard trying to push her away, and it is something that I’ll have to live with, because mentally ill people have a habit of needing love and support and asking for it in the most inappropriate of ways. We turned on each other, rather than learning to take care of each other, and I have said this before and will continue to say it until it finally clicks in my brain… that so much of this strife was caused by not being able to see real tears, real emotions, real anything. For instance, there have been times I have cried like a wounded animal, alligator tears because of everything I have done and left undone. I would give anything to put back together something that will not go. So, no contact is best for me, because I feel like I got shafted. I was moving forward in leaps and bounds, and it only took one conversation to undo it all and I was put back in that big ball of anxiety that no one has ever had the ability to create in me. People cannot “make” me do anything, but that was my reaction…. to crawl into a hole of depression and wish like hell that I hadn’t been so damn independent. That I’d done more to consider her feelings at a time when I really, really should’ve.

But there are things that you only see in retrospect that you do not see in the moment, and this was one of those times. Thoughtlessness does not equal dark and twisty, but had I taken the time to realize that it might come across that way, I would have found other ways to grieve…. other ways to process that didn’t include discomfort on the part of others. I am normally one of those people that considers everyone else’s feelings first, putting others ahead of my own needs, and in not doing so this time, I really stepped in it without even knowing what I was doing.

Going exploring was not meant to hurt anyone, and knowing I did hurts me. But I cannot ignore the fact that when I came clean, honestly and truly, it wasn’t enough, and it never would be. I don’t want friends in my life who constantly harp on my bad side without recognizing the good, and it took that huge of a recognition to realize it…. that I don’t feel happy when Argo comes down on me, that I don’t feel happy when I regress into the person she wants me to be, because I do get angry at being mis-identified and it only takes a few words of dripping sarcasm and condescension to make me go to that place. Being pinned inaccurately is the easiest way to tap into my feelings of injustice, and once that happens, I cannot release myself from anger easily. I pop off without regard to others’ feelings, especially when I have already taken them into consideration and it does no good whatsoever. I couldn’t apologize for something I didn’t think was wrong. Period. But I apologized over and over for not taking her feelings into consideration, and I thought that was the whole point entirely. I recognized how she felt, but it wasn’t enough.

I struggle with the concept of “enough.” Both when I feel I haven’t done it, and when I’ve had it. How long was my past going to be held over my head? How long would it take to be recognized as a friend instead of a foe? How long would it take for both of us to just fucking relax? How long would it take until others’ words meant just as much to me as hers did? I feel like this year was a lesson in “enough,” because I expressed my feelings of unhappiness and all I really got back was “have a nice life.” It wasn’t the response I expected, but it wasn’t out of character, given the fact that when I’ve tried to be vulnerable, I’ve gotten RPGs designed to hurt, and they do…. immensely.

I don’t move on easily or quickly, and all of these feelings are swirling within me as I try to piece together how shoots of green came apart in one day flat. And then I decided that whatever impressions she had of me were ones that took place over a medium that only projects seven percent of a person at best, and the other 93 were going to be lost to history. I had to regain my sense of confidence that I was funny, lovable, and the last person who’d ever want to hurt someone else when I am feeling well and healthy.

I was not feeling well and healthy, and as far as I can tell, she was pretty emotionally crispy herself. The right thing to do would have been to have coffee and cry it out, but I am not invited to that, and I’m ok with it. I have had enough of trying to glean information that would help me on my journey with her as opposed to the “you’re a shitty person” bandwagon that has been held over my head. I have this feeling inside that if we’d ever met, none of this would have happened, because there wouldn’t have been this wall between us in the first place. There wouldn’t have been this anonymity that allowed both of us to freak out at people we didn’t know, but thought we did. Reading people is not the same as seeing them, truly seeing them for who they are.

Argo said something about it not being a good idea to go by her house just to see it, and I said honestly that I would never want to do that to myself. Not having that relationship where I could knock on the door and say, “let’s go for a beer” would emotionally wreck me even more than I’ve already allowed myself. I feel that I have proven over and over that I do not want any more of a relationship with her than I already have without it being mutually agreed upon, and those words haven’t sunk in, even though they are God’s honest truth.

But I can’t make Argo feel anything, just like she can’t make me feel anything, ether. My responses are my own choices, just as hers belong to her. My response now is nothing. I wouldn’t hurt a fly, much less someone I care about as much as I care about her. Getting angry and popping off like an Internet troll is just one of the many services I offer, but it doesn’t come without a huge amount of regret and deep sadness at the way I behaved. I pushed her away, my heart broken at my own hand, and I accept it wholeheartedly. But what I do not accept is that being angry is the only part there is to me.

We both hurt each other, deeply, and I don’t think I recognized how much.

Making new friends that see all of me is important, because they see that 100 percent… taking in that I am sad and grieving and hilarious all at the same time. Because grief is hilarious if you let it.

I am just not willing to open myself up for more. I promised Argo that I would always be an open and loving heart for her, but it was up to her to use it…. that I didn’t feel like I had the right to ask for anything, and I wouldn’t. But there is no hope in that statement, because I know what she thinks of me, and I know what I think of her, and they don’t match… and perhaps never will.

I promised that I would keep working on my hot buttons, so that if they got pressed, I wouldn’t react in the same way. But that is my work to do without her, because again, you cannot own that you need no contact and then go back across the river for comfort…. because it won’t be. It will be more button-pushing to get me to go away, and of that, I am sure. It will be more grief and rage and silence at good things and johnny-on-the-spot with e-mail if I’ve done something wrong. Even being nice to her is fraught with the possibility that I’m still wrong.

I can’t live like that anymore, and I won’t. I care, deeply so, but not enough to put myself in that kind of harm’s way. I divide myself in two and talk to her based on the tapestry of words we’ve already said, going back two or three years to avoid pain altogether. I miss her hilarity, and I miss the days when checking in meant real conversation and not idle chitchat, although that was fun as well.

But what I do know is that it’s time to stop wrecking myself.

It’s been 13 days.

Siri, set the timer for one hour.

Ok, Leslie. I will… and the suspense is killing me.

I got home around 11:30 last night after going for a pedicure and dinner with Scales. We talked for four solid hours, and it was amazing. In terms of the polish, I couldn’t decide on a color, so I picked out black with red glitter and said, does this look like DC United to you? And like that, we were off…

Which is why I was so surprised when a propos of nothing, my eyes popped open at 5:59. I was out the door and at SBUX by 7:10, had my coffee by 7:24 (took me a few minutes to set up the app) and set my timer for an hour so I could get lost in my writing and not forget to go to work. I have given up on Starbucks cards. They generally get lost in my car, my room, etc. So much easier to log onto the web site and add them to my phone. Plus, SBUX is now cheaper than 7-Eleven, because the price of the coffee is about the same and with the number of rewards I have, I get free refills (not that I should use them… at least I don’t have an office mate to watch me spazz out all day). I was going to get some tea, but the bold pick today was too amazing to ignore… Cafe Verona… yum. Plus, I have Stash™; at the office in both Earl Grey and English Breakfast should I need to spazz out again this afternoon. Starbucks sells Teavana,™ but it’s more expensive and to my mind, just not as good. But perhaps it is not the tea itself, but the package that comes with the tea. Stash is a Portland company, and when I drink it, it’s the equivalent of going back in time. Sometimes I wish Dana & I had never left, but at the time, it made the most sense. You have to have a Master’s to teach in Oregon, where in Texas, it’s just a simple exam if you already have a Bachelor’s.

Plus, living in the city of Houston, it’s very possible that Dana would have been placed in a school where we could be out… not true 20 years ago, but certainly a possibility now. Of course I wanted her to teach at HSPVA. Of course I did. Her BA is in technical theatre, and not only that, I think she would have been one of the most popular history/geography/senior English teachers in the history of the entire school. This is because senior English is all Brit Lit, all the time, and Dana has an encyclopedic knowledge of Shakespeare and Rain Man when it comes to geography and history…. where as MY geography knowledge is limited to They Might Be Giants.

Of course, because schools need math teachers so much more, I think she would have been excellent at that, too. I was the creative diva basketcase while Dana’s brain works on a more logical axiom…. which is why I think she could also be a six figure programmer in no time if that’s something she wanted to take on. But it’s not my job to think about Dana’s future anymore. I just want the best for her, and I believe that’s how I know I’m really getting over it. Seeing her happy no matter what she does is important to me, without the weight of the past. It’s been long enough that I forget how bad it got and focus on how good. There will never be another Dana, and the sooner I recognize that, the easier it will be for me to think about accepting someone else.

But right now, I don’t want anyone else. I want her… in all her flaws, failures, successes, and hilarity. I have always thought of Argo as a completely separate compartment than Dana, and they never overlapped. They fed different parts of my brain, and the thought that I was on my way out the door because I loved Argo’s brain was laughable. The lesson for me in all of this was learning to love someone’s brain without thinking that translated into needing to be with them to enjoy it.

Dana used to say that Argo was an X-factor, that if I was capable of falling in love with her brain, I was capable of falling in love with someone else’s, and that person might actually be a lesbian and it wouldn’t be so easy to crush out and stay married. I personally thought that was bullshit, because I know what threat looks like. I recognize it. If Argo had been bi-identified, I would have run from her like a house on fire from Day One (also my favorite track on John Tesh Live at Red Rocks [shut it]). Argo being so incredibly heterosexual allowed me to feel all giggly inside like a teenager, an injection of dopamine that just made me feel good without all the messiness of shit getting real. There was no one that could make me blush easier, no one that could get under my skin with her words the way she could, for both evil and for awesome (thanks, Strongbad). But I felt that if my feelings for Argo stayed in the Argo box, I was perfectly capable of having enough love inside me for both of them, because as those giggly feelings faded, philia took over and eros got stronger with my wife, the one it was supposed to go to in the first place. However, I could never convince Dana of that, and perhaps that was a throwback to our past memories. I will never know, and that’s ok, but perhaps being married and falling for her best friend back in the day convinced her that’s what was going to happen in this case… that it didn’t matter what Argo’s orientation was, that our relationship was so tight that gender and sexuality didn’t matter anymore. But of course they did. OF COURSE THEY DID. I am a huge personality in a tiny body, but I have never once been able to “turn someone gay.” It doesn’t work like that, although I did make the joke back in the day that I didn’t think you could catch homosexuality from Gmail and Facebook Messenger, but you might want to check your license agreement. Shit happens when you don’t read the fine print.

In retrospect, I wish Dana and I had moved to DC at the same time, even as broken as we were, living apart so that we could make our own friends and still see each other every once in a while… but that is my bag, not hers, because she found what she was looking for in Houston and I, put quite simply, did not. Plus, I didn’t want to be a Houston-based writer. I wanted to be a DC-based writer. Too much to write about with too little time… although I don’t want to write about politics. I want to write about the city. Everyone focuses on Congress, the presidency, and the Supreme Court. But how many people focus on what it’s like to really live here? Muriel Bowser (mayor of DC) and Eleanor Holmes Norton (shadow Congresswoman) are doing the best they fucking can with a garbage dump of a situation. The founding brothers never really intended for people to live here, and it shows. Though DC is becoming more and more gentrified over time, the reality is that there are tourist areas and ghettos right next to each other, with the middle class only now emerging… and the upper end of middle class at that, because very few people can afford to live in the city proper. When Kathleen and I were looking for an apartment, the best we could find is a tiny box for $2,000/month, and that was 15 years ago… although if we’d had enough money to buy a house in a shitty neighborhood, we’d be rich by now. Again, gentrification is happening. Columbia Heights has been completely overhauled in the time that I’ve been away, as has the SW waterfront.

My favorite house that I saw was on the Potomac River, close to the marina on the NoVA side, and it was only $880,000. We didn’t have that kind of money, but I assure you that was cheap for its location, and now it’s worth over $2 million. We ended up in a small townhome community in the city of Alexandria, behind Landmark Mall for those who are familiar. The rent was reasonable, and we had all the amenities inside the house, like a washer and dryer in the kitchen so we didn’t have to schlep our clothes to a Horn & Hardart. But like I said, that was 15 years ago…. that same townhome complex probably charges twice what we paid then.

I am glad that I went the group house Craig’s List route, because I do not do well living alone, and my rent is less that $800 all bills paid, including cable and high-speed Internet. Now that I have a middle class job, it is allowing me to put away more money than I could ever save if I had a place of my own.

Plus, Sam, who still calls me “Mark.”

For those of us just joining us, a few months after I moved in, I got a “Share a Coke with Mark” Coke bottle at 7-Eleven and joked that now I only needed Luke, John, and Matthew. That was almost a year ago, and “Mark” has stuck.

One of my favorite stories about Sam is that her family took her back to Lebanon to see where Hayat grew up, and she and her sister tried to find the actual “Jesus tree.” If only there was photographic evidence. One of these days, I want to make it over as well, especially if Beirut calms down. In fact, I want to explore all of the Middle East, but I have to do it in a certain order, because the rules about traveling between Muslim countries and Israel are frightening. I also want to go to Turkey, the site of the original Mt. Tabor, and swim in the ocean at Antalya, thanks to the pictures my friend Brian and George posted of it.

Travel is at the top of my list in terms of interests, but in muslim countries, I swear to God I would wear a burka the whole time. I’m a lesbian and I look like it. I don’t want to take a chance that it could be used against me, and a burka allows me to watch people without being noticed, important as a writer. The place I want to see the most is the mountains of Afghanistan, thanks to The Kite Runner. I also want to see JoBurg and go to a Springboks game and perhaps try to find a way to meet Desmond Tutu. And oh my God, what if I went at the exact time the Springboks were playing the All Blacks?

Bliss.

And on that note, my timer is done and I have to leave. See you on the flip side. 🙂

I ran across this graphic on Facebook today and tears came to my eyes. These past few weeks have been a shitstorm of enormous proportion, and when I am alone, it’s all I can think of, especially when I close my eyes. I have medication that helps me to sleep soundly, but one of them gives me extremely vivid dreams, and the other makes it where I don’t dream at all, but the hangover is extreme. And the thing is, the one that’s got the worst hangover is not the one that helps me stay asleep, but the one that is supposed to help me fall asleep and then wear off. With either one, I keep a bottle of caffeine pills (200mg) on the other side of the bed and take it when my alarm goes off at 0600. I then hit the snooze button once or twice, and by then, I am ready to jump out of bed and get shit handled. For instance, this morning I got in the bathtub and shaved my legs, got dressed, and then went to CVS for an eyeglass repair kit and fixed my own glasses. I shaved my legs because Scales and I are getting together tonight, which may or may not include a pedicure. I’m not sure I can get to a nail place before it closes, but if I can, I am definitely interested. I am wearing my black Airwalk flip-flops today, which I love because they are so warm. I could practically wear them in any weather because the pads soak up my body heat so easily. I used to have a brown pair as well, but I lost them in the move…. somewhere. Trying to decide what color polish I want, because I will probably be wearing the same flip-flops to the DC United game. Maybe one set in black and the other in red. If they can airbrush, I want black with soccer balls. Meag would be so proud. I also want a DC United jersey, but that will have to wait, because I don’t want a fake one from Target. It’s something I’ve wanted to buy for myself since I was in high school, because at that time, the Houston Dynamo didn’t exist, and DC was the closest team to me. I am dyed in black, white, and red…. and have been since 1995. I also want a National Team jersey, but yet another thing that will have to wait. I have to get glasses, first, or else I won’t be able to see the game properly. 😛

Fixing my glasses was a new thing for me. I’ve never had to before, but I can’t get an eye appointment until Saturday morning. I would just order glasses from Warby Parker or Zenni, but my prescription is one month out of date, and doesn’t have my PD on it.The measurements have to be exact, because otherwise, the prisms won’t work. I also have to have small glasses, because again, the prisms can’t be too far down. I used to have two pairs of glasses, but the other pair was plastic and they didn’t last long. I also need prescription sunglasses, because I don’t want to drive without my glasses on…. it at least gives me a fighting chance. I did get a pair of regular sunglasses because they generally dilate your pupils for an eye appointment, and it was recommended that I bring some. I asked Scales if she could drive me, and if she can’t, then I’ll ask Sam. I’d just rather spend time with Scales. I am not underestimating the gift of her friendship, which came along at the perfect time. We’re very much alike and very different at the same time, which makes for great and long conversations about everything from relationships to what’s going on in the world. We’ve decided on taking turns hanging out in each others respective areas, and it’s my turn to go to her. Excited to see where she lives, because setting means a lot to me. Remember, Virgo. Earth sign, tied to the land & all the settings that come alive in front of me. It’s one of the reasons I was excited to see Dana’s apartment before I left, because then even if I was sitting in my room in DC, I could still picture where she was.

We only talked a few times after I moved… too painful for both of us.

And in terms of setting, it was a large part of the reason I moved to DC. I didn’t want to go anywhere I didn’t know. It’s taken me some time to figure out Maryland and DC, because I am literally ON the line between them. But if I had moved to NoVA, I wouldn’t have gotten nearly as much help as I needed, because Montgomery County has a fabulous mental health safety net, and Medicaid made everything free, except for my medications, which were a dollar a bottle. Getting private insurance made my health care more expensive, which I am not happy about, but I don’t qualify for Medicaid anymore, anyway. I make way too much, and I am passionate about reserving Medicaid for people who really don’t have the means to pay. Although if we go the single-payer route and Medicaid is opened up to everyone, it would make me extraordinarily happy. I am quite content at my job, but for those who aren’t, it releases you from the “golden handcuffs” that keep you in a job you hate because you’ll lose your insurance if you quit… and COBRA is just prohibitively expensive.

I just found out that my PCP doesn’t take my insurance anymore, and it makes me so sad, because I didn’t have to make an appointment to see him. I could just walk in and wait if I got there before 3:00. I hope that I can find something like it that does take my insurance, because it made getting medication refills so much easier, especially since they have Saturday morning hours.

I also need to make the time to see a massage therapist, because as a computer geek, it’s one of the few things that really makes me feel better after a long week of sitting in a chair that’s almost comfortable. I am also getting to the point where I need carpal tunnel surgery on both wrists, but that will have to wait until I can accrue enough vacation to be able to do it. Realistically, I need a week for each wrist, because I remember when Dana went through it, and though she was better in a few days, she couldn’t get back to the repetitive nature of her job right away.

Which reminds me of another funny story. They only do one wrist at a time so that you can still do things like wipe your ass. As the surgeon said, “I’m not doing both wrists at the same time for Dana. I’m not doing both wrists at the same time for you.” Additionally, he used a blue marker to indicate which wrist he was doing that day, and I can’t remember who said it, but one of us said, “he should have used a black marker. Black is slimming.” When we repeated it to the surgeon, he laughed… and as I remember, I think it was one of the few things he laughed at during the ordeal. Some surgeons are just not built for humor.

Scales just got back to me and she’s on for Saturday. W00t!

This whole having a friend thing is working out. It’s really allowing me to focus on my future and stop beating the crap out of myself. Especially for single people, friendships are life-sustaining, and Tinder has been excellent for that. I met Auna that way, too, and we are still friends to this day. I miss her all the time, but she is just a phone call away, one of the few people I will talk to on the phone because her personality is just too big for text. She reminds me of a t-shirt that my friend Jala used to wear all the time……. DANGER: EDUCATED BLACK WOMAN AHEAD.

I really like that Tinder allows me to meet people. Not chat with them over the Internet, but actually have a cup of coffee and see if it’s a friendship I want to continue. I think that my relationship with Dana really made the impression on me that skipping the friendship part and dating right away is taking away an essential piece of a relationship.

Thank you for that, Triple D (Darling Dangerous Dana). It’s just one of the things I learned from you that really stuck, along with a thousand other things, but this one is at the top of the list.

But right now, I am not charting the path toward dating with anyone. I can’t. It’s just too much. I feel that I am still too broken, that I am still one of “those girls” who can’t stop talking about their ex, but not in a bad way, ever. Just that the funny stories I’ve had over the years mostly include her.

And although I put my feelings for Argo away long ago, there is a part of me that needs to process that friendship all the way through, as well. Every lesbian on earth has that story of falling for their straight friend, and having to get over it by themselves, because it’s not the straight person’s fault they’re just not wired that way. I don’t have to deal with those “in love” feelings, but I do have to dig deep and figure out how it happened and why in order to move on completely…. why our relationship became so bipolar at my own hand, and how to avoid something like that ever happening again.

I decided long ago that Argo was the last one. The last friendship in which I would ever deal with Eros, because it wasn’t real. It was a byproduct of “the way I was raised.” As real as it felt at the time, it was an illusion of enormous proportions.

But God’s honest truth is that I do love her. Not in any kind of shady way, but the kind that is ever-present Philia and Agape rolled into one. I may never get the chance to express it, because I have done enough to kill hers for me. And that’s part of processing all this loss, as well. For a long time, she was my person in the Grey’s Anatomy sense of the phrase… and I would like to think that in that place and time, I was hers.

But that was then, and this is now. Regret has no place in the present, because all it does is drag me down deep into the recesses of myself, hiding from the rest of the world in grief and shame. I don’t have time for it anymore, because there are too many things I miss when I am that blue.

I am looking for things that help me to feel happy despite my grief. But that grief is my journey to take now, without either Dana or Argo looking over my shoulder, judging the process. It’s just going to take time not to feel so empty, and things like getting together with friends are the best medicine, because it’s the thing that really allows me to laugh. I should also start exercising to get my endorphins up, but one thing at a time. The first step is to feel good enough about myself to realize I deserve it. I don’t need to lose weight, but since I’ve been in the morass of grief, my muscle mass is dwindling to nothing and I can’t run up a small flight of stairs without getting winded. It’s probably from not eating, but I’m not there yet, either. I eat when I feel good, and when I don’t, food is the last thing on my mind. You’d think I’d have enough energy with all the caffeine to multi-task… you know, eating and thinking at the same time.

Well, not so much. I drink everything in sight (non-alcoholic, right now a Coke Zero and a cup of tea), but that’s really all I can manage. I need some Carnation Instant Breakfast or something. I’ll buy a case tomorrow. That should help. Much better than walking around the grocery store close to tears because I can’t find anything that looks good.

Again, I just need time. How much, I don’t know. But I do know that as long as I keep putting in the work toward wholeness, I will reap the rewards. Surely it can’t get any worse (famous last words).

Paraphrasing Dorothy Parker, this hasn’t just been terrible. This has been fancy terrible, with raisins in it.

I just have to have faith that things will continue to get better as I branch out into the world instead of hiding from it.

Amen.

The quote from Dana that I’ve been waiting for arrived in my memories this morning. It made me happy to an enormous degree, because like I said yesterday, there is something precious about going back far enough that the divorce fades and just how funny we were together takes its place. All of our conversations in the humorous vein are tennis matches, and if there’s anything I miss about our relationship more than anything else, it’s that. Dana picked up all the parts of the conversation I forgot, or corrected me when I didn’t get a line just perfectly. I regret not taking more pictures. I regret staying home too much and not creating fantastic memories, because they say that money can’t buy you happiness, but it can if you spend it on the right things, experiences over objects. Most of the time, we were broke because either I didn’t have a job or she didn’t, but in the moments where we were doing really well, we didn’t take advantage of our middle-classness… and how I wish that we could bum around DC, because nearly everything is free.

Perhaps that will come in time, after we’ve had enough life experiences apart from each other that the pain of divorce will ease. I desperately miss being married to her, and getting away from her was the right thing entirely… but that doesn’t ease the fact that it was almost always amazing while it lasted. I don’t want to get back together, but in time, I’d like to be comfortable with friendship again. I’m not right now. You can’t grieve someone and go to them for comfort. You can’t cross a river and look back, wondering if the other person is still behind you. In the days after our divorce, when we were still living together, it was a mistake to try and roll back into our friendship immediately, because I couldn’t do it. We’d have an intimate moment (friendship-wise), and either my heart or my ovaries would explode. In retrospect, I am glad that we did not have children or buy a house or any of the things that would have made our separation all the more difficult.

I am still on the fence about having kids, and I have never once doubted that Dana would have been an awesome co-parent. But at this point in my life, at almost 39, the pool of women available to date have kids of their own, and I wonder if I’d make a good step-parent. It’s also not inconceivable that I could get pregnant (see what I did there) if I met someone, but going to the OB/GYN with Dana wrecked me, because our doctor said (when I was 35) that it would be considered a geriatric pregnancy. Now, while that may be a medical term, emotionally it made me feel 80 years old. And, of course, that was before I discovered all the ways I was truly mentally ill, having gone through teen drama/trauma and wondering if I’d be a good parent…. although I do have excellent role models for the task. My mother and father already have grandchildren of their own due to remarrying, but I cannot imagine how thrilled they would be if I did find the right family structure and I did decide to conceive. My sister and Matt have already decided that they don’t want children, and not only that, their last name isn’t Lanagan. I worry that I am the end of the line sometimes, and though it doesn’t weigh heavily, it is a thought that crosses my mind.

Though my possible future step-kids wouldn’t have the same last name as me, having kids who live with me (even if only part-time) would definitely be fun. It’s something to think about as I start to dip my toe in the dating world, because now that it’s been a year since the divorce, I have decided that I am not ready to date unless that person comes along that I simply cannot ignore; there’s a spark that’s not worth denying. My favorite plan is that it won’t happen for at least another year, but it doesn’t work that way. Life is what happens when you’re making other plans. I didn’t write it, but it’s no less true.

I also wouldn’t mind dating someone older than me, with the decision of children already made. That’s what on-the-fence really means to me… that the direction of my life will, in some ways, not belong to me, because it is a shared vision instead of a solo endeavor. There is also the looming question in my mind of whether I want the life I had as a child for either my own children or my steps, should I ever have them. Being a preacher’s kid is tough, moving a lot and having all sets of eyes on you all the time. Your family is your refuge. At the same time, I do not want to sacrifice the dream of being ordained and starting a church plant, so I have to wait for that person who will seriously consider those things with me, and in the best sense, not mind.

My dream for St. James is that it is on a river, with a huge parking lot on one side and a deck that leads down to the water on the other. That way, people have the option to choose how they’d like themselves or their children to be baptized. Don’t think that O Brother, Where Art Thou? didn’t go into that decision. 😛

I haven’t started fundraising as much as I’d like, but I am constantly “paying myself” by putting away savings, because in order to finish at University of Houston, I’m going to need money…. and then I’m going to need more money to finish at Howard.I would like to do all of this without graduating with a mountain of debt, but there are programs for that, especially for people who intend to enrich their own communities with non-profits. One of the local Congressmen has even suggested a program that will erase school debt by entering civil service. I dig it.

In my own mind, it is never too late to get my shit together, and getting the divorce and moving to DC was the first step in doing so. It is an exordium of enormous proportions. As I bless and release the past, I am making room for the future. It’s so big it needs a room of its own. It’s time to be the visionary my personality type dictates, instead of hoping that everything will come together with a knock on my door.

Nothing worth having comes without an enormous amount of work, and this is no exception. Jesus and I have the same personality type, given his extraordinary visionary qualities and the scene in which he loses his shit at the money-changers in front of the temple. I love the snarky quote, “in thinking about What Would Jesus Do?, remember that getting angry and flipping over tables is a viable option.” I don’t know who came up with it, but it makes me laugh every single time. You know how in the Bible, there are little descriptions of what you’re about to read? It would please me to no end if that particular scene was changed to “Jesus Loses His Shit.”

I personally think he’d get a kick out of it. Remember that he was a common man raised up into divinity, which means that there was nothing that the people around him did that he didn’t do himself. He was a joiner… a community organizer… and got people to follow him not because he was preaching from a place of judgment, but a place of, “I’m just like everyone else.”

In the end, not so much. And for that, I am grateful. I take all of him. His humanness, his divinity, his holy authority, and the lens he provides for me to look at the world.

In a country where laws are being passed that would affect me directly as a lesbian, I only have to look at Jesus to know how wrong they are. It is a table-flipping moment, and I applaud those who are doing just that.

Amen.

 

One of my favorite songs in the entire world is Feeling Good by Michael Buble. I don’t think I’m quite up to feeling good, but I’m getting there. Today, the best I can say is that I’m “feeling all right.” But it is a new dawn, a new day, a new life for me. Things are percolating nicely. Drinking cold coffee left over from yesterday and it tastes even better…. don’t know why, probably because all the chlorine in the water has dissipated. I don’t normally drink coffee in the morning, but I have some leftover Christmas blend, and I wanted to use it up. My dad and my cousin have given me a lot of Starbucks money over the past year, and instead of buying individual cups, I spent a lot of the money on beans… mostly because Starbucks tastes better fresh and you have no idea how long it’s been sitting there unless you arrive when they open. Christmas blend is the bomb, but I really, really miss morning Joe, named after Joe Scarborough. He probably did something that made him lose the endorsement, SBUX being the liberal company that it is, but I have yet to find the same blend with a different name. They also used to have what was called a “Tribute blend.” It was not the greatest coffee in the world….. you know where I’m going here. Although in a different turn, the best packaging would have been teenagers fighting to the death over a bag.

I realized yesterday that I wrote that entry on the first day of my period, which as all women know, is the worst day of the month to feel anything. Maybe that’s why I was ready to cry at the drop of a hat and sick to my stomach. At the same time, that day is when I feel the most vulnerable, and missing “A-dog” was more intense than normal. This morning, I took some ibuprofen and Sudafed, and things feel a lot more even keel. Grieving for Argo and Dana at the same time is just about the worst feeling on earth, and the best all at the same time. This morning’s memory on Facebook was wonderful:

Cutest conversation with Dana today:

Me: I take you, your crazy family, your crazy, your adorableness. I take it all.

Dana: Good, because you don’t get a discount on parts.

See, this is why I like the “memories” feature on Facebook, because they’re not all sad and depressing. Some of them are incredibly funny. My favorite, and I can’t wait for it to come up, is this one:

Me: I am so grumpy.

Dana: I know you are not grumpy with me, because I have been cute *all day.*

It’s memories like these that keep me going in the face of incredible grief, because occasionally, if I reach back far enough, the memories of how terrible divorce were fade into the background and I can just remember how much I loved her and how much I felt loved by her.

Dana is the first relationship I’d ever had in my life where we were both on equal footing. My “type” has generally been ball-breaking bitches, Type A personalities because I was just so, well, “B.” It was good right up until it wasn’t. Type A and type B work well in the short term, because the Type A helps the Type B get shit handled and the Type B reminds the Type A that it’s ok to calm down once in a while and stop and smell the roses. In the long term, it’s like dating a steam-roller.

However, as the trauma of my youth has begun to fade, I’ve realized that I am more Type A than I have ever given myself credit for…… and maybe, that’s where the breakdown in communication with Dana occurred. I wasn’t the same person, and had different reactions to everything. My counselors in the hospital warned me this would happen. That people who weren’t used to me acting differently would pull away because they didn’t recognize me anymore. I have a huge personality in a tiny body, I’ve just never used it.

Until now.

I love my work, I love my home, I get up excited for the day ahead. My moments of grief are abated when I am working, because it is the time in my life where I feel like I’m really on top of my game.

My room still looks like “dumped girl,” but I am trying to fix it. I bought a book (a real book, not a Kindle version so I could write in the margins) called The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, by Marie Kondo. Over three million copies have been sold, so I figured that if it worked for them, it might work for me.

The bottom line is that I need to get rid of a lot of my stuff. Like, a lot of it. Not everything has a place and I end up with stuff all over my room that I just don’t know what to do with, as if a teenage boy has moved in and taken over my life…. which reminds me of something someone said to me once (I would quote them, but I don’t remember who said it), that I was like a teenage boy…. and his mother.

Not far off, really.

I am hoping that this book will elevate me from feeling all right to feeling good. To really see the dragonflies in the sun instead of living in perpetual rain.

Amen.

Scales had to cancel on Thursday, so we ended up meeting for lunch after I got out of church yesterday. A lot of talking and listening was done. I’m a little farther on my journey than she is on hers, so I felt like I was able to give advice… but not until I said, “do you want my advice, or do you just want me to listen?” I have learned to ask that question many times over, because sometimes all people want is a place to be heard. Everything I said was hard, hard won, and it made me recede into the depths of myself. I came home emotionally drained, not from listening to her, but from going deep inside myself to tell her about the conclusions I’ve made in my recent past…. my flawed, fucked up past that is basically a manual on “What Not to Do.” The mask came down, and I spoke honestly… which I’m not used to doing after meeting someone exactly once before… and at the same time, she made me feel comfortable enough that I could, because she wasn’t Scales,™ either. We each just needed time to decompress, and it was much needed on both ends.

I have been and continue to be a mess on the inside, just a jumble of emotion that won’t go away until I unpack it all. It’s been five days since Argo and I have had any contact with each other, and another five days before that. I can’t remember the last time I went five days without e-mailing her a go get ’em, tiger e-mail… and it hurts, deeply, but I know I’m doing the right thing. It is as if the flood is passing and the rainbow has started to come out. Light in my eyes is returning, when I have been days without it. There have been times where I’ve felt my heart was literally walking outside my body where she was concerned, and now, not so much. I finally got sick and tired of being sick and tired… not physically, just emotionally. Heartsick to an enormous degree and trying to sleep it off… because that’s what I do when my body is trying to release a storm. I’ve been taking my sleeping medication very early, so that I am dead to the world before 9:00, and getting up at 6:00 so I have time to move about my day slowly before I have to be at the office. It’s helping me not to forget things because I have enough to make tea, eat breakfast, pack, take meds, etc. And actually, this morning I woke up at 5:15 and just read until my alarm went off.

Depression hurts. It just does. Not the bipolar kind, but the type you feel situationally when you’re just moving in the world sad. I didn’t realize how much the weight of Argo’s go-to emotion regarding me would always be dark and twisty affected me until I didn’t have to think about it all the time… because her assumptions are not my story, and they never will be.

As I have said before, I couldn’t apologize enough, forgive enough, or love enough to ease her pain, and now I see it. There is no compromise on anything, and now that the give and take has ended, so does the relationship. I received plenty of recognition for the things I did wrong, and very little over the things I did right. There were genuine moments, clearly, but the bottom line is that I can’t make things right, and it’s killing me to try when it’s never going to happen.

It’s just sad that it took a wrecking ball for me to recognize that fact, when there were subtle signs all along that I missed entirely because I either couldn’t or wouldn’t pay attention to them. I’m not sure which, because I don’t think I consciously ignored anything. I think I just didn’t realize that there was nothing I could do, because shoots of green seemed to take shape and I believe I took too much stock in them.

I didn’t think anything would go back to the way it was; neither one of us were prepared for that. But I did think that there was a possibility, a hope, that peace would win out and over time, the rift would be healed to the point that we could spend time laughing again.

I was wrong.

In the meantime, I just feel sick to my stomach and ready to cry at the drop of a hat, because where there was once great love and affection, there is now a black hole. I’m not angry, I’m not bitter, I’m not happy she’s gone, there’s just nothing. A great big emptiness that in the moment, nothing fills… or at least, that’s how I feel when I’m alone. Lunch with Scales is really the first time I’ve allowed myself to let go, to laugh at myself, because I know me. We’ve met.

It felt good to laugh. It felt good to have someone value my opinion. It felt great to hug her goodbye, because I can’t remember the last time I hugged someone. For the first time in a long time, I allowed myself to feel content…. maybe not over the top happy, but enough to let my soul relax and just be the me that I know I am, rather than the me that was pushed upon me, instead.

We’re getting together again on Thursday, and it’s nice to have something to look forward to.

I also bought tickets to DC United v. New England Revolution, because even though Raul Diaz Arce and Alexi Lalas aren’t playing, they’re the two teams I loved the most when I was in high school. I don’t know who I’m taking, but even if I don’t take anyone, I know I’m going to have a good time. I felt like I needed to get out more, and the tickets were cheap. I’ve been living like a hermit since I got here, and am only now beginning to branch out.

Shoots of green are beginning to take shape, even if they’re growing in a different direction.

Amen.

 

There are no words this morning. It’s cold, grey, and wet… just like the day we went to the courthouse in the first place. We were both wearing sweats, because we didn’t feel the need to dress up. It was, after all, just a document. We’d been best friends for three and a half years, with everyone else thinking we were having an affair and trying to hide it… but no.

In those three years and change, I simply desperately needed a friend. My heart had been put through a blender, and Dana was married. Not only that, part of those three years, we were separated by 1800 miles, Dana in Portland and me in Houston, with Dana narrating M*A*S*H* reruns to me over the telephone. When I moved back, things happened quickly, because time apart had made both of us realize that our friends were right, we belonged together… or maybe it was just me that needed convincing, because six weeks after Dana met me, she told me that she’d told her wife that she had a crush on me. I didn’t know what to do with that information, but it comes in handy now comforting me over the Argo situation, that I am not the only one who has ever been emotionally attracted to someone outside of a relationship and I won’t ever be, because it happens to the best of us.

Initially, I wanted to write the story of what happened that day, but the truth is, I don’t remember it. I wasn’t blogging then, so I didn’t write it down. It is lost except for this picture that speaks a thousand words simultaneously in light of what has happened since then. None of our friends came with us; this picture was taken by a reporter and appeared in The Portland Tribune as part of the story on Multnomah County giving out domestic partnership licenses. It appeared as my Facebook memory in the “Eight Years Ago Today” section. Our eighth anniversary would have been last Feb. 4th, but I must have posted the picture a lot later. Seeing these memories scroll by is a good thing, I think, but I also feel it is a bit like getting blanched early in the morning. But let us not forget that blanching stops the cooking process. Little by little, the fire in me dissipates as I hit the ice water.

My friend Wendy’s words hit me like a brick.

You don’t have to love it. You just have to live it.

I thought of this title while thinking of “Scales,” my new friend’s nickname until I can get to know her enough to pick out something more entirely appropriate… Counselor was already taken, and should remain that way, because even though I doubt she’ll show up again, that doesn’t mean that I don’t love her and I’m going to take her nickname away, because I’ve called her that since the moment I met her… and even though she couldn’t represent me because of family ties, I still gave her a dollar just in case. 🙂

Scales reminds me of taking a paralegal course at University of Houston, when one of my professors got the scales of justice tattooed on her ankle when she graduated from law school. She said that a woman on a plane said, “I love your tattoo. I’m a Libra, too.” Then she facepalmed in front of the class. I never did anything with my paralegal certificate, because every law firm to which I applied needed at least a year of experience… and how does one acquire said experience if no one is willing to take a chance on you? And, how much could I have used of said program because I moved to Oregon, and am only familiar with Texas civil and criminal codes? I did decide, however, that if I wanted to be a paralegal or an attorney (having taken Con Law in undergrad and gotten bitten by the bug hardcore), that I would definitely want to be a criminal defender…. because there is far less paperwork. That’s it. I could give a shit whether people were guilty or innocent, just don’t make me fill out things. I could also go my entire life without Bates labeling eight boxes of discovery. However, time is on my side in that respect. Now, there’s software that when you scan a document, it will Bates label for you. When I was in the course, you had to put the label on the document and recopy it….. and we’re talking discovery that could easily lead to 10,000 pages, especially in a civil suit.

One of my bosses at University of Houston (then-head of the Information Systems department) also had a JD and had passed the bar, so he used to joke, want to see my $75,000 card?

However, my legal background has served me once, although I never had to use it. Because there were no assets in my divorce from Dana, and we both just wanted a quick and dirty separation, I offered to go pro se if we needed to go to court. Neither of us wanted to hurt each other, we just wanted it to be over…. and even if there had been assets, I would have been of the mind to let her have whatever she wanted, because all I wanted was out. She could not see the path I was walking, that the Argo situation would resolve itself one way or another, and that life would go on. She would have been horrified at the way I chose to handle the Argo situation, but I can only plead mental illness, and a lot of it. However, even though I was never turned into a newt, I got better. Mental health, like addiction, is not something that has a cure-all. It’s a daily struggle with ups and downs, particularly when I feel like I’ve been treated unjustly or unfairly. My justice-oriented nature, INFJ and perpetual armchair law student, sometimes makes my blood boil, and because I was emotionally abused as a child, pieces of my emotions that are supposed to help me deal are missing. For instance, one of the things that made me the most angry with Dana was her sense of appeasement. Telling everyone I was crazy and that we’d never get back together while kissing me on the sidewalk and wanting to spend time with me. I felt even more nuts than I already was. As far as I’m concerned, with the policy of appeasement, the list goes 1) Dana 2) Neville Chamberlain. Knowing how bad I needed out came over time, because at first, I thought there was too much history between us to ever stop working on our relationship, as painful as it might have been for both of us. But within months, I realized that getting out of that relationship provided me with a sense of self-worth I’d not had EVER. In terms of divorce, the rules are simple.

All that needs to be done is file the paperwork with Multnomah county, and as long as I don’t contest it, the matter is resolved. I thought we might have to go to court only because of the Supreme Court decision, that our domestic partnership might have automatically become a marriage and thus, need of a day in court. In some ways, I am sorry I won’t get one, if only to have a formal acknowledgement. In fact, I would have invited my close friends and family as a sort of makeshift ceremony, because it is just as important for your community to recognize dissolution as it is to recognize that the marriage took place. The UCC even has a liturgy for it, and if I’d thought about it before I left Houston, I might have been interested in having it. I don’t know that Dana would have gone for it, but it wouldn’t have hurt to ask. All she could have said was no, and she never could have said yes if I didn’t ask.

I’ve been asked before why I write so much about Argo in comparison to how much I write about Dana, and the answer is so very simple. Argo was a very short relationship/catalyst to allow me to realize my worth. Dana will take years to untangle. Just years. The chord that runs between us is enormous, and I use the word both in the geometrical sense and the C minor I hope will one day resolve…. although I think the Piccardy third is on me.

And it is as I go through this journey into wholeness, I am looking forward to having dinner with Scales tonight. We’re going to a local Ethiopian joint, because Silver Spring has AMAZING African food. The African population here is quite large, and they cook…. blessedly. I should say up front that I already know I’m not girlfriend material, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to broaden my horizons, especially with someone who is so damn smart. I mean, making it through law school in the first place is taxing enough. But she’s moved past that, onto bigger and better things, and those are equally exciting. We are a talk for five hours kind of pair… and that’s putting it mildly.

And as for Arpeggios, that’s me.

Scales and Arpeggios. Has a ring to it. Maybe one day I’ll buy her a friendship bracelet, you know, after she French braids my hair and we do face masks together.

Amen.

 

 

I met a woman on Tinder that piqued my interest as a friend, because as I told her, I don’t want to date anyone I don’t know… and the fact that I really, really don’t want to start dating, at least not yet. It’s too much for me. I’d just like to meet more local people to go and do things with, and to keep my mind humming about something other than the past. I think we’re off to a good start.

Like most people in DC, I can’t tell you who she is or what she does, because her job isn’t shadow government B-16 sensitive (Scandal, holla!) but sensitive enough that if anything on this blog were to be traced back to her, it might cause problems. However, I can tell you that she is a recovering lawyer and Episcopalian, Southern, although different Southern than me. North and South Carolina as opposed to the great state of Texas (its full title), and has about as much accent as I do (take that for what you will).

When I swiped right, I was blown away that I’d already been matched. We had some great conversations over e-mail, but as you might imagine, I am quite gunshy about continuing that whole thing, so we met up pretty quickly. I told her that my writing was barely a quarter of me, and to only know my writing personality is not advisable… but I wasn’t lecturing her, just hard-won experience on my part…. obvi.

She is equal parts power suit and blue jeans, hilarious and lovely. Plus, there was this funny exchange:

Leslie: I gather that you are kick my ass smart. I love brains like that.

Her: Best. Opening Line. Ever.

Eventually she’ll get a nickname on this blog, but it takes me a while to come up with these things, because I want the nickname to be a reflection of who that person is. Argo, to me, was a ship of enormous proportions, carrying me through uncharted water. I had a thousand other nicknames for her, but Argo was the one that stuck on this blog, although my favorite is probably A-dog O’Bling Bling, because it is funny to me to imagine just how much she would hate it.

She never said anything about it, so maybe I’m wrong, but in my head it was “gods…. are you mental?” (shut it)

I’m in a space where I am not underestimating friendship. I want to take the chance of being close, trying not to be jaded and bitter on the idea because I’ve come such a long way… or trying to, anyway. Trying to be honest with myself and others, trying to be a better writer than I was the day before (to varying results), and the surprise of hearing that it was my blog was one of the things that made her want to meet me, as opposed to running away.

That was my perfect scenario, anyway. I figure why bother with people who can’t wrap their brains around the enormity of writing every day, and writing seriously about my own mistakes. I don’t think I would be willing to take the heartbreak of introducing someone to my blog long after I met them, because I cannot see that going well, ever. Something akin to, “why didn’t you tell me all this?” Ummmm, because I thought you’d think I was a freak show…. not that it’s a dealbreaker if you think that.

People can think I’m as cracked as they want as long as they’re willing to accept that there are also enormously amazing things about me, too. I remember the first day of ninth grade at HSPVA, when my Algebra teacher, Dr. Papakonstantinou, got up in front of the class and said, “I teach at Rice half a day in upper mathematics and here half a day with Algebra and Calculus. I also can’t ride a bike or drive a stick shift car.” And that, to me, is me in a nutshell. I’ll tell you all my flaws as long as you recognize that there are also things I do incredibly well.

Write me off as just the crazy part and you are seriously missing out, because some of the fun IS the crazy. It’s just all part of the creative process, and how I come up with big ideas instead of small ones. The words in the English language that drive me the most crazy are “we’ve always done it this way.”

We’ve always done it this way is a death knell, and following rules gets you nowhere in my line of work (the writing part, not the SQL part). But rules are important in their own right, and the one I want to keep most of all is that I will not let my past impede my future. I know who I am, and who I am says to let go of all the things I can’t control, when I tried so hard to be stuck in them and failed.

What has ruminating on the past ever got me except problems I couldn’t solve with people who didn’t care?

There won’t ever be a part of me that wishes things had been different, but that was then. This is now.

What am I going to do with it?

Matthew, Mark, and Luke are what’s known in Greek as the “synoptik” gospels, which means “seen together.” There are so many similarities that we know they were taken from the same source document, simply called “Q.” My friend Knives, who has been one of my Atheist friends for years, posted a picture on my Facebook page that had me laughing for days (even though Mark was left out… pity). I had to admit to him that the only reason I got the joke is that I learned he played “Discord” in the new My Little Pony series, so I watched the documentary Bronies on Netflix… and that’s how I learned who he was on Star Trek. I have never been a true Trekker… I’ve only seen a couple of episodes, most notably The Trouble with Tribbles. Loved it, but have never really gotten on the bandwagon of watching every series, even though more than one person has said, “I envy you getting to experience it all for the first time.” One of the pastors I admire, Chuck Currie, manages to work Star Trek into his sermons a lot, for the simple reason that most episodes are morality plays. The first episode I ever watched was Kirk inviting one of his best friends onto The Enterprise, only to learn that he had become evil and the pain it caused him. He was in denial most of the episode, because he had to see to believe.

You would think that our gospel reading today would also be found in the synoptik gospels, because it is an important one… yet nowhere in Matthew, Mark, or Luke are these words to be found… Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe. It is as if Thomas was in denial the entire episode, because he had to see it.

I believe that this is one of the pericopes that clearly separate the synoptik from the gnostic. The synoptiks are mostly facts, but in John, it’s all about feelings. Knowing God comes from deep within, and not the need to prove that Jesus was the Messiah through evangelizing his Davidic heritage. This is not to say that feelings are absent, just not as mystic.

Jesus’ reaction is pragmatic… sure, touch me. I don’t care. If that’s what you need, I’m all for it. But he also calls Thomas out on the carpet by blessing those who believe without seeing… Perhaps a little passive-aggressive, but very effective. In the Gospel of John, it is not about seeing with your eyes. It is about seeing with your heart.

Thomas, however, was not really trying to be a jackass… or at least, that is what I choose to believe. We all have these moments in our lives when something seems impossible, and we are not jaded… just trying to wrap our brains around something that can’t be put together without more information. We wander around, thinking and overthinking, ruminating (or as Aaron and I call it, “mooing”) on how the puzzle pieces can possibly fit together.

Sometimes we are overwhelmed by the sheer hugeness or complexity of something. We can’t get our arms around it. We can’t get it figured out. We are unable to organize it or to bring it under control. We are overwhelmed in a way that makes us feel small, weak and inadequate (congregationalresources.org).

Think of the days in between the crucifixion and the resurrection… Good Friday and Holy Saturday. In Proverbs 29:18 KJV, it says, where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keepeth the law, happy is he. The glue that held the disciples together was gone. The rules and conventions they lived by fell by the wayside in the midst of overwhelming grief. Feeling small, weak, and inadequate must have hit the nail on the head (maybe THAT was a poor choice of words). For a long time, I have called Acts “The Gospel of Holy Shit, What Do We Do Now?” The disciples were lost, alone, afraid… hiding from the Jews that they knew were after them, next, because it was thought they were just as guilty of sedition as Jesus.

But that is not the end of their movie. In the time between the resurrection and the ascension, I can only think of Obi Wan Kenobi… if you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine. Søren Kierkegaard had the same thought in the 19th century: the tyrant dies and his rule is over, the martyr dies and his rule begins. If you’ve ever been to church camp, I assure you that you know these words… it only takes a spark to get a fire going.

Jesus’ appearance to the disciples can only be described as imbuing them with holy authority once again, to let them know that they were capable preachers despite the fact that he would now love and direct them from the cloud rather than on the ground. I can imagine their pain and suffering as they knew they would only have him for a few more days, and regretting every moment they did not spend with Jesus while they had him on earth. He warned them that he was not long for this world, but I’m not sure the disciples could wrap their brains around that, either. There was no way  that they could have absorbed the horrible reality that their leader, mediator, paraclete and advocate was going to be murdered as a common criminal. Jesus’ appearance was a spark of motivation.

For me, it’s like being family to a CIA agent. I can’t imagine what would have happened emotionally to the people that my great uncle Foster “read in,” because the concept of losing him was a constant reality, too big to wrap their brains around and especially the part where he supposedly died in a helicopter crash and “rose again” as a different identity that our family never knew. For all practical intents and purposes, he was dead to us… until years later, when we ACTUALLY got his personal effects… I am not close to that side of my family, so when I say “we,” I don’t actually mean “me,” but it is a family story that sticks with me every day. I am not allowed to  go into the CIA building at Langley, because no one is…. and yet, I choose to believe that a star on the wall is his… one of those unnamed heroes that died in the line of duty… twice.

The difference between Jesus and my great uncle Foster is that he was allowed to tell no one of his resurrection. He was not allowed to appear to his family and friends to assure them that he was still alive, well, and doing what he loved… but to me, it is my real-life connection to what the disciples must have gone through, and I can connect to that experience in a visceral way. Their leader was gone. They were sorely afraid of their own deaths, because if the Sanhedrin had convicted Jesus and handed him over to the Romans, what was to stop them from doing it to everyone else? Judas was the only one to take the easy way out. He tried to get in good with the Romans for betraying Jesus, and then killed himself… partly, I think, because of his guilt, and partly because he didn’t think for a moment that “getting in good with the Romans” was going to work and he’d rather take his own life than let them get him. Of course, that is my own opinion, but venturing into fiction, seems entirely plausible. The Jews who did not believe that Jesus was the Messiah were out for blood to stop the coup they felt was happening and they were doing everything they could to quash the rebellion.

Jesus’ appearance to the disciples was a way to tell them to keep going in the face of their fears, because he knew how much it would cost them, and yet, how utterly important it was. The Sanhedrin was power over. Jesus’ was power with… a rising up by people who felt powerless and wanted to reclaim it. Needless to say, it worked, because thousands of years later, Jesus’ words are used for liberation all over the world… to lift people up and make them feel more worthy than the hell that’s being handed down. Now, Jesus is not a person, but a movement, and we are invited. Jesus made it clear that although he was the cornerstone, he was not the whole church.

WE ARE.

Jesus sparked the disciples into action, and many preachers that followed after them, down to the very people we sit next to in the pews. Hear the words of Acts 5:27:32:

When the temple police had brought the apostles, they had them stand before the council. The high priest questioned them, saying, “We gave you strict orders not to teach in this name, yet here you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and you are determined to bring this man’s blood on us.” But Peter and the apostles answered, “We must obey God rather than any human authority. The God of our ancestors raised up Jesus, whom you had killed by hanging him on a tree. God exalted him at his right hand as Leader and Savior that he might give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins. And we are witnesses to these things, and so is the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey him.

Christian is not an adjective. Christian is a verb. Just as “adulting” has become a thing, so should “Christianing.” We talk all the time about how adulting is hard. Why are we not saying the same thing about “Christianing?” Jesus’ message has been mangled in some denominations as wealth through the power of belief, when most of the time, belief is fraught with uncertainty. And yet, the Apostles refused to be beaten down, no matter how much it cost them, mostly the uncertainty that they would live.

To combat our own uncertainty, it is our job to feed hungry children, lift up the oppressed, believe #blacklivesmatter, support the entire queer community as they still battle discrimination every damn day despite the Supreme Court ruling that demands equality, and most of all, welcome the immigrants and the refugees. Christ was all about welcoming the stranger, the parable of The Good Samaritan written all over everywhere. It’s not our job to judge why people have chosen to come to this country illegally. It is our job to give them safe sanctuary…

bottles

blankets

water

food

clothes

Obviously, they’ve come here to escape something, and it shouldn’t matter what that something is to us. Jesus’ resurrection is in every time we look into a stranger’s eyes, feel that fear of not knowing them, and TAKING CARE OF THEM ANYWAY.

It is not our job  to kick people while they’re already down, because if we are meant to be Christ in the world, it is our job to lift them up. Christianing is hard because you have to put away your judgmental crap, and I hear it all the time from conservative “Christians” who wouldn’t know the face of Christ if it was staring right at them. Mostly because he wouldn’t show up as the almighty Christian superhero they’ve invented. He would show up as a Syrian refugee, a woman that paid a coyote thousands of pesos to be able to lift herself out of poverty in a new life, a farm worker paid pennies on the dollar, a thirteen year old accused of a crime and stuck in the adult population.

You don’t have to be Thomas in this situation, because there is nothing to make you doubt that your ability to be Christ in the world will be found by putting your finger in Jesus’ wounds to believe that he has risen indeed. All you have to do is open your eyes… because now, the resurrection is not Jesus. The resurrection is our ability to lift up ourselves when we are stuck in the Good Fridays and Holy Saturdays of our lives… the madness and grief that occurs when we look around at our world and realize that the laws we’ve created do not make us happy, but continue to oppress.

We need a paradigm shift as liberal Christians, that when the vision fails, the people do not perish but create their own. We are able to bring heaven and erase hell on earth, but it is not a requirement. You can be happy to live in your bubble and pretend that everything is ok, because Christianing is hard, hard work, and it costs us something to be the extravagant welcome that Jesus gave to us.

When we eat this bread and drink this cup, it is home in a single sip… a way back to the preacher that strengthens us, the martyr whose rule has begun because an idea beget a sea change… the one that says “when you show up at the table, you get food, anyway.” You get sustenance for the journey ahead, the hard road that you will walk if you make Christian the unbelievable verb it needs to be. But again, it’s not a requirement.

We are invited.

RSVP.

 

When I finally figured out the root cause of my emotional abuse, I wrote a blog entry entitled What it Looked Like When I Stood Up. At issue was that I had been through hell and back trying to release my shame at everything that had happened as a teenager, and through it all, Diane had been silent. She wouldn’t talk to me, she flaked on meeting with a mediator, and when I told her that my nephew was in heart surgery and that Dana and I were too emotionally crispy to function, it would hurt beyond belief if she let me down again. So she sent me a note while my nephew was in surgery that our relationship was over. I thought it was the shittiest thing she ever could have done, and at the same time, poetic and beautiful because Philip (known to this web site as Wi-Phi because his full name is William Philip) lived and our relationship died at the same moment. I am of two minds on the issue. The first is that there’s no way she could have known he was on the table at that very moment. The second is that she is calculating enough to know when to launch an RPG that will hurt like a motherfucker for years afterward, and this was no different.

We hadn’t talked in months, and she sent me a picture of herself with her Portland Timbers scarf and a program signed by all of the players I loved… a note that said withuot my influence, she wouldn’t be there. I’m glad that I gave her a love of soccer, as Meag (high school girlfriend for those just joining us) gave to me, but this was beyond the pale. Just dropping a sweet note as if we were buds. Dana was incredibly supportive of my anger, confusion, and sadness. Argo made me courageous, because her words were, “gross. She doesn’t deserve to be buds with you… not your heart, not your soul, not your guts, anything. One day she will have no more power over you.” I felt ten feet tall, because I knew she was right.

That day came a few months later, because I just stopped caring. Kristie’s advice got through to me, because I couldn’t release myself from her grip, and then one day it just clicked. I could direct my own emotions.

I feel the same way about Argo, that one day, it will just click and I can stop caring so much. The difference is that I feel Argo is worthy of that friendship, because she did something for me last night that changed everything.

She stood up.

She owned it. She fucking owned it. It’s not all my fault. I am not responsible for anything and everything that went wrong anymore. The weight lifted off my shoulders is enormous, and I loved that moment with such white-hot pure love, as if it was radiating within me.

It makes letting go so much easier, because when she stood up, it was everything. It was ALL THE FEELS.

It was another part of being able to let go in peace. I gave up the thought that I didn’t want to be around her for a million dollars. I just prayed. I prayed for her happiness, her success, her drive and passion and all the things that make her, well, her. We clearly need to stop interacting, and I clearly need to stop caring so much, because my feelings are clearly not reciprocated. It’s complicated and messy as I try to pick up the pieces, but not impossible…. just sad beyond belief.

When we wrote to each other, she used these long ellipses that made her sound like Shatner, and it gave me one of my greatest inspirations… I even started a hashtag for it on Twitter and Facebook… that not only should you pray on the words, but the spaces in between…………………………………….#prayingonthespaces

And that’s what I’m doing right now. Taking her words, her ownership, and praying not only on the words, but the spaces in between. I feel that I can do so much more good for myself by holding her in my heart as a blessing, and just forget about the times we were at each other’s throats. There were quite a few moments when I just wanted to throw in the towel, I was so ashamed of my past and I just wanted life to be over, and she saw how depressed I was getting and literally kissed my soul…. saving my life over and over. If I focus on that fact, I will never stop praying for her, because the light she shone on me made me a better person. In fact, I will never be the same.

There’s so much I cannot say about this relationship because it would break confidentiality, but those are the moments I, in the words of Luke, ponder in my heart. I can either let go in anger, or I can smile that this relationship ever happened.

I wanted us to grow into wholeness, but you can’t help a little old lady cross the street if she doesn’t want to go. And this is where our paths diverge, and maybe always will. I need to grow more as a person regardless of whether her footsteps are beside me or not… and I think the Footsteps poem about Jesus is terribly cliche, but it has relevance here… that there were moments in time where there were only one set of footsteps on my path, because she carried me, my metaphysical Christ in the world even though she’s an atheist.

But now we will walk our own paths, because I saw what it looked like when she stood up, and it was a beautiful moment of growth and strength and everything I wish for her in the future. I will keep that moment for a lifetime, adding it to the tapestry in my mind.

Because she’s never met me outside of my writer personality, there’s so much that I wish could have happened, but I can stop regretting that I ever met her. I will always smile at the memory of her, and if that is all that is to be in our movie, it was a great one.

My Argo, my great ship who carried me through literally the worst time in my life. It’s not something you forget, and it’s not something you minimize, which I was trying to do in order to let go. I thought that it would be easier to dislike her to make it easier to separate, but as it tuns out, what I need to do is send more love, more peace, more forgiveness, more humility, more grace into the world. I don’t have to e-mail it. She’ll just know.

Amen.

We’re going to right the world and live. I mean live our lives the way lives were meant to be lived. With the throat and wrists. With rage and desire, and joy and grief, and love till it hurts, maybe. But goddamn, girl. Live.

Sandra Cisneros

It’s been such a long day that I’m just now taking a lunch writing break. I have a wallpaper changer that puts quotes on my desktop, and this one hit me where I live. I remember reading The House on Mango Street when I was at HSPVA, and it was my first introduction to chicana literature.

Cisneros has never been married or started a family, saying that her writing is her child and she’d rather live alone. I have never identified more with that sentiment, because trying to write about my own life and the things that happen in it cause me to retreat into a dark room and just think it out. Right now my mind is consumed with Dana, Argo, and letting go of the white-hot pure love I have for both of them, because I thought they were the people with whom I’d LIVE! like this. Rage and desire, joy and grief spilling out as Dana and I made our way through a marriage that weathered hurricanes and adventures with Argo that made her realize that I am indeed a badass and could be an even better one with her… or so I thought. At this point, letting go of all the toxicity in both relationships is what is allowing me to LIVE!

I want that peace and solitude to create passage. It is not lost on me that I have said many times that I slept deeply in the belly of the Argo, knowing my passage was safe. Now I’ve left the Argo and jumped in the water headfirst, and I’m not very good at diving so it was more like a belly flop that continues to hurt my stomach. Things were said and done that were unforgivable on both ends, so why not find my own path? I may not be a great diver, but I was small and weak as a child, so I’ve had swimming lessons since I was six months old. Preemies are actually really good swimmers because they haven’t forgotten the dolphin reflex they used in the womb. It strengthened my legs, and I am sure that it is one of the reasons I can walk….. badly, but still. I have the tools to walk my own path, bring myself out of the deep, and have the courage to go boldly into the valleys of my own vulnerabilities.

I have a quill tattoo on my left forearm that drips blood, based on a quote that has been attributed to many people… writing is easy. You just sit down at the typewriter and slice open a vein. [Editor’s Note: Dana used to be married to a woman named Carol. She took one look at my writer’s tattoo and said, “aren’t you right-handed?” I laughed so hard I nearly fell off the couch because it was such a great #dumbassattack] My tattoo reminds me every day of my tensile strength. All of the people I interact with bend me to a certain degree, but at the end of the day, I feel unbreakable because of this space. I can think through everything, including all of the mistakes I’ve made, and over time, it looks better. It feels better. I have more compassion for myself when I think, wow… did I really say that? Blog entries are slices of time that say how I’m feeling in the moment… how I am LIVING! As Emily Saliers wrote in the song Ghost, I dance the edge of sanity I’ve never been this close. And maybe that’s all living really is. Being willing to dance the edge of sanity to get real emotions, real experiences, life-altering mountain-tops you never thought you’d reach because you can see the valleys and look how far you’ve traveled up. Having this blog is a straight-out miracle. I’ve gotten a lot of flak over it, but usually it’s from the same people who adored my writing until they could see themselves in it, as if I couldn’t write as truthfully and beautifully about them as I could about the people they read about when they stepped in.

For instance, Argo and I were horrible to each other, but I will always write about how much of a miracle it was when she found me. We probably won’t speak, but that doesn’t erase the past and how much I needed her at that time in my life. She provided me with reasons to think I was bigger than I was- capable of doing more things with my time than I was currently capable of. That I could think bigger. She was right- I fell in love with absolute honesty and trust, and I ran away from it like a house on fire. I torched her so many times that it’s no wonder she has such shitty opinions of me now and I have to live with that idea. But to open up to me is fraught, and I would say the same of her. That’s how we were so capable of learning each other’s hot buttons in the first place. Our trust issues were immense, and instead of taking care of each other, we turned on each other and it was just World War Three, with my wife caught in the middle of trying to keep the peace and trying to get me the fuck away from her all in the same breath… because once that trust was broken, it was broken for good.

And yet, a line from Wicked comes to my mind when I think of Argo- I don’t know that I’ve been changed for the better, but I’ve been changed for good. I will never be the same after this. Not in a million years. I once told her that her tapestry was in the great museum of my head, that even though our relationship was in black and white, I could see her in color.

So that’s what I hold onto in order to let go of anger. It wasn’t all bad. It was one of those experiences that I needed to have, my soulmate in the Elizabeth Gilbert definition that there are these people that shake you out of your current reality and aren’t designed to be permanent.

There will never be a time when I can say I don’t love her, because you can love people and dislike them all at the same time. We do it with family members and friends all the time. Like, I love you but i think you’re being a total jackass right now. It’s definitely been said to me many times. Cognitive dissonance is one of my specialties. it seems I can hold eight opinions at once on any given topic.

For instance, I would give a limb to see Dana again, bury my face in her neck and cry and apologize and want to kick her ass into next week simultaneously. And that’s just how relationships are, when you LIVE! When you FEEL ALL THE THINGS! It’s horrible and messy and completely divine. We are perfect in our imperfection if we can let go enough to let others see them and respond.

It gives me something to help other people, and I truly take it in that there are people that feel good about helping me… this ecosystem that spans the country because I’ve lived in Portland, Houston, and DC…. Internationally if you count my friend Randy, who checks in from Qatar and I get a little thrill every time Qatar appears in my stats.

I nicknamed this blog “international television” for a reason. People read me all over the world, and in some small way, I hope that by laying out my brokenness and grief I am helping them not to feel so alone. Sometimes you break open to let light in…. when you really, really LIVE!

I found a Dana story that needs to be told. Here it is:

I downloaded Amazon Prime Music for my phone, and put it on the Top Country station. I can’t say I’m really a country fan, per se, but I enjoy the fact that most songs are slow enough I can actually understand the lyrics. So I’m listening along, and I hear this song, and it just breaks my shit up. I realize that losing Argo is not about “breaking up,” because she’s just my friend, but it still hurts like a bitch. So it was great to laugh in the middle of pain. By the time the song was over, I was all like, “behold the field where I sow my fucks, and see that it is barren.”

I’m going to be ok. Everything is going to be ok.