I am so tired of the way my face is breaking out. It does this in Houston, too, but thankfully the hot weather in MD doesn’t last as long. Plus, I have all these cute hoodies and sweaters and a blazer that I can’t wear yet, which make me look so much smarter than I actually am. 🙂 This heat, tho. It’s killing me because I can’t tell if it’s all acne or if some of it is heat rash because I walk so much. I am the classic Beezus “Pizza Face” Cleary right now, so I am doing my best to stay indoors for the time being. That way, I *can* wear all my cute hoodies and sweaters because Samantha keeps the A/C somewhere between lowboy and walk-in.

Speaking of Samantha, she and Dom left for Jamaica yesterday, and I miss her already. Last week I was feeling particularly down and she said, “Leslie, you are one of the nicest people I know.” It was a propos of nothing, which almost made me tear up in the parking lot at Target. It’s been a while since someone said something like that to me, and I needed to hear it as much as I needed air. This craziness with Dana and Argo made me forget who I was. I really am nice. I really am fun. I really am the person I thought I was, but I have made some mistakes that made me forget it. I think slowing down has helped. Because I don’t have a set schedule, I am not one of those people that gets rattled by much. I have time to help when I see people in need. I have time to stop veterans on the street and simply say, “thank you for your service.” I have time to be the person that I want to be, instead of the characterizations that have been made for me.

It is not as if I didn’t do anything to deserve them; I just didn’t know how to overcome them, either. I realized that I couldn’t fix what had been broken with either Argo or Dana, and it destroyed me into thinking I was a bad person that didn’t deserve anything because I couldn’t see how to get there from here. Argo said long ago that she couldn’t believe she’d allowed me to know some of her deepest secrets. It gutted me like a fish, partly because I haven’t told any of hers, and partly because she’s told all of mine, as if the line of communication only went one way. I didn’t realize that I was up for discussion, and when I found out, I was livid, especially because I believed she’d gone to the one person who couldn’t trust me as far as she could throw me, anyway, so how could it have ever been a case of “maybe you’re looking at this the wrong way.” I was rebelling hardcore against her secrets because they were separating me from Dana at a high rate of speed. I firebombed the relationship on purpose, and now that I am single, I wish like hell I could take it all back. Every single mean thing I said, every time I sent her unwanted advances because it was the one thing that I knew would push her away the easiest. If I had been in my right mind, I would have ended the relationship with Dana sooner so that Argo and I could have had that bubble unto ourselves without it being this toxic triangle of enormous proportions. It wasn’t choosing Argo over Dana- I broke up with Dana the moment we got to Houston because I felt like I couldn’t trust her. I’d put up with her “accidentally” forgetting I’d told her not to tell people things long enough. I also made a mistake in telling someone Argo’s real name. It never should have happened, and I own that sin wholeheartedly. No one should have known, but it was before I knew the direction our relationship was going to take and honestly, I’d forgotten until it blew up in my face. Otherwise, I would have changed her pseudonym yet again. Someone suggested “Cheerios” since she’s a mom. I liked that. ‘Sup Cheerios had a ring to it…. a synecdoche like calling a car “wheels.”

I also didn’t like that she loved reading my blog when it was about someone else, and not so much when it was about her. Did she think that she was supposed to disconnect from the fact that I was a writer? That I could be trusted to write around our privacy? I told her in no uncertain terms that I would take the entire site down if it made her uncomfortable, and she didn’t even recognize that I’d made that sacrifice in the first place. To even whisper it was more than I’d done for anyone, ever. She means more to me than my silly blog ever will, and before you say that I’d be giving up a lifeline, no. I wouldn’t. I’d be gaining the world of anonymity. I would have found a way to write using my plenty of pseudonyms in a galaxy far far away. But this iteration could burn and I wouldn’t even watch it go for one more letter.

Samantha is right. I am a different person now. Dana and I used to end our evenings with cocktails. There’s nothing wrong with that, per se, but I didn’t realize how much it was affecting my medication and its efficacy. The last cocktail I had was at the Meetup, and I think I had a beer when my mom was here. That is quite a bit different than cocktails every single night. What drove that home was having my Dana-normal amount when my dad was here and sleeping all the way home in the car. I realized I had become quite the cheap date, and I’ve stuck to it. My tolerance has gone back to zero, and I just can’t hang.

I have developed an unnatural addiction to Haribo Happy Cola instead. Seriously, if I could mainline them, I would. Not every store has them, so I have been known to wander the streets of DC, stopping into every drug store and grocery store along the way. When in a pinch, 7-Eleven sells a knockoff that’s pretty tasty, but it’s not the same. They are, however, more tolerable than no gummy cola bottles at all. Last time Samantha had to make a cigarette run, I went with her so I could get some gummy cola bottles. That particular 7-Eleven didn’t carry them, and I was furious until I went to pick out a soda and they had both regular and diet Cheerwine in 20 oz bottles in the cold case. I only bought one, and then I went to a couple of different 7-Elevens and they didn’t have it.

Why God. WHY? Why didn’t I realize that I should have bought more?!

It takes so little to make me happy these days. I should stop focusing on my lack of Happy Cola and Cheerwine and start focusing on the tea that I bought. I wish I could remember the name of the store, but it’s in Rockville down the street from Noodles & Company. They carry more flavors of Republic of Tea than Whole Foods, so I bought a hi-caf breakfast black. I thought to myself, “I have to go to Whole Foods, anyway. I should just wait.” I bought it anyway because I knew I would kick myself if I got to Whole Foods and they didn’t have it. I did go to Whole Foods. They did not. I smiled with being right.

I am also waiting somewhat impatiently for Girl Scout cookies, because as a tea fan, there is nothing better than a box of Trefoils. I should get some sticks of Walker’s to hold me over. In Portland, we had a Scottish shop that had lots of imported food, and one of the things I found was Walker’s with butterscotch chips. I don’t think I’ve had a better cookie in my life, especially after dipping it into a particularly strong cuppa of PG Tips. Tea is just another reason I’m waiting for it to get cold again. It’s kind of weird to be sitting out on the porch in 90 degree weather with hot tea and biscuits, but I do it anyway. You can fix most things with a cup of tea.

Even a broken heart.

See, the sad thing about a guy like you is, in 50 years you’re gonna start doin’ some thinkin’ on your own and you’re going to come up with the fact that there are two certainties in life: one, don’t do that, and two, you dropped 150 grand on a fuckin’ education you could have got for a dollar fifty in late charges at the public library!

-Will Hunting, Good Will Hunting

I’ve got some eggs in my basket on leads for a job. They all pay well, they all come with benefits, and I’m sitting here waiting to see what’s going to happen. In the meantime, I’m taking Will up on his advice. I loaded up my Kindle with almost 1900 books, and I’m working my way through them. So far, I’ve loved every one. Right now I’m struggling with James Joyce, but as the book goes on, I’m falling in love with Stephen Dedalus. So much so that I may need to read Ulysses next, because when I went to Stephen’s Wikipedia page, I learned that he’s also an important character in that book as well. Stephen is interesting to me because he struggles with his faith and being human at the same time. He doesn’t want to sin, and beats himself up regularly for doing so. It’s not my theology, but it’s interesting watching him evolve into his own. I can’t decide whether I want to break my rule, though. My rule is that I read a different author with each book that I start so that I don’t pick up their style. I want my voice to be unique, and I can’t decide whether I’ve been writing long enough that it won’t happen. I went through quite a Dooce phase, but I didn’t steal anything. I just started to imitate her style in a way that it showed in a transparent kind of way. Next was my love of Ernie Hsuing of little. yellow. different. Those were the people I emulated the most when I first started blogging at Clever Title Goes Here. It’s still around on the Wayback Machine, but I let it go when the lease ran out and I was too scared to continue writing. That’s because I have to have an inordinate amount of bravery to keep writing, as Dooce has said over and over. It’s hard when your friends don’t like you because they can see themselves in your mirror. But that doesn’t mean you should shut down. It means that you have to know within yourself that you are not trying to slam anyone, but to tell your own story. Sometimes people do negative things, and of course, they don’t want to read about them. But what I have to get across is that even when people do negative things, I am not shining the light on them. I am shining the light on my reactions to them, whether positive or negative.

I have written extensively about the ways I manipulate people because it is what was modeled for me as a child and it is something I need to work on with a therapist so I can stop it cold. I do not want to be underhanded. I want to be as pure as snow, the way Argo lives her life and tried to model for me, but because so much damage had already been done to me, I could not hear her over the sound of my own rebellious voice. I kicked her ass into next week…. and for it, I got the exact opposite of what I wanted and needed, which was a friend to kick my ass into next week so that I could stop being such a jerk. I pushed her away because I knew it would work, because in some sense, I thought it would bring Dana and I back into equilibrium.

I chose……………………………. poorly.

Dana and I had developed patterns over time that were going to destroy us, anyway. I will not tell her story, because it is not mine to tell. But what I will say is that when she said I would never amount to anything, I felt she was pushing her own lack of self-worth onto me… that she was telling me what she felt about herself. I could be Hector Projectering onto her, but I never got the sense that she was doing so much better than me that she had the right to hand down that judgement.

I feel that the difference between us is that my friendship with Argo proved to me that something was desperately wrong with me and I needed to fix it. She was right, and I listened. I will remember forever when she said, “why do you think it’s everyone else’s job to fix you?” It provided me the much-needed ass kicking to get myself into gear. It was that moment, that very day, that I checked myself into the psych ward at Methodist hospital to try and deal with the emotional issues I should have taken care of at 15, but didn’t know enough to even see what questions to ask. It astounded me when I went to occupational therapy and everything I thought was Attention Deficit Disorder was actually 20 out of the 30 signs of emotional trauma. I wasn’t ADD. I was reliving my abuse over and over, every single day.

For instance, my grades were terrible in school because I just could not keep it together. All of the staring at pictures of Diane in my notebooks, all of the signing her signature all over my book covers, all of the staring out the window and ruminating about what was happening to me were not signs of inattention. They were signs that other things were more important than my own life, and I let it go.

I am also not sure that I wasn’t raped as a child, because the same trauma reflexes that I exhibited as a teenager were present in elementary school. Perhaps I genuinely do have signs of ADD, but at the same time, I had a great uncle come on to me sexually as a teenager that I am not sure didn’t get away with something in my childhood that made him come back for more when I was 17. It’s a wild stretch, but at the same time, it is not something that I can ignore altogether. When I was two or three, I was terrified of men with moustaches. I would scream and cry every time someone with a moustache wanted to touch me. My mother says that I was never alone with said great uncle, but this is untrue. My body clock was off when we went to London and stayed with this great uncle, and I came downstairs in the middle of the night. I remember being creeped out because something was happening under the blanket where he lay next to his wife. I tried to go back upstairs, but my feet were planted with fear. I finally went back upstairs and back to sleep between my mother and father, but the feeling in the pit of my stomach never went away. I do not remember being abused, but I do remember seeing something I thought was not supposed to happen in my presence. However, these two memories together lead me to believe that Diane was not the first to cross a line with me. When my mother confronted Diane about ending our relationship, she asked my mother if I’d been abused. I remember thinking what in the hell made her ask it. I wonder what she saw that would lead her to believe it. I cannot say for sure, and I never asked her. But in retrospect, I should’ve. As a music teacher that worked with hundreds of middle schoolers, I cannot believe that she didn’t see something.

The only thing that saved me from that time in my life were the teachers that encouraged me to read. I could get lost in a story, and I had three particular favorites at that age. The first was The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin. The second was Hatchet by Gary Paulsen. The third was The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle by Avi. Incidentally, the last one was not recommended by one of my own teachers, but given to my sister, Lindsay, by one of hers.

When I was a junior in high school, one of the books assigned to me was The Color Purple by Alice Walker. Junior year was my first at Clements High School, and after having been out at HSPVA and going back into the closet at Clements, it was a lifeline of epic proportions. It was the one time at Clements that I could be myself in some small way, because I found someone with my own sexuality at a time when I wasn’t allowed to talk about it. I am sure my book report gave it away. Every lesbian in the world knows what happens on page 52 (yes, I did type that from memory, thank you). I was so thankful to my teacher that we became friends of sorts. I used to help her out in her room after school, helping with bulletin boards and the like. Then, on my birthday, Diane sent me flowers. They were innocuous. She was dating someone at the time, and the card said, “Love from the Moms, Diane & Jeri.” My teacher transferred me out of her class so fast my head spun. She put two and two together and her insidious prejudice just couldn’t take me anymore.

I seriously hated my new teacher, because I didn’t think she was as smart as my other one. She also ripped off ideas from my other teacher, and all of the sudden, my old teacher was interested in me again as a spy. She wasn’t prejudiced as long as I was useful to her. I got my peace years later, when said teacher became a patient in my stepmom’s practice. My dad thought she was a total bitch, and said he was sorry for the way she treated me if the way she treated him was any indication.

Again, it was books that saved me. My senior year, I was completely enthralled by Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. It immersed me in an environment so far away from my real life that I was ensconced in escapism. It was also about that time I became interested in The Bible… but not in the way that teenagers studied it. Because my dad had been to seminary and had been a minister for 23 years, most of his criticism books were still in the house. My particular favorites, and still are, the works of William Barclay. They opened up a world that I’d never seen, because it gave new breath and life into something that I thought I’d have to have a brain transplant to understand. I also read one of the best criticism novels of my life… so called because it takes all the facts there are to be had about Jesus’ life and death and ventures into fiction to fill in what might have happened. It is called The Day Christ Died, by Jim Bishop. What makes it different is that it is written from a journalist’s perspective, so the chapters are divided into hours. The tone is very Woodward & Bernstein, and it changed the way I viewed Jesus’ life immensely. It was that book that changed my focus from the way Christ died to the way he lived. While some Christianity is focused on being washed in the blood of Christ (ew), I am focused on the political structures Christ managed to dismember, a humble shepherd murdered by the state. The most interesting character in the whole book is Pontius Pilate, because he bent to peer pressure and at the same time, really doesn’t understand why. His internal struggle is, to me, the apex of the conflict which begins the denouement. It is one of the saddest moments in history, but I choose to “always look on the bright side of life.”

High school was also where I discovered James Baldwin and Richard Wright. Go Tell it on the Mountain, Native Son, and Black Boy got me through the roughest patches of high school. I was bullied, but nothing compared to the down and dirty shit they went through just to stay alive. They got me out of bed in the morning, because if they could do what they did, the least I could do was show up for high school regardless of who I needed to fight. I think I told this story before, but it is apt here. In my freshman English class, a group of people showed up on the lawn of the school where I was eating lunch and screamed Bible verses at me. One boy kicked my side as I was drinking Dr Pepper and it went everywhere. My sophomore year, my English class ganged up on me and said they were a family, and I was the dog, making me bark every day until I got tired of it. The class was on the second floor, and the railing was on top of a large checkerboard linoleum floor. I picked her up by her jacket and threw her against the second floor railing and told her I was going to throw her over if that shit didn’t stop immediately. I don’t think I was actually strong enough to have thrown her over, but my eyes clearly went to my nothing box and she knew I meant business. If it didn’t stop, I was going to do something. She at least knew that much.

It stopped. Immediately. The bitch of it is that my dad thought it was best to treat bullies with kindness, and this girl didn’t have a horn. It was stolen or something, so he let her use his trumpet the entire school year. She still treated me like crap, maybe because she didn’t know how to accept such a large gift. But at least the barking stopped. That was the important thing. I could deal with everything else. Just because she was a total bitch the rest of the year didn’t mean much to me. I was too busy to care.

In English we started reading Cry the Beloved Country by Alan Paton, and I was again lost in a world miles away from my current reality.

And that is where I sit right now. Trying to be miles away from my current reality, because I have been through the shit once again and am trying to bring myself into wholeness by becoming more educated by the things I choose to read. I haven’t chosen anything easy. Even Outlander, with its wild ride through history, was heavy in places… many of them, actually. The words of John Adams and Benjamin Franklin and George Washington and all of the people who founded our country are giving me words of peace to ponder. Stephen Dedalus is a conscience builder if ever I saw one. I also need to finish Argo as Tony Mendez reaches the end of his life, because it would be nice to send him a piece of fan mail whether he responds or not. It is the same with Oliver Sacks. I truly loved The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat.

All of my books are helping me to release my own Argo, the great ship in which I sleep deeply in the belly, for which I know my passage is safe. I wrote that line years ago, and even though she has taken the life raft of apart, that doesn’t mean that I do not travel the seas in my dreams.

All I can say to that is amen, may it be so.

No late fees included.

Apparently Klonopin was the right move, because my whole body has just said, “aaaaaahhhhhh…..” The title of the blog entry is taken from an Asher Roth song called “I Love College.” I do not drink my beer or smoke my weed, nor do I stay up until three and wake up at ten, go out to eat and do it again (Impressed that Hakeem Olajuwon is mentioned, though). The first time I heard it, I was watching Last Call with Carson Daly, and I was hooked (I hope they put the whole series on Netflix or Hulu). I downloaded the whole album, “Asleep in the Bread Aisle.” When I listen to it, I relax into putty. Now, I’m carrying that relaxed into putty feeling all the time. I am on a very small dose, .5 to one mg at night. I don’t necessarily feel like a new person, but I do feel like I can handle more emotionally, and that is the thing we were going for. As I said earlier, my psychiatrist is the bomb diggity, but I need to find another one butt quick, because she is known as what’s called a “safety net” doctor, someone who can refill my meds until I find someone permanent, given to me by the county. I’ve been pointed to an organization down the road from my house called Vesta. Interestingly enough, they also had a position for an IT generalist, so I applied for that as well. The position pays enough that I can afford Uber more often. That’s not a bad deal at all.

Right now the only reasons I use Uber is when I need to get somewhere quickly or I have several bags of groceries. Going into DC takes me an hour from Silver Spring, which is not a deal while I am unemployed. I just relax with my Kindle and therefore, I am one of the people on the Metro that is truly kind. I’m not in a rush. When we get there is when we get there. There is so much to hate about being unemployed, but if there is one positive, it’s that I have the ability to be kind and not step on everyone as I am not rushing to wherever I need to go. I continually ride on the right side of the escalator. I have time to stop and be interested in other people. I have the time to notice the beauty that is DC, because I feel that most of the people that live there forget.

That is one thing that I’ve never forgotten. When I lived here before, I had a cute little purple Saturn at one time and a little white Mercedes at another. I lived in Alexandria, in a townhouse complex on N. Van Dorn right behind Landmark Mall.

Whenever I took 395 into the city, tears would come to my eyes, because I passed the Pentagon, the Jefferson Monument, and the Washington Monument in the distance. It was breathtaking every single time, because I couldn’t even believe I lived here. My downfall, and I have said this before, is that I didn’t think I could make it here on my own. I did not have enough faith in my ability to bounce back from a disastrously abusive relationship. I was hurt, and I just wanted to go home. First it was back to Houston, and within months, I was headed to Portland with my family’s blessing and support. I counted on Diane and Susan to provide the comfort I needed to get by, and in small measure, they did. But after a while, that relationship disappeared and I didn’t know what I’d done to drive them away. It was like a wall had been built, and I can tell you the exact moment it was. I was working for Wells Fargo as a collection agent, and Diane called me on my lunch break. She said that I was the kind of woman that she wanted to get to know, and it breathed unsafe. Diane has a history of being close to her partner and having a side chick, like I treated Argo because I didn’t know any better. I thought that with Argo being straight, I could avoid the pitfalls that had been modeled for me since childhood. As it turns out, not so much. But anyway, her voice was a little seductive and I realized that I did not want to be that person. I reacted like a wet cat with claws extended, and she never really called me again… not with any regularity, at least. She found someone else to be that person with her, and it caused no small amount of damage. The closer she got to her best friend, I roiled with anger and pride. I was angry that I wasn’t the best friend, and I was proud of myself that I did not become caught in her triangulation. That shit was for other people, even though I was flattered that I was her next choice. It was a case of knowing deep within myself that she’d gotten dopamine from me long enough.

Kathleen had destroyed me, and I needed a distraction (a truly bad idea because the dopamine rush made me put off my grief for a long time). I became “friends with benefits” with a boy in my church that I’d known since he was 16 and I was 19. He was so beautiful, so perfect, and we were both so flawed that we were perfect for each other in that time and place. My lesbian friends wouldn’t have been more surprised if a spaceship landed in front of them and little burritos walked out, but it was worth it just to see their faces. He had an 8-bit Nintendo, and I am ashamed to talk about just how much we played with it. Oh my GOD was I addicted to both Super Mario Brothers 2 and 3. My favorite memory of us was our first date. We went to see 8 Mile, and listened to “The Eminem Show.” It was fun, flirty, and he was The AntiKathleen.

The relationship ended abruptly when I realized that even though I enjoyed him, I couldn’t envision a life with him. Plus, he really wasn’t ready for a full-time relationship, either. He had his own issues- his own story to tell. I was the one that initiated the breakup, but it was truly time for both of us. We remained friends after that, and I remember years later, when he’d been arrested as an accessory to murder, that I didn’t know if he would come back or not. I just wanted to lie down on his bed, smell his sheets and blankets to see if they still smelled like him. Luckily, he is back where he belongs, or will be soon. The judge was very lenient with him, and for that I am grateful. He trusted me to hear what he’d been through, and it changed me in the way that all stories do. We finally ran away from each other, because we were the same personality in two bodies, unable to stop wrestling with the abuse we dealt each other because it was too hard not to. We’d come to a place where we were no longer good for each other, and even though I hope that’s not the case in the future, it is right now. I needed to, in Argo’s beautiful words, “take the life raft of apart.”

I am very close to his sister, though. She’s one of the people that if money were no object, we’d visit each other all the time because we need each other. Our stories reflect each other in a major way, and talking to her is the ablution I need to make peace with myself.

I am already on my way. Taking life slower and really concentrating on the needs of the community around me is helping me to move on with grace, even though I am tending to kick and scream about it. God how I miss Dana. God how I miss Argo. Life without them is pretty fucking miserable. They’re the best people that have ever happened to me, and the guilt of how I behaved is eating me alive. I am grateful that I have a psychiatrist who is talking me through the chemical side of anxiety and sadness. The organization I talked about earlier, Vesta, will help me with that, too, and also examine the behavior patterns I’ve had since childhood that allowed me to make this mess in the first place. I don’t want to be that person. She was so angry.

But I’m nice right now, man. I hope it brings peace to not only myself, but the people around me. It can’t hurt.

Yesterday I wrote about hot dogs because I am getting tired of writing about grief. It is all I can think about when I close my eyes, a repetition of facts because maybe there’s something I can do. Something that’s within my control. Something that does not include sitting here doing nothing, thinking about the people I love and feeling helpless. I love Dana just as much as I love Argo, but currently she is a lot farther away. That may not always be the case, but it is right now. With Dana’s parents in the area, it’s not inconceivable that our paths will cross again, but it is unlikely. The sound is deafening when I think about her being so close and so far away like she was this summer… and the fact is that we needed to see each other, not for pleasure, but for business. She did not want to meet me at the bank so we could separate our bank accounts. I’ve gotten text messages when her account is overdrawn. I don’t think it’s my right to know things like that. I am not accusing her of any irresponsibility. I think she’d just not transferred a bill and it hit our joint account without knowing that the money was in the bank, just in a different location. It happens. I’m not worried. But at the same time, she didn’t get the message. I did.

We’d had an enormous fight in which I wasn’t yelling at her. I took out my anger on her, but in the immortal words of AWOLNATION, “baby when I’m yellin’ at you, it’s not your fault.” I tried to explain this, but she was done. She blocked me on just about every way I could contact her except text message, so it was humiliating the next morning to have to send her a text that said “your account is overdrawn.” She was very gracious about me catching it and letting her know so she could take care of the problem, but it mired me in all the things I’d planned for meeting again after a couple of months. I could have shown her all my hangout spots- the ones I’ve found since I’ve been here and Teaism in Dupont Circle, my favorite place of all time and space. I would have bought her a hot ochazuke or some salty oat cookies and we would have sat, lost in conversation. It was a dream dried up like a raisin in the sun. But the dream did not fall apart all at once. Her parents’ house is in a suburb just far enough that even if I took the Metro all the way out, it would still be another 20-30 minutes by Uber. She didn’t have a car, and her parents had scheduled every moment of her visit. So between all of the travel either one of us would’ve had to make, it was hard to carve out time. So I pushed her away so it wouldn’t hurt so much when she got here and I still couldn’t reach her. I just took a little thing and made it a big thing and voila. I don’t want to see you. I couldn’t be vulnerable with her anymore, because it would have come across as begging and pleading. I didn’t want to be with anybody, even in friendship, that doesn’t want to be with me. On a day that I thought we’d be tooling around Congress Heights and Dupont, I went to Capital Pride with Prianka and Elena instead. I was so glad they were in town, because it saved me from being utterly miserable.

Argo thought it was particularly bizarre that I bitch slapped Aaron for wanting to make a local move, and then when I broke up with Dana, I moved back to DC. I explained to her that I’d had that conversation with him, the one where I had to swallow my pride and make amends, because I was so wrong. I did make it plain though that there was one difference in the equation and it was why I was worried about him. Aaron wanted to move to a city where he’d never really spent time and didn’t know anyone except the woman he was dating. To me, the difference was that I was already established in DC, and I could step back into my old life and my old support system, adding Prianka because even though we’d been writing to each other since Jesus was a boy, we’d never gotten to live in the same city. Prianka was so touched when I told her that she was one of the reasons I moved to DC, because I needed a hiking buddy and she needed me. Elena is a social butterfly, and Prianka is one of those people who is so introverted she’d rather stay home and talk to one person while on her laptop. She says it’s good that Elena pushes her to do new things, but it’s good to have a friend that can quietly sit across the table from her and enjoy silence as well. Now, Elena can fill a gap in both of us, the one that says we need to stay solitary and she says we need to play… because we do. Sometimes we have to play against type for our own sanity. I enjoy Elena so much for that, because if she didn’t say “let’s go do something fun,” I’d never leave home. I wish I was kidding. I want my laptop and my Kindle, not necessarily in that order. I am also ashamed to say that I am watching BoJack Horseman. It’s the little things in life, really.

I thought I’d done a good enough job in explaining to Argo why I was moving back, but apparently not. I think she thought I was coming here for her in a grand gesture sort of way. She’d already said no. She’d already said goodbye. I didn’t want or need her for anything save that I hoped one day we’d be able to let the past be the past and enjoy each other for the hilarious people we are, especially together. She shoots goals and I get the assist, unless I’m feeling particularly snarky that day… and even still, I am not sure that I got a goal. Whenever I say something funny, she says something funnier and more irreverent.

Honest to God, what fucked up my program the most was wondering if Dana was right. What if she was holding something back from me? Getting out of that loop saved me from myself, because I wasn’t caught in her alternate reality, and Argo did a good job of bringing me back around. I think I’ve said this before, but I got so desperate with Dana’s ruminations that I sent Argo an e-mail that said, “could you send me a 12 page report with graphs and pictures on how much you like dick? It would help. BY EOB. Thanks.” When she replied, she changed the subject line to “Bullet Points” and I laughed so hard I farted.

My journey was to leave Dana’s ruminations behind because they were making the “in love” feelings worse instead of better. Letting go of that part of me has been much easier by realizing I could love Argo’s mind all I wanted without being in love with her in the first place. It would have made me so much better a friend if I’d realized that say, two years ago, but I did not have the capacity to see what I was doing. It was what was modeled for me as a child, and reinforced when I moved to Portland. Healthy boundaries are key, and I did not have them. In that time and place, how could I? What could have ever prepared me for a friend that was willing to go as deep as me without feeling that line itch and twist until it broke? I freaked Argo the fuck out, and it was a reaction for which I could not have prepared. I had no history as to how to be in that kind of relationship, one that sustained me through hard times and kissed my scars to make them better without feeling the need to seduce each other because I felt it was all I had to offer. I had to take time to convince myself I was worth more than that.

I had to write and pray my way into wholeness, realizing that I am not ready for any relationship right now that’s deeper than an orange juice glass. I moved to a city where I know no one on purpose (I separate Silver Spring from DC and VA). It’s not time to work on other people. It’s time to find my own compass and True North. It’s coming together in a major way. When I arrived in Silver Spring, I was scared of what Argo might have waiting for me if she really did think I was coming for her and she didn’t want me to. Luckily, she didn’t, but I was still a nervous wreck thinking she had the power to call the police, even though it was wasted breath. I’d already gotten used to the idea that the city was big enough for both of us, and I could and would find my own path. No matter how much we needed each other in the beginning of the relationship, we didn’t by the end, and that was okay. I didn’t want to be with anyone, even in friendship, who didn’t want to be with me. Taking responsibility for my own actions took away feeling victimized, and I began to feel better in a hurry, both because of my healthier mental state and because I gave up my car, because one fed the other. My mental state got healthier and healthier the longer I walked and talked to myself in the sun.

If I needed to talk to myself out loud, I just put on my headphones so people would think I was talking to someone else. It seems crazy, but sometimes hearing yourself out loud reminds you of how ridiculous you sound. It takes the crazy out butt quick, because you think to yourself, “would I really want my parents/friends/coworkers to hear what I just said?” Nine times out of ten, I don’t. As Clara Oswald says in The Day of the Doctor, “that probably sounded better in his head.” I talk out loud to myself because believe it or not, there are very few times that I am eloquent in real life. I have a lot of stories, and I tell them well, but in conversation I am lost without a delete key. Canned responses are no problem. Off the cuff is iffy. Sometimes, I own that shit. Sometimes it seems like I need a jump start to get moving because the crowd has intimidated me. In front of my own church, however, that never happens. I know them well enough to know they’re rooting for me no matter what.

In front of strangers, I wish I was alone with my keyboard so that I could write down what I wanted to say to you. It will come out better than my stammering to remember what I was talking about in the first place. When I don’t manuscript a sermon and you come up to me afterwards, I literally have no idea what I said. I just hope it was meaningful.

Bah Dum Pum……………. Jesus!

I am fairly certain that if Whole Foods stopped selling their veggie dogs, I would be dead by now.

When I was a kid, I hated hot dogs. I could taste the chemicals and the poor quality meat, but didn’t know that’s why they tasted that way. I also had an aversion to the smell of hot dogs boiling, and that made me nauseous way before I tried to eat them. I liked sausage just fine, so it wasn’t that I had an aversion to tube steak. Just the ones specifically marked as “hot dogs,” and the “wurst” were the ones that mixed poor quality beef AND poor quality pork. When I had no other choice, I would eat the bread and all the toppings and the chips and/or french fries, leaving the frank on the plate where someone, hopefully, would grab it from me before no one noticed I hadn’t eaten it.

The first time I had a grilled hot dog, I noted that it was slightly better, but only because of the taste of the grill marks. The inside tasted the same. Two bites and I was over it. Maybe it just wasn’t done enough. I can say this in retrospect because I truly love either low sodium pork or turkey SPAM sliced thinly and laid low and slow on a heat source. It takes forever, but what you get is bacon on crack. Perhaps if I’d grilled my hotdogs sliced longways over slow heat, it would have been a different experience altogether. As a child, I hadn’t learned to cook, and therefore could not give my mother or my friends’ mothers the finer points of feeding me.

As it turns out, I do like hot dogs. A lot. I just prefer the ones with no meat in them. I am not exactly sure what IS in them, exactly, but I know that it tastes like hot dog. That should be close enough. It’s probably some kind of texturized vegetable protein that will one day rise up and kill us all, but it’s delicious with a bit of cream cheese and Sriracha.

That’s another thing about hot dogs. I used to go to this restaurant called “Zach’s Shack” in Portland, where they had trivia and $2 PBR tallboys on Wednesday nights. The hot dogs were expensive, but also the best in town. Well, technically, they aren’t that expensive except that I could always eat two or three plus fries (I tend to eat one large meal a day instead of spreading it out). They gave me the idea of loading up a hot dog with cream cheese, and if you’ve never tried it, you should get on that shit MANANA. I use Sriracha here, but if you can get a bottle of Secret Aardvark sauce, all the better. Just make sure you get either full or low fat cream cheese. No fat and the Aardvark will burn all the way down to your asshole. That’s the secret.

Zach’s original idea was to mix cream cheese and bleu cheese to spread on the bun, then top the dog with Aardvark and shredded carrots. Aardvark isn’t really a wing sauce, per se, but you get the general idea. Heaven on a bun.

So, now veggie hot dogs are my favorite meal, and I eat them all the time… ironically enough, most of the time cold and right out of the package as I am on my way up the stairs- no hot needed. When I am bothered to make a sandwich, I prefer either sourdough or potato hot dog buns, and I make two. One with ketchup and mustard, and one with cream cheese and hot sauce. I don’t drink PBR anymore, though. I’d rather save my calories for another hot dog at midnight. 😉

I liked my psychiatrist. Raised in Buenos Aires, there were a couple of times I had to ask her to repeat herself, but she was sharp as a tack. She wanted to change up my protocol, but only a little bit. Step up from 200mg to 250 on Lamictal slowly, go down from 60mg to 40mg on the Celexa, and replace Atarax with Klonopin at night. The Klonopin is a temporary measure because I am starting therapy with a trauma specialist, and she could tell that I was struggling. I told her that I can keep all of my appointments, and I am not scared to look for work, but I haven’t left the house otherwise except for church and grocery shopping. That I am afraid of conflict, so I go out of my way to stay home and read. She said that there were worse things that I could do with my time, but at the same time, I am in my own little bubble. Ummm…. yeah. You guys know me. WE’VE MET.

It’s part of my personality type that I like to stay home and read, but it is not me to completely isolate from everything for days at a time. It has been for the last two years, but those years have been extraordinarily atypical. The only thing I know is that for the first time in my life, I am actually taking steps to make the problem better, instead of pretending it doesn’t exist. I do not have to tell anyone and everyone just how fine I am. Nothing to see here.

I also told her about the possible youth director job, and how it didn’t bother me to be in front of people like, in “show mode,” but it bothered the hell out of me to really connect with people because there is only so long you can know someone before conflict arises, and that’s when I feel the impulse to run. I don’t believe that it’s not because I am incapable of intimacy, or that I have a personality disorder. I think I’ve just had a lot of emotional trauma dished at me since I was a kid and now I am in the long process of rediscovering society… I can’t take it all at once. It needs to be in measured steps.

She seemed to understand that innately- perhaps doctors are the same way, or perhaps I am just not as alone as I think I am.

I went to Starbucks after my appointment and had an Earl Grey (Teavana…. yum…) so I could have a few minutes of peace to stare out the window before I began my long trek back to Silver Spring on the Metro.Then, I found that I wasn’t quite ready to go home yet, because for the first time since my mom left, I was truly hungry. I got some beef stroganoff at Noodles & Company, and then noticed there was a grocery store across the way that might have Haribo Happy Cola. I walked over there, and it was a natural foods store. I did not find anything I wanted, except for a flavor of hi-caf they don’t sell at Whole Foods, English black. Disappointed, I finally got on the Metro and read until this young couple got onto the train in front of me. They were insufferable. He was one of those theater boys who cannot talk about anything other than himself, and she seemed to adore him. However, from my perspective, it was like he rattled on incessantly and I just wanted to interrupt and say, “ummm, does she get to talk?” A few minutes later, my suspicions were confirmed when there were all these things he wanted to do with her, and she mentioned one thing that she thought was going to be cool and he was all like, “I’m so busy… I mean, I’m like doing a thousand things with my plays and I’m still writing songs for Megan…” She accepted this like it was perfectly okay to do whatever he wanted because her thing didn’t matter, anyway. I am sure I have been guilty of this at times, which is probably why it bothered me so much. I was glad when I got off the train only to find out that they were getting off at Silver Spring, too, so the endless repetition of everything going on in his life continued all the way to Colesville and McDonald’s next to the 7-Eleven.

I turned the other way on purpose, and climbed the hill to drop off my prescriptions at CVS. I spent an inordinate amount of time searching for the aforementioned Happy Cola. The last time I went, they had several bags, and this time they were out. That did not stop me from staring in disbelief for quite a long time as I walked up and down the aisles. I thought about walking to 7-Eleven, but it was getting late and rain clouds were starting to gather. I settled for some rice crackers and wasabi peas at Whole Foods, steps from CVS on Georgia. You could probably just take the -ers off the end, because I am pretty sure that crack and rice crackers are synonymous. Have you ever been able to stop eating them? I haven’t. I divided mine up into snack-sized Zip-Locs so that the entire tub wouldn’t be gone by tomorrow morning. Also, Cliff’s Kids were on sale, and if you have not tried “chocolate brownie,” your life would undergo a miraculous change if you did. Brownies with vitamins. Look into it. I also remembered to get bananas and milk, because I’d used most of my milk for tea and I have Peanut Butter Cheerios in my pantry that need attention. Again, Peanut Butter Cheerios are life-sustaining, especially if you mix them with the chocolate ones. Trust me on this one.

It was raining when I came out of Whole Foods, so I called Uber to pick me up. I don’t think I would’ve if it was just sprinkling, but the skies opened up and I would have been drenched to the skin in less than three seconds. This is because I don’t have an umbrella because I’m still such a damned Portlander. Umbrellas are for tourists. It doesn’t work that way in Maryland- the rain is too sudden and too fast, not like Portland spitting in the slightest. But have I changed my ways? I’m gonna call that a NO.

Baby steps.

I have to start with the basics this morning. I’ve had a cup of tea. It was large, with two high-caffeine coconut teabags, four packets of Splenda, and a heaping tablespoon of CoffeeMate (it tastes better in black tea. Ironic.). I will probably make another one soon, because I have a psychiatrist appointment at 2:00, and I have to go from Takoma to Rockville on the Metro. If I don’t, I will fall asleep and miss my stop. It’s that kind of day. I took a sleeping pill last night and it is not wearing off as nicely as it normally does. I feel as if I am walking through a castle made of Jell-o, my favorite scene in Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.

While I was drinking my tea, I was reading A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. So far, I hate it. The story is great, but the stream-of-consciousness is driving me crazy and I wish I had Cliff’s Notes to tell me what in the hell is going on. Joyce flips back and forth between dreams and reality, and it’s hard to tell which is which. I feel as if I am walking through a castle made of Jell-o, my favorite scene in Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.

It is especially poignant to me after reading Outlander, because it proved to me beyond a shadow of a doubt that the UK has not changed its stances on Catholics and Protestants ever. Jamie and Claire are thought of as evil by the Protestants in the Outlander series, and a fight breaks out at Stephen’s dinner table over the very same thing. It pleases me to know that one of the bishop’s names is Lanigan. I am not sure that the Lanigans are part of our clan, being that my ancestor was out to sea when the cholera epidemic hit Ireland and therefore, my clan escaped with their lives, for which I am thankful. I am not especially thankful to be reading Joyce, but I feel it is a necessary endeavor. Not only am I Irish on my father’s side, no one escapes a liberal arts education without suffering.

I put Stephen Dedalus aside because my head was a little swimmy and realized that I’d forgotten to read the Outlander novellas, and I started one of them to become engulfed in that world once more. It is one of my favorites, ranking up there with the world of Harry Potter and the world of Doctor Who- incidentally, I believe that Outlander is based upon Doctor Who, so it’s no wonder that I was attracted to it once I got over the initial few pages. At first, I did not see it as a Doctor Who type escape. If I had, I would have swallowed it whole the first time it was recommended.

The novella is called The Space Between, and characters you thought were lost are in fact, not.

The thing I love about my Kindle the most is that I can be in the middle of many books at once without carrying the weight. The other books I am reading are 1776 by David McCullough, and John Adams by the same author. I have to thank Diana Gabaldon for getting me interested in the Revolutionary War, because frankly all I remember from Con Law is that Philadelphia was really hot in the summer. John and Abigail Adams are possibly my favorite people in the entire world of books, and I find it a damn shame that they are dead. What I wouldn’t give to take them to lunch……

I am slowly coming back to life after divorce and the loss of a great friend all at once, especially because I blame myself entirely. I have so much guilt that at times it’s hard to function, but getting lost in the world of literature and non-fiction is bringing me peace and propelling me forward. When I read, I go deaf to the rest of the world, and for it, I am grateful. When I am thinking about books, I am not thinking about grief, which consumed me for a time and is now a dull roar in my ears as I fall asleep. It still pains me greatly that at this time, I will never walk on the beach with either of them. I keep hope alive that as the waves crash against the shore, one of them will carry my messages of peace and turn their hearts. If that cannot happen, I hope for peace inside myself, that I can fix what I broke inside me and leave them behind with grace. I rail at God with “it’s not fair,” but only because in relationships, I do not view much of anything as a deal breaker… I forgive easily, and I am willing to rebuild anything broken from the ground up. I do not understand giving up. I do not understand letting go if I mean as much to them as they say I do. But none of those things are in my control, so the waves are on my own face, the ablution of tears and the taste of salt on my lips.

I told a woman from the Meetup that I wanted to see her again, without knowing that I lied. In the moment, I connected with her on a deep level. When I got home, I felt like I was betraying my own grief, that I needed more time to sit in it alone and not get wrapped up in the dopamine of dating. Not yet. It’s not time. I still need my monkish existence of books and solitude and tea and cookies. I fell hard for Dana in real life. I fell hard for Argo in our virtual world unto ourselves. Love on the ground and in the air. It was a high I’ve never felt, and will probably never feel again because I will not allow the luxury I took in feeling that kind of love for two people. I will not let two people into that space ever again, and I am having trouble with even one, knowing the capacity for destruction I’ve wrought on both loves of my life.

Now, the romantic feelings for Argo are gone. I needed them to go away, because it was just torturing me and fucking up our program. I had to let go of that part of myself, and I don’t miss it. What I do miss is the idea that we will one day have tea and books and solitude together instead of apart. Argo said, and I will remember this line forever and a day, that she needed to take the life raft of apart. Even though it was sad, it was beautiful because I could see us both as ships in the night, mooring unhinged.

Maybe someday we’ll pull into the same port, changed in only the way time can make plain.

I just have to start with the basics.

Go Set a Watchman is burning inside me.

While the book centers on Jean Louise, the undercurrent is about how much white people in the South loved blacks as long as they acted, for no better a term, like their pets. The trouble in Watchman starts when black people want to be treated as equals. The white people feel betrayed- one character actually says, “after all we’ve done for them…” The opinion on Brown vs. Board of Education has just been released by the Supreme Court, and the entire state of Alabama, including Maycomb, is incensed.

To be fair, the whites genuinely believe they are helping. It makes them feel good to give blacks their old clothes and the toys their children don’t play with anymore. They literally do not have the capacity to see why this is unequal, especially in a town as small as Maycomb… and this attitude is still present in the South if you know where to look for it…….. I am from the South. I have seen it with my own eyes. Whites have no issue with parental generosity to black people, but God forbid putting them next to whites in the office or in school.

My own education was like this, especially in a small town. Blacks had their own neighborhoods, and whites had theirs. The only real integration was on the football team (which was awesome- the team was tight-knit). In school, we sat at different tables in the lunchroom. We whites did not understand why blacks talked differently, but it seemed to me that there wasn’t an issue with it. It just was. Queer to our ears, but not enough for comment. I cannot remember having a single black friend until grade seven. Of course there were black people in our classroom, but it’s not like we went over to each other’s houses to play.

One of the memories from middle school that I will always regret is sharing a bed with Leslie (my middle school black friend) on a class trip to San Antonio. Before she went to sleep, she put a kerchief over her curlers and I laughed my head off and told her she looked like Aunt Jemima. Now, there is not a racist bone in my body. I literally meant that she looked like a syrup bottle. In retrospect, I can see her face clearly and how much I didn’t know.

When I was 19, I dated a black woman. One Sunday morning, I went to her house to pick her up for church. Her parents looked at me like I had three heads the entire time. It was so uncomfortable that the word awkward was onomatopoetic. It was like an alien had arrived to take their daughter away. They were drinking coffee while my girl put on her last minute church touches, and I asked for a cup of coffee as well. Not wanting to be impolite, her mother gave me one and stared the entire time I was drinking it, as if white people drank coffee differently and there might be cooties left on the cup. White is not catching. I looked it up.

In reminiscing on that moment, it’s hard to tell whether they were upset that I was female or white or both. As I have said before, if you’re in an interracial relationship in Texas, no one will notice you’re gay.

I didn’t know that there were American blacks that spoke just like me until I moved to DC the first time around, in 2001. I say “American blacks” because I went to the Bahamas as a kid and was fascinated by black people with British accents. Moving to DC was an education in itself, because had I not moved here, I don’t think I would have discovered that there was a difference between Southern and Northern blacks. And this is not to say that either is better or worse- just different. Because there is less segregation, there is less difference in language. There is less difference in education. It just highlighted to me how backwards the South was, because integration was key to black success… and in the South, there is less incentive on both sides of the equation.

If it sounds like I am pulling for black integration into white society, I am sorry. That is not my point in the slightest. My point is that every black deserves a white education, and every white deserves a black education. The way to equality is always compassion and understanding. I have been to majority white schools my whole life. I chose Howard on purpose. I understand the white side of the issue. It’s time to flip my understanding on its ear. If I am called to be Christ in the world, one of my jobs is to understand race relations, and I will never understand unless I experience. There is only so much experience I can have not being black myself, but at least I am making the effort. I am one of the white people that wants to absorb the experience of being black in America, because my skin is white, but my eyes and ears are open. I seek to learn.

I am angry about #alllivesmatter, because of course they do, but the hashtag misses the point entirely. #blacklivesmatter is bringing attention to racism, because the treatment of black people in America has long been a disaster area of an enormous proportion. Whites fall into the guilty category most of the time, and with their WASP upbringing are loathe to talk about it. There are also those who are still angry that the South lost, and take it out on the descendants of slavery daily. There are still more people who just don’t care enough to engage. As with voting, this is where the rubber meets the road. What if all the people that didn’t care suddenly did? How different would the country look?

In Watchman, there is what is going to be a famous scene in which Jean Louise goes to Calpurnia’s house. While there, Scout realizes that a wall has gone up between them because of current race relations. It brings them into sharp picture, ironic only because Calpurnia has gone blind.

Jean Louise rails at the heavens, and it burns her up thinking about the fact that Cal raised her. The truth that came up for me in all this was thinking about race relations in different areas of the country, and how it’s funny how fast things change, and how nothing ever does.

I was one of those unfortunate souls who was not tasked with reading “To Kill a Mockingbird” in high school. Like Pudge, a character in John Green’s “Looking for Alaska,” I was more interested in Harper Lee’s biography than her books. When Argo told me that the movie version of “Mockingbird” consistently ranked in her top ten, I put it in the back of my head that I should read the book before I saw the movie, but was not in any way motivated to follow through until I realized I wanted to read “Go Set a Watchman.” Since I wanted to read them in order, I finished them both in about seven hours… and now, I am in an incredible funk. Their styles are drastically different. “Mockingbird,” while talking about serious issues, was also hilarious. It reminded me a lot of Haven Kimmel’s autobiography, “A Girl Named Zippy.” “Watchman” was angry.

Very angry. The difference in tone was striking, almost palpable. While there are pieces of text that were lifted for use in “Mockingbird,” most of the story centers on Jean Louise’s hatred of her father, because the person she thought he was in the past is clearly not the person she sees when she comes back to visit.

It’s a universal story at its core. Who IS the person we thought they were the deeper we get to know them? Argo got to see all of my funny until she helped me pick at my own scars, and I went out of my mind with rage. I unleashed on her in a way that I’ve never unleashed on anyone. I wasn’t the person she thought I was. Diane groomed me to tell the story that I was just a little kid with a crush and I just couldn’t get over it. When the shit hit the fan for me, she disappeared. She wasn’t the person I thought she was. The more Dana and I loved each other and opened up, the more we gained the ability to hurt each other, because we were using the other’s flaws as weapons. Neither one of us recognized each other anymore. We weren’t the people we thought each other were.

The great state of Texas is trying to override the Supreme Court in any way it can to get around issuing marriage licenses to gay couples. It is not the government I thought it was. A state built on individual principles and freedom seeks to mandate their brand of morality. I got tired of fighting. I got tired of feeling invisible. My last straw with the state of Texas was spending hours at the DMV trying to prove to them that the last time I’d come in, they’d taken a copy of my domestic partnership document as proof of identification, and when I came back, all of the sudden, they wouldn’t take it anymore.

Eventually, they found the scan they’d taken the last time I was in, but it took more fight than I was ready to have. When faced with such conflict, I run. This time, I ran to Maryland because it was more liberal than Virginia the last time I lived here, and Kathleen and I said even then (almost 15 years ago) that we needed to make the jump because Virginia wasn’t going to change as fast, especially with Richmond still caught up in speaking the “Jeff Davis English.” DC is the liberal haven we sought; Virginia was the part we didn’t consider. It wasn’t the state we thought it was.

“Watchman” is not so much a story but a “man vs. man” conflict. How do you watch these civil rights struggles when you are not on the same side as your family or your state? How do you love them through it despite differing views? How do you love people that do things you despise? Harper Lee’s answer is that there is no collective consciousness, that we are all responsible for what we see and what we do… but nothing renders another inhuman. You have to meet people where they are, and connect on the things with which you can connect, and not with what you cannot. For instance, if and when I have to go to Southern Virginia and someone says something racist or homophobic, the best thing I can do is start talking about pie or football.

Darkness will always exist. The calendar and the clock will not stop it, because humans will always find the next new thing for which they can harbor prejudice. There cannot be only one “watchman,” because one report will not fit us all. We all have to go and set our own watchmen, to create our own calendars and our own clocks with which to move ourselves forward. It is all at a different rate because we cannot synchronize humanity, and we never will.

I got the supplemental questions they’re only sending to selected applicants in my e-mail today, and for the first time in my life, I am speechless. I am sure that the answers will flow when they are ready, but right now, I am having trouble pulling them out. I know some bare bones, but this is the time to be specific. Everything I’ve ever done church-wise has led me to this point, and now it’s here, and I am somewhat panicked. It’s not that I’m afraid to fail. In some sense, I am afraid to succeed. God has been asking, and now I’m answering with some definitive statements. At the same time, though, there’s still that part of me that says I’m not good enough, and I should look for an adult who can adult better than me. And then my still, small voice says to me that there is no adult who can adult better than me in this job, because I’ve done every single part before. I just haven’t made any money at it.

It’s funny how making money at something makes it more real… as if I haven’t slaved over every sermon, every bulletin, every Senior High Sunday School class, every retreat, every board meeting… This is not my first rodeo, cowgirls. It’s funny how I think it is. In some ways, it’s going to be a better fit for me if I get the job, because there is nothing like being a person “in charge” without any actual authority or title. The buck will stop with me, people will look to me for answers, and that might seem scary to some people. For me, the lack of having to wait until someone in authority gets there is comforting. I am not saying I will not have a boss, but there is a difference between running the program under authority and as a volunteer. The volunteer put in charge is not really, because with no real authority, there can be too many chefs and not enough line cooks. Being given the authority to carry out the things I’ve set in motion in planning meetings, along with the ability to say, “no, we’re not going to do it that way” and have people believe me is a very good thing. People try harder to override volunteers, even if the pastor says, “I’m putting X in charge.” I am not interested in being a dictator, but I am interested in staying true to the vision I put forth. There are ways in which I will give and which I won’t, but those are my decisions to make, not those to be made for me, unless the person making them has more authority than I do. The vision is top-down, not lateral.

Right now, though, I am my own biggest obstacle, and God is moving me out of the way.

Oh, there we go. Here it is. Starting to flow.

Praying on the spaces…………………………………………………

Because of #Outlander, I am ensconced in the Revolutionary War. I took a break between the Outlander series and 1776 by David McCullough (Finding Alaska by John Green and Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs), but I had to get back to it. I wanted to know more about both sides of the issue, and whether the battles went down as Diana Gabaldon said they did (so far so good). I’m not fact checking her, really, it’s just that in a novel, there’s more focus on the fictional characters than the real ones. I am getting to know Howe and Burgoyne, Clinton and Washington. It’s actually pretty amazing how many of the people in the House of Lords and the House of Commons thought the Brits should let us go, because with the distance between London and Boston, they’d get caught in a morass of epic proportions. Just goes to show that sometimes you should indeed listen to the minority, because we all know how it turned out. They couldn’t get troops here fast enough, they couldn’t get word of the outcomes back fast enough, and the Americans were scrappy and would do anything in the name of freedom. They weren’t necessarily stronger, but they indeed wanted it more. The British were also very wary of King George’s allies, and thought it was pretty scary to call in the Hessians.

But, as G.K. Chesterton famously said, “the Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because generally they are the same people.”

Reading about all of this is an education in and of itself. I was a political science major and a psychology minor at University of Houston, so I enjoy all types of historical and political non-fiction. There’s a lot of psychology woven into it. My favorite quote about THAT comes from Napoleon… “never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.”

I’m trying to get smarter as a writer, and Stephen King says that in order to do it, you must read everything you can get your hands on… I disagree. I think that when you read everyone else, you lose your own voice and start to sound like the last author you just read. So, that’s why I’ve skipped around a lot. You cannot imagine the difference in style between Gabaldon, Borroughs, Green, and McCullough. I am hoping that by mixing it up so much, I will gain knowledge, but not a clear sense of how someone else writes. It also gives me a break from thinking about myself and what a colossal goat-ropin’ clusterfuck I’ve made over my life the last two years. Reading about a war is much better than being caught up in my own.

I just want to cover Dana and Argo in the hugs and cheek kisses of I’m sorry so that we can get on with our lives in true peace rather than running away from each other like we did. Wait. That’s not fair. I ran away from them, because they both wanted to be my friend for life and I burned both bridges to the ground. They both played their parts in my reactions, but it was me who lashed out in pent-up rage. I wasn’t fighting with them anymore. I was fighting with myself and my abuse and they were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Anything could and did set me off in the War Between the Mates.

I have no doubt that they view me as the abuser in all of this, and I am, in no small measure. But what I can’t seem to get across to them is that the war is over in my own mind. I do not need them to get dopamine. I do not need to feed off of their energy. I do not need anything but a love I hope to recreate in time with both Pri-Diddy and Giles because I am not sure that they will ever see my light and change their minds. They focused so much on my anger that they couldn’t see anything else. Couldn’t see that I was capable of taking a deep breath and calming the fuck down. Couldn’t see that the hospitalization did indeed give me new context to work with, but I wasn’t going to change overnight. Couldn’t see that I was not running toward DC, I was running BACK. I see now that even though Dana was the light in the middle of the mess, I truly made a mistake in moving to Portland in the first place. I also tried to love Houston, but I can’t. There are too many memories of Diane’s abuse there, and even two years was too much. I thought I was battening down the hatches and reinforcing the fortress by coming home to my family. My family cannot override my feelings about Diane, and they simply cannot understand it. They do not have the proper frame of reference. The smell of the air can remind me of a particular conversation. Driving by anything associated with her gives me a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, because it was too much.

It was the war at home.

My love for Diane supplanted everything in my life. It consumed me, and I have no doubt that I was projecting it onto Argo, because when I got rid of Diane for the last time, I still needed that relationship with letters, or I thought I did, anyway. That’s why loving her came so fast and easy. It filled a gap in my life that I didn’t know I needed. I hope I made a difference in her life beyond anger, beyond hurt, because it would destroy me to think I didn’t. Her letters to me were a lifeline of an enormous proportion, and because of my past, there were a lot of things about deep friendship I didn’t understand and couldn’t, at least until I started going to therapy and exploring all of these issues, the ones that led me to lash out at her because it was what I knew.

There’s so much difference in what I know now.

When the Neurontin took effect, I didn’t have the physical responses to rage anymore. I could think through things more slowly, rather than reacting quickly because I was in fight or flight mode, shortness of breath at feeling threatened with no way to combat it. I couldn’t function in any relationship at all because my threat meter was so high. I destroyed myself, both at work and at home, because my past was catching up to me in a way it never had. It was as if during the course of those two years, I stopped thinking about the ways I thought I was helping Diane, and started thinking about all the ways that her burdening me with her issues as a teenager turned me into someone who couldn’t really handle society because I’d lived on the downlow for so long. Couldn’t handle being at work or at home, just enveloped in deep anxiety all the time, except when I felt manic in my anger. It was my only high in a deep chasm of lows.

I don’t want to be that person anymore, and I live like a monk because it is giving me time to work on my own issues in silence, and if you’re thinking, to me, silence is comforting. I am alone, but not lonely.

Revolutionary.

I have eaten too much.

Seriously, the entire time my mom was here, I ate as if there would be no food left when she got on the plane to IAH. It was worth it (of course), but now I am so bloated that I cannot move. Perhaps I needed it, though. When I am not eating socially, I take in so few calories that I’m not sure it’s healthy. However, my pants are tight with that “just took ’em out of the dryer” feel, and that is not the look for which I am going. I decided I needed some exercise on the way home, so when I got to Silver Spring Station, I walked to my house. It’s almost two miles, about a 30 minute walk for me, and by the time I got home I felt better about myself. I decided that whenever possible, I was going to make myself walk to the Metro instead of taking the bus. As a depression patient, endorphins really make me feel better- as well as the sun beating down on my Vitamin-D deprived shoulders. Yes, it was 88 degrees. I didn’t care. I stopped at 7-Eleven for a Super Big Gulp of Coke Zero and a 24-oz water bottle and off I went.

You would think that walking two miles would ease this bloated feeling, and I have to say… not so much. Perhaps it was the two days of McDonald’s that did it. This morning, I took my mom to Busboys & Poets, where I had a tofu scramble with some actual vegetables in it… like vegan bacon. There was also spinach, salsa, and some other stuff, but if you’re going to eat vegetables, why not eat the ones that taste like pork? Plus, there are times in my life where I prefer Daiya to actual cheese (I know, I know… cheese is awesome and beautiful. I GET IT. Stop looking at me that way.).

The restaurant itself was recommended by Pri Diddy, and I’m glad we made the trip. It is now possibly my favorite place in the entire world. Stacks of books and a great bar/cafe, complete with amazing tea and coffee. I’m going to go back with my laptop and my Kindle when it’s not busy so I can work. I need to get my shit together and up the ante on this job search. At this point, I will take anything, and I am surprised that none of the places I’ve sent online applications have even bothered to reply. I went to McDonald’s web site yesterday to send them yet another application, because they’re the ones that have the best tuition reimbursement program and Howard is a private school (read: I need lots and lots of money).

Why did I choose Howard? Several reasons. The biggest is that their MDiv program is a United Church of Christ-based school, and I didn’t want to join the Virginia Mafia (the nickname for all the Episcopal priests that come out of VTS). The second is that I’m white and I thought it would be cool to play against type. It’s hilarious the responses I’ve gotten. Geoffrey looked at me, wide-eyed, and said, “you know you’re white, right?” It was even funnier because he is black. If I remember right, I told him that I hadn’t noticed and he laughed even harder. Additionally, it is in Prianka and Elena’s neighborhood, and close to Giles as well, which gives me a great excuse to drop by… as if I needed one. 😛

Several people have asked me why I want to go to a UCC school. I think I’ve answered this before, but I will answer it again. I don’t want to be an Episcopal priest anymore because I realized that with the UCC, I can include Anglican elements to my service, but I can do more with liturgy, writing my own instead of being tied to the Book of Common Prayer. I have it in my head that I will collect my own liturgy over years and years, publishing what I think would be a great book for our denomination. Some people are blessed at writing call-and-response. Some people aren’t. I think it would stifle my growth to go the Episcopal route, so I won’t.

There are like, ten people in Portland sticking out their tongues and saying, “I told you so.”

Plus, in the UCC, you don’t have to be ordained to do communion/preach/etc- it’s on a church by church basis. So if I get this job as a youth director at my church, it is possible that I could get some experience in worship as well. If I know I’m preaching, I will send out a “Save the Date” announcement just like I did in PDX. I have fewer friends here, but I am changing that every Sunday. Christ Congregational was a great way to plug in- the people have been fantastic to me, supportive in all the right ways of both me applying at Howard for my eventual MDiv and welcoming me into the choir.

The choir. Gotta talk about it.

I went up to Nae, the choir director, and said, “are your sopranos mean?” He said, “No, the only one that’s mean is me.” I told him that was acceptable and I would see him Sunday morning. I have been told that I have a gorgeous voice, but that’s not why I joined. I joined because I have a corkscrew scoliosis and the pews are traditional Shaker benches that wreak havoc on my back. I noticed that the choir had padded chairs in the loft, and that was that. It only took me three Sundays to realize that one, along with everyone who sat next to me saying, “you should join the choir.” One of the sopranos was sitting behind me in church two Sundays ago, and I asked her when we started back up. She said, “not until after Labor Day.” I quietly said “fuck” to myself and said, “I have to wait all the way until AFTER LABOR DAY?” She said, “man… you sure are eager.” I told her the chair situation and she laughed until she cried. I’ve sort of adjusted. Last week I took my backpack empty and leaned on it like a pillow. It kind of worked.

I was really sore by the time I went to pick up my mom at the airport after church, but I wasn’t going to leave her to make her own way to my house. I am not sure that would have ended well.

I just took a big gulp and left.

I took a break from blogging because my mom arrived on Sunday, and we’ve been tooling all around DC. It’s one of the cities we both love, because my mom is a teacher (music specifically) and there’s always things she wants to see. On Monday, we went to the National Portrait Gallery, which was stunning. Yesterday, we went to the American History Museum, which to me seemed both amazing and incomplete. As an Outlander fan, I thought there was going to be much more about the 1700’s, and there wasn’t. You’d think the 1700’s would be pretty important around here… We saw the flag that inspired the Star Strangled Banana, and a few trinkets that people owned, but I wanted more.

Speaking of the National Portrait Gallery, I was stunned. They had original Matthew Brady photography that made me want to pull out my laptop right then. It was so inspiring, and I found myself wanting to stop and write about each photo and painting. My favorite was a portrait of Jimmy Carter when he was young, even though the ones of George Washington were the ones I came to ogle. He’s kind of popular in Virginia.

I remember seeing when I lived here the first time the sign for Alexandria that had the founding date and the population. It was something like 1745, and I was amazed. Years and years before the American revolution, while Scotland was being drawn and quartered by the English. The only reason I know this is because I’ve read the entire Outlander series up to this point. I would not know that otherwise. I am way too dumb to geography. My sister and I have that in common. My family and I once argued with her at the dinner table for over a half hour that New Mexico is indeed a state. When I told her that I was moving to Oregon the first time around, she thought DC was close (she was confusing the city with the state, I HOPE).

My mom also likes McDonald’s a lot. We ate breakfast there yesterday (Big breakfast sub bacon for sausage and a yogurt parfait to put on my hotcakes) and lunch today (double Filet-o-Fish meal, one of God’s gifts to mankind). I have decided this is acceptable since most of the time I am vegan now- not because I have anything against eating meat, because I still do. I just like that there are better fats in plant-based foods and I save a lot of calories that way. I am not fat, but I am short, so I’d like to keep the not-fat part in check. I knew for damn sure that my mom would only pretend to enjoy vegan food, so I haven’t pressed her on it… even though I think fake chicken is way better tasting than processed real chicken. I will take Quorn over Tyson’s any day.

I also eat 365 brand veggie dogs with cream cheese and Sriracha like they’re going out of style. Apparently, so do other people, because the last few times I’ve gone to Whole Foods, they’ve been out. I found a brand of sausage I like- the Tofurkey beer brats. They are so good with sauerkraut and mustard that I am loathe to eat real hot dogs ever again, because I am not sure what the hell is in them. I’ve read The Jungle, and I’ve gotten the shakes when thinking about hot dogs ever since.

Monday night we ate at Legal Seafood, where I had the prettiest house salad I’ve seen in this lifetime, and a vinaigrette that turned my face inside out it was so acidic. I loved it. I only ordered the house salad because I ordered mussels for an appetizer and when it came out, the bowl was bigger than Donald Trump’s head. They were perfect. The sauce I chose was spicy Thai, and it lived up to its name- so tasty that I mopped up every bit with sourdough.

In the American History Museum, there’s an exhibit with Julia Child’s kitchen, and a running videotape of her cooking show. By the time we toured it and watched the video, we were hungry for French food, so last night we went to La Madeleine. Mom had chicken with mushrooms, and I had beef bourguignon, the only recipe appropriate for apres Julia. All in all, it’s been a very successful visit, although yesterday I was almost killed.

I got on the silver line and I thought my mom was behind me. She shouted, “I can’t get on,” and I tried to back out. I got stuck in the doors and the train lurched forward. Luckily, the conductor saw me or I managed to wrench the door loose. Either way, it was not a pleasant experience and I hope not to repeat it. I just knew that leaving my mother in the Metro station was not a good idea, either.

The funniest thing that’s happened so far is that I got our lunch at McDonald’s and sat down with it. My mother didn’t see that I was at the table, and so I started eating my French fries (they depreciate immediately). I noticed that she wasn’t there after a minute or two, so I peeked my head out around the corner and didn’t see her. I thought she must have gone to the bathroom or something. In fact, she was standing in front of the counter. They asked her if she’d gotten her order, and she said she hadn’t gotten any of it. So, I’m sitting there stuffing my face full of fried fish, and she comes around the corner with another full order of food. She thought I was in the bathroom. To make things even funnier, they gave her a peach pie and an apology for being so late with her order.

So, to make a long story short, I had two double Filets-o-fish for lunch and I’m not taking any crap about it. I’m on vacation, and it was fucking delicious. The only thing I was really upset about is that the Old Bay tartar sauce was only a special thing and they don’t have it anymore. If I’d known it was just a special, I would have gone every day like those McRib freaks.

I’m not sure what’s in those, either. Have you tried the ones from Morningstar Farms? OMG. You’ll never go back.

In case you’re wondering why this entry is all over the place, I’ve had several, several cups of hi-caf black tea. I think my blood type is Assam by now. Plus, a Dr Pepper, a diet Coke, and some iced tea at Mickey D’s. Wired for sound doesn’t even begin to cover it. I was going to say it’s like I’m on drugs, but it’s not like that. It is that. Caffeine is a drug, and a very effective one at that… apparently.

My mom being here has totally taken my mind off of everything else in my life. I am only concentrating on showing her a good time, and today, we are worn out from walking all over DC for the past two days and going to the grocery store today. You would think that going to the grocery store wouldn’t be all that strenuous. When you don’t have a car, everything is strenuous- in a good way, though. I’m getting more exercise than I ever did in Houston, and I feel stronger than I ever have before. When I lived here the last time, I isolated so much because Kathleen had a big shot job and I had enough room to completely destroy myself inside the house… which is why I saw with certainty that Dana was going down in the same way I was. I had sympathy for it, but I couldn’t fix her. Only she could fix her.

My relationship with Kathleen died in the exact same manner that my relationship with Dana did, except that I was on the other end of the stick. I didn’t realize how sick I’d been until years after the divorce, and how much strain I’d put on the relationship without even realizing it. Kathleen lashed out, sleeping with coworkers. I lashed out, putting Argo above Dana in more situations than I ever should’ve. But at that point, I was just too lonely, too fed up, too filled with the knowing that I couldn’t help. I also lashed out at Dana’s parents, saying that I needed help because Dana was going down and it was more than I could handle on my own.

They got the message, but then they went back to DC- and calling someone can only do so much. Dana finally got a job and it made her feel better, but what we’d been through wasn’t fixable anymore. She’d had it up to her eyeballs dealing with the Diane situation and then the Argo situation. I’d had it up to my eyeballs with Dana’s rejection from the teaching program and not applying to another one and becoming dependent on me for her emotions about things… or so it seemed to me, anyway. She was happy when I was home. When I wasn’t, she isolated.

My mom being here has allowed me to put all of that down and just enjoy DC for what it is… a great tourist trap with a very generous McDonald’s.

Sometimes the violent wind of the Holy Spirit Nocks Yo Punkass Down. Today, it happened. It is go time in a major way. My church is looking for a youth director, and the woman who made the announcement that they needed an additional member of the search committee was sitting in the pew behind me. I turned around and said, “I want the job.” She said, “you want to be on the search committee?” I said, “no. I want the job.” She took down my e-mail address and we talked a little bit, and when the service ended, we talked some more. I managed to impress the hell out of her, and she’s going to put me before the search committee. I’ll be praying that goes well, too. I was so enthusiastic about the job that she said, “there are other applicants. I don’t know what we’re going to do about that.” I said, “I expect you to look at every applicant. I’m just telling you I’m the best.” I had a confidence in me that I have never seen, and she liked it. So did I.

Turns out, she’s a PK as well. I said, “regardless of whether I get this job, we need to go to lunch.” And we do. Preachers kids are a special breed. She said, “you know, they only come in two kinds.” I said, “it’s been interesting. At first, I was the dutiful daughter that wanted to go into the ministry, and my sister was the wild hair. And as we’ve gotten older, we’ve switched places. Now I want to find a balance- the youth minister with a wild hair.” I said, “kids love me. I dress just like them.” I was in brown pants and a surfer t-shirt with my hair spiked and she could clearly see my tattoos. She knew what I meant- that I could reach the kids because I knew where they were coming from.

The other thing we talked about is how to grow the group from where it is. They already have 40-50 kids that come on a regular basis, and I said, “do you advertise in the local high schools?” She said, “no, but that’s a great idea.” I said, “that’s how you grow a church. You don’t get the parents. You get the kids and the parents come with them. They are the church, because the pattern now is ‘go to church until high school/early college, drop out, and don’t come back until they have kids of their own. If we don’t grow the youth group, where are we going to get future members? How can we stop that cycle so that the kids are participating all along?” I also said that as a preacher’s kid, I’d worked in every aspect of the church. Every one…. and I’d never gotten paid for it. She laughed with the knowing of it, because as a PK herself, she’d been in that exact position her whole life, too.

I also made a point to ask what Matt is like as a boss. She said she didn’t know, but that he seemed like an introvert. I said, “we all are, aren’t we? Every pastor I know is an introvert with a big front on Sunday mornings.” We’re all writers and creators. We’re sociable, but need plenty of time to recharge our batteries. When I preach, afterwards I am usually spent of emotion. It takes your whole body and your whole mind to put it together. To step into the river and let the service flow.

I would be remiss not to thank Susan Leo for giving me a chance. I got my start preaching at Bridgeport UCC, and for that, I will always be grateful. She gave up her pulpit willingly and gladly so that I could get the confidence to really be who I am. If there’s anything I’ve learned from the devastation of divorce and recovery from it, it’s that I’ve been hiding a light that is about to come out. I’ve been in IT instead of using my God-given gifts, because I have been running from my calling and now je suis prest.

I want the youth to lead worship. I want the kids to own being members of the community. I want them to learn Christian responsibility, which is to take care of the people around you whether you know them or not. See need and respond. Just because you’re a teenager doesn’t mean you don’t have that gift.

People write off teenagers and don’t give them enough credit. When I took my kids at Bridgeport on a retreat, when they opened up, they really got down and dirty. They opened up their souls and poured them out, and the problems were more complex and carefully thought out than anyone not working with youth would guess. I carry their names tattooed on my heart because that weekend bonded us for life. I am still in touch with them through Facebook and that retreat was in 2004.

I divided them up into groups and gave them different color bandanas because it was Survivor themed (we were on an island). The tribes were named after the tribes of Israel, and they competed against each other and did trust exercises before we had worship every night…. except it didn’t look like traditional worship. It was sitting around a camp fire and praying for peace.

Sunday morning we had worship, and I will never forget Lauren’s sweet voice saying the words we said at Bridgeport each Sunday as the assurance, written by Susan herself:

We are God’s children, wonderfully made…
And as fallible as we are, we are no mistake.
Be responsible and let go of guilt.
Be mindful and carry no shame.
Believe the Good News of the Gospel
You are loved unconditionally by God.

You have never really heard those words until you’ve heard a child say them. You’ve never really heard a piece of Scripture until you hear a child read it. If I can direct that growth and change, so that high schoolers think being at church is cool because they’re not treated like children, then I will. Because treating them like children demotes them to being unable to take responsibility. It’s their church, too.

They need to take offering. They need to read Scripture. They need to preach. They need to own, instead of react.

God has been whispering my whole life. Today was NYPD. Tomorrow is “I got this.”