Dana and I had a conversation that gutted me last night, and I don’t think we’ll be friends after this. I want to, but her words stung so bad, scored such a direct hit, that I know I do not need her energy in my life anymore. I thought that there was no limit to my understanding, my willingness to hear her, my willingness to submit to the fact that I’ve hurt her. I found my limit not because I was angry about what happened. Just dead. Flatlined. Could not show any more emotion in front of her, and perhaps not ever again. It remains to be seen what will happen in the future, but right now it’s time to disengage completely, because she wasn’t just saying something in a fit of anger. She was telling me how she truly felt.

I said something to the effect of it hurting so much that she was there for all the pain and not the promise. She said that she saw so much promise in me, but that I’d put energy into something and then get distracted when the next big great idea came along so that everything was theoretical and nothing was real. That she would be skeptical of promise in me forever.

It is something that I struggle with on my own. I know my personality. I am ADHD. I have more great ideas before breakfast than most people have in a lifetime. Where I fall flat, where I’ve always fallen flat, is in follow-through. I do not have the coping mechanisms, and never have. I feel differently now that I’ve gone through so much, because letting go of the tidal wave Diane created made room for so much more. I was so emotionally laden over my teenage heartbreak that I could not depart from it for more than a few minutes at a time, because I had to figure out a way she would stop calling me a liar. That she would believe the words that I spoke. There had to be a way.

There wasn’t. The answer was just to stop caring altogether. Dana also said something about that, that I’m like a dog with a bone and I just cannot drop things. It’s true. Emotional injury is my stock and trade, both figuring out my own and how to heal it, and how to heal others as I heal myself. I just want my world to be whole, and I will try every combination of words I can think of in the English language to try and figure it out….. when sometimes, I am trying to fit the wrong key into an ancient lock that’s already been covered in rust for quite some time.

I do not get letting go of people. To me, that is saying that they are unworthy of redemption, as am I. Relationships should be long and prosperous, no matter how much hell they go through, because the relationship is in working out the hard parts. Relationship is taking an emotional injury and finding ways to connect afterward, so that we can both look back down the road and see how far we’ve come, as opposed to how far we need to go. Relationships to me are never temporary affairs. I would much rather work through issues than give up, mostly because it makes things awkward if we run into each other at the grocery store (that was like a joke). I choose not to run away from emotional problems, and I am finding that I a tad unusual in that respect. I am tired of Dana’s insistence that my words are so much worse than hers, that my reactions of anger and enmity are more severe than the ones she’s handed down. I am tired of her insistence that the problems in our relationship were all mine to own.

I will not say much more than that except she’s ADHD, too. If we’re going to talk about squandered promise, I’m just going to leave that riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight there.

She has asked me the question, “since we wrecked each other, why do you even want more?” Because after the flood is the rainbow. Her answer is that what is broken should just stay that way. It is an approach to life that I do not want, especially if all she can see in me is the promise I’ve wasted and not the promise I live in right now. I am glad that I took my shot in getting away from her. I do not think that I could handle trying to emotionally separate from her, so I enforce physical boundaries instead. The dog with a bone attitude is gone, because I realized I didn’t want her energy in my life if all it was going to be is sadness at all the things I did not accomplish and skepticism that I ever would. I felt it long before we separated; one of the reasons Argo became so sacred to me so quickly is that she saw promise in my writing, something that I do gladly and faithfully every day. It is something to which I am completely dedicated, and the blessings it has endowed on my life are something that Dana does not see.

I have enough words to have a portfolio now, a recognized one at that. I may never be well-known, but of the people that do read me, I am respected. I have created something out of nothing. I have lived in my own promise. One day, it will pay off even bigger than it does now, because I have a wealth of sermon illustrations, book ideas, history so that I don’t repeat it…………………..

The hardest part about hearing Dana’s words was knowing that I’d said them to myself, and I told her it was just about the meanest thing she could have said to me. She didn’t see how I could possibly misconstrue her belief in my lack as mean. She was just telling me her emotions.

I. Am. Skeptical.

My skin is buzzing. My stomach is queasy. My mouth is dry, and I am having a bit of trouble breathing all the way down. It’s not a panic attack, just shock, and I know it will pass. I’m not sure that I want it to, though. I kind of need it. I need to sit in the pain of what just happened, because it is necessary for me to process before I can move on. That’s the thing about being a writer. Something can happen in a moment, but it could be months before we understand it….. because it’s not just understanding. It’s the full knowing of every side to the story- or the ones we’re able to tell, anyway. There is no way that we fit into another’s mind. There is no way that we can understand the depth of human emotion to the degree that we can just describe someone else’s feelings. All we can do is hope that by describing our own, we reach some kind of understanding with ourselves.

When it was good, it was very, very good. When it was bad, it was wicked.

I am speaking of my relationship with Dana, both the way we came together in fits of joy and laughter, and how we came apart after years of making each other miserable with our words. We both deflected the other’s pain so that nothing was ever owned, just thrown at the other. It was never either of our faults, because we both felt so put-upon. I felt as if every time Dana had a problem, she found a way to make it mine. It wasn’t that she was depressed and isolating; I was inattentive even before Argo walked into my life. The problem with that statement is that I spent every waking hour not at work with her, and she resented me working long hours because she did not have anything to keep her busy while I was gone. Therefore, she spent her days waiting on me, or so it seemed, so that when I walked in the door there was a burst of happiness and light that seemed dependent on me, rather than lighting her up from inside.

When Argo and I connected with such an explosion, she did not go out and make friends of her own. She sat and seethed that I had a friend and she didn’t. Argo was Dana’s excuse for not trying to connect with me, because in her mind, Argo would eventually submit to me and I would be out the door. Nothing was further from the truth. I begged, plead, cried with myself and God to take the feelings I had for her and return them to a normal state of friendship, the kind where I didn’t ache for her because in my marriage, I felt so lonely. Dana’s depression left me quite vulnerable to Argo’s attention, but there was no reason to act on my romantic feelings for two reasons. The first is that my fidelity with Dana was sacred. These were feelings I had to work through on my own in order to heal and move on. The second is that if Argo had been a lesbian, I would not have allowed myself the luxury of feeling “in love” feelings in the first place. I would have seen a threat for what it was, and disposed of it promptly. Because she was so wholly other, I rested in the fact that it wasn’t going anywhere, that it was just fun…. and it was, for about a month. After that, it was just me feeling butt-hurt all the time because both of the women in my life were unavailable to me in terms of contact comfort.

Had Argo been in physical proximity, I know for sure that she would have supplied the hugs and cheek kisses I needed to survive the lack from my wife. I didn’t need sex, I needed affection. Aaron made sure that I had plenty, hugging me and putting his arm around me when I thought I would fall apart with grief. I isolated more and more in my office the lonelier I got, because it was more comfortable to write to Argo than it was to look at the problems going on in my own house. As I have said, I was on the ground and in the air. I had to make a choice. I chose the ground because I COULD SEE IT.

I chose Dana. I will always choose Dana. However, that did not mean that as her depression worsened and she began exhibing behaviors that I could not tolerate that I did not choose to disappear into the cloud again. My heart began to walk outside my body where Argo was concerned, because wherever she was, I wanted to be with her. I did not picture hot and heavy. I pictured the love we had on the ground growing over time, slowly, because I knew that it would take time for me to get over her in a way that my love feelings didn’t feel like small internal attacks. I was beating myself up, handily. I’d feel rejected by Dana and take my sadness to Argo who would put a Band-Aid on me and kiss it and make it better. Those Band-Aids became liferafts of an enormous proportion, and I could not hide my feelings any longer….. but not with her. She knew it from the start. I wasn’t shy, ever, about telling her, because here was my fear. My fear is that we’d meet and she wouldn’t know how I felt about her and there would be some sort of awkward moment where a touch creates a reaction and I wanted her to be sensitive to it. To know that she needed to treat me every bit as carefully as she would a man interested in her affections, because I didn’t want those memories burned into my brain. By then, it wouldn’t have taken much to absolutely undo me. Punch me on the shoulder if you want, but don’t ever let your fingertips brush the back of my neck, capiche?

It seemed like a fair warning.

Over time, though, even that wasn’t enough. I cut off all contact several times, gutting her emotionally because she didn’t want to lose me as much as I didn’t want to lose her…. but she understood my reasons for it. I wanted more than she could give, and I still valued her as a friend, but I just could not even keep it together. I cried and moped every time we fought, sometimes for days, and Dana was on the receiving end of all of it, as was Aaron. They both stood by me because they knew how hard I was struggling to bring my attention back to Dana and our relationship, and it worked. We sat around the living room and talked incessantly about anything and everything. Argo faded to the back of my mind…………. and then I thought it was okay to start working on rebuilding friendship, and within 48 hours, I knew I was wrong.

48 hours to undo everything I’d been working on for weeks and weeks of self-reflection, self-abuse by deprivation from contact with other people, just isolating as far as I could get because I didn’t want anyone to know my pain. It was humiliating. Falling for straight girls was such a middle school thing to do. It doesn’t happen to adult women, right? Adult women have the capacity to see that people are wired the way they were wired, right?

The problem is that I saw it entirely too well. I knew that it was hopeless, but so was my relationship with Dana at that point. She’d begun hiding things because she was scared of my reaction. Big things. I cannot elaborate further, but it caused waves of nausea in me that I didn’t know how to handle. My reaction was to run away, safe in Argo, or so I thought.

We had an agreement at first that I could say anything I wanted. She did not tell me when that agreement changed, and she started seeing my words not as useless rumination but out and out threat. She cut me to the bone when I found out that she wasn’t playing anymore, I’d lost my safe space, and don’t contact her ever again. She told me to stop ruminating, but I couldn’t hear it. I needed my safe space more than air. I needed someone to listen to my struggle, to listen to my heartache, to listen to the feelings I shouldn’t have told anyone but God.

But now they’re all there…. all out in the open. All there for her to digest, dissect, castigate.

I never felt like a threat. I felt like I was in my small place, in the fetal position, hoping the anger would stop long enough so that she could hear me without judgment again. But we were way too far gone for that, and I should have known it. I ignored all the signs, big ones, because I thought our relationship was invincible. As it turns out, not so much. Her judgment was swift, to the point that I almost didn’t move to DC at all because I didn’t know what would be waiting for me when I got here. What originally felt like a triumphal homecoming turned into slinking off with my tail between my legs. I cried all the way to the airport, and my dad said, “you know, Leslie…. you don’t have to do this. Do you want to call it off?” I said, “no, because then I’d just be letting Argo scare me. This move was never about her, and staying home just says to the world that it was.” I got to Maryland and threw myself into my own health and wellness, just like I’d planned all along. It was then that I allowed myself to get angry. It takes two to tango, and even though I had to own my half in what went down, she didn’t own hers. She just walked away and let me sit in my wrongness so that I’d know how ashamed I should be. It worked. I’ve been crawling on my belly with God since I got here, asking forgiveness for my sins so that even if God doesn’t exist, the peace of Assurance would still take my heart and help me to feel whole again.

In the month since, I have sent Argo some of my prayers, because just like God, I don’t know if there’s someone on the receiving end of them, but I hope so. I do not want anything so much as I want peace. The fear of enmity is overwhelming, because when the fight left me and I could see reality for what it was, I came back into myself and realized that even if there was no answer, there might be peace from sending.

I have done the same with Dana, and she is just as angry. She has a right to be, and she has the right to tell me that too much has happened between us to ever work on our relationship again. But that doesn’t ease the shock in which I am just bathed. I held on to too much hope, thinking that our relationship was invincible.

As it turns out, not so much.

She just told me about an hour ago that this month has been better for her than the last several years. I feel the same way. This past month has been more peaceful than I’ve been the entire time we lived in Houston, and my entire meltdown in Portland.

So why would I want to get back together? To prove that all of the enormous emotional work that I’ve been doing has a point. That I am capable now as a wife because of all I’ve been through in terms of self-discovery. That I understand how the relationship with Argo undid us because of my past history, and how that cannot affect me in the same way because I don’t pay attention to my bruises. I pay attention to my invitations. I concentrate on the ways there are to say yes to life, and not the ways my mind has tricked me into saying no. I feel that there is more redemption in resurrection than there is in moving on, but I care about Dana’s feelings and ultimately, it doesn’t matter what I want. I have put my needs above hers since she stopped taking care of herself because I went into survival mode. I had to be strong for both of us, and in the end, I couldn’t do it.

I begged and pleaded with Dana’s parents to help me, and it took me losing my mind with rage in front of them before they really heard what I was saying to them. I didn’t want it to come to that, but it did. I congratulated myself too much for standing up and protecting her, and not the emotional damage I inflicted. But what do you do when you go to your wife’s mother pleading for help, and she says that she cannot give any more than she’s already giving and perhaps Dana should find a new mother figure?

What would you have done in that moment? I tried to be the valiant husband-type that protected her wife from all enemies, foreign and domestic.

As it turns out, not so much.

I bought the first book with my Christmas Amazon money from last year, so like the old saying goes, “the first one’s free.” I have sent two tweets today about the second book, “Dragonfly in Amber.” Here they are:

Tweet One:

I just finished book one of #Outlander, and a reviewer on the 2nd gave away a MAJOR SPOILER. It's a good surprise, but still. Get bent.

— Leslie D. Lanagan (@ldlanagan) May 22, 2015

Tweet Two:

I finished #Outlander and said I needed a break. Then, my Kindle popped up with an ad that said, "buy the next book for $4.99?" Damnit.

— Leslie D. Lanagan (@ldlanagan) May 22, 2015

It’s like having a dealer in your living room. It’s a good thing it’s books. There are worse things on which I could spend money, I am sure. But at the same time, I was going to be PRINCIPLED, DAMNIT.

And now I’m not.

I’ve finished Outlander, and thinking about moving on to the next book in the series….. but not yet. I need time to breathe. The reading was heavy, and the emotional response even more so. Throughout the entire novel, I saw myself as Claire, the young battlefield nurse that in ancient Scotland is elevated to a physician. She waffles between love for Frank and love for Jamie, but also, how that love defines her, as well.

It weighs on her, thinking that she has betrayed one husband for another, much like I have told you that I did (“they both needed me. They both wanted me. Which one was more important? The gay one or the straight one?”). Radiohead’s Karma Police is playing in my ear as I write this. I didn’t know that they never should have been competing for the same space. How could I know that? Knowing appropriate boundaries with love is a future that didn’t happen. I was wrested away from it before I even knew the definitions of “friend” and “lover,” making them one and the same in my mind for far longer than anyone (especially me) should have had to tolerate.

If there is any justice in the world, it’s that the friends Diane has done this to in ADDITION to me also read this web site, I’m sure with pain and baited breath. You see, because I know them. I have worn their scars on my skin. I have seen the effects of her disaster, and the ripples it has caused in my own pond. I am not close to them now, but I was then. I have seen more than one woman lose her shit over the manipulations Diane has thrown in her direction.

Why I thought I could rise above it is beyond me. The way out was not above, but through. I had to feel an enormous amount of pain at the destruction I’d caused before I could finally say, “enough.” I will paraphrase Elizabeth Gilbert, that she doesn’t know of any story of self-redemption that doesn’t start with someone getting tired of their own bullshit. And readers, I am exhausted.

In the past, I haven’t made new friends so much as seduced them into it. Because what could I possibly have to offer anyone but, well? You get the picture. I played with darkness until I realized it was leaving me nothing but a bunch of friends who alternately walked off in disgust or used me until I had no more to give, regardless of what they asked.

Argo is the first friend I’ve ever had that instead of walking away, she whipped my ass. I couldn’t sit for weeks (this is just a metaphor, thankfully). Even while she was doing it, I didn’t think it was undeserved. I was just too proud. I came back at her, claws extended, when what I should have done was thank her for saving me. I looked at everything in a different light after that. Tendrils of new life began to extend from me in a way that I’d never experienced, as if some of my dead places resurrected themselves at her words. I began to see what she meant with her clean, white, pure love, and realized it had always been inside me. I’d just never used it.

But the thing about friendship that broke with Argo is equality. She’s had more time on this planet than I have, and she pulled rank in a big way……. when in friendship, you whip each other‘s asses when necessary. She could not submit to me anymore. She could not listen and hear that I might have a point. Whatever I thought was wrong, sick, and in no way indicative of the friendship where I constantly heard, “you’re right! I never thought of that.” You cannot get a person to hear you when they are convinced that you are wrong before you speak.

I think of it this way. Therapists who work with couples in large age-gap relationships solve this problem by getting the older partner to lay in the younger one’s lap…. to be comforted, parented by them in order to create equality. I don’t know how that extrapolates into friendship, but I do know that the analogy is apt….. maybe not in terms of age, but definitely in terms of balance of power. And, of course, my 25 years with Diane in the same trap convinced me that even when Argo did lay her head in my lap, I wasn’t worthy of it. I remember thinking every time she messaged me out of the blue that it was weird, against the natural order of things. Why would someone seek me out? Why would anyone value my words?

I was such a fool, because she was acting like a true friend, and I dinna ken.

Today I walked the mile and a half to 7-11 and McDonald’s, in that order. I needed to get more snacks, because I don’t tend to eat meals, especially when I’m engrossed in a book (Outlander, Book I). I got yogurt pretzels, banana chips, gummy cola bottles, sour Skittles, sour gummy worms, and debated on buying, like, six more things. Sour Skittles have become a sickness since Prianka and Elena had them at their wedding. I called Prianka today and told her I was almost ready for an intervention.

I don’t normally read fiction. It took me the longest time to get into Outlander because, like I said previously, the story didn’t grab me at first……. and because every time I read someone else’s fiction, I tend to “lose my voice.” I don’t ever want to sound like the last writer I read. It is most noticeable when I am reading David Sedaris. I don’t plagiarize. It’s just style. I want you to know me for me, not someone who’s taking a style and trying to make my words fit into it. I think of it like copying Old Masters. I’d rather invent something than learn by rote, if that makes any sense at all.

I went through a very long Barbara Kingsolver phase, and I am just now recovering from two decades of Wally Lamb, because “She’s Come Undone” is kind of about me. It’s not, really, but I did get interviewed by Olivia, the executive producer of The Oprah Winfrey Show, for 45 minutes as I explained to them why I would be perfect for that month’s Book Club show, a follow-up to the essay I’d written. I wish I could tell you what the essay was about- hell, I wish I could remember the book’s plot. I just remember thinking that for a man, Wally Lamb did a bang-up job writing for women.

It’s not the words that stayed with me. It was their order. If I start to sound like Diana Gabaldon, please stop me. It means the pod people have come to get me and I am stuck in the way she writes and not the way I do.

But I digress.

I got my junk food and then went to get more junk food- a burger and fries from Mickey D’s, the magnum opus of junk food, in fact. By that time, I was stuffed and in no mood to walk back home. I, of course, requested Uber. Rudrick came to pick me up in less than five minutes.

College kid who loves sports. Nigerian. I asked him what sport he liked, knowing the answer before he said it…… soccer….. of course. I told him he looked like a forward. He did- long, lean, fit. When he said he was, I said, “because you’re a forward, does that mean you’re kind of a jerk?” He laughed so hard he nearly ran off the road. He said, “no- it means I am smarter. I am the one that has to get the ball in the net.” I said, “THAT IS SUCH A FORWARD THING TO SAY. You know your wingbacks and your fullbacks have to get the ball TO YOU first….” He laughed again. It’s true. Forwards are akin to sopranos, trumpet players, and Terrell Owens.

I got to blush for a second in 18-year-old love, because my first girlfriend was goalkeeper and she taught me how to flip everyone on the team shit. It has paid off handsomely, I want you to know. It felt great to laugh, because before I decided to venture out, I hadn’t left the house in two days. Too consumed with learning everything I can about Linux and Lollybroch, in that order.

Remember when I said it was violent and rape-y? Well, one of the male characters was just raped and it was even harder for me than the women, because male on male rape is generally about humiliating your enemy, especially in that time and place. You don’t just hurt them. You destroy them from the inside out.

Unfortunately for me, it reminded me of all the times Argo and I went at each other’s throats, and how many times we emotionally destroyed each other from the inside out. My mind went to the terrible things I said…. and not so much the ones she did, because it hurt so much more to know that I hurt her than it did to know she hurt me just as much. I’m supposed to be the one filled with the light of Christ, and I emotionally bombed her into next week. It doesn’t matter that it felt justified at the time. In no universe do I ever want to lose my temper like that again.

Way to use that light, Leslie. We’re all so proud.

Why did those feelings come up for me right then? Because the character talked about how there’s a still small space that you only show to people you love, and that place was destroyed in him. DAMNIT if that wasn’t a mirror image of some of the things we’ve said to each other. I crumpled, sick to my stomach and wishing for peace. It won’t come easily, because I of ALL people know how much words can hurt.

For me, being the forward who gets the ball in the net is learning to control my tongue even as my temper flares. Because that’s a damn goal.

My dad took this picture of me when he came to visit a few weeks ago. I am sitting on my beloved porch with my laptop and a cup of tea, as I do every morning… or at least, every morning since I’ve been here.

It’s been a month already. The time has flown by, because I have kept myself moving. I do my best thinking while mobile, so I often type to my heart’s content and then gather my things to take off for the city. They are, in no particular order of importance:

• my laptop
• my phone
• my keyboard
• my mouse
• my Kindle
• charging cables for my iPhone and Kindle
• my wallet, complete with Metro SmartCard
• my glasses case
• my keys

If I lose my backpack, my entire life goes with it. I guard it judiciously, because even though there is nothing in there that can’t be replaced, it’s my stuff. I am used to my keyboard; my fingers fly across the keys as if only gravity could stop them, and doesn’t.

I thought you might want a picture of where I live and where I do my best writing, because it means something to have a setting. There’s a bird feeder behind me, and birds constantly talk throughout the day. I have learned to tune them out………… sort of.

I spent yesterday by the phone, waiting for instructions on what to do next re: my possible job opportunity. No one called, but I used the time wisely. I spent it reading Outlander (Book I) and watching the training videos available on the LinuxJobber web site. Since I ordered their book, I have access to a wealth of information. It is not lost on me that whether I get the job with them or not, I have upped my education level considerably just in the time I’ve been watching. I now know how to put together a LAMP server (Linux, Apache, MySQL, and either Perl or Python). I also know how to create a server Kickstarter file… basically, the best analogy for that is a Cascading Style Sheet. If you’re familiar with creating web sites, a CSS is where you put all the information regarding formatting. For instance, if you just code each page individually, you’ll have to update them individually every time you want to change a paragraph margin or a font family. With a CSS, you can change those things on every page at once.

You can extrapolate (EXTRAPOLATE! EXTRAPOLATE!) that into a Kickstarter file. You put everything you need into it in terms of server settings, so that if you have 15 servers to set up, one file can be pushed across all of them. It saves a considerable amount of time, as you can imagine. So, regardless of whether I am qualified to take this job, I am getting more comfortable with applying for more. This is seriously the best present I could have bought for myself, and you gave it to me. I bought the books and web site access with the money I’ve earned from this blog.

I am using that money to further myself, both career-wise and as a person. Your money goes toward visions for myself that take money to realize. I cannot ask you to provide money for St. James… not yet. I want to get the 501c3 in place before you do that so it’s a tax write-off, just like every other religious organization/church/charity. Far be it from me to scare you away from donating if you don’t care about the tax write-off, but I do want to operate within the constraints of the law- better for me, and better for you.

Anything that comes through the web site now is continuing education for me- any kind of tuition, book, entrance fee, etc. If you make a donation, I want to do something extraordinary with it so that you see the changes in me and how much those donations improve my quality of life… mostly emotionally, because every time I see “Paypal” in my inbox, I know that my words have meant something to someone. I have made someone’s life better by displaying what it means to be a human. I am so flawed, and I show it. I am so perfect, and I show it. Those two things are not mutually exclusive. Every human has the capability for the disaster and the divine….. the holy and the moly, if you will.

If the donations get large enough, so with the education. I will go back to school and finish my degree in Political Science so that I can move on to graduate school. I want to go to seminary, and as fast as possible, because I know what I can do with such a degree. I will move mountains. Easily. If you think I am kidding, please know that I am every bit as capable as the ministers who have come before me, both in my family and among my friends. I am the Type A who was convinced at a very early age that her opinions didn’t matter.

Now, that is not a problem.

I believe in myself more than I ever have before, because my core was changed to accommodate it. The change did not happen overnight. I dragged myself kicking and screaming into wholeness, as you’ll read about extensively if you are just now getting on board and going back and reading my archives. Speaking of which, I know some of you are, and it pleases me to no end. Yesterday, because I tagged Outlander on WordPress, Facebook, and Twitter, I gained about 100 visitors, as opposed to views. The difference is that viewers read one entry. Visitors read many. So thank you, Outlander fans, for reading the thing that brought you here and continuing to read as if I am interesting. 😛

I wrote the other day about trying to create a True North out of a compass that had been rubbed by a magnet too many times. It is interesting how I have latched onto the moral code presented in Outlander, because in some sense, I understand it. The part that had me on the ground yesterday afternoon was Jamie having to whip Claire so that she would remember the punishment and not endanger the men again, and doing it within earshot of them all so that they would remember her punishment, too.

In so many ways, I do that to myself on this web site. I put my sins and my punishments in print not because I need you to see them (I do, to hold me accountable), but because I need that remembrance more than you ever will.

Do you think it is comfortable for me to go back and reread the things I have experienced since this web site started? Do you think it is easy?

It is not.

I showed my abused nature, my willingness to submit to hospitalization for it, my openness in admitting that my relationship broke with Dana because of my own inattention to her as it passed plainly to someone else…………… attention that was wanted and unwanted all at the same time. It would have been fine if I had not crossed the line from love to “in love,” but that was not something I could easily control. I was abused, and because of it, emotions only went forward. There was nothing in me that could say “abort” or “back off.” It was a watershed moment in realizing that I was not in love with a person, just an idea. It is something that should have appeared to me as it was happening, and it did.

However, being the jackass that I am, I ignored it and kept on walking in the darkness, because I was going to win one way or another. I do not mean that I would have been successful in making Argo feel everything I did. That’s just bullshit and I know it. You can’t make anyone feel anything at any time. I just thought that the easier way was across the river rather than backing off and finding a bridge. It got a lot worse before it got better, and I own that the reason it did was because I could not find a way to separate out how I felt about her from the way she felt about me.

I cannot speak to how she feels now; then, it was intense. It was deeper than any relationship I’d ever had in my life. I wanted more than she could give because I’d been wired to think that way from an early age. It made her react sharply- pull away because she could see the dog I was walking and didn’t want to follow. I reacted…………………… poorly. I knew I was wrong; there was something in me that had broken long before she walked into my life, and it wasn’t going to get better with a snap of her fingers. I had to learn how to have friends, real ones, before I could become worthy of the kind of love she wanted to give me.

That moment did not come with Argo, and might not ever, but at the same time, her lessons in love were not lost.

The time and date will not come to me, but I remember sitting in Aaron’s arms, squalling my eyeballs out and telling him that because of him, I had learned how to treat my friends. That his love sustained me in all the right ways, because it taught me how deep friendship could be without ever crossing any romantic lines. That, in some sense, his love healed me from it…. “it” being shorthand for the mark that Diane left on me that says romantic love and friendship are the same thing. I cannot think back to that moment without tears streaming down my face, because I realized that it never would have happened if Argo hadn’t loved me first.

I am comforted by the fact that it’s not like this situation has never happened to anyone before. Plenty of people fall in love where it cannot be reciprocated, same gender or opposite. It just so happened that the way I felt about Argo was so easy, so unencumbered, that it didn’t feel like a sin right up until it was. It was all fun and games until I shot my eye out, kid.

And on that note, I need to get back to Outlander. According to my Kindle, I still have six hours left.

As I have mentioned on Facebook, my roommate Samantha has decided to accept all applications to date me, and will pass on the candidates that make it through her screening process. This is because I am Southern, and she is not. Leave that up to yourselves to decide whether that’s a compliment or not, because I’m not saying she’s not nice. I am saying that she is not shy about asking things that would make a Southern woman crawl under the table and die. For instance, she will want to know your annual salary and require proof of income.

Do not show up for the interview unprepared. Pretty sure she’s going to want a W-2.

I do not know how I feel about all of this, but I’m willing to go with it. I think her natural reaction is to want to marry me off to someone rich, because I’ve told her that I’m a writer. In fact, I think the first time I told her I was a writer, she told me everyone in the neighborhood with a government pension.

So there’s that.

I’m sitting in the grass outside the Takoma Park Metro, trying to decide if I actually want to go anywhere, or if I just want to get back on the bus and go home. It’s a down day for me. I don’t feel particularly sad about anything, I just don’t have a whole lot of energy, either. It is as if taking the bus to the Metro has already used up my spoons, even though of course I had more plans than this. I wanted to go to a coffee/tea shop and think rather than right here, where I am, because there are bugs on my laptop now. There are also bugs crawling on my leg, but that’s ok. They’re not the sting-y, bite-y kind. They’re just curious.

So am I, really. Just curious about everything. Learned today that POTUS has a Twitter account and asked him if it wouldn’t be easier for us to just meet for lunch, because OH GOD SERIOUSLY? REALLY? You want to be on TWITTER? What the hell FOR? Barack Obama and I both are way too old for Twitter, and yet, there we are. (@ldlanagan and @POTUS, btw) I think the reason I’m too old for Twitter is that I can barely make my point in 800 characters, much less under 200. I’m like an old man trying to navigate my way around teenage bullshit, mostly because I cannot subjugate myself into abbreviating “you.”

I like the Outlander tag because I started reading the first book a year and a half ago, hated it, and have picked it up and put it down ten times since. I do not get the appeal of Outlander. The writing didn’t grab me, and I still have no idea what happened to Frank, or as I call him, “Mr. Exposition.” I mean, seriously. I am sure he will reappear at some point, but that will probably tell you how little I’ve read. I keep battling through because I have friends who like it that insist it will get better. If by better you mean violent and rape-y, well then, I suppose they’re right. I also spent a relatively lot of money for one book, and I feel like I owe it to myself to at least finish it. At some point, I will probably concede defeat. It’s just not my jam. However, now Outlander is a TV series, and I am hoping that it can shed some light on the book so that it will re-spark my interest in finishing the story….. keeping in mind that I do not actually watch the TV series, because I do not actually watch TV. I will occasionally watch Netflix, but I don’t sit down and watch anything at the time it airs. I like the Outlander tag because I can find out what happens in a bite-sized morsel. I love spoilers, because it allows me to see what happens without putting in any actual effort.

It’s the same with all my other TV tags. I haven’t watched Doctor Who in ages (forgive me, I know not what I do). I stopped watching Scandal so that I could save it to watch with Dana, then we broke up and I just didn’t want to go back and watch it on my own…. yet…. and then Jake Ballard died and I cried like I lost a family member. It wasn’t pretty. So I keep up with the characters on Twitter for that show, too.

And this is where my mind goes when I’m looking up at the sky- all the things I do differently now that I have downsized so much. I’m not taking care of anyone or anything, which leaves me a lot of time to focus on myself. One of the ways I am so different is that pulling away from media has left me a lot more room to handle interaction with real people…. up and to a point.

I spent all day Saturday at the wedding, and then there was a feast at our house on Sunday….. which I missed because I went upstairs to take a nap and didn’t come back down until the next morning. Hayat left me food in the refrigerator, which I scarfed up cold for breakfast (ZOMG stuffed grape leaves om nom nom). What I have learned from this experience is that I cannot go to a wedding all day and go to a party the next day. I think the nap was my body’s way of saying “there are going to be a whole bunch of people here you don’t know.” Avoiding social interaction by “accidentally” falling asleep. The reason I think it was subconscious is that I fully intended to go to the party. Fully intended to be an amazing hostess.

That is when my body said, “not so fast, Leslie.”

The clouds are still rolling- I think it’s getting windy and possibly going to rain. I need to make a decision. It’s just the the ellipsis is so large, and so many things could fit in it.

In the post about Prianka’s wedding, I thought that both brothers Nandy had been born in the US. Turns out, Avik was also born in Calcutta. Those responsible for the error have been sacked.

My job interview went very well last night, and I think I will hear something soon. The pay is beyond my wildest dreams, doing something I want to do (and have been doing), anyway- bring Linux to the masses. Linus Torvalds has long been my favorite Finlandian (not sure that’s what they’re called, but doing it anyway because Sibelius), and the chance to give him the pleasure of furthering his life’s work pleases me. I started using Linux when I made friends with Luke in the middle of a Kinko’s in 1997. Seriously, we were both working on our own things at the computers there, struck up a friendship, and together with our friend Joe started a Linux server called Darkstar. My web site lived on Darkstar for years, and I will never forget learning Red Hat 5, Caldera, and Mandrake. It prepared me to be a Rock Star now, because I know how to do something that most people do not- sit down at any operating system in the world and make it work.

I am partial to Linux because I do most everything with the command line, but in terms of the graphical user interface (GUI), I am operating system agnostic. What I have learned over the years is that when you double-click the Firefox icon, Firefox comes up on anything. It’s just not worth it to argue, especially since we are going toward cloud computing and soon, I believe, operating systems will stem from web-based applications instead of storing data on your local computer. For instance, I have a 250 GB hard drive on my laptop, and I have used maybe a quarter of it for data. Everything I do is either a Google Doc or a blog entry. That way, if my computer gets hosed, I don’t have to do anything to it except reinstall linux. I need to stop doing that and get down into the details on how to troubleshoot, but I do that on OTHER people’s computers. On my own, just blow it away. I can hang.

Speaking of which, I formatted my computer this morning so that I could switch from Ubuntu to Fedora (the open source version of Red Hat) because the company I want to work for is using both Red Hat and CentOS. I haven’t been disappointed, mostly because the “disable touchpad while writing” feature actually works. The command line is a little different, but the applications are the same. I am still playing open source Quake as often as I have time. It calms my anger a lot to take out aggression on animated pictures of people, some of whom look like spiders, ghosts, aliens, etc. You can shoot a character and they go down, but if you shoot them a second time their guts explode everywhere. It’s very satisfying, because I don’t think I could shoot an actual person, but a picture of one is another thing entirely.

It’s like that scene in “Modern Family” where Claire disappears and her family has no idea that she’s actually at the gun range. Going to the gun range is fun for me, too, especially since the first time Volfe took me, I found an old Dell computer that somebody left there and literally lost my everloving mind shooting the shit out of it. A bullet for every user who’s asked if their computer has to be on for me to fix it…………. yes, that’s happened.

I have a ton of stories like that.

One time a user called and said that his computer wasn’t working and he’d accidentally plugged the power strip into itself instead of into the wall. It took me 35 minutes to figure out that one.

Another time a lady called me and said, “I heard that there’s a network outage on campus, and my monitor is blinking on and off. Are those two things related?” I shook my head and said, “ma’am, I hope not.”

The thing that really makes me want to play Quake and shoot people repeatedly is when people call me from the car on their way somewhere and need me to fix their what the fuck ever application. If you are not actually sitting at said computer, how am I supposed to help you? You’d think that people would know this, but they don’t.

With my family and friends, I generally create Logmein.com accounts so that they don’t have to explain to me what’s wrong. It’s just easier that way. I can see it faster than a non-technical person can explain it to me in words so non-standard that I have to scratch my head and try to figure out the question they MEANT to ask.

I am a voracious BOFH reader because he does all the things we WANT to do to you and CAN’T. Here is my favorite excerpt:

Another user rings.

“I need more space” he says

“Well, why not move to Texas?” I ask

“No, on my account, stupid.”

Stupid? Uh-Oh.

“I’m terribly sorry” I say, in a polite manner equal to that of Jimmy Stewart in a Weekend Family Matinee Feature “I didn’t quite catch that. What was it that you said?”

I smell the fear coming down the line at me, but it’s too late, he’s a goner and he knows it.

“Um, I said what I wanted was more space on my account, *please*”

“Sure, hang on.”

I hear him gasp his relief even though he’d covered the mouthpeice.

“There, you’ve got *plenty* of space now!”

“How much have I got?” he simps.

Now this *REALLY* *PISSES* *ME* *OFF*! Not only do they want me to give them extra space, they want to check it, then correct me if I don’t give them enough! They should be happy with what I give them *and that’s it*!

Back into Jimmy Stewart mode.

“Well, let’s see, you have 4 Meg available.”

“Wow! Eight Meg in total, thanks!” he says, pleased with his bargaining power.

“No” I interrupt, savouring this like a fine red at room temperature, with steak, extra rare, to follow; “4 Meg in total..”

“Huh? I’d used 4 Meg already, How could I have 4 Meg Available?”

I say nothing. It’ll come to him.

Copyright of Simon Travaglia

Reading Simon is a guilty pleasure- if you are in any way connected to an Internet Help Desk, don’t start reading this unless you’ve got some interrupted time. The first time I stumbled upon the archive, I didn’t move for eight hours, and I needed to go to bed like, yesterday o’clock.

On the whole, though, I enjoy working with users. There are just those difficult people just like the ones waiters want to strangle. No, I’m sorry I can’t log into your computer and help you while you’re at Target.

In this job, the students will be in a lab, so I won’t have to worry about that part of it. I will also be making videos for the students to watch, which will be great fun. I want to up the production values, and use a desktop recording tool so that the students can see what I’m doing in real time. It would also be neat to teach over the web with Hangouts, which is the best collaborative tool I’ve found for demos, sharing documents, etc. The best part is that it’s operating system agnostic, too. Hangouts comes in every flavor, including iPhone and Android.

Your Love is My Drug just came on Spotify. Time to shake my ass.

The weather is beautiful, and the birds are singing and chattering eagerly with the busyness of “I got shit to DO.” I don’t know my birds, but there’s a red cardinal and some black thingmes all going at the bird feeder like teenage girls at a Taylor Swift concert….. they actually sound like them, too. I am beginning to understand why British men call women “birds.” I don’t mean it in a pejorative way because I am a woman, but the chatter is similar. Very similar. I am convinced that the reason men don’t listen to women is the lack of bass in their voices, so I try to use my cigar and vodka range whenever possible. I have found that talking to a man is similar to talking to a dog…. Also not meant pejoratively. It’s just that in order to train a dog or get a man to listen to you, you have to have a certain amount of power to your inflection, and to both dogs and men, that comes with reaching deep down into your range. Don’t believe me? Try it. I promise you will get results. Stop being delicate when you say things and men will startle because they were not aware you could mean business.

So we’ve gone from birds to women to dogs to men. I think we’re off to a good start, don’t you?

I don’t know what to write about today, but I know I have to, so pack a lunch, son. It’s going to be a while before I hit brilliance. Speaking of which, I thought I was very clever yesterday with aforementioned asshat conservative who, halfway through the conversation, said “I didn’t know you were gay.” I said, “I’ll BET.” But that’s not the clever part. He said, “are you a man?” I said, “I am more of a man than you’ll ever be and more of a woman than you’ll ever get.” I am not sure it did me any favors, but I thought it was a good line nonetheless. You can steal it from me, it’s ok.

Because of my relationship with Argo, I reveled in gender not being an issue. I stopped seeing it at all. I stopped caring whether people wondered if I was a man or a woman, because the answer is “yes.” Everyone mentally has both sides inside them. I choose to acknowledge that truth. I started seeing gender bending as hot, because when it hit my brain, it hit my wardrobe as well. I mean, why wouldn’t it? I have written extensively about how much more men’s clothes appeal to me than women’s, because I do not want to look like I am for sale, a bird preening to get attention from the opposite, or the same, sex. I do not want to accentuate my rack in order to get out of tickets or get the “cute girl” discount at Starbucks. Those things are nice, sure, but it’s a system that needs to go the fuck away. There is so much pleasure for me when the people I CHOOSE to let see my body do. One girlfriend in particular made my year when she said, “you got the boobs I always wanted.” Beat that with a stick.

My male side comes out in that protector/tiger mode, and I think it does for a lot of women. Hell hath no fury like me when one of my friends is in danger. The thing is, though, most issues don’t need that kind of fury and I put it out there, anyway. I would have been a horrible soldier, because my answer would never have been to use my head. It would have been “blow ’em up. It’s easier to apologize than ask permission.” And I wouldn’t have done it for me. I would have done it to protect everyone else and hope I got included. The phrase “hothead jackass with a God complex” that I wrote yesterday is still ringing in my ears because it describes me so perfectly… except I’m not out for glory. I’m out to be “the guy.” The leader. The one you want in the front… getting there because everyone wants me to be there and not because I needed the clap on the back.

I read a thing yesterday that cracked my shit up because it was so accurate…. That hell for an INFJ is being in a room full of people where they’re sharing their ideas and no one thinks they’re interesting. The “oh my God, that’s so true” is strong in this one.

I may get a chance to be a leader yet. I took a break from writing to answer a phone call (LOOK AT ME! I ANSWERED THE PHONE!) and it turned out to be the guy from LinuxJobber. He asked me some questions and said, “clearly you know what you’re doing. Let me have someone call you back.” The funniest part was that we ended up having an interview, but he originally called to tell me that my book had shipped.

I’m good at this game. 🙂