One of the reasons that I need help so badly is that a whole bunch of people in my life are telling me that they feel manipulated by me. Even though my books on verbal and emotional abuse warned me extensively that this would happen, I am wrecked by it because I am already begging to be heard as I tell people that I need them to safety net me until I’m stable again and they are reacting as if I am creating an elaborate ploy. Maybe this is because they thought that exorcising all my demons was the end of my abuse.

Let’s clear that up right now. There is no end to abuse. None. It is ever present. It runs through my mind every second of every day. When I was on my way to lunch with my dad and stepmom, I said “I need to know two things. The first is whether either of you have ever been sexually abused or whether there’s been any physical violence in either of your families or anything that would create a tape similar to mine.”

He said no. This was unfortunate- not that I wish abuse upon anyone, just that they cannot even begin to have a frame of reference for the kind of beat-down I am. My worthlessness loop says “shoot yourself in the head” most days, because there are few where I really believe that people want me here and I am not a burden to them.

In fact, one of the most brilliant minds in the country is tired of my shit, and it is only that I think so that I will take her crap at all. Of course, it is Argo. My Argo. My favorite line about Argo, I wrote a year or so ago and I still love it…. that “I sleep deeply in the belly of the ship, where I know my passage is safe.” One of these days, I hope I am strong enough to be Jason, and not a deckhand in training. This is because often, the setting is the main character in the book. For instance, what would The Bible be without the Negev, Lake Kinneret , Mt. Tabor, etc? What would the Potter Chronicles be without Hogwarts itself? Actually, as an aside, Rowling is brilliant because she literally wove the story into the walls with the paintings and ghosts and moving pictures and shit.

Back to you, Bob! Let’s go to the phones.

The research says I’m right on target. I don’t act like I did while I was being abused, so my new personality isn’t “real.” One of my friends is treating me like my entire personality is a schism, that all of the light I emit is a show and all the darkness is who I “really am.” It is devastating to hear so repeatedly that I am a monster. It shows on people’s faces. They don’t have to say it. My stepmother’s words to me when I came to her for help and told her how broken I was, she told me that she was tired of being manipulated by me and turned me away. I will apologize right now to my dad that I am publishing this, but it is an abuse I will not tolerate ever again. You do not get to punch me while I’m on my knees. Not three times. She’s already done it twice. The first was after reading my Facebook post, she called Dana and asked her what was going on, and didn’t bother to call me at all. When we met for lunch, I thought it was going to be a shoot-the-shit kind of afternoon and instead, Angela showed up itching for a fight and beat me into the ground emotionally at a time in my life when I couldn’t defend myself, anyway.

This loss is devastating, because this relationship is broken. Maybe it will come back together, but not any time soon. It was not cemented in my mind that Houston was not healthy for me until that lunch. It was that lunch that I realized that our physical relationship had been broken for so long that when I came back into their lives on a day-to-day basis, we didn’t really function that well. There was a lot of cake and icing, though.

I am not unsympathetic to other people’s problems. However, I don’t feel forced to care about them anymore. This is because I have been caring too much about other people and neglecting myself since I was 12. There have been times in my life where I was living well and still looked damn near homeless because I’d already given so much of my emotional strength away, I couldn’t get myself to function.

Bending the spoon came when I realized that if I didn’t start having self preservation, one of two things was going to happen. The first is that I was going to die. Literally. I cannot stress this enough. The first time I told people I was going to kill myself, I was 13. It hasn’t stopped. I never get close enough to really make plans and go through with it, but I did the first time. I wrote Diane a letter detailing what I had done to myself. I’d drunk kitchen chemicals from under the sink. She said that I was lying to her. I agreed. It wasn’t worth it to tell her that I actually know what Drain-o tastes like…. or maybe it was Pine Sol. It’s been too many years now, I don’t remember the brand. What I do remember is that it had a Mr. Yuk sticker on it, and that’s how I knew it would get the job done.

Every gay kid has this story. EVERY GODDAMN ONE. Just for different reasons. Sometimes, it’s their parents that unwittingly encourage suicide because they (intentionally or not) treat their children as second-class citizens. It doesn’t have to be blatant. I’m from the South, bitch. I can tell you to go fuck yourself in several extremely polite ways. Argo would tell me to start using them (shut it, we’ll talk about it later).

Again, dad. I’m sorry. I’m not doing this because she deserves it. I’m doing this because I do. I will not let her get away with injuring me to this level and not allow myself to put it in the pensieve so that 20 years from now, I will still know what REALLY happened that day. She may not have meant to come across this way, but her words disowned me and my nothing box ached with grief until I was offered the chance to just leave. I do not know if said chance will materialize, but I know that I am out of here.

I didn’t burn any bridges. They were on fire long before this.

 

Paul Gilmartin reminded me to write some, because I have had so many awfulsome moments this week:

1. I love how Argo has a five ton personality and a rat dog. In my head, she is Stan Smith on American Dad from the episode where he joins the Log Cabin Republicans without knowing they’re gay. She is going to whip my ass later for insinuating that she’s….. Republican.
2. I love the sound of Dana watching TV while I sit in my office and write.
3. I love hugs from Aaron that last a second longer because he knows how much pain I’m in.
4. I love being able to tell the Internet that I am crazy again and I need help and the response is even bigger now, not because the problem is bigger, but because there are more people to hear me.
5. I love that just in writing this entry, I have hit reload five times on the Stan Smith video.
6. I love that I am strong enough to take this much criticism because I have been learning how to take criticism and use it to my advantage for two years. People angry with me over the divorce express their anger and I get to say, “I’m sorry for your pain, but this is not about you and therefore, my pain is more important to me than yours.”
7. I love that I know within myself not to make it about everyone, because when I do, I try to save everyone but me.
8. I love that with this breakup, I see more self-preservation in either of us than I have seen in years. We are setting healthy boundaries because we saw how frayed the unhealthy ones had become but unfortunately, it was too late.
9. I love that I am allowed to say as much as I want that I am absolutely in love with Dana and she is not freaked out to hear it. Walking away in the peace of “I love you and maybe we will meet again and maybe we won’t” seems infinitely healthier than either of us being out on our asses.
10. I love that I got to make the joke with Brooke (new friend who is also a lesbian) that I’m glad Meg (Dana’s ex) and I are still friends because we know that in the lesbian community, that’s what we do. It takes the entire line of exes to train our beloved for other people not to hate them in the same ways we do.
11. I love that lesbian breakups only come in two types….. amicable parting with lots of hugs and cheek kisses, AND ABSOLUTE THERMONUCLEAR WAR ARE YOU KIDDING ME SOUND THE ALARMS MAY DAY MAY DAY WE ARE GOING DOWN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
12. I love that even when you have thermonuclear war with an ex-girlfriend there’s still something that she thinks is cute about you….. she just won’t tell you. But she will spend the rest of her life telling other people.
13. I love that when needed, Daddies jump in.
14. I love that I can tell myself the absolute truth. I am in the space where no one loves me, not even me, but we still have to live together.
15. I love the way I dress now. I look like a shorter version of Ellen. I have never had a crush on her, I’ve just always wanted to be like her. The moment when my next door neighbor told me that I looked like her, I went a little nutso inside. #missionaccomplished
16. I love the daydream I had this morning. I am a soprano. My friend Giles is a baritone. The daydream was singing together at National Cathedral…. not as a gig. Standing behind the rest of our friends in the congregation so that we can show off our chops.
17. I love that I am quiet and shy and depressed and isolating and all that stuff, but I will still take the high B flat at the end of the Star Spangled Banner occasionally so that everyone will turn and look at me.
18. I love that I never do it if I’m alone. Just because I can doesn’t mean I will. But if there is someone I’m trying to impress, I’m not trying to get attention. I’m waiting for the moment. The moment when they see how others light up when notes like that are hit. I don’t care about the people I don’t know. I want my date, my friend, my whomever to be the one standing there paying more attention than I am to the people around me. It makes me feel amazing when Dana says, “did you see all those people looking at you? You were AMAZING! HOW DO YOU DO THAT?”

I love it.

Facebook post announcing our divorce:

Dana and I were talking about getting married and all of the issues that we’d been struggling with over the last few years came to a boiling point in a way that you’d think we’d be able to fix by now…. and yet, not so much. It is with great sadness and heavy hearts that we announce our separation, and hope that you will continue to pray for both of us as we go on with our lives. Neither one of us could have undergone the type transformations we have over the last few years and still be the same people we were when we started. We’d hoped to have a long marriage with lots of kids and grandkids, but had to put that to a halt when we realized that we weren’t even healthy enough to be in relationship right now. I know you’ll all have a metric fuck tonne of questions, but keep them to yourselves. All you need to know is that Dana and I love each other, nothing will ever change that, but we have reached a fork in the road. It doesn’t mean that our roads are separated permanently, but it does mean that they are separate right now. We each have mental health issues of our own that need addressing. We need time to be us. We need time to find out who we are. If that takes us ultimately back toward each other, great. But no one can plan that far ahead, least of all a couple with two ADHD halves. Please respect that I am absolutely laying as much on the line as I can without breaking confidentiality, and that if there was anything more that either one of us could have done, we would have done it by now. For those of you who expected a phone call, we do not owe it to you. We do not want anyone to feel like they are more important because “they knew first.” It would also not be me if I didn’t end with two things. The first is that we go out with joy. This is not an end, but two new beginnings. The second is that may God forgive us for all the things we have done, and all the things we have left undone.

It’s over. It’s really, really over. Dana and her family are blocked on Facebook, that’s how done we are… but this is not an angry, aggressive move. I do not want to see all the support that pours out for Dana, because I need to be reaching to my own people and not hers. We love each other very much, but it is still not good for both of us to be pouring our stories into the same people, particularly each other.

When you go through a divorce, you learn quickly who your friends are. I mean, the ones that will rush in. The ones who are in proximity. I even mean this with Facebook friends, because miles do not equal distance. There was a period of about six months that Argo and I went barely an hour without flipping each other some sort of shit… sometimes it’s about God (and Not God). Sometimes, it’s about each other’s jobs (Edna’s bringin’ cookies), and sometimes it’s about rap (Andre be praised).

Last night, it was my friends Robert, Stacy, and Ramsey that rescued me. We did nothing. We watched Alexander and the Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Day and Steve Carell knocked me on my butt with the funny. There was very little post-mortem and a whole lot of “let’s just do nothing and relax. All of our problems will still be there tomorrow.” That works for three hours.

Too much to think of to let my brain slide out my ear. Actually, that’s been the biggest side effect of the divorce. I cannot control my eating or sleeping…. and by that I mean that I don’t. I can’t make myself sleep more than three hours at a clip, and yesterday my calories consisted of an energy drink early in the day and a shot of amaretto at about 0. I’m going to buy a case of Slim Fast or Carnation Instant Breakfast because I can drink ok, but I have a block on eating. It’s a luxury right now. Too far down. Too anxious. Today I managed lunch. It’s a start.

All the rumination isn’t bad. I am actually very happy to be single, and not in an “it’s great to start dating again” sort of way. Everyone my age knows that shit sucks. I’m just not going to do it. I fell for Dana because she was my friend; she cared and still cares about who I am in joy and pain. You don’t get that from dating. You get that from day in, day out proximity. You get that from knowing the person so well you can read them like a book before you actually start thinking about whether it’s friendship or that OH MY GOD set of fireworks.

No, right now the happiness of being single is being let off the hook for the family obligations of being married. The happiness is being able to bury myself in work and not worry about when I come home or when I stop writing. And for those of you who think that having separate bedrooms made a difference, let me stop you rrrrriiiiiiight there. Our sex lives got HOTTER when we were inviting each other into our beds. So please shut that down. Unrelated.

No, our relationship broke with one fight, kind of like bands that work for 15 years to become an “overnight success.” All of the things we’d done to each other started to show like scars on a battlefield, because while we are fun, funny, and wonderful friends, that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a dark side to both of us- I mean, come on. You and I have met.

We have both started to turn toward light- I have found a new psychiatrist/therapist and we’re talking possible med changes, but taking it slow since I’ve been relatively stable on the ones I’ve had for 12 years. Maybe 12 years is long enough for those. I know that I am never going to be stable enough chemical-wise to be off meds, but I am not opposed to new things if they are genuinely better for me. The cycles in my bipolar disorder seem to be less dramatic, but happen more frequently.They used to last a few months- now I’m lucky to get a few weeks. Since I am Bipolar II, I do not truly go into mania. I just get very busy. Sleep is less important and writing becomes more. People think that I write because I am truly manic, and that is incorrect. My lows can go so low that I take the busy when I can get it, capiche? When I’m in a low, I am doing well to function at 85%. There’s no room for things like fun, because my worthlessness loop kicks in for no reason at all. I mean, I always know it’s there, but when I’m in a low, my ATTENTION turns toward it. When I am on the upswing, it’s not that it’s not there. It’s that my attention isn’t glued to it.

I owe a special thanks to Argo. I never would have realized just how much help I needed without her loving and attentive ear, even when I’m being a total douchebag and don’t deserve it. I am lucky that grace and mercy mean a lot to her, because even when we’re mad at each other, neither one of our mother lions turns off. That’s how we roll. She may be a burger-flippin’ ho occasionally, but she is also smarter than I am, and you’ll never hear me say that again out loud.

And on that note, it seems fitting to end with the image that I now carry as my iPhone wallpaper:

I fell asleep early last night, I think because my eyes are still getting used to my glasses. My body is struggling and just needs rest so bad. Dana realized yesterday that I should “propose” to Dr. Doan like I did to Argo………. get down on one knee and say the words I hope she’s always longed to hear………… “Will you write a book with me?” Dana’s point was valid. You should get Dr. Doan to contribute to “Staring at Myself,” the title of my autobiography. I hope you don’t think it’s strange that I’m planning an autobiography at 37, but it really isn’t as self-serving as it comes across. The book is not about me as a person. It is about me as a case study for all eye doctors, regardless of degree……. and lay people that also have the same complicated quirks with their vision. Human interest feeds CME feeds human interest. Part JAMA article, part autobiography, which is why it thrills me that Dana thought of asking Dr. Doan to collaborate first. She’s a Vietnamese marathon runner, as heartbreakingly gorgeous as Sandra Oh. Yes, I realize that Sandra Oh is Korean. At the moment, though, she is just the most gorgeous Asian actress I could think of off the top of my head (and then I realized that I don’t think of other Asian actresses at all….. not because they don’t exist. Because I’m not a cheater. Wait. Yes, I am. Aishwarya Rai…… you have my number…… why won’t you call me back?). I feel ok publishing that I think she’s beautiful. She said my dad was handsome. I agree with her wholeheartedly, because I look like him. To me, he is the most beautiful man on God’s green earth because I am his flesh. To feel beautiful is to call him beautiful in the same breath.

Argo reads paragraphs that jump like this and says things like, “your mind fascinates me.” It is my life’s work to keep it up.

Today is simply the most interesting day I’ve had in a very long time. I had to go and get a Texas driver’s license (shut it), and because I haven’t had a license in the state of Texas since 2002, I had to take the written test over and my first driving test is in March. That’s right. I didn’t have to take it the first time. When I took Driver Ed, if you got above a certain GPA in the class, you graduated with your license rather than getting it from a DMV test. If you think I am un-amused by this, you would be wrong. I am the driving instructor’s best case scenario. I’ve been driving since I was 16, I am funny and pleasant (most of the time), I speak English, and I bathe daily. I have to tell myself these things because I am so afraid. Seriously. I hate driving tests. Hell, I hate driving with other people in the car. If I’m going to embarrass the crap out of myself, I like to do it solo. However, in order to continue driving without other people in the car (right now I am only eligible for a learner’s permit since I haven’t taken the driving part of the exam), I have to take the test. Catch-22:………………. social interaction needed to maintain isolation, coupled with gut-wrenching fear.

When you go to the DMV to get a license, they check your vision. The first time I took the test, I forgot that my vision was monocular. When the clerk told me to read the numbers from left to right, I did, and she said “there are three columns.” My heart dropped into my stomach a full second before I remembered that I’d be able to see all three if I closed my right eye until I got to the second column and closed my left eye. “Ok,” I thought. “Problem solved.”

Yeah. Not so much.

I somehow managed to fake it, but we went straight from the DMV to the optometrist. My optometrist (Anh Doan in Missouri City- seriously the most brilliant optometrist I have ever met in my entire life bar none, and I have been to what seems like thousands) confirmed what I’d felt in the DMV. My alternating lateral isotropia wasn’t alternating anymore, because my left eye had gotten so poor that my right eye was literally telling my left eye to fuck off and get out of the way. It had made my life so much easier, because my field of vision wasn’t, well, alternating. But I didn’t know what was different, just that it felt easier. That feeling came with a cost.

We went straight from Dr. Doan’s to the mall, where I got new glasses made with prisms to strengthen my left eye and to keep them both from drifting so far. My glasses are tiny to accommodate the prisms’ functionality…. However, I made a big show of getting glasses and flirted with all of the salesladies (one of them cruised me back, holla!) because I am way too insecure to talk about how I feel about this…. so I cover it up with bravado. It works really well. I can talk ALL DAY LONG to people I don’t know…. which is handy because I don’t know a lot of people…. by this I mean that I have lots of acquaintances and few friends.

My dad said that I was masterful with the woman at the DMV (SQUEEEEEE compliments from Daddy!!!!) because I was a little bit frustrated that they took my “marriage license” from Oregon the first time around as ID and they weren’t taking it now. I said, “if you can’t take it, you can’t take it. I’m not going to be mad about it. I’ve been mad about it for 20 years. It just can’t matter.” My dad said that he respected my ability to choose which battles to fight (they ended up taking it, btw….. mostly because I sat there until they found the scan they had already taken of the document the last time I was there [yes, it’s a long story]). I told my dad that I feel these battles every moment of every day. To be angry is to stay angry. I can choose to be mad about a lot of things, but the Texas ban on gay marriage was struck down yesterday. It won’t be long. The house of cards is falling.

What I didn’t say because I didn’t think of it until now is that it isn’t the government that bothers me. It isn’t even present day. It is my history. I have been preached to, spat on, called names, asked what I did to provoke other kids’ hatred of me, my only sin being WHO I WAS. When I was 14, I thought my best shot in life was to live with Diane and to actually be able to tell people she lived there. And I just said Diane because she was the one I was in love with at the time. I thought that hiding my gayness was going to last forever, and as it turned out, forever was only about a year. I came out to Diane first, and my trumpet teacher, Theresa, second. For all my Epiphany peeps, that is why I CANNOT EVEN when she plays at our church. I CANNOT EVEN. It takes me back to a tiny PVA practice room where I laid my heart on the table and she received it with all the mother-love she has for Angie and John now. She was the perfect teacher at the perfect time. It was never about trumpet. Never. It was about having a safe place to go with my feelings, knowing that it wasn’t going to get back to anyone. I was out at school (not by my own hand), but I wasn’t out at church except for the people that talked about Diane and me behind our backs. It was a fucking miserable time in my life because on one hand, I was tortured at school. You would think that HSPVA was this gay mecca then, but you aren’t counting on the musicians that come from the black church, the Southern Baptist church, and the fucked up non-denominational variety that run the gamut from A to B in terms of intelligence (thanks, Dorothy Parker).

HSPVA was hell on earth for me because those little fuckers ruined every single day for me. I told a girl I liked her and she ran to the bathroom to throw up. She and her gang of goons cornered me at lunch and screamed Bible verses at me. One of them kicked me, and I ran to my counselor’s office. When I tried to tell her what was happening, she asked what I did to provoke them. A girl made a flyer and distributed it all over school saying I was a lesbian to be avoided. You’ve read what became of my “home life.” You can’t even imagine what it was like to be me. I was FUBAR in every direction, and I still haven’t recovered from it. To be able to call Dana my wife in front of everyone and not be scared of retribution is unknown to me. I am stuck in my teenage place of having been bullied in every way imaginable and emotionally abused by the one person who was also my angel.

When I left HSPVA and went to Clements, I had a fresh start and I took it. I found a beard. I went back in the closet. Beard wanted to marry me and I didn’t even know it. We were friends for a year before he told me and I told him I’d never sensed any romance between us, even on his part. He told me that it was just his plan to follow me to college and THEN we would be boyfriend and girlfriend. I ran away from him as fast as I could, and once my dad stepped down from the ministry, I started wearing my freedom rings to school every day. My friend James asked me about them on the first day of senior year, and we are still friends today. My favorite response was from a bisexual girl in my creative writing class who said, “do you wear those because you’re a lesbian, or because you’re an idiot?” I told her that I was a lesbian idiot. She was not amused. I did not go out with her.

Coming out at Clements was surprisingly easy, and I am still remembered there for being the first person to do so. I learned this when my sister started at Clements years after I left. There were kids wearing rainbow flags and stuff on their backpacks. Lindsay asked them about it, and they said, “I think it’s for this kid Leslie.”

Diane used to tell me that I was so brave for coming out at such a young age. I realized I had no choice.

Just like at the DMV.

Umm, we’re kind of sorry (and scared) to say this, but according to this test, you ARE a sociopath!

You probably already know that, based on your antisocial behavior and no sense of moral. Don’t be angry, but you should probably seek help and guidance, before you find yourself doing something that can cause you and the people in your life a great heartache. But hey, you would be great on reality TV!

Surely these quizzes aren’t that accurate, but damn. It hurts my heart to think of myself as that flawed and that damaged, but the conclusion that I’ve come to is that it just has to hurt. I am healing myself from something that was never supposed to have happened. Healing is not a cure, because there isn’t one. I know who I was before I met Diane, and I know myself now. Those people are so different that that it is like comparing Anne Shirley to Dexter Morgan. My shame and disgust at my behavior knew no limits because I thought if I could just be some kind of normal person around Diane that I might get a real relationship with her instead of the fucked up one we had. I thought that I was so sick and twisted that it never would have occurred to me on my own that I’d been emotionally turned inside out by a predator when I was younger and it scared the life out of her to have to interact with me every day. This is conjecture on my part, but I feel like when she looked at me, she was reminded of everything she did wrong instead of everything she did right.

When we fought, she found ways of twisting my words so that anything I’d sent that was full of love was returned with annoyance or the “you’re a crazy person let me back away slowly” shtick. Not “we’ve known each other since our original hair colors and have so many inside jokes that we could disappear into our own language at times.” Little known fact. I do not imitate Apu from the Simpsons. I imitate Diane imitating Apu from the Simpsons because it is better than the original. The best cup of coffee I’ve ever had in my entire life was at our friend Michelle’s house. We were sitting outside and she handed me her cup and said, “I’ll always share with a friend.” I didn’t like strong coffee with half-and-half, no sugar. I didn’t like IPA beer. But I developed a palate for them both because it is what she drinks. Not in a creepy way. Just in an “I remember this most about us- sharing coffee and beers.” What I wouldn’t give for one more cup and at the same time, I know I’d clock her in the head with it.

So it’s better just not to go there. Coffee together probably sounds better in my head. Truth be told, it always has been. I started losing interest in reality the more she treated me like crap because I could use my imagination to fill in the gap- you know, the one between “I am a great friend to you,” and “no, you aren’t?” That’s why people think I make up shit for fun. I’ve been doing it to protect myself since I was 12. Why would I want you to know how much I was suffering? To that end, Diane was a miracle to me and nothing less………….. in public. Behind closed doors, she said everything from “I am so glad to have loved you and mentored you this long” to “I can’t remember anything. I was high every time you called.” For all my stoners out there, has pot ever erased your memory to the point where you forgot two years? Especially two whole years of a middle schooler being absolutely crazy about you and you participating in it? I get how boundaries got loose. But to say it made you forget everything is horseshit, made real by poetry I got from her after she said that saying she remembered everything. I never knew which Diane was going to show up, and I grew quite tired. I never knew which direction was home base, and which direction led to freefalling through ice, water like knives on my chest sweeping me further away from the hands with the auger.

I was so confused; I didn’t know what to think, and I didn’t know what questions to ask. I was just lost in my own little world of rumination, because in my own mind, Diane couldn’t have done anything wrong. I was too much of an emotional wreck as a child. It was all my fault. I deserved it. She wasn’t playing with my heart. She was trying to be a good influence. I just had to wait.

I took all of the responsibility for everything that happened. All 25 years of it. I was such a horrible person that I didn’t deserve to live. I was rescued from that line of thought, but it will never leave me that my abuse led me to that place while it led everyone else to think that I was a fucking liar. She couldn’t have possibly.

It’s the part of me that makes my nothing box hurt. It’s that part of me that wants to go for the jugular of anyone that dare defy me, because I will let a lot of people be right about a lot of things, but not about this. I should not have had to wonder if Diane was coming on to me by giving me her college journal as a 14th birthday present. I shouldn’t have been able to read about her college adventures in 8th grade while I held on to my boyfriend and we flirted with our eyes.

My boyfriend. We have to talk about this. Diane didn’t want me, but she didn’t like Ryan, either (see last sentence above). Even if it was appropriate friend-love and just jealous of the *time* I was giving him and not the affection, it was still wrong. It was using a child for something they’re just not meant or equipped to handle, which is confidante to a 25 year old woman.

Argo is a mother. Aaron is a father. When I see my own childhood through the lens of “could I do that to someone else’s child?,” my first tendency is to dry heave and tear up. When I think about what I would do if someone tried to hurt my child like that, my eyes flash and I know I have to make three phone calls. The first to Dana, to make sure I am sane. The second, to Argo, to make really sure I’m sane, and the third to Aaron, because I would need him to carry, ummmm, supplies.

Here is my Valentine’s Day present from Dana. She had people read it for two days at work to make sure it was perfect. She made some big hairy guys cry, let me tell you.

Are you crying yet?

Boom.

I talk to very few people. I rarely pick up the phone, because I have what has become a phobia. I stepped out on a ledge to send Argo a voice mail because for whatever insecure reason, I didn’t want to let her hear my voice…………………… I am so much bigger on the page than I am on the phone or in person, so maybe I didn’t want her to hear me that small? I am a writer- I do not function well without a delete key. Conversation makes me feel put on the spot to dance like a monkey, even though it is the furthest thing from reality. Living in the world requires interaction. Not realizing this has sabotaged my life, and it is a huge problem that I can only now name and address, hoping to move forward.

Even if Diane didn’t physically abuse me, her emotional abuse made me think that lies and secrecy were the way of the world. That light was how people who didn’t think about the world worked. The mask was there for others’ protection, an idea that naturally appealed to me because as a preacher’s kid, the idea of having a mask was long ingrained. The difference is that before Diane came into my life, the difference between my “show mode” personality and my regular personality was small. Afterward, outwardly I was the painted face of a china doll, while my soul settled itself into a lifetime of thunder. And, of course, there is nothing easier in terms of getting me to do things than by appealing to my sense of self-importance. I felt needed. I got to know things other kids my age didn’t. I got to know things about her that other people didn’t. I got to laugh behind her friends’ backs when she said that they didn’t seem all that interesting and laughed because I thought it was funny, because of course I did. I wasn’t one of them. I was hers.

Or, at least, I thought I was. That is the essence of my abuse as a child. Diane was such a brilliant manipulator that she could make me think I was the most important person in the world with her words and COUNT on the fact that I wouldn’t see her actions and believe them instead. If I could’ve, I never would have come to Oregon, and my parents would have had the evidential proof they needed to believe they weren’t crazy a long time ago.

Oh, wait. No, they wouldn’t. I had to wait for “Jesus,” in a sense. Jesus is only in quotation marks because in today’s world, you don’t wait for him personally. You find people that embody him, those that walk as Christ on earth whether they profess Christianity or not. You know those people. They are thoughtful. They abide. They listen without judgment. My Jesus is a white woman. No one is more surprised than me, because I have never been changed before to such a degree without tripping and falling onto a woman’s vajayjay. I can sum up our love with one line from a letter I wrote last year sometime (I think). The setup is that to me, gender and sexuality are not binary, and I’ve talked about why I think that a lot. The line from the letter is that “the hottest woman I know taught me to be a better man.” I only mean it emotionally, as all people have male and female character traits inside them, but I hope I made my point. Her other-ness in being straight feeds the husband part of me that wants to protect Dana and keep her safe, because Dana doesn’t need protecting for shit, but that doesn’t mean that I’m not entitled to those feelings. It especially comes in handy that  she’s straight because I’ve had to ask things like, “am I just being a militant dyke about this, or is this the same daughter-in-law crap anyone would go through?” Emotional shorthand for “am I allowed to be mad about this?” And just for the record, because I know who’s reading, she hasn’t accused me of being a militant dyke ONCE. Well, perhaps she has, but not about this. 🙂

If there is anything that I feel guilty for over the last 25 years that I could have changed and chose not to, it’s that I waited so long to talk. I chased after her for so many years hoping that our patterns would break down and we could create life-sustaining patterns for both of us. Writing to Argo has been the self-actualization of those realized patterns when I am mindful and pay attention to this fact. In this relationship, I am fully in control of what is happening. Argo is not older than me in the traditional sense. We are both in that nebulous adult age where lack of life experiences show childishness and not simple chronology. In some ways, she is older than me. In others, I am older than her. Where we shine is when we both accept our humble and vulnerable parts, and where we falter is in both being first children who want the last line.

But it’s a relationship, not a stork. It doesn’t come to you fully formed.

I don’t really have a topic for today. Just want to see what’s in my brain this morning that needs to come out. First, I should probably post Dana’s Valentine’s Day present, because since she’d shown it to people at work, I asked her if I could post it on “Stories.” Here is the Facebook post I wrote on Feb. 15th:

I see a lot of bitching on Facebook about Valentine’s Day and how it’s so commercialized and all. Valentine’s Day is as meaningless as you make it. For instance, Dana and I did the grocery shopping we were going to do, anyway, and did some wine/liquor tasting at Spec’s. It was so simple, and so memorable. Later that day, she handed me two pages of handwritten notes describing her love for me on plain white notebook paper, saying that she had worked on it for two days and she hoped it was just right and that it had made people at her work cry so she was pretty sure it was good……… Crying just thinking at the memory of her words before she handed them to me, because it was just the most amazing, bare moment. A girl laying her heart in my hands and hoping it was enough.

Dana completes me, which sounds so co-dependent. I won’t lie. It does sound that way. However, I do not think of it as co-dependence so much as interdependence. It is not that we do not have skills within ourselves and use each other to fill those holes. It is that we have tried through trial and error what the division of labor looks like in our house and we know which way it functions best because we’ve tried every single one that doesn’t work, I assure you. I think part of staying married for both of us has been “we’ll get it right this year. Surely we can’t fuck it up any worse.” I think every couple on earth feels this way- that there is a Right™ and Wrong™ way to be in relationship with each other and we are all failing to live up to the mythical standard that “they” represent, whoever they are.

For some people, it’s the perfect representation of Biblical marriage. For others, it’s the marriage of their parents. For me, it is not a mythical standard. it is the supercomputer drive in me to succeed, and to keep working on the unhealthy tapes in my marriage until they are gone. I believe that Dana feels the same way, because the longer we work on those unhealthy tapes (especially the ones in which we are not emotionally tied, like our own first family “stuff”), the more we discover that we like the new person we’ve just uncovered even more than the previous iteration. Relationships don’t magically fall from the sky fully formed. It’s a relationship, it is not the stork. Relationships are the work of your life, and because it is hard, you will be rewarded. If you do not feel rewarded, then you are not gaining intimacy from being able to see your person in a different light. You are stuck in their old iterations and cannot stop thinking about that person, rather than the one your person actually is. Or perhaps they are stuck in old iterations of you. The reality for the relationship is the same.

Relationships break when one person loses faith in the other, but not because of lost faith. The relationships break with a door being closed without realizing how many layers of thought processes are being interrupted on both sides. When one person loses faith in the other and is not open to resurrection, they are taking fate into their own hands and saying that they know better than time what a relationship should hold. Submitting to Dana wholly (and in part to Aaron and Argo) for me was realizing that I needed to stop trying to control time. That all relationships have a 50/50 shot of making it no matter how hard I try to do anything, positive or negative. In order for our relationships to all go deep enough to sustain us, we have to be willing to take time and regroup, and avoid saying those words that end relationships permanently because I AM TOO ADDICTED TO TRYING TO CONTROL TIME. It is in these moments that I have to breathe and remember to just abide.

Does anyone else feel like going bowling now, or is that just me? I remembered that I can’t find my phone and you’re just going to have to sit on your hands until I can find it, because that’s how I’m going to upload pictures of Dana’s gift. I like the idea of leaving you with anticipation. Go pop some popcorn. If you love my words, you will absolutely go apeshit for hers.

One of my favorite songs is called “Angry Anymore,” written and performed brilliantly by Ani DiFranco. It reminds me of my childhood. “She taught me how to wage cold war with quiet charm, but I just want to walk through my life unarmed.” The problems snowballed when the cold war grew civil and I lost part of my emotional spectrum, and I struggle to heal daily. I was walking through life armed to the teeth, emotionally laden with so many lies that I could not keep track of them all. I wasn’t someone who made a career out of that sort of thing, just an amateur with too much imagination and too little sense.

Two years ago, I stopped seeing the forest for the trees. I woke up to a bigger picture, and do not think that I say this lightly, because it was hell on earth. Someone held my hand as I explained the details, and at the end of my story, told me my reality instead of asking for my opinion. In that nanosecond, it was out of my hands. Someone had taken an interest in my story and proven the Occam’s Razor in it. Let me assure you that it slit my wrists emotionally. I could barely breathe for weeks.

My resurrection came in the letters after I wrote The Cost of Shame. Many were words of encouragement, some were friends of Diane’s that thought I was being dramatic. I assure you that I have been accused of being too dramatic about things since this relationship started, and I will also assure you that line of questioning amounts to a tall dose of horseshit. The thing I struggle with is “how come it took so long for me to get here?” Diane told me when she moved to Portland that I could come and live with her in Portland and go to Portland State. She told Susan that she thought I “would just go away” when I was 18.

Even if she meant it as entirely appropriate, friendship-type love, the the lie compounded because Diane told us each what we wanted to hear and freaked the fuck out when I held her accountable to those words. Eventually, I did move to Portland, and while sometimes we were close, the rest of the time she was distant and cold. I never knew whether I was going to feel awkward and cold-shouldered or whether I was genuinely going to have a good time with her. I again, tried everything I could think of to keep her happy so that she wouldn’t emotionally shut down and railed when it stopped working. Jesus CHRIST how much did I have to beg, plead, and apologize even though our fights were never about me. They were about me hating your ability to absolutely draw me in, intoxicate me, and the moment I reacted in a way she didn’t like, she would shut down like a trap and I wouldn’t hear from her again until I was useful to her in some way. Because I’d loved her my entire life, it took me 25 years to realize she was taking advantage of me. The rest of the time, I’d thought I was taking advantage of her.

Maybe I was. I don’t know. Maybe there was something I could have done differently, and I’m sure there are a thousand. But I don’t think that any of those things were supposed to happen. I think I was meant to freefall into acceptance of who I am and the gift I gave myself in this web site.

That being said, I will also remember that I stand on the shoulders of giants, Diane included. Her place in my heart is secure……………. but so is her place in my rage. One day, I’ll let go of it. But that day will not be today or tomorrow, I assure you wholeheartedly.

Mostly because I have found that I am stronger when I keep Diane far enough away not to let her bother me and close enough to be able to describe her as a three-dimensional character. Not good, not evil, just human. Full of flaws and beauty for which I am grateful to have loved in any capacity, much less just one. When I do not send her love and light, remembering how beautiful life felt when she walked into a room, I cannot function. I am laden with dark ruminations and the homicide that’s happened in my dreams since I was just shy of 15. I choose to love the everliving hell out of her because when I don’t, IT KILLS ME. DO YOU HEAR ME? IT KILLS ME.

It’s just easier to love her from wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy over here, made even easier by letters like this one, received when I was trying to decide which entry to send to Paul Gilmartin of Mental Illness Happy Hour:

Hey Leslie….There is an entry or entries in your blog where you really explain emotionally how your abuser has affect your life…..you talk about her actions and your thoughts and feelings at the time about her actions and about how the words she said to you didn’t match her actions or your feelings/feedback you were getting from her. You talked about her manipulation. These are the details I remembered because my gut was turning because I could feel the pain you were expressing through the writing……AND I had never seen/heard this kind of behavior from a female/female “romantic” relationship. This is the kind of behavior that we hear about in the news all the time where the man is the older abuser but you are the first one I have heard express it in the lesbian version where a woman is really a villain. Even though we all know (from female friendships that women can be master manipulators). I also thought because your/your abuser’s story is all wrapped up in religion/church that this makes it even more interesting and complex……any way….I can’t find the exact entry…..but I wanted to share these thoughts….

Thanks for letting us be a part of what is on the “inside” of you…..it is beyond courageous.

It floors me how generous people are with their analysis of my writing. I don’t take compliments well, but I’m learning. To hear that I am courageous is humbling to an embarrassing degree. I saw something on Facebook that made me start to asphyxiate with laughter this morning. It is so me that you’ll laugh because it sounds like I wrote it. “Writers are people that spend the entirety of their lives in solitary confinement all in the name of communication.” Dead accurate, according to me. I mean, I know me. We’ve met.

Right now it is 9:00 AM and I am sitting at my desk in the same clothes I would wear to a business meeting. I have learned a lot about myself as a writer, and one of the things I’ve learned is that there are two levels for me of being ready to write.

Nothing can interrupt my thought process, and this includes the itch of a tag or a watch that cuts into my wrist just right. Therefore, before I write, I dress to the nines. It’s a new thing that I do (as of about three weeks), because I used to write in my PJs and dress for the day afterward. I realized that I felt better if I did it the other way around, because then I could shed off the day before and start writing without worrying about my itching scalp or bad breath or any number of things that will drive me to distraction. It really wasn’t a shame thing- I was getting up at 5:30 to write. It wasn’t like I was lying around idly. I write early in the morning because entries come from directed dreaming the night before. It just feels so much better to continue that directed dreaming haze into my shower and shave time, because it adds to the editing time before I sit down to write.

When that is accomplished, I sit in front of a blank page and spill out the tapes that have been running since the last time I hit the pencil icon (the one in WordPress that creates a new post for the unfamiliar). Sometimes, I put on the Argo playlist, one originally created so that we could share tracks across Spotify and has now become a catchall for everything I listen to when I’m in the car, writing, etc. It is seriously everything. Aqua, Tupac, Ed Sheeran, Indigo Girls, Cake, Fiona Apple, Eminem, Wilson Phillips………. it is music that reflects the nature of our relationship, which is that we’re different in every possible way and yet combined together, harmony rather than discord………. when we don’t skip any tracks.

I’m digressing because I don’t know how to describe the second level. It is the part to which no one is party, because it is unexplainable even to me. When I am lost in my music, I am often singing and typing and one energy feeds the other in a beautiful way. Right now, it’s “The Wood Song” by The Indigo Girls. In my mind, I am dancing around the house, because as Emily sings melody and I stretch my vocal chords down into “ballsetto,” my nickname for the range that Diane calls the one you have to “cigar and vodka down.”

I’m a soprano, but never with them, My mind is too fascinated with the mathematics of harmony to be bothered with the simplicity of “only singing the melody.” My sound fills my office and something clicks that I said yesterday that needs some clarification and all of the sudden, I am literally. LITERALLY. typing 100 words a minute trying to describe what I feel to you.

When I am not dancing and listening to music, I mentally take someone out for a beer and try to further the conversation. I particularly love doing this with dead people. It really cuts down on their ability to react in ways I don’t want them to. The music comes from my own head- trying to create peace out of nothing and have resplendent Rutter-like chords come from Charles Ives dischord.

With people that are alive, I still try to send as much peace as possible and hope that their world explodes with my agreement to do it.

I have always been an empath, and yesterday I learned the depth and breadth of it. I was reading an article about Kayla Mueller, and as I sat there, I studied the face that launched a thousand ships. We’d been trying to rescue her for so long that she’d been mostly forgotten in the news. A footnote as the months went by…………. until yesterday. I realized just how long she’d been in captivity, and the range of emotions that everyone involved must be feeling.

It was similar to what would have happened if the movie Argo hadn’t gotten to end with a piece of music called “Clearing Iranian Airspace.” I’m listening to it, channeling the peace of the violins toward the eternal flame that is her personality. She leapt off the page for me, an aid worker with no fear and a sacred sense of what was laid at her feet. I can only hope that I show a quarter of that kind of courage on this web site. It is people that are capable of these gargantuan feats that get me out of bed in the morning, excited to start my day. There are others like me, so sensitive that they want to save the world and get frustrated when they simply cannot.

Which is why I am sympathetic to the plight of all the people who hung their heads in grief yesterday. I do the same thing when I alienate people with my own behavior. I cannot even imagine the type of grief that something like this would trigger, but I can imagine a fraction of it. I have been the Lanagan Search & Rescue operation since before I could drive. People’s emotions wreck me. I have mentioned before that it’s the worst in large crowds, when there are too many people in pain and not enough ability to clinically separate unless I properly prepare for “battle.” By this, I do not mean that I am itching for a fight. I mean that it is a struggle not to cry when I see service members in uniform, or couples fighting and I can tell within 30 seconds what each of them is trying to say in body language and fucking it up with words.

So, I sat at my computer with the story of Kayla Mueller’s life writ large on my 17-inch iMac and tears of loss inched down my face. Dana came up behind me and kissed my head. “You didn’t lose her, Leslie.” I know it. I’m just not capable of clinical separation.

This is my Facebook status right now, and I have a visceral need to post it here:

All writers are vain, selfish and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives lies a mystery. Writing a book is a long, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.

George Orwell

Writers are not lazy. They’re not lazy a day in their lives. This quote made me FURIOUS and I have to tell you why. It makes me crazy that people think I am indolent and unmotivated at times, when that is so far from reality that bass ackwards doesn’t even begin to cover it. Writers are the people that do all the serious emotional work of finding the human condition and describing it. It’s backbreaking work. Just tears and frustration all over the place at times, and euphoric at others. Carrying that inside yourself is a burden. Don’t kid yourself. The tapes of things I need to write down are enormous and run through my head all day long. Just because you cannot see work happening does not mean it is not there. It is cerebral and cellular. If you are a writer and you constantly hear the message that you’re lazy and you believe it, cut that shit out right now. You do the work that most people don’t have the chutzpah to sit in for five minutes, much less the entirety of your life. Selfish and vain are adjectives on which I do not have the right to comment.

 

I am REALLY going to have to let Argo know how much mileage I’ve gotten out of judgmental dickhead. It’s like someone validated that I am every bit the jackass I’ve always known I had the capacity to be, and it’s good to have a skill.

As we go into Lent, the penitential season in Christianity (Advent, not so much, although some theologians disagree with me), I turn inward and evaluate my very soul. It sounds so dramatic, but in a way, it is. My words on this page are as large as I can make them so that 20 years from now, I remember how integral it was to my development. It is also one of my favorite pieces of music, because Diane’s voice turns me inside out. It’s my favorite memory of Diane and my mom, because at St. Mark’s she was Diane’s accompanist. They were greater together than they could ever be on their own, because Diane’s voice makes her the star of a concerto and my mother her private orchestra. Hearing them together is one of the greatest blessings of my life, because when I get into a bad space about Diane, the accompaniment starts and I remember sitting in the austin-stone cathedral and beauty filling the room. I submit to the music in a wonderful way, because I sit down in grief and get up renewed for whatever lies ahead.

My life got so much better when I realized that what I thought of Diane was none of her business. I took the emotional space I had to explain my feelings to myself. If she has picked up anything from reading, I hope it’s that my divinity forgives her and my humanness disappears in some moments. I go to my nothing box and allow myself to feel what I would do to her if her body and my rage were to meet each other.

It’s the spectrum I have struggled with for the last two years. I was so angry I was nearly dead inside trying to hide it. It felt like the pain would never end, because 25 years is not exactly NOT permanent. If you were a member of St. Mark’s, you probably tried to rescue me because you could see farther than I could in all 180 degrees. My escape from her control was being able to see it myself. Catching up to what you knew 25 years earlier than I did. If there is anything that makes me swell up with pride, it is that she did not allow her abuse to physically abuse me. That if I was a factor in her decision to move to Dallas, I commend it. I hope that she saw what she was doing and had a change of heart. That she loved me enough to give me up, if that makes any sense. Then, I felt angry and utterly abandoned. The night before I started my freshman year of high school, I was so distraught with grief that I regressed to the point of waking up and getting into my parents’ bed. I was a few weeks short of my 15th birthday, grieving the loss of a physical (as opposed to virtual, not sexual) relationship so intense that an adult would have gone psycho ex in a fraction of a second. I didn’t have that option, because we weren’t dating. I didn’t feel I had the right to expect or demand anything. I withered into myself for the rest of high school, desperate to keep what we had on the ground strong in the cloud. Remembering just how desperate I was is painful even today. When Diane left town, it took me three years to start dating someone else, because I felt it. We loved each other as if we were made of the same blood. There was no way that I wasn’t going to have a long recovery process from it.

When I did meet someone else, it lit me up from the inside. I called her my light in the middle of the mess, because she’s blonde. These past two years, I’ve had to forgive myself for all of the misplaced energy that went to Diane instead of to her. I could have loved her so much better than that. I could have stopped those ruminations where I got lost in my own thoughts about Diane and couldn’t make it back into the present…… as has happened with every relationship since. It wasn’t right or sane that I had my heart broken to that level three years before I could vote.

I think Susan was hoodwinked into believing that I had this cute little girl crush on Diane. No. That is not the truth and I will not accept it anymore. It was never cute, and it was never little girl. Diane set my body on fire and according to someone who makes a career out of this sort of thing, told me quite plainly that I had been groomed by a predator. I also want the people of my church at Bridgeport to know that I am telling the truth, that it is not my lie to tell, but the truth handed down by a professional who made me hold on to my chair with my nails until all the evidence was in her possession so she could make the call.

I believe that Diane was a predator, and you have the right to know it. She has the right and responsibility to tell you whether there were any other teenage conquests, either by fucking with their brains or their bodies. What I know is that if it has happened, it’s never been reported.

Do you think there is an unrelated reason that I am so fucking hard on Bill Cosby?

Aaron and Josie spent the night last night, which was fun because I got to give J-dog a bath with extra bubbles and sit with her while she played with her fishes and duckies. I wish I could tell you the first ten million of my thoughts, but they are gone now in a cloud of energy long released. Only one stuck. I am still confused over whether I want to have a child………….. or I was until this morning (leave your eyebrows where they are). I did not decide to have a child today. I decided to stop saying no. To open the door to “if it happens, the world will explode with my agreement.” That being said, I’m not sure that I want to put any effort into it. I like Dana’s sperm count where it is. She tried wearing boxers for a week or so, but……………….

I am not saying we’re having a kid. I’m saying that we are starting to pray on the spaces a little harder than we used to about it because I will be 38 in September and Dana will be 40 in June. We are praying for clarity and discernment, not wishing for the stork to just drop one off, even though we are somewhat prepared. The house already has a built-in nursery. We can tell because one of the closets is lifted off the ground and it has layette drawers (are those what they’re called?). We found this awesome, unusual piece of furniture and didn’t realize it was a solid oak changing table until we started decorating it. Now you have to tilt your head to the side before you realize it’s a changing table. We put Beyonce on it, a ceramic chicken named, of course, for Jenny Lawson.

Wi-Phi can still use it, and it’s not like we don’t have friends who are parents or parents to be. Nice to have in a guest room, that’s for sure, especially since we put Wi-Phi size diapers and wipes in it to trick it out for Kelly and Will (and us when it’s just him).

We’re not even going to justify the Baby Bjorn (I am SO kidding).

We’ve gone through this several times before. It’s not our first rodeo. I’ve talked about it before, but the basic rundown is that we got dressed up to meet the doctor that would carry us on our journey and she was so snide and aggressive that we went home and put the idea away, because her advice was frank………………. I don’t think you can afford me. I think you should just find a friend and go home.

She didn’t know us from Adam. She sized us up by the clothes we wore. In one way, she was right. We couldn’t afford her. She was also wrong. There is just no limit to the amount of people that would shit a brick if Dana and I announced that we wanted to get pregnant or go all Angelina, giving money and sperm (which, I have found, is extremely expensive despite its overabundance) hand over fist to see what a mini-Lanagan looked like (just FYI, if you are planning to conceive, count on about $3-500/month until you get pregnant ordering from a catalogue and having it sent frozen).

Also, every relationship with every man who has offered to give us sperm has ended in complete disaster, save one………………… the one queer. The concept to straight men is foreign and emotional. Gay men in touch with their feelings about children don’t think of their sperm as children even though other characteristics are the same because they don’t have eggs and are in the exact same boat we are.

One did not understand the concept that he was giving away genetic material. He wanted a bebe and two tias. One set up a meeting with us saying that he’d bring his girlfriend, and they stood us up and never talked to us again.

All of them (again, save the gay) thought I wanted to sleep with them. Because of course they did. If you think that I am exaggerating, if you ask a man for sperm his mind does not go to a bathroom with Juggs and Big Butt. This does not happen exclusively to guys we’ve talked to about conceiving. This happens every time there’s a man in the room when we talk about trying to conceive and he just happens to walk by. I am not singling anyone out- I have had hundreds of male friends casually slip into a conversation that if I’m looking for sperm, they know where I can get it. I am sure they do. I feel demoralized about it sometimes, and then I think to myself that it’s kind of fun knowing that anything they’ve pictured is is ten times worse than I actually am in bed….. or that is what I have to believe in order not to feel grossed out about the entire thing. I tend to emotionally shut down and walk away. When it’s in person and not over e-mail when I am put on the spot to respond, I have a variety of one liners and quips designed to rip ego to shreds because I am not playing around. I do not want you to think I am anything but Dana’s (and you would have to kill her to get to me, because I guarantee you that she would go mama gorilla on you and she fights dirty).

When Dana and I talk about pregnancy, it’s not the child that scares us. It’s getting pregnant. For us it’s clinic visits and fertility specialists and taking basal body temperature and charting my cycle and all of those things that add up to TAKING OVER OUR WHOLE LIVES. We are not prepared to jump off that ledge.

But we’re prepared to think about it.

What opened the door was the checker at Family Dollar. He was young, Hispanic, with eyes that marked him as an Indigo, a soul as old as The Doctor in a 21-year-old body. We were just trying to make conversation as he worked and I said, “I have a little girl staying with me and I needed some emergency supplies (ponytail holders, etc.)” He said “do you want to have children?” as quietly as I have ever heard anyone speak.

I started and looked at him. Really, really looked at him. Restrained myself from giving him a hug. I knew that look. Parental exhaustion was written in the lines of his face and his carriage. I knew that anything I said could be misconstrued and I didn’t want to ruin the moment. I just said “I don’t know yet.” He said, “you should do it. Your kids pull you into being better people way faster than you could do on your own.” I looked at this boy deeply and remembered what it was like being 21.

Having no words of wisdom, I just said “that was really profound. I think you’re older than me.”

And walked out.