There is nothing more frightening to me than the sight of a blank page, because I know that at some point, there are going to have to be words on it. I don’t feel a deadline, per se, but I do keep track of the time. For instance, here’s the reason I post so often. It’s nerdy. Strap in.

Internet sites that stay stagnant do not get traffic. Period. Especially with blogs, the amount of attention you get is directly correlated to how often the content changes. People who change their content more often get noticed because when the feed (think Twitter or Facebook) updates, their links appear more often. The feed only moves forward, it does not stop to call your attention to yesterday.

On this web site, I am connected to thousands of updating feeds. When they get a ping from me that I have a new article, it exposes my words to a broader audience. It’s a 24-hour news cycle, just like CNN. The difference with “Stories” as opposed to anyone else’s site is that it’s mine. There are no unique story lines, only unique characters. I post often because I think often, and it works to my advantage. What would be my downfall is thinking that I have to write for national television (what I call the Fanagans), so make it something good. If I weren’t naturally a writer, I would feel the urge to make things up just because I had the platform to get attention. Writing would be the action, and not the response.

I have said that in death, God is not the Actor. God is the Responder. So much bad theology out there is based on people’s thoughts that God is out to get them because they deserve it… they’re miserable sinners, anyway. People now think that way about me- that writing is an action, and not a response. I supposedly write because I am trying to hurt someone, when, to me, I use writing to respond. I use writing to, in effect, think in longhand. Of course my responses are human, because I am not omnipotent and I am especially not silent, which is one of God’s better qualities, if you ask me.

I like the image of me saying something ridiculously offensive to God and not having to say, “shut it!” afterward. We have lots of inside jokes.

If I’ve said something that hurt, I will refer you to Martin Blank. “Chances are if you see me knocking at your door, you’ve probably done something to get me there.” Basically, it’s the reason that I am an INFJ and not an INFP. I prefer to call myself an “introverted intuitive feeling asshat,” but so far Meyers-Briggs hasn’t responded to any of my suggestions.

Life’s interactions hurt me and lift me up all at the same time, and I hope that this blog reflects it. I am so brave with my writing because I believe that everyone is entitled to have emotional space in the world, and life gets hard when you stop using it. When you stop taking up room, you are giving your power to other people and you cannot know how they’re going to use it. Everyone’s nice in the beginning. Letting other people have your power is fun at first, and then it descends into hell on earth, particularly if both people in the relationship have given away their power to the other and are trying like hell to take it back.

For instance, in order to protect myself emotionally, I prefer that my friends read my blog. That way, they have some clue as to what they’re walking into when they meet me. It’s a very effective advertising campaign, because I don’t get many applications for friends, and when I do, I know that they know how fucked up I am and they’re okay with that.

But then we come to the space in our relationship, and it happens all the time, that people love the mirror I hold up to the world around me until they can see themselves in it. Their belief in my brilliance is shattered because I am amazing at writing about everyone but them. I am amazing at bringing truth to the world until they’re the medium through which the message is carried. I have done everything I can to prepare for and avoid these moments, because writing is my passion. I do not have the option to quit. It is how I save my own life, all day, every day.

It is an exhausting life, defending creativity. However, my power does not come into play until it’s been several years and they want to remember what they were doing at that time in their lives, and I am the only one that remembered to write it down. My words carry different weight when they are taken in long after the fact………. because I am a responder, and not an actor.

I’m sitting and listening to Eminem flow in the background as I type. Several people are going to raise their eyebrows because it’s “Superman.” I am in a twisted mood because my stomach is nauseous thinking about how Diane screwed me to the wall emotionally by saying that I had abandonment issues. I was not reacting to the trauma she dished. The fault was in me because I just couldn’t get over it. I was in contact with her longer than my biological parents were married, and they divorced in 1997, when I was a freshman in college. I was reeling from my abuse at the time, because my high school girlfriend had left for college and I was mired in rumination about both relationships. Because of the job they did on me, I didn’t date anyone for three years afterward. However, when my first wife came into my life, I’d picked the same personality type. She walked all over me because I knew I deserved it. I set people up to use me, and I do it willingly. I refuse to believe that people love me at times, because I know they’re just humoring me. And then I treat them that way, and humoring me becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy because I’m so difficult to be around, anyway. I have to constantly apologize for my behavior, because I do not often have the ability to be light-hearted. I want to know the answers to questions that seem like emotional bombs because I am taking the emotional temperature of the relationship when it doesn’t need it because I don’t have the safety and security of knowing that your words are sincere. It is not of you, I don’t have the ability to trust anyone. At my core, I have one friend, and that is Diane Syrcle. Just one. I found that tape today, as I was looking for a problem with someone else. I thought Diane wanted me to be the love of her life, because at 14, you have a different idea of “being family” than a 25 year old. What I have decided is that I am. If Diane could love anyone the way she wanted to, it would be me. If I’d known better, I’d have imprinted on someone else. I didn’t, but the imprint is there and erasing it is emotional neurosurgery. I feel like I have my brain exposed and I’m just doing conduction tests at home… which is just as smart as doing your own leg amputation.

Dana needs to be at my core. So do Aaron and Argo. They’re fighting to get in, and I just keep pushing them away because I don’t want them to leave me first. I’m trying so hard to change, because it just perpetuates the same emotional abuse I’ve lived most of my life and inflicts it on people around me. I don’t want to be that person anymore. I have got to cut the tape that says I need this, because in some cases my ability to pop off has saved relationships because no one was saying what really needed to be said and after I opened my big mouth, we didn’t have any choice.

I’m bad a small talk. Really bad. The reason I’m bad at it is that I can’t stay on that level. I find most people vapid. If you can’t hold my intellectual interest, I’m done. However, I find a lot of different things funny, so it isn’t necessarily about book smart. I don’t like people that don’t think, really think about the world around them. My personality type says that I have the ability to see things as they should be and not as they are. Therefore, I want to talk about things that could be and not things that are. I want you to create something out of nothing, like a new neural pathway that wasn’t there before, because I want you to remember me as being someone that gives you something precious… a new way of reacting to the world, no matter what it might be.

This is because I have to impress my worth upon you, because I know how you see me before you even have a chance to tell me what you think and I will lash out at you when you try because how dare you love me? How dare you even say so?

When I realized that was my thought process, I realized I’d gotten to the smallest of the small letter l leslie. My inner teenager sobbed with grief. Because she left me, I’ve left everyone. The people that love me now are the ones that stand up against that tidal wave of crazy and let me cry out my frustrations. They chip away at the idea that my value rises and falls at regular intervals if I don’t try like hell to get you to notice I’m still here.

I have ensured that you won’t, because I won’t let you.

This is the tape I have to cut through, and right now the knife is midway. It is blitzkrieg up in this bitch as I try to remove Diane to make room for the three new people that have genuinely become my family. Perhaps someday, maybe more. I’m just not that far along yet, and my capital with others’ patience of it is stretched like saltwater taffy. I am doing everything I can to change myself, because there is only so much that a therapist can do. People don’t change after years of therapy because the therapist is amazing. If the therapist is the amazing one, then people go to therapy to spend time with the doctor rehashing their other 13 introductory-level meetings. The patients that win take on their own issues and report to the doctor how they’ve improved. You’re supposed to talk about different things every week. Otherwise, what are you paying for? You’re letting a highly paid professional babysit for an hour while you tell the same story of how you were hurt last week without even advancing mentally to this one. In my case, it has taken the bravery to unwrap emotions to my core. When I don’t, I treat my family like shit and I become the emotional disaster I’ve always thought I was. I apologize, and we move on, because they know beyond a shadow of a doubt that they can be absolute toolbags in front of me and I’ll still love them, anyway.

It’s the Tao of Friendship.

Last night I learned the meaning of the word “trip.” I’m not an alcoholic or an addict, but I find the mindset similar to the one created by psychosexual abuse… and therefore we get along extraordinarily well. It’s a black sense of humor, that. A woman made me laugh that had accidentally set her house on fire and killed her children. It was not a funny situation; she was using humor to express tremendous pain. Laughing through the tears so that the shame doesn’t kill you because IT WILL IF YOU LET IT. I cannot ever say that strongly enough. When people get as mentally fucked up as the abused and the addicted, their worth on earth weakens into nothing… so they plan the next trip. You can plan to go to Paris… why not plan to fly in the ether? Why not prepare for the journey to the edges of your mind?

I’m sure each drug does it differently. Alcohol is state-dependent, so when life starts spiraling you can depend on negative thoughts slowly creeping toward suicide. Everyone, including me, realizes the emotional disaster we have the potential to be, and it isn’t until the snowball melts that we can do a damn thing about it. Worthlessness clouds everything. Shame becomes a mantra for the disenfranchised, the ones that feel like they are literally hanging onto the edge of society and even that is too much work. The more our emotional failures pile up, the more we recede into darkness and light is a choice. A daily choice. One that cannot be ignored. If you can choose not to drink as an alcoholic, then the very next choice should be not to be bitter about it. If you are a survivor of sexual abuse, you cannot stop the tapes that run in your head until you make the connection that your regrets are what’s worthless. You can’t have regrets, because why regret something you couldn’t control in the first place?

With Diane, I could barely keep it in my pants as a teenager, and she blamed it all on me. That I was just this freak of nature when she was the one that taught me to love sex in the first place (yeah, chew on that one bitches). You want to talk about regret? I spent years torturing myself that I’d just gotten the wrong message. It was all above board. Meanwhile, I am vomiting emotions and punching walls trying to get rid of my nightmares of her sexual abuse, connected to my own, and my sole desire to be her shining white knight for far longer than I should have spent worrying about it.

It feels like a developmental delay, because it is. My sex life didn’t occur in the right order, kind of like when my nephew was born with his aorta and his vena cava plugged into the wrong sides. His problem was medical, and required thousands of dollars in surgery. Mine is mental, and no less damaging financially, but hopefully not to that degree. It scared the financial hell out of me when my therapist told me that she thought it would take five or ten years to get to the bottom of all this. I’m going to pay it anyway… I mean, what choice do I have? I do not choose to stay broken. I have done enough of that. Staying broken has caused me no small amount of emotional and financial security. It is an uphill battle that I fight every day to win, but most of the time I hit just above average. The lows aren’t as low anymore, but I’m still waiting to get high.

It’s going to be quite a trip.

Dana was not a fan of The West Wing when it was on originally, so she’s been absolutely binging it on Netflix. A few nights ago, we saw the one where Leo gives Sam the task of writing a birthday message for the assistant Transportation Secretary so that he is tidily unavailable to go to a Chinese opera with Leo’s very attractive daughter, Mallory. It reminded me of a birthday message I sent last year on this day:

How can I possibly give enough thanks for the day you were born? There is no one that has been able to reach me with such ease. There has been no one that has given me more confidence in the person I will become. You have become such an important part of my life, because you believe in me. Blessings for this and every trip around the sun.

Now I am compelled to do better than that, and I want to nail it. I want to have the excitement that Sam and Toby got when they realized that nailing this minor message would redeem all the crap they felt they’d been putting out. It wasn’t bad, just uninspired. It wasn’t the best they could do. So they take this job that a bike messenger could have done and proceed to write until the stars align.

From there, my mind went on a meandering path. What would I write if I could reach that far up? What would I write if my words could reach the White House? What would I say if POTUS gave me the task of writing a birthday message for him?

It is a little known secret that in politics, the only friend you have is a dog. I thought that was true until I met you. The way you save me from myself with your advice and counsel is something that will live in my memory longer than the silly job I have right now.

Thanks for having my back, and for being a whole hell of a lot smarter than I am.

You make this look good.

I couldn’t resist a “Men in Black” reference, because of course Barack Obama sounds like Will Smith in my head. Of course he does. Everyone in America, including his wife, knows that Will Smith will play President Obama in an epic military operation so that he can be Barack Obama,™ Professional Superhero in Chief. What no one knows is that I’ll probably write the screenplay, because I totally nailed that birthday message.

Just like Sam and Toby.

There are a lot of things I do from time to time, but this week seems to be the realization that I am a creative type. I know I’ve said it before, but I have to keep saying it. The definition keeps moving and changing; it evolves as I do. Creativity makes me outrageously submissive to my art and defiant about my vision. Question it all you like, but decisions are final. I cannot and will not create by committee.

I struggle with that balance of power daily. How do I merge both sides of my personality so that I can speak truth to power and at the same time, retain my humility? I am a political master of soft power, and then I trip. My ego stands in the way when I desperately do NOT need or even want it. Learning to create is learning to manage duality. My artist wants to be free, and my visionary wants to be regimented. It is yin and yang inside my own brain… which doesn’t surprise me in the least considering the three people that raised me live with the same duality every day. All three of them are musicians, amazing ones. My dad made All-State band three years running, and his senior year of high school, he was first band, first chair. That means that he was the best trumpet player in the entire state of Texas. He got 26 full-ride scholarships to the best schools in the nation. My mother is a pianist, taught at Kilgore College by the same teacher that molded Van Cliburn. She’s played for President Carter, but it means the most when she accompanies me. My Diane is an amazing opera singer, and you can take that check to the bank and cash it because Pavarotti himself told her that when she went to New York for a Met competition.

I’ve always felt left out in that crowd, because it’s a “rarified air” I strive to achieve and thus far have managed to fall ass over teakettle in just about everything until now. My writing allows me to feel equal to their brilliance. I’ve always known I was clever, but I didn’t have a medium until I knew for sure that my writing had healed someone else… and then it happened again…. and then it happened again….. Now, people all over the world know who I am. Beat that with a stick.

There’s my ego. You know how I combat it? I talk to addicts and homeless people all the time. I’m the one that stops on the street just to hear your story. While I am listening to you, the rest of the world will stop moving and I will only take in your words. Your stories matter to me because I am so grateful that my story means something to you. I have to take the chance that you will not hurt me, because you can, deeply. I overcome that fear of opening up daily. I stick close to home to reduce the odds of opening up to people and feeling rejected. In blogging, I found a way to hear people respond to my thoughts, and when my thoughts got power, I realized that I’d created the legacy I wanted, which was to reach the whole world at once.

Now, I can believe in myself the way I believe in others.

From time to time.

In all the excitement of confirmation, I didn’t get to tell you the best part of my weekend. Black Friday slowly became Easter as I got a letter containing the words that I’d longed to hear.

I am sorry.

Those words were all it took, and I got to say the words I’d been longing to say, too.

I forgive you, absolutely and completely.

The hard part that I struggle with is meaning it. I am the type person that forgives completely, but I have to work on the forgetting part. This is because I have a tendency when I fight with people to bring up old issues as a way of showing people, “hey, this is a continuing pattern, here.” I mean it as, “here’s a landmine we need to avoid.” It does not come across that way to other people. Many have called it “throwing things back in my face,” but they have no idea that I mean no judgment by it. It comes across as judgmental, so I have to stop. It’s not helping anyone or anything to be reminded of things they did in the past, no matter how helpful a heuristic it might be for the future.

I recognize patterns in everything, especially behavior, because my calling in life is working on relationships of all types, trying to get personalities to blend that normally wouldn’t. I would probably do well to remember that the heuristic can stay in my head. Not everyone likes to be as analytical about their own behavior as I am…. also, pretty sure that no one has the ability to be as analytical of their own behavior as I can do it for them, and by that I mean that I can be a real asshole sometimes. It’s one of the things about myself I find the most charming (wtf isn’t there a sarcasm font?).

“Never, ever” lasted eight whole days.

Today was my confirmation into the Episcopal church at Epiphany, my home congregation. It couldn’t have been a more beautiful service, especially since my dad read my post on Facebook and literally dropped everything to make sure he and my stepmom were there. It meant a lot to me to have them as a part of our congregation during the laying on of hands, and as the bishop put his hands on my head, I literally laughed. I was so full of joy that I couldn’t stop myself. Christine and Lisa (my priest and my presbyter, respectively) smiled at me, and then it was done.

I was home.

After the service, everyone wanted pictures of our class (both the adults and the youth). In most of them, Douglas looks like he’s choking me. It was the most appropriate welcome in the history of the world, because OF COURSE I wanted to stand next to the youth group. Of course I did. It wouldn’t have been confirmation if I didn’t have a gaggle of teenagers all around, smiling and laughing because I was.

Then the group picture broke up and my dad said he wanted a picture of me and the bishop. I turned to him and said, “will you put rabbit ears on my head or something?” He said, “sure,” so our picture together is totally, completely me. We got a serious one, too, but it doesn’t mean as much, because for me, faith isn’t serious. I mean, it is. But at the same time, it’s also a lot of joy. My faith wouldn’t be mine if it didn’t include a lot of levity.

Being a Christian is hard. If we are called to be Christ to the world, it’s more than just showing up on Sundays. It’s looking into the face of homeless people and offering them bread. It is accepting no matter who shows up, and giving them food, anyway. It is seeing where there is no justice, and working to fix it. It is seeing other people, standing in their pain and shame, and trying everything to bring them the light that other people have brought to you.

Plus, the bishop has cool spiky hair. I bet yours doesn’t.

I get up at the same time every morning. I sit at my computer for long hours writing and creating. In the evening, I rarely go out because after a day of expending creative energy, all I want is to curl up on the couch with my sweetheart.

That’s my life. Day in and day out.

It never fails to surprise me how much I don’t think. My life is on autopilot, reinforced by my iPhone and laptop. If I had my headphones in and I was facing the front, a grizzly bear could tear out the back wall of my house and I’d never even know it.

I am the lazy jackass to which Jesus is preaching.

When the days start to shorten, I turn inward and see even less of the world around me, because it takes more energy to do things in the dark. I have to convince myself that even though it feels like midnight, it’s actually only 7:00 PM. I am absolutely dragging ass trying to stay up for anything if it ends past 8:45. The comfort is that it’s not just me. The people who were with Jesus had the same feelings, for he says that the sun will darken, the moon will not give its light… but we have to be ready, anyway.

Ready for what?

I struggle with Mark, because his favorite word in Greek seems to be “immediately.” He writes a bit too maniacaly for my taste, but I admire his passion. To be fair, as a Gospel writer you were often on the receiving end of a thousand piece jigsaw puzzle, so there was no way to know if Jesus meant tomorrow or a thousand years later. I couldn’t possibly know Mark’s thought process, but it seems as if he is running around like Chicken Little.

Mark: GET READY!
Congregation: FOR WHAT?
Mark: THE SON OF MAN!
Congregation: WHEN?
Mark: I DON’T KNOW!

When I lived in NoVA (Northern Virginia), I had a friend that was pregnant for the first time. It was a learning curve for both of us. She’d never had a baby, and I’d never before become friends with a mom my own age. Every night I prayed for the baby, that he would be happy and healthy.

I knew he was coming. I just didn’t know when. That didn’t stop me from buying baby gifts, taking long labor-inducing walks with my friend, and packing a bag of goodies just in case I had to stay in the waiting room for an extended amount of time.

Again, I knew he was coming. I just didn’t know when…. but I was READY. I could relax and enjoy the fact that all I had to do was put on my scrubs and run. Later on, I realized that being ready wasn’t the gift. It was the journey I took to get there.

I smiled walking around baby stores, exclaiming over adult clothes in miniature. I started paying attention to ads for formula and diapers. The baby didn’t change me, but getting ready to welcome him did.

And that’s all Advent really is….. waiting for the baby.

Buy the diaper genie.
Wash his clothes in Dreft
Paint his room.
Build his crib.

It’s not the baby that will change you. It’s the way you made room for him, the way you watched and waited, the way you kept alert because you knew he was coming.

Welcome to Advent, where we can all fall asleep in the waiting room together.

Amen.

I have mentioned that I lost a friend, and I am still grieving mightily. She has a sacred place in my heart, and can’t see it anymore. I send love and I get back anger. I send peace and I get back “go fuck yourself.” It’s time to end it until she can get past her own pain, and probably won’t, because she doesn’t even acknowledge that it’s there. I cannot go on grieving someone who has so little regard for me, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t suck.

I have been in this relationship before… many times, in fact. In part, I have created them. I am used to being an enabler, and as soon as I do that, the pattern becomes entrenched and I can’t back out of it no matter how hard I try. The thing I have to work on are the triggers that make me think enabling is my only viable option.

People who have been abused take a long time to readjust their patterns, because they are in effect, reshaping their personalities. I stepped over a huge boundary without even knowing it, and the fallout began immediately, just shit raining down on my head which I thought I deserved because I’d behaved badly, anyway.

A few weeks later, I realized that I couldn’t possibly apologize enough, because what I’d already done was beyond the call of duty. I laid myself bare on like, three media platforms and still… go fuck yourself and get the fuck out of my life.

It wasn’t always this way. In the beginning, she proved to be one of the great loves of my life, completely sanctioned by Dana because it wasn’t *that* kind of love, but still absolutely unconditional… the type of love that you try all your life to have for yourself to feel complete.

The kind I need right now, because surely it can only get better from here.

Here, in no particular order, are the things I’m grateful for:

My wife, who continues to love me more than I deserve, and when you find that marriage, it will be the one that truly completes you, especially if you are also complete inside yourself. Now, I feel I have both of those things. I learned a long time ago that I wasn’t longing to be owned. I was longing for a mate. I found her.

My friends on the ground, who love me beyond all measure even when I feel like I’m just waiting for The Doctor. In this metaphor, I believe wholeheartedly that I am Amy Pond. I love my Doctor beyond all measure, but Dana is my Centurion, the one that would wait 2,000 years… And then I flip the metaphor on its ear and I become The Doctor and Aaron becomes Craig, because it would be just like Aaron and I to lose track of a baby in the mall. I am also surprisingly like Matt Smith’s Doctor- I feel that I am twice as awkward and half as clever, but we both pull off the “giraffe in a bow tie” image quite nicely. Therefore, I am thankful to Doctor Who for giving me an additional world of description.

I am thankful for Shonda Rimes and the work she does on Scandal, because it is the highlight of my week to disappear into that world for an hour.

I am thankful for Pizza Night, because through it, everyone I’ve ever loved has sat with me on the couch and shared the communion of bread and tomato sauce….. both physically and metaphorically. There’s always love at supper time.

I am thankful for stories, both mine and everyone else’s- fictional or not. I love media not because I’m trying to be numbed out, but because cartoons and other TV shows are worlds to be explored. Podcasts are usually daring interviews with people I want to meet. I want to live on Battlestar Galactica. I want to have coffee with Frasier and Niles. I want to stand in the sun with Jake Ballard, and friggin’ adopt Quinn and Huck (because don’t you see that under their baddassery lies a need to be loved?). SuperGrover is my hero. If you doubt a mother’s love, you won’t after meeting Molly Weasley. If the TARDIS landed on my front lawn, the surprise would be in who popped out. It’s always going to be The Doctor, of course, but the fun is wondering which face loves YOU!

I am grateful to start the process of writing fiction. It sucks, there are plot holes all over the place that I don’t know how to fix yet, but my characters are worlds in which I can disappear. I can make them the people that I need them to be, and if that isn’t part of healing yourself, I don’t know what is. Through your characters, you are in charge of your own world, including getting the people you love to say the words you need to hear and be complete…. because you didn’t need them to process. You divided yourself in half and the conversation erased a scar.

I am thankful for dreams in the same way I am thankful for fictional media. The people that have hurt me the most show up, and we have eight uninterrupted hours to talk, relax, and just be together without the pressure of resolving anything. I go to my dreams to just *be.* There’s no fighting, there’s just love. For instance, Diane and I have had coffee every Wednesday for a year and a half. In those moments, I don’t remember abuse. I remember the way her hand feels on my head when she tousles my hair. In my dreams, there is more forgiveness and love to me than when I am awake. I go to sleep to remember the parts of Diane that make me, well, me….. if that makes any damn sense at all. It is 15 til 7:00 AM and I haven’t had a cup of coffee yet.

I am thankful for Aaron Sorkin, who created the legend of a knife passed down by a Boston silversmith named Paul Revere.

I am thankful for my Fanagans, who support and sustain me every day without fail from all corners of the earth.

I am thankful for the experience that pulled me out of The Matrix and taught me that my feelings matter, and I do have the ability to both speak truth to power and lead people in a way that I wasn’t sure I could. I’m no longer hanging on to ANYONE’s coattails. Not my dad’s. Not Susan’s. Not Tara’s. Not Christine’s. Not Lisa’s. I finally, finally, finally BOUGHT MY OWN DAMN COAT.

I am thankful for Meag, Tym, Lake, Wade, Deah, and Giles…. my Canadians. They are like me…….. and so not. They remind me of a different side of politics that I never knew I needed. To get past the politics of kindness.

Did I mention I was thankful for Dana? It’s because she lets me have the life I want to create and makes room for it. Allows me to be bigger than I thought I could be and stands by me even when I am a right jackass, which is most of the time. She says that our relationship evens out by the amount of crap she throws at me in return, but this is my blog. If she wants to say that we’re even, she’s going to have to sign up for WordPress on her own. 🙂

One of my Facebook friends asked me what my deal was with Cosby. Here, in its entirety, is my reply:

Here is my DEAL about Cosby. I am one of those people blown away by victim-shaming because it happened to me. My abuser is a fabulous musician and educator, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know what happened. Federal agents dragged me away from her and I still spend hours every DAY trying to release shame. Fifteen women have the same story and you still don’t believe? Kiss my motherfucking ass because you deserve my rage.

In terms of a court case, it is clear that both “a preponderance of evidence” in a civil trial and “beyond a reasonable doubt” in a criminal trial have been achieved. I hope that no jury in the world would be that starstruck or that stupid. Who was it that said, “the hardest part of being a lawyer is convincing twelve K-mart clerks you’re right?”

Then I posted Diane Syrcle’s “It Gets Better” video because “It Got Worse” for me. My friends saved my life, and they probably wouldn’t think of it in those terms, but I do. There are only four people in the world that know how bad it got, and one ripped me out of my reality. She is the rock of my church, because if we hadn’t met, my resurrection wouldn’t have happened. She is the reason that the Risen Christ means so much to me, because her words became an additional source of Red Letters I could “ponder in my heart.” I don’t need to know facts to know that miracles happen all the time, and this was one of them.

She gave me the belief that it would indeed get better and to that end, assured me that I didn’t have to worry anymore, dried my tears, and kissed my head- metaphorically because the only side of her that I know is her brain.  Through the power of the medium, it is also hilarious to me that the Internet CAUSED the resurrection to happen.

She is the reason I am so incredibly religious, which is extraordinarily funny because the only deity *she’s* mentioned is running. I believe in running.

Apparently, it works miracles.

I have followers on “Stories” that aren’t my Facebook friends, so reposting here:

This Cosby thing is freaking me out, because from where I sit, there are too few people willing to believe that Cliff Huxtable is a rapist, and that’s the problem. Cliff and Bill are not the same person, never have been. Bill Cosby, Trademark is not the same as bill, either. Duality lives in a lot of people, and it is frightening for all involved when worlds collide. I refuse to take away his legacy of joy to the world, but at the same time, I think he is one of the most despicable people on earth because he won’t own it. Won’t sit in his wrongness and ask to be forgiven. Won’t apologize for all the gaslighting he’s done to these women to make them believe that if they talked, they were going to be in a lot of trouble. It’s what rapists do. Stop looking at guilty vs. innocent and start looking with your heart. Even if these women weren’t raped, can you not see that they have been through *something?* Can you not see that when these women came forward, they weren’t told that they were brave? They were told that they were wrong.

Sit in that.

One of the greatest sermons Susan Leo ever preached at Bridgeport was about baseball. She went to seminary in San Francisco, so there is no one more beloved to her on earth than her Giants. You would think that baseball and theology would be mutually exclusive. Not so much.

The sermon itself was about building a church one base hit at a time…. that nothing comes together with one big home run.

As I sit here in the quiet, writing, I’m thinking about small ball.

I have been so locked up inside that I’ve realized I’m trying to make every pitch into a game-winning homer, when in reality I am not going to come back from 5-0, even with the bases loaded. I have to change my strategy, because the home run is the unachievable dream while a base hit combined with three or four more and suddenly, the score doesn’t look so bad.

A home run is getting rich. Small ball is saving five dollars a week. I can spend my life hoping for the homer to end all homers, when in reality, I would be much better off by reorienting my expectations of success.

For instance, I am already successful, but not in ways that you can measure with money. There’s not much in my bank account, but I am the only one of my friends who can say that people from France to Bangladesh KNOW WHO I AM. They know my flaws, they know my charms, they know MY STORY. I could never put a price on that, because it saved the direction of my life from going into deeper disaster. I have a dream for a church that is viable and profitable…. but profitability is relative in ministry. By profitable, I mean that any money left over in our regular budget becomes savings for a disaster so that there is a rolling stability instead of a church dependent on its members in a week-to-week kind of way. There are always going to be economic disasters, and when that happens, you have to have a place to go. For me, church is that place.

It’s how Epiphany is rescuing me right now.

Next Sunday I am being received into the Episcopal church for the first time. I have attended since I was 17 in some capacity, but I have never officially put my name on the books as a very member incorporate.

Christine asked me if my plans for St. James meant that I didn’t want to join anymore. I held back tears and said, “I don’t have a home church. I want this to be home.” St. James will never be that for me. St. James is my creation. I am birthing it. While that is happening, I need to be Epiphany’s creation. Epiphany is a rebirth into light and life, which lifts me out of the darkness I often perpetuate because I don’t have the emotional tools to keep calm all the time. If I want to be a leader, I must first learn to serve.

It’s the bottom of the ninth and the bases are loaded. Where are you sitting?

I lost one of my best friends this week. Dana says this is our song, because EVERY WORD hits like a ton of bricks.

She was right. It completely kicked my ass into next week, and I sobbed like a baby all the way through it.

All I can do now is breathe, and pray on the spaces……………………………………

I am editing this post to say that the song *I* think of as “our song” says exactly the same thing, but it is more my style musically.

Lisa Loeb’s song “Do You Sleep?” is playing on Spotify as I write. The house is quiet. Dana is getting ready for church, and I am sitting on the couch in the living room literally waiting for something to happen. I could make something happen, but I am not that industrious yet. I haven’t had any caffeine, so sitting here is about the most exciting thing I will be doing until I can get the energy together to go get some.

It’s nice, though. There’s a lot to not doing anything and sitting here. My mind runs 3,000 miles a minute, so I actually get more done sitting and staring off into space than I do at any other time in my life. For me, great thoughts come in the quiet, even when I am moving. Sometimes I pace. Sometimes I dance. I just know that the energy I spend while thinking is different when I move than when I sit.

One of my friends from church is a psychologist trained in dealing with emotional trauma, and luckily, she is in the choir with me. She can tell with one sideways look how I’m doing. I am very emotionally vulnerable at church, and because I’m in the choir, I try hard not to absolutely FLOOD OUT with emotion. If I look at her, she will smile and remind me to move. I rock back and forth on my heels until the tears dry, and every time, I am amazed at how fast it works. She cannot be my therapist because we were friends first, but she is invaluable to me as a friend who can take it. I don’t need her to listen to my problems. I need her to be able to read me and tell me what to do. If you know me at all, it is a gargantuan bit of control I’m letting her have, because most of the time I am hell bent on no one being able to tell me what to do. In some cases, it makes me Leslie. It makes me an original.

In others, it makes me a rigid asshole.

It’s something I struggle with daily, because I am fighting to own myself after so many years of NOT. I feel like I have to be stronger and more resolute in my willingness to bend because all I have done in the last 24 years is try and mold myself after someone else’s image because she told me I could trust it more than I could trust my own….. just not in so many words. Generally, if I am defiant, it means that I think you have heard what I’ve said, but you haven’t actually listened to it. For instance, I am no longer a fan of the high-pressure sell. If I say no, I expect you to respect it. I do not want five more minutes of arguing with you over whether I should do x or y, because that five minutes is not me hearing that you want and need me at said event. It is me hearing that what I want is irrelevant.

So I get angry. You just meant love and warmth, but in my mind, you’ve stepped over my boundary and tried to push me into doing something I just don’t want to do and you aren’t listening to the fact that going into social situations is not the same for you as it is for me. Social situations, for me, are a mixed bag. When I feel good, no sweat. I can front for a couple of hours. By “front,” I don’t mean that you aren’t getting part of the genuine me. I mean that I do not have the ability to be funny and charming when emotionally I feel a Chevrolet is on my chest. You just have to realize there are days when the Chevy doesn’t move. That I cannot overcome my anxiety long enough to think that going into a large crowd will be fun.

In the sense that an agora is an open market, I have severe agoraphobia. I do not dislike small gatherings of friends, but I dislike going to grocery stores at 5:00 when everyone is getting off work and shopping for dinner all at once…. or Central Market on Sundays. Seriously, I’d rather have a tooth extracted.

People ask me all the time how I function, because it doesn’t seem like I have any of these problems. Fanagans, there’s a lot I’ve been hiding over the years. I’ll never figure me out, much less you. What I know for sure is that right now, people are fighting with me over boundaries and Dana says it’s because I’ve never had them before.

She’s never wrong about stuff like that.