Swirl is my favorite place to get yogurt, but it is also the summation of my entire existence. Everything is being swirled together. I do not have a full minute of thinking one way about anything. Sometimes, Dana is the most evil person that ever lived, and sometimes I think this is the biggest mistake I’ve ever made. I did not allow for counseling in the moment that she hit me because I was terrified. I posted our separation on Facebook. Dana is saying that it’s over, that we can’t work on it because I’ve already our divorce. I told her that I didn’t even rule out the possibility of getting together in the Facebook post itself, but that was neither here nor there. It was the crux of the problem. I did something we can’t undo.

She has a problem with how many followers I have. I said, “why do you even care what they think? I don’t.” For real. If we are in a conflict, I am running my mouth to deal with it. I don’t give a shit what you say to me afterward. Your story is not mine. Get your own fucking blog. It will be so much easier than trying to meld all our personalities on this one. I don’t mean that as a gutter snipe. I mean, you have all the tools in terms of using your emotions as an outlet on the page that I do. The fact that you do not use it is not my problem. The fact that you would rather attack me than let me have my space is not going to happen. To me, success comes from doing what you love and letting the money come to you. If people believe in me as a writer/theologian/pastor/etc., then they will give me enough money to implement some sort of plan. If they don’t, then this blog continues to be for me what it’s always been. My private thoughts that people are allowed to read to understand me. I do not count on my blog as a financial resource. I count on it to heal me and maybe one day, when my writing is sharp enough, people will approach ME instead of the other way around.

What do I mean by “giving me enough money?” I mean that I could afford to live cheap and travel a lot, both in terms of missionary work and travel writing. I could start a homeless ministry in a neighborhood that needs it. The food is the faith, people. Giving people food is the key to ministry. You do it every week- home in one wafer. No matter who shows up at the table, you give them food, anyway.

Speaking of ministry, I left Epiphany butt-quick. Just disappeared. I hope you will forgive me. It is not my place to fall, and Christine and Lisa are not my priests. I have always looked at going to church as continuing theological education, because as a preacher’s kid in another denomination, I do not have the ability to function as a parishioner AT ALL. What do you even go to priests for, anyway? I mean, aren’t priests and parents the same thing? Um, no. Not anymore. Yet still don’t wish for the skills. Priests don’t take care of me unless I take care of them. It is a mutual relationship and not a power hierarchy. Honestly, anyone who wants authority in my life right now I just cannot handle. If you can meet me where I am, I will receive you. You start treating me as lesser than, and I’m out. And right now, you only get one shot to do it right, because I am in the place of wet cat in a corner claws extended. I have gotten so much better than last week, but now is not the “I want to meet new people” phase. I am protecting you. Believe me.

I scare Dana so bad that she can even look at me the right way. When I told Aaron and Angela (the Red, old girlfriend from Bayou City Women’s Chorus days…. the Red because my stepmom was red at the time, too, so we called them The Red and the Med) that Dana had said she was scared of me, they fell on their fucking asses laughing. “She’s LOOKED at you, RIGHT?” was the consensus. Normally I am incensed by people calling me small. Today it’s all I need. I need validation that the fistfight never should have happened. I’ve gotten letters that say that since she pushed me first, anything after that was defensive mode and they don’t blame me for anything that happened after that.

It’s in that moment that Argo’s dog comes romping across my mind, and I lean into the feeling of praying to God……. funny only because I can’t tell you his name.

The biggest reason Dana and I are breaking up is that she does not understand the world that I live in and I don’t understand hers. She thinks that when I’m talking to friends on Facebook that I am talking to people I don’t know. Since she doesn’t know to whom I am speaking, I think she thinks I sit here and get people to love me.

I do, but not my friends. You cannot be my friend if you are impressed by me. It’s for people who think of my feed as sort of “The Hot List.” For the ability to reach millions instead of just one. As for chatting, the only person I’ve ever really chatted with on a consistent basis is Argo. The rest are friends from middle school, high school, college, etc. I KNOW THEM. Like, on the ground. Argo is the exception to the rule, because we developed an unusual kinship by sharing stories and jokes and just talking about our lives. It was amazing how someone so far physically could be so close emotionally when I needed her the most. She just loved on me from afar, and her letters were worth as much as hugs to me, so when Dana said that she thought her life was better because she got lots of hugs from real people, I told her that plenty of people hug me. Plenty of people write to me and say that they want to hug me.

She then told me that she thought I had the ability to lead millions and she was somewhat jealous. Nice to hear from a former part of the dream, but meaningless to me right now as she tries to “manage a mental patient.” She, in fact, told me today that I was too much for her to “handle.” I felt like the biggest burden in the entire world, and my worthlessness loop went off in a hurry. Then I remembered that Dana doesn’t have to handle shit. She never did. The more she tried to “handle” me, the more I rebelled, because Dana comes across like my mother after ten years.

I do not want to be handled, and with Dana, I wonder when in her mind she decided she needed to. The more suffocated I felt on the inside, the more it showed on the outside. Without meaning to, she reinforced my worthlessness by taking care of my every need and telling me that she worried about me because she didn’t think I was taking care of myself.

I wasn’t…. but not because I couldn’t. I didn’t have control over anything, so I started wasting away to nothing and trying to make up for it with a smoothie now and then because that’s all I can manage. She has no idea how far her fist to my face set me back in terms of recovery from abuse, because while I am emotionally abusive, my abuse would never go to the place of physically injuring someone’s face. By the time there is that much rage involved, it should have been taken care of long ago and just wasn’t. That kind of rage doesn’t come from a fight with your wife. That kind of rage comes from being mad since childhood and only now having an outlet. That’s just conjecture on my part- I have no idea what she’s really thinking. She does not share and I do not want to know.

It has been the most humiliating thing that has ever happened to me that Dana’s responses to my hospitalization run the gamut from “I’m so glad you got help” to “why didn’t they keep you longer?” to “it must be nice to have insurance and just be able to check out like that.” This, to me, demonstrated her complete and total inability to see that the setback she caused in my recovery led me to making plans to commit suicide and that’s why I checked into the hospital. I wanted the plans to stop, because I knew that was the very last exit before you get to SpongeBob HeadStone.

She did not believe me when I said that the nurse practitioner signed my release papers before I left because she didn’t think I would get much out of staying in group over the weekend. She thought I could get more done in outpatient, because that’s where the real work is. Why she didn’t just call the clinic and verify I was telling the truth, I don’t know. But it would have been very easy to prove

Now I have to listen as revisionist history takes place- on both sides- but at the same time, it incenses me that Dana thinks our relationship ended with a Facebook post and I say it ended when she punched me in the face with my glasses on while I was already crying, the fight in me a puddle on the floor.

She’s been saying we were going to break up since, oh, our first date. Her reaction to my new glasses was “you’re so hot now you’re going to leave me.” The more she tried to “handle” me, the more insecure I felt, especially in terms of my glasses. When I thought, “maybe I should take them off” just to please her, I should have known it was going to be our last fight ever.

Dana and I got into a fistfight and that’s why our relationship is over. I came back home against medical advice******* because when I got to the ER, my weight was 118 lbs and my heart rate was 97. The fight started over money and invariably devolved into the amount of time I spend with Argo, because it’s an easy political shot that takes no time to wound me at all.

I won’t lie. I gave as good as I got in that fight. But there are two things that will stay with me. The first is that I emotionally escalated. The second is that Dana physically escalated by pushing me. We fought, and then Dana says that she walked away and I reengaged. I disagree, but I have been telling people exactly what she said because to me, none of that part matters. She outweighs me by a hundred pounds. There is no way that fight ever should have happened.

But now Dana is trying to say that because I’ve manipulated her for years, I deserved everything I got in that fight, including two broken blood vessels in my face. However, she doesn’t say it on the surface. She says everything in an “I’m sorry, but…..” As in, “I’m sorry I hit you, but you’ve been a monster for so long that I just exploded.”

Now Argo’s on board with Dana and they can both go fuck themselves, because Argo’s first reaction to hearing that I wanted to be with ALL my friends and my old church and try to undo the damage that I did to myself by leaving DC in the first place is actually an elaborate ploy to get close to her and wants to know if she should get a restraining order. I’m sorry, what? I am interviewing all over everywhere. If I get a job here, then I get a job here. I am not completely dissociating. I haven’t figured out what I’m doing, and I figured it was better to ask my friends for help than go to strangers.

So far, I have been wrong about that. Neither Dana nor Argo will let go of past hurt long enough to see that they see the darkness in me, but not the light. They are both judging me as a split personality, not one that is slowly reconnecting its damaged neurons to make new thought processes that were supposed to grow and just didn’t. For those of you who are about to say that I am a monster for publishing this, I asked Dana if I could write about it if I said exactly what she told me. I don’t care. I don’t have to disagree or not. She can argue all she wants that it’s my fault. She can hear from Argo all day long that this is really about her and nothing I am doing is to make a better life for myself down the road- to not be stuck in the day-to-day of being a cashier and really try to make something of myself before I die.

I am the one that checked myself into a psych ward, and they are the sickest people I know.

******My friend Stacy said, “why did you leave against medical advice? I thought they were helping you.” That’s not what I meant. I meant that they advised me not to go home, to go straight to a battered women’s shelter, and I went home because I thought I was coming home to my best friend. I still did, but I didn’t count on the fact that the emotional swings would be much, much larger. I made a horrible mistake and I don’t want to do anything about it tonight. I just took my Neurontin and my Atarax and shut the door to my office.

The greatest moment of my right now just happened. My dad invited me to go to a jazz concert tonight. Seriously, it makes my entire fucking year. Because you know what we do when we go to jazz concerts? We allow ourselves to be GIANTS together and flip each other shit like the adult trumpet players we are. Check this out. Argo, you will friggin’ spit your coffee all over your keyboard. I am almost arrogant enough to be sure of it.

Last Sunday, I was feeling kind of low, so I decided to go visit my dad between rehearsal and service at Second Baptist. I didn’t want to get into politics or religion. I just like the guys on the brass line A LOT because OF COURSE I DO. They are part of my heart- the brotherhood of being the leadership in most cases, especially in a band vs. an orchestra. Exponentially multiply that by oh, 11 (because our ability to out-asshole each other goes to 11), and then you might have some idea of the arrogance that goes on in the trumpet section of a jazz band. BELIEVE ME, it does not matter which one.

Here is as much of the conversation on Sunday as I remember. 😉

Mike: Haven’t I met you before?
Me: Yes, I’ve played here once.
David: You notice we only asked her once.
Mike: You can replace your father at any time.

Dad is talking to Noe and doesn’t hear what Mike says. I thought it was so funny that I said, “Dad, did you hear what Mike said?” I tell him and Noe is busy on his phone. Doesn’t even look up when saying, “you notice you had to ASK your father if he could hear you…….” I set ’em up, you knock ’em down. It’s been that way since birth. When I was two or three he taught me how to say “antidisestablishmentarianism” and “beta hemolytic streptococci” so I could be the straight man, ironically.

Seriously, I wear it so well.

Joel is the music director at Second and a dead ringer for my boss at Marylhurst. Because of it, I like his face. It’s a good one. I remember his manager love for his employees and his kindness. There will never be another boss like that for me, and I mean it. It is unusual to feel good feelings for a boss, and I am so glad to have had three or four relationships like that. Speaking of which, my old boss from University of Houston is picking me up for lunch.

Doors are opening that I never thought possible, and I wish you the light of life as well. It feels good to be able to give what I’ve been so lucky to receive. You will never know how grateful I am to you, for responding to me in the same way you do to Heather and Jenny. You don’t sugar coat, you tell me what you think. And that means more than gold to me, which is good because as I writer, I’ll never have much. Unless Oprah calls. Then I will lose my mind with gratitude.

No, SERIOUSLY (in a Meredith, Izzie, and Christina kind of way).

I knew that breaking up with Dana would break me, but I didn’t realize the degree until I got home last night. I was telling her about my feelings and having a very intense moment of “small-l leslie,” and instead she called my dad and told him that she thought I was having a psychotic episode. She then told me that she would call the police if I didn’t go away, even though I was sitting on the floor, talking in my smallest voice. I am on a medication for stress and anxiety. I cannot get rattled to the same degree ever again. Dana has the right to feel what she wants about me, and I have the right to say it was a bad call. I have never and will never want my father to be involved in my marriage. I was trying to tell her about my weekend. She asked me to stop, and I told her that we were just getting somewhere, because she would get deeper and deeper and say, “this conversation is over,” so that I had plenty of chances to hear her and few chances to talk.

Dana told me that the reason Angela called her first was that she was appalled I posted our divorce on Facebook. She thought THAT was the reason for my psychotic break. Without breaking confidentiality, all I will say is that Dana has chosen my parents over me, and it breaks my heart. I refuse to talk shit about Dana, but at the same time, I think I am well within my right to say that maybe she is overstating her right-ness and overstating my wrong-ness so that she can feel better about walking away. I feel so broken that it doesn’t matter whether she walks away or not. I have to fix myself regardless of her decisions, and I am glad that I have so many options available to me that do not include reconciling with her. It is obvious to me that she does not understand the depth and breadth of fear that she’s re-enforced by threatening to call my father and possibly the police at a time when I needed her more and not less. I may not be the wife anymore, but I am still the person that remembers hiking to the top of Angels’ Rest and having Dana hold on to my ankles while I got a shot of the entire gorge.

My problem is realizing that woman is gone. She left some time ago. She just didn’t tell me about it. The last fight redefined us, and no apology is enough on either side at this time. I just want to go on record as saying that I am working through an enormous thunderstorm, and again, people are reacting as if I am entirely mentally unstable when I feel more in my body than I ever have. Letting go of Diane was a thunderstorm that luckily took way less time to exorcise than it did to create it, but only because someone proved to me beyond a shadow of a doubt that I was experiencing post-traumatic stress. It wasn’t that I couldn’t “get my shit together.” I will be in occupational therapy for a long time as I learn to manage my trauma reflexes and break them down to create new healthy patterns.

When I said that it felt like everyone was out to get me, I don’t mean all of you. I mean the people in my life closest to me. Because when Dana retreats, that’s not my friends retreating. That’s my entire world thinking that I am a monster…. that I have abused her emotionally for so long that I deserve everything she’s given me so far, and if you are a party to our inner monologues, you know what fucking bullshit that is. I could never give as much as I got in a fight. Ever. I am not wired that way. I just have a Napoleon complex that comes out when threatened. I am a five ton personality in a rat dog body.

Maybe that’s why I love Argo’s dog.

The scar is an X on her wrist.

So that’s what hardcore looks like. It could have been me, but it wasn’t. The scar is on her wrist, but implanted in my brain. I cannot forget it. It stays in my mind, a reminder that I cannot give up ever again. I see that X in my dreams, and I know beyond a shadow of a doubt how much pain it takes to get there.

We all have different stories, but the idea is the same. We are all grieving the loss of control of our lives and what led us to believe that we were worthless enough to stop taking care of ourselves. For my roommate, it’s the dopamine from cutting. For Siobahn, it was catching her husband in the act of adultery. No one has talked about childhood abuse and it’s effect on them. In some ways, it has been a loss to be unique, if that makes any sense at all. However, both my nurse practitioner and my social worker are lesbians (I’m guessing…. gaydar intact….) and they cannot even. It BOTHERS me that they lost their clinical separation because my issues hit too close to home for them. This is why I prefer male therapists. Women tend to lose their objectivity with me, but men are too gruff for that (generally). It’s like having built-in clinical separation instead of trying hard to maintain it.

Plus, I’m a Lanagan. I can move people to tears. You know it’s true. We’ve met. I don’t mean to say that I’m better than them. I’m a WRITER. I tell my story LIKE A WRITER. Many people are unprepared for how deep I can go and be both incensed AND hilarious at the same time. I am ambivalent about going home today. My nurse practitioner said that it’s really quiet on the weekends here, and she wanted to release me so I could go to outpatient. A little part of me is like, OH JESUS I AM NOT READY. I mean, it’s nice to have time to not worry about anything. It is nice to get feedback on what I say, and my group is as close as a heartbeat. It’s a cohort where we are all mutually in love up to our EYEBALLS because we know each other so well. It physically hurts that I’m not allowed to touch them at all. I want to hug, comfort, etc., but the idea is to learn to self-soothe, which is great when I’m talking, but horrible when the floor belongs to others. I just want my entire group to move in with me so that we can protect each other forever, but that’s not life and never will be.

What is life is learning that social services are open to me that I never knew existed. If you need help, the number is 211. However, having done my research, Montrose Counseling Center is the most well-rounded, and they don’t give a shit about your sexuality if you’re a straight person and you need help and feel welcome in an LGBT environment. It’s ok. We don’t bite that hard. But anyway, these people are capable of finding me a cheap place to live if Dana wants to stay in the house (fine with me, I’m not married to anything- especially having survived a complete and total house fire at 11. It’s freeing. I could lose a vase from the Ming Dynasty and I would be like, “oh well. It’s just a vase.” Why? Because my house started burning and the only thing that mattered was me. Fuck everything else. I am so proud of myself, because at least when my world was literally falling down around me I could function.

I am the type person that is calm, cool, and collected in a crisis. Well, usually anyway. I am the type person that will take care of what needs to be done, fuck all how I feel. I will break down when we are all safe. But sometimes, though, I don’t break down after a crisis and I just carry it. One of the things that I told my nurse practitioner is that it didn’t feel like my muscles had as much stress since the Neurontin med change.

I also told her that since it was our last meeting, she was really cute (shut it. We’ve met).

I love my nurse practitioner. I really hate that she works here because I want her to have her own practice so that she can be my actual doctor instead of just the one I saw for a few days. She understands that I try to be the funniest person in the room and she is going to try and kick my ass in all the right ways. I cannot abide a doctor I don’t think is smarter than me. I do not have that problem.

I also have a social worker that is hooking me up with all kinds of services. I don’t know which I’ll need because Dana doesn’t know where she wants to go, either- or I assume. I cannot talk to her right now. I told her to come last night and then she told me that she was grieving the loss of our relationship and I said, “did we make a mistake?” She said she didn’t think so. I was so down that I just uninvited her. I’m grieving, too. I do not want to believe that it is over, and I am also ready to leave and never look back. It is a strong cognitive dissonance, because I do not know which I want more.

I still think that moving to DC is the best option for me at this time. It’s not really that I need a change of venue. That’s just an added bonus. It’s that I’ve lived there before and I have friends from DC to New York that I NEVER get to see. Plus, I miss walking downtown. I used to take the Metro in and just get lost for hours on purpose. In DC, there is so much to see that it is beneficial to wander around by yourself. I tend to take lots of pictures and journal my findings. My favorite place to sit is on The Mall, because it is the BEST people-watching. Sometimes you’re watching famous people, but most of the time, you are watching families out with their dogs. So calming to be by myself- an observer and recorder, like most writers are.

I can picture my apartment. Hopefully SE Waterfront, near my old church. It’s a funny story about how we found it to begin with. My first wife, Kathleen, and I were in Lambda Rising when I found a book with Susan Leo standing in the sanctuary at Westminster. I took it as a sign from God and the first Sunday I met Brian and Ruth Hamilton, the co-pastors, they were doing coffee and muffins for communion. Ruth said, “I hope you don’t mind.” I said, “of course not. Coffee has always been a life-giving substance for me.” It THRILLS me that Ruth and Brian are STILL THERE!!!! So, even if I live in a different area and decide on a different church because of it, I still want to visit occasionally. I helped put in the tile floor in the sanctuary.

But that is later. Right now I have to make sure that I am stable enough to go to work every day. The struggles I have been having at work are all due to repressed trauma that hasn’t been treated until now. I am hoping that getting rid of the trauma is as easy as getting it, but I know that’s impossible. It is good to feel hope today. It is good to feel alive and to know what I want to do and where I am going. I am applying all over the place, and I have a friend who works for Congressional Quarterly that is next on my list for a phone call (look at me! I make calls now!) I will also be applying at The White House, because I deserve to have a shot at an interview to be Sam Seaborn. I don’t know that I deserve the job, but I deserve to be SEEN AND HEARD. What I do know is that people can tell within a millisecond that I am every bit the writer I say I am.

By myself- an observer and recorder, like most writers are.

Which brings me to two awfulsome moments (thanks, Paul Gilmartin):

1. My occupational therapist said that I couldn’t write the whole time. I had to do these worksheets (that she has never given me, so I have no idea what she’s talking about). I said, “would you mind if I sat at the computer and type? My wrist hurts too bad to hold a pen.” She told me that it uses exactly the same muscles to type as it does to write and handed me a golf pencil. I said, “this is total crap,” and I left, because I did not want to engage in a fight. Diana (roommate) said, “I was there and she was shitty to you.” Nice to have validation and to know that my roommate has my back.
2. Mike (the Viet Nam vet in the wheelchair) told me he was leaving and I said, “give me a hug before you go.” We hugged and the orderly yelled “NO HUGGING!” I turned around and said, “I FORGOT!” He took exception to that. They’ll probably put me on Haldol for it (kidding, this is not Nurse Ratchett up in this bitch)

I told Argo that she broke me open to let all the light rush in with “why do you think it is everyone else’s job to fix you?” It did not occur to me that I could “man up” and get someone to drive me to the hospital and admit myself. I mean, why would it? I have no self-preservation. I am content to help you until I die. And by that, I do not mean Argo. I mean “you plural.” It doesn’t matter who she (most likely) is. It might even be a man. It’s not about attraction. It’s about seeing need and wanting to respond to it. Thursday was when I got my first taste of self-preservation, because even though it broke me open to let light in, it also just plain broke me. I went to her for help, and for whatever reason, it was not given. It was a swift kick in the ass that I’m not sure I didn’t need. I mean, her advice was really fucking sound. Her delivery is as awful as mine. We have done a fucking number on each other because I am who I am and she is who she is and instead of trying to be enormous together, we have gutter-sniped each other into the ground. Not because either of us really wanted to. We just hurt each other so bad that both of our walls went up. It happens. Whether they come down or not will not be decided for weeks, months, years. But I can’t worry about her right now. I can worry about her later, but only if she wants me to. I think it depends on how she sees me. I have not been kind to her, and I want to make amends by truly working on myself until we can interact safely and with much kindness, instead of the constant barrage of “fuck off and die.”

That is because neither one of us can handle emotional intimacy. Argo’s is not my story to tell, but I will say one thing. We cannot let each other in because our pattern is to get close, not be able to handle it, and then get in a fight that forces both of us to retreat. It has happened too many times for either one of us to believe that the other one really wants to change. I hope that I proved to her that I do love her and want her in my life because I am willing to lay my life on the line and say “it’s me. I know it’s me. If nothing else, I need her to realize that I am not doing this for her. I am doing this because I want to know what’s wrong with me, and how to turn off my defenses when they get so thick that no one can help me because I won’t let them. I have gotten really into the psycho/bio connection, which is good to study if I want to be a minister one day (my parishioners will never know how much I am doing to protect the future them. I have to have clinical separation or I will get into this position again because I will carry their problems like I carry my own.
I have five minutes of work time left, and I am so glad that they recognize I’m a writer and that I will heal more by continuing it than doing anything else. They don’t mind if I write about them. They think they’re famous. Shhhhhhhhh……. 😉

I am not sure why I hit my limit yesterday, I just knew I’d had enough. Most of the people here actually *are* in worse shape than me, which is totally part of the problem as an empath. I am trying to get over feeling everyone else’s pain. My roommate is a fucking cutter on 72 hour suicide watch. Good times. She’s actually one of the sweetest people I have ever met. Her name is Diana, because of course it is. My nurse practitioner looks like Susan, because of course she does (seriously, such a dead ringer I cried and hugged her anyway).

But all that stuff happened when I reached the unit. I got somewhat better when, ironically, billing came by. Turns out the billing lady used to have depression as bad as me and we cried and prayed together in the ER. Because that’s what I do. I’m about to die and I offer to pray over you. Because what can I do for you that I won’t do for myself? Pretty much goddamn everything. I am tired of being so emotionally laden from empathy that I cannot function. It is not that you have problems. You’re allowed. It’s that I can’t see a problem without wanting to fix it, particularly if it is something emotional because I’m already in my element anyway. Diana said, “I’m not sure I can make it. Will you stay with me?” She’s 21. I want to put her in my pocket and take her home. She reminds me of my stepsister Caitlin. I’m 5’4. She is probably 4’8. From Boston- so far from home that no one will visit her. I have taken her under my wing (because of course I have). It’s what I do. I just love people until they can’t stand it anymore. It comes from a very good place, but comes across as “smother mother.” Luckily, Diana is borderline so she won’t even notice.

I met with the mobile assessment team this morning. They thought I was hilarious, intelligent, and didn’t hesitate to speak to me like a colleague. There was nothing I couldn’t handle anyway. I’m fucked up in the head. It is unlikely that anything they give me will be unfamiliar.

I am more concerned about occupational therapy, because that is where I really struggle. The one thing that I learned today is that everything I *thought* was just ADD is also a trauma checklist. It’s hard to hear that I’ve been misdiagnosed in some sense, because I didn’t think of what Diane did to me as trauma. My nurse practitioner was tracking all the way through. “OF COURSE! Coming across like that, how would you even know what questions to ask.?” I told her that was Argo’s first reaction as well.

Unresolved trauma damn near killed me and I want Diane to know it. I don’t care if she responds in the slightest. I just want her to HEAR me. After we met, I could no longer live my life because I was living yours. It is now a pattern that I need to break desperately and don’t have the slightest idea how. That’s what these people are for.

But all the things I was telling you guys about that I thought were ADD? Not so much. I have been living in PTSD every day since my 14th birthday. No wonder I almost died. *I* couldn’t even describe what was wrong. By Saturday I was hyperventilating so much that I couldn’t really inhale. So again, the answer to why “I thought everyone else could fix me” is that I had been gaslit so successfully that I didn’t even want my own life, much less hers. I remember sobbing into her voicemail. Please don’t let me leave Portland without seeing you at all……” But the sociopath was already in place. Just WALL. So I turned on my sociopath. Wall. Trying so hard to keep each other out we couldn’t let others in.

My dad said that being able to turn off my emotions was a good skill to have. I said that it came at an enormous price. All the things, really. There is no limit to the amount of emotion I can deny myself, especially love. I feel love from God because God can’t go away and everyone else can. I am destroyed at my own hand in all cases, really. Argo said, “can’t you see the common denominator is you?”

Yes, I can you burger flippin’ ho.

However, it’s not all me. I do not have the same reactions to ANYTHING anymore. I have hit rock bottom, the place that says I don’t deserve to live and I will actively take steps to finish the job if I don’t ask for help. It gives you something, that place. You get there and you think “it cannot possibly get any worse.” So you start offending people left and right because they aren’t used to you not being abused and you’re not used to being able to stand up for yourself…. not maliciously….. you can’t even see what’s different. But they can.

I understand myself differently now. I understand the ways I manipulate people now, because until I checked in, nothing had scared me enough to be able to say out loud that I thought she loved me so much and I’d ALSO been turned on by a predator. Seeing her behavior afterward, I do not believe she planned to go through with it. If she did, she changed her mind. But what I know is that 25 year olds don’t let 14 year olds read their journals. Period.

Why is that one moment in time so important? Because Diane is so funny. She is a Southerner that also covers up shit with cake and icing. But that moment. The one where she gave me my presents? The mask came down and I saw her for the first time. If you’ve ever met diane (and I pretty much guarantee you haven’t because you wouldn’t know what to look for). Her eyes were dark and intense. Seductive, but not in a loving way. She did not wax rhapsodic. There was no light to make that happen. What did happen was adrenaline at the thought of getting caught. For older couples, it’s the thought of getting caught having sex. For me, it was the thought of my mom walking in on any of our conversations. I lived for it. How long can we keep the game up?

Til Thursday, apparently.

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.