My dad wrote one of these for his dad. Here is mine. It wouldn’t be mine if it wasn’t late.

1. There is Never a Time One Should Look Unkempt

These are the things my father has taught me. Not necessarily the ones I exhibit in the outward sense. While my father is usually in a suit, I am usually in jeans and a t-shirt. It is not lost on me that people are a lot nicer to him in public than they are to me. Dressing nice has its privileges. He should know. He began wearing suits in high school.

2. Apologize When You’re Mad

I never got the chance to walk away from an argument, and ours are epic because we are the same person in two bodies AND WE ARE BOTH ALWAYS RIGHT. However, neither one of us have ever walked away from a fight without apologizing and meaning it.

3. Mean Not To

God, it was so irritating when I was a kid. If I said something to the effect of, “I didn’t mean to,” the response was always “mean not to.” It’s emotional shorthand for “try to figure out how not to hurt someone in the first place.” At the time, I thought it meant that there were no accidents. It still does. The meaning has changed for me as I learn the ways I can be really annoying and trying not to unleash it on other people.

4. Funny Fixes Nearly Everything

There’s no reason to do anything without humor. My dad has proved that to me many times, and that advice has gotten me out of sticky situations. People rarely want to hurt other people that make them feel good.

5. Starting a Conversation is Easy

I have incredible social skills, and most of it comes from having watched my dad navigate all kinds of social situations with grace. Don’t know anyone? Sit down randomly and say, “I like your shoes.” You will be amazed at how easily the conversation will go from where he/she got those particular shoes to anything and everything else if there’s a newfound connection… because what do people like to talk about *the most?* Themselves.

6. Somebody Has to Be in Charge

There can always be collaboration, but at the end of the day, someone needs to be held accountable. someone has to direct the flow of traffic. I’ve learned a lot from him about how to be one of those people without seeming like a dictator or doormat.

7. Having People Look at You is the Point of Doing Silly Things

My dad taught me that “they’re all going to laugh at you” is a good thing… and how to use it to my advantage. When you make people laugh, good things tend to happen for you. Because of my dad, I can hold an entire room of people in the palm of my hand… just because they’re waiting to see what I’m going to do next.

8. Love All You Can

We’ve always had this saying in our house- “if I have it, and you need it, it’s yours.” He taught me that there’s literally no place on earth I could go to get away from his love- that he would always find me if I got lost. I’ve loved other people that way even when they haven’t loved me back. Of course it hurts- but what is the point of life without it? What is the point of love so shallow you can’t even feel it there?

9. There is No Such Thing as Quiet Brass Music

WHAT?

10. Be Who You Is

My dad never reacts when I have new tattoos, new piercings, or anything that could even be construed as body-altering. It’s not that he doesn’t care how I look. It’s that he would accept me no matter how I looked.

This week, the most popular topic on my Facebook page has been the story regarding the Maryland teacher who went to the house of the child he was texting and the father hit him with a baseball bat. I caused a bit of controversy because I was on the side of the teacher, but not because I thought he’d done the right thing. I just thought that the parent should have taken a breath and had a Coke and a smile while he waited for the police to take the teacher away. Taking the law into your own hands rarely turns out the way you think it will or should.

There was so much blowback afterward~ including one person who said that a teacher texting his daughter gave him the right to any number of irrational acts.

And then I put it together why I was on the side of the teacher and I started to dry heave and run for the toilet.

It was just texting. They were just talking. How inappropriate could it get? I mean, it worked out so well for the teacher writing me when I was that age.

I need to throw up again.

Things have been so busy around here that I haven’t had much time to think, much less put the words down in logical order. Plus, I didn’t have anything burning I needed to write about, so the blog went to the back burner until I could feel your little eyes baring down on me with disapproval. Leaving this blog with stale content was not what you came here to see, thankyouverymuch, and don’t think I don’t know that. It’s a driving force in my life, because the last thing I would want to do is drive off my readers out of sheer boredom. How do I know this? I leave blogs that have stopped producing content all the time.

Additionally, it’s not just the external pressure of having an audience. It’s internal pressure that I haven’t “gone to therapy in a awhile.” I say this because seeing a doctor is only one hour a week. You want to get better? Then spend more time than that thinking about your role in your own life. You do own it, after all. The doctor is just a coach to get you to do some self-reflection anyway. He/she doesn’t so much make you well as guide you toward yourself and the things that make you feel authentic. Many doctors will agree with me on this. It’s a prescription pad, not a magic wand.

Taking control of your own wellness (especially with mental health) is the only modern option. Gone are the days when you wait for a doctor to fix you. There are pharmaceutical commercials on TV (possibly the worst idea in the history of the world), and frankly, there are days when your doctor just cannot maintain and the schedule is an hour and a half behind and by the time you actually see him/her, there’s no time for long, deep discussions. My psych appointments are rarely more than 15 minutes, unless the doctor does both therapy and prescribing. Sometimes, psychiatrists are good counselors. Sometimes, they’re just, well, doctors.

And how shall I put this?

You go to a doctor when something needs fixing, and there is a black or white answer. I have found very few doctors that are really, really good at being engaged *with* me, instead of *at* me, and I know the difference intimately. Engaged *with* me says that my doctor knows that I am not an expert at psychiatry, but I am an expert at being Leslie, and I probably know better what I need than someone I see once a quarter. I also need a doctor that will engage with me as an equal, because as a doctor’s kid, I’ve been around high-level jargon since I was a teenager and if there’s anything I hate in the world above all else, it is an MD with a patronizing tone. Just as a for-instance, a doctor who takes the time to explain to me what an SSRI does even after I’ve made it clear that Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors have been a part of my Tx (treatment) plan for a very long time. I get that wigged out feeling and just want to tell the doctor that I have pants older than him.

Pants.

My world came full circle this weekend, when I saw my childhood choir director for the first time in about 18 years or so. Looking into his familiar face made my day. My favorite memory of him is that his last name is four syllables, so one of our choir members printed up t-shirts with the first page of No. 44, Hallelujah, with his name instead of “Hallelujah.” I wish you’d seen his face when we all surprised him~ it was absolutely priceless, because of course we were all wearing them and started singing the moment he walked in.

It’s moments like this that make me glad to be back in Texas, because it truly feels like coming home for good. I feel like I’ve had some of the wildest times of my life, the worst mistakes, the highest victories. I didn’t reach the goal I’d hoped while I was gone, but I got what I needed, which was the idea that I could be me, and that was okay, because that person is beloved regardless of how messy my life is at any given moment.

It’s storming out, and the calming rattle and hum is feeding my contemplative nature. I’m listening to Regina Spektor radio on Pandora, which is just the perfect writer’s blend… and yet, I’m not sure what to say. The things that happen to me are all interesting in their own way. Culling it down is harder than dictating everything, but that would turn my blog into even more of a brain dump than it already is.

Speaking of which, thank you for reading my brain dump. Special thanks to those who help shovel.

I would say that summing up my Portland experience is this: there are lots of situations I hope aren’t the end of the movie. Right now, it kind of looks like Broken Flowers, where at the end there are more questions than answers. I got that line from an episode of Will and Grace, where Grace is crying over something (I forget what), and Will comforts her by saying, “Gracie, this just isn’t the end of your movie. There’s more.” To address the inevitable question in your mind, I am not talking about the relationship with my abuser. I feel like I have made it clear that I have high standards for getting access to me due to all the damage done to my foundation. She has made it clear through thought, word, and deed that I should never expect it. So I don’t.

I am talking about all the things that I left undone.

That line touches me to my core, because it comes from the Book of Common Prayer.

Most merciful God,
we confess that we have sinned against you
in thought, word, and deed,
by what we have done,
and by what we have left undone.

I let that line kick me in the gut every week, because I really feel the discomfort. I have to listen to it so that I can be a better person than I was the week before.

I pray for all the hurt that I’ve caused my friends and family, because acknowledgement of my flaws and failures is the seat of Christianity for me. Like C.S. “Jack” Lewis, “I don’t pray because it changes God. I pray because it changes me.”

I tested a lot of boundaries when I was on my own, like all young people do. When I found out that there was a better way, I chose it. I thank God every day for the compassion I’ve been able to learn for myself, because it gives me more compassion and love for others than I ever thought possible.

There’s something really happening at my church. There’s something familiar about the words of the Anglican church still being said so that there is still the ritual. I can’t always believe in God, but I can be faithful, do the ritual and “act as if” until the next “God moment” appears.

And it always does.

The reason that I saw my childhood choir director is that his best friend’s dad died, and we were both at the funeral. My priest also attended, and sat next to me during the service. I said something snarky about the preacher (when you run out of things to say, stop talking) and she said something about how I shouldn’t do that because she has a lot of sympathy for preachers. I completely realized just how jaded I’d become, because while I take my faith seriously, I think a lot of things about church life are uproariously funny and deserved of ridicule because that’s the foundation of a good church vs. a bad one- the ability to laugh at themselves. At the same time, because my priest didn’t like it, I felt that I’d crossed the line between appropriate and inappropriate things to say, and I melted from this emotional armor and thought about what she said all day long. I thought about how young she was, and how I didn’t want to be the one to jade her, as well.

If that’s not a God moment, I don’t know what is.

I saw something today on Facebook that piqued my attention.

If there are toxic people in your life, are you obligated to enlighten them to that and explain why you no longer want to interact with them? Or, is it acceptable to just, well, slip away….quietly, without explanation? Discuss.

The only word that comes to my mind when I think about this question is “expectation.” We are implored as peaceful people to live without them, but we are all fallibly human instead. Expectation management is not easy. There’s no schedule. Emotions aren’t due on the 15th. Our society tells us that when someone else has an expectation of us that we do not want to fulfill, it is truly ok just to walk away and let it go.

Let’s think about that for a second.

Do you have expectations of those same people? How would you feel if someone slipped away without telling you? Would you be able to walk away from them as easily as they’re supposed to walk away from you? Will you be able to handle the gorge between you if and when it’s inevitable you’ll see each other again?

These are flowery words, but come with a velvet hammer.

Get. Your. Shit. Handled.

People are so afraid of conflict. We just are. We hem and haw and put off until it is the very worst situation possible and we react with “I JUST CAN’T HANDLE IT ANYMORE!” Maybe the answer isn’t finding out how to slip away quietly, but how the relationship got so strained in the first place. Relationships don’t generally start out with antagonism. That stuff grows over time, especially if the person is related to you or such a close friend you forgot when they came into your life, anyway.

And eventually, holding someone at arm’s length to get some distance from the situation will turn into someone holding on, because they don’t know.

They. Don’t. Know.

They don’t know you aren’t on their team anymore. They don’t know that you’re over it. With long relationships, would it occur to you that the person was done if you’d always been able to pick up right where you left off in the old days?

Break the habit of slipping away if only to protect yourself, because it will bite you in the ass if you don’t.

For instance, when I was single and living in Portland, I was dating three women at the same time. I say that to look like a badass, when what I really meant is that I went on three first dates.

I didn’t handle date #2 well, and I slipped away without calling. Cut to a huge scene in a bar that would be better left undescribed, but I still had all my hair at the end of the night so it couldn’t have been that bad.

The take home message is that bailing without telling someone creates more trouble than telling the truth ever would. I should know. I’ve seen me do it.

I have drunk so much water and punch today that my coworkers are starting to worry that I have bladder problems. It’s simple, really. There is no better medicine than punch and water for snot. It stops the coughing and starts the never-ending nose blow that comes with the common cold… but at least you can get the snot out of your body and into the trash can (with the proper amount of Kleenex).

My busy peeing schedule isn’t exactly impeding my work. Basically, it’s just making everyone in the department laugh in a “there she goes again” sort of way. It doesn’t help that there’s a pool out the window of the break room to remind me how maybe seven water-based drinks in two hours could have been meted out a little better.

On the plus side, I am not coughing. I am not having too much trouble on the phone. I will make it through the day, which is more than I could say when I woke up this morning. I could barely talk before I got into the shower and breathed in the steam. I’m even on for choir practice, barring vocal disaster. I mean, who drinks more than a singer?

I’m not sure I need an answer to that. 🙂

Mother’s Day has been loaded for me since I was a teenager… not because of my own mother, but because of my abuser. She beckoned me toward her and simultaneously shut the door in my face, so I never knew if it was ok to celebrate her or not. Whether or not I celebrate her with cards and flowers, past memories wash over me like saltwater waves~ beautiful with a bitter taste in my mouth.

With the exception of the part of the day with my own sister and mother, I spent the day staring into space. I sat on the couch and looked out the window, watching animals and their humans walk by, subconsciously driving down Weslayan toward Drake in my mind, noting that we have to go to Central Market and maybe Dana wouldn’t mind driving me by…

I snap out of my daze and realize that these memories need to stay in my head. Nothing will be accomplished by trying to jog my memory even further, because I’m already feeling emotionally crispy and I don’t want to exacerbate the situation. Staring out the window and thinking is both the best and the worst I can do.

To quote myself from a long ago entry on a long ago blog, “so we sat there, my spirit and I, wrestling each other without keeping score.”

When I was 13 or 14, I don’t remember exactly, the woman known simply to this web site as “my abuser” said something to my mother that I will never forget, because at the time I thought it was just mean and the most horrible thing she ever could have said about me in a million years (but she was forgiven somewhere around 1995). She said, “Carolyn, I think she’s an alto.”

I KNOW, RIGHT????????

I remembered that conversation when I started in my new church choir, and it did not go well at first. It wasn’t that I couldn’t sing… it was that I didn’t fit in. Because I don’t want to hurt anyone, I will limit my comments about my church choir to the simple fact that I can sing high notes… and the people around me were First Sopranos. If you have been in a choir for any length of time, I won’t have to say anything more than that.

Last Sunday, my throat was a little bit scratchy, so I asked if I could sing alto. All of the sudden, my brain was firing faster, because sight-reading harmony is a hell of a lot harder than sight-reading melody. The person next to me was hilarious, and we wrote notes to each other like choir people having fun are supposed to do. It was then that I realized maybe I *am* an alto, because I would sing low notes all day not to have to compete. I don’t compete.

I write notes and have fun.

Yesterday at work, my coworker was teasing me about saying that one of our clients had a cute Texas accent. He told everyone that I must’ve been looking for a date. I said, “I got more woman than I can handle at home… what makes you think I want another one?” He looked at me like he’d never seen me before. “Whoaaaaaa…. welcome to the boys club!”

It was a moment that reinforced my feeling that only male sexuality matters. I am already looked upon with a bit of shock because Dana and I currently have the classic 1950’s setup (I bring home the money, and then it’s Dana’s). We are so new, and we are so retro.

I think that my coworker thinks that I prefer it this way… that I’m sort of chauvinistic and I like it that Dana’s home because she takes care of me. I do value Dana, beyond any type of measurement, but I can’t take that extra leap into deciding what Dana’s going to do for her. I get to enjoy whatever this is for as long as it lasts, and remember it fondly when it’s gone.

Another coworker is hounding me to have kids, because Dana’s already at home. I’m like, “bitch, let me learn to manage my own schedule before I take on anyone else’s.”

I mean, DAMN. I just got into the boys club yesterday.

I made an enormous mistake by not taking more time off to recover from working nights. I took just enough time to get some rest, but not enough for replenishing my soul. If I’d thought about it, I could have taken Dana to the beach… or to a park… or on a road trip… you know, just something to get the heck out of Dodge and just not be here.

Right now I am sitting in my precious lobby, which I no longer “own” because there are people coming through the front doors at this hour. These are the most comfortable couches in the entire building, and not being able to take a nap at lunch, curled up in my Lumpy Space Princess blanket, is especially irritating. Don’t these people know I’m recovering from not a small amount of sadism?

Necessary sadism, but still.

Two ladies just came into the lobby and their perfume is so loud that I can smell it from across the room. They’re wearing clothes that ladies wear- one has a fancy top and pants with no waistline. The other has one of those “walking suits” that were all the rage in the ’90s.

I like my new schedule- it allows me to sleep in a bit later. The only drawback is that traffic is much heavier now than it was two hours earlier, my last day shift. Apparently, everyone in the city of Houston has to be at work at 9:00 AM, or at least, it feels like it because normally, my office is thirteen minutes door to door.

I’m so impatient. Add ten minutes to my commute and I’m like, “this is BULLSHIAT!” I should try to be better about it, but when I was growing up I had a friend who absolutely white-knuckled the steering wheel with impatience at having to wait on someone, and it made an impression. Showing up on time matters. In fact, just showing up is most of it.

I sometimes feel that any job, anywhere, is based on a collective agreement that we can stand each other every day. If you’re man enough to put on your big girl panties and deal with my crap every day, I suppose I can do the same thing for you.

The lobby is quiet. I wonder if I could get away with putting my feet up…

It came to me in a flash of light, kind of like a dream if you believe in that sort of thing. I’m working like a cook. I’m working like everything is high priority and everything has to get out on time. I don’t understand the concept of “slow down.” Slowing down is being less productive. Slowing down means I am not contributing as much as I possibly can whenever I can.

No one gives me this pressure. It’s my internal slave drivers, “the committee,” as my AA friends would say (if you don’t have a friend in AA, you really need one). No one is harder on me than I am internally. It’s something that I’ve picked up from all my parents (which, by my count, is six). Everyone in my family is internally driven and successful beyond belief.

I am not yet, but not for lack of wanting. I mean, I do not discount all of the progress I’ve made over the years, but my mental health has been a constant obstacle in terms of time management and organization. If I was only paid to think, I’d do quite well. It’s the paperwork that kills me, even though it’s all digital. I’m sure you all have some version of this. Firefox always has sixty tabs at work, you know?

I am being switched back to days on Monday, not as a punishment but because I realized that graveyard shift was exacerbating the problem instead of making it better. I thought that I would have an easier time at night with the slowing down, but it’s been the opposite. There’s no one to talk to, no one to consult, and as I sit in the dark, I buzzsaw through backlog. The mistakes I have made are nothing major- akin to copying an e-mail to someone that didn’t need to be included or vice versa. Then, I hear the criticism that’s thisbig and blow it all out of proportion because I’m too exhausted to take it in stride.

Being on the graveyard shift has flipped my personality, as well. All of the alone time has made me retreat into myself. Even when there are other people around, I tend to put on my headphones and shut out the rest of the world. I only exist in my bubble, the place where no one can touch me because I look absolutely unapproachable, anyway. I am not like this. I have never been like this at a job. It’s nice to take off the mask and just be my antisocial, introverted self… but I’ve stopped feeling like I’m part of a team that shares the load. Right now, even though it’s really not true, I feel like it’s all on me.

In some ways, it is. I have to deal with my mental health issues. I have to keep tabs on myself when it feels like there’s too much flying at me. I have to know when the plate is hot, because it’s self-preservation to drop it. The calming down part is that not everything is an entree. Sometimes it’s just a salad.

I am starting to find out, between all my writing and reflection, that I am my biggest obstacle, and I don’t know how to get me out of the way. I have ADD without hyperactivity, and it is constantly plaguing me at work. I don’t fall short with big picture details… it’s only when something so small needs to happen that it runs under my attention and hides just beyond my reach.

It’s a huge deal to me, because I cannot think of one single thing I’m doing wrong, because this problem is not new. It has plagued me since elementary school. I know within myself that if I could think of a solution, it would be implemented by now. I’ve read Driven to Distraction, and like one of the case studies in the book, I know I’d be late to the psychiatrist’s appointment to talk about my ADD as well.

I’m at the end of my rope, and it doesn’t matter whether I’m late to the psychiatrist’s office or not. It’s either get this taken care of now, or let it continue to plague me until I’m dead. Those emotions create so much fear in me that something has to give. I cannot live my life this way anymore.

There are all kinds of psychiatry that would help me, most notably cognitive and behavioral therapy to implement habits. Creating habits, for me, is just as hard and stressful as higher mathematics. I can deal with infinities as well as I deal with finding my keys/phone/bag every damn morning, which is to say, not well.

I go completely inside myself, gathering my strength, because some days feel like battling my own mind just to get it together. I’m awfully hard on myself, which is why when life gets difficult because of my disease I tend to spiral into self-fulfilling prophesies of failure.

Talking to Dana helps, because she suffers with the same disease. However, she is much more consistent than I am about having coping mechanisms and using them. I’m often jealous that she is so much more put together than I am, but then again, because she’s not working right now, she doesn’t have as much on her plate to handle as I do in a given day. I am sure that if she were working, I would see more of her struggle than I do right now. In my darkest moments, I realize that I rely on her organizational skills way too much. Her nickname even reflects this- she is my “Danabase.”

I am putting these words down on paper to have something tangible to hold myself accountable to my words. I said I need help, now I need to get it… else this will be another detail I let fall through the cracks, and it’s the one thing that will heal the cracks from happening in the first place.