The fiction in my family is that my great uncle was CIA, supposedly killed in a military coup somewhere in Africa. What gave us that impression is that we did not get his personal effects until years and years later. None of these stories have ever been proven. It’s just our hunch. The CIA does not advertise if it doesn’t want you as a basic analyst. We have no proof, but we believe it to be true.

I was abused as a child, therefore, a lot of my personality screams sociopath. Light is a choice I make daily. I choose to be filled with Christ’s love, and I am strengthened by the same holy spirit that worked through him. It allows me to have more love and compassion than I can ever gather on my own. God fills the spaces in me that feel nothing. Light is a direction, and I am going with it… because the light did not shine the brightest until I surrendered to the idea that I am a sociopath and I need God more than most. The biggest problem I have is not inflicting that lack of emotion on others. It’s something I’ve made the choice to work on daily, and it has made me silent on the outside as I sit and ruminate on the choices that God is asking me to make.

The way those two paragraphs merge is my head space when I was reading the CIA torture report. The sociopath in me thought the operatives were………………….. creative. The risen Christ in me said that my responsibility is not to care what those people have done and to love them anyway. It’s a tape that’s been running since childhood. I can love people no matter how far they fall because I’ve sat with evil longer than anyone else and we know each other now. My entire life I have known that my great uncle was in the clandestine service, so the idea of extorting intel has never been offensive to me. Under the right set of circumstances, I would be capable of doing it myself. I know that because it has been proven over centuries that under the right set of circumstances, anyone can do anything.

Just because I can doesn’t mean I will. Living in clean, white light has been the best thing about using my web site to think in longhand. Others’ reactions to my writing have helped me learn the invaluable lesson of surrender, because I have had to learn to compromise……. to give more than I thought I could and love more than I thought I could to the glory of receiving the light that flows through me. I’ve really had the time and space to reflect on what I think, regardless of others’ reactions. I invite dialogue with the recognition that this is my web site, and you have the right to your opinion, but at the end of the day your disagreement probably belongs in your own blog entry because I am not threatened by the fact that you take up as much emotional space as I do. In my world, your stories are all as large as the one happening on this page right now.

The light I have to give you is that I came into my relationship with God as someone with two distinct personalities…. one light, one dark. As those sides have merged, my darkness hasn’t gone without a fight. I expected it to. I wanted it to. And the reality was that I kept coming up short. I had to seriously piss myself off enough at the decisions I was making to see that I was perpetuating a darkness I didn’t need. I moved myself out of the way, and God started talking to me differently….. and I know why.

Until my personalities started merging, I thought I was smarter than God while at the same time convinced that even if I thought God was smarter than me, I wasn’t worthy of redemption, anyway. Two things happened to ease the darkness down the road a bit.

The first was changing my focus. God isn’t the grandfather in the sky. I am God. You are God. We are all God together, because society’s response to the divine is more important than the divine itself. You go to church, pray, and give money because it should feed the divine in you, not that God cares one way or the other.

My answer to whether or not God exists will always be the same. “Why does it matter?” With faith, you can’t factually prove shit. I choose to believe so that I am not the walking sociopath my history tells me I am. I choose light. I choose faith. I choose belief.

Because I know God, and she is wonderful.

Time decides who you you meet in your life. Your heart decides who you want in your life. Your behavior decides who stays in your life.

I got that from a Facebook graphic, and it was the first time that one of those things shared all over everywhere sent a knife through my chest. I have been dealing with want vs. behavior for months. My WANT says “please be in my life forever.” My BEHAVIOR says otherwise. I manage to piss people off regularly, and the bitch of it is that I don’t mean to. I think all the time. Thoughts flow out of me like water. I don’t have a very good gauge as to how my thoughts are going to come across to other people….. that other people aren’t going to see me for the tiny philosopher king I strive to be. They’re going to see me as a meddling asshole. And of course I don’t mean everyone thinks that, but when I’m in the middle of a conflict with someone, it takes the color out of my world.

The reason it does is that I know I participated in emotionally bombing someone because I didn’t think about how my words would change from being written to being read. I sit at my computer and calmly type away, because typing allows me to look at huge issues while keeping land mines untripped. I can talk about things easily because when I’m typing, I don’t generally emote as well. There have been times, like when I wrote When We Were Young. During that one, I cried and screamed all the way through it. 90% of the time, I am stock still. Only my fingers are moving.

Then, when my words are read, I sit there in shock as I realize my words have hurt someone, because it didn’t occur to me that they wouldn’t be reading in the same headspace I was when I was writing. That they might emote where I didn’t even flinch. It’s something that I’ve been thinking about constantly, because writing is something that I just can’t help and their reactions aren’t, either. It’s their choice whether to continue to interact with me or not, and that’s where my helplessness reaches its height.

There comes a point where I can’t make it right again. There aren’t enough amends in the world.

My behavior decides, and I crumble with want.

Dana just got hired as the Receiver for the Spec’s in West U. I told her that now we could both be Receivers together (because she keeps track of inventory and I am a Lois Lowry fan). The most interesting part of Dana’s interview (after the part about “you work here now”) is that they need cashiers at other stores and I’m already hired if I need a job. That’s right. Dana showed up to an interview and I got a job. I wasn’t even there, and I got a job. I was telling some of my friends at church that this was the best thing to happen to my web site in a long time. Plus, it’s a liquor store. They’re closed on Sundays. That’s God right there.

It is as if God is saying to me, “when you put light into the world, you get it back.” I have been working honestly on a writing career, and I have been working so hard that my wrists are numb at the end of the day, along with my lower back. I also put out into the world that I wanted a job where I wasn’t on call…. that all I had to do was spend 40 hours a week making money and the rest of the time I was free to write away. Because working at a liquor store will be my job, not my career. I am not defined by anything but my words. My words matter to me, and they’ve started to mean something to other people. I cannot and will not walk away from that fact. It is not my opinion that my writing heals people. I didn’t start saying it until it had happened three or four times (always get at least three sources). I have a benchmark for success, and that benchmark is how many people are healed by my words instead of hurt by them.

I tanked Clever Title because I could not see the forest for the trees. Writing about my life hurt my friends, so therefore, it wasn’t worth doing. This time around, I have done it differently. I have told all my friends up front that I’m a writer, I’ll always be a writer, and you’ll always be a part of me. I am not using you to get hits, I am talking about my life AND YOU ARE IN IT. If I don’t write about you, you don’t mean much to me at all, because it means that you don’t value my talent or are running in fear of it because you see yourself as some sort of target.

I will say this again, because I’ve said it before and it’s still true. I don’t write to hurt anyone. I write so that my friends will live forever. Three hundred years from now, people will still know that Aaron, Argo, and Dana are the closest to me because they are officially NOT. IMPRESSED. When I told Argo that I was going into the ministry, she said something about not being sure about the whole God thing. I said, “I don’t need you for that. I need you so that when I start talking to God, I don’t start to believe I am one.” She said, “I can do that.”

I didn’t think it would be a problem in the slightest.

Here’s what Jesus wouldn’t tell you that I will. When you’re a leader that comes from the people, when you start to get recognized elsewhere, you need to keep the people around you that were never impressed in the first place. Why do you think that the Disciples are so important? How are James, John, Thomas and Peter any different from CJ, Toby, Josh and Leo? To the Disciples, they had to take it on faith that Jesus’ ministry would be successful and that by following him, they were doing the right thing. They put up with a tremendous amount of emotional bullshit, because Jesus and I are a lot alike. When you ask us questions, sit back and be prepared for the answer, because it will be the equivalent of you asking me how my fish and chips taste and getting back the entire history of fish and chips because that’s where my mind went when you gave me that starting point. Questions do not get answers. They get trails and ellipses. I think out loud to my detriment.

People say that my mind fascinates them. I never know what to say to that, because I’m not sure what they mean by it. It’s too generic a compliment for someone that has serious self-doubt issues, because my first thought was, “like a zoo animal?” Of course. Of course that’s what they mean, jackass.

This is why we can’t have nice things.

This is also why I’m glad to have a job as a cashier. I can be polite, friendly, courteous, and at the end of the day, go home and enjoy my career.

When one of my friends writes to me, she always uses these long ellipses…………. When she does it, it makes her writing voice sound like William Shatner. I am…… pleased. I was even more pleased when I realized that the long ellipses were the story, not the pause…..

To that end, I started a hashtag on Facebook called #prayingonthespaces, and I’m trying to get it to go viral, because this is a bigger idea than a one on one conversation. In my prayer life, I see the words, but God sees the spaces…. the parts that aren’t filled yet. The things that need my love and attention because they’re not getting it already because my responsibility is in the wrong place. Part of being an abused child is learning to take responsibility for things that aren’t your fault. Part of being a healthy adult is putting responsibility back where it’s supposed to be, which is not a one-time endeavor. It’s a lifelong process. I feel that when I go to God in prayer, there’s not much I really have to say except a variation on Anne Lamott’s three prayers:

Help.

Thanks.

Wow.

Where am I going………………………………………….?

#prayingonthespaces

As I was preparing for my sermon this morning, I started reading the Gospel for today. It’s another excerpt from “Chicken Little,” but at least the language is somewhat more expository than “I don’t know.” One of the things that theologians struggle with is that since Mark is the earliest written record chronologically (as in, Mark came first but is not the first gospel in the Bible), they’re not sure whether Mark is the gospel OF Jesus or the gospel ABOUT Jesus. There’s a difference, and even though it might be a millimeter of difference, theologians thrive on that millimeter for centuries. The practical application is tense. Is Jesus speaking in first person? Is Mark speaking in third-person omnipotent? We don’t know, but we try like hell to figure it out (pun intended).

In today’s reading, Mark focuses on the ministry of John the Baptist. John is historically representative of judgment and repentance. However, John leaves out the thing that Jesus can and will provide- salvation. Here is the difference in one conversation (Matthew 11:18-19):

For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they said, ‘He is possessed by a demon.’

The Son of Man came eating and drinking and they said, ‘Look, he is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.’ But wisdom is vindicated by her works.”

This is ancient language to describe an ongoing problem. If you set yourself apart in righteousness, you are seen as wholly other. People cannot relate to you. If you are the visionary that comes from the people, you are going to have a hard time overcoming their very real earthly impressions of you. Can anything good come out of Nazareth?

No. No, it can’t.

You notice that Jesus was not a very popular preacher in his hometown until he was recognized everywhere else. Reminds me of preaching to Argo, Aaron, and Dana…. “been to Vegas twice, saw a tiger fly around the room. Your act ain’t nothin’ special, slick.”

John the Baptist preaches from the holy fire of judgment, but not his own. His God is old-school. Judgment does not rain down on you from him, but from the spirit through which he is strengthened. John is supposedly humble enough to know the difference, but I believe that both John and Jesus were also INFJ. The difference is that John’s emphasis is all J(udging), and Jesus’s is all F(eeling). To accept the ministry of John, you accept that you sin and you can’t help it… you give the power to God for accounting your works. To accept the ministry of Jesus, all you need to know is that the account is reconciled before you do anything else. In fact, what account? Any sin that you may have committed is already forgiven, which is why John is not shy about saying that someone is coming greater than he. It is as if he is saying quite plainly, “I only have the emotional ability to get thisfar, but someone is coming that can take you the rest of the way.”

As a writer and theologian, I feel this way daily. DAILY.

I can bring you the light of Christ, I can tell you what it means to me, but I am not stupid enough to think that there aren’t millions of ministers smarter and more capable than me… and not only that, I would prefer you seek them out. That way, I don’t have to be responsible for your emotional freakout when you discover that I am just as human as Jesus. I won’t be there to know when your mindset suddenly changes and you don’t think anything good can come out of Nazareth. You know it.

It is the conundrum of every good pastor in the world. “Please, God. Do not let me show my humanness because they think that since I am anointed with Christ’s light that I somehow have new superpowers that they don’t.” As a child of the Methodist church, my friends would apologize for cursing in front of me. I honestly think it created the tape that made me so vulgar now. Yes, you can have the mouth of a sailor and still be worthy of God’s love… no matter how holy I feel, it’s not going to stop me from saying “fuck” a lot. Sorry. Not gonna happen.

The day I stop cursing and telling outrageous jokes is the moment I set myself apart and start my “John the Baptist” crap. The people around John thought he was possessed by a demon because he wasn’t partying with them. People accepted Jesus because he was just a regular dude with an extraordinary calling… and it had been that way since he was a baby.

Last week, our Advent devotional was about waiting for the baby… preparing for the miracle of Advent to occur… when the preparation leads to permanent changes in how we react and respond, how we listen and how we talk to each other.

This week is no less an enormous change. This week, the buzz word is “watch.” We are waiting for the one John the Baptist calls “greater than himself.” We have met John, who is perfectly happy to preach as the preview to the movie. It is a sacramental interpretation- that baptism is a spiritual change from darkness into light. Where John trips is that he himself was not waiting for the baby, because he expected that the Messiah to come would reign in the fire he attributed to him long ago.

He wasn’t waiting for the baby, because he didn’t know he was supposed to.

But we do.

We have the benefit of four gospels that tell us exactly who that baby grows up to be. But John, like most Jews of the time, was waiting for the heavens to open up and for God to yell down and say, “THIS IS IT! HE’S HERE!” There were going to be signs and shit all over everywhere so that no Jew on earth would mistake the Messiah for anything else. The reason that there’s so much geneology in Matthew is because Matthew is literally screaming to get his Messiah recognized by the Jewish community at large. He is, in effect, walking around with a huge tome to factually argue everything to the last tooth and nail. Matthew is all, “he comes from the House of David, bitches.”

Please, for the love of God, make Matthew stop. Part of faith is not having to make people prove that they’re telling the truth. It’s fine to debate, but when you get down to the basest parts of yourself that say this is all crap, stop and remember that the gospel writers, John the Baptist, and even Jesus were just as human as you and I. They didn’t understand any better than we do right now. They had the same emotional tools and less in terms of research. We have had the benefit of thousands of years to think about it, and we’re still arguing like all this came down on our heads last night.

It doesn’t seem that belief in the gospel writers or even Jesus has real-world application, and yet, it does. If you are that analytical about your faith, are you that analytical about your life? What does it take for people to get you to believe? It doesn’t have anything to do with God at this point. When your kid comes to you and says, “I have a problem,” how long does it take you to believe them? How long does it take for belief to become action? How long does it take you to help them?

I am slow on the uptake a lot.

I am so analytical that it takes me twice as long to figure out a problem because I have to look at all 82 sides. It stops me from springing into action quickly, because I look before I leap. I have learned to spend the time and look after a whole swath of my life got eaten up in “don’t want to think about it.” I baptized myself in John’s name, because I wanted someone else to judge me as harshly as I do. I wasn’t ready for Jesus, yet. In order to be ready for Jesus, you have to believe that all your sins are worthy of being redeemed, and that it’s ok you keep on sinning, because there’s really no way around it.

This year has been a marked (Marked?) change in thought process as I wrote about waiting for the baby, and am now watching for the Messiah to come. I went to the pre-service concert, and I am tapping my wristwatch for the main event.

Come sit next to me. I need popcorn.

It’s still Diane’s birthday, and I’m getting ready to go to sleep. Emotionally, I’m fairly exhausted, because as I told Dana, “just because it’s emotional work doesn’t mean it’s easier… it’s still work. In fact, sometimes I think it’s harder.” I’ve had a lot on my plate emotionally, and tonight I just want to relax in the comfort of my own bed, because then while I’m dreaming, the pain will float away. To that end, I am publishing my favorite Diane Syrcle quotes of all time:

“AIDS will kill you, but herpes is for life.”

“I like your lady. I like you WITH your lady. She is a good lady.” Dana and I are going to have to record this at some point. It loses something without Southern inflection.

“You are free therapy for someone older and often not wiser.”

“You can’t make love to someone else if you don’t know how to make love to yourself.”

Diane used to wear contacts all the time, and once at church when I was 13 she ditched them and wore glasses. I said, “Oh, Diane! You look so smart in your glasses!” She pushed them up on her nose and said, with dripping sarcasm, “as opposed to WHAT?”

“Bless it and release it.” (more important with age…..)

I don’t want to lose her. I try like hell not to. People around me, especially my wife, say that I am too kind. I tell Dana that I don’t love Diane because it changes her. I love Diane because it changes me. I cannot live in that much anger, fear, and shame. Loving her despite her flaws allows me to walk in light even when the darkness consumes what I really hold dear… which is the ability to funnel light to others.

If people say that makes me too kind, then let them say it. It’s how I’d rather be remembered, anyway. Do I really want to be known as “that bitch that came after Diane on her web site,” or do I want a story of redemption?

Well, I believe in the risen Christ. It seems only fitting that I allow the risen Christ to work through me. This is not a resurrection between us. The resurrection is for me. What she does with it is her choice.

I’ve already made mine.

My sister Steffi (well, technically, she’s my sister-in-law, but I hate semantics with family) is running in the California International Marathon tomorrow. Mama and Papa B have gone out to Sac to support her, and both Dana and I wish we were there. It’s just unfortunate money and timing. Even if we had the money to take off for Sac tonight, we are still performing in Lessons & Carols tomorrow at Epiphany. So tonight, even though my body is in Houston, my thoughts are sitting on the couch next to her.

I’m not sure what to say. I don’t know anything about running. All I know is that marathons are like, 8 bucks a month on Netflix and I’m okay with that. It just seems important to recognize that Steffi SAW what she wanted to do, and once it was in her mind, she just tore after it like a house on fire. It’s inspiring. If Steffi can run a marathon, what can I do?

The skies are limitless on that one, and when I find a direction, I’ll be the first to say that Steffi gave me the endurance to stay in the race until the end.

I love you, Counselor. Maybe we could watch The West Wing while you’re pounding the pavement. Both marathons. Seems legit.

It’s Diane’s birthday, and I am emptier than I thought I would be. It’s a range of emotions, from brick wall armor to histrionic mess. I, like I do every year, remember the first birthday present I ever sent her. I conspired with my mom when I was 13 to send her flowers at school when she was a teacher at Hodges Bend- a rosebud with a card that read, “for all you do, this bud’s for you.” Then, I called 104.1 KRBE and had them announce her birthday over the radio.

Her totem animal is a dragonfly, so one year I got her a toilet seat with a huge dragonfly embroidered on it. It was so tacky it hurt. Then for Christmas I got her a turquoise bracelet with a card that said she deserved it because I totally Punk’d her on her birthday.

Today it’s all about the good memories so I don’t drown in bad ones. In my head, we’re singing “Happy Birthday” together at Bridgeport, dueling divas style, because we had that shit wired. When our voices connect, there’s so much power it’s a magnetic field.

I have to be careful that my thoughts stay on the ground, because my tendency on these days is to sit and stare into the Mirror of Erised and the dichotomy is so stark my breath becomes fight-or-flight.

But I totally nailed that rosebud thing.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s the Tao of Friendship.

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

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

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

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

It’s going to be quite a trip.

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

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

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

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

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

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

You make this look good.

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

Just like Sam and Toby.

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

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

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

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

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

From time to time.

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

I am sorry.

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

I forgive you, absolutely and completely.

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

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

“Never, ever” lasted eight whole days.