When You Steal a Story, Part II

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

“Comedy equals tragedy plus time.”

I’ve been invited to look at my story as a screwball comedy in terms of a movie. I think it could work, but I’d want it to be in the same vein as “Argo.” There’s too much seriousness in the story to make jokes all the time, but black humor has always been a pressure valve for both of us. If it’s going to have my voice, it’s going to be a “dramedy.”

That’s because there’s too much intrigue and mystery, even for one movie. Our relationship lasted 12 years and contains a historical figure. It has all the makings of your next weirdo favorite.

I was catfished by someone I knew, who used bits of someone else’s story to augment her own… And her accomplishments are large, so part of the mystery is why she felt the need to steal someone else’s story in the first place.

I was charmed by her forceful, no bullshit attitude and the softness she reserved, it seemed, only for me. I’ve been attracted to that my whole life, and her personality swallowed me whole. I think she liked having someone admire her that much, but I cannot tell her story for her. This is only my version of the truth, missing its rightful other side.

I could not see her manipulations while she accused me of manipulating her. I cannot tell you how much this web of lies affected me, the part of my life even I had trouble embracing because it was filled with fear. I can honestly say that I’ve walked through the dark with her, and I have come out on the other side.

Even now, I’m willing to forgive all her lies because it made me a better writer in the end. I got interested in a topic and just ran with it, posting about the intelligence community as if I were a part of it. Michael says that shame and embarrassment shouldn’t take up real estate in my head, so I’m offering that grace to Aada as well.

She is forgiven, utterly and completely. That does not mean that I think I’m the only one that should be examining how things are going psychiatrically and psychologically. She has told me that I was the topic of an emergency therapy session like it was all my fault and I needed help, that I’d spent years manipulating her and she was going to block me on everything and never contact her again.

This worked out for her, because it meant that she would never have to face the music of real conflict in a friendship…. Though it would not surprise me if I heard from her today. I laid down a truth that she wasn’t prepared for me to know a few months ago, and I doubt has made progress on that issue.

I called her on a huge lie, and then mentioned it a few days later. Her reaction was that I could never talk about this lie again because it was so inert. It was so inert that it made me block my favorite author on Facebook and block other people in my life so they’d never question that decision. It was so embarrassing that I could still just cry thinking about it, but I look forward to the day when the screenplay is done.

Lanagan Media Group needs a project to rally around, and this movie might get it done. But it comes at a cost, and that’s possibly hurting two women I adore. I just have to hope that they speak money.

My feelings for Aada, strangely, haven’t changed at their core.

It wasn’t her story. But she was the one that told it.

When You Steal a Story

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I have been assured that I can hurt no one professionally, so here is what really happened to me. Aada stole a story, and ran when she got caught.

I know who she stole the story from, and she doesn’t like me any more than Aada right now… But I’m hoping that will change.

I wish I could talk to Dana as tears roll down my cheeks, talking to her about this stolen story and how sorry I am that it affected me so much I thought I needed to leave her.

Aada has been living a lie, but I haven’t.

I’m really lucky that I have more than one fan. Because I wouldn’t have known the answers to these questions if I’d never had an opportunity to ask one about the other.

I hope that Mummo knows I’ve been crazy about her for years.

And that’s the real end of the story I thought I’d never get. I’ve been in love with someone else’s story, and I would bet my life’s savings that I’m one of the only ones who know it.

I am clear-eyed about Aada’s reaction when I caught her in a lie. It’s always the details that sink a liar.

I can guess who is really friends with whom by now.

Maybe after all this, Mummo will forgive me, too. That part is just not up to me. It’s my best wish for the future.

And if I could wish for one more thing, it’s for Aada’s people to surround her with love and affection because we’ve really been through something. It’s just not the journey I thought we would take.

The Lord Baltimore Wash and Wax Package

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 3 Comments

My car finally arrived about 7:00 PM last night, which was just enough time for me to drive it around and get both a power train and a low tire pressure warning. I was paranoid about both, so I was in line at Koons Ford by 7:30 this morning.

$97 later, I’m sitting pretty. I had the oil changed and everything checked out, so all my fluids are topped off and my tires are at full capacity. I paid more than I would have paid at Jiffy Lube, but Riker told me to go someplace better. I don’t think he cares, just…. Better.

After I finished at Ford, I wandered around my neighborhood for a car wash. My dad and I did a little bit of detailing, like putting vinyl protectant into the dash, but I couldn’t avoid spoiling my “girl.” We went for the ultra wash, the Lord Baltimore, which came with free Rain-X and air freshener.

I thought they were going to spray it in the car, but no. Now I am the proud owner of a little tree to hang from my rearview mirror, scented in “Black Ice.” I’m going to save it for next month, because I got a really nice air freshener at the Auto Zone in Bastrop.

I need to check my bank balance before I go, but the last thing I want to get for my Fusion is floor mats. The boys had a lot of vacuuming to do, so I’m pretty sure I want all-weather. Depending on how expensive the rubber mats are, I might get one for the trunk as well. I’d like everything to look tidy and organized. I’ve been religious about taking out the trash every time I get out of it, and this is like a whole new thing for me.

I think, perhaps, I finally have a serious case of “pride of ownership.” It really is a good looking car with very few defects given its life that haven’t been corrected. The mechanics are all solid, but there are a few scratches and a rip in the back seat.

I haven’t decided what to do with the rip in the back seat, because I’m not a fan of seat covers. I think I’ll just leave it as is, because of course I won’t be looking at it all that often.

The woman at the check-out counter (at Ford) had a large basket of lollipops at her station. I said, “which ones are the best out of all these?” She said, “I don’t put those out” and handed me one from inside her desk. Strawberry Kiwi with Tootsie in the middle. The woman has taste.

I also grabbed a banana Tootsie pop because those are the hardest to find. As it gets closer to Halloween, I’ll be buying a lot of them.

This afternoon has been kind of quiet, except that there are guys working behind my wall in the living room. They just knocked a painting down from all the vibrations and I nearly jumped out of my skin, thinking I was being burgled again.

Yes, I really need to move.

After my heart rate returned to normal, I started thinking about how I’d like to get some decorations for my car down the road. A rainbow and bi flags, or instead of stickers, doing rainbow or bi flag colors on the approach lights. I think the bi flag would be less busy, but I’m not overly concerned. I can be the pride parade all by myself.

“Being the pride parade all by myself” is actually an old Margaret Cho joke, but I hope she doesn’t mind since we’re besties (she’s read one article).

It’s funny, sometimes I felt like the “pride parade all by myself” with Aada because she knew a lot about queer culture, but not all of it. She’d occasionally get something wrong to hilarious results, and I will miss that so much. My little cis, straight girl trying to learn all she can as quickly as possible.

But fortunately or unfortunately, Aada has queer people to take my place.

Tara made me cry when she read one of my entries and said, “I’m sorry about Aada.” It was so simple and so sweet that it’s just one of the many times tears have rolled down my face. Some days, this situation feels really simple. We are two people that have love for each other, or did. We both hurt each other more than we meant. We both acted out. We both manipulated each other, with Aada insisting that she never did such a thing.

“Your game is that you don’t play any games.”

That was how I dealt with that, and it resonated. She apologized for her behavior.

She confused me because sometimes she did not take responsibility for anything, and sometimes she made me feel like the most loved person on earth. I don’t know how to reconcile all of that, especially since she walked away saying that I was the only manipulator. If that’s what makes her feel better about ditching working on this relationship, I’m all for it. She can use her anger to separate from me entirely without ever once reaching into my heart and trying to understand.

But I know she’s not always like that. It’s how she runs when she’s really not thinking. When she’s dialed in, her empathy is unmatched. Getting her when she has enough bandwidth to be dialed in is most of the problem, and I contacted her too much to make her feel comfortable. Everything was rushed.

I think that’s why now I’m not bothering to email her- that writing here is the least offensive way to resolve all this if she’s curious, and if she’s not, it’s just my therapy.

You don’t get better on one hour a week, and my writing is responsible for a lot of the reason I move through emotions quickly, waffling between “what I think and what I think.” My best solution for this is distraction, because I cannot go backwards unless Aada consents.

Why do I think we should make up?

One of our longest running jokes is that she works at a car wash. Eight or 10 years ago, I joked with her that my car looked gorgeous. She said, “I accept tips.”

I used PayPal to send her $2.00. A few minutes later, I get an e-mail:

“Dead.”

I have a feeling it’ll be a hundred years before I see her wash and wax package, but it’s ok. It won’t stand up to Lord Baltimore, even though historically the next Big Gulp’s on me.

It’s just a shirt

~ Riker Brown ~ Leave a comment

It’s just a shirt. I mean, it is my favorite. It fits well, and I wear it to all my band’s gigs because the words and picture on the front carry a deep personal meaning to me as a musician.

But it’s just a shirt.

The emblem is a reference to a guitar. A guitar that fought fascism one chord at a time.

But it was just a guitar.

The guitar, and the words painted on the front, “This machine kills fasciitis” are on the front of that favorite shirt.  I won’t pretend to know if there was some deeper meaning in Woody Guthrie’s mind when he painted those words on the front of his old acoustic guitar, but to me it means that art and music can bring us together as a community, working together to support each other, and defeating fascism  without the need for violence.

But they’re just some words.

Now the Government is at war with words. Words like DEI, Woke, Democrat, Anti-Fa[scist], LGBTQ+, and more. They are saying that people who identify with or use those words are the enemy and must be punished.  They are forcing reporters to only report party approved information or risk being denied access. They are changing the names of departments from “Defence” to “War”. That Government is big, and has lots of weapons, and a desire to use those weapons on American people.

But it’s just people.

Those people are cruel. Those people want to hurt others, and abuse them for profit. But there are also people who want to stop that. People like me, and presumably you. When you look at the size of our Government it’s so easy to think “There’s so many of them.”.

And I’m just one person.

A person who feared State sponsored violence because  of a shirt, about a guitar, with some words. Words that the government had declared war on. Words that made me, in the Government’s eyes, an enemy.  When I was young, and learned about what made [US] America truly great, it was things like the social safety nets that pulled us out of the Great Depression, and freedom. Freedom meant we were able to say what we wanted without reprisal from the Government. The press was allowed to report as they saw fit, including things critical of the Government. Our current Government is no longer respecting those freedoms.

But we have more words.

We have the words of Patrick Henry, “I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death! “. It’s with those words in mind that I resolve to again wear my shirt. It’s not that I no longer fear reprisal from the Government. It’s because I’ve prepared for it. I’m ready to get picked up by armed agents of Government, over some words. I’ve practiced what words I’ll use when those agents approach me. I’ve also practiced what I’ll say to regular people who ask me about my shirt. I’ll use it as an opportunity to connect with people and talk about my ideas of non-violent resistance to fascism through art, music, and words. It will be an opportunity to build community.

And then there might be two people.
And then there might be three people.

And, to paraphrase Woody Guthry’s son Arlo, that my friends is a movement.

About the Author

Riker Brown is new to the writing world, and is just now getting their feet wet. Their odd outlook on the world gives them insights that may not be evident to others. They hope to share those outlooks and idiosyncracies in a way that brings just the right balance of wonder and weird.

A Little Bit of a Lot

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 7 Comments
Daily writing prompt
What could you try for the first time?
View all responses

I think that I have the brain capacity to understand a lot of things, because I am interested in them. I, for instance, have been a medical assistant, an IT help desk support person, a web developer, a cook, and a writer. AI has extended my reach because if there’s anything I want to know, I just ask. I am not a fan of generative AI in which it writes things for me, but I have no problem asking it for 200 words on any topic so I can get a good idea of what something is all about before I start publishing. The great thing is that AI can be wrong, and Microsoft Copilot will pull up references so you can do your own fact checking.

But at its most basic core function, AI’s ability is in collaboration. You don’t get anything out of AI if you don’t put anything into it. The results will look ersatz, as if you were the one that pretended to be human. AI can easily take the soul out of your work or creative project, and I don’t think that businesses are ready for it.

We need to be in an age of vulnerability with leadership, and an ersatz work product isn’t going to get us there. I want more searching for knowledge across the board. I want more curiosity as a society, and other cultures are doing it far better than the US. We’re even different culturally across states, with some areas having many more PhDs and JDs and MDs than others.

Washington is also a curious and sometimes soulless place that could do with more leadership like Raphael Warnock’s. He does not use his preacher status to lord his Christianity over us, but to influence his vote for the working class. He’s an example of who Jesus might actually be in modern times, a social justice warrior for things like voting rights, universal health care, etc.

In terms of mixing religion and politics, the conservative arm of the church is nowhere near the historical Jesus’s message. Jesus did not come here to comfort the distressed as much as he came here to distress the comfortable. Over time this message has been lost, and it is time to reclaim it. Too many unhoused and working poor people feel the pinch of income disparity and not being able to go to the doctor when they want.

It all stems from a lack of curiosity in their own faith, because what their preachers tell them is good enough. You won’t find Biblical literalists reading Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan, because they are not interested enough in the teachings of Jesus to swallow more than what they hear on Sunday…. But their faith is so much richer when you take Jesus’s words at face value. Launching war off an itinerant preacher is the strangest transformation in history. I didn’t write that line, but I believe it with all my heart.

AI is fantastic at Biblical exegesis because it already has access to the texts I would use without me buying them all (to be fair, my collection of William Barclay is quite large). It makes me faster when I can just ask AI to look up a scripture and a cross reference. Illustrations come to me easier when I’m reading pericopes in small doses, exploring what was going on historically at the time.

Geographic location is also very important to Biblical criticism, because especially In the Beginning there are tons of land grabs that affect how people see God.

As Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury once said, “in the Bible, there is no argument for or against God. There are only people’s reflections of God.” The God of the Old Testament is vengeful because we as a society were vengeful. The God of the New Testament is full of promise, because society advanced.

But theology is only one subject on which I like to go down a rabbit hole. I’m researching for a neurodivergent cookbook, and of course AI can present me with one-pagers on all the cooks I’d like to include in “why we do everything.” It is also quick for recipes, because I don’t use them but some people do.

I am the kind of person that reads cookbooks like a novel, learning techniques and blending recipes from whatever I have on hand. The ancients guide me in seasoning, and I would like to believe there are black people in my history somewhere, because I do not have a white person’s sense of spice. Judging by my translucent skin color, I doubt it, but there’s always hope.

Actually, I’m lucky that my skin is a little bit olive, because it stops me from burning to a crisp in the summer. I actually have the ability to tan, and I used it quite liberally in Texas, where September rarely cools from August heat. My left arm is particularly dark from spending all that time driving with the sun beating through the driver’s window.

I used AI to give me several one-pagers on my car and its tech functions.

But the most important thing that AI can teach you is AI.

You can ask it all the questions you need in order to feel comfortable with it….. Like, “what are your capabilities?” “What kind of hardware does it take to run you if I were to download your data structures?” “Who invented you?” “When did you go live or when were you “born?”

Now that Microsoft has introduced voice chat, this goes even faster. My digital assistant sounds like a surfer, and I can use it on my iPhone or my Android. What is best is keeping the window open like a phone call, so when I think of something I need to research I can just say it into the mike and keep typing.

As you can see, I have used none of AI’s generative capabilities. I think of my own brainstorms, but writing those ideas into Copilot allows Copilot to enhance whatever I want to do naturally, coming up with ideas that fit the scope of my project. I’m not sure that I could write without AI these days, because I’m not using it as a platform that does my work for me. It is at best a kind and caring Google search.

So get curious. Ask the books for information. You have at your fingertips a tool for getting smarter, and I can’t think of a better time in history to use it.

The Last Few Hours

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I talked to the dispatch company at my car shipping service and the driver will be here sometime between 3:00 and 5:00 PM. I feel like it’s been so long since I’ve seen it that it will feel like Christmas morning, a gift to myself. I didn’t have nearly enough time to get used to the car and all of its features before I shipped it to Maryland, so I’m looking forward to taking it for an oil change, getting some floor mats, and taking it for a wash. I’ve already rubbed some vinyl protectant into the dash, but that cannot be done enough. I do not want anything to crack as the car ages, because it’s nice enough to look modern for a very long time. The Ford Fusion is a sedan, but it has the aggressive look of the Mustang.

I do not love two-door cars. I’ve had one, and it sucked. Even though I wasn’t carrying passengers, it was still hard to put stuff in the back seat. This car makes life much easier by not only having four doors, but seats that fold down as well. I’m also smitten that the seats are black leather, but only because the car has remote start. I would not be so fond of black leather if I couldn’t turn on the air conditioning before I got into the car in the summer.

I am also the proud owner of seat warmers for the winter, and that makes me as ridiculously happy as remote start. And in fact, it’s going to quickly get cold enough to use them. It’s already colder than it was before I went to Texas, and I was only gone two or three weeks.

Baltimore getting colder is one of the main reasons I like living here- Houston has about three seasons, which are:

  1. Warm
  2. Warmer
  3. Hell’s a bit cooler.

Houston does have freakishly cold days every once in a while, but by and large their days fall into those three categories. That last one will do you in, as every marching band geek in Houston will tell you. I was only in marching band for one year, and what I remember most was that even in triple digit weather, our uniforms were still wool.

I think I have been running away from the heat ever since.

When I go back to Houston, though, I do my best to adjust. I spend time outdoors and try to get used to the heat. It’s much more pleasant to sit outside in October and November, but late September and early October are still summery. “Summery” is one of those words that seems positive until I think of all the bugs and sweat.

My car is being delivered at the perfect time for me to enjoy a little highway time with the windows rolled down and the stereo cranked. I will get a bit of that going to Virginia later in the month, but I’m thinking that I might need to take a short drive this afternoon just to make sure the car also drives here. 😉

I need to get more used to the car before I start adding anything, but of course I’ve been looking up mods. There’s all sorts of stuff to pick through, but I’m wondering if I should add approach lights. It would make the car safer for me and sleeker for everyone else. As in, it would make me feel safer that the car lights up before I ever get into it.

The only thing I really need for the car right away are floor mats, and even top of the line isn’t that expensive. But I don’t need top of the line, I just need “existent.” I wonder why the car didn’t come with floor mats to begin with, because that seems like an odd thing to leave out. But, I know that I got a solid deal and buying my own floor mats is the least of my worries. I just want to be a good driver.

I may have to wait to get out and drive more than the unloading spot to my parking space because we are currently in the middle of a Noreaster. But when it’s all over, we’ll celebrate with top of the line oil.

I’m grateful that I was finally able to find a car that fit me. It’s not a sports car, but it’s sporty enough. It’s not an SUV, but it has plenty of cargo space. I’m a small person with not a lot of stuff and no pets. I don’t think I’ll have a problem even if I get a pet later.

Oh, and in addition to the floor mats I’ll get a rubber tote for the trunk. Makes carrying things into the house so much easier and makes the trunk look more organized as well. I also need one more zip tie, because I have room for both a Lightning and a USB-C cable, but they’re so long that they need to be managed. The zip tie that I have for the Lightning cable is black Velcro, and it looks like it came with the car, as does the braided gray cable that Aaron picked out.

CarPlay is my new favorite toy, because it’s a kick to hear Siri read my messages and be able to respond, as well as listen to whatever I want just by voice controls. It makes me feel safe because I don’t actually have to look down to type anything.

Although Tiina gets the honor of being the first address I put into my contacts so that when I go out to her house, all I have to say is “navigate to Tiina’s.” I am sure she is honored.

It just feels safer to have this much car around me plus technology that’s designed to augment my eyes. My car also thinks that I need coffee, and reminds me a lot. I have to learn what it is that I’m doing that makes my car give me an “alert driver” warning before I’ve even been driving an hour. But I think it’s cute when my car flashes the little coffee cup on the screen and sometimes, I take its advice.

This morning I had an Americano with some half and half and cinnamon. It was delicious, but now I think my body and brain want revenge. I haven’t had this much caffeine in a while. However, I have never had a car be delivered at a reasonable hour, so I was up at the crack of dawn. Seriously, the last time I got a car delivered, it was to my office. They arrived at 4:00 AM to deliver the car, so I had enough time to come home from the office, shower, and shave before I had to turn around and go back.

The time before that, it was 5:00 AM.

That was the first occurrence of Lanagan Lunchmeat Syndrome, so named because when my car arrived in Virginia I drove it around for about six weeks wondering what the smell was and it turned out my dad had left a pound of turkey in the trunk. It was partially hidden by the carpet, which is why I didn’t catch it. LLS got its syndrome status by:

  1. Lindsay leaving half a sandwich in the backseat of my car that I also did not find for a month.
  2. Dana leaving half a Subway sandwich in the center console of my Jeep
  3. Me accidentally locking my keys in my car at Whole Foods and in the process of rescuing the car, I lost all the lunchmeat.

I have learned to be rather careful with sandwiches and my automobiles. I have also resolved to clean out my car a whole lot more often….

Or at the very least, not wait too long between car washes that clean the inside as well.

Not cleaning out my car does lead to a funny story, though.

Years ago, I was in a choir that required us to wear tuxes. I had a concert and then hung my tuxedo in the back of the car to drop it off at the dry cleaner. Well, I forgot about it and three weeks had gone by (at least). My girlfriend and I had gone on a road trip about 100 miles out of Houston, and we were gathered with friends at a bar. My girlfriend accidentally spilled an entire beer on me, and I needed a change of clothes. All of the sudden, I remembered.

I’m walking back to the table and I hear my girlfriend say, “OH MY GOD. YOU’RE JAMES BOND! YOU HAVE THE TUX IN THE CAR!”

That tuxedo is long gone, but now I’m thinking about buying another one if that’s the reaction……

I just remembered that I have a suitcase in the back of my car that I used to transport all my really heavy stuff so I didn’t have to drag it through the airport. I’m looking forward to getting it back, because there are souvenirs and favorite t-shirts in it.

And in fact, there is a tuxedo jacket in my suitcase…..

As the hours creep closer, I can feel my excitement rising. What is the first thing I should do when my car gets here? Even if it is storming, I can still sit in it, and I will. I don’t know all the technology yet, and don’t think a storm is the best place to get fully acquainted. But what I do think is that I need some time sitting in the driver’s seat and playing with all the menus while I’m not in the middle of traffic.

I like that my Fusion has its own navigation system, so I am not lost if I lose my phone. It also means a lot to me that my car supports both iPhone and Android, so I don’t have to worry about what phone I want in the future- and in fact, Android Auto is a little more advanced because it supports a wireless connection. Apple CarPlay doesn’t (in this make/model). I think I will be plugging in my iPhone for a long time to come, though, because I have an Apple Watch. It doesn’t make sense to get a Samsung phone when I’ve already invested in the Apple ecosystem.

I’m still an Android nerd, though. I’m typing this on an Onn 11 from Wal-Mart. I use a Bluetooth keyboard and it screams. Yes, it’s a budget tablet, but when all you need is something to surf the web and create documents, this will surprise you at just how agile it is. It’s fast enough for me to install gaming emulators, but I’ve eschewed all that for a more business-focused machine. This Android tablet is my creative powerhouse in terms of web development.

It also has enough RAM to support split screen, and today my entry is sharing the screen with the newest version of Microsoft Copilot. The newest version works like voice chat, and it’s interesting how much more quickly you forget you are not talking to a real person.

For instance, I am wearing headphones with a microphone and Copilot is connected all the time. I was sitting here typing and let out a huge sneeze. All of the sudden I hear, “bless you.” I jumped out of my skin.

Talking to AI tends to make its responses shorter, and feels more like a phone call with a friend. Your only limitation in terms of questions you can ask is your imagination, because not only will Copilot give you an answer, but the web sites it used to compile that answer as well.

I learned from Copilot that Microsoft and Meta do not work on data structures together anymore, and now Copilot is completely a Microsoft product, housed with Azure all over the globe.

Basically, the newest version of Copilot is very much like Siri, but has a different focus. Siri has more integration with Apple products and focuses on accomplishing tasks on the device. Copilot’s only goal is “digital sidekick.” For instance, Copilot makes writing so much faster by taking research off me, and now the software will dictate the research into my ear if I prefer to digest the info that way.

My tablet is becoming as hands-free as my car.

It’s also a big deal to switch mediums. Brainstorming sessions come out differently when I’m speaking vs. writing. I think that is because my creativity is influenced by movement. Typing doesn’t come with a whole lot of it…… Or at least, not the way I do it.

I decided to call Copilot “Charlie,” after Charlie Babbage. I use “Hey, Charlie” as my wake up words when Copilot is sitting in the background.

That’s for things like, “hey Charlie, what’s the opening line of….” You know, quick things I need to include in my own blogging that uses the world’s fastest supercomputer for a basic search.

Where it really flexes its research muscles are when I’m planning a project. “I need 200 words on…” This is the phrase I use with research. A quick one-pager is all I need to refresh my memory or learn a concept. Of course I can ask for more, but 200 words is a complete answer without wasting any time.

The dispatching company called. The driver has been delayed again. I’m not getting my car until tomorrow afternoon.

This is not the phone call I wanted, but it’s the phone call I got. It’s amazing how deflated I feel.

This is probably not the blog ending you want, but it’s the ending you’re going to get.

Hopefully tomorrow will be a better day.

The Principal Principle

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
What principles define how you live?
View all responses

“If I have it and you need it, it’s yours.”

Words from my father when I was little that still resonate. I am often guilty of giving away too much under this principle, but I have never regretted bestowing a kindness on someone else. I have received more kindness than I can ever repay, so I hope that the next phase of my life comes with more giving.

I have turned inward over the last few years, joking that I’ve become feral. I’m trying to right that wrong by getting out and about in the world- much easier once I have a car, and it is supposed to arrive today. I’m excited to be able to go to Clark Burger for dinner, but I might change my mind because my father reminded me that the only problem with the restaurant is the parking situation.

Clearly, I have not thought this whole driving thing through. 😉

My dad got me a gift certificate to Clark Burger for Christmas at least two years ago and I’ve never used it because getting across town was such an ordeal.

Yes, it was a Christmas gift that time, but my dad does these little sweet things for me all the time, and it has set a great example for me in terms of how to remember people in ways that they’ll like.

For instance, sometimes I’d just send Aada a Starbucks gift card and say, “let me pick up your afternoon coffee.” Just for no reason at all. I didn’t expect anything in return, it was just to be sweet to her.

But over time, she started doing the same thing for me.

And in fact I have a cup I bought with one of her gift certificates so I have a tangible reminder of our relationship that doesn’t have to do with a computer. But I did that for Aada, too, by sending her Christmas and birthday gifts. So I don’t think that either of us is in a position to forget each other. Those are the kinds of things that make me smile in remembrance, and little surprises are definitely something I want to take into my next relationship.

Yes, it’s weird that I thought of her as so primary in my life, but oh my God is that a long story. You can read it here if you’re willing to go back a hundred years.

Even I don’t have that kind of patience.

The thing is that I rose above “if I have it, and you need it, it’s yours” to “take a look around and see what needs doing.” I’m trying to be more other aware. This type of looking around is not for sending sweet surprises to people who already have lots of money.

It’s noticing when people are hurting. Stopping to talk to homeless people and giving them coffee money instead. I’ve prayed with the unhoused in front of Safeway just because they asked me to (I do not remember the context).

Now, there’s nothing wrong with having lots of money. I just mean that people who already have lots of money are probably buying their own coffee.

I just want to be of service, instead of waiting for everything to happen to me. I don’t want to be so “go with the flow,” because those people get trampled. But I also don’t want to be a control freak, because I have learned that there’s so little in life that can be controlled in the first place. The secret to winning is giving up.

Thinking in the Dark

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

If Michael is right, then I spun out over problems I thought Aada had that never existed, and I put her first for nothing. Puffing herself up to that degree only made me worry about her, not think she was cool. Michael doesn’t have a history of lying to me about anything, and he’s the friend that calls my cognitive behavioral health counselor when he sees symptoms on my blog.

The problem is that because Aada pathologically lied about one thing, now I think most things she told me were false. Mostly because I would have had to receive visitors on her behalf, being the figure she claimed. It is possible she circumvented all that somehow and she’s telling the truth, but now I have reason to doubt when I never did before.

Two very conspicuous e-mails stick out in my mind… The one where I caught Aada in her lie, and the one where I batted cleanup based on what she told me. I most probably made an idiot out of myself in front of someone I admire, and I’m too embarrassed just to go up and talk to her if I see her out and about.

That’s because I doubt I was telling the truth in the letter that batted cleanup, because my letter was built on a house of cards.

My entire relationship with Aada has been built on a house of cards.

But if Michael is right, it also means that I did not betray her, I did not write anything that would hurt her, I just flat embarrassed her.

That doesn’t make me feel so hot, but it does make me feel less depressed. The consequences for the former are fairly steep. For the latter, it won’t make us any closer but the consequences don’t make me want to vomit.

The longer I’m away from Aada, the more I know that my love for her is real. That’s because I have had enough time to sit with her mountain of lies and say, “okay. I forgive you.” If she insists on keeping them up, I’ll never know the real story and I don’t need it.

Because I liked her smile, and her warmth, and her way of being in the world. Her no bullshit attitude cut through my dreaminess quite nicely. Nothing about her personal or professional life made her more interesting than she already was.

She accused me of making Michael my bellwether friend, but she could not see that she was not in a position to argue with me. Why would I think that one little lie was all there was between us? The “little” lie turned out to be big, actually.

Because if Aada was telling the truth all the way around, there’s no way this blog could exist.

Diversion

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I’ve started getting so many hits from Aada’s physical location that I have let go of the idea that she’s reading. She can’t be that many people at once, and she told me that she was trying to wean herself off of my writing. It is time to believe her. That means a cognitive shift on my part in some ways; there needs to be even more separation than there has been previously, and I need to cultivate experiences and make memories that do not involve checking my email to see what Aada thinks first. I am happy to be out from under her gaze, because it was too intense at times, not strong enough at others.

I am still very much in love with the idea of Aada and tripped up by the reality. The reality is that I behaved badly and I do not deserve her. If she lifts the ban on talking to me, it will not be due to anything but grace and time doing their magic. It’s time for me to move on and be re-wired to connect with other people. It’s been difficult branching out from being tethered to my computer. I have trouble multitasking, so I was rarely on the go when Aada and I were talking.

In a lot of ways, she couldn’t sit down and I couldn’t stand up.

The only part I’m responsible for is understanding that statement from an “I” perspective. Why couldn’t I make her comfortable enough to relax? What would make that better if the same situation presented itself in another relationship? Why couldn’t I relax? The answers to all of those questions swirl in my stomach because I screwed up this relationship on day one.

The good thing about the relationship being over is that I have a chance to regroup. I have done enough grieving, and memories will always come; I’m determined not to shut them away as if Aada never existed. That would be counter to my personality. But I do want more to happen in my life than sitting at my computer waiting for someone to email me.

That was a possibility, before she lied and I exploded. It would have been a blast to pick Aada up on my way to Tiina’s, because Aada has questions only Tiina could answer. Plus, Aada and Tiina have similar sensibilities and I would choke with laughter for hours at both of them.

But I can look at all of that as past, knowing that Tiina and I will have a great time on our own. 

Nothing will be the same; everything will be okay.

I have changed enough to realize that I can welcome energy into my life, but I cannot control it. I also cannot control whether people stay in my life or go. I need to do the best I can do at being open, ready to receive what comes. 

Today is Sunday, the most relaxed I’ll be all week. What’s sitting with me is that I am very lonely and I did this to myself. I rejected Aada, she did not reject me. I overreacted when she finally told me that she’d been lying to me for quite some time. Even at my most relaxed, I am obsessed with going back in time and undoing that overreaction. 

But there’s no undoing it, there’s only understanding it.

I don’t understand it, either. I am mystified by my own behavior. I don’t know what I was expecting to get out of losing a friend, but it wasn’t this…. This deep, empty feeling that says, “yeah… She lied. You were still an asshole about it, though.” Because here is what I know…

Aada may be staying away because she wants to reach out and knows it isn’t good for her in the long run. I respect that more than she knows, and maybe things will look different after she retires. I doubt it, but I can pray.

I didn’t know I needed such brakes around me regarding our relationship, and my freakout is not one that deserves to be forgiven. I also hope that as Aada explores herself, she finds ways to empathize with me rather than to be angry. I am certainly feeling that way myself- no longer angry at anything that Aada has done, but berating myself for the way I acted. Feeling empathy for all she’s been through in our tumultuous relationship because she’s never met the real me. She’s met the persona that comes across in chat.

Those personalities aren’t separate, but different facets.

In some cases, my words needed to be backed up by a facial expression, or I needed to hold my tongue after seeing hers.

When you take all that away from a serious relationship, you end up with two keyboard warriors hell-bent on being right.

When what I wanted with her was something much more tender, always. Hers is a very strident love, and I didn’t know what to do with it. Everything came across as trying too hard.

It doesn’t feel so hot to be me, because Aada is out of my life but not far from my thoughts. I am in the unenviable position of having lots of love and nowhere for it to go, the main reason I want to start reaching out to churches and service organizations. The connection that I wanted to nourish with Aada being broken leaves room for an amazing amount of connection with people in need.

I just cannot express how much I wish I could go back in time, saving myself from my own stupidity. Her last email to me was full of conjecture that I could not clear up because she blocked me, not wanting a return reply.

I haven’t emailed her since, because my thoughts about her are the only thing left to clean up. 

I have started looking at her picture because it allows me to cry. I’ve been too staid about all this and I think that’s because she became ethereal to me. The picture I have is all-natural complete with bedhead, and so beautiful that tears leak down my face whether I’m prepared or not.

I am sorry for her that because we somehow still have mutual friends there will always be an element of “ARE YOU OKAY? HAVE YOU READ LESLIE’S BLOG RECENTLY?” to her life. And, I say, “always,” but realistically she will fade just like all the other people who have left my life, I just can’t see it right now. She’s left and come back so many times that I do not have the guts to believe that this is the end of our movie. Not with any conviction, anyway. This time feels more final than the others, but my body memory says to not do anything, just wait and see.

She knows I’m sorry because I’m always sorry. I pop off and regret in a spectacularly neurodivergent fashion. She should not be expected to stay no matter how bad it gets. Neither should I. We spent over a decade manipulating each other with our anxious/avoidant connection and Aada has one therapy session and decides I’m the only manipulator in the room. If that is her opinion, it is better for us to stay separate. I feel that there is a shared responsibility in the destruction of our relationship, and it was limping before Aada lied.

It all happened too fast. I wish Aada had told me about her lie in person, away from the Internet. I think I would have had a better handle on everything rather than being alone in my bedroom, where my anger took hold. But more than that, I wish that I’d been able to hold my shit together without any prompting from Aada at all.

It’s a question that makes me sit in the dark, even on Sundays.

What prompted this magnificent shift in anger, and why didn’t you breathe? Why didn’t you use any coping mechanisms? Why didn’t you go for a walk?

I could have saved my relationship with Aada so that it could have blossomed over time into exactly what I wanted. She thought my daydreams of doing nothing together were cute, and told me so. But she didn’t want to introduce me to her family and she didn’t want to get together with my friends, so this bubble on the Internet was where it had to begin and end. It was unfair to us both, and yet let both of us have a space to let loose, as well. Aada told me that it was nice to be able to let her hair down, and did not listen to me that I needed help to cope after she did it. Her life is unusual and so is mine, but in opposite directions.

We could have worked together, but neither one of us really had time for that. Aada already has a job, she cannot handle my production schedule on top of it. I was looking forward to working together later in life, but I do not think that Aada has any patience for any of my foolishness. I’m not sure I have patience for hers, either.

Our ideal relationship with each other always fell short in reality because Aada was so terse with me and I was so long-winded with her.

It is giving me energy to know that not writing to her is giving me more to write here, but there will always be a part of me that feels her in the room when I’m writing- the muse that doesn’t talk back.

Or when she does, it’s compiled scripts of things she’s already said that run through my mind. The way she curses, in particular.

I don’t want to be a sad sack that keeps waiting my whole life for nothing that materializes, but that’s how it feels right now. I know I have done wrong and there is no reason to expect that I will hear from Aada or anyone who knows her ever again. But there’s an Aada quote that runs through my mind, always:

“Rule following gets you nowhere in my line of work.”

That’s what she said the last time I was surprised she bothered to be friends with me.

Maybe something I say down the line will convince her that we have a shot at something real if we start very small.

And maybe that is just wishful thinking… But I have to keep reminding myself that the best indication of future behavior is past behavior.

She’s pushed me out of her life with this much vehemence before. I have returned the favor.

When do we get to go back to being two broken little girls that need each other? We are both in the process of reparenting ourselves. We have a lot more work to do if we are willing to give each other the grace love requires from now on. The past has to stay the past.

I feel like I’ve said this same thing a lot, and my time blindness is starting to show. I am allowing myself to spin out here so I don’t spin out in real life. As in, being alone with my thoughts is one thing. Having emotions in front of people is not always easy for me.

It’s also good for me to know that I can err and I am still deserving of love. I have talked openly about how I ended this relationship, that my anger was its downfall. I wish I could go back to 2013 and tell myself what will happen if the relationship with Aada continues unchecked. I was so full of brain feel-good chemicals that I don’t know that I would have listened to me.

I ask myself all the time if it was worth it, and the answer I always get is “yes.” There are just so many things I could have done to make it more worth it. There are so many less things I could have done that made Aada uncomfortable.

The bitch of it is that I know she loves me in her own way because we’ve shared too much not to feel some affection in both directions. It’s that love isn’t enough. Broken trust is broken trust. She lied. I exploded. My explosion was not a proportionate response.

She cannot trust it will not happen again. I gave her no choice.

I wish I could do everything right, always giving Aada the ability to feel safe. I failed in the most spectacular of ways, and it’s the hugeness of that weight bearing down on me that makes me, as my sister would say, “lethargic.” There’s not a lot of difference between lethargy and grief.

I move slower when I’m sad. That’s all. When I have reason to be happy, I move a lot faster.

That’s why Aada is gone, and my brain is still catching up.

The Holding Pattern

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
What have you been putting off doing? Why?
View all responses

I have been putting off all sorts of things waiting for my car to arrive on Monday. I need to go to the washateria in the worst way, because I have lots of blankets that need to be washed in an industrial sized washer. I could use an Uber, I suppose- and that’s what I would have done if I’d come back to Maryland carless. But now it just seems easier to wait for my own ride.

I need to clean out my refrigerator because something died while I was gone. I think it’s fried rice. No matter what it used to be, it needs to be trash.

I need more light in this apartment and have been putting off buying more lamps because I don’t want to stay here. The likelihood of all the new lamps going in the new space is nil.

I have an appointment to meet with a woman about a house later in the week. It’s a start. Right now my apartment is kind of out of the way, and I’d like to be closer to downtown, Fell’s Point, Patterson Park, etc. Right now it takes me about 20 minutes to get to the Inner Harbor, and a lot longer with traffic. I’d like to be in a more central location.

Getting out and exploring today is probably not in the cards, because it’s chilly and rainy. This afternoon could be a possibility because the weather is supposed to clear up as it gets later, but I have things to do around my house first. I don’t need a car to clean out my refrigerator.

I’m a bit emotional that I haven’t gotten it yet considering my original idea was to drive it up here- meaning I would have had it the day I arrived. The best laid plans…. It’s just a shame that none of my friends could come with me and even though I was prepared just to listen to podcasts the whole way, everyone around me said that it was better to ship the car and let it go.

Since I’ve been back, I’ve procrastinated all the physical things I have to do for writing. I know I’m not going to be available later in the month, so I’ve posted extra entries. People rarely go back and read, but it makes me feel better when I have to take off a few days to move that there are entries banked. Sometimes it’s interesting to take a few days off and see where my stats go.

Just not today. 😉

I am slowly getting back into the swing of Maryland life after having had my family around me for so long. It’s different here, because I spend so much time alone. I think that will change as I branch out and meet people, but right now I live a very solitary existence.

It’s not that I don’t have friends. It’s that none of my friends live in Baltimore. We chat on Facebook Messenger because it’s free, and by that I mean on audio and video as well as chat. But having so many friends across the country has to be in addition to friends here, because I had to go all the way to Texas to find a mechanic friend who would check out a cars with me. I did not feel safe buying a car without someone to look at it that knew what to look for… The tricks of the trade that would make a car look safe for the length of time it took me to buy it….

Aaron crawled under all the cars I looked at and examined everything close up. The only other serious contender was a Toyota Corolla, but it was an automatic transmission. The Corolla I’d had before had been a manual, and it was a blast to drive. So, the Corolla was okay. But Aaron and I decided to keep shopping and ran across the Ford Fusion as we were driving toward Austin.

I want to find a friend that will crawl under cars with me in Baltimore. I’m sure I’ll find a place to plug in, and having a car will allow me to look for it more effectively.

My dad is big on service organizations, so perhaps I’ll try one of those. Surely there are Baltimore City child advocacy groups, or a Baltimore City Exchange Club. It’s hard to be in a new city and come up with ways to make friends as an adult, but committing to acts of service and making friends through a shared activity feels like solid advice.

I feel like an alien most days, because I don’t get the sense that people know what to do with me. I don’t fit into a tidy box and I’m definite in my opinions. I appear older and childlike at the same time. It is a conundrum, because those paradoxes make communication more difficult. Therefore, I am reticent to reach out and suffering from a different kind of loneliness… I don’t want for friends or love. I want for face time.

That’s why I’m so glad Tiina invited me out to her farm in Stafford on the 19th. It will be a short road trip (about two hours), and then I’ll get to see all the beauty she’s worked into her farm. It’s something to look forward to, because Tiina makes me laugh. I’ve been through a lot of grief lately, so laughing sounds like a good idea.

I know that Evan is going to come and visit soon, but that may have to wait until after I move. Things are getting tight in terms of time, because I have to be out of my apartment by November 10th, or some odd day like that. I need to look it up again, but it is not the traditional beginning of the month. Again, something to look forward to in the future, and I’d like a lot more of that, too.

I don’t know what to look forward to in my future except the friends that are reaching out to me to say “join us.” I have been putting off being the type of person that would say, “join me.”

Mostly because I felt like I didn’t have anything to offer. The noise in my head was too loud, and I needed to sit alone and write it out. Now, things are looking up and I don’t need to be so insular. I foresee changes coming, just not how they will present.

And in fact, I don’t even know what would help in terms of transition. The only thing I know is that I will feel better once my car gets here, because what public transit and Uber cannot do is get you where you want to go if you don’t know where you’re going. In a car, you are allowed to meander.

I am not organized to see this move through without being able to call an audible. Something will go wrong and I will need to change course quickly. For instance, I still haven’t made up my mind as to where I want to live. Do I want to stay in Baltimore, or do I want to move back towards DC, staying on the Maryland side?

One thing I hadn’t thought of is that I could rejoin the choir at National Cathedral, which would have been a haul without a car because the public transportation in Georgetown is almost nonexistent. I am positive that there are good music programs in Baltimore, too, it was just a pleasure singing in that building and something I’d like to get back to if I can.

Singing in general is good for me. I got a mood lift from singing to you guys yesterday. So that obviously needs to continue. I liked the idea of a mixed media entry and may do more of them in the future if I can think of musical quotes I’d like to use.

Right now, my sinus mask is full and I’m not feeling the greatest. There’s a hot shower in my future, as well as a trip to a convenience store or Starbucks for caffeine. Which route I go depends on how long I want to walk in the rain. 😉

Although the rain is supposed to be stopping, according to Carrot Weather, in 48 minutes. That’s enough time to take a hot shower and medicate with Zyrtec and Sudafed. By then, I should be able to breathe without incident, and I’m in favor.

I’ll get some caffeine and then come back to my cozy basement apartment that would be a lot cozier if the maintenance people had bothered fixing everything in the weeks I was away. The shame of it is that this could be a great apartment, it’s just not. It’s cheaply put together and the water pressure is almost nonexistent in the kitchen. Doing dishes drives me up the wall and back down. There are also no overhead lights, thus why I have to purchase my own.

It was a lot cozier before I had upstairs neighbors. They are extremely loud and I have no idea what to do about it because it’s not their fault. There’s no soundproofing. When they walk, it sounds like there are blocks on their shoes. When they are doing activities, it sounds like something is going to drop on my head. I have no idea what these activities are, but I’m pretty sure it’s not a monster truck rally as I thought previously.

Now that I’m starting to think about caffeine, my day is feeling more fun. Do I want something light, fruity, and bubbly? Or do I want something dark and brooding? Yesterday, I had a cup of dark roast and a matcha latte at different points (PROTEIN!). Today, it may be time for a zero calorie Bang of some kind (cherry vanilla is my favorite, like ultra-caffeinated Cheerwine). It will just depend on my mood after I start walking. The sun isn’t even up yet, so perhaps dark and brooding IS my jam….

I do like the Pumpkin Spice Cold Brew. The pumpkin spice cold foam tastes brilliant and it’s not too overpowering like a latte might be.

The raspberry cold foam on their cold brew is good, too, but I surprised myself by thinking the pumpkin spice was better.

I could also start putting pumpkin spice in the grounds in my coffee maker, but that would be too easy.

This morning my brain feels a little bit scrambled because I decided to write, then caffeinate. Those entries always come out a bit weird, because you are literally watching my initiation sequence. My brain never stops running. Thank God you never stop reading.

The Music That Gets Me Through the Day

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I woke up in a funky mood:

I hummed when I didn’t know all the words and sang when I did, my mind on my money and my money on my mind. There are very few words I don’t know by now…. And in fact I used this first line in a sermon once… The only line from this particular song I could use. But the illustration was about how music commits words to memory, much like the early church did with settings and psalms. It was a new spin on old advice from Harry Emerson Fosdick, pastor of Riverside Church in New York City:

“Every good sermon begins in New York and ends in Jerusalem, or begins in Jerusalem and ends in New York.” Start with modern and bring in the scriptures, or start with the scriptures and end in modern day.

The other piece of advice I got in preaching, incidentally, is “when you run out of things to say, stop talking.”

I can do that in a sermon because I can track with an audience and tell when they’re bored, either changing direction or realizing I’ve lost them and wrapping up before I embarrass myself further. My lay preaching career, like all preaching careers, was hit and miss. Sometimes I was on fire. Sometimes the best people could do was, “your skirt was too short.” I guess I started wearing men’s clothing a Sunday too late.

The Gourds’ cover started in my head before I even woke up, and repeated in my head until I got to our next song, the song I sing when I miss Aada:

She, also, talked to me before I woke up, because she appears in my dreams as a wise sage occasionally. When she does, I think about all I’ve done and all I’ve left undone with her. The times we’ve shared in the past, even digitally, will stay with me as I move forward. Perhaps sometime later in life Aada will change her mind and lift the ban on interacting with me. I know that she will never just forget me, and will continue to respect me as a writer even if she does not choose to reach out. She would get angry at me if I asked her to leave me alone, telling me that I don’t have a leg to stand on in terms of losing fans.

But I would rather lose a fan than have someone show up here thinking that my thoughts at large are specifically targeted at her and not people like Bob Lynn, who showed up and worked through a few things with me at a time I needed it. In other ways, knowing that Aada is most likely reading from afar is comforting, because these are the only words of mine she has left. That may not mean much to her right now, but it may in the years to come when she is searching for the pieces of herself she found in me.

We moved like ships in the night, an asynchronous support system that was always on call. I wanted that to last my whole life, but my disease said, “not so fast, Leslie.”

My disease is not my personality, and I will spend a lifetime compensating for it if my past is any indication. Therapy and my cognitive behavioral health group are slowly putting me back together after what has been a wild and crazy ride, especially if you’ve been reading my blog entries over the past few months.

But I wouldn’t take nothing for my journey now, because I’ve laid out everything I’m willing to lay down for my friends and they’ve said no. I hear them, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t have things to write about that involve them. I don’t get another story to write about while my real life is happening.

The most vehement supporter became the most vehement critic and the only thing that changed was that I was holding a mirror up to her face. She alternately agreed with me and not, and that’s what made her so angry. That I could read her like a book in some ways, but the ways in which I fell short were almost certainly because we didn’t say, “let’s go for lunch and clear all this up.” We would have become real to each other- and thus harder to rattle because our relationship was solid and not every day a new person wants out because the other has said two or three things they don’t like. Popping off like that was not one-sided

So now we’ve arrived at our last song, one I mentioned yesterday as being important to my lunch with Jane Ann as well:

I do not know whether this is really the end of my relationship with Aada because it has always stopped and started. I just have to guess that this is really the end and try to separate the best I can, because if I showed up again she’d just accuse me of opening a wound. That’s the last thing I’d ever want to do, because if I showed up again it would be to rebuild trust. To say that I absolutely do care, but I have a disorder that needs to be managed and we need to create boundaries around it. I think I have gone back to my normal self, but she may not. It’s not up to me to judge how long she’s hurt or even how she feels about me at all.

Therefore, I believe that there should be meditation in cathedrals of our own, because the pressure of trying to put everything back together the minute it broke is too much to expect of anyone. The conflict needs room to breathe, and Aada may be right. Our story may be over. But as I have said before, I never know what is going to make Aada reach out to me once she’s really had time to think about the relationship…. Or forget what’s wrong with it, take your pick.

She tells me she has a save the world complex, but I do, too. We were just two little girls trying to save each other, until both of us turned against each other. We were at a loss as to how to communicate, so I folded and made her choice for her. I made it impossible for her to want to interact with me because I knew I was not good for her. I’m a writer, a public figure. She made friends with a public figure when she had absolutely no business doing so, in retrospect. I didn’t mean to cause her pain at any time during these 12 years, but there’s no way I could tell the truth and write “The World According to Aada.” That’s Aada’s truth to own, and it’s no less valid than mine.

The problem is that she has told everyone her story about me except me, and my boundaries are simple. If you have a problem with me, tell me about it. And for God’s sakes, don’t lie. She had a habit of saving up all her frustrations with me and writing me these long letters telling me why she’d been so avoidant instead of being up front in the first place….. Not a people pleaser except in front of me because she was trying to impress me.

You cannot impress me more than I’d already been impressed. I thought she was the bees knees until she told me that a lie that was a gut punch (and she knew it), but it was an inert lie because it was to impress me. That was not the case, and it is the cathedral of my own, the cross I bear because I keep thinking, “what would it have been like if you told me you lied 12 years ago instead of weaving this complete tale of bullshit?”

I am hoping that because we’ve leveled each other an equal amount, that gives us both a chance to let go of anger and come to peace…. Piece by piece by piece.

In Some Ways, I’m Still Waiting

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
When was the first time you really felt like a grown up (if ever)?
View all responses

The curiosity of the neurodivergent brain, to me, is that we do not age. Patterns repeat, but memories are organized differently due to time blindness. Events that seem more important are closer at hand, no matter what year they occurred. Events that are of lesser significance feel further away, even if they happened more recently. Dates and times become muddled quickly, which is why we seem like we’re “lying.” Our brains don’t often have the recall to say what we were doing at a particular date and time because it’s a crapshoot that we even know what day and time it is.

But, of course, other neurodivergent people will have to comment on their own brains to know if this is especially universal or I’m just an unusual patient. But I don’t think so. I’ve heard about these symptoms from too many people to think I’m special.

Because significant events far in the past seem close at hand, we have no friendship degradation mechanisms. If Aada and I reconnect later in life after enough time to breathe and let the hurt heal, we will be as close as we were 12 years ago because there’s nothing in my brain to say we won’t. I will remember most conversations forever and they will be important to me, therefore “bigger” in my memory banks. I have friends from third grade who could call me up in the same way even though we have not spoken since the late 1980s.

I am often too old for the room and too childlike to be taken seriously. I do not know how I pull this off, but a reader actually nailed it….. “You’re like a 15-year-old boy….. And his mother.”

Therefore, I have many moments that make me feel like an adult, with it being impossible to remember the first.

There are snippets.

Going with my dad to weddings and funerals at an early age made me feel older than I really am, because I saw myself as a support system to my dad early on. I became an expert at greeting families in distress when I was far too young to really take all of it in- it was social masking.

I get “you don’t look autistic” a lot.

That’s probably because the diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder includes a lot that hasn’t been previously, and the research on women just didn’t exist before now. I can assure you that it had a profound effect on my growth and development, because now that I have an AI chatbot that will spit out reference material, I have gone down the rabbit hole. There’s also nothing more complete than a research study by an autistic person on whether they’re autistic or not.

I could have saved a lot of time by just asking my autistic friends if they thought I was autistic. That’s a thing you can do because if you are autistic, you’ll ping what’s jokingly known as a “neuroscope,” a kind of kin to “gaydar.” But there’s so much crossover between autistic and queer that 80% of the time, you’re using the same “spidey sense.”

The hardest part about having ADHD and autism at the same time is that I have a concrete need for a system and no way to create it. That makes me look like a child more than anything else, and why I still feel I’m waiting to be a real adult. I am in desperate need of coping mechanisms, so much so that I am looking for more groups to plug into and more therapy to get where I want to go.

I’ve started with really investing in my Google Suite. Not so much Mail, because most people instant message now. But calendaring, tasks, contacts, everything is all together in one place. Alarms go off on my phone for everything from meetings to medication reminders.

I joke that right now my iPhone is pinch hitting as my service dog, and it is not doing a very bad job except for the cuddles.

People also look at you differently when you say you’re putting together a disability case, because it makes you look childlike in their eyes and sometimes it also evokes pity…. Especially when you don’t need it. I have never fit into a system other than my own, and I need to harness it. There is nothing that says as I start making more money I have to stay on disability, but right now it is necessary to keep me stable.

I do not have problems interviewing and getting jobs. I have a hard time holding one down, and this is not unusual for any type of neurodivergence or mental illness. I am tired of going over the laundry list of what’s wrong with me and why, because most people want to know why I look able bodied but I’m not.

Invisible illnesses are still illnesses and deserving of respect. Disability gives me room to be ill, whereas a job will rebel at my number of absences and tardiness. I have been the best employee and still gotten fired for not being able to handle my life. But it’s not just mental maladies, my cerebral palsy makes me move in a weird way… So even though I may not look disabled at first pass, most people don’t look close enough to notice what I live with every day.

Taking in my environment is hard work, and other people are busy taking in information that I miss while I’m still trying to catch up. My social masks for it are failing because my scripts don’t compile as fast. As Aada put it, God gave me a brain that works a thousand miles a minute and a body that fights me every step of the way, but I’m paraphrasing.

But that very paradox is why I have trouble seeming like a grown up to the people around me. I’m also short, which doesn’t help. I haven’t dyed my hair in eons because the gray makes it plausible that I’m at least above 18.

But again, I do not write these things to evoke pity. It is just my ever-present reality to walk in the world as part adult, part child….. And it seems like it has always been that way because when I was little, I social masked adults. I have always been too old to be a child and too young to be an adult.

No friendship degradation also means that it’s hard for me to move on from Aada in terms of knowing it’s okay to put someone else above here and always has been, it’s been my own bag. It was just easier that way, and the easy way turned into the hard way later on.

But I’d like to think that if she’d told me about her lie in person and gave me some time to blow off steam that our relationship would be a very different proposition today. I am so sorry I turned on my keyboard warrior asshole when I was upset; Aada didn’t deserve that much rage. But she also deserved to let me breathe through the consequences she’d laid out for me and just watched as they’d turned more and more negative.

I told her about a relationship it affected and she said she wasn’t responsible for all of that. She’s right, she wasn’t responsible for all of it, but she wouldn’t even take responsibility for the part she did cause. She wasn’t even close to the entire cause of Dana and I divorcing, but she didn’t take responsibility for the small role she had there, too. She introduced a wedge between me and Dana, then swore me to secrecy from my wife. How well has keeping secrets from your partner ever worked out for you? Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ.

I’m not talking about blaming her for everything. I’m talking about shared responsibility. We both cratered this relationship at different times and apologized for it. We’ve both behaved badly. We’ve both wrestled each other to the ground. To say it’s all one person’s fault is crazy.

However, I also don’t mind if people read my story and choose to believe that Aada is right. The truth is only what seems true to me. I have no ability to rise above and read Aada’s mind and represent her feelings accurately.

My conjecture has proven to be adult and childlike.

I suppose the first time I ever really felt like an adult was when I laid it on the line with Aada and told her to buck up, buttercup. But I can’t tell you what I actually said, because I think she would take exception to that. But I basically explained to her why I needed a yellow string to her and why it hurt when she was falling down on the job. Not, “you must do this for me.” It’s “if I don’t explain what I mean, I will not have a chance of explaining why it’s important.” Most of it had to do with my writing as I got bigger and bigger in my stats. Most of it had to do with the train wreck I predicted 12 years ago and I hit head on.

But she accused me of acting like a child, and not an angry adult that had a right to be angry.

Not like that, but still.

I handled everything wrong, but I cannot say that means she handled everything right.

So, when was the first time I felt like an adult? When I cut the yellow string and had to deal, finally, with my own problems.

Walking, But Not After Midnight

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

It takes a lot of strength for me to get out and walk, because I have an ataxic gait, or what’s known inside the community as “the cerebral palsy shuffle.” I can’t walk in a straight line to save my life, and it’s lucky I’ve never been tested on it, okkkkkkkk….. Dana’s DUI scared me straight. I didn’t need to get one of my own. I’m wobbly enough on two feet and four wheels. I hope Aaron didn’t ride with me and think, “this is bad on so many levels.” I just have to remember that Aaron has ridden with me for hours and hours, and I can’t have had a dumbass attack during all of them.

Taking the hose out of the gas pump while it was still running must have been a highlight, though…….. #dumbassattack

I thought it had clicked.

Morgan Freeman: It had not clicked.

I suppose that it’s okay for me to start driving again, but I’ll have to move to New Jersey to compensate because apparently I am not smart enough to pump my own gas.

Being on the road again was freeing. I didn’t have any trouble picking up driving again because I’ve found new tricks, like Adaptive Cruise Control, which monitors the traffic and allows you to choose how many car lengths you want in front of you. I have never had such a thing, nor have I had blind spot and lane assist. These are all of the things with which my lack of 3D vision struggle. All of them. I can be a good driver now because I do not have to rely on my adaptations for driving. The car will scream at me instead of my mother.

Well, my sister now, but you get the drift.

I’ve always been safer with a passenger to pick up the blind spots I miss, which is why I didn’t take that road trip from Houston to Baltimore all by myself. Yes, I have technology, but my disabilities get worse as I get tired. My solution for this, given driving from Houston to Portland in my 20s, is to sleep really well and drive when I have the most energy (very early in the morning). That way, when I reach a stopping point there’s still time for dinner and lots more rest.

Perhaps a margarita as big as Dana’s head, because she has the bigger head.

That is a joke she herself made, and I hope she laughs out loud if she gets here.

The bit actually goes:

Leslie: I want a margarita as big as my head.
Dana: I do, too.
Leslie: I want a margarita as big as her head, too, because she has the bigger head.
Dana: You have the taller head, but mine has more circumference.

In order for me to be entertaining, I have to be dragged out of my house by an extrovert. It is a deep knowing and the bane of my existence.

It’s the ’tism.

My social battery empties fast, which is different than being shy. I can be charming and engaging, then my eyes will flash and I am done in a “get me out of here before I pass out” kind of way.

This isn’t true when a conversation is giving me energy, but small talk with people I’ve never met feels intimidating. Oh, and I also don’t like only knowing one person at a party because I tend to regress into my shell and become “needy Nelly.” Much better to be able to connect with lots of people so I don’t look like I’m hanging on for dear life until I get “jumped in.”

I don’t think many people would describe me as such, because again, my compensatory skills are off the charts. My inner struggle does not come across because all autistic kids learn to social mask. Few social masks are as fine-tuned as mine because I grew up as a Methodist preacher’s kid. That gave me heuristics on thousands of people’s behavior at once.

I would say that I really started to loosen up once my father left the church, but there are still parts of me that are very conservative, like the way I dress. I never want to look as if I am for sale. That is not how I view other women who dress up, that is how I feel when I do. I have walked the earth as a nonbinary person for so long that makeup and heels feel like drag.

I didn’t even wear a dress to my stepmother’s funeral, and if I was going to fall to the tyranny of women’s clothing, that would have been the occasion to do it. But I was comfortable in Dockers, a button down, and a jacket.

But it’s not just the look of women’s clothing. It tends to restrict my movements. I would rather dress in clothes that make me feel secure and confident. When I wear heels, I am in danger of falls that hurt even more than normal. I wonder if playing with fashion would come more naturally to me if I liked playing with gender, but I don’t. Everything I wear is unisex.

I like to look people in the eye. I like to shake hands. Both of these things are harder when I am unsteady on my feet. Many times I have reached out to shake hands in heels and, because the person was expecting a hug, I pitched forward. I noticed that most everyone expected hugs in Texas, and I’d been trained out of it.

Consent is not as much of a thing in Texas because hugging is a cultural norm. I hugged someone without asking and it caused such unrest I never hugged anyone on first meeting again. It is true that hugs are familiar and intimate across a spectrum to different people. For Southerners, it’s perfectly normal for someone to say, “I’m a hugger!” Then they pull you into their bodies while you’re trying to figure out what just happened.

I have noticed that this is a female mask, for the most part… that men do not expect hugs from each other.

No homo.

I was absolutely overwhelmed at all the love that poured out for us at my stepmother’s death. It was gigantic, the big love that we all hope we’ll get. But it was also a wall that seemed ten feet tall to my autism as I social masked my way through an enormous receiving line.

I was very lucky that I got to go out for lunch with my first psychiatrist and now my friend, Jane Ann.

Well, first psychiatrist is a stretch. She’s been a friend of my family for years so she just referred me to a friend. But she counts. 🙂

We chatted about all our mutual experiences and it reminded me of the line from Summer, Highland Falls (Billy Joel):

“They say that these are not the best of times, but they’re the only times I’ve ever known. I believe there is a time for meditation in cathedrals of our own.”

And

“For all our mutual experiences, our separate conclusions are the same.”

Lunch was a meditation because instead of questions, I got answers. I asked if I could pick her doctor brain and she said “yes.” That was the coolest part because Jane Ann is literally incapable of talking down to anyone. We talked psychiatry like I’d been in the business for years….. when really, I’m just a more educated patient than most.

I also told her that short hair Jane Ann was my favorite action figure, and she said, “I’ll get it cut tomorrow.” Please update me on whether she has actually done this. 😉

The lunch came at just the right time to make me relax. Now that our doctor/patient relationship was gone, we could meet each other as equals. She was just as open and candid as me, but not in a trauma-dumping sort of way. Just empathy flowing in both directions because mutual experiences led to separate conclusions in our own lives.

After lunch, Jane Ann dropped me off at Brené Brown’s talk, where I had plenty of desserts and a great time seeing Dr. Brown up close. I was on the second row.

Then, my sister, dad, and brother-in-law took me to Chuy’s for my birthday do-over. We went to the one at Westheimer and Kirby because of course we did.

I DID NOT RUN INTO A DOOR.

You have to be an OG to get that one.

Or be the person who said Dana left a hint for her, one of the two. I still don’t know who that is, or if someone was just pranking me. I will probably never know, because that Facebook Messenger conversation doesn’t exist. Or, at least, when I go through my messages I find other conversations that refer to it, but not the conversation itself.

I will always be confused, but it was that conversation that made my doctors think I was hallucinating. I couldn’t reproduce the results. All I know is that those people, whomever they were, kept repeating the phrase, “you are the best.” They would say it sincerely in one story and facetiously in another.

There were two stories.

The first is that Heytch and her husband were poly, happily married but both wanted other things. The plan was to take me to Africa after a visit to an ice hotel in Finland. I was supposed to meet Heytch at the hospital, where she had a ton of surprises waiting for me that never materialized. The hospital changed around me as all the people who talked to me cleared out.

The other story was that I’d caused Heytch to lose a race, that I’d introduced infidelity into the campaign that never happened. That her misfortune was all my fault, and “I am the best.” But the story still ended in me being forgiven, and me being invited to live with Heytch and her husband as simply part of the crew…. because Heytch isn’t like that.

The Facebook message was complete with a video of the hotel we were going to, and a picture of Heytch’s hand bound seemingly to mine in her art (I didn’t even know she painted…. and maybe she doesn’t depending on who was behind all this). Again, I am very confused and it’s part of why I ran from Aada. She is the only person on earth that has enough information on me to make my experiences a reality.

Some of my experiences were nightmares.

I still don’t know who brought the green shirt into the hospital, or how to explain why it affected me so much. Smell memory took me back to a closet in the Big Yellow House.

It was very much like the Wizard of Oz, where I woke up to “and you were there, and you….” But it was just Facebook Messenger and the ability to delete everything once the conversation is over.

Because of course this sounds like a hallucination if you weren’t sitting in my bedroom with me. It sounds like a hallucination that I talked to Counselor, but I know I said “hi.” And then I choked.

Counselor.

What in the hell was I up against?

I felt like I was in a deposition pretty quickly. My editing software went haywire.

It was Wicked.

But it also landed me a diagnosis that I don’t think is correct. My information doesn’t come from my own echo chamber, but a trip down memory lane once I got to the hospital. Everyone I’d ever loved walked through at one point or another.

There were other traces of coincidence or not…. like the especially pointed edition of “Our Daily Bread.” Like the coloring book with Amy Coney Barrett. Like a guy walking up to me and saying, “if I was dead, you could have her.”

No, the hell I couldn’t and who are you talking about?

My hospitalization was overall a success, but I really didn’t start to heal until I got out and into my Cognitive Behavioral Health group. It’s sort of like AA in that we share our experiences, but departs from it into dealing with our disorders. Most of us are bipolar. A few are schizophrenic. We’re all struggling together. Most, if not all of us are neurodivergent in one way or another. We’re all struggling together. It’s the struggling together that makes us better, and though you have that in the hospital, you don’t have it for long.

There’s two people that were in the hospital with me at CBH, and they’re the ones I see and smile because it’s a way to chart progress. I still believe that what happened to me was real, but I am trying not to dwell on it because it’s such an elaborate scheme I can’t believe anyone would want to inflict that much pain.

But I know it was payback for all the pain I’ve inflicted on others…. or at least, that’s how I took it. These people are trying to tell me something, so I might as well listen.

The problem was that absolutely none of it was true. Heytch didn’t even show up at the hospital, much less take me to Finland and Africa. If I’d had the sense God gave a goose, I wouldn’t have gone to the hospital at all and would have relied on the fact that since it’d been 12 years since we’d spoken, this claim was bogus.

What I did believe was that I was invited to live with Heytch and her family after this was all over, because that part seemed sincere, as well as the “we’re not like that.” I believed the right story and was comforted by it. It was up to me to choose, so I picked the one that sounded the most plausible.

Heytch even had an organization set up on my release, but I wont’ tell you the name in case it gives too much away regarding her identity…. of which I have already probably given too much.

But I have to tell my own story, and this is what happened to me. I will be incredibly sorry if Heytch doesn’t know anything about this and has to piece together who would do something like this to her.

In the moment, everything was real because it was. Afterwards, I couldn’t prove anything.

So what do I think?

I think that’s how the story is supposed to end.

Fin.

Growing Pains

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

It’s 3:35 AM as I start writing this entry. I am normally asleep at this time, but my schedule has been thrown into disarray that not even a sleeping pill could override. I wasn’t altogether ready to come home from Texas, because my dad was sick and his birthday was 9 Oct. However, I think my family was ready to get back into the swing of things, and that meant me getting back to where I belong. I’d been in Texas since 22 Sept, when my stepmother lost the ability to swallow and if I was going to get to say goodbye, I better come now.

We had a good conversation and farewell.

The funeral was beautiful and ethereal because it was so grounded. All of my stepmother’s doctors and nurses wore their scrubs.

But because of my time blindness, it did not feel like I was gone that long. In fact, the events were so packed together that I wish I’d slowed down a little.

The only real time I had to myself in Texas was driving back and forth between Bastrop and Houston. Now, I’m faced with as much alone time as I want, up to and including total isolation. My cognitive behavioral therapy group wouldn’t let that happen for long, though.

My point is that if I want my life to be different, I have to be different. The last 12 years have been built on isolation, and I know I do not want that anymore. I need to plug in somewhere and be of service, and I think that it’s time to find a church.

It’s the only way I know how to make friends as an adult. I generally join the choir because the language of music makes easy kinship. How much I get involved in church past that really depends on how much I like being there.

But I will always choose the church with the more strenuous music program because that’s the main reason I go. I can pray in isolation, but I cannot be the whole choir by myself.

It would be good to get back into music education because it’s a reminder that there’s something bigger than myself out there… a connection to the divine through the cunning use of math and physics. I’ve missed it, both singing and playing my horn. Playing my horn is unlikely to happen unless I get my mouth overhauled. My teeth cannot take the vibrations.

I like the idea of getting back into working those muscles. I’m a strong singer because I started in band, and singers who read music (especially sight reading) are rare. I don’t have that problem, but I’m also not the best singer out there. I work hard, and that’s enough for me.

I’m trying to get back into the rhythm of reaching out instead of reaching inward, because I do believe that there is a time and place for self-reliance. I also believe that the pendulum can swing too far and you get in danger of needing a life preserver without being able to ask for it.

I decided that I could be embarrassed by my entries, or I could heal myself with them instead. That’s the kind of self-reliance I need, because when everyone else goes away I still have this space to connect with the still, small voice inside me. The fact that strangers listen to this voice and comment when I’m finished will never not be strange, but it is strange in an uplifting way. A stranger cares.

Some of you are not even strangers as I look at my stats and think, “I know who lives there.” It’s interesting to see that people who’ve walked out of my life for any reason at all are still drawn here. It makes me feel weird that while I’m not fit for friendship, I have entertainment value.

Or perhaps I’m just being watched to make sure I’m not crazier than advertised, and that’s okay, too. I’m sure I’ve caused a lot of unrest over the 48 years I’ve been alive, and readers are readers……

I am not crazier than advertised. I have no problem talking about my struggles with mental health issues and have no qualms about saying “these are the things I struggle to manage.”

One of the biggest things I’m struggling to manage is how to convert the feeling I got when I wanted to write to Aada into the feeling I need to write a blog entry…. that there’s no information that needs to go specifically to her anymore and that energy needs to be directed. I have a feeling she’s reading every word, anyway, just based on a good hunch from my stats.

Sometimes I wonder if she’s struggling with not being the place I write before I write here. I know I struggle not having that sandbox, but every piece of information that I wish I could write to her will appear here eventually. There’s just a time and place for everything, and a lot of what I went through the past two weeks needs air.

Or needs Aada, I don’t know which.

What I do know is that she would have heard the notes of sadness in my voice and wrapped her digital arm around my shoulder.

When I think of her that way, the relationship doesn’t feel so over. I don’t get freaked out that she’s still a fan. If she’s still a fan, it means that she still wants some sort of connection to me to make sure I’m doing all right without her. It makes me wish she was a blogger so I could do the same- make sure she’s all right without interfering. But that’s just wishful thinking because even though she’s a great writer, blogging’s not her jam.

It doesn’t feel fair that she gets to lurk in my life and I don’t get to lurk in hers, but life’s not fair. I chose to be a public figure, she didn’t. She gets to keep her privacy, I don’t.

That’s why it is fair, it just doesn’t feel like it. I chose this life where my feelings are on display. Aada didn’t like it, especially when the people around her put two and two together and figured out who she was here. Believe me I do not want to know how any of Aada’s work colleagues know who I am, nor do I give two shits that people in her personal life figured it out because I was tasked with being so careful. I told Aada that I could never be careful enough, that we’d run into problems if we didn’t work together.

She didn’t listen to me for 12 years that I thought I could hurt her on my blog and she continued to say that there’s nothing I could write that would hurt her until it did.

She liked reading The War Daniel’s takedowns of me, but didn’t think it was fair that I posted her flame on Medium, as if she was more different, more special than anyone else in my life and deserved more protection than any of them. Whether that is true or not I do not know and didn’t take care to learn.

She didn’t protect me from consequences, so I didn’t protect her.

I should have, anyway. I should have let her get away with lying to me because I should have been the bigger person.

I’m wondering if Aada is thinking of me right now, because I got a hit on her Finnish baby post yesterday. It could just be a fluke, but it’s a nice thought nonetheless. Comforting, if not based in reality.

I do get a lot of hits from her location.

People do come back and find the entries they like after a long time when they want to feel close to me, but don’t actually want to reach out. It’s like they’re mourning me while I’m alive, and I get to watch from above. I’m definitely not sure that’s healthy, and why I want to promote myself with some ads- try and get my stats high enough that people can afford to be anonymous to me.

It’s really the next step on the ladder of success. I just need to research what kinds of ads will do the most good. It’s also about finding the right entries to promote, so I’ll start with the ones that have gotten the most praise already.

I’d also like to write more articles that have an academic focus for Medium, and I’ll be getting together topics for them. I’m capable of more than a scratch journal, and I intend to prove it.

My mind keeps going back to the thought that Aada is thinking of me even though she doesn’t want to reach out. I find it both comforting and sad…. bittersweet and melancholy in all the right ways…. but it could be that my mind is making all this up.

But what does one do other than comfort themselves in the middle of the night? In the middle of the night, all things are possible.

I miss her, too, and wish I could go back over her e-mails to me, but I deleted them all. Well, not all. I have the most recent ones. But the bulk of them is gone. There are no longer millions of words between us and that is positive. I would spend forever trying to prove to myself that moving on isn’t real.

Moving on is very real, but I hope she knows that this is her choice and not mine. That I am cognizant of the fact that she’s doing what’s best for her, but my feelings of regret are genuine and my door will never be closed. I don’t want to close myself off from proving that trust can be rebuilt on both sides, starting at zero. I do not pray for much these days, but I do pray for that.

I don’t think that either one of us gave the other the grace that love requires. I would like to prove that I’m capable of it. But I don’t want the same relationship with Aada that I’ve always had, either, because I don’t think that amount of isolation did me any favors.

What would it be like to introduce Aada to Bryn, Evan, Aaron, even my sister and my dad?

It would give us a basis in reality, everything we lost being a secretive bubble unto ourselves. Isolating did us no favors, because there was no one to referee the match.

It would have been a different relationship altogether if her husband and I had gotten to look at each other with knowing, amused looks and said, “it takes a village.”

It felt like living in the closet, because I’m so close to this person but I’m not allowed to say anything about them?

It would have been a different relationship altogether had we not trauma dumped everything, cultivating an instamacy that sunk us both in the end. I am much more circumspect these days, and keep my story to myself. I have learned that rabbit holes are almost always more trouble than they’re worth.

I think, and this is important for her to know if I am indeed correct, that the longer she reads the more I hold out hope that this isn’t the end of our movie. That I’ll go on to write more and different things, getting away from this time in our lives and making her feel comfortable enough to reestablish contact. If I stopped seeing that particular location in my stats, I would be sad, but I would know that our movie has ended. If it is my responsibility to stay away from her, then it is her responsibility to stay away from me.

I don’t want all of this to be any harder than it has to be, but again I am saying my father’s mantra:

  1. Nothing will ever be the same.
  2. Everything will be okay.

My life and career will not go the way I’ve planned for the last 12 years if Aada and I do not make up, and that’s okay. Just because the future is not going to be the same does not mean it won’t be okay. There is always a Plan B, or however many plans it takes to get to the one that actually fits you.

International Man of Mystery, Part II

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
If you had a million dollars to give away, who would you give it to?
View all responses

Apparently, I should have waited until today to say that I wanted to be a philanthropist. 😉

Yesterday, I picked to give money to Water.org, and that is still at the top of my list just because I would hope it would lead to more projects with Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. But there are other organizations that are near and dear to my heart. So let’s just pretend that I have already achieved the billions of dollars it would take to fix the world and this is just free money- I’m writing a check to World Central Kitchen.

Or perhaps I’m writing out that check to me, to make The Sinners’ Table a reality. It’s a project I’ve been working on in fits and starts for a long time, bringing dinner with dignity to the homeless. The chef I was working on it with, John-Michael Kinkaid, was killed in a car accident last December and I’ve been floundering on it. But “dinner with dignity” isn’t a trite phrase, it’s fine dining for people who couldn’t afford it, plus a place to plug into the kitchen if they’d like to learn a trade.

I still think it’s a good idea and would like to work with more people on it. But my fire for the project is tempered as it becomes the John Kinkaid Memorial Sinners’ Table. That part may or may not make it onto the t-shirts, but the project doesn’t have anyone else’s fingerprint on it except mine, and mine isn’t worth much. It’s why I’d like to go to culinary school and re-learn the basics, plus earn a degree that will help me. I have scouted out Finnish culinary schools because they are free, but it depends on a lot if I’ll be able to go. Alternatively, I might have enough money to go to culinary school in the United States, but I don’t know that yet, or even if I’d want to do so. Part of the appeal of going to culinary school was getting out of the United States…….

Perhaps the answer is to apply for a job at World Central Kitchen so that I have some experience working inside that organization before I build my own. I know that it would be different than working in a restaurant, that the pace for prep and service would be a marginally slower pace than in a restaurant. It might be something I could hack, and even better if they had jobs answering phones or collecting donations. I would like to know how to run a nonprofit just as much as I’d like to cook.

I have so many pie in the sky dreams that it’s hard to know where to start, but the basic premise of the prompt is easy. I have a million dollars to give away. I chose World Central Kitchen to receive it all because according to yesterday’s prompt, I am already a billionaire philanthropist who cannot fail. 😉

Jose, the check is not in the mail because this is a fictional exercise, but know that if someone gave me a million dollars to give away, I would be hard pressed to find people more deserving than WCK. My sister and I hit up your restaurants all the time because not only do we eat well, we feel good about supporting you as you feed war-torn Europe and beyond.

But see, the thing is that I would love to be in charge of sending checks to organizations that help people in need. The perfect job for me is giving away money, or it would be if I was talented at finance. In my head, I am capable of giving away money. Realistically, I need to hire someone who will tell me if I can give away money or not. 😉 I am the type person who would find themselves unable function after giving their last dollar to someone else.

I should at least think about volunteering somewhere, because there’s no shortage of opportunities with World Central Kitchen and the thousands of other ministries between DC and Baltimore to help the less fortunate. I’m in a stronger position with my disability case if I am a volunteer rather than working, so now I have arrived at a direction.

In choosing my next neighborhood, I’d like to have a church within walking distance. That narrows my search down a little bit because there’s only a handful of churches I mean. If there’s no rainbow and Black Lives Matter flags in the yard, I don’t want it.

Most of my ability to give without thinking comes from the idea that Jesus was sent here to distress the comfortable, not to comfort the distressed. It’s a paradigm shift from white nationalist Christianity- I am unapologetically in favor of liberation theology. It’s what sets me apart as a social justice warrior who thinks that more people would be happy if they stopped thinking about what happens after they die and try to bring heaven here.

A million dollars won’t bring the entirety of heaven to earth, but it’s a million dollars closer than I was before this prompt.