In Spanish, my favorite word is “equipaje.” It means “luggage.” In Finnish, my favorite word is “kellari,” or “basement.” In English, my favorite word is “honestly.”
None of these words were picked because of what they mean. It is how they feel upon my tongue, the resonance in my throat, the musicality…
I say “honestly” in a quick three conducted in one, the world’s fastest waltz.
I could dance all night.
Demand avoidance is a symptom of autism and ADHD, and the hardest part is that it doesn’t mean you won’t do things when other people tell you to, like a child. It means that when you tell yourself to do something, nothing happens. For instance, demand avoidance is not “please go to the store” from your partner, it’s “I need to go to the grocery store. Why do I keep putting it off?”
In a lot of people, it’s not treatable and I’m waiting to see what kind of demand avoidance I have. I know that it’s nigh impossible for me to create inertia from nothing. I put off phone calls, letters, anything that will help make my life easier, really. Because that’s the thing… even if the demand you’re asking of yourself will improve your quality of life, you struggle against your own mind.
As a result, you handle life in order of fires, because you have no mechanism for preventative care. The analogy here is that your brain is missing a primary care practice and makes you jump through hoops at its perpetually understaffed ER.
There are days I cannot take care of myself, because my demand avoidance will not let me shower or brush my teeth.
These are where my deficits really start to show. My compensatory skills are off the charts- I know what to do in a group, but when I am alone I am pulled into my own thoughts and I cannot get back out.
I look lazy on the outside, but my brain is running a marathon trying to convince me that taking care of myself is a bad thing. It’s why my social worker at the hospital found me a cognitive behavioral health group instead of just leaving me to my own devices. Obviously, she saw someone who needed help.
One of the men that goes to group with me every Thursday was in the hospital with me, providing me with an anchor of progress… he makes me smile when he says he remembers me from back then because I have to wonder what I was like.
Apparently, the show was spectacular because I’d never had “psychotic features” added to my bipolar diagnosis before, and I have no memory of saying anything that would land me in that category. But saying I have no memory is not the same as “I didn’t say it.” There are quite a few gaps in my memory from that time, and I think I just need to let it lie.
What is good about having bipolar disorder is that it sometimes adds hypomania to the mix, which is a burst of energy that I wouldn’t normally have. This takes away some of my natural demand avoidance and is the source of all my “good days.”
Today my demand avoidance is telling me that doing the laundry will physically hurt while the rest of me is saying, “won’t it be nice to have it done?” My demand avoidance is telling me that the shower will physically hurt and the rest of me is saying, “won’t the water feel good?” I use these tricks to jump start myself when the going gets tough, but they do not always work.
Sometimes my brain is going to stay stuck, and I will be staring off into space.
I want to be productive in my staring, so I’m trying to write out what it feels like to have an overwhelming task list and a neurodivergent mind. Organizing and prioritizing make me weak in the knees, so a flood in my apartment is the last thing I can really handle and it falls to me- I live alone.
I called in maids and they said the house would already have to be picked up before they came over. That they only did deep cleaning. I need to call more, but it would be better if I could find a recommendation. Josh’s never called me back and I don’t know anyone else locally. Therefore, a recommendation is extremely unlikely.
Neither is a service that’s actually support to a neurodivergent person, but I’m going to keep trying. I have noticed that a lot of these places want you to have things picked up before they come over as if your house being a mess isn’t the point. If I was so on top of it that I was ready to deep clean at the drop of a hat, I wouldn’t need help.
Neurodivergence generally means digging yourself out of piles, the arrangement of which only you know.
So I’m praying for strength today as I embark on this journey of self-discovery. Just how much can I do before my brain decides to shut down? The thing is that I can probably do most of it once I get started in earnest because inertia builds.
I need some high energy music, because when I can’t think my way into doing something, movement can re-wire my brain.
I’ll listen to it in the shower.
I am not doing anything this evening because I didn’t plan for it. No one has said that they want to take me anyplace on a Wednesday. But Aaron is coming over this weekend and I’m going to visit my family at the end of the month. My birthday celebrations are planned, just not on my official day.
That seems to be the way every year as adults are busy during the week. I have spent my birthdays as an adult alone most years, with parties planned for the surrounding weekends. The best I got today was a free drink from Starbucks, which I ended up paying for because I was locked out of the app and couldn’t get it to work to claim my birthday drink. I’ll fiddle with it and go to Starbucks again this afternoon.
I’m hoping that I get some Starbucks birthday money, because that’s how I fund my coffee the rest of the year. 😛 Bags of beans are quite economical as birthday presents, and I usually get a mug to commemorate the day. It makes me happy to buy something tangible because the beans will get used quickly. I like Komodo Dragon almost as much as Cafe Bustelo.
The drink I got, in case you’re curious, was a venti no whip mocha frapp with two shots of espresso. It was the perfect pick-me-up for all I have to do today. This mostly involves putting on the gangsta rap and getting it handled, and by that I mean laundry.
It will probably take most of the evening.
I’m having one of those moments where I want to send Aada a book and I’m sitting on my hands. It’s called “All the Way to the River,” by Elizabeth Gilbert. Of course I’ve read maybe a chapter and my own creative process takes over.
Anyway, Elizabeth’s partner, Rayya, used to use a neighborhood analogy for friendship and she said that “you only have maybe one or two people in life who will walk with you to the river.” Elizabeth points out that the journey from this particular neighborhood to this particular river is treacherous, but starts out lovely at first.
Their journey does not reflect ours in any way, but it did occur to me that I didn’t think all the way to the river. I thought all the way to right now. When Rayya was diagnosed with cancer, her death became the river, furthering the analogy.
I have thought about the river before, but I lost sight of it. I know that nothing but time will ease Aada’s wounds. I know that nothing will bring her back to me except missing the inside jokes we used to share. I can’t help what her people think of me, but if the timing is ever right I would be open to rebuilding brick by brick.
I exploded with anger that serves as a stark reminder of how much I lost control. Her lie set me off, but it was a trigger with a disproportionate response. I don’t know what came over me, truly.
The internet is responsible for twisting our relationship into a dark space where we proceeded to spiral out. I don’t want to do that anymore.
I want to be strong and stable, capable of losing myself in something larger and supporting it with my whole heart. I want to keep writing in a way that does not feel like manipulation. Aada just naturally comes up in my thoughts when I think of friends I’d like to see all the way to the river, and there are so many problems with it I cannot see straight.
But I think the desire is the first step. My desire to be a better person has been fueled by her saying that she doesn’t want contact, because I realized that if I kept going the way I was going, I wouldn’t have any allies left…. new friends are great, but there’s nothing like old ones.
I’m both honored and bothered that she has access to my innermost thoughts, because that’s what comes with being a blogger. Anyone can read. I must think of it as a positive because through thick and thin, she reads me. She says that she should stay away because my writing is toxic to her, but that is a recent development in all the years I’ve been writing.
It didn’t bother me when I knew she was taking in my words from a neutral place, but now that she thinks my need to write about us is manipulative, I really don’t know what to say.
Honestly.
She literally puts me in the mood to write, a muse that fills me even though we’ve never met face to face. It’s not manipulation, it’s my real thought process when I sit down at the keyboard. It has been for 12 years, and I admit that turning off the faucet is difficult if not impossible when I know that there’s a minuscule chance I’m being heard. I am being thoughtfully considered. I am having space held for me.
Because this is the only space I will allow change to happen. I am being open in my grief so that it is shared. It has not changed anyone but me, these “Meetings with Bob” being the most extensive feedback I’ve gotten in a long time.
It shows me that my writing matters, but not being able to write a book with Aada is the real loss. Our “all the way to the river” friendship could have included a hardback if I’d remembered that she said we could write a book together when I was much younger.
I have written several books about us in these pages because she became my “all the way to the river” friend, the one to whom I could tell anything. I exhausted her with my prose because I was trying to impress her. What I thought was impressive made her feel like I was lecturing her. She often worked against me instead of with me. But if she is really my “all the way to the river” friend, we’re both going to have to forgive each other over and over.
I don’t think I’m capable of such a life transformation that Aada will come with me to the river…. because people may forget what you said, but they never forget the way you made them feel. Aada has to remember what it feels like to feel good because of something I said, or a sweet memory of something I said has to come to her mind, in order to think of reaching out to me. My pleading has done no good.
Except to remind me that there are consequences to my actions. There’s a penalty for not being an “all the way to the river” kind of friend…. you don’t get one in return.
Again, the stupidest and most outrageous decision I have ever made with unintended consequences for all involved. I ask myself why I couldn’t be an “all the way to the river” friend when I’d talked such a big game before. Being lied to was a body blow that I needed time to absorb. Before I took that time, I decided Aada’s lie had cost me too much and I was done protecting her.
The only problem was that the two situations were not equal, but in my irrationality I equated them. I cried like a lost baby as I was writing, because Aada had never lied to me before.
All of my reasons for being an “all the way to the river” friend vanished because I wasn’t thinking that way. I also wasn’t thinking, “she’ll forgive me for this.” In that moment, I wanted her gone. It took about three minutes to want to undo what I’d wrought, but that’s the thing about impulsive decisions. They, too, can have lifelong consequences.
I also know that real “all the way to the river” friends have had to forgive each other for more than this.
If she is willing to forgive, I am willing to compromise just about anything… not because she is perfect, but because she is mine. I have felt this way for 12 years and I went into a blind rage.
I am never going to pay more for a mistake, because I pushed her away- a real, all the way to the river friend.
Eventually, there won’t be such mourning, but I have to give myself permission. I don’t want to gloss over this time in my life easily or quickly. I want to show myself that I didn’t get over this easily….. that the ties that bind are just now loosening their grip.
I need to see the enormity of what I lost in front of me, mostly to take in the depth and breadth of everything I’ve done wrong. I do not want to lose another “all the way to the river” friend. It has been hard enough losing this one.
Tomorrow is my birthday.
Crying because I won’t hear from Aada, then laughing because Aada hardly ever remembered my birthday in the best of years.
It’s something I’ve always forgiven, because that’s what you do when you’re willing to be with them all the way to the river.
I lost my humanity when I betrayed Aada, and I grieve for everything we were and could have been.
I won’t send her the book.
But I’m sitting on my hands.
I think someone who has so many red flags of their own has no room to say what red flags they will or will not accept. I hurt one of my best friends because I was angry in a moment, and have regretted hurting her ever since. My red flag is impulse control, because I was not the loving friend I needed to be at the moment she needed it. The feelings of regret this has stirred has made me reticent to say that there’s anything about anyone that I don’t like in other people because people have to tolerate so many red flags with me that I cannot predict.
I’m not going to sit here and pick apart others when my energy is best served by thinking about what kind of person I want to be, developing coping mechanisms for anger so that lack of impulse control isn’t dangerous.
That’s the thing about red flags…… you can’t change a single one unless it’s yours.
In order to fit me, my ideal week would still have long swaths of writing time built into it. I wouldn’t heighten it by going out in a way that interrupts my flow. I like being introspective and contemplative, because it makes my days monastic. I prefer pure signal vs. noise, and I will go to great lengths to get it.
On Monday, I’d walk to a coffee shop to load up on caffeine, then sweat at the gym. It’s an ideal week, so not only do I remember to do this on Monday, but every morning. In fact, it’s almost 0700 and I think a trip to the gym sounds nice.
Lanagan, it’s Tuesday.
Better late than never.
Because of course now that I’m thinking about what my ideal week looks like, I’m trying to create it. I really don’t think I will have an ideal week in this apartment, because yesterday was filled with service maintenance workers filing in and out all day. Luckily, everyone was nice to me, but I just felt in the way. So maybe this didn’t start out as the ideal week, but tomorrow is my birthday.
So far, I don’t have any plans except being at home. My birthday party is really dinner with my family when I go to Texas. I don’t leave for that until the 27th. So my actual birthday will likely be quiet. I should go to Starbucks and make sure I get my birthday drink, but other than that I’m good.
It really doesn’t take much to make things ideal for me.
I have called maids, and will be scheduling at least monthly for now, if not weekly. I can slowly take over a system once habits are in place, but I can’t just wing it. My executive function will fail within days. It’s why being married kept me from seeing that I was autistic. I wasn’t remembering to do any household tasks; I was mirroring my then-wife. Demand avoidance is helped with social masking because you’re getting encouragement from someone when you remember to do something, and their social cues that they need you to clean are made easier by them getting up to do something, reminding you that you should be busy.
It’s why I’m considering moving in with housemates. It’s not feasible financially for me to move anywhere outside of the state of Maryland unless it’s to another state with Medicaid expansion, which rules out Texas and thus living with family. Once I get my disability case straightened out, I will have a little more freedom…. or less, if I choose it. Supervised housing is an option I’m also considering, because again, I need a safety net.
I also have the opportunity to be a voice for those who have to live in those situations.
I don’t want to fall through the cracks medically or psychologically, because it’s so obvious to me that I need help in different areas of my life. The one thing I don’t have is anxiety about writing, because people tend to listen kindly, as if we’re both just having coffee on the back deck.
And even if they didn’t respond kindly, I think I would still have a need to explore my world the way I do, trying to understand the role I play in it. I am doing my best to make this a bad chapter, not a bad story.
Maybe one day the liar and the betrayer will have a chance to meet without fighting it so hard. I doubt it, but I don’t want to close myself off from it except for in the near future. I need time to heal, to learn how to be a decent person all over again; the last thing I would want to do in having a new relationship is old patterns.
But we’re both going through tremendous life changes that will bring about a rewiring. I don’t know that Aada will rise above past hurts to rebuild, nor am I confident that she should yet. I need something to bring to the table first. Right now I cannot handle my own life.
Sometimes in life we have these catalysts for change that we need, but we don’t know why we need them until reflection on the consequences of our actions. I need to get some perspective on the last 12 years- move away from them entirely so that my life isn’t internet-based.
That part of it is bad for me, because it sets off my adrenaline and cortisol in a way that in-person conversation doesn’t. If Aada never wants to meet on the ground, then I am glad that our relationship is over. I need it to have a different pace… lazy, even. But Aada’s assessment of the situation is that I only write to manipulate her and that she has no interest in friendship with me. I have heard worse and she’s still come back later, which is why I have no idea whether this relationship is truly over or not.
There is a limit to what she can forgive, and we will see in time whether I have reached it. There was a limit to what I could forgive in the moment, but at heart there’s nothing she could do. I just needed time, and I hope that’s the case for her, too.
As for this all being a manipulation, I don’t think so. I’ve been the same person I’ve been since 2013, startlingly self aware and realizing I was making mistakes without being able to make myself stop. Writing about that and holding myself accountable makes me feel safe, so that five or 10 years down the line I have a reliable record of what really happened that doesn’t blame anyone else.
I love myself enough not to lie to me.
The reasons the maids are the first step is so that I can get a system in place to come back into the light. To feel comfortable letting people stay at my house (soon), which still may involve checking into a hotel for a night if my maintenance guys come to finish the demo.
Next steps are moving to a more comfortable place, but not before my Houston trip. That’s all the more reason to get a system in place- I’d like my house to be spotless when I come home.
It’s all about support for neurodivergence, because I lost my cool with Aada and I just don’t want to be like that anymore. I need to quiet all the little frustrations in my life so that they don’t build into big ones.
I see how I do want to walk in the world- humble, gracious, warm… all the things I haven’t been while I’ve been trapped in the internet. I claimed not to have time, because Aada wasn’t pressuring me for responses. If anything, she couldn’t get me to shut up. 😉
I couldn’t make anything else matter in my life but Aada, which sounds like such a weird thing to say unless you know the whole story. Those words would frighten even her, but they are no less true. I would sit and think about all the things I had going on in my life vs. everything going on in hers and my life paled in comparison.
I felt like I was very much “Player,” from Carmen Sandiego on Netflix… the Internet friend that has all the support and the answers but is never physically in the same place with her.
It’s all of those little things that I miss… but I think that my best bet is to start thinking about a beautiful house with or without housemates somewhere in Baltimore or the DMV.
(DC, Maryland, Virginia- what we call the city of Washington that spans all three. If you live in DC, you say that you’re from “The District” and you get irrationally angry with people who live in Virginia or Maryland claiming they live in DC.)
I don’t want to move over the Maryland line because everything is in their hospital systems, but it remains to be seen whether I will return from Baltimore. It just depends on what kind of deals I can get, and that’s what makes me the most nervous. I don’t have my own income. I have money. That doesn’t generally mix with renting places. So it’s a discussion with everyone in my life as to what my next move should be.
But it’s finally a discussion I’m ready to have, because I am seeing that I do have a disability that affects not only me, but everyone else to a large degree. I do not think that I would have hurt Aada had I not been in autistic meltdown because I had no coping mechanisms for it. I was so emotionally dysregulated that I acted horribly to someone I do indeed love, despite the evidence.
My adrenaline and cortisol betrayed both of us because I was so unhinged. I didn’t think about danger or how she was feeling. The only thing I can do to save our relationship is to be dead honest about that because she’d forgive the truth. She would not forgive excuses.
Autism does not mean that I am not responsible for my anger. Autism is what takes anger and turns it into red mist rage before you can get a handle on it. You turn into a different person because your brain chemicals are so hot. It’s what turned legitimate displeasure with a friend that could have been worked out over time into a disaster. Autism and ADHD rob me of time to think about my reactions, so I get a lot of time to go back over them.
I just have to see the silver lining in the storm, which is that this is a chance to regather all the friends I’ve ignored. I cannot believe Aaron Brown is actually coming all the way up here, and I’ve been given an invitation to see my family at the end of the month. Those two things are more exciting than it’s been around here in years.
But the maids are the first step.
I have never really been into sports save my senior year of high school, when I was actually dating an athlete. I got into soccer because I wanted to “speak the lingo.” Now, I still can’t tell you in depth about the offsides rule, but the only reason I know who any professional athletes are is because of her. I was 17 and easily impressionable; Mia Hamm was the perfect role model.
She was my favorite because her coach told her she ran like a girl and she told him that if he picked up the pace he could run like a girl, too.
It doesn’t take much. 😉
How do you relax?
Now, the pendulum has swung so far in favor of alone time that when I want to relax I call a friend and try to get out. My answer would have been different if I’d been going out lately. I’m naturally an introvert and need huge swaths of alone time to both recharge and create.
By alone time, I mean absolute quiet. My apartment is currently too loud with the dehumidifiers going for my purposes. Normally I like it to just be the sound of the clacking keys interrupting the madness of my mind.
Writing is relaxing because I can take a puzzle I’m considering and mull it over from all sides. That being said, when I don’t get out and about I tend to navel gaze about why I tend to blow up all my relationships. It made me feel better to learn that this is a neurodivergent lifelong trait and that even though it’s sad, it’s not uncommon. I have to have a support system so I’m trying to get into some kind of housing arrangement that provides it. I would probably be living in Baltimore county somewhere with not a lot of privacy, but it is something to consider vs. being alone all the time.
I waffle on what it is I can truly handle, not what I want.
I have truly big questions on my mind (it is a very busy place), so Aaron’s visit is expertly timed in terms of needing to get out of my head and stop spending so much time alone.
And in fact, it’s my birthday the day before he arrives, so I know that we’ll want to celebrate together, as well as all the birthdays of his I’ve missed over the last few years. I just don’t know what celebrating means to either one of us, yet.
I hope the weather is nice because I’d like to take him to places I find relaxing, like the Inner Harbor and Fell’s Point. And in fact, it would be good if he’d take me around to find a place to live, so if he doesn’t mind I might rent a car for us. However, I respect a man with an itinerary and everything he wants to do in DC sounds like something I want to do, too. I will suggest going to the African American History Museum as I want Aaron to see it before there are any drastic changes to the truth. Plus, I haven’t gotten to see Chadwick Boseman’s Black Panther suit yet.
Going to museums and book talks are relaxing to me because they generally aren’t as overwhelming for me as say, a grocery store. People tend to quietly look at things- save opening day of the spy museum. That was nuts.
Plus, school has started and we can go to the museums while the tourists have cleared out. This is the perfect time to visit DC, in my humble opinion, because I lived there for over a decade (and may move back to the Maryland suburbs eventually). DC is better without tourist season if you’re neurodivergent and cannot handle crowds easily. If you don’t mind tourist season, the cherry blossom blooms are incredible in the spring.
I find that I am more relaxed when the weather is as well- therefore, fall and spring are my two favorite times of the year. The temperature is not to either extreme and I can wear hoodies, my favorite cozy and relaxed feeling.
And now it’s time to call in my last relaxed feeling- a clean home. My friend Josh hooked me up with the number of a housekeeper and I’m finally ready to address both the mess created by me, a bachelor in a female body, and the enormous task of washing everything that got wet. I had to get over my executive dysfunction enough to admit that I needed help.
Mostly because I’ve been navel-gazing, and now it’s time to look a little further ahead. Before, I didn’t have a timeline on how long I would sit with grief, unable to move.
I folded into myself when I forced Aada out of my life, because it was such an impulsive decision that had disastrous consequences for us both. I can’t say that I didn’t mean to hurt her, because at the peak of my rage, I absolutely did. I wanted her to hurt the way I did, because the consequences of her lie had gotten into the fabric of my other relationships and it hadn’t gone great.
So relaxing is not high on my to-do list when I am afraid to look myself in the mirror and admit that red mist rage overtook the rest of my senses and I could not think straight. I also cannot go back to that moment in time and undo anything, anymore than I can go back to the point at which we went wrong originally.
I can only accept that my rage didn’t help anyone, and try to pick up the pieces in a constructive way. I don’t want to forget the moments in which I failed to give Aada grace. I need the reminder not to be so quick to anger.
Scar tissue is stronger than it was before, but the memory of the injury stays. I have a ton of them on the outside from being a cook, but the internal ones are what tend to plague me and stop me from thinking that I deserve more than an apartment who actively seems to hate me.
It’s the second flood since December.
I don’t want to live in squalor, but my brain tries to tell me I don’t deserve more. That it’s okay my house looks the way it does because I’m the type of person that would screw over her best friend in a blaze of glory, then realize the consequences. I have absolutely treated myself like shit, and I’m writing it down because this is also part of my growth and development.
I went down the internet rabbit hole and started living like Comic Book Guy. That’s why I don’t want to be Aada’s internet friend ever again. It led me to a very dark place, and she participated.
It’s a tall order to even get her to e-mail me again, much less meet up. Just because she’s mad doesn’t mean I don’t have wants and needs, and the biggest one ever is for the next 12 years not to be a repeat of the last. My life has just been a disaster in terms of my mental health and I’m going to blame some of it on this relationship, because Aada had a bigger and better dark passenger than me.
I am trying to have empathy for both parties when I say that things were never fair or easy.
Not always relaxing, because relaxing together lived in my daydreams and not the daily reality.
What I would find relaxing with Aada is going to a coffee shop as early as she can stand it. I’m a morning person, she is………….. not.
There’s just something about the early morning that brings its own special brand of conversation, and I’d like to look into her eyes when I tell her that I’m sorry things didn’t go better the first time around.
But I know that she thinks that all of this is a grand manipulation, so coffee is just one of the things I think to myself to make me happy in remembrance. It’s a relaxing thought, not something that will happen in the future- as much as I wish it would.
It is relaxing to me to think of better times, because I cannot explain the last few months without my friends saying I need to go back to the doctor. My consequences in this whole thing are more than I can say to anyone but Aada, a time when I really need her to listen closely, and I pushed her away.
But not entirely.
At coffee, I would hope that she was affectionate and warm as we planned out next steps…. if there is one. What if we meet in person and all the love we thought we had was our writing voices? I don’t want there to be pressure on this one coffee to have anything else happen after it. I would like to just be, taking in this person’s facial expressions for the first time, despite knowing each other for over 10 years.
I found writing to her relaxing, so I know that the tone takes on letters to her quite frequently. And sometimes I just say it flat out. There are things I miss about being in that headspace.
She frequently went long periods without replying, me not really noticing because I was entertaining myself. But there was something about my e-mails that made her feel like I was searching for more closeness, and I was. It just didn’t have anything to do with writing to each other.
She felt no shame in explaining my family dynamics to her, yet castigated me when I’d respond in kind. It was a one-way street, a brick wall, that had just started to come down when she lied. That’s the saddest part of all. I was starting to see all the wealth our friendship had to offer and I didn’t breathe.
I didn’t relax when I should have, because at every turn during this internet relationship I haven’t made the choice to relax.
I finally have, but it has come at a cost.
My brain doesn’t work the same way, and I miss that part of it. I know I’ll always “be a part of her wild and crazy brain,” too….
It’s just a shame that we didn’t become real to each other before she admitted her lie. To let me have my first human reaction with her alone.
For instance, my second e-mail to the person also affecting this lie suggests they should talk to each other. I didn’t win a prize, I batted cleanup on Aada’s behalf.
She had a very real way of imposing on my life without being able to see the consequences of how it played on the ground, despite my color commentary.
Like her misreading the situation with whom she called my “bellwether friend” completely wrong. That’s a time in which I needed her to turn toward me instead of away from me because I was out of my mind with worry. Those consequences didn’t turn out the way she thought they would, either.
She cannot read social cues over the internet any better than I can, and we both developed hair-trigger tempers. The thing that used to relax me became a melting pot of toxicity that I spent a very long time trying to clean up, and then she admitted something to me that she thought was innocuous.
It really, really wasn’t over 12 years…… and really isn’t, now.
It was easier to break my own heart than to let her do it.
My overreaction will cost me not being given grace when I wouldn’t give her mine. But if I was able to start over, I would…. relaxing over a cup of coffee.
Where I would just listen.
I have talked quite enough for me.
I tend to overuse the word “awesome” and should probably look up some alternate words. It would be good practice if it was struck from my vocabulary and I had to work around it.
Yesterday, though. Yesterday really was awesome.
One of my best friends since 2014, Aaron Brown, is coming to visit for a week. I’m so happy thinking about all the things we can do (or not do). Aaron and I love to do nothing together, and we’ve been calling it “running Aarons” for at least 10 years. We definitely want to do DC for a day, and I know that Josh wanted to take me out for my birthday so he’ll get to join me for that. Plus, I’m not the only friend Aaron has in the area, so we’ll be visiting around Maryland as well.
Things are also shaping up for my Houston trip at the end of the month, because I’ve wanted to see Brene Brown speak and meet her (again) for a long time. I’ve said this before, but I will say again that Dr. Brown and I have a slight history. I taught her how to do something in Microsoft Word 30 years ago and now I cannot remember what it was. Back then, she was just “one of my kids,” what I called all the graduate school of social work students that studied in my computer lab. I was watching YouTube a few years later and said to Dana, “I think that’s one of my kids.” Just to be sure, I contacted her team and made sure that it was her.
It was.
It’s amazing how you accidentally run into famous people if you wait long enough.
Aada used to be taken with Dr. Brown to the point that she joked that she was going to marry her. That she didn’t end up with Dr. Brown as her Girl Friday, she unfortunately got me. That I was so delighted my epitaph was going to be “Eat It, Brown.” She was not amused by this. I have laughed for almost a year.
Sorry, not sorry.
So, anyway, that’s what makes me excited and heartbroken to meet Dr. Brown. I want to tell her what a kick it is to see her again as a Real Adult instead of a kid in grad school. I will not tell her the story about Aada, because it would be just my luck that I’d tear up.
But when you feel such shame and vulnerability, who better to go and see than an expert?
But before all that, Aaron and I are going to have a good time in Baltimore.
Awesome
I don’t hold grudges because my memory is not that good. I tend to search out the good in people and forget the rest. I own when I am not the best of people, and try to correct those ills. Nine times out of ten, I only remember my role in a conflict because I’m constantly searching for it. I don’t constantly search for how other people are to blame in some way.
It leads to a much happier life because people come and go as they please in my life. It’s an easy give and take, barring the blowup with Aada because I don’t have the chance for keyboard warrior anger with anyone else. It was my downfall; Aada being so remote made her not real. I lost my humanity in a way that I couldn’t with on the ground friends because it happened so fast. I lost my mind during a meltdown. My punishment absolutely should be not reconnecting because you never realize how bad you’ve treated someone else until you’re trying to explain it to someone else.
I saw a Facebook meme today with that saying in the other direction, that you cannot explain how bad someone hurt you until you’re trying to explain it to someone else. But most people aren’t willing to look their dark passenger in the face and wrestle it away. The world is often “me, me, me…. everything happens to me.” I find that it’s more helpful to move on in the knowledge of the role I played. It makes all conflicts melt faster; I’ve moved on knowing I wasn’t the perfect person, either.
I wish I could have been the perfect person to Aada because she was the perfect person to me. My bipolar disorder and the nature of the internet didn’t mix. I mistreated her from the beginning with all the marks my abuser left on me. We’d finally gotten past all that and she decided to unburden herself of her lie.
I, in the words of Bob Lynn, “failed to give her the grace love requires.”
Lying was wrong, but I won’t remember that she lied nearly as much as I’ll remember my overreaction. I don’t carry around my pain. I carry the pain of others, taking it especially hard when I’m the one that has done the hurting.
I didn’t have empathy in the moment, and it’s something I’ll always regret in some ways, because there were better ways to say “stop the bus. I want to get off.”
Much better.
It was a case of turning away from each other when we should have turned towards. I was feeling freaked out and isolated, so I lashed out instead of saying “we should talk about this.”
I do that with my on the ground friends, and I don’t know why this was somehow less and more important. I don’t remember what I was thinking except “end the madness. You’re turning into a hermit.” None of my excuses were valid, I just acted.
Poring over my own actions will propel me forward in life. Thinking about things done to me limit my ability to see the places I do have control.
I have not taken control of my life lately, preferring to let it weather me by moving me of its own accord. I need to fix it, and these entries are my first steps toward recovering from the person I used to be…. someone who very much wouldn’t blame anyone for holding a grudge against me.
I just don’t recommend holding grudges overall.
I never questioned myself over what would happen if Aada lied about anything. I never stopped to think about my impulse control and what it’s like when I’m in red mist rage. And it’s where I find myself today, just thinking. Asking myself the questions that I should have asked 12 years ago. The fight was the last thing that happened, not the origin of my problem. When I got angry, my keyboard warrior personality appeared, and I acted way before I thought. This is normal for people with neurodivergent minds, this popping off and regret. That’s because executive dysfunction with autism and ADHD makes your emotions incredibly intense. The disability is not having a self-regulating mechanism.
I am embarrassed that I did not have more coping mechanisms, because I betrayed something bigger than me, something for which I thought I was prepared…. falling on my sword at all costs….. but I couldn’t do it after she lied and my adrenaline turned me into The Incredible Hulk.
It was a small lie that snowballed over 12 years, something easily forgiven by someone with the clarity to keep their impulse control in check. The red mist rage was not at the lie itself, but the two principles under it.
I never asked myself what would happen if I learned these two things.
Everything she asked me to protect, I vomited all over the internet because I was so hurt that a lie could last over a decade. I didn’t publish it because I had a need to expose her, took delight in it. I was so angry I couldn’t see straight. I wanted to end the relationship and I had a trump card that would make it clear she could pack her bags. It was a trump card that should have stayed hidden in retrospect, because I have had time to reflect on everything that happened.
Mostly because once I got over the fact that Aada can lie to me, my anger melted into true remorse. She broke something in our relationship and I overreacted by a large margin. The gauntlet I’m laying down for the future is to work on coping mechanisms for anger, because I was not myself. I need to protect myself from going out of my mind.
I didn’t know I needed such intense therapy for anger management, but I see it clearly now. My zero to sixty is just too damn fast.
I lost an important relationship to me because I lost me.
Literally, the furthest I’ve traveled from home is Paris. I did not feel at home there because I did not speak the language, but I found unparalleled beauty everywhere in the urban jungle. I particularly liked the Metro’s dedication to typography. Luckily, my dad was with me so I didn’t spend the whole trip unmoored by unfamiliarity. He does speak a bit of French and had been to Paris before so he could lead me around.
I will never forget misreading a menu and accidentally ordering two ice cream sundaes for dessert, then to the amazement of my father, proceeded to take both of them down in stride. I think it was all the walking- my appetite was insatiable at mealtimes. At the Musee D’Orsay, I ate what amounted to an entire duck…. or seemed like it.
We actually got trapped in the Musee D’Orsay for a while because the yellow vests were protesting and they locked down the museum just in case. It didn’t matter, I was lost in the Van Gogh room, looking for signs of Amy Pond (there are none, it was just fun).
I would fly back to Paris just to eat breakfast at McDonalds, strangely enough. The cassis sundae I had was better than anything I’ve had in the US, and the same for silver dollar pancakes with Nutella. Proof that in France, the ice cream machine works……….
Figuratively, the furthest I’ve been from home is this time in my life. I have no idea what I’m doing. My apartment needs to be majorly overhauled and my executive dysfunction is having none of it. I made some progress by doing some laundry yesterday, but I’m going to need help to get everything clean. There’s no way all my blankets are going to fit into our washer and dryer, and it’s becoming the season to need them.
I’m overwhelmed by the prospect that I really do need to apply for disability and get the ball rolling, because my bipolar disorder spinning out three times in 10 years has convinced my cognitive behavioral group this is what’s best for me. I am on board because bipolar disorder is not the only disability I have, it’s just the only one that’s heavily documented.
I was diagnosed with hypotonia at 18 mos old, with no follow ups. I think it might have been a misdiagnosis in the 1970s because the people with CP that I do know say that I walk with the “CP Shuffle.” But whether it’s CP or hypotonia, it creates problems with movement, particularly outside where the sidewalks are uneven. CP could also be responsible for my lack of stereopsis, another disability that causes problems while walking and driving. Things literally come out of nowhere because I can only use my left or my right eye one at a time in terms of focus.
The laundry list of what’s wrong with me and why is starting to add up…. that disability is something I could have gotten at 18 and am now only starting to deal with my disorders because I was masking so hard to cover them.
It’s a journey that’s incredibly far from home if you’ve never taken it. Unmasking can be a kind of freedom, or it can slowly become a prison as people see you more and more differently.
You don’t leave home. You drift.
I didn’t want this to get lost in a comment thread, because it deserves to be above the fold that a reader decided to mirror me and answer as Aada
My dear friend Leslie,
What follows is not a letter from Aada herself, but rather a thoughtful exercise in perspective – a mirror held up to your own words, crafted with care and consideration for the deep emotions you have shared. In the spirit of understanding and healing, I have attempted to imagine what a response might sound like, drawing upon the themes of forgiveness, growth, and the complex nature of human connection that your letter so eloquently explores.
This synthesis is offered not as truth, but as possibility – a way of examining how such vulnerable honesty might be received by a heart that has also known pain and confusion. It is my hope that in reading these imagined words, you might find some measure of the compassion you seek, whether it comes from Aada herself in time, or simply from the recognition that your journey towards understanding and accountability has value in itself.
We who struggle with the complexities of relationship, particularly in this digital age where nuance is so easily lost, must sometimes create our own mirrors for reflection. Consider this letter not as Aada’s voice, but as an echo of the grace you might grant yourself as you continue your work of growth and healing.
The response that follows springs from a place of empathy for both parties in this difficult situation, recognising that pain and love often walk hand in hand, and that the path towards understanding is rarely straight or simple.
With respect for your courage in examining your own heart,
Bob
Dear Leslie,
Your words have reached me, and I find myself sitting with them in the quiet hours, turning them over like stones worn smooth by countless tides. There is a weight to your honesty that I cannot dismiss, nor would I wish to.
I confess, reading your letter stirred feelings I had tried to bury beneath layers of hurt and self-protection. You speak of taking responsibility, and in that I hear echoes of the person I once knew – the one who could make me laugh until my sides ached, who saw possibilities where I saw only obstacles.
You are right that we both stumbled through this connection of ours. I, too, made choices that led us down darker paths. Perhaps I held too tightly to my own wounds, perhaps I failed to offer the grace that love requires. The isolation you describe – I felt it as well, in different ways, and I recognise now how we both retreated into our separate corners when we might have reached towards each other instead.
Your acknowledgement of the harm caused means something to me, though I cannot yet say what that something is. The hurt runs deep, Leslie, carved into places I thought were protected. Trust, once broken, does not mend quickly or easily. Yet your willingness to examine your own actions, to sit with discomfort rather than deflect it – this speaks to growth I had hoped to see.
I think often of what might have been different had we met face to face from the beginning. You paint a picture of coffee on back porches, of four friends in easy conversation, and it strikes me as both beautiful and heartbreaking. Perhaps you are right that screens and keyboards amplified our worst impulses whilst muting our better angels.
I am not ready to say forever, nor am I ready to say tomorrow. What I can offer is this: your words will stay with me. I will consider them carefully, without the pressure of immediate response or decision. Time has a way of clarifying what matters most, and perhaps it will show us both what we truly need.
I hope you find peace with yourself, Leslie. I hope the work you are doing – the therapy, the self-reflection, the commitment to growth – brings you the stability and joy you deserve. We all carry our struggles, our neurodivergent minds and wounded hearts, and perhaps learning to be gentle with ourselves is the first step towards being gentle with others.
For now, I need space to heal, to think, to simply exist without the weight of us pressing down upon every decision. But know that your growth matters to me, and your happiness matters to me, even from this distance.
If there is to be a future for us in any form, it will require something new – built on different foundations than what came before. Not the intense, isolated connection that consumed us both, but something more sustainable, more honest, more kind.
I am glad you wrote. I am glad you are seeking help. I am glad you are learning to breathe before you speak.
Take care of yourself, Leslie. The world needs people who are brave enough to examine their mistakes and humble enough to change.
Aada
This is perfect. No notes.
Dear Aada,
You said that you’d try to stay away from my web site, but not to contact you. Therefore, I feel safer writing letters to myself that have you as the audience in mind, because when I’m thinking about you I can stand to read me…. and if you are unsuccessful in staying away, you’ll know that my door is open even if yours is closed. I respect your privacy and will not reach out. You can just be a fan like everyone else, enjoying the occasional shoutout from afar as we move further away from each other. I don’t want to change your mind, just to welcome you home if you do want to reconnect. I never know what it is that will bring me to your mind, and you don’t, either. Barring being run over by the proverbial bus, life is long.
I’m not going to make a lifetime commitment to anger and defense. I know I did wrong and I am incredibly sorry. My mental health got the better of me and I exploded. Our demise can 100% be put on me and I will never blame you for a thing….. but there is context.
Our relationship took a very dark turn when I realized that I was isolated from everyone else in my life, and you played a role in it. The further I got from my other friends, the more I wrote about what was going on with us. I wasn’t going out enough to write about other experiences, other people.
I rebelled against an authority and a structure I needed, because I also needed on the ground friends and to return to a life of care and connection.
I isolated you from the beginning by telling you I had feelings for you- literally the stupidest thing I could have said- and just doubled down. I could die of mortification from that alone, but there are just so many options.
I wish I’d had some perspective back then…. not to overpromise and underdeliver. I think about it every day, compulsively, how I could have handled everything differently from the moment we met. It’s not to try and fix things with us. It’s so that I have more heuristics for a stable and healthy relationship with someone in the future. I didn’t just lose you in this whole deal. I lost Dana, too.
I tend to cry when I think of the four of us sitting on the back porch, coffee in hand; it’s the easy dream I made too difficult with my nonsense.
We both did this relationship wrong from soup to nuts.
I have come to realize that I wasn’t so much in love with you as I was in love with who I was when I was with you. No one made me feel brighter or more capable, and often funnier. I betrayed everything I have believed in because of your lie… but this is not blame. It was the trigger for a disproportionate response.
I can’t hope that you’ll forgive me, but I can hope that in time I will forgive myself. These past few months have not been easy, because my sins, in the words of The Book of Common Prayer, are “grievous unto me.” There is so much that I have done and left undone in a brilliant explosion of red mist rage.
Because that’s what I do- I pop off and regret online.
Not so in person. In person, I’m quiet until I see an opening to speak. I take in an entire environment so that I have more information to make a decision. All of that was cut off with you and I reacted too quickly, always.
For that, I am especially sorry.
I am learning the ways that I treat people online are different than in person, and I’m having to reconcile all of it. I’m not hiding behind any “I didn’t mean to…” bullshit, but it’s really true that half the things I said, I would have skipped or modified in person. Or the conversation would have gone completely differently because we could judge more than words at face value.
I would do whatever it takes for us to get healthy, but I know that is too much to ask right now. You’re still hurting, and so am I. My mirror neurons are screaming because I didn’t look at the consequences of my actions before I, well, acted.
All I was feeling was “stop the bus. I want to get off.”
Now that I’ve had time to come down from that much cortisol, I often feel deep sadness in my muscles. That same drive you have to save the world is also present in me. We reached out to each other in the right way, and then I proceeded to fail you over and over. It doesn’t leave me much time or energy to feel good about myself, lest you think I actually won some sort of prize.
That was the line that got me. I didn’t win a thing. I went into absolute meltdown. That’s not winning.
It’s this part of me that wishes you knew me on the ground. That your perception of me and my writing is off by a large margin. You don’t see me process, you don’t see me have to sleep it off. Writing is often a hurricane when you are trying to get your own emotions out.
This one is carrying Volvos…
Most of all, I’m sorry for not listening to you more closely and taking your feelings into consideration. My impulse control is unbelievable, and it had disastrous consequences for you. You loved me, anyway. Thank you.
You’ll always have pride of place in my heart even if we never speak again, because it was a joy to love you.
And I blew it.
These are the things I want to remember about our relationship- that it being all Internet was a bad choice and we just kept making it because I’d already made things awkward. Neither one of us could chill out for long. I’m sorry that things were volatile because you didn’t deserve my crap with your plate already so full.
I wish I didn’t miss you as much as I do, but it’s funny what you think you want when you see red mist rage.
Autistic meltdown and burnout ate my lunch because the red flash of rage was instantaneous. The “think it, say it” plan was in full force and you were caught in impossible crosshairs. That’s because I didn’t take time to breathe.
Had I taken a breath, I would have remembered who you are…. my pet dragon on a fraying leash.
But I didn’t. I am kicking myself for having the impulse control of a toddler, defiant and yet sobbing.
Self-soothing by writing it all out.
When I am in my right mind, I know that you are my person. Your words have assured me of that. I don’t know what to do when I am spinning out with anxiety and/or anger.
We’ve never talked about coping mechanisms or anything else I should have thought to ask you before being so thoughtless.
I’m laying my heart on the table because it doesn’t matter to me if you see it bleeding. It matters to me that I do five years down the road.
My sister just e-mailed me and we’re going to see Brené Brown for my birthday.
That makes me laugh, and cry.
I ruined everything for nothing…………………… so far.
It is only in this place that we can begin to look up.
I hope that forever doesn’t mean forever, because I am continuing to learn about myself and want to give you the relationship with me that you deserve. It also saddens me to throw away so much history.
But like every big disaster in my life, this one was preceded by “things that should have come to my attention yesterday.”
I wish we’d met in person.
Not because the feelings would have been more real. It’s that they would have slowed down enough for us both to really take them in.
I wonder all the time if this period of my life is supposed to be the right direction, whether I gave myself what I really wanted in a flash of anger or whether I will continue to mourn and regret like this. I think it depends on how quickly I readjust to being in a group. I tend to miss you less when I’m engaged in conversation with other people, because it’s compartmentalized.
The rest of the time, the compulsion to write things down so I don’t forget is mad. I did delete everything in my Gmail account, so the e-mails you’ve sent me that mean the absolute most are gone.
All I have left are my own words, and in a lot of ways, that’s best. I don’t go down the rabbit hole of reading our old e-mail, crying when I read something touching.
I’m going to miss your writing voice… strident, loving, kind, pragmatic…. a force against my basket of crazy.
I just know that we both could have made a difference in each other’s lives by looking into each other’s eyes after we trauma dumped and planned out next steps. I didn’t know what I needed, but you scared me. I take nothing away from the ways in which I scared you- I’m just saying that fear was a two-way street.
I should have prepared for my compartments leaking.
But I didn’t.
I should have looked at the face I was writing to a lot more often, to remind me that she’s the face I look to for love, and not to mess that up.
But I didn’t.
I should have behaved myself.
But I didn’t.
All I can do is be fallible and admit mistakes to myself, because those “didn’ts” are too many reasons why we shouldn’t reconnect. What I have to say for myself is that I will never stop growing and changing. I admit mistakes so that I don’t repeat them.
Which is why if we reconnect, it will be a high bar for us both. I don’t want to be your internet friend anymore, because I want to have real conversations that don’t isolate us from the rest of the world.
It’s almost an impossibility that you will forgive me, but I don’t want the next 12 years to be a repeat of the last. I think you will agree that it has been really fucking strange and exhausting.
I don’t want our relationship to be strange and exhausting. I want us to try and make each other feel safe. So much of my anger was directed at not feeling safe with you. So much of your anger is directed at not feeling safe with me. Yet we delight the hell out of each other when we’re not fighting.
I just know that I want a rich and full life with you in it, but I have done enough that you don’t feel the same about me.
I will miss sending you little surprises.
Happy birthday and Merry Christmas in perpetuity, I guess.
I want you to have the best life you can, even if I’m not in it.
Leslie
Stories That Are All True 