Road Trip

October 25, 2025 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I will have to wait to take another road trip in my precious car. It is supposed to rain tomorrow, so instead of me driving out to Tiina’s farm, she’s coming to Baltimore to have dinner with me. But in thinking of taking said road trip, I started thinking about how to share my favorites with all of you. First, we have to have drinks. I’m not going anywhere without a large cup of ice and some sort of caffeine. Since I had coffee this morning, I think I’ll pick Coke Zero.

Even in the convenience store of my dreams, there’s no Dr Pepper Zero on tap.

We need what my dad would call “road junk.” Bugles. Gummy worms. Hot Tamales. A fried pie.

Then, it’s back in the car. I usually listen to podcasts, but I have a few favorite songs for testing out the stereo. You get that list first.

All the Rowboats, Regina Spektor
Pop, NSYNC
She’s So Mean, Matchbox Twenty
Inside of You, Hoobastank
Cake By the Ocean, DNCE
Wake Up, Danay Suarez

None of these songs are new, they just tickle my speakers in all the right ways. “Wake Up,” by Danay Suarez is my current obsession because I saw her perform it live with Ben Folds at the Kennedy Center a few years ago. Then I ran across it on YouTube and it’s been an earworm ever since.

Now Danay is playing in the background as I type, because I couldn’t look up the link for you without listening again. 🙂 She’s such a wordsmith that it makes me want to keep up in Spanish. I got a few clever things the first time around, like rhyming “pajaros” with “zapatos.” I think.

The reason there’s so few songs on my list is that even though I am a musician, I’m a bigger news junkie. I listen to NPR and all of its related podcasts, so sometimes I’ll go weeks without indulging in a beat.

Here’s my show list:

This American Life
The Moth
Risk!
Pop Culture Happy Hour
Pod Save America
Anything Rachel Maddow- her show, and the serial podcasts she produces

I could go on for hundreds more, but this is what I have time for in a week.

I dream of getting out on the highway, but this weekend’s just not good for it. I’ll come back to this entry when it’s time, and be sure to add your favorite driving songs/podcasts in the comments. I need some new recommendations.

As Much As It Costs

October 25, 2025October 25, 2025 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Daily writing prompt

How much would you pay to go to the moon?

View all responses

Somehow, I don’t think a trip to the moon is something you get for $29.99 on sale. I do not have the amount of money I would pay NASA to haul me around. That’s because I recognize that traveling to the moon is terribly unsafe venture and getting by on the cheap could only lead to disaster.

But honestly, this is not the most important question. The better question is, “do you want to go to the moon?” I’m not sure. I think I do. I have been enamored with space and NASA since the 7th grade. But I’m also introverted and have trouble with transitions, so I don’t know how that would translate to interstellar travel.

Do I get to pre-board?

I know that it would be an incredible experience for a writer to touch the face of God.

That actually seems, well, priceless.

The Benediction and Epilogue: A Multimedia Approach

October 24, 2025 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Aada has said that she will not read and she will not answer email anymore. This does not mean that I do not owe her an apology and a thank you. She has taken damage from my writing, to the point that I need to show true emotion, and this captures what I’m feeling today.

I failed her. She failed me. We could have had a safe, stable, loving relationship for many years if I’d just kept my mouth shut. We would have connected like a house on fire, because I was just so me in the beginning. I acted like a fuckboi jackass until I was faced with the reality of what I was doing. I have said this before, but it crossed the line into sexual harassment. That is the most painful, humiliating thing I have ever done… And I’m wondering if that’s what Aada means about turning judgment on myself. I have published this before, that I was entirely responsible for making our relationship feel unsafe to her in the beginning. It is only because I kept writing, kept encouraging myself to nurture real friendship with her that we recovered years later. It was a slow and debilitating process.

She sat through all of it, and didn’t turn away. My only aim in putting this here is to publicly apologize for the harm I caused Aada, because I can only control my half.

The point at which I lay myself bare to show that my feelings are genuine, because you cannot fake them in audio. I have sent Aada very few audio clips over the years, so perhaps that’s why she thinks that the positive aspects of our relationship are hard to find. I think that we would be so much easier with each other during a phone call, if we liked using the phone (seriously, warn me first. That’s just good policy. I don’t always have it in me because writing and talking are a different energy level).

It’s the ending and beginning this story needs, because as I have said before, my relationship with Aada is now over. It may begin again, or she may turn away and indeed ignore my first book.

Come on. Really? Even at Dollar Tree?

All of it depends on how much peace I can create between us, forgiving all that is past and moving forward with different ideas as to what friendships mean in my life.

Creating peace between us is being as publicly apologetic as I’ve been publicly angry.

I’d like to send her off in peace to the warmth of my voice, rather than the harshness of black and white reality.

Because we’ve gone in and out of each other’s lives so many times, I still want to encourage the ways in which she needed change, because they were good earmarks in the pages of my history that need addressing. If my writing comes across as manipulative, that needs to change first.

I’m laying down arms, and focusing on the peace I’m capable of creating.

I’ll let the me of 20 minutes ago have the last word.

Brain Droppings

October 24, 2025 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Only in America could Dunkin make paying $4.23 for a large cup of coffee seem reasonable, because Starbucks has made it their mission in life to make coffee as expensive as possible. But to be fair to Starbucks, I’m not sure their large coffee is more expensive than Dunkin. I think that when I go to Starbucks, I am not lured by their coffee. Their espresso drinks are where it’s at, and I don’t get out of there for less than $6.00. I don’t do it every day, because I’m a Xennial who knows that of course I can buy a house if I just stop buying coffee and avocado toast.

Of course Starbucks is the reason I can’t buy a house, and not the gigantic surge of inflation over the last 40 years. Coffee is just the best example to bring it home to people. I am sure that very old people who can remember paying a dollar for coffee in a diner are more outraged than I am, because it’s just beans and water. The margin is incredible. We don’t pay for drinks, we pay for drugs. 😛

There’s no way that people buy coffee just for the taste, because you can find excellent decaf out there, but who’s going to buy it? Apparently, more people than I think, because I have a decaf Cafe Bustelo in my cabinet for those long writing nights in which I still need the aromatherapy to function, but eventually want to sleep at some point.

I have an interesting relationship with coffee, because my brain slows down while my body ramps up. It’s the same with Ritalin or any drug I might take for ADHD. My brain needs the caffeine to function, my body does not. Therefore, I often drink coffee, as I told my sister, “until my brain works and my hands are shaking.” That’s because high doses of caffeine seem to be the right amount of correction and Ritalin is too much.

When I’m on Ritalin, my autism cannot cope.

That’s the part I’ve been missing all these years. I’ve had an ADHD and a bipolar diagnosis because women are often diagnosed with personality disorders instead of autism. That’s why there’s so many new women being diagnosed. The criteria has changed because AuDHD was being mistaken for other things, or impossible to find because the personality disorder and the autism were comorbidities, as is my case. I go up and down with the seasons due to my bipolar disorder. Neither depression nor hypomania last very long.

I have a good relationship with hypomania most of the time, because it doesn’t present as this period of wild behavior that goes up into what most would view as crazy. It’s just a period of productivity, alertness, and a lot of the time, insomnia that drugs cannot defeat. My body is too keyed up with adrenaline to let them take effect. There’s only been one time in my history that hypomania has led to true mania, and I was laid out in the hospital for several days while my medication got adjusted.

It was so frustrating, because I didn’t have any ID on me when I got there, so they gave me the first drugs they thought I would need instead of the ones I normally took. But, when I got back to having a regular psychiatrist, my protocol was changed back to my regularly scheduled program. I think that I’m doing better for two reasons.

The first is that things calmed down to nothing in terms of Aada’s story with me, so I don’t have those worries weighing me down anymore. I am satisfied that all we want is peace for the other, and that any contact down the road will be just as peaceful as ours was a few days ago.

We deserve the right to be tired of each other for a while. I cannot believe how bad things got, and how much of a miracle it will be if this is not the end of our movie. That’s because we are excellent writing partners, and it would be fun to create a writer’s room with her in it rather than isolated on my own. If I am allowed to build a dream, it’s that Lanagan Media Group will take on a project that excites her, so she’ll actually want her STEAM creativity sitting at my table. I am not kidding when I say that we would flatten people with our talent and make millions of dollars. I’m not talking her up, this is just the truth.

She doesn’t use arts in her daily job, so she doesn’t think of herself as creative. But I know better because of her diverse background. She could also make me come alive in a different way, because it’s our synergy that makes me feel like a better writer than I actually am. I don’t think I’ve focused on that enough and given her credit. All of that letter writing crafted me into someone with incredible dexterity as a writer, and it was all because I was trying to be impressive when I didn’t feel like it.

She thought of me as a professor, lecturing her instead.

I was always embarrassed by this, because my neurodivergent need to over-explain everything was a symptom. I never thought she was less intelligent than me or less capable. I’m a storyteller, and getting lost in my own thoughts alienated her so that she thought I was speaking ex cathedra, that my words had a magical quality that they didn’t, which was more truth than hers.

I could get lost in my beautiful girl’s writing, and I regret that I did not give her the time and space to feel it. Because I’ve deleted most of the other ones, I’ve gone back and savored the one from the other day. It’s the last pieces of her that I have, and it’s not surprising to me that I want to spend time with them. Her tone is warm and inviting, letting me listen to all her stories. They were very good ones, a narrative I could never create on this web site because those are not my stories to tell.

I may have been invited into her world for the last time, as I have written on my own blog… “The Last Letter.” It is not time to think of an us, only a me in a new direction. But I think there is new hope of building something down the road, after our feelings have had time to breathe. I need to get better, to recover from the last 12 years. I need to be in a more stable place to give Aada the grace that love requires, and she needs time to reach that place with me. If we ever do come back together, it will be because we know we belong in each other’s lives because of our conflict and not despite it.

As I told her, “what would be The AntiAada is for you to face real conflict in a friendship and come out the other side.” That is because she said that her journey with The AntiLeslie had come to a close. This changed her stance to “for now.”

Two words have not meant this much since “someday, perhaps.”

Because the thing about Aada is that she chooses her words very carefully, and would not lead me on if she did not mean it. I was blown away by her depth of emotion for me, that she actually liked being my yellow string and refers to it often. That she was not threatened when I said that it was hard to create relationships outside of her because I was so invested in this one.

It comes across as love addiction, that I’ve attributed these magical qualities to a real life person. But you won’t know if I’m telling the truth or not. You’ll just have to see if our partnership actually produces anything in the future.

I don’t think that Aada has it in her for this to be the last of our movie, either, if she longs for the days when reading “Stories” was her highlight. If there was something I was doing that made her feel that way, I’d certainly want to know what it was.

I thought she would think of me as serious, thoughtful, not willing to throw her away. She thought I was playing her alive. It is definitely a difference of opinion, and one that makes me eager to explore more of myself. To understand what I’m doing when I write about a conflict with someone and they see it.

If you have a conflict with a writer, it’s going to hurt if they’re any good. It was not my intention to come across as The Punisher, just The Tortured Bloggers’ Department.

I’m having to bat cleanup and clarify that all my ruminations were designed to let me let go. That holding all my emotions inside was damaging to me when I couldn’t get air to them. That is no longer a problem, because I don’t see those problems in the same way.

They have been recorded, and are yesterday’s newspaper…. What should be lining your birdcage if you print.

The best comment I ever got from a reader was that I made her cry on the toilet.

Now that’s power.

My story is interesting because it involves so many different people and eras. When I go back and read I realize how many multitudes I contain. But how to show those different aspects of myself to the world has come with mixed results.

I have had to struggle with being popular among strangers and Harriet the Spy to my friends. Given that I love spies, this comparison is not altogether unpleasant. I also enjoy the cartoon, and would love a t-shirt.

But all this time, I haven’t thought of myself as Harriet the Spy, but Player from Carmen Sandiego. I’m just the nerd on the internet with lots of information, that’s usually not in the same physical place with her friends. I identify a lot with Justin Long from “Galaxy Quest.”

But due to my ADHD I have a wide variety of interests rather than sinking my curiosity into only one thing.

And now we’ve arrived at an AHA! moment.

No, I don’t have varied interests because they all feed my writing. I have to have something to write about, but my mind never lifts away from the things I could do here to be more creative.

I just haven’t been funny lately, and I apologize. I haven’t felt funny.

I’ve felt like licking my wounds and being dumped girl.

Meanwhile, I was never dumped girl. I was “I am totally responsible for every aspect of this conflict because I had one job.” I turned my harsh criticism on myself and let everyone see it…. And in fact wonder what made Aada say that I don’t.

I have manipulated her without realizing it, and she cannot say that she did not do the same. I would love to hear what Aada’s doctor saw in me that made her say that Aada was being manipulated, because I’m betting that there are more constructive ways I could have said everything. I hope the difference between me and Aada’s other friends is that I’m waiting and willing to learn all these things so that we can be safe & stable with each other.

I still need to learn how to handle all of my relationships, it’s just that this one is the most important to me. 12 years is a lot of history to throw away, and there will never be a time in which her story is not welcome to be entwined with mine.

I closed my letter by saying that I was “an all the way to the river friend, if we could find a way to walk without tripping the other up.” I think that is the plight of all relationships, to as Rumi says, be entwined at the branches instead of the trunk. All people need enough room to breathe and be themselves, and enough companionship to feel like they are not walking alone.

It is something I will take with me into all new relationships, because I need to talk to a therapist about my own verbiage. How can I grow as a person so that my writing becomes happier? How can I put away my troubles when it is time? How can I focus on my life and compartmentalize?

How can I focus on my own goals, putting down my conflicts with other people and the need to turn them over in my head? I have a feeling it’s why I’m not more popular than I am, this need to ruminate. But it is in this rumination that I find the strength to make it through the rough days. It is my therapy and my hitchhiker’s guide to the universe.

Anne Lamott has always said that if you don’t see the book on the shelf that you need to read, you should write it. Because I didn’t have any new memories with Aada to create, I found myself dwelling on old ones. I was a sentimental fool, and it didn’t come across to the one person I needed to “get it.”

But she does “get it.” She told me never to stop writing, that I didn’t need to take anything down, that she wanted peace for me.

My only reply to that was “you want peace for me, but you do not want to do anything to promote it.” I think that line landed exactly where I needed it to land because it is the heart of the problem. We keep reaching out to each other and missing the mark because we know each other so well in one aspect, writing.

Aada promoting peace would be meeting me in person, allowing us both to decompress and talk slower than 90 wpm.

It is how I have learned that my writing can be negative, that I spend so much time in this space that I am not really connecting with people. Connection is in glances, hugs, cheek kisses, whatever the occasion dictates. Connection is Cafe Bustelo. Connection is Dunkin. Connection is Starbucks.

Connection is spending a few extra dollars on coffee to sit next to each other, welcoming the other into our silence.

Careers

October 24, 2025 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 2 Comments

Again, I cannot get WordPress to load the pull quote with today’s writing prompt, but it’s one that I did recently, anyway- the one about which careers I would like to do instead of this one, which I assure you I would not do if I thought I could do anything else. Being a writer is a lonely endeavor, but I seem to get the most done this way. I just don’t know how much of a value-add I am right now. It’s a rebuilding year.

The writing has to go on no matter how I am feeling, no matter whether I want to publish or not. Web sites that don’t change in 24 hours don’t get repeat visitors. So, if I make money from ads based on my thought process, my thought process goes on paper no matter what it is. I have been lucky in that my readers will accept any topic from me; what I have not done is switched to academic papers when I was going through something hard. I haven’t hidden away from my grief, shame, mental illness, any of it. It has led to a number of discussions with myself lately on how much I like being a product.

Maybe I would be happier doing something else, but I don’t think I would get the same type feedback. Now, I feel so much less tortured in my soul than I used to. The depression is lifting and I can handle more than I could a few months ago. Where that will lead me, I do not know. But it will not be turning the same problems over in my head, because I’ve been allowed to move on.

But in all of my moving on, I have not allowed Aada the same grace. She has been reading, taking in all my writing as punishment when I’m the one that feels punished by my own actions and feel terrible about them. The message is coming across to her as inverted, like I have some malevolence in store. I do not know how this is happening, but I want to say for the record that I thought I was excellent at raking myself over the coals, and I’m sorry for the lines in which it seemed like I was dragging someone else with me.

This leads me to a deeper issue within my own writing. If I set out to punish myself, then why was Aada so hurt? How could I have written the narrative better so that she knows she’s off the hook?

My silly ruminations weren’t for her, but she read them, anyway. I have no idea how I feel about that, because I’m too used to it to feel embarrassed.

Well, I am embarrassed by the emotions that came up in Aada as she read, because my hurt and my pain were the point of the entries. I did not write them in a way that did not affect her, and I’ll be struggling with that for a long time, because it’s not really a question involving Aada but all the people in my life as I muddle through having a blog at all.

How do I write my frustrations out without hurting the other people in my life? The short answer is that I can’t. To be so frank with my opinions is to create a ripple effect.

Sometimes, the ripple effect is good. People read things here that enlighten them to the path I’m on and it makes them have more empathy for me in person; they feel like they know me better. I have given them context as to who I am, and they like reading me because of it. But then when I write about a conflict between us, the conflict only deepens because I have written about it.

That’s the part that always trips me up. The blowback. My stomach hurts. My head hurts. My brain races. My heart races. My adrenaline fights not to go up and I swallow bile.

I’m a sensitive person, and I am not saying that I don’t deserve these differences of opinion. Mine is not the only story that’s true.

I’m just saying that when I have hurt someone, this is what happens. I start to overheat and melt down.

Like when Aada said that it was my goal in life to take her down, embarrass her.

No, my goal in life is to make memories with the woman I love.

Some of them, because I love her, are difficult.

Some of them, because I love her, are easy.

That’s why none of the positive things I write are clues in a game (although I do like Clue, I’ve only played it once or twice). They are just as genuine as everything else. I wish I could endorse my writing somehow…. If only there were a way to check if I’m really who I say I am, like going for coffee……..

Going for coffee is my favorite way to talk with someone whose read my writing and needs to vent. The conversation cannot get too heated on either end, and I’m not ashamed to cry into my latte. Sometimes these conversations are living the entry twice, because I cried when I wrote it. But the easy nature of friends helps the conversation to get back on track quickly. It’s not the same as writing in this space to figure out a conflict. We have solved it in real time.

Though I think it will take a long time for Aada to heal, I do not think this is the end of our movie. She thought I was rejecting her when I wasn’t, and it took the wind out of her sails. This last round was peaceful, and I told her I loved her. It was a benediction of sorts, allowing her to go in peace.

I have taken that peace for myself, and it reminds me to slow down in my writing. To notice smaller things, like the sunrise this morning. The taste of my coffee. The water in my shower. To feel differences in temperature, like the sharp cold of the morning air embracing me after a night covered in blankets.

My entries are progressing into a new era that doesn’t feel like profound loss. I have been given a chance to start over, and I am taking it.

I want to surround myself with people I can be safe, stable, and genuine in creating deep friendships, a support network built on trust. I’m really starting to think about who is going to finish my life with me, because I’d rather know a few people for a very long time, and a disorder that needs to be managed in order to make it happen.

I am the most safe and stable in Baltimore, ironically. It’s a dangerous city, but it’s got the best health care package for me. I can move anywhere in the state of Maryland, the trick being that all my doctors here are already set up. I’m not sure that I want to go through the hassle of setting them up again so soon after I’ve become their patient. But moving back to DC does weigh on me, and I think about it every time I have to renew a lease. I just don’t think I can make it happen this time around. I’m running out of time.

I would like for my apartment complex to make it right by giving me a new apartment on the grounds. We’ll see. I’m also surfing Craig’s List like a madman.

I am overwhelmed because moving takes more energy than I have. I need help, and I know that my dad and sister will be available as we get closer to my move-out date. I am learning that we will do anything for each other, and that makes me feel invincible as I work through what needs to happen between now and November 10th, the absolute date at which I will be homeless if I do not find something.

It is comforting knowing that the things I love most will fit in my car, and that lets me escape to anywhere, or dream of it, anyway.

I dream of a lot of things, which is why writing suits me. Today I’m dreaming of a better world for myself, one that doesn’t flood when it rains. I would like my home to be warm, welcoming, and inviting. I would like for light to stream in. I have a laundry list of features that I want in a new place, including laundry. My neurodivergence is eating my lunch.

I need to be more strict with myself. I need to time writing sessions rather than letting them be open-ended because I have too much to do at home to make WordPress my entire focus. But at the same time, I know I will not be able to post and move at the same time, so it’s banking entries so that people have more to read while I’m off the grid.

But it’s not a carefully calculated baring of my soul, it’s just brain droppings. I go all over the place, or try to, and that’s the point of the journey.

I make a career reflecting on my interactions with the world, and it responds by reacting to me. It all seems fair, it’s just difficult.

But I wouldn’t have it any other way.

My Specialty is Flexibility

October 23, 2025 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

For some reason, I can’t get my browser to insert the pull quote containing today’s prompt… But it goes something like “what food would you consider your specialty?” I worked as a cook for years, and I have yet to find a favorite. But the thing I make the most often when I need to comfort myself is macaroni and cheese.

Not Kraft Dinner.

It’s a casserole filled with multiple kinds of cheese, mirepoix, and a crumb topping made out of club crackers or Goldfish. I am pretty sure I can woo anyone with this dish, I just haven’t found anyone on which I’d like to work that particular magic. You have to be invited.

Real macaroni and cheese is work, which is why Kraft Dinner has simplified it. I enjoy taking the extra time and effort, especially since a casserole will last me for several meals. Mac and cheese with some kind of protein thrown in is never something I mind having more than once in a week.

When I’m cooking it’s all about love. I want friends in the kitchen to sous for me while I direct the recipe. I feel I have at least cooked professionally long enough to break down the jobs for everyone else by station. I don’t abuse power, I just get it done. You can teach more with kindness than you can with hostility, but try telling Gordon Ramsey that………

When I’m cooking, I think about love and how I want it to direct me in the future. Because I’ve been so sprung over Aada for 12 years, I’m looking in a different direction. She has never been interested in me like a partner would be, and I am realizing that emotional support cannot be everything. It’s not about displacing her, exactly. I just need more than she can give, and that’s so okay. She’s beautiful just the way she is, and she was made straight.

That doesn’t mean I didn’t say “damnit” a lot when I found out that particular tidbit.

So what I’m looking for in a partner is someone like her, who is strong and vulnerable in all the ways I’m not, plus actually wants to go on a date with me would be a nice change.

Finding love like that makes me miss Aada more, not less, because I realize that my time would be divided so much differently out of necessity. That my girlfriend (most likely) and my possible step kids will take over my writing life. That’s good, that’s necessary. You can still admit that change is difficult when you’ve only known something else for a number of years.

I honestly cannot tell you why this transition did not happen earlier. It just never worked out. I have dated since I met Aada and I have fallen in love. It just didn’t last.

Mostly because I didn’t care.

I would eat my own comfort food, take my own long baths, sleep in powerfully comfy sheets, and just focus my attention on a possible career as a writer if I ever get my act together.

I know it is possible if Aada read every day for 12 years, because she’s smarter than everyone else.

Mostly.

We both have our weak spots, and one of mine is that she feels like I’m beating up on her. She already feels terrible, and I just keep bringing shit up. That’s got to stop, because the slate is wiped clean. I have done all the thinking about our problems that I’m going to do, because being off in my own little world did not allow me to see that I was hurting her. I was just working on my own stuff.

I was trying to wade through the hard parts of our relationship so that I could come to peace within myself; that came across to her as “you will be stronger than ever once you’ve punished me enough to move on.”

Yeah, that one hurt.

That’s because she’s been my heart since 2013, and she didn’t deserve to be thrown away like I would get over our “breakup” quickly and easily, as if she was disposable. If you break up with someone and they’re a writer, it’s going to hurt if they’re any good.

It would not have been my recommendation for Aada to keep reading, but she said that she stopped on Friday and would let me have my space. I have my doubts as to whether this is actually true, A-Dog O’Bling Bling. 😉 I sent her a letter yet again pouring out my heart, and perhaps hearing the back story of what really has gone on these past few months helped her to see that I’m not the monster I play on TV.

My web site is all about exploring relationships, and mine with Aada is the only one I’ve been in to be able to tell you about, with guest spots here and there, but for the most part it was just us chatting all day. I couldn’t build a web site outside of her because I was giving her too much energy. She couldn’t keep up with the volume, and always felt guilty about it. Meanwhile, I’m like…. “But you like to read, don’t you?” I never minded when she couldn’t keep up. I minded when that excuse was actually her hiding a problem from me.

I hope she’ll at least cop to that.

I am a sponge and I can feel energy, even from someone’s writing. I can tell the difference between “I’m slammed” and “I’m ignoring you.” The tone is completely different, no matter how much you might mask it.

I told Aada that maybe my writing wasn’t for her, because she didn’t think she was as interesting as my readers did. And honestly, I think that’s true. Nobody likes to read about themselves as much as they like to read about somebody else, because they don’t identify with the conflict. Aada identified with it too much, and I’m sure is basking in the glow of not being subject to all my “homework.”

I don’t know, though. Even now, after all we’ve been through, she told me that she just needed to get together the willpower to stop reading, and stop wanting to correct the narrative. That genuinely broke my heart into a million pieces because I would be thrilled if Aada corrected the record in so many ways.

Why does she not think she has a side of the story here? That my entries are edicts? Why does she give me that power over her rather than telling me to shove it up my ass?

I know from 25 years of blogging that I can be wrong. Really wrong. Devastatingly wrong. And instead of getting defensive and angry, it helps to roll with the punches. Write corrections where I can, because sometimes people don’t want to talk about my writing. The ones that do have a better relationship with it, because we collaborate on what’s going to be said. Aada hasn’t had that because she cut me off (I deserved it).

She is forgiven for that, but it’s hard to correct her record when she walks away.

I also don’t think that she’s ready to give up her relationship with me, not in her heart of hearts. I’m not sure she has the stomach for it, but we’ll see. I think she thinks it’s interesting how I weave us in and out, she just doesn’t read it with enough love for herself. She does not see the tapestry I’ve created, the 3D characters we’ve both become, because I can talk about victories and defeats in equal measure… But often, happiness writes white.

The ink just doesn’t get deep enough to make an impression, so in thinking of things to write about I often explore problems in my life so that I can put them down for the day. What Aada is missing is the part of my day where I’m the lightest, which is after I’ve finished for the day. It would be great if she came in at Happy Hour and not “this is my space where I turn things over.”

This is advice for my new friends, who cannot possibly know me as well as Aada does in other ways. I figure if she thinks I’ve been punishing her, I should tell her how I feel when I’m the lightest as well.

I wish I had a memory of us hugging, and then I don’t because I think it would make me too emotional now. Once I had hold of her, I wouldn’t let go until she did. I would hope that at least sometimes, it would be hard for her to let go, too. There’s not a hint of romance, but deep companionship that I won’t find anywhere else BECAUSE we’ve fought so hard. I am in my grateful era, that all of the strife is over and I can just relax. I want Aada to enjoy the benefit of the calm in my soul.

She really undid me with her letter the other day, but I cried so hard that it let some light in. I no longer feel as sad and depressed as I’ve been the last few months, because I feel secure in her in a way that I never have before. If we do not reconnect, everything will be okay. Nothing will be the same, but everything will be okay. Before, when Aada would walk away our trauma bond would go off and my palm would itch, brainrace and heart race intact. I don’t feel that anymore, because the trauma bond is broken. It is a huge leap forward in connecting with other people.

I have a feeling I’m using the words “trauma bond” incorrectly…….. What I mean is that we had “instamacy” because we each trauma dumped, not thinking of the consequences years down the road. It has been a mixed bag. I think she likes the idea of me writing my first novel and dedicating it to her; I don’t think I can do it without her. Therein lies the rub. I feel like I will not proceed as a writer if I do not have Aada in my corner.

These are all the things that are in my writing, this absolute glowing about Aada’s magic qualities, that she misses when she reads. I’m betting she has few people around her with a positive view of me if she views my writing as punishment. If she tells people I’m punishing her, then that’s what they should believe. Those are not my facts, that is how my writing affected her.

I am saying that I hear that.

She said that hopefully I could let go of the hate and vitriol, and I wish I could. Sometimes I get angry, and those feelings are just as valid as joy for a scratch journal about mental health. Those angry entries are symptoms of something larger, which is showing mental health as it really is. If you follow me every day, you can see my neurodivergent tendencies fight it out. Some days, autism is driving the bus. Sometimes. ADHD has the wheel. It has never, to my recollection, been Jesus.

But for every single time I’ve been angry, I have been joy-filled.

You should see her eyes. I have, and I’ll never be the same. Her gaze is so wonderfully powerful in a photo that I would fall all over myself in person. I think that’s the part I regret most about our relationship, that I never got to apologize in person, moving the story forward in a more positive direction. I think I could have accomplished more with a smile and a hug than I could with a letter, but both methods of apologizing are inextricably interrelated. Going without contact comfort for 12 years led us to be a lot crankier with each other than usual.

I don’t think she realizes that I let go by writing, that I am not carrying around hatred, vitriol, punishment, any of that. I have been so careful to talk about both our flaws and failures, trying to be fair and balanced, trying to see her perspective without her giving it. I have raked myself over the coals trying to apologize and she says she cannot stomach the flagellation I’m doing to her. I asked her where her empathy was for all the times I’d flogged myself.

I don’t mean to flog myself or anyone else, but when you try to get to the heart of shame and vulnerability in a relationship, you talk about hard things. Putting them away and pretending they don’t exist is harder than bringing something into the light and sharing pain. I have been so grateful to the readers that have stuck with me, especially those that have commented, and I’m sorry I have not been keeping up with them.

I think the most magical quality that I’m trying to find in my writing is, “if I can attract someone like Aada to my writing, how do I attract more people like her?” I want readers that are smart, engaging, funny, thoughtful, etc. Now, they are starting to appear.

I hope that it is because I have presented a story all the way through, not picking and choosing “the best of,” but showing that relationships are complicated and so are the people in them. I cannot think in soundbites, I need to understand all the way around the nature of a problem. My soul has not been settled for months, tossing and turning from despair to despair, with jolts of joy to remind me that life was worth living. It got dark for a while, but thanks to my mental health team, the swing is going up.

I am not trying to hurt my beautiful girl. I have been hurt. I am not trying to punish anyone but myself. I’m not punishing anyone, but asking Aada to own her part. To not be a victim because neither of us were. We both have gone through some hard things with the other, and neither of us has a stellar track record at connecting with the other. But through my writing, both in e-mail and here on this web site, I have managed to explain myself well enough. Why would I want to punish her when I am so excellent at punishing myself?

Yes, it was all worth it. From the highs to the lows to the end of the show for the rest of our lives.

But it’s not just that. It’s that Aada and I have reached a good stopping place. That it is now possible to start again because we both got closure and will give each other time to rest. It’s not time to throw each other away. It’s time for me to be stronger now that I’ve lifted her up enough to move on.

Maybe Michael is right. Some relationships just shouldn’t be. But love is all about risk, and I’ve already risked this much. I know she has risked plenty for me, more than I know and am afraid to ask.

But one day, down the road a bit when both of us have breathed the peace of interim, I hope she’ll let me make her some macaroni and cheese.

It’s the closest I’ll ever get to really letting her know how I feel.

If You Are New Here

October 23, 2025 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

If you are new here, you are reading at a very good time. I have recently let go of my old life and am starting to build a new one. Some elements of my life will remain the same. I am not planning on leaving Baltimore. It’s just that the life I’ve led for the past 12 years has been mostly tethered to my keyboard even when I’m not writing for this web site. That has to change, because I know you all like pictures, too. I could take some if I wasn’t so busy chatting.

Internet chat is one of those things that sustains me. It is easier for me to respond in the comfort of my chair, but this new life I’m building requires more of me than that. I need to meet people in their elements, out and about. I’ve gotten to know a little bit more about my neighborhood since I’ve gotten a car, because I’ve been able to branch out more than the two or three tenths of a mile I was willing to walk.

If you are new here, you probably don’t know that this is the first time I’ve driven in about 10 years, and it’s a miracle. I didn’t have all the technology available to me now on my last car, and driving feels different…. But no less amazing. I thought I would miss my stick shift, but as it turns out a six speed automatic is just as good. I am much happier in stop and go traffic.

I’ve been diligent about cleaning my car inside and out. Every time I park, I gather all my trash and throw it away before I come inside. This is a new ritual for me, because usually I cannot be bothered. It’s my way of turning over a new leaf- not having to have that conversation with people getting in…. “Just give me a second to move all my crap over…” I think it’s funny that I’m so dedicated to people seeing my clean car and there’s no chance anyone will be riding with me anytime soon… But there’s always a chance.

If you are new here, then you probably do not know the cast of characters. I am Leslie, and I’m here every day. My friends rotate in and out as we chat and visit in person. My friend Riker is a writer and uses this blog as his own, so we’ll be doing a web site redesign in the near future, which scares me… But is also a great project as Lanagan Media Group becomes a reality.

This blog is not my only project, but it’s the most consistent. I’m also working on a cookbook with my buddy Evan, and we’ll see what also comes down the pike as LMG thinks about new ventures, like a podcast.

I’ve also thought about getting out and doing some filming in Baltimore, a vlog from me as I’m walking down the street vs. reading. My friend Bryn has told me many times that she likes listening to me like a podcast, so a vlog would bring her that….. And I’m sure she’s bummed that I haven’t posted on Medium in a while because the AI voice doesn’t read the entries to her on WordPress.

I’ll get back to Medium. I just haven’t thought of any scholarly articles that I want to write, and that’s where it seems the most geared. Here on WordPress, I have access to so many more elements to make this web site appealing.

I wish that I could combine the two web sites’ abilities, but no one asked me.

So, if you are new here, look forward to the fact that you might be getting Medium links in the future, as you have in the past. The main reason this is still my main web site even though Medium pays its writers is that my ad revenues are starting to pick up here and I’m more comfortable with WordPress altogether.

If you are new here, then you should know that I used to be kind of a big deal in the early aughts, but I didn’t monetize early enough to become an influencer, and honestly, I’m not sure where my talent ranks among other writers. I’ve been compared to David Sedaris the most frequently, but I cannot figure out why. I am sure that it is because I can use my Southern drawl to great effect, even online.

I, like Dooce, will ALSO SPARE YOU THE DETAILS OF EARL’S ANGINA.

God, I miss that woman. I wish I’d had a chance to meet her in person.

I did get to meet Wil Wheaton back in the day, and I’ve had a few famous names read me over the years, but mostly I’ve kept my head down. I made a friend over the internet and we disappeared into a bubble. Now, that bubble has burst, and I am ready for prime time.

But what the secretive bubble did for me was give me a sandbox as a writer. I am more fluid and flexible in writing than I am verbally. I think that this is a feature of my neurodivergence, as I have both ADHD and Autism. Spending 12 years almost solely reading and writing for entertainment upped my game in a way that I would not have gotten otherwise.

Now, it’s time to blend that world into the real, learning to live and react simultaneously.

I have felt for a long time that this blog has been a book report on my friend Aada’s letters to me, an easier thing to write than taking in a whole environment at once. But I need to realize that this blog thrives on my descriptions of more than how I’m feeling in reaction to people’s email. I do not know why I gave so much power to Aada, but yet, I do.

I still do, and am pulling myself out of it. Believe me when I say that I am coming down from thinking she puts the sun in the sky every morning before she goes to work. I need to put her in the proper perspective, and since we’ve agreed to at the very least have time apart, if not drift altogether, it’s time.

There’s just nothing I want to immortalize more than our relationship, so the search is on to find something that excites me just as much. My brain works best with distraction/redirection, and this situation is no different. To me, rising above being in this secretive bubble filled with energy would be writing about my reactions to the world’s news. I haven’t much before because I don’t have any degrees. Who cares about my opinion?

It’s a huge reason I talk about my life and not politics. I am an expert in my reactions to things because I was present when they happened. I am not an expert in anything other than that. So, because I am not a world traveler and it is not my job to absorb the news, I’m not sure I feel qualified to do more than let you into my little corner of the world.

Welcome.

History According to Me

October 22, 2025 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Daily writing prompt

What major historical events do you remember?

View all responses

The first news story I really remember was when Adam Walsh got kidnapped.

I watched the space shuttle Challenger blow up with the rest of my fourth grade class.

Baby Jessica fell down a well.

My father preached through all of it.

I really wish I could remember what he said in his sermons all these years later, because I remember feeling comforted then.

I was a child, taking in everything through a child’s lens. I was afraid of being kidnapped for a long time after Adam Walsh disappeared. This was the first time I knew that facts could have an emotional impact. It was 1981. It felt like that was the first moment I realized how big and scary the world could be.

The second moment was huddled on the floor of my townhouse in Alexandria with my then-wife, Kathleen. The Pentagon had been struck that day, as well as the twin towers. There were fighter jets flying over our house every 10 minutes for about three days, and the phone lines were jammed. Because I’d been home that day, I’d actually heard the plane slam into the Pentagon, but the TV wasn’t on. I had no idea that I’d just lived through a terrorist attack. I thought it was a construction accident across the street. That’s how loud it was, even miles away.

Less traumatic, but still important was that I led a prayer and remembrance service for Matthew Shepard after he was murdered at University of Houston. It changed me because I learned that I could indeed be a leader when others were in pain, and I could step into the role my father had and it didn’t look bad on me.

I can see myself preaching through things, in retrospect, but I think I have more of an impact here.

I’m able to talk about my experiences, and how the historical and the emotional come together to make me who I am today.

I used to be more dialed in than I am now. I have ignored the news for months. I have been focusing on my own journey, pulling myself out of a lot of grief. That has started to change with getting back into the swing of things. I’m starting slowly. I listened to Pod Save America in the car.

I distanced myself from the news because it drove my anxiety, whereas a lot of my writing became repetitive self-soothing, echologia to calm myself down that riled everyone else up. I’m learning that my words do have power, that I’m my own kind of news, and that I’m not comfortable with it. I’ve had to become comfortable with it over time…. To accept that to put my own thoughts into the universe is to create a reaction, a ripple effect.

No one knows what is going on in my mind as I write, weaving history and my emotional life together. There are many people that I wish would come over and sit with me, because writing is often a lonely endeavor. It helps to have a dog, which I do not. But I enjoyed being in Houston and my dad’s dogs lying next to me while I pounded the keys. It has made me consider a service dog with renewed fervor now that I actually have the time and space to dedicate to one.

That will be a moment in history to savor, because I think at that point I will be so obsessed with training my dog that Lanagan Media Group will just become a repository of our pictures and videos.

Something about Aada’s letter has stayed with me… That she will miss the time in her life when reading Stories was the highlight of her day. Her manipulations isolated me from the life I was writing about, so in effect she helped bring about the changes she didn’t like. My task now is to find what it was all those years ago that made my writing appeal to the broadest possible audience. It is how nothing being the same will make everything okay. It’s the transition I have in front of me, where getting back into the news is a choice. Getting back into society is a choice. Not being so closed off is a choice.

Walking towards health and wholeness is a choice. I am on my way, because being in my Cognitive Behavioral Health group and attending therapy is helping turn down the dial on all my emotions. It will be possible for me to get out and make friends locally in a way that it hasn’t been before. I have more of what I need to survive, which is care and connection out in the real world that doesn’t depend on the Internet.

The 24 hour news cycle drove me insane, because there wasn’t a moment of my day that I wasn’t anxious about something. But I cannot afford to be tuned out, either.

It is a conundrum, because I like being dialed in. I just don’t feel strong enough to handle the world’s anxiety when I can barely handle my own.

Again, it is striking to me how much this blog has made history in other people’s heads, that things I’ve published have come across as news to them. I am learning how to deal with those consequences, and it’s such a large part of my need to branch out. Maybe write some academic papers. Who knows?

History belongs to the writers, and this week I learned why that is so unfortunate.

Driving Ambition

October 21, 2025 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I recently bought a used car. It’s a 2019 Ford Fusion SEL, a sedan with the aggressive styling of the Mustang in gunmetal gray. I cannot tell you how nice it is to be mobile again, because what was tripping me up about leaving the house was having to be in public from the moment I walk out my front door until I get to my destination. There is a feeling I need to be “on,” and whether or not that’s true I’m in prime social masking territory waiting for the bus.

In the car, I do not have to worry about being charming. My eyes can be half closed in the line at Starbucks just like everyone else. It’s those little bursts of sensory deprivation that give me the energy to make it through the day.

I have had many dreams of my beautiful girl learning to scare me in it. Which one? Take your pick. They are all beautifully scary drivers. That’s how I roll. Drive like a grandma in my own car, but enjoy the criminality of others whenever possible.

I drive so slow that people routinely go around me. I can’t help it. It’s my new car and I don’t want to get into trouble with tickets or accidents. I don’t mind being passed. I’d rather give someone room to get around me and let them go on their merry way. Some drivers have gotten way too close for comfort and I can only surmise that they do not have lane assist on their cars like I do.

Lane assist, the backup camera, blind spot assist, and adaptive cruise control allow me to overcome my original problem when I got my license…. Lack of stereopsis. Not being able to see in 3D made cars jump out of nowhere.

After being absolutely blinded by the sun this morning, I’m ready to go back to Oregon. Evan’s a realtor. I’ll just leave tomorrow and figure it out on the road (KIDDING). I actually love the sunshine, but the gray has its benefits. You are rarely, if ever, blinded on Portland roads. You can’t even see the sun 280 days a year.

These drives of mine are bringing up drives past, when I just loaded up my truck, Shirley, and hit the open road. We’d drive out the Columbia River Gorge and go hiking…. Well, the truck was terrible at hiking even in four wheel drive mode, so I left Shirley in the parking lot. You know what I mean. I took my camera and stopped every 50 feet to take pictures of flora and fauna alike.

It’s what I’m hoping to do on Sunday, when I travel out to my friend Tiina’s farm. I was sick this past Sunday, so we rescheduled. I’m so excited that I don’t have to miss out on a great road trip, and lots of photography of Virginia.

I used to live in Alexandria, so I always feel like going to Virginia is going home. I hope to bring out some of that emotion in my pictures so that you can tell how much I miss it. And who knows, maybe I’ll end up in Virginia again someday. It would be a pleasure to claim 703 for the first time since I was 24.

Right now, though, I have a more immediate need- driving around to find a place to live quickly. A move to Virginia could indeed happen fast, but I want to think about it first. I have memories in Alexandria that are not altogether pleasant, and I’d like some time for them to fade. But what I will love is driving by my old house, which faces the freeway, on the way to Tiina’s. I think…. Hard to tell which route I’ll take on a Sunday afternoon with the least amount of traffic all week.

I am feeling my inertia start to rise because I have another place that is totally my own. I am capable of more than I have been, but I don’t know how much. I have a driving ambition to find out, because I am letting go of things not meant for me.

I’m excited that Aada just said “for now,” because I know she chooses her words carefully. She would not leave me with hope if she did not mean it. We need time to settle, to breathe, and for me to feel the wind in my hair as all my troubles fly out the passenger side. Believe me when I say that her passenger has just as many issues, enough for both cars.

Rolling down the windows and turning up the stereo is how I’m going to survive all of this, just like when I met her and found out, gasp, she was straight. It doesn’t bother me now, but it bothered me a great deal back then. It’s not that I thought anything would happen, it’s that you can’t control who turns your head and it was an ordeal to turn back.

In a lot of ways, my head will never be on straight because the driving ambition in my life is to find a way to make myself so proud that I start attracting energy to me rather than feeling like I need to give it away. That leaves me a lot of room to dream into the clouds and not a lot of time on the ground with execution. AI is making all of that easier, with abstract ideas being concrete plans in a matter of minutes.

Stop.

I wanted this entry to be all about my car, and my mind leaned toward Aada again. I’m calling myself out and changing the channel, because even though the thought is not intrusive, now is not the time to indulge it. I’m supposed to be resting and relaxing. Dr. Aada’s orders, and Dr. Leslie’s back to her.

Why do I feel myself shutting down for calling myself out? Because I don’t like authority, even mine. I have a driving ambition to be more than I thought I could be because I have the stories of several women flowing through my veins that are tougher motherfuckers than me.

:::pats self on back:::

One of them is even a very famous Instagram influencer and so cute I walked into a door at Chuy’s trying not to notice. I hurt my nose.

This is me once again trying to recapture what it is like for reading “Stories” to again be the highlight of Aada’s day, because she apologized that she would not be reading…. And her resolve was secure, she hadn’t read since Friday.

My heart might have melted at that.

She stayed with me and read everything I had to say until Friday? That means she read the letter Bob wrote mirroring her, which was actually perfect in its tone except for the lack of profanity. She thought I was raking her over the coals and trying to exact a price when I thought I was writing the good, the bad, and the ugly.

That there is more to my story than the things that went wrong, and now I know what they are. I am responsible for all of it, and the price I paid is large. I have learned from my mistakes, and need to make amends.

My saving grace is that Supergrover (Aada) sees my pain. Honors it. Acknowledges it. Has come to me in a way that few people do, heart in hand.

It reinforces the fact that she’s been my driving ambition since long before I bought a car. The relief of seeing her name in my inbox and the story she told me brought tears as I coped with the loss I’d felt since December. She brought it all back, but because she leveled with me, she did not hurt me. I have not lost progress to our conversation, except that my thought processes regarding her have calmed.

I’m not as anxious as I was. I won’t be from here on out. Aada’s and my ages have a lot to do with it. I’m slowing down and I need Aada to slow down with me. It’s time. We’re both ready for some space and she has given it to me by allowing me to write whatever I want. She is not going to read it. So anyone who thinks she needs to know something, write it down. She doesn’t want to know.

She doesn’t want to know the good, the bad, and the ugly because all she takes home is the bad and the ugly. She said yesterday that compliments were like puzzles, which only puzzled me. When you get mad at your spouse or your sibling, does that one fight eliminate all the love you have for them? Well, that’s how I feel about Aada. She is cute, cuddly, and in monster mode will eat off your face. Twice.

I have it on good authority that she doesn’t mind being monstrous.

The “for now” aspect of her e-mail convinces me that this is not the end of our movie. That all I need to do is accept more of the universe into my writing so that she’s not so extremely loud and incredibly close. But if you were traveling with The Doctor, wouldn’t you rather write about them than anyone else?

As with all companions, living with The Doctor on the TARDIS has to come to an end. I feel that this is just Aada dropping me back off in 2025. But there’s always the specials, so perhaps the blue box will appear in the sky when I least expect it.

I can at least give chase in my magnificent used car.

What is it about Aada that makes her so special? I can’t tell you that. I’m not being flip. I really don’t know why she has captured my imagination so completely. But it was there before we ever talked about her career.

You know. At the car wash. I hope they’re breaking even.

Grace and peace, Godspeed to you. I’ll see you in my dreams, when we race to Coos Bay. I’ll even give you a head start if you’re in the pregnant roller skate.

For Now

October 21, 2025 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Dear Aada,

I never expected to hear from you again. Thank God you’re so feisty that you have to refute things on my web site. But you are wrong that hearing from you was because I was trying to provoke you. I have so many feelings that I need to get out, and I’m sorry that you think I need to exact punishment without seeing all the positive I write… or you cannot trust it, because you think that the negative is correct and the positive must be false.

You write that our journey has been amazing and debilitating as is all of life. Such is the nature of my web site. When things are bad between us in real life, they’re bad between us on my web site. When things are good between us, it shows here.

We have spent too much time fighting for me to explain how beautiful you are to my readers in great detail.

You said, “we all get it. I’m a terrible person.”

No one, not even the writer that mirrored you, said you were a terrible person. Everyone has come through with empathy for us both because that’s the way I write- that love is complicated and so are people. I, like you, am tired of things being complicated. We need time to rest and relax in the enriched earth after thermonuclear war. The ground on which we walk must not be radioactive, but we get to decide how long it stays that way.

I’m struck that we both want peace for the other, both look out for the other. I know you feel pain on my behalf. But you have not reached out to do anything about it, such a large part of my need to pull away.

As I told you last night, I love you and I want you in my life… but not like this. Not aloof on the Internet where so much can go so wrong, so fast. I would rather have memories of the first time you hugged me instead.

I’m sorry for all the pain I’ve caused you. You are right in that we both manipulated each other. But I am very honest about the fact that it was not purposeful, and interested in what your doctor saw that I didn’t. I assure you it was all first family crap, and not “I really need to screw with Aada’s head today.”

You asked me if I’d ever turned the kind of judgments I have for you on myself, and it was my turn to laugh out loud. I punish myself in these pages and I know it. Every time we’ve fallen out I’ve cried like a toddler on steroids.

I rake myself over the coals so that you don’t feel alone in being written about. It’s not your story, it is mine. Every protagonist has to have an antagonist, and I think I have shown that you are mine and I am yours, should you ever have the need to write it all down.

We have both been the heroes and the villains in the other’s story. Because your letter is so long and involved, I go back to it often. It’s your “last letter.” For now.

For now as I turn toward my Zoom CBH group and in person on Tuesdays and Dusan and Michael. Maybe one day you will call Dusan and explain how I am sane. I know he wonders daily……… but that is a call a close friend would make, and we have made no promises that our drift now will lead back together.

“For now” leaves me with hope, and I know you would not leave me with hope if you did not mean it. I will ignore what you said about me not wanting to dedicate my first book to you, because of course I will. Duh. You didn’t go through the grind for nothing, woman.

I enjoy you. I wish we could walk in the sunshine with our arms around each other and just let emotions happen. That tears could fall and it would be okay for me to have emotion and it would be okay for me to see yours, rather than hearing about them as you type.

The thought of never hearing from you ever again is one that feels crazy to me, but probably less crazy as we go longer without contact. What I know for sure is that because I was not expecting your email, I said that I did not want it. I did not mean that I didn’t want it and oh, God. I’m a moron. What I meant was that none of my silly blog is designed to elicit a response.

That of course someone is going to alert you when you need to pay attention because you’re my yellow string. My emotional support for the last 12 years and I’m trying to collate what that looks like now that it’s “gone.”

I keep saying that I will change topics, but this is what is running through my mind right now and I cannot lift out of it. Thoughts of you no longer feel intrusive and I can breathe freely.

The damage to both of us has been incalculable, but we are both doing the best we can to write the story we need right now.

Counselor and Dana know what’s true and what’s not. No one in Baltimore does, and my health is dependent on what my counselors believe. I’m over a barrel with these “psychotic features,” and my new friends are showing me a way out.

The way out put nails on your palms, because we did not talk to each other first. You have not known what was going on in my life for the last few months because you did not want contact and I gave it to you. I still had to tell my story here.

Contrary to popular belief, I’ve seen some shit.

Maybe one day I’l get to tell you about it.

The next Big Gulp’s on me.

Again, I love you and I want you in my life. But not like this. Our relationship needs the one thing we’ve never given it….

Air.

It is my hope that I’ll be walking down the street one day and there you’ll be, finally, after all these years. That my writing has made an impact on you, and you see that my feelings for you are genuine. I really have been invested, and so have you… but I tend to see it the most when you are telling me goodbye….

For now.

Yours til bacon strips,

Leslie

Do I Like Risk?

October 21, 2025 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Daily writing prompt

What’s the biggest risk you’d like to take — but haven’t been able to?

View all responses

I am not generally a daredevil, so it’s hard to think of anything I’d like to do more adrenaline-filled than go to the spy museum and read books. But perhaps if I had a friend with me, I’d like to do something more brave, like bungee jumping or sky diving. It really depends on my traveling companion. Do they want to do high adrenaline stuff? I’m flexible.

I’ve always thought that Hawaii would be my perfect vacation because they have all the extreme sports, but if you want to lay on the beach and be a bum, you can do that, too. I will have to talk to Bryn and see how risk averse she is, because she’s the person I can see doing that stuff with. If I meet a partner in the future, I’m sure I’ll want to include them, too. But my best friend being with me is non-negotiable (if she wants to go).

Skydiving, among my friends, has gotten mixed reviews. I think the only way I will know how I feel about it is to jump, because some people loved it, some people hated it. Both are equal in their fervor. I am sure that it is the same with bungee jumping, I just don’t have any friends that have done it…. well, maybe Lindsay has, but I’d have to check and there’s no way she’s up yet. I don’t want to poke the bear, okkkkk…….

I am hoping that I get the chance to travel as I age, and have mentioned before that I would like to spend some time in Finland with all the other neurodivergent weirdos. That includes going into the sauna, then jumping into the lake. I am almost certain I will not die, and that I will not get a truly Finnish experience if I do not do this at least once.

Maybe I’ll love it. Maybe they’ll have to call an ambulance. Who knows?

I’d also like to visit other parts of the world, but I’m not sold on where I would like to go except for Helsinki (and Tampere, to visit the MOOMIN museum). I know that I’d like to explore the UK, because I have only been to London. Maybe Rosie O’Donnell would let me visit her in Ireland. 😉

The most important part is that wherever I go, I take a piece of home with me. Aada’s letter yesterday served as that talisman, a new Gmail era that I don’t want to delete. Last night I felt emotionally regulated for the first time in months, actual tears threatening to fall with relief.

She doesn’t feel sorry for herself, she is aware of the penance she is paying. I feel exactly the same way in an equal and opposite reaction. I hope it will allow us room to breathe and come back together in the end.

We’ll just have to see what these next few years hold, because I think we at least need that much time to rest and relax. We’ve both been through a really hard thing, and I make it more complicated because I’m a writer.

Trips like these where I am constantly taking in new information are so important. I don’t want to stagnate in my writing or anywhere else, and it’s important that I drift away from Aada to the extent that I can. I have been so dialed into her for so long that I’m finding it hard to walk through life without her, but resolute that it’s time for me to find out how to cope on my own.

I just know that she cannot stay away from me any more than I can stay away from her. Even yesterday, she said, “for now.”

I’ll take it.

She has shown me that she has the ability to change, and the ability to face the music in really hard conflict. I wasn’t sure about that before, and now I feel better. It’s still time to let go and trust that the universe has our backs. That just because we aren’t talking, that doesn’t mean that peace isn’t flowing through the chord that runs between us.

If is is meant to be, it will be. I can rest in that.

So bring on the adrenaline. I want to live before I die.

Not Being Certain

October 21, 2025 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 2 Comments

The biggest risk I’d like to take in my future is not being so certain about everything. My autism lends itself to writing about everything in black and white, when in reality there’s a lot of gray area. Like knowing you have a story that ends with a wet fart and publishing it, anyway, because that’s what happened.

Aada shocked me by writing me a very long e-mail last night, covering a lot of ground. We’re square, and she’s not going to read anymore. Her resolution has been holding strong since Friday. I’m so proud. 🙂

We talked about what both of us have been through- she said that the entries feel like nails on her palm. So, instead of sending someone to wipe the blood off her cross every day, I think I’ll move on in writing topics.

That’s because I said before, the mystery is solved. I am getting better. And in the end, that’s all that matters.

The Last Letter

October 20, 2025 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Dear Aada,

I know what you did and how you did it. I’m not angry, but I do think that the manipulations are fascinating. I got so sick I nearly killed myself twice, and none of that would have happened if I’d had a therapist to bring me back down to earth.

You shattered my heart with your lies, because I know that going to Portland was a lie as well. It only took one mistruth to unravel all of it, with you complaining that I betrayed you instead of you lied and got caught.

I shouldn’t forgive you, but I do. It’s for me and not you, because I know that if I get a response to this e-mail at all, it will be full of all the things I’ve done wrong. I am slowly coming out of the shell we created to be whole again.

I’ll move on and be successful without you, but I also hope that you get healthy and change. I think I’ll always hope that, because people who’ve been manipulated always hope that the person will change. I refuted all other facts, and “sure as shit, you’ll get her side, Dagger,” was because I thought that Jonna lied and not you. Because you would never lie to me and you never had.

How wrong I was.

It pains me that we will never see each other’s faces after all these years, adding new depth and breadth to the laugh lines on the other’s face. I can envision it perfectly if we both get help, but right now I think we’d fight to the death.

I wish you peace, my Finnish baby. I’m angry and hurt in a way that I never thought I would be. But my memories of you are pristine and it was all worth it.

I did love you with an intensity that surprised even me. But now it’s time to stop, because you’ve made it clear that’s not what you want from me. I’m just throwing emotion down a hole and expecting it will come back to me. The chord that runs between us is breaking, because you thought you needed to be bigger than you were.

What would it be like to come clean from all that?

You can stick to your story that Michael knows nothing, or you can admit that looking into you is easier than looking into Mummo.

But I want to be clear about something. My anxiety was tripled when you started fighting me on Michael because I was scared of him. I needed you and you exploded at me. I needed you closer and you just left. The biggest nightmare I could imagine was happening and I warned you it was going to happen and still nothing.

I gave away enough clues over time that Michael finally figured out who you were. It wasn’t that I just decided to say “fuck Aada” one day. I wanted you to say “I’ll be on the first train” but your anxiety won that day.

You didn’t care about any of the consequences you laid out for me.

That’s hard to swallow, but I would if I thought it would do any good.

You won’t come clean with me because you’ll insist that we know nothing. You’ll stick to your story that I nailed you over “one little slip.” The reason no one is interested in you is that you never did anything.

When you steal a story………………………

Maybe one of these days you’ll find it in your heart to confirm or deny everything Michael is saying, because I will never believe anything you say again without it. I want the whole truth, and yes, I CAN HANDLE THE TRUTH.

That was my Jack Nicholson impression, I am not yelling at you.

I find myself too tender to yell at you. That all I am is embarrassed at having to rebuild my life after so many failed relationships. I wonder what would have happened had you decided to meet with me in person, because I don’t think that I would have been open to Michael’s story if we’d actually had a happy relationship. Your overreaction and anger to the simplest things made me realize I was in over my head.

You say that you hate when people get up in your business, but you got up in mine without thinking twice about it. You ruined a relationship for me when it wasn’t necessary, and had a hand in complicating a second. Dana makes three. Was it worth it for you? Was it worth it for me to think you were a superhero all these years?

This is the first time in my life where I have hoped desperately that I’m wrong. That surely the lie cannot be so fine tuned that all our process conversations were based on things you’d overheard. Of course you picked up the lingo and the basics from someone else.

It really worked out for you when you told me that Heytch and Mummo would never speak to me again and I shouldn’t bother making amends. I don’t know what would have happened if I’d really bared my soul and got honest with both of them. I owe them reparative work if they want it.

But I know that no one, if they are in their right minds, in your family is going to have a lick of sympathy for anything I’ve gone through, because they rightfully need to surround you with their love and care. I have my own people, and I think I chose wisely. If there was ever reparative work with you, it would start with why you felt the need to lie.

The people being manipulated by people like you always hope for a change and a reconciliation, and hope for long after the relationship has ended that the person will come clean with them. Meanwhile, the manipulator is usually into the wind and onto another dopamine source.

It makes me wonder if all our people pleasing is love addiction. That perhaps the reason we can’t talk to each other is that we are both “qualifiers” for the other. That we both gave away too much of ourselves hoping that the other would love us. I was so lovesick over you, and it all had to do with the fact that I thought I could lose you at any time. Meanwhile, your safe & comfortable office was a mystery to me.

“It’s the not mostly that would fry people’s hair.”

Aada, I bothered you about being on your “in case ofs” for 12 years, and yelled at you that you didn’t tell me you were out because it led to so much anxiety. Meanwhile, none of that anxiety was real because you were never in.

I cared for you in a way that I will never love anyone else, and that part is clear to me. That while I was being manipulated, we have some very genuine moments in our past and I will take those with me.

It’s time for me to find out who I am without you, because at the very least it will take you months to figure out what you’re going to do in this situation…. Whether it is easier to run from a lie, or whether it is worth it to you to find out why I’m so clearly invested despite all the harm that’s been done to me. I am stunned at Michael’s assessment that some relationships just should not be, because my preacher’s kid mentality says that there’s nothing that cannot be forgiven.

He just does not want me to take the risk that you will be absolutely as harmful to me in the future as you have been in the past, and maybe that’s your fear, too. That you cannot give any more than you’ve already been giving, because telling the truth would be a step down on holy ground. That you would rather hide in the dark rather than coming into the light and receiving me as the friend I always said I would be.

I just won’t go that far for a liar.

That’s why our relationship is a total loss right now. I cannot put any trust in you and all of my trust has been misplaced so far. What I’m searching for is something to write about that is healthy, that does not have this level of drama and intrigue, that genuinely helps me find my directions and not my distractions.

I know that thinking of you will not go away fast. Your birthday and your name day will always be reminders.

I’m dialed in.

Through you, I have found a direction that suits me, which is spending time in Finland with all the other crazy neurodivergents. It will be impossible not to be reminded of you there, but I’m willing to put away my discomfort to enjoy a society built for me. I have built a lot of dreams through trying to impress you, and they are still good ideas whether or not you’re impressed.

I’m lost right now. Truly lost. Even though you don’t want to admit it, you’ve enjoyed all my love and affection. You have admitted that you have taken energy without refilling it, and that has been damaging to me. But that’s what I thought you needed- having your cup filled at the expense of mine because your life was so much more important than mine.

I do love knowing that we’re equals, that I didn’t marry the government.

The fact that you sat through lines like that and didn’t come clean makes me crazy. It’s why I’m better off releasing you from whence you came. That’s because your story is so woven into the fabric of your life that I think you really believe you were telling me the truth.

But I’m always hoping you’ll change. We’ll see whether that’s a flaw in me later in life.

I believe in you, that you have the ability to change. I just don’t think you will.

Yours, an all the way to the river friend, if our relationship is built right from the ground up.

If it has no chance of that, then I don’t want contact. I will always want what is best for me, and this seems to be it.

There’s no apology without changed behavior, and I am no longer willing to hold my breath waiting.

Leslie

Where Y’all Are From

October 20, 2025 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

One of the things that makes me really excited to be a blogger is the flags in my stats. I have people reading from places that are close to me (Wheaton, Reston) and places that are so far I have no idea where they are. For instance, I do not have a lock on Indian geography, and I am more popular in India than any country in the United States.

It’s probably Aparna’s doing. 😛

But that’s assuming that Aparna lives in India, and most of what trips me up in my stats. I have been making assumptions on who is reading based on my stats, and I need to stop. It only drives me crazy, it does not help anything. I’ve been defaulting to just looking at stats in my web app, because the web app cannot get as granular as who is reading by city.

I forgive myself because I am just so human. But that does not mean I do not need to change. Part of my growth and development is not appealing to any one geographic area, but writing to the whole world at once. That strategy seems to be working, because I am not popular in the United States by a large margin. Really, the only thing that puts me over the top in the US is that I live here, therefore most of my ads are going to be targeted here.

However, you would be surprised that my US stats are often beat out by India and the UK.

Remembering that I have fans all over the world is remembering that I have a bigger mission than just “blogger.” That I want to spread some good in the world, so what am I going to write about there? I could cover hundreds of topics, and I will. Right now, I am digging myself out of my own hole so that I can rejoin the land of the living.

There’s a few things I could do right off the bat that would help. I could change my master password on everything, because it means I have to type Aada’s name fifty times a day and enter her birthday backwards on my tablet.

Aada’s real name makes a banger of a password in haxxorspeak, so I’ll be sad to lose it. But I think that choosing a new master password so that I don’t have to think of her even incidentally is best. And somebody else’s birthday will make just as good of a passcode on my phone/tablet.

These are the things that will change me the most fundamentally, because I know they are adding to me thinking of someone who no longer wants me to think about her. If she did, she would have come to me long before now.

So in moving on, I’m trying to think of the things that would help me the most immediately, These seem like such small things, but that’s why they’re so important. It is reinforcing my connection to Aada to have to type her name and her birthday all the time, and I want to stop those thoughts cold.

I want to stop all thoughts of her cold, because she asked for it and now it’s something I want, too. I do not want to be as unstable as I have been the past 12 years, and anything I can do to promote that is the only thing that matters.

Aada says that Michael knows nothing, that I have lives in my hands if I out her. I think that was a scare tactic, and we’ll see how many lives for which I’m actually responsible going forward. Women in their 60s aren’t operators, according to popular legend.

I am still in the space of thinking I have betrayed my friend and my country, so I’m not feeling so hot. But when I get into that space, Michael reminds me that I retook my own agency, I stopped accepting Aada’s lies as the truth, and I refused to be manipulated any more than I already had been. He’s got his work cut out for him, but he’s the type of friend that’s willing to do it. He’s been invaluable to my Cognitive Behavioral Health group by being in touch with my counselor when he sees that I need work.

It’s the kind of friend Aada said she would be, but just never had time. All of her lies put this into sharp relief, because I know that she did not want to see me suffer because of something she said. She did not show up when my mother died, even though she said that she wanted to and regretted it later. What I know for sure is if her mother had died, there wouldn’t have been anything that kept me away from her, that nothing would be more important in my world, so wondering why she was so avoidant is no longer a mystery. She had no plans to tell me how deep the lie really went.

Michael thinks that this lie ruined her first marriage because my former father-in-law got tripped up in it as well. That we were all living in service to this lie while worried about the wrong person.

Judging from the little bit that I know Mummo, she would not have wanted our care and connection, anyway. That it was too much for her to think about us worried about her. So, I don’t think that I should feel guilty that the care and concern did not go to the right person.

But did it really go to the wrong person? If Aada was the one that needed it so bad she was willing to lie to get it, I don’t think that my affection was poured down a hole. I have to write it off as a fan being so impressed that she got off on the wrong foot with me, and never went back to correct any of it. She just kept digging us into a more and more secretive hole without footholds to find our way back up.

It bothers me that both Aada and Michael are so resolute in their stories. That I have to choose who is telling the truth. I had to choose Michael because he uncovered two lies Aada told me that unraveled the whole sweater.

Therefore, when a lot of me hopes that Aada was telling the truth, Michael is right there to keep deprogramming me.

It was all just so real.

Now, choosing what’s real is easier. There’s Aada, whose story was a complete fake, and then there’s everything else. If I go towards Aada, I am choosing to be gaslighted. If I go towards my group, I am asking for their help in remaining stable.

It is my opinion that Aada will stick to her lies and remain angry at me that I exposed them. That is okay with me, because I do not want to be in a relationship with anyone that tries to control me. Her control was so tightly wound that I still feel the ties that bind, and Michael is right to use the word “deprogramming.” For every lie that Aada told, he has a real answer.

It makes me wonder where I’ll be in five years, when the pain of all this has finally passed. I know that I will never be able to talk to the real Aada, because I do not think that she has enough emotional bravery to sit down with me and admit how bad things really got.

Because what if the lie is so ingrained she’s lying to herself? How much of her story does she actually believe? How many people has she puffed herself up for to make herself seem more important?

She scared me so bad that I’m constantly afraid that I’m going to get her fired, as if I had that kind of power. If I do, I shouldn’t. Aada clearly needs help, not a comeuppance.

It feels good to say that Aada needs help because I’m tired of being the only one who is dealing with their mental health in an actual setting prepared for it.

I was hospitalized twice, so I’m hoping that Aada will realize that being hospitalized isn’t that bad a deal. You get better.

Bipolar with psychotic features might even be an appropriate diagnosis for her.

Pride

October 20, 2025 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

The thing that I’m most proud of in my life is helping queer people be themselves. I have always been out and proud in situations where it was inadvisable to do so, because I was unwilling to hide. It gave other people who were still closeted a touchstone in rooms where queer people were not always invited.

For instance, I was out in high school in a large Republican stronghold. I helped other kids come out, or just to talk about their sexuality in a way that was non-threatening. I had a rainbow flag on my backpack and I wore a rainbow necklace. In a lot of ways, I brought HSPVA with me to Clements, because I wouldn’t have been so brave if I didn’t think queer kids walking the halls in high school was normal.

I have always been someone that other queer people could find in a crowd. It’s mostly the haircut, not going to lie.

There’s something about my presence that makes people relax and be themselves. Mostly because I discovered that being myself is the only thing at which I am truly capable.