I Have Had Quite a Few

July 25, 2025 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Daily writing prompt

What’s the story behind your nickname?

My dad called me “Less” or “Lesser” when I was a kid, so I thought Wal-Mart was entirely for me…. “We Sell for Less.”

When I was 14, my friend Scott called me “his personal Leslian,” and unfortunately that stuck like glue……. I wasn’t a fan.

At Chili’s, I didn’t hear an announcement that a glass was broken in the rack because I was out on the floor. So I come around the corner and it’s the first thing I pick up, slicing my pinky. They called me “Worker’s Comp” for three months after that.

At University of Houston, I dyed my hair red and cut it very short. So, my nickname was either “Red” or “Spike” for a few years.

Aada called me “Jana, Goddess of the Moon.” I think that meant the most to me because it reminded me of the song “Somewhere Out There,” that even though we weren’t in the same room we were still sleeping under the same modicum of sky. I had also never been called a goddess before, so that didn’t suck.

But to most people, I’ve just been “Leslie.” I don’t really need a nickname because my name is already short.

I’m not even imaginative enough to think of something else I would like to be called. “Leslie” is already nonbinary with the number of male and female Hollywood stars that carry the name, particularly in the UK.

Speaking of movie stars, I wasn’t really a fan of my name until Ann Davis’s mother said that “Leslie Lanagan sounds like a movie star name.” Thanks, Ann Davis’s mother.

I tend to give people nicknames rather than receive them.

Unfair

July 23, 2025 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

In reading over my past entries, I’ve realized that I’ve been truly unfair to Aada and she deserves an apology. Recently, things did change drastically and I skipped over that part to rage about the past. It was a few months ago that she said she was willing to be open and not have a lot of boundaries, but that was only a couple of weeks before she told me that she lied because she wanted to impress me. Therefore, we did not get a lot of time together in this new phase of hers before my bipolar disorder decided to flip out.

I do not know why I chose to get that angry, that fast. It was a white lie that snowballed, as they all do. I think that the reason I got so angry was because she told me she never lied, and put such a brass ring on the truth that it held me to unbelievably high standards. Meanwhile, this lie was pathological and it had been running underneath our relationship for 12 years. Why was it so entrenched? She never thought that I’d find out.

The rule was that she could lie to other people, but she couldn’t lie to me. I never lied to her, but it seemed like it. That’s because I told her that I’d deleted all of my e-mail from and to her, then later found something I’d written that I really liked in another forgotten inbox. It wasn’t a lie, it was the passage of time. I am utterly destroyed that I was stupid enough to delete everything, but at the time I was hallucinating that she could restore everything if I needed it. Therefore, everything that made me love her more than life itself is gone. It’s probably better that way, because I would often go back and reread everything, making me lost in the past instead of creating a future.

I mentioned that I needed space to recover from this bout, and she has said that she has no interest in being friends with someone who’d treat her like I did. So it remains to be seen whether she will always think of me the same way she does right now. She has every right to be angry. I have every right to be angry, too. However, I think that friends often say they don’t want a relationship and change their minds years down the road. I don’t hope for much, but I do hope for that.

I don’t think it’s better that she’s gone. I think it’s better that she’s gone right now.

My family is going through changes so fast that I cannot predict where I’ll be in the coming months. It’s enough that I’ve been asked not to talk about it, but I will say that these changes make me unsettled and longing to take care of everyone. It’s very difficult being far away from both my sisters and my dad, and impossible for them to come and visit me. We talk on the phone and text a lot, but it is not the same.

Therefore, while it would be nice to have Aada’s “mama wolverine claws” dug into my heart, it’s okay that we’re not talking. I need to go through these changes alone, and perhaps tell her about them once time has passed. That remains to be seen. I wish I knew if I was hallucinating or if she’s still mad enough for it to last a lifetime, but I have decided that it doesn’t matter. I can only throw my wishes up into the air and hope they come back to earth.

I can give plenty of examples in the past when we were both mad enough to never talk again and it lasted a few months. So, again, it remains to be seen whether this relationship is really over, or if it is “over.” In some ways, I think it has run its course due to something I said:

Here’s how I can help you. Walk into your therapist’s office and show them everything I’ve written.

That got her therapist to tell her I had a habit of manipulating her, that this was all my fault. Fine, if that’s the way I’m being seen, I don’t need this relationship. She says that I am damaging to her, and that’s the last thing I want. It makes more sense in my mind just to let her go than to ever hurt her again. But I do not think that I am the only manipulator. I think that she reads my blog and decides it’s ok to drop in after a while, not taking in how much my heart bleeds when she walks away. The reason I think she doesn’t take it in is that it’s all here. I have never written about her in a way that’s light reading.

Where I fail is in letting go. I have loved her so intensely for so long that I just don’t know what to do with myself.

:::cue White Stripes:::

The thing is, she loves me intensely, too. It’s just not the same for her because she has never felt those teenage, blushing butterflies for anyone with a female body, much less me. That does not mean she doesn’t have feelings that are deep, where we both run like a river under the other’s skin. We’ve managed to create an unusual kinship, and I have no doubt that she’s hurting, too. She must be. She lost a friend in this deal, too. One that hurt her beyond all measure, and feels the guilt weighing on my chest like a rock.

I have always had trouble believing that she liked me, because most of her e-mail is so strident. But then she’ll surprise me by saying that I’m very impressive as a writer and those letters are the ones I miss the most. I have never thought of myself as impressive, and she was the first person to really believe in me. She thought I was more well-known than I actually am when we met. My one claim to fame is that I was recognized on the street once in Portland, but that was 20 years ago.

I lost myself in hurting her, because that was not the end goal. The end goal was getting well for me. It was bringing my life back into the light, because the secrecy surrounding this relationship was not good. We’d blocked each other on everything so that our relationship only lived in one bubble, away from the rest of my friends and marked them as unsafe. I wanted her to be able to communicate with my other friends so that our relationship was more normalized. She didn’t want to get together with other people.

In all fairness, that’s probably okay. She would have liked Bryn better than me. 😉

But there was a point. I wanted her to have other people in her life who knew me. I wanted us to have context outside of just talking to each other. We tended to get lost in our own little world, not knowing how to fix it when it became toxic. We’d just separate, and then come back together when the heat died down.

It was a cycle I’m not eager to repeat, and why I’m trying to write my way out of this mess. I don’t want to long for a friendship that isn’t there. I don’t want to cry over someone who isn’t crying over me…. and I’m not even sure that’s true. It’s easy to pretend that she doesn’t care, but I think she cares more than she’d ever let on. I just have never seen her express those kinds of emotions unless she was so angry that she popped off.

But toxicity is not something I want in this relationship, if there is to be a future after this round of heat dies down. I want to love her with my whole heart, and that means getting myself healthy first. I need therapy to understand why my own popping off caused such pain for her, and why I felt it was necessary to bring her into the light when she wanted to stay hidden. I am by no means a perfect person, and I have shown it. I have been incredibly unfair to someone I claimed to love. So how do I keep it from happening in the future?

I needed to listen more than I talked, something I’ll always regret because time cannot move backwards. All I can do is say that I’m going through something huge in letting go, but I realize that it’s time. Wishes may come true down the line, but I cannot count on them. It’s why I vacillate between being glad that Aada is gone and wishing desperately that she was here. I cannot make up my mind because what I want is the idealistic version of what our relationship could be, and not the toxicity we’ve given each other over the last 12 years.

I need to stop writing about her, but nothing else puts me in the mood to write quite like she does, because she inspires me to be better than I am. That’s been her job for a long time, molding me into a writer that connects with an audience through examples from my own life. I wish that I’d made her my editor a long time ago, because I have a feeling we would have created something spectacular together rather than fighting each other over what I’ve written.

And in the end, I just miss her. I wish that I could have done everything right. Because she’s been my yellow string, my emotional support, since 2013. It leaves me empty to know that I hurt her, and the crying won’t stop any time soon. That’s because my apologies are no good, and something feels final. All I can do is hope, but that’s not nothing.

Hope is a thing with feathers, but it takes a hell of a lot to get it off the ground.

Emotional Strength

July 22, 2025 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Daily writing prompt

What would you change about modern society?

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I do not like the social masking that comes with modern society, where politeness means that no one will actually tell you what is really going on. As an autistic person, I find myself living in my own little world because I do not understand the dance of intimacy that neurotypical people use as code. I say what I mean and mean what I say, often coming across as blunt to the people around me without realizing they think that because they’re too polite to just say, “can you tone it down? Ouch.” I am not a mind reader, and do not want to hurt anyone. But how do you know if you’ve hurt someone if they pretend they’re not hurt?

I have found that when I try to sugar coat things, the actual message is lost. When I say what’s on my mind, it is gravity’s rainbow to a conversation because people don’t know how to respond. I find myself seeking out other autistic people who have also stopped masking, because communication seems easier when neither person picks up neurotypical cues. They, too, just say what they mean and mean what they say.

It leads to a disconnect between neurotypical and neurodivergent society because only autistic people are taught to adjust. It is our job to learn to pick up social cues, it is our job to bend to the will of people who won’t bend toward us. A better way forward is to teach neurotypical people how to communicate with their autistic counterparts.

Right now, the axiom is “neurodivergents run in packs.”

I don’t think we’d keep to ourselves so much if there was a bridge between what we say and what neurotypical people hear. I find that when people ask me to explain what I mean, there is a jump in understanding quickly. If people take my words at face value, they’re generally interpreting them wrong.

This affects me greatly as a blogger because people will read me and the blowback will be vastly different than what I actually said, because their interpretation doesn’t match my thought process. It’s a natural give and take, but it doesn’t make me feel any better when people misconstrue my words and come at me when they’re angry.

For instance, saying that a friend wouldn’t understand me until her mother died, and she thought I was saying I wished her mother was dead. Absolutely not. There’s just no similar experience to losing one’s parent.

There’s no substitute for the process one goes through in the business of death. Trying to express that led the friend right to me being a terrible person because she thought I wished that on her. No, I wished for her to have a deeper understanding of me, and that’s all.

Once we got it cleared up, we were golden. But most people will not take the time to clear the air with me. They will just sit in their own perceptions of what I said and step away.

But they won’t step away from my blog. They just stop talking to me altogether. Because I can read stats by city rather than by country, I have stepped away from looking at them. I am making the modern society around me better by ignoring them, because I know where my friends (former and present) live……….

I don’t want to know if they’re reading, because my writing transcends them. I would rather believe that my audience is all strangers who don’t mind that I scream into the void. I know I am doing the right thing because everyone loves that I write about my real feelings until they’re the ones in the crosshairs.

My writing loses value to them, but strangers take home the actual message.

In that way, I do not belong to anyone. I belong to everyone. I want this blog to reflect my modern society because I am not a subject matter expert on anything but me.

I feel that I am not the best person to write about society at large, just to make my own voice heard in the darkness, one among many. I have the opportunity to record my life as it happens, so that hundreds of years from now, people will see how I lived. My blog doesn’t matter because I’m popular, it matters because it’s here.

There are many anonymous people that have contributed to museums, and that’s how I feel about my digital life. It’s not a goal to be well-known, it’s a goal to have contributed to the legacy that all bloggers will leave behind when they die.

I don’t think about my blog in terms of fame and popularity, which is good because I haven’t had as much success as people like Dooce and Jenny Lawson. I have watched both of them, along with Wil Wheaton, climb the ladder into the stratosphere and it’s not a life I think I want, particularly since Dooce and I both share the same diagnosis and it killed her.

I don’t want to be an influencer or a mommy-blogger, though if I have stepkids they’ll know I’m a writer and be included when they want to be. Some of the best entries I’ve written have been inspired by the children in my life, and I wouldn’t want to give that up. But thinking about it is long into the future because I’m not bound to anyone. I may be single until I die just because my first priority is writing.

I don’t think that my duty is to change modern society as a blogger. I think it is my duty to record it.

4’33

July 21, 2025 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 1 Comment

Daily writing prompt

What do you listen to while you work?

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The air conditioner and the box fan in my office are both humming as I listen to the keys on my mechanical keyboard clack. Music, for me, is not external. I write in the silence, but music often runs through my head as I record the difficult passages of my life.

This is a difficult passage, but as Winston Churchill famously said, “if you’re going through hell, keep going.” The reason this is a difficult day is that I started out by looking at Facebook memories, and it was one year ago that I wrote the letter to Michael, Aada’s husband, explaining that it was a rough break for both of us that we didn’t get to meet each other and make room for all of our feral feelings for each other. I wrote a list of all the ways I wanted him to love her in my stead. It made me smile, and then my cheeks felt wet. I still feel every bit of love for Aada that I always did, but I got myself into an impossible situation and now it’s time to get out.

Everything right now is a distraction from the way I feel when I’m writing about her, because it makes me feel invincible to have such an incredible muse. I’m not angry today, as I was in the last entry. Just sad that none of my predictions for the future will come true unless a miracle occurs. I take responsibility for all the ways my blog has affected her life, and look forward to writing more about new experiences. The sadness is not being able to talk to her first before I publish, something I should have thought more about before I “exposed her.”

I deserved this friend breakup because I got too angry, too fast. She was my primary relationship for a number of years because we weren’t romantically involved, but emotionally entwined in a way that most friends aren’t. I still cannot deal with the hole left in my heart, and the guilt that it came at my own hand. I was in a very bad place, and I own that I would have made different decisions had I felt better about myself and the state of my world. It’s not an excuse, but my bipolar disorder got the best of me. Having bipolar disorder does not make me less accountable for my actions, but it is context for me down the road when I’ve forgotten why this relationship no longer exists and “whatever happened to….”

I used the word “feral,” and that’s exactly what it was… a reaction with no reasoning behind it. She lied to me in a way that she cost me more than she will ever accept, and while she has apologized for that lie “a million times over,” it does not erase my reaction when I found out.

I was less than gracious.

There’s no going back, so as I sit in the “silence” I’m thinking about how we both treated each other over the years. There’s no percentage in trying to fix anything, there is only taking the good parts away and learning from the bad. We both told each other to fuck off every time we got close. In that way, it will take months for this to feel real. That’s because we’ve tried to end it hundreds of times and it hasn’t worked for either one of us. Either I will feel her pull or she’ll read something here that she has to address, and we go a few days catching up until something gets said that the other doesn’t like and then it’s chopping each other off at the knees. That cycle has to end for both of us, because we have tried to get healthy over and over and over and over and over and over…………….

I do not think that we’d be in the same place had we met in person, because there’s something about the Internet that makes you quicker to anger than in person. It’s easier to go down the wrong road a lot faster without clearing things up. I wonder every day how things would have changed if I’d ever seen her eyes sparkle when she was making a joke, or given her a hug after a fight. I wonder if she wonders those things about me.

She mentioned being sorry that she wasn’t more present when my mother so shockingly died, and I told her it was okay… she was present now. And at that time, it was true. But she was only present in my inbox, too ethereal to be real. I have to admit how tired I was of her bullshit, that if she really wanted to show up for me, she would have already. That her reluctance to meet was feeding the trauma bond, not creating a solid and secure connection. That she was going to be avoidant and I was going to be anxious and that’s just how the cookie crumbled.

I will be the villain in my own story, and I wish it meant I never had to talk to me again. I don’t feel great about this set of decisions and I will have problems forgiving myself for a long time. I should have just stopped replying. I should have left it at “I’m happier without you,” because at that time, I was. I’d managed to go a whole month without Aada ripping me a new asshole about something I’d written and it felt great. The thing is, though, I could go a month, but not longer.

I wasn’t happier without her in the long run, and I’m not happy now. But me being unhappy is not her problem to solve, because I think it’s better that we don’t talk. I need space to find new friends and make the solid, secure connections I crave without being a slave to my inbox. I gave up monster amounts of social interaction just to sit in my office and write to her. I do not regret it, I just know that much isolation is not good for anyone. But it’s amazing how happy I thought I was.

It’s time to consider a vacation from all of this, and mentally I just don’t know how to prepare.

I did make a wonderful friend this week, Josh, who lives in Maryland relatively close to me. He’s a therapist as a second career after being a war reporter in Iraq and a television news producer at CNN. We walked around the National Aquarium in Baltimore chattering away about anything and everything. I felt free for the first time in months, able to let go and just enjoy the moment.

Living in the moment is something all writers have trouble doing, so at least I don’t feel alone. We are all lost in our thoughts most of the day, because we’re constantly pushing our own “record” buttons.

Mine just doesn’t have background music in the traditional sense- it is the symphony happening behind me as I type. The air conditioner and the box fan in my office are both humming………..

A Hit from Helsinki

July 19, 2025 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I’ve been learning about Finland and the Finnish language for so long that it was a kick to see a hit from Helsinki in my stats today. I mean, obviously if one person from Helsinki has read me, this means I am well on my way to being a household name. 😛 So, to the Finn who is making me famous, hei and kiitos.

I don’t know what it is about Finland that draws me except for the fact that it looks very much like Oregon, Washington, and Alaska with the added bonus of not belonging to a fascist regime. I would very much like to attend vocational school and see if it fits me the way Oregon did. The culinary program to which I want to apply is in Vaasa, but every flight from America goes through HEL first. Therefore, my first sight in Finland will be its capital.

I know that even if I don’t get into culinary school or decide not to go, my dream is to vacation in Helsinki, particularly to see the December 6th Independence Day celebrations. I would like to make some videos for YouTube of my impressions because that day has been important to me for over a decade. Basically, I celebrated someone’s birthday on that day for many years. She’s not my friend anymore, so there’s a hole in my heart where that holiday used to be. I looked up a new holiday to replace it on the Google machine, and now my heart bleeds sinivalkoinen (blue and white).

It seems ridiculous as I have no Finnish family, and yet it works. Trauma is replaced by joy, and I don’t get into why the former holiday is traumatic in order to make room for more happiness. Going to Helsinki for this celebration is the only thing on my bucket list, things to do before I die. Meanwhile, going to Vaasa for culinary school is lower on the list, but still important to me. I just cannot prepare for that right this moment, because I am locked in a lease here in Baltimore until November 30th. Any school to which I apply that’s not in Baltimore will have to wait until next year.

The reason I chose Vamia (aforementioned culinary school) is that their instruction is in English and the tuition is free. It would open up a brand new career path for me, because I am interested in starting a nonprofit called “The Sinners’ Table,” outreach to the least among us that offers fine dining to people who certainly couldn’t afford it on their own. Our tagline is “dinner with dignity,” and it will take about the length of culinary school to decide where home base should be. The program is approximately three years. During those three years, it’s my hope to create a team of people for Lanagan Media Group to do instructional videos on cooking for YouTube.

My former chef, John-Michael Kinkaid, had already started making these videos when he was killed in a car accident. Therefore, they exist, but I will never get to see them. All I can do is create videos on my own that remind me of him. The first will have to be “pan skills,” because my friend Mercy said, “I’ve always wondered how cooks flip the food in the pans without getting shit everywhere.” Mercy, here’s a pro tip…. you get shit everywhere until you learn how to flip food in the pans. In order to start, the easiest way is to learn to flip a piece of bread first. Then you can try an egg.

You want enough butter in the pan that the egg stays loose, but not enough to splash in your face…. ask me how I know this….

After a while, spoons are boring and you’ll just flip everything unless you’re using a rondeau or saucepan. My kitchen is such a disaster in terms of design that I would need to get back in practice. So I’ll be starting with a piece of bread as well. But it will be a piece of Finnish bread, God willing and the creek don’t rise….

The creek is certainly rising right now. I have health issues that need to be addressed before I see myself taking off for a foreign country. I have almost a year, so we’ll see what happens between now and then. What I do know is that I will be getting a new living space when my lease is up, and I want to pay special attention when I’m shopping around as to how the kitchen is built. My current arrangement leaves no work space, so most days I end up reheating leftovers in a toaster oven.

I know I would be happier with a larger kitchen and a smaller bedroom. I don’t even sleep in the master bedroom now. I have a two bedroom apartment and leave the master for guests, because I put my computer in the guest room. I didn’t realize how much I liked having my bed and desk together, so next time I will put my desk in the master to begin with. Everything is too heavy for me to move and I live alone. Plus, there’s something nice about it being small and cozy in here.

Overall, my experience at this apartment complex has been a shitshow, but I’m managing around its issues knowing that I’ll be out of here as quickly as I can. I want to move back to the DMV, Rockville, MD specifically. I belong to a group called “Cognitive Behavioral Health” in Baltimore that also has offices in Rockville and I’d like to be close. At the very least, moving anywhere in the DMV is easy access to Rockville via the Metro.

I realize this entry goes all over the place, and I thank all of you for sticking with me. I think that all blog entries are designed to be thoughts off the top of my head, but I’m still grateful that they provide some entertainment.

I am not entertaining myself. I’m devastated that my Finnish baby will not be coming with me to Helsinki, even for a visit. She said that I betrayed her and that is true. But she has no idea why or even wants to understand me. So I’m glad that the relationship is over. When I think back to her treatment of me for the last 12 years, what I see is an overwhelming amount of love and adoration coming from me and very little going to me. That isn’t why I betrayed her, but it is why I’m glad she’s gone.

I betrayed her because everyone was starting to look at me like I had this imaginary friend I made up. Her name might as well have been “George Glass.” No one understood why I was so messed up over it and why it’s ultimately better that she’s gone. I kick myself every day for continuing the relationship even though I knew it would be the end of me eventually.

She didn’t give a fuck what it cost me to be her friend.

She didn’t give a fuck how many times it hospitalized me (three and counting).

She didn’t give a fuck about my needs, that I was starting to crack a long time ago.

The only way out was to reach out, and the only way I do that is by writing.

She bolted, just like I knew she would. I didn’t care. I was experiencing too many mental health issues that were above her pay grade, and she made it where I couldn’t talk to anyone about them, even keeping it in the family.

I am still angry, still grieving, still trying to move the fuck on and stop thinking about her because that’s what she wants. It’s not what I want. I know part of her was really excited to actually see me learning Finnish. But I won’t see her in Helsinki. That dream is dead just like many others. She chewed me up and spit me out because I had the audacity to spiral out in depression and anxiety due to sitting on everything she told me, then stonewall me into oblivion when I tried to go to her directly.

She doesn’t talk about her feelings, and she doesn’t want to talk about mine. It left me empty on some days and crying my eyes out on others. But those nights won’t mean anything to her.

Because I should have stayed shut down and miserable. I should have counted on her to open up after years and years of pleading.

I don’t know why I couldn’t let go on my own. I needed this push. Otherwise, I would still be buried in a pile of e-mail, no closer to a real relationship with a close friend than I was 12 years ago.

That part is all my fault. I never should have told her I had actual feelings for her, the kind that never go away and there’s jack shit I can do about it until my heart decides she’s just not that interesting. My heart will never decide that. I have to decide how I’m going to handle things going forward. I know within myself that if it took 12 years for her to implant herself, it’ll take half that to get her back out. Luckily, I can see a therapist to work out why I’m such a mess.

I just want her to go away, because it’s not reality to put love into this relationship anymore. They’re just intrusive thoughts on a trauma bond that flips out when I think of her. Trauma bonds aren’t healthy, but that’s what we created. Then, we spent 12 years unleashing our most toxic versions of ourselves on each other. Every single time I wrote her long e-mails trying to explore these things, she’d spit venom in my direction.

She didn’t want me to get close to her, and over time, it worked. I realized that I didn’t want someone who always fought against me instead of working with me. I found out she lied and hit the ceiling, thinking that because she’d lied about one thing, she’d lied about everything.

I realize now that I don’t know and I don’t care what’s true and what’s not. She’s already taken as much of me as she deserves, and I’m finally angry enough to see it. She can rant all day long about my behavior over the last few months, but I’m ranting about the last 12 years. Just avoidant and tight-lipped while I was screaming for empathy and nothing. She helped ruin a marriage over it, and not her own. Because the thing is, my marriage never would have worked after I met her even if I hadn’t felt those teenage, blushing feelings. I don’t wall off my emotions and pretend they don’t exist. I don’t keep secrets from my partners and expect that they know not to ask about my friends.

I want new friends with secure connections and I have them. Unfortunately, they don’t live in the area. So, I’m trying to get out and make them.

I hope that Aada reads this and sees that we’ve always been toxic, that she participated in the toxicity, and likes to pretend that everything is all my fault. It’s easier that way, I’m sure. But I’m done talking to a brick wall and even more done trying to knock it down.

It will be a cold day in HEL before I welcome her home, a double entendre because perhaps one day she’ll realize that she was in the wrong, too, and I’ll get the healthy relationship I wanted all along. I just severely doubt it because she doesn’t like emotions or messiness. She doesn’t like mental illness. She doesn’t like anything that disturbs her peace while she disturbs everyone else’s. She’s been the most selfish friend I’ve ever had in my life, because when she needed me, I was there. When I needed her, she was nowhere to be found. She said a lot of things that made me think she would be there for me someday.

Someday never came, which is why I’m happy with just getting a hit from Helsinki and leaving my Finnish baby where I found her.

All of Them, with AuDHD

July 16, 2025July 16, 2025 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Daily writing prompt

Which activities make you lose track of time?

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I could while away the hours just writing, and often do. But there are other activities that make time irrelevant:

“Playing” with My Computer
- Most people would not consider installing an operating system “playing.” However, I like to try out different versions of Linux and can spend hours perfecting my desktop. Right now, I just have the vanilla version of Ubuntu installed, but lately I’ve tried Cinnamon, Mate (like the tea), KDE, and in a fit of insanity, switched over to Red Hat. The installer crashed, which is why I’m back to Ubuntu. I don’t know why I bothered with Red Hat. I haven’t used it since college. I think I was just feeling a bit sentimental, not realizing that the commands are different and I would have to learn a different way of “speaking” to my desktop. To be clear, I did not cause the installer crash. I just realized I didn’t want to have to learn a whole new system, making me grateful for the same old crap I already had.
Gaming
- Gaming should be in quotes because I really only like “Skyrim.” I’m not sure you can call yourself a proper gamer if you only like one game. I was introduced to “Skyrim” by my brother-in-law, because I was watching him play on his Xbox and thought, “that looks fun.” A few days later I was fighting dragons on my PC. And in fact, I had to buy it twice because of the modding community. The first time, I bought it through GOG and the scripting engine was broken by an update. I have it through Steam now, which allows me to install it on both my Windows and Linux PCs. I am sure that you could get the GOG version working on Linux if you were a programmer, but Steam support is so much better that it’s not worth the hassle.
  - If you are interested, my character is a Wood Elf/Bosmer named Quinn. I’m deadly with a bow and arrow, so I generally conjure companions for melee (Dremora Lords are particularly good) and find a spot to pick people off, hidden behind a rock.
Cleaning
- When I clean and organize, it takes hours because I will find things I haven’t used in forever. It stops the process as I sort through pictures, books, knickknacks, you name it. But there’s a rhythm to cleaning that is soothing, and I enjoy it when I am able. I have trouble taking care of myself due to my autism, but when I’m on top of it, I am absolutely “Anal Annie.” And in fact, I should probably take a nap to get ready for a marathon cleaning session today. I’d like to be able to host a friend this weekend and my apartment isn’t ready for that kind of commitment. If you make promises to yourself like that and often beat yourself up with guilt, I have a book for that called “How to Keep House While Drowning.” It has been revolutionary in helping me do what I can do with my compromised state. Executive dysfunction is real.
Reading
- I inhale books. I’m a member of Kindle Unlimited because I’ve made a lot of author friends and want to read them all for the cost of one book a month. It’s also nice to be able to get most books that are recommended to me through KU as well. I’ve had to buy very little recently, but I’ve certainly gotten my money’s worth. For the $12 I paid this month, I read five books that were $8.00 apiece, and another that was $20.
Walking
- I’m a member of Planet Fitness, and one of my favorite activities is to set a program on the treadmill for incline and zone out to the TV, YouTube, or a podcast. If I’m listening to music, it’s usually “Podrunner,” a running podcast sorted by beats per minute and the DJ is fantastic. But most of the time I’m listening to whatever is on TV at the club. I tend to show up during all the talk shows, reminiscent of when my mother and I used to walk every day during The Oprah Winfrey Show.
Watching TV
- I love to write so much that I’m always looking for smart television to up my game in terms of story construction. However, I also enjoy actual construction and “This Old House” is my comfort show. I have learned so much that I would seriously think about buying a house if I was married… because I don’t want to do all that work by myself. 😉

Oooh, even thinking about me being married again gives me the shivers. I do not want to get lost in thought on that. So I think we’ll call it for today and pick back up later. I have a house to clean……… ALL BY MYSELF, THANKS.

Me, Mostly

July 15, 2025 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Daily writing prompt

What bothers you and why?

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It’s hard to point fingers at anyone else for bothering me when I am such a handful. I didn’t even know whether to put an emoticon after that, because I don’t know that I’m joking. From my writing to my behavior, there’s nothing I cannot criticize, but I’m trying to be kinder to myself. If one’s behavior affects treatment of others, then it is up to me to be happier on the inside.

The first thing I did to make myself happier was to buy a membership to the National Aquarium. I was invited to go on Sunday, and the price of a membership was cheaper than buying two tickets individually. I thought that was a much better deal as I am obsessed with aquarium fish and don’t want to have an aquarium at my house. Plus, I’ve never been there before and I hear it is world class. Many of you don’t know this about me, but I watch videos on aquascaping all the time and look forward to being able to set up my own tank once I have a living situation conducive to it. I have had freshwater tanks in the past, but I’ve never actually landscaped one with live plants. I think that I would be less bothered once I was paying attention to my minuscule pets. I’d like to have shrimp, catfish, snails, and a betta. A cleanup crew and a betta fish wouldn’t take up that much room, probably 10 gallons, and that way the tank wouldn’t be a monster job to clean.

The reason my living space couldn’t handle an aquarium is that the water pressure is so low here it would take hours to fill a 10 gallon tank. It bothers me with every sink and the bathtub. I could write an entire entry on why this apartment complex sucks and why you shouldn’t live here, but I don’t want to give any indication as to where I live. Baltimore is close enough.

I am thinking now of moving back to the DMV in December, because my lease ends on November 30th. I love Baltimore itself, but the public transportation isn’t as good as I thought it would be. I need to be back on the Metro. My current group, Cognitive Behavioral Health, has another office in Rockville. I would like to stay with my people, and one of my counselors would be the same. It all depends on what kind of deal I can find with my living situation, because like I said, Baltimore is not the problem when I can get around. Uber is too expensive to take all the time, but it does provide an excellent stopgap when a trip on the Metro/bus is going to take two hours.

I do know that I need to stay in Maryland because I am getting so many benefits from Medicaid expansion. We will have to see how the “big, ugly bill” affects me in the future, but so far I have had no interruptions in service. So while I love Virginia, I am solidly staying on this side of the Potomac.

It bothers me that I have to think about all of this. I don’t want to be disabled, but here we are.

It bothers me that I have always been disabled, but these problems are just now being addressed. Better late than never, but I could have been helped with government services in Portland when I spent so many years without health insurance. I have been eligible for services since I was 18 years old, but I didn’t know why until my mother died. I found solid proof that I have had cerebral palsy since I was a baby, after she spent years trying to convince me that I was fine. My dad was overreacting. But interestingly enough, cerebral palsy is not why my care team wants me to file for disability. My bipolar disorder got the best of me, and that bothers me, too.

Most of the reason it bothers me is that I have a hum in my brain that will not go away. I think it was caused by stopping Lexapro suddenly, because even though I’m back on it now, the sound has not gone away. It is similar to the Emergency Broadcast System that used to play on TV during flood warnings (ahem), a minor second that drones 24/7 and demands my attention above all else. It’s hard for me to pay attention at the best of times because I have the ADHD/Autism combo meal. This is just shitty icing on a burnt cake.

I suppose the one thing that doesn’t bother me anymore is having to prove that something is wrong with me. I am settling into the life of a disabled person, learning to contribute to society through being a voice for other disabled people right here on this web site. My voice counts because as people read about me, they identify with my struggles. Or, if they cannot identify, they at least learn to have empathy.

It bothers me that most disabled people are written off as living off the government, when most of us would do absolutely anything to return to normal life. My life is anything but normal. I spend most of my time by myself. It’s isolating and lonely not to have a place to go each day, which is why I’m so grateful to have a group of other disabled people to meet with twice a week (once on Zoom, once in person).

However, at least with an aquarium membership, I have a place to go whenever I want that will feed me. I remind myself of the character Sam from “Atypical.” He goes to the aquarium to feed his love of penguins. Perhaps I will also find an animal that will be my special interest. I do love puffer fish……….

It helps to be bothered less by my living situation now that I’ve figured out a plan- Rockville is on the Red Line, with easy access to the National Zoo. It’s the place I love to write the most when it’s not hot, so until I move I want to try and find a place to write at the aquarium. All I require is a bench, because I carry a tablet and a keyboard in my backpack at all times. After I move, it will be back to finding a “replacement Kevin.”

Some of you may remember that Kevin is a giraffe. I used to sit next to him and write blog entries, having no idea what the giraffe’s actual name might be. I just named him Kevin for my own amusement. Then, one day I went to find Kevin and found out the Zoo had closed the entire giraffe exhibit. Kevin had moved.

Kevin is probably the reason I felt the most comfortable moving to Baltimore in the first place. I needed out of the DC area just to catch my breath, and it felt like he was the last tie to that area. But now I would say that my breath has been caught, and I miss DC more than I thought I would. Now that I have settled on a place, I feel at peace. My time in Baltimore will be much easier to survive knowing it won’t last forever.

It might even make my apartment less bothersome, but I doubt it. I’ve been without a dishwasher for what seems like a lifetime because the water pressure is so low it makes washing dishes incredibly taxing. I have submitted requests for everything that is wrong with my apartment and no one has come by. The last straw for me was finding a mouse eating my bread and hot dog buns.

I am paying too much for this apartment to have problems like this, especially those that go unaddressed. I am bothered that I cannot seem to be “the heavy” and get the repairmen out here on my own. I just hate letting people in that I don’t know, so I work around the problems on my own. I know I need help, but I have trouble helping myself. My dad and my sister advocate for me as much as they can, but it’s hard when they live so far away.

However, my sister is a lobbyist, so that’s another reason why Rockville is a better choice for me than Baltimore. When she’s in her DC office, I’d like to be closer than I am now. We have too much fun together to make her come all this way. However, I know that I have introduced her to a place she loves as well. Again, Baltimore is not really the problem. The Inner Harbor is gorgeous, as is Fell’s Point. It’s getting around Baltimore that’s the hard part. When she comes to visit, she rents a car and all of my problems disappear. I don’t drive, so it’s nice that she’s willing to drive me around.

The most fun I’ve had in Baltimore is when she’s come to visit, because she looks up restaurants and decides where we’re going to go in advance. It becomes a “staycation” for me because it’s always a place I haven’t heard of yet. Of the two of us, she’s the social butterfly. I wish I was more like her, because she’s so headstrong that I feel taken care of in her presence. I wish I could extend that feeling to others.

It bothers me that I’m her older sister and I’m not able to provide that feeling of safety to her. I am sure I had my moments when we were young and this is just payback, but still. I wish that I was large and in charge, but I have a struggling relationship with taking care of myself, much less others.

Which brings us back around… it’s hard to point fingers at anything that bothers me more than my treatment of myself, so it’s time to get happier.

It starts with looking at fish.

I’m Not Sure There Are 10 Certain Things in Life

July 13, 2025 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Daily writing prompt

List 10 things you know to be absolutely certain.

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Here we go. I will try:

I am a sinner, a worm. All I can do is ask for repeated forgiveness. That’s the beauty of faith, I guess, but somehow God forgiving me doesn’t do as much good as being able to forgive myself. That will take a lifetime, and I have to be prepared, because no one gets out of life without sin, including me.
Evangelical Christianity will bring about its own death due to hypocrisy, but the social justice warriors dedicated to the message of the historical Christ are doing their best to stop the death of the church altogether. I have chosen the right side of history because even if the church dies, I still have the message of the historical Christ inside me. There are many messages that the church has handed down that deserve to die, such as Evangelical treatment of queer people. The reason the Evangelical church deserves their fate is the unfailing attitude that the net was full after they got in.
I am certain that you will forgive me for ending a sentence with a preposition.
I am not good at reaching out, but I am certain that I am getting better because I have to do so. It is not my choice to be more extroverted, but I do want to be included in a social safety net. No man is an island, probably the truest sentence I know. Perhaps my need will lead me back into a church, but I’m not quite ready for that yet- I’m certain. If I do re-join a church, it will be because the music got me there. I miss being a singer, and could use the money if I was hired to be a section leader.
I am certain that I am a spoonie, and I am dealing with those repercussions. Having bipolar, AuDHD, and cerebral palsy are all problems that I’ve masked and ignored since I was old enough to be aware that I wasn’t like other kids. Now that I’m aging, they are all a straight up problem to be solved. My care team is recommending that I file for disability because I already have a solid case due to my last two hospitalizations, and I am not sure how I feel about that…. the “hallucinations” I experienced were curated by an unknown quantity, and the only reason I cannot prove it is that I was too dumb to remember to take screenshots. It’s a rabbit hole I could go down for hours, trying to prove that I did not make up the reasons I was hospitalized. Alternatively, if I just say that I hallucinated everything, it’s better for my disability case. But I wish I could put my illness on the organization that caused it, because my illness was nothing if not organized. Of that, I am certain. I am also aware that I sound “crazy” to anyone that would read this paragraph in abstentia, that only the people who were there would know what I meant. This paragraph is for them. I really wish my relationship with Heytch had been real, whether we were off in our own little world or I’d been accepted into her family as one of the crew. Because of the power of suggestion, I had created a deep inner landscape, a garden with deep roots and a master gardener to tend me, kissing the top of my head as she scoots out the door for her next adventure.
I am certain that I am not a gardener, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to try and create deep roots in other areas of my life. I am one who waits for nourishing rain, of which we are getting a lot of this year. In fact, the skies are dark surrounding my apartment, and it is up to me whether to stay inside or to dance between the drops.
I am certain that I am making progress in Spanish, and may take home the gold trophy this week for the most XP on Duolingo. Because I do not work, I spend an inordinate amount of time trying to perfect learning a second language instead. From Duolingo, I will graduate to reading books and watching the news. I do not know if I will become fluent, but that is not the goal. The goal is to be able to have comfortable conversations with people, which I can do at the Home Depot next to my apartment. As ICE gets more and more active, I need to have my finger on the pulse of the community it is trying to destroy.
I am certain that even if I never have a “real job,” I will continue to write. Sometimes that will be here, sometimes that will be on Medium, and sometimes that will be with published books. I look forward to creating an anthology for Kindle Unlimited, and I will let everyone know when it is finished. You’ll find some of your favorite entries, and some of mine.
I am certain that I have a lot of apologies to make in all of my sinning, and look forward to the chance to make them. But again, you can only resurrect a relationship if both parties are interested. To my Finnish baby, I am so sorry. I popped off and got too angry, too fast. I don’t deserve your forgiveness or your friendship, but I hope that one day you’ll remember that I wasn’t always angry. That there is a lot of love we are both throwing away in the moment, and we’ll have to wonder whether it was worth it to move on rather than trying to compromise our way to healthier patterns. Perhaps that will come with peace and forward motion to other things, and perhaps it will bring us back together. I am uncertain which way is healthier, but I do know that it’s not only my feelings that matter. Your feelings matter, and I was too hasty. Of that, I am certain.
I am certain that I will die someday, and I’m thinking about legacy on this web site already. That’s because I do not think about what is going on in the moment, but about what someone will discover when they read 50 or 100 years from now. Even though the dues for the URL may not be paid, the Internet Archive holds all our secrets. I am trying to paint a portrait of real life- how one human lived. It is something that is missing from the thousands of years before us and I think it’s very important. I don’t need to know how kings and queens lived their lives, but the struggles of the everyman. I do not think that my words are exalted in any way, it only matters that they exist.

Wisdom

July 11, 2025July 11, 2025 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Daily writing prompt

What do you think gets better with age?

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I think that the only thing that gets better with age is wisdom. You have enough life experiences to react with more ease and grace than you did in your younger years because so much has happened to you that you know what deserves your time and what doesn’t. You have enough regrets to know not to commit the same mistakes, as well as enough victories to know what works.

You become better at regulating your own emotions, and controlling your own behavior. You realize that every problem begins and ends with you. You have no need to count on others to provide the answers, because you realize that they are only speaking from their experiences when they provide advice, which cannot line up to your own. It isn’t that you stop taking advice (necessarily), it just looks different because you have a better sense of what will fit you and what won’t.

I have recognized that these are the things I need to work on in my own life, this continuing to learn emotional regulation and impulse control. I lost the great love of my life over it, because I was so angry that she lied I could not function. As a result, it made me so depressed I needed counseling and still struggle with those demons. The thing that makes me feel better about the whole situation is that I am not the great love of hers, so we will drift apart naturally over time as I forgive myself and move on.

The thing is, though, I am being dragged kicking and screaming toward my own redemption. Getting better with age feels so far away because this relationship did not express any wisdom in controlling impulses or emotional regulation. I popped off. Full stop. That comes with my brand of neurodivergence, but it doesn’t mean that I am not accountable for my actions. I am filled with sentences like, “if I could go back, these are the things I would change.” But they are useless and would fall on deaf ears.

I sit like an old wizard twisting his beard, alone in my castle.

What I can do is provide comfort to myself- that I haven’t met all the people I’m going to love in my life, nor have I met all the people who are going to love me. I can only work on myself and try to become the idealist my personality profile says I am. I am tripped up by my own mental illness, and that comes with its own set of problems. They require addressing, because I am tired of not being included in the safety net of a local friend group and it’s my health that stops me from getting out and making one.

I have become too introverted with age, refusing to leave my house in favor of communicating through writing. Though there is nothing wrong with that in moderation, the pendulum has swung too far. Letters are not enough, but it’s amazing how much they’ve provided over the years. I have more friends in other places than I do in Baltimore and DC, and keep in touch with them daily thanks to the Internet. But something is missing without contact comfort, and I’m tired of pretending that I don’t need handshakes, hugs, and face time.

I suppose that also had to come with age, because I had to go on this journey to figure it out.

I have spent the last 12 years touch-starved and lonely because I was more interested in learning about my pen pal than reaching out to people in my area. I gave her too much power, another morsel of wisdom that has only come with age. I am not sorry that I fell in love with her writing, because she’s damn good at it. But I’m sorry that it isolated me to the point where I didn’t want relationships with other people. I just hung on two words:

Someday, perhaps…..

I still hang on those words occasionally because none of this feels real. Nothing feels final because it never has. We will always have a reader/writer connection because even when she’s not in touch with me, she’s still reading here. I can only hope that I will write something that will resonate with her, because she sees that I am learning and growing in wisdom. That may be a pipe dream, but I’m allowed to have them.

Wisdom is telling me to have a wait and see attitude, because every time I think that my connection to her is shallow, she surprises me with depth. She has always surprised me with depth, because I will get two or three words from her for months on end, feeling rejected and small until the Mama Wolverine claws come out of nowhere and slash my problems from me. If nothing else, I will miss that about her in the future.

Getting better with age is allowing myself to be my own Mama Wolverine, slashing problems away on my own. I think that has been the point all these years, learning to stand up for myself. I didn’t so much fall in love with a pen pal as I fell in love with the person I was when I was writing to her. Even she says that meeting her in person couldn’t live up to my imagination, which made me blush because she knows my imagination better than I do and I think was trying to poke a little fun.

Eventually, what I hope gets better with age is letting go of her as the voice in my head to which I compare my own.

Spanish and Sundry

July 8, 2025July 8, 2025 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Daily writing prompt

What are you most excited about for the future?

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I have finally reached a section of Duolingo that has vocabulary I haven’t studied and I’m on my own. It makes me excited for the future because I can’t skate by on 30 year old lessons in school. I am actually using the software to prepare me for trips to Mexico in the future- none of which are planned, by the way, but I have a better shot of going to Mexico than anywhere else. Granted, when I get there I will mostly be asking them why they don’t wear the green t-shirts and where the bank might be, but it’s a start. 😉

Kidding, but not by much. I remember the first time I went to Mexico on a mission trip. My Spanish was equal to that of a Mexican toddler, but the people were so kind and corrected me with such love that it lit a fire in me to learn more. I learned that Sylvia and Hector were getting married, that Marta was building a new house, and that little kids don’t listen to me no matter what language I speak (I was on a trip to teach vacation Bible school). It was my turn to listen because I picked up more just soaking up conversation than I would have trying to talk. For instance, those are the real names of the people I met, stuck in my brain even though it is now over 30 years since the last time I went to Reynosa. There is just no substitution for immersion, so it’s time to start finding telenovelas on Pluto TV, or watching the news on Telemundo/Univision.

I had friend recommend “La Reina del Sur,” but I have already watched “Queen of the South” on Netflix. It would be a good brush-up to have a show with which I’m already familiar, but there are others I haven’t seen that might be better after I finish it. For instance, I have not seen the original “Yo Soy Betty, la Fea.” That’s “Ugly Betty” for you American viewers. I have found it on Peacock and Apple TV+ according to reddit, so I will be searching it out after I finish this blog entry.

Because I have an auditory processing disorder (comes free with neurodivergence), I like to have the subtitles on as I listen. People don’t have subtitles, but I need the extra help while I am learning.

There is a point to all of this. Many of the homeless people I have encountered, as well as the workers in my neighborhood, speak Spanish and their English is poor. Instead of making them learn English, I want to turn the view of Americans on its head. I’m perfectly willing to put myself out there, mostly because if I get a job in the future, I want to work at Home Depot.

That’s another thing I’m looking forward to in the future- discussing jobs I could do with my care team so that I am not reliant on SSI/SSDI unless I really want to be. I am eligible for both because I was diagnosed with cerebral palsy when I was 18 mos old. I don’t regret the choices I’ve made in my life with my career, but it would have been nice to know that I could have gotten disability from the jump. The reason I didn’t know is that my mother hid all the paperwork I needed to file and my sister found them among her personal effects after she died, well into my late 30s.

My mental health is not helping the situation, so I am looking forward to working all of this out. I either have a journey into the workforce or a journey into the court system in which I’ll have to fight for my right not to party.

But there are things I can do on my own to further my education, and a second language has filled the hole in my heart at not being able to work in the immediate future. Right now, my job is to attend classes at Cognitive Behavioral Health and learn all I can when I’m not there.

I actually started with Finnish, but after a 43 day streak, I was hospitalized for my mental health. After I got out of the hospital, it had been just long enough since I’d studied that I don’t remember much. It seems like I forgot Finnish in “kaksitoista sekuntia,” or 12 seconds.

Duolingo is also not the best learning tool for Finnish, because it does not have the AI features that Swedish and Spanish do. Everything is done with the keyboard and reading, so you don’t get to practice by speaking out loud. The reason Swedish is important is that the cooking school I would like to attend next year is in a Swedish-speaking region of Finland, Vaasa. The school is called Vamia, and it was recommended to me by a YouTuber named Cyril:

At this point, I do not know if this school is right for me because the tuition is free, but living in Europe is not. I am saving my pennies and riding out the lease I have in the United States until November, and then I’ll decide what to do. I know I would like to go to Vaasa before I decide to move there, but even that is a stretch on my budget. I just have to hope that I will get more subscribers to both my Medium and WordPress blog, because every subscriber here adds to my ad revenue, and every reader on Medium adds to the income I get the longer you scroll through my drivel. 😉

Culinary school would accomplish two things. The first is that I would like to work with Finnish YouTubers like Cyril to create a channel with Finnish content. I think I would be hilariously cranky like Anthony Bourdain, because that is my kitchen personality. The second is that I want to start a ministry for unhoused people that revolves around the kitchen, and I would be better equipped to do that having been trained as a chef and not merely the line cook I am now.

Traditional advice is to work in a kitchen before you go to culinary school to make sure you like it. I have 10 years under my belt, from dish to pantry to sauté. I have worked every station and though I cannot say I am excellent at any of them, I know I will get better by hanging in at school. Plus, there are plenty of jobs I could do without learning Finnish until I’m ready, because most Finns speak English, especially in the hospitality industry. Vamia also instructs in English, with (I’m guessing) the requisite amount of French required.

In the meantime, I am looking forward to all the nonprofit ideas I have coming to fruition. I have to have a Plan B in case going to school in Europe is not feasible… and it’s probably not, to be perfectly honest. I want to go more than anything, but again, it’s going to take a lot of money I don’t have yet. But that’s the thing about dreams. When other people know you want something, they are willing to help. For instance, my readers showing up every day. Each little bit helps.

If I stay in the Baltimore area, my idea is to create a nonprofit called “The Sinners’ Table.” It centers around accepting all the people that society rejects, giving them a fine dining experience they could never afford on their own. I am doing the hard work of identifying stakeholders and writing a business plan, because that is something I can do in my spare time while I am waiting to see what is going to happen with my job and school aspirations. If other people have to run it because I am not eligible for a job, I will be able to volunteer.

But why Finland in the meantime?

I would only have to worry about my living expenses and not the fabulously high cost of tuition. Any Le Cordon Bleu institution in the United States would bankrupt me quickly, while I can find housing for the rough cost of living in DC or Baltimore. Some things would be more expensive, like clothing (I’m not skimping out on cold weather gear), but an apartment is roughly the same. The biggest cost to my family would be me being so far away that it’s hard to visit. However, culinary school does not last that long. If I like Finland so much that I want to stay and get permanent residency or citizenship, that’s a bridge I’ll cross when I come to it. I don’t get to see my family that much as it stands now, because they’re all in Texas…. far away from the current flooding, I might add.

My biggest problem is that I am an idealist who doesn’t necessarily know how to break down large ideas into small steps for execution. I generally work best in a team for that, and I’m lucky to have one under me now. I have gathered the best and the brightest at Lanagan Media Group, most of whom went to high school with me at High School for Performing and Visual Arts. Instead of using AI, I get immediate feedback from an arts brain trust.

Because make no mistake, cooking is art in any language.

And in the United States, the language in the kitchen is overwhelmingly Spanish. I want to be able to speak to my employees in whatever language they feel the most comfortable. Therefore, Finnish can wait.

But not for long.

The Aada-See

July 7, 2025 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Daily writing prompt

What could you let go of, for the sake of harmony?

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The Homerian epic that has been my relationship with Aada needs to go for my own peace of mind. We have hurt each other over and over, trying to change… neither one of us has done well in that area. So now, it’s a blessing and releasing. I have asked God before to go with her where I can’t, and I repeat that prayer today. If I cannot be the friend that she needs, then I don’t want to be her friend at all.

It’s not that I don’t have hope of a redemption story, it’s that you can only have a redemption story if both parties are interested. She says that I have a need to manipulate both her and our relationship, without taking into account all the ways she’s manipulated me over the years. That’s for her and her therapist to work out, because her therapist will never meet me. She will never take in the drastic changes in my own personality as Aada’s edicts came down from on high.

The biggest is that I’d never had to keep a secret from my wife before, and that caused way more problems than it was worth. I suppose that I’m grateful I got to see Dana become violent so I knew she was capable of it before I spent any more time with her, but it all started with Aada saying “don’t talk to anyone.” The problem is that she made it where I couldn’t talk to her, either. I sat alone in my room with the weight of the world bearing on my stomach.

However, that was not our only problem.

She doesn’t realize just how much her lie cost me, and she never will. That’s because she didn’t come with me to a book talk with my favorite author. I couldn’t glance back at her and see her eyes when the question was asked, “so are you looking for a job now?” She couldn’t see the torrent of emotions running underneath my skin, but she could have if she’d been able to see my face. I was too nervous to say yes without her approval.

Through it all, I’ve charted our friendship on this web site, and I think it has helped me to see some perspective. I do not like it when Aada gets main character syndrome and fails to take in what I am actually saying. She skips over my pain and concentrates on her own. That has to stop, for both our sake. I am writing in hopes that she’ll listen to me. She is reading to look for attacks that aren’t there. She reams me out and I cry…. lather, rinse, repeat. It has been going on for 12 years now, and for the life of me I don’t know why I’ve hung in.

I guess you would just have to know how beautiful she is in spite of all her flaws and failures to know why she has been my Achilles heel.

But for the sake of harmony, I cannot hang in anymore.

She will continue to read everything I write, calling it toxic. The only way to stop that is to write about other things… I have to find a new muse, something that fills me with the passion to write. It shouldn’t be a person, because it puts too much on one relationship. I need to find nature, or God, or something.

The only thing left is to thank her for being the inspiration behind my writing thus far, and forgive her for all her missteps.

It’s so much easier than forgiving myself for mine.

Estudio Mucho

July 5, 2025 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Learning Spanish has always been dear to my heart. While I know I should be studying Finnish if I want to get a job there, I have found that I am burning out because it is so difficult. I switched to Spanish so that I could get a break and actually make some headway on Duolingo.

I studied for two years in high school, and as it turns out, Spanish hasn’t changed that much. Therefore, I am making it quickly through the ranks with a 96% average. My only problem is that I need for people to speak slower, and that isn’t always possible. I have an auditory processing disorder where voices sound like garbled noise and it takes me some time to figure out what was actually said. This is not exclusive to Spanish, it’s just much harder because words are strung together at a much faster rate.

I am finding that reading in Spanish is more my speed. I can take my time and really figure out context. I can also speak Spanish, but it gets problematic when I can’t understand their replies. Like I said, Spanish is so much faster, especially for someone who grew up in the South. I don’t even speak English with any speed. The urgency of Spanish seems unparalleled.

I’m also frustrated that it’s Spanish from Spain and not Mexico, so things sound a bit different to my Tex-Mex ear. My favorite phrase has always been “habla despacio, por favor” (speak slower, please), and I’m thankful that Duolingo actually has a button for that. It makes me wish that people had a button, too.

Boop!

It’s also frustrating that it’s not as easy as it was in high school because Broca’s Area and Wernicke’s Area in my brain are set for life. Language acquisition comes from both of those places, and their malleability is on the downslope. I never got to full fluency, but I was at least able to carry on full conversations while on mission trips and vacations in Mexico.

That’s my goal- I could be fluent if I lived there and didn’t have a choice. Because I do, I nope out to English when it gets “too hard.” I am such a perfectionist that it gets “too hard” easily, because I have rejection sensitivity dysphoria even with software.

I have learned to regroup and go back later. I’m determined to succeed, and have a 70 day streak going. I should get some books or access to Rosetta Stone through the library, but I’m not quite ready to take the plunge. I just know that of all the languages I could speak in the US, English and Spanish are the most useful.

I remember when I got to Maryland, I went up to a janitor in the mall and realized pretty quickly he didn’t speak English. So, I flipped into Spanish to get directions to the bathroom and he looked like a spaceship had landed and little burritos walked out. I could understand- I don’t imagine that gringos walk up to him and speak Spanish all that often.

Especially since white people are known for telling brown people to “speak American.” That’s not a thing. We speak English. I mention this because I saw a video the other day of a couple walking up to a train conductor in London, of all places. They asked him if he spoke American. When he said he spoke English, they walked away until their 10-year-old said “I can still understand him.”

If I had one wish, it would be to speak every language in the world. I would love to be able to understand anything and everything regardless of country. I think that’s why I’ve flipped around so much on Duolingo. Spanish is my home base, but I’ve dabbled in Arabic, Russian, Finnish, and Swedish. Of all those languages, I enjoyed Finnish the most. I got to where I could write my own blog titles and have Medium’s voice AI read them back to me. Hearing myself in Finnish was quite a trip.

Hearing myself in Spanish isn’t as exciting, only because I’m used to it…. and in fact, because I grew up in Texas, Spanish doesn’t even sound foreign. The only time I’ve had trouble was with dialects in the kitchen. Again, mine is Mexican. The cooks in my Silver Spring pub used a Salvadoran dialect. It’s one of those things that is mostly the same right up until it’s not.

Hilarity ensued.

Luckily, I’ve blocked all of it out.

Quietly

July 2, 2025July 2, 2025 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Daily writing prompt

How do you express your gratitude?

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I go into my closet to pray, thanking God for the little things. I have an apartment with running water. I have a trust to make sure that I don’t have to work when I cannot. I have a family that understands I have cerebral palsy, Austism, ADHD, and bipolar disorder with psychotic features. I have friends who would do anything for me. I have a deep relationship with the historical Christ, who directs me toward social justice, and an ability to write about it. I have talent when it comes to crafting sentences, from which I do not know where it started. If I had to guess, it was in elementary school.

My first win was an essay on adult illiteracy called “I Forgot My Reading Glasses,” in which I was asked to read it in front of the class in fifth grade.I have always been grateful that I can communicate with many people, and I draw people to me with it.

I am grateful that I have had mega fans over the years, one that thought I was world famous and several who have thought I should write books in addition to blogging. I don’t know if I will ever write a book, but because I write so many words on this web site, I am grateful that I know I’m capable of publishing.

I am grateful that some people think I should write an anthology of the blog entries I’ve already written, and should look for a literary agent. I do not think my writing is as good as my readers do, but I am over the moon that many people think it is.

I do not know what the future holds for me, but gratitude flows within me that I have so many options. I do not want to go down in history as just a writer, so I’m also grateful that my nonprofit ideas are taking off. I really do want to give the unhoused a place to go, to eat and learn to cook. I am unsure how to do this, because both my ideas seem to resonate. The first is a set of pop-ups to give the unhoused “dinner with dignity,” food that they could never afford on their own.

The second is to build a library based on Oodi, which not only has books but a maker space as well where anyone can rent tools, there’s a kitchen space for all I want to do with my pop-ups and cooking classes, and is a bigger idea than all of my other ones put together.

Yesterday, I came up with the idea to write to Oodi and ask if I could have a copy of their original business plan for the Finnish government. I need a guide as to how to get the idea through the Maryland house. My sister is a lobbyist, and I know that she could help me with the form, perhaps sending me a blank bill to fill out. I need to find a sponsor, but I don’t know any….. yet. I know when I find someone, that will be a great day full of thanks and tears.

I do not want to sit on my laurels, I want to bring hope to other people while I am able. I am not sure that people will take me seriously, but it only takes one person to believe in me.

I am grateful that I can come up with lots of creative ideas on a dime, and these have resonated with people I admire. I have said many times that I came to the area to do great things, and I am working toward them by joining Kindle Unlimited and checking out all the books I can find on starting a nonprofit.

Gratitude will get me the rest of the way, because so many legislators go without thanks as they work towards ideas that may never come to fruition. Saying “thank you” instead of being angry that things aren’t happening fast enough is key, because right now ideas for the disenfranchised don’t pass through congress quickly if I want to take this idea to the federal government instead. I have a feeling I will need both state and federal grants to get the library I want, because Baltimore is a small city. I do not know if their budget will sustain a library like Oodi, but it would be a shame not to try since that is a democratic base.

It starts with me, though. I have to put in the work and I’m grateful that I do have enough energy to sit and type at my computer. I am also grateful for the 10 years I spent in the kitchen, because while I am not capable of a full-time job there anymore, I am definitely capable of creating a brigade for other people. I know how to organize stations, and I know how to teach. I learned from the best, and I intend to pass on my knowledge to people who need jobs and don’t know how to get started.

Those that can’t, teach…. and the hardest part of teaching is remembering what it was like not to know. I do remember those days fondly, and not every dish I make turns out perfectly. I have gratitude that other people can and will see me fail. I am not a chef lording my talent above them on high. I am human, and so are my potential students. Sometimes, failing up is the best lesson, and instead of getting angry at yourself, you have to figure out what that failure is trying to teach you.

It’s reaching up for gratitude because anger will only lead to more mistakes, especially if you are under pressure during service.

I am also taking a lesson from José Andrés, that feeding people is not political. I do not want to check political credentials at the door, but there must be a basic respect for all. I will be grateful if this library does not turn into a political fight because people of all backgrounds find themselves without a place to live.

The Sinners’ Table is being elevated because I realized that it is a great project in and of itself, but we have a chance to add even more specialties with a library that rents out equipment, gives the unhoused a place to go during the day, and provides more avenues for learning than just cooking.

We have the ability to create a performing arts center with classes of all kinds in a soundproof basement or top floor, providing beginner lessons on instruments that kids cannot afford on their own. When people think of “the unhoused,” they rarely think of hungry children who also need an outlet for their emotions.

I have a feeling that private donors would be interested in this as well, but government money is key because I need buy-in. They’re the ones that will give me the money to build what I need or overhaul a historic building without having to endure the ups and downs of private fundraising, of which I’m sure I will also do plenty if government grants aren’t enough.

I keep telling my HR and PR teams at Lanagan Media group that their favorite word needs to become “endowment.” That’s because I cannot think of a city that needs something like this more than Baltimore. There are places within my city that look like a war zone, and have the crime statistics to prove it.

People turn away from crime when they feel loved and needed, when they feel their own gratitude shining through. Recidivism goes down when people become educated, and a library like this gives all people, rich and poor, a place to go that is free.

It’s also a way to redeem my own sins and feel gratitude that I’m actually giving back to my community. My plan, should it work out, is to actually spend time in Finland at a vocational school so that I can actually get my chef stripes. I need to learn more about teaching while working in the bubble that comes with culinary school. The school itself, Vami, is free. Living in Europe is not.

My gratitude will overflow if I get my wish to study there, because I cannot find a free school in the United States. However, I do feel that it is necessary to become a chef in order to lead others in an administrative fashion, because I am not cut out for the line. I am cut out for HR, inventory, menu planning, and teaching the prep and line cooks what I need them to do. They’re the ones that will take on the heavy lifting of feeding the multitudes. I have put in enough time to know that cerebral palsy and 50 lb bags of flour do not mix.

In school, I would have a lot more support with things like that than I would in the fast-paced world of the line. I have heard too much about what culinary school is like not to believe it, because I’ve had friends that have been to Johnson & Wales, Oregon Culinary Institute, and Culinary Institute of America. All of these stories have led me to believe that I could make it through school with a lot more ease than I could work in a restaurant every day, and it is the education I am missing in order to create the fine dining experience I want the unhoused to have when I get back.

I would have gratitude that I got to sit out what’s happening in America for a while. I do not like the direction that the country is going and I need a break from the constant crazymaking. I am over the Republicans being the party of “no” and the Democrats trying to appease everyone all the time so that we cannot make headway. Gratitude would be the ability to forget what is happening and focus on Finland, even though the odds are that it would be attacked by Russia while I was there.

The thing is, though, the Finnish military is prepared and no one is better than them at fighting in that climate. I would be safe nearly anywhere, and with an American passport, I could leave at the first sign of trouble. I would stay if I became fluent in Finnish and Russian, though, because I know I could help just by overhearing conversations and reporting them.

My gratitude would be turning my blog into an important war story about someone who once was lost and then was found in the strangest way possible… that when it got dangerous, I got calm.

That’s the gratitude with ADHD and Autism. The crazier it is around me, the more calm I become. I think I would be an excellent war reporter because my instincts are sharper when my cortisol is sky-high.

I quietly take in my surroundings and triage what needs to be done, then when the cortisol subsides, I write about my experiences.

Feeling the gratitude that I was once again able to make it through something I thought I couldn’t.

Dreaming

June 30, 2025 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I know that because I betrayed Aada, she will never trust me again. That’s because she will not give me a chance to rebuild. The thought is devastating, and runs on repeat in my head. All of my thoughts of her are now intrusive, because there’s nothing I can or should do. I just need to leave well enough alone.

Unfortunately, that is not my personality.

I want to fix everything. Surely, there’s something I can do, something I can say that will make things right. I don’t do well with relationships ending, because I don’t think they ever do. As long as we’re both breathing, there’s still a connection. It is manhole cover in size, and I cannot manage to shut it down.

My energy goes through that chord even when we’re not talking, because I know that she can use all the prayers she can get, even though she wouldn’t call it that. She doesn’t “do” prayers. She used to call me her “pinch hitter,” and I hope that at the very least, she’ll think of me that way now. I know I have done wrong, but I do not want that to be my only narrative.

I don’t want to provoke her, as she says my blog entries are designed to do. I want to tell my other readers that this relationship has left me in a million little pieces. I have felt every feeling for her that a human can express, from deep love to deep anger. My anger got the best of me quite a few times over the years… and so has hers. Through it, we’ve managed to forgive over and over.

Therefore, even though Aada says that her decision is final, it does not feel real. It won’t for a very long time, because I will need to turn away from writing to her. I will need to turn away from writing about her. I will need to stop making her my first thought in the morning and my last thought at night. I will need to find other people to make those touchstones, and it is frightening.

I do not like moving on from someone I’ve loved this much over the years, one who agreed to be my yellow string on the murder board of polyamory (red strings are romantic, yellow strings are emotional support- making that very clear). Cutting a string is tantamount to cutting off a limb for me, because I feel emotions down to my neurons. Pain tears through me when I think that the other end of the string is an empty slot.

The truth is that she made friends with a blogger, not knowing what that meant. I made friends with someone in government, not knowing what that meant, either. We should have worked closely together, or she should have told me I couldn’t have a blog. Either would have been acceptable, as her career came first.

I don’t know how I lost sight of that fact, but I did. I didn’t say to myself, “self, you’re running in a different league now. Cut the shit.” Because all my writing is shit to me. I throw it out there and let other people tell me whether it’s good or not. It’s not my decision as to what has value.

Aada found tremendous value in my words at first, and then as our relationship became more enmeshed, the more she hated being a featured player. I am sure that I have done my part in embarrassing the hell out of her, but I hope I explained my writing to her behind the scenes well enough that she won’t hate it all in the future.

That’s dreaming, I’m sure.

I wish that I could stop crying, that the grief would lift long enough for me to get out and start making other friends. But so far, I’ve just stayed in my own little bubble. I need time and space to emote. Because I’m autistic, my emotions are large and need room to breathe. I need time alone for red mist rage at myself, because I did not get the future that I wanted.

I sabotaged it, and I will never know why. Perhaps I was tired of keeping secrets all the time, that it made my life too small. Perhaps I was tired of all the isolation, because Aada would not let me get closer to her. She kept me at arm’s length and let me sit in my discomfort at not knowing who she really was. I mean, I do know her writing voice and could pick it out of a lineup. I have memorized her face, but only in one photo.

I have dreamed many times of making her laugh, have sent her videos and pictures of myself so she could get to know me “in person.” I wanted to make the transition from online to offline as easy as possible. But I think that wanting to meet in person was just too intimidating. I cannot help but believe that when I asked her about it, she got nervous and started fighting with me just to end our relationship before it could happen.

I can see how meeting me would be intimidating given all that I’ve written, but I am strikingly different in conversation. I am disconnected from my writing and do not retain blog entries. Our relationship would have been without context. All of the love that I poured into my writing may or may not have been there after a coffee together, because who knows if we would have gotten along as well without the anonymous wall that the Internet presents?

I think about that all the time… that normalization of our friendship would have cut her out of my blog almost immediately. Why would I need to write about her? I just saw her yesterday! Etc.

I dream about what I would do if Aada came back to me and said that what I did was horrible and I have a ladder to climb if I really want to make things better. My answer is “anything. I’d do anything.” It is not up to me to decide how hurt she is, nor how many steps I’d have to climb. And right now, it’s just a dream.

I am preparing for the worst, that I’ll never see her again, and my heart is bleeding out. Hope slowly drains from me as I fumble around on this web site, trying to explain how a virtual relationship got me so twisted up that I cannot breathe. I am lucky that I have other people in my life who have gone through the same thing, that 10 years later it still hurts to think of an Internet friend who is no longer.

I remember saying that I thought she was scared, that frankly, she didn’t know what would happen if we were alone in a room together. Would our easy give and take transfer to conversation, or would we tear each other apart? She did not answer.

She did not answer a lot of my questions, preferring to hold her emotions close to the vest. I am attracted to that, because my emotions spill all over everywhere and I constantly tell myself that I need to learn compartmentalization. In all my friends and romantic partners, there’s been that disconnect in which I constantly crave their emotions when they are unable to show them.

I think that Aada was attracted to me energy-wise for the opposite reason. She saw her inability to emote and wanted to be more like me. That I was a breath of fresh air when she was stuck in the doldrums. But over time, that led to too many fights because I required her to do emotional labor.

I extol my love for Aada all over the place, but I wasn’t always happy with her. No relationship can claim that it’s always happy if it’s in any way dynamic.

Our dynamic was to have a very close moment and then separate, because Aada could not sustain it. Our dance of intimacy required separation after difficult conversations. I did not like it, because I couldn’t understand why closeness couldn’t stay in place. Now that I know more about her, I know that it wasn’t personal. It’s what she requires, and I fell down on the job.

I want to give her what she requires, and right now that is separation. It is not good for me, but her needs must come first. I am the one that hurt her this time, and it doesn’t matter what I think anymore.

I look in the mirror, and I am shattered.

Into a million little pieces that will eventually rearrange into a different order, with or without her.

A Letter That May Never Be Read

June 28, 2025 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Dear Aada,

In trying to talk about my own feelings, I exposed the world to my perceptions of what yours might be. It was wrong, and I’m sorry. I wish I could tell you why I did it, but there is no answer to that, just like there is no answer to the reason why you lied to me. What I do know for sure is that I did not set out to hurt you, that you were collateral damage in trying to explain my journey to everyone else.

I am sorry, like you said, “a million times over.”

I have no excuse for my behavior because there isn’t one. I fucked up. I also accept that you have no interest in working toward a future, and that’s what scares me the most. I don’t know who I am without you. I think, though, that I am going to find out.

This phase of my life has been rewarding, but also tremendously lonely and isolating. Your insistence that I tell no one anything at any time was also manipulative, because it marked all my other friends as unsafe. I sat with unbelievable anxiety in the pit of my stomach while I waited for letters from you, not reaching out to anyone else because I couldn’t. If anyone asked me what was wrong, I would not be able to tell them. I got to where I wouldn’t leave the house. My mental illness spiraled out of control. I didn’t get any relief until you said I could write about what I wanted.

I took your words seriously, that there’s nothing I could say that would hurt you now that your life is different. Then, come to find out, that wasn’t true at all. We could have avoided a lot of missteps in my publishing life if you had been clearer. I thought that for the first time, our lives were equally boring.

But they’re not.

If I had known then what I know now, I wouldn’t have published anything about our relationship at all, and yet it is the richest tapestry on this web site. I hope that one day your anger will lift, and you will go back a few years. I think you will be surprised at how much I’ve learned. That seems to be the way, anyway. My friends read about themselves and are incensed in the moment, and then when time has passed, my words just hit different.

I was never trying to manipulate you. I was trying to illustrate you- to paint you with words. I have often ripped you off blind, using things you’ve said so that you know I’m paying attention.

One of the most profound things you’ve ever said to me is that I “paint my feelings as fact.” I am still not sure what that means, but it’s such a beautiful line that I repeat it. I guess I just have never met a writer who didn’t paint their feelings as fact, because it’s their story.

It’s a line that I wish had led to an in-person conversation, because I would have liked to look into your eyes as you explained what you meant. I would have liked to look into your eyes as you explained lots of things. But knowing me, I would have worn a baseball cap to hide mine. I was social masked into eye contact at a young age. I could not hold your gaze long, but I would have tried.

I would have tried harder to be the friend that you needed me to be with more support from you, because guessing what was okay to publish and what wasn’t landed me in this mess. I do not blame you. I can only blame myself. But what I do know is that if we’d had any kind of production meeting, you’d be happier with the result.

I needed my editor.

I would burn this whole blog down to get her back, because that’s how much I believe in our ability to write together. You write fiction, I write nonfiction. I’ve had so many ideas over the years as to how we could harness this and make it profitable. Maybe I’d be a better editor for you because I wouldn’t catch plot holes, but I’d definitely catch spelling/grammar mistakes.

It’s just another dream that died, because we’re not on the same page.

I wish I could stop being so sad. My life feels over. I keep thinking about the conversations we had before I was admitted to Sinai and wondering how it all went to hell. I do know that when I was in the hospital, you were with me in spirit. You sat at the foot of my bed while I slept, watching to make sure I got healthy. There were too many signs of you to ignore.

How did you get that green shirt to me? How did it get back to you?

You are always the best.

We could start writing there… it’s a story that needs to be told in fiction for both of us, doesn’t it?

You are always the best.

You told me 12 years ago that you’d have lots of juicy bits for my first novel, and I still don’t know how to write fiction. I don’t visualize anything. My brain doesn’t come with that feature. You can see the whole map at once. I have a feeling that’s a large part of our story without saying anything. That you saw the whole map while I fumbled in the dark.

I’m still trying to find my way without a lantern.

That’s because I want to stay in my lane, writing what I know while you build the fictional worlds. I’d be a good research assistant and Dagger’s not hiring….

I wish I’d known how much you thought of me, wanted to impress me, wanted to be my friend as much as I wanted to be yours. I know all of that can’t possibly still be true, but I’m flattered nonetheless.

I wasn’t the one that said you were a nobody. To me, you’re the greatest thing since sliced bread. I was trying to send you a message, and you thought I was being literal, launching an assault with words.

I thought you would know by now how I feel about you after years and years of telling you EVERY DAY how much I feel for you. I’m not sure a day has gone by in 12 years that I haven’t written to you, my blog coming in second because if I was responding to you, my other readers just didn’t matter.

I believe that part of you is proud to be Aada, because when I write about other subjects my emotions don’t run as deep or as real. Part of you, I’m sure, would like me to push the big red button and move on to something else. But how are you going to feel when I do?

You said that you learn more about yourself when you’re reading me, and that comment sticks in my mind as well. It’s what I wish every reader took away. That they read me to learn more about them.

Stay away for as long as you need, because the thing about letters is that they keep. The thing about blog entries is that they keep. You have a treasure trove here that you may not want to lose. I have not always behaved badly. Neither have you. We have grown and learned much just by being so incredibly different.

You are logic. I am emotion. We are built to be complementary angles, but we flounder by dividing up all the labor. Sometimes, I must be more logical. Sometimes, you must be more emotional. But that’s only if there’s a relationship to fix. I don’t think there is right now, I’m just going off past history. Eventually, you’ll want to know what I’m up to and you’ll drop a note out of nowhere, and I will be prepared. I know you well enough to know that you’re thinking, “that’s impossible.” But life is long, and we haven’t managed to stay away from each other yet.

I really would sit down with you and your therapist if the opportunity presented itself, because I do not want to be a manipulative force in your life. I have told you for years that I came to DC to do great things, and in no world do I want you to be excluded from them.

I would also sit down with your husband and answer any question he threw at me, and in my imagination, the first is, “what in the absolute hell is wrong with you?” I would probably cry and say that many doctors have tried to figure that out, but they’re still scratching their heads. Join the club.

If this is really the end, I hope he’s the one for you. I hope your family, friends, and colleagues are there to fill the hole that I left in your heart. I’m only now realizing that I made one, because our relationship was so turbulent that I didn’t take in your feelings, not a quarter of them.

I have cried so many nights, wanting to please you and not knowing that I already did. That I am enough, all by myself. I’m sorry for every moment that you did not feel like enough, all by yourself… and that is what was so surprising about your lie. That you didn’t believe I was sufficiently impressed with you, as you are.

My God, Aada… if you only knew.

When my mother died, the only person I wanted was you. I couldn’t emote in front of people, but I could write letters into the night. I would not have recovered without it. So know that even if we never speak again, I will always remember your contributions to making me feel like there is life after the death of a loved one.

My life won’t be as interesting without you, but I have to be prepared for the fact that your anger will stay in place. That what I have done is too big to forget or forgive.

All I can say is that the emotions you said I had weren’t accurate in the slightest. You read me wrong, just like I read you wrong.

My point for the last year has been that we need to stop reading each other, because there are so many ways we could communicate our feelings. I have heard you talk in a voice note, but you have never picked up the phone. I have never seen your body language, micro aggressions, facial expressions, anything to indicate what is going on with you except words in the heat of the moment.

Surely there is a part of you that wishes you knew those things about me… that we hadn’t put it off so long. I hate that I know your coffee order and have never actually gotten to bring you one. I hate that we have never taken a walk. I hate that I only know you in black and white, because I know that there’s a well of information I’m missing and so are you.

We could fix this if we tried, but I cannot hope for that. I can only hope that I can recover on my own. But know that it is a setback of enormous proportions. I will have to work hard to forgive myself for everything I have done and left undone.

Because you are always the best.

Love,

Leslie