My All the Way to the River Friend

September 9, 2025 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I’m having one of those moments where I want to send Aada a book and I’m sitting on my hands. It’s called “All the Way to the River,” by Elizabeth Gilbert. Of course I’ve read maybe a chapter and my own creative process takes over.

Anyway, Elizabeth’s partner, Rayya, used to use a neighborhood analogy for friendship and she said that “you only have maybe one or two people in life who will walk with you to the river.” Elizabeth points out that the journey from this particular neighborhood to this particular river is treacherous, but starts out lovely at first.

Their journey does not reflect ours in any way, but it did occur to me that I didn’t think all the way to the river. I thought all the way to right now. When Rayya was diagnosed with cancer, her death became the river, furthering the analogy.

I have thought about the river before, but I lost sight of it. I know that nothing but time will ease Aada’s wounds. I know that nothing will bring her back to me except missing the inside jokes we used to share. I can’t help what her people think of me, but if the timing is ever right I would be open to rebuilding brick by brick.

I exploded with anger that serves as a stark reminder of how much I lost control. Her lie set me off, but it was a trigger with a disproportionate response. I don’t know what came over me, truly.

The internet is responsible for twisting our relationship into a dark space where we proceeded to spiral out. I don’t want to do that anymore.

I want to be strong and stable, capable of losing myself in something larger and supporting it with my whole heart. I want to keep writing in a way that does not feel like manipulation. Aada just naturally comes up in my thoughts when I think of friends I’d like to see all the way to the river, and there are so many problems with it I cannot see straight.

But I think the desire is the first step. My desire to be a better person has been fueled by her saying that she doesn’t want contact, because I realized that if I kept going the way I was going, I wouldn’t have any allies left…. new friends are great, but there’s nothing like old ones.

I’m both honored and bothered that she has access to my innermost thoughts, because that’s what comes with being a blogger. Anyone can read. I must think of it as a positive because through thick and thin, she reads me. She says that she should stay away because my writing is toxic to her, but that is a recent development in all the years I’ve been writing.

It didn’t bother me when I knew she was taking in my words from a neutral place, but now that she thinks my need to write about us is manipulative, I really don’t know what to say.

Honestly.

She literally puts me in the mood to write, a muse that fills me even though we’ve never met face to face. It’s not manipulation, it’s my real thought process when I sit down at the keyboard. It has been for 12 years, and I admit that turning off the faucet is difficult if not impossible when I know that there’s a minuscule chance I’m being heard. I am being thoughtfully considered. I am having space held for me.

Because this is the only space I will allow change to happen. I am being open in my grief so that it is shared. It has not changed anyone but me, these “Meetings with Bob” being the most extensive feedback I’ve gotten in a long time.

It shows me that my writing matters, but not being able to write a book with Aada is the real loss. Our “all the way to the river” friendship could have included a hardback if I’d remembered that she said we could write a book together when I was much younger.

I have written several books about us in these pages because she became my “all the way to the river” friend, the one to whom I could tell anything. I exhausted her with my prose because I was trying to impress her. What I thought was impressive made her feel like I was lecturing her. She often worked against me instead of with me. But if she is really my “all the way to the river” friend, we’re both going to have to forgive each other over and over.

I don’t think I’m capable of such a life transformation that Aada will come with me to the river…. because people may forget what you said, but they never forget the way you made them feel. Aada has to remember what it feels like to feel good because of something I said, or a sweet memory of something I said has to come to her mind, in order to think of reaching out to me. My pleading has done no good.

Except to remind me that there are consequences to my actions. There’s a penalty for not being an “all the way to the river” kind of friend…. you don’t get one in return.

Again, the stupidest and most outrageous decision I have ever made with unintended consequences for all involved. I ask myself why I couldn’t be an “all the way to the river” friend when I’d talked such a big game before. Being lied to was a body blow that I needed time to absorb. Before I took that time, I decided Aada’s lie had cost me too much and I was done protecting her.

The only problem was that the two situations were not equal, but in my irrationality I equated them. I cried like a lost baby as I was writing, because Aada had never lied to me before.

All of my reasons for being an “all the way to the river” friend vanished because I wasn’t thinking that way. I also wasn’t thinking, “she’ll forgive me for this.” In that moment, I wanted her gone. It took about three minutes to want to undo what I’d wrought, but that’s the thing about impulsive decisions. They, too, can have lifelong consequences.

I also know that real “all the way to the river” friends have had to forgive each other for more than this.

If she is willing to forgive, I am willing to compromise just about anything… not because she is perfect, but because she is mine. I have felt this way for 12 years and I went into a blind rage.

I am never going to pay more for a mistake, because I pushed her away- a real, all the way to the river friend.

Eventually, there won’t be such mourning, but I have to give myself permission. I don’t want to gloss over this time in my life easily or quickly. I want to show myself that I didn’t get over this easily….. that the ties that bind are just now loosening their grip.

I need to see the enormity of what I lost in front of me, mostly to take in the depth and breadth of everything I’ve done wrong. I do not want to lose another “all the way to the river” friend. It has been hard enough losing this one.

Tomorrow is my birthday.

Crying because I won’t hear from Aada, then laughing because Aada hardly ever remembered my birthday in the best of years.

It’s something I’ve always forgiven, because that’s what you do when you’re willing to be with them all the way to the river.

I lost my humanity when I betrayed Aada, and I grieve for everything we were and could have been.

I won’t send her the book.

But I’m sitting on my hands.

Why Mansplaining Isn’t Always a Thing

March 23, 2024 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 3 Comments

I found a meme that explains all of this better than I could, so let’s start out with it:

I am not saying that mansplaining does not exist. Far from it. But what I am saying is that as you get to know a man, it’s easier to tell whether they’re egotistical or neurodivergent. For instance, I would never accuse any of my male friends of mansplaining, because I’m just as likely to mansplain to them, because we are all working from a neurodivergent brain. I have had many men who worked from the first paragraph in my life, and they aren’t my friends.

In fact, a very effective way to get a man to stop “mansplaining” to you is just to ask them what’s up. Say, “are you telling me this because you think you’re the expert, or are you ADHD/autistic?” That’ll shut ’em up…… or you’ll get a real moment of authenticity and a breath of relief that will almost make them cry…… because they feel seen. That’s because I asked him a question that, dollars to donuts, no other woman has. They automatically assume that man is trying to one-up them, and don’t even think about that man’s self-esteem. That maybe he’s not trying to be an egotistical bastard. He has a processing disorder, and he thinks you think he’s dumb, not the other way around.

I feel like I know this better than most because I am nonbinary. I have told Supergrover over and over that I don’t write to her, and I don’t write for her. That my writing would exist whether she was here or not. This is the one exception. This meme is definitely for her, because I have a feeling that she’s been reading my e-mails like “I’m the expert,” and because of it I think I’m doing a terrible job of explaining myself, so I overclarify until “the cows can tape something by now.”

I feel this way because Supergrover has called me a “judgmental dickhead” for 10 years, and in her last e-mail said that I should stop thinking of myself as the expert on everyone and everything. “Not a good look.” So, my reaction is just to leave her behind. Fuck that noise. I will never in my life put up with that shit again. I talk how I talk.

I was absolutely moved by her e-mail, but after some time, I realized that she’s just as shitty a friend as she said she was, because the e-mail opened, “Ugh. I vowed never to respond to another of your e-mails.” Opening with disgust didn’t win her any brownie points, especially when I came to hear heart in hand and asked her for help with something she knew intimately.

Granted, she answered all my questions and even clarified within herself what she’s meant all these years, and it was basically “I hide all my feelings about you so that you can just twist in the wind.” It’s easy to keep someone feeling desperately insecure in a relationship that way, because they don’t know how to act. What is real? What is not?

I have been saying over and over that I’m not the expert on anything but the way I feel. If someone feels differently than I do, there is room for both our opinions in the world. Me telling my story and you hiding yours is just a shortcut to calling me a dictator and blaming me for everything when you’re the one that’s emotionally unavailable at every turn. It’s a stalling tactic, and a good one, because it makes me feel like shit.

The reason I had to get her out of my life is that I’ve been in relationships with too many women like this. I am attracted to emotionally unavailable people and they’re attracted to me. It’s because we each have something the other lacks. I lack pragmatism and logic, They lack the ability to feel as deeply as I do. So, in the beginning, it feels like you are each meeting each other’s greatest need.

Without fail, in every single relationship I’ve been in that works this way, over time it devolves into division of labor. They do all the thinking, I do all the feeling. It leaves me anxious and insecure, because in the beginning, they weren’t like this. They were high on new relationship energy and not so opposed to letting themselves feel. After that, they go back to what they know, which is not letting anyone know how they feel so that you have to walk on eggshells…… because they won’t tell you that they’re angry. They’ll say nothing is wrong when it clearly is by the way they treat you.

That has been my life for 10 years, and I’m done unless I actually feel some empathy for the way my brain processes information, because I am not an expert.

I’m a train wreck.

A Comprehensive Response

July 27, 2023July 27, 2023 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I blog, therefore I am healthy.

Writing is a comprehensive response to life. That is true no matter what kind, but particularly blogging because the story moves forward every single day, because it’s a choice to post, not a responsibility. I do not feel like I have an audience to whom I owe anything. If I needed to, I’d push the red button and everything would be gone. Nothing threatens you if you don’t need something out of it. I would be giving up a lot, but I wouldn’t stop writing. It’s a huge deal to be a blogger, because people cannot predict what you’ll remember and think they can.

Someone might be totally freaked out and barking up my tree not to write about them, but what they don’t know is that if I can’t make an illustration out of them that works, I won’t. Not everyone makes a good character. Telling them that is worse than blowback, because their ego gets involved. What do you mean, I don’t make a good character?

I feel like I handle this better than most after coming out to straight people without a clue. You’ll never see a more butt hurt child than when they’ve told a gay person they don’t like them “that way” and the person says “you’re not my type.” They are horribly offended in the most hilarious of ways. It is more than physical attraction, and they’ve taken your rejection as if you think it isn’t.

My straight girl crush was because I was struggling in my marriage and it was easier to feel high as hell on new relationship energy than it was to deal at home. She is drop dead gorgeous and it didn’t mean anything to me because I wasn’t looking at her picture while I wrote. She was the equivalent of my “corporeally challenged celebrity girlfriend on the radio.” (I went on a date with a woman from OPB/NPR… maybe two… but this is what Dana and I called her for 15 years.) I could have a crush on a straight girl because it couldn’t go anywhere. I’d get all the good stuff without all the bad except I didn’t. My trauma bond screamed with empathy because she didn’t give me a slap bracelet after the fire.

When I say that someone makes a bad character, I mean that when I write about you, the emotions fall flat on the page. If I can’t make myself feel anything, no one else will feel it, either. If you go back to my older entries, you’ll be able to tell when I’m distressed. I can, but I also have the memory of writing the piece if it’s so overwhelming it made me sob. People think I get really angry when I’m actually crying my eyes out. I am literally pouring myself out onto the page so that I have an accurate idea of how my mental and physical health are treating me. I realize when I’ve been too harsh. I realize when I’ve been too nice.

What makes Supergrover such a great character is because when I write about her I can cry. Not many people evoke emotion in me like that because I just won’t get vulnerable enough. When I write about my beautiful girl, I step into a museum with ten years’ worth of collected art. Some of it was bought and paid for. Some of it we stole in a heist. We’d push and pull and tumble and roll, but for whatever reason, we didn’t cut each other off. That’s because the museum had no easily accessible exits.

I became exhausted because bringing up conflict and it never getting resolved was eating my self-esteem for every meal.

It was very, very confusing because we’d have a fight and she’d say we were done. When I assumed she meant it, I’d try to move on and then she’d drop in. When I assumed that she was just angry af and apologized, it was perceived as me trying to get attention. She would tell me that she told me it was over and I just pushed, but I have two solid memories that stick with me.

The first was a huge fight that really was the end of it for me. Like, I am just not capable. She reads on my blog that my dad is having surgery and checks in. I was pleased, but I felt weird about it because I thought, “surely she sees why this would be problematic.” It felt like “leave me the fuck alone, but I’m going to make sure you know I’m watching.” It has never gotten any more resolved than this, because when she dropped in on me, it was fine. When I dropped in on her, she felt creeped out because she thought it was me saying “I’m always watching.” It happened again when we had another blowout and I thought maybe then I’d get a break long enough to figure out what really happened. Someone said something to her that reminded her of me, and she was back in my DMs.

Neither one of us could break the connection, just “tumbling through a freefall, no one’s going to go unscathed….. but it’s not because you held back, and it’s not how I behaved.” Now I’m humming…. “and I believe that underneath it all, you are my friend. And the way that I fell for you, I’ll never fall that way again. I still believe despite our differences that what we have’s enough” because I believe in her (and I believe in love). You know I have the ability to cry about this if I’m writing and suddenly quote Indigo Girls.

I told my friend Missy that I didn’t even listen to them for the longest because it created a “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” amount of “AS IF I’M NOT WEIRD ENOUGH.” I had a stereo in my room. Their albums didn’t leave when I did for years.

Now, one of my favorite songs is “When We Were Writers.”

Writing is not what Supergrover does for a living, but she does write in her spare time to get away from work. She’s right. It’s a bubble, When I say that I can’t do something or I have to go because I’m writing, it is taken every bit as seriously as when Lindsay says, “I’m going on a run.” Nothing else is more sacred than spending time alone so you can actually hear your thoughts.

With a virtual relationship, you never have to feel alone. That’s because their physical presence has never been needed. The relationship wasn’t created that way. We’d become each other in our work, borrowing style, structure, and tone. It was quite sophisticated in retrospect. It’s amazing how much we were able to do for each other virtually, and now everyone knows it because of the pandemic. We were virtual BEFORE IT WAS COOL.

We’d trade off being The Holy and The Moly.

We both went scorched earth too much when it was infinitely possible to just be out with it and either be done or decide we have something and work toward it. My emotions were larger than hers and always have been. She absolutely knew this. But I do not think that she ever thought that she’d be reopening a wound if she reached out. My part in all this is that because my feelings were large, I ignored everything bad and just kept on believing that one day, I’d find the combination of words that would unlock her. In my mind’s eye, I’m 14. She’s six. I’m older, and I should have known better.

When you know better, you do better. Maya Angelou’s words, but true for me as well. I don’t even know if she likes Coke, but she has a unique name and I knew for damn sure she wasn’t going to find a “Share a Coke with…..” bottle anywhere. So I ordered her one from Atlanta. There were actually six. One with her actual name, one with her character’s name, her husband, her kids, and her dogs. Except the Coke bottle said “Boytoy” on her husband’s because that’s how we referred to him. She never saw them, because I mixed up the address and put my name on the wrong part of the form. So they got a box addressed to me for a reason completely unknown to them and returned it. I was furious because it cost so much to do, but I was only angry at myself for mixing up the web form. It was so unique, and ADHD fucked me. I was absolutely miserable because it was the nicest thing I could think of to do virtually because I’d been a jackass. It was the friend equivalent of having to sleep on the couch and buying chocolates and flowers to beg.

Since she wears suits and crap for work, she also travels sometimes. I sent her a bracelet with a charm for her favorite cause. She told me it was perfect and sent me a picture of her wrist. I feasted on that for weeks because now I could go wherever she was, metaphysically. She just isn’t the sort of person that would tell me where she went, because it’s not important in her daily life and that’s really what I wanted to hear. I don’t care how she’s doing professionally. I care how she’s doing emotionally. I am the red telephone where she is concerned. Even now that we’re done I won’t hear a bad word about her because my friends don’t care about her. They care about me. They don’t recognize how much she gave me because even I’ve never heard her side of the story. I couldn’t make anything better. She was looking for hurt, so she found it.

The bracelet said to me that as long as I kept my behavior consistent, she’d know that my drug protocol was working , and not to worry if I spiraled out, that it had nothing to do with her. It had to do with my mental health, and no one else is in charge of managing it. I know when to go to the ER/psych ward. If that doesn’t end up being the whole story, still not her damage. Blame poor health and bad medicine, not the patient.

It all seems scary to people the way I lay it out because I’m dispassionate. I have a disease. It has to be managed. People need to know they’re off the hook for checking in on me, because when mental health issues pop up, if I don’t do anything that’s my fault.

“Oops. My bad. Should I leave a note?”

Wow. That was dark, even for me. I’m mostly fine, so that’s not an indication that things are about to get worse. It’s just a reality check. Run the numbers, don’t diagnose me.

I am awaiting the cause of Sinead O’Connor’s death. I think I already know what it is…. and no matter what it is, you don’t die at 56 of natural causes.

I don’t want to know, but I ran the numbers.

Here’s the other thing you need to know. You cannot guess what mood I’m in, or whether I’m experiencing depression or hypomania in my work because I write about things that have already happened and I’m searching for the road ahead. I map out what I feel now to plan for what I’ll feel later. It’s not because I know you better than you, it’s that I have to decide how I’m going to react to our next interaction based on past history. I will know whether it’s time to stand up for myself or apologize with fancy Coke.

However, I did not just send a gift and assume that she’d take it as “I’m sorry.” It’s just that her love language is action and mine is words of affirmation. I compromised, she didn’t. She could respond in her own love language, but she couldn’t meet me halfway and talk about her feelings. I never knew which way was up. It’s just not fair to leave someone in that much confusion because my need was being rejected. I needed her to show up, be present in the moment. Instead, her responses were dismissive or angry. Meanwhile, I’m trying to do things that make her less angry and annoyed, but I couldn’t because I was guessing all the time. I got done with guessing way too far past my breaking point. She had enough information to blow up my life, not the other way around. And yet she saw me as a threat without realizing she felt like one to me, too. We were in the same boat, just back to back.

She is the Aunt Voula. I am the Toula. She will be everyone’s favorite and I’m okay with that because she’s my favorite, too. We’re in that weird age gap where I’m not young enough to be her kid, but not an average age between siblings, either.

In the beginning, she treated me like an equal. After fights, she treated me like a pest. It is my fault I treated her badly, and her fault that she never got over it.

The problem isn’t even that she “never got over it.” It’s that she is free to be someone who decides how they feel about you on a daily basis for someone else. It was chaotic and I was tired of the swings.

It wasn’t good for my mental and physical health.

Headaches

May 21, 2023May 21, 2023 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I do not have a very good relationship with headaches. They love me, and I don’t feel the same way. Yet, we don’t break up. Headaches just plague me constantly. I am certain that some of them are caused by emotional pain, but these are too severe for that to be the whole diagnosis. I can tell they are migraines, because both Sudafed and caffeine help stop the pulsing sensation that makes me close my eyes and the brilliant colors start dancing behind my lids. It is genetic. I spent parts of my childhood waiting for my mother to emerge from a dark room where she was sleeping off these monstrosities with narcotics because in those days, that was about the limit of what you could do after Tylenol, Sudafed, and a cup of coffee didn’t do anything.

The headaches aren’t NOT connected to my bipolar disorder, either, because when I feel bad physically, the pain compounds mentally. I feel worthless because I have even less to contribute to the conversation besides sitting in the room and unable to focus on other people because I can barely see five feet in front of my face.

As of right this moment, I feel like I have ants under my skull and I can’t scratch them out…. But not in a destructive way. Just in that way that it feels good to scratch my head like I’m washing my hair. I am not feeling crazy in a way that would have blood dripping down my neck and me saying, “did I get them?” That’s too dark even for me.

It’s just easy to pick up on dark humor when you feel this bad. It’s been all day, every day, since about Thursday. I have been going about my regular business while feeling absolute shit. It’s not my favorite set of emotions ever. I don’t like the guilt of feeling sick, that I am falling down on the job of taking care of other people and realistic about taking care of myself. I am sorry to all of the people who have sent me something and I haven’t replied. Being sick isn’t an excuse, but I hope it’s context. It is a sign that I am feeling marginally better that I was able to reach out a couple of times this morning even though my head is pounding, anyway. My need to isolate when I am sick is absolute when I am sick, because I do not want to be seen, heard, or touched. If I lived with a partner or I just happened to be with Zac during something like that, I might cave on the being touched part. I wouldn’t talk about it. That’s because there’s too much evidence it’s not psychosomatic, and too much evidence that it really, really is. I have a feeling I talked my way into this mess, so I don’t want to talk my way out.

That’s generally how I get into emotional messes. People think I’m too much. Full stop. I’ve been told I’m too much by too many people for it not to be universally true. So, I don’t talk about it and my brain sets up pain loops that eventually turn physical if I struggle mentally long enough. Depression and anxiety create stress responses that wear down your immunity and resistance to injury. In my case, that means something hurting far longer than it should when I fall. Depression makes me lose timing and balance, because they get worse when I’m tired. Depression is chronic fatigue, so I live for hypomania. Because I’m medicated, it doesn’t mean a whole lot except for my energy being high enough to handle more of other people’s emotions because I’m not concentrating on my own.

My closest allies talk about their problems and it helps me to focus more on them so that depression doesn’t dog me as bad. Changing my perspective is key. When I spiral out, my trauma reflexes kick in and the rage I’ve been holding in because I’ve been keeping so many secrets from an age where I should have been allowed to be young creeps in. Except I can’t get mad at her directly, it comes out in my writing style and people don’t realize that I’m hurting. They see it as being mean to them on purpose. I am working on changing that perception, but it’s hard when I’m struggling so hard to contain my emotions. I am combustible, and the first step is acknowledging it.

In the particular case of the Internet relationship, her life was bigger than mine, and she had a lot more to focus on than me. That was completely fine until my issues were never addressed and it was clear they were never going to be important enough for things to change. Then it was deciding whether I could live with that or not… that the level she was willing to pay attention wasn’t going to ever change and I needed to get with the program.

It wasn’t her fault, but our problems were too unique for me to process, and heavy enough that I needed to resolve them or move on with my life. That superficial interaction wasn’t enough for me because the feelings I’ve been carrying are too large for me to talk about on my own. And it’s not fair for that information to go to anyone else, anyway, because if I have something to say about her, it’s something she should know rather than me talking about her to other people. It’s what friends should do for each other no matter what the circumstance might be.

It caused no small amount of wanting to resolve everything and come to a peace about it so that dropping in on each other’s lives would have been possible. Not having that peace bothered me too much not to get closure on my own. That’s because her behavior came across as “you’re in pain and I don’t care” whether she meant it or not. Healing me meant giving me the peace of mind about what she was thinking and feeling, and because she didn’t give that, the relationship got more and more off kilter as I needed her to engage and she was stonewalling me every chance she got. She had every right to do so, but not with me. It was too much, but not too fast. It had been almost ten years. I was very supportive of everything she was going through, and frustration at not hearing that it was causing me more pain not to hear her anymore than I could reasonably be expected to carry. If she wanted me, I needed her to open up, because it was devastating that I was no longer hers, not that I never was.

Everything she did to stonewall me looked bigger than the occasional incredibly sweet things we did for each other, because it wasn’t my love language. She wouldn’t come my way no matter how I felt about it, which was to hurt deeply. It wasn’t fair for me to live with that level of pain and pretend it was okay anymore. That our relationship was nourishing me instead of draining me. In effect, we’d get frustrated that though we were both speaking clearly in her love language, she forgot how to use that skill and was extraordinarily frustrated that I cared so much more than she did because she wasn’t feeling the same pain as me. Working out problems didn’t make her feel more loved. Having a surface level friendship didn’t make me feel loved, either. It was a win-win situation in some ways, and devastating in others. I couldn’t afford that lack of self esteem anymore, because it was incongruent with being told that I was extraordinarily smart and impressive. In the beginning, I felt incredibly needed and extraordinarily honored, but because she stopped being vulnerable, I felt discarded. That’s not on her because she needed to distance herself. It was on me to decide a plan of action… what I needed to do to stop feeling unloved all the time because it was something that contributed to my physical health because I hadn’t learned to think about her. I’d imprinted on her and began to feel her.

Not resolving an issue completely presented physically, because she apologized for her behavior, but bringing it back up when I was processing what happened when something in my head referred to it was wrong. That I wasn’t bringing it back up to shame her, but defining a pattern. Recognizing a bad pattern and addressing it was the way to move forward and relieve the pain tape. Changing my pain to my empathy and focusing on what she was feeling was relief. I couldn’t get it from her, but I could get it from me.

Processing a thunderstorm takes a lot out of me, so that’s how I know it’s all in my head and also serious as a heart attack, because psychobiology tells me it’s true. But thinking about what she must have been going through brings me peace because it’s not offensive to think those things without her, when it hurt her to hear them and respond as if I was actively trying to hurt her instead of trying to change my own reactions to her. It was essential to resolving my feeling wanted and needed, because it made me emote in a way that made me feel equally hurt. Getting my needs addressed didn’t come across to me as actively trying to hurt her. It was solving the problem of being close in the future without knowing if there was a future or not. No matter what, we are part of each other’s brains because there’s nothing that will ever stop it. But there’s no building anything, either, when we constantly hurt each other because one wants to get closer and the other doesn’t set boundaries at all.

When she did, finally, it hurt too much to hear. It was never going to change. I could spill my guts any time I wanted, but if I hit a nerve, she was always going to keep it to herself unless it made her angry enough to explode. To have more negative reinforcement than positive was too much, because I then felt like I was intruding on her life rather than adding to it. It wasn’t that she didn’t want the relationship at all. It was that we didn’t want the same things. She was making clear what hadn’t been before, and it was devastating to an enormous degree because I’d put in so much work to rectify past mistakes so that she could trust me, and it felt like those letters were trying to prove my trustworthiness and being taken as attacks…. And that’s what made nothing move forward. I tried different ways to address a problem and none of them would work. I was lecturing her, not inviting her into my world. And it wasn’t that I couldn’t move on, either. It was that when a huge callback came up, she would take it as rejection and not trying to get closer, or not wanting it and not willing to be able to say it until now. It had to be one or the other, because in order to feel impressive, I needed to know why. Which changes have impressed you, because you only seem angry with me when you write? Why does a sitrep make you feel horrible instead of you lumping all my emails together as if they all say the same thing?

In my head, I thought she was a miracle, and she thought I was annoying. I am usually impressed by being the most annoying person people know, but she was my safe space, my lock box. It makes me feel so much light and love to feel needed in the same way, and my heart couldn’t take all the changes I’d made in negative ways, and it took a long time to understand that my illness had gotten out of hand and I needed to give myself a break because I’d done everything I possibly could to make sure I was consistent in my behavior so that our connection was as rock solid as ever, that scar tissue was stronger than new. She was safe from me. She’d have to know how long the stereotype of the aggressive lesbian has existed to know how deeply I’d shamed myself into believing I was a worthless piece of shit. How deeply it cut into me when she thought I was being overbearing when I was making light of something that had happened eons ago. The fact that she wasn’t there yet destroyed me. If she couldn’t laugh about it, she was holding onto pain and just not addressing it.

To give her an opening to do so was wrong and didn’t change anything. I just reinforced the idea that I wasn’t safe, when humor is how I move on. Therefore, when a clapback triggers something major, she can’t hear it with empathy, it’s a threat. Something I meant to be innocuous triggers abandonment feelings because I know that straight girls have been taught that homosexuality is wrong, or they just feel it. To tap into those feelings is not the same as a guy saying those things, because it makes them wonder what it is about them that gives off those vibes when there’s nothing in that thought process at all. When you love someone and start to feel those butterfly feelings, does it matter what their sexual orientation might be if yours is bisexual and theirs isn’t? There’s nothing about them that gives off a “vibe.” I’m not looking for feelers, because there are none. There is only direct communication and the deeply ingrained cultural acceptance of queer feelings being somehow wrong.

So, to be intrusive of that cultural norm is a bad thing, and I am separating out what happened before I got sick. Why do straight people automatically reject the fact that even if they can’t return those feelings and it’s okay, we’ll get over it, the thought is somehow offensive, as if we should have been able to tell you weren’t bisexual at first glance? That it is somehow in and of itself offensive?

I was never concerned about her reaction, because I knew it was a dead end, that these feelings were my responsibility to get rid of and they didn’t resolve until I absolutely spiraled out after isolating her because the pain of rejection was causing all kinds of hell, especially since I’d pushed buttons that were out of bounds in my haste to make her angry enough to reject me altogether, because I needed time. I would have gotten all the time in the world if I hadn’t picked myself up and apologized, but because nothing about our relationship was solid except for checking in once in a while, I floundered. No one loves you like someone who has wanted you and taken the time to get over it so that particular rejection doesn’t cause pain. Then, to have it resolved and to want to welcome someone into your life so badly and to have that deep love rejected is a unique torture, which you bring on yourself if you feel as deeply as I do about things.

Lesbians move on in this particular way easier than most, making an ex a part of their family because they trust people who have felt that deeply about them. Straight girls don’t, and I’m sure that’s because there’s a whole litany of tapes that run inside them when it happens. It irrevocably changes something, because it doesn’t feel like the natural order to them. It wigs them out, and why that is a thing is blatant.

What bothers me about this is that straight women have no problem telling each other that they love them to that degree, and say that they’d marry them. No, they won’t. Why? Are lesbians treated differently in this country or something? It’s fine to say it when it could never happen. Joking is fine, real is not.

Pushing is not fine, either, but that’s a separate issue and built on the fact that mental illness sucks. I have to believe that entitled behavior always comes from mental illness, because to make that level of a bad decision takes dedication.

To say that you’ll never do it again is empty, always…. Even if you take the appropriate steps psychiatrically and psychologically to prove it. She was very impressed and afraid at a fundamental level, and I couldn’t resolve that issue for her, I could only talk about it and see if it did any good.

I got exactly what I needed in every way but one, and that one overshadowed everything else, because it wasn’t being received as color commentary. It wasn’t received as letting her into my thought process. It was trying to inflict pain, and being seen like that wore me down over time. Feeling this deeply about someone when they couldn’t or wouldn’t speak in my love language when I realized I needed to make major changes in my life and keep them consistent in order to keep our relationship strong made me feel terrible. Believe me, I was fired for cause, but I couldn’t make things better for me, either. I could only make things better for her, which I was glad to do in any way that I could. But not hearing about her life made me feel unworthy, and it cost me a lot. Then, when she finally did open up, I thought we were set. It was just unfortunate that she hit a trigger. It was not her fault that she hit it. It was her response being irate and asking me not to put something on her, when I wasn’t. I explained what happened and she threatened not to communicate with me ever again, when she’d dismissed a basic need. I was trying to express my own fear, and it came across as irritating her for the fun of it. I’m sorry, what?

It was then that I thought we were done, because I thought it should have been enough to end us. But she and Daniel had so much in common that I really thought they needed to meet each other, because they would have been friends whether I was involved or not. They could have leaned on each other in a different way than they could have leaned on me. I bargained with myself that it was worth going through pain if I could make this connection, so I did.

Here was what I think was the fatal mistake. She told me that she would have to respond to my other e-mails at some point, so I asked her about it a month later, figuring that was enough time to get back to me and I was really interested in what she had to say. She didn’t know what I was talking about, and explaining it didn’t ring a bell. Knowing I was that low a priority was necessary. I needed to be on the bottom rung, being supportive and waiting for a response. But over time it wore me down because I felt unworthy of being a higher priority.

Therefore, it cannot be said that any of this is her fault. It’s my reaction, because she was right to do everything she did, and so was I.

But one recent moment that sticks with me is asking her to take a contact photo of herself for my phone… “it’s just to match a name to a face, don’t make it weird.” She legit just turned the camera around and hit the button, and it was one of the most gorgeous photographs I’ve ever seen in my life. This is because her eyes were focused on the lens, which made them come across as deeply intimate in a beautiful way, like she was staring into me, and it is just for me. She knew she was looking at me, and she saw me in return.

It’s a beauty that would undo anyone, and it’s not even close to what goes on behind those eyes. She is truly a world class brain, and here’s the biggest thing of all. She made me believe I have her smarts, too, when I actually use them. Her belief made me stronger, and made me love who I am. She continues to believe that, and I want it so much because it makes me like who I am when I’m with her. But feeling the pain underneath is a rough gig, because I couldn’t forgive myself. I’d be reminded of something bad, and chastised when I talked about it in hopes of letting it go. I let the joy multiply, it’s just that pain compounded faster. I was paying so much interest I couldn’t attack the principle.

That’s all on me, but what became clear is that resolving my own feelings had to come from me if we weren’t working on it together. I was in too much pain from feeling like I was a problem that needed to be solved. I couldn’t rectify not being able to build from a foundation that was once rock and had disintegrated at my own hand. As in, I wanted to move forward together, and didn’t want to do it alone until I had no choice.

Surely everyone is familiar with the pain of it all? That you’ve done something that can’t be truly forgiven because neither party is willing to communicate because one wants something more and one wants something less and both are afraid? The feeling of not wanting to rock the boat and hurting inside? Wanting to feed relationships so that they develop roots and brilliant flowers? The disappointment of knowing it can’t be done. Choosing whether the eventual buildup causes redemption or rejection, knowing that rejection will win when communication isn’t clear?

If we’d set up new boundaries where we were comfortable so that I didn’t build up a hope that should never have grown, I would have been fine. Asking for clarification took eight years. She danced around the subject because she knew I wanted more than she could give, and felt guilty about the pain it caused me because she didn’t want to tell me about hers and never would.

When she opened up about her family, I was thrilled. I don’t think I made it where it was clear that I was both overjoyed and felt left out at the same time. I was thrilled to hear that the relationship had been successful, loved the idea that she’d found a life mate, and announced it to all her friends except me. What does a lockbox friend want to hear except the things that make you love more? It meant I felt the pain of being excluded for so many years while also feeling the joy of being included now, wanting to build on it and not knowing if I should. If I tried and it failed, I’d be opening myself up to more rejection and pain. I did, and it did. Nothing went the way I wanted, and everything sounded better in my head, because her perceptions were so far off from my intentions. It caused a lot of anger that went unresolved, because what friend likes to hear on a consistent basis that someone feels like I need to attack them instead of “will you work on something with me?” Again, I think she is the most beautiful human known to God and man, and I am nowhere near alone in this opinion. The fact that she felt rejected by my words and they made her respond more than the accolades I gave her made my self esteem plummet. I was trying to speak for myself without speaking for her. She thought I was creating the narrative that I was a victim, when I didn’t think that at all. I was trying to get her to speak to what was bothering her by laying out my fears, hopes, and dreams first. Being strong by asking instead of telling.

To think that I was not thinking of her feelings is untrue. It wasn’t my job to write about her as if I already knew what she was thinking. It was telling her what her words did to me on an emotional level and needed to hear her reaction. When it began to always be pain, that I was goading and provoking her, I knew we were never going to see eye to eye on this, so we couldn’t give each other what they needed. There was something bigger than me at work. I was trying to build something strong and comfortable for the future, where the idea of having a conversation in person didn’t seem weird. When she said she’d think about it, I began to write in that way. I don’t know whether I wasn’t a priority because the prospect felt scary or because she literally didn’t want a future even when I talked about a time in our lives where she didn’t have as many commitments. It would have solidified in my mind that there was going to be change later on, even if there couldn’t be right now. She finally said enough to convince me that I was too much of a burden for her to spend any more time, and suggested she’d only been nice to me because I’m a writer.

There were a couple of other things that made her think that I was trying to hurt her, none of them true and scared the hell out of me. But none of that stopped the hope that we’d resolve our mutual issues with each other because she’d said she’d think about it and I couldn’t press. There was nothing to calm the fear we had in each other, even when I was vulnerable first. We both lead from the back, and I wanted to show her that I wasn’t willing to do anything for her that she didn’t do the way she’d saved me first. She just didn’t trust it. Didn’t mean I didn’t understand why and felt like a victim. I wanted our behavior patterns to change because this was costing me so much energy without being refilled because we were focused on different ways of being there for each other. My pain was all my bag, but hearing hers would have lifted it. I wasn’t trying to make her feel anything, I was curious as to how she felt and didn’t want to speak for her except in explaining how her behavior came across to me and wanting to know the reasoning behind it because it was so uncomfortable to be in the dark all the time.

I am sure the intensity of all my feelings came across as gigantic, and pushed her away to an enormous degree. Trying to prove that though they were large, they were all pointed in the right direction was futile, because she couldn’t just let me be me anymore. She was exhausted by it, and I was exhausted at her always thinking I was trying to attack her and trying to find different ways to resolve things so that she could hear just how much she meant to me without it seeming somehow manipulative or offensive when neither of those things were in any way true. I feel the same way about Bryn, and it makes us able to talk about anything and everything. She accepts all that gigantic love and returns it in a way that feels consistently loving to both of us, because neither of us feel like one is feeling deeper than the other.

We both feel deeply in every quadrant of emotion on the z axis, and don’t deny each other access, because being able to process is important to both of us. Neither of us see the other feeling something about a thing is an attack. It’s telling each other the story we’re telling ourselves and checking to make sure it’s true. Neither of us are a victim of anything because we’d never phrase anything in the form of “you made me” because we can’t. No one makes you do anything, you can only describe your own feelings and hope someone responds in a way that enlightens your assumptions rather than them feeling rejected. My uncertainty about the future led me to react quickly, because I never knew when something I said was offensive or not because she lumped everything together in one unit and said everything was negative.

I knew that wasn’t true, because she respected my opinion and would yield to it in the beginning. She’d talk about my perception and tell her story. To have something that vital and ephemeral was painful in a way that I’d never experienced. It was her right to withdraw, certainly, but also my decision on how long to be wrecked by it. How long to hope someday was real. To crave consistency and not be able to put it into language where it was heard in the manner it was meant to be received, which was not able to be changed because there was nothing to put us in the proper context, the only think able to break patterns. To meet might have made us repel each other for a while to let the cognitive dissonance set in, because the difference in writing voice and speaking would create sensory overload on both sides.

Maybe meeting in person would have been the end of us, anyway, because we both would have realized quickly that nothing could be fixed. But what I was aiming for was trying to make it comfortable enough to do that so it wouldn’t seem like a big deal because it wouldn’t seem out of left field.

Writing about it is helping me stop the rumination that comes with being so close and yet so far. I never could tell what I was saying that came across as an attack, just that there had been one. Therefore, I couldn’t stop “attacking her.” Being blind isn’t my fault. But I get to decide how long I’m willing to put up with not being received with positivity.

I felt like I had to ask her permission to go, because I needed to know whether I was valuable to her as an asset and not a liability…….. and deal with it on my own if I wasn’t because the not knowing was just as painful as letting all of that hope float and bursting it later, once it had grown. “We were just an empty dream too big for hope alone to fill.”

She did teach me a lot which I couldn’t have learned any other way. I am in no way mistaking the part for the whole. She made me glow from the inside at such a rapid pace. I can’t thank her enough, which makes my negative feelings all the more painful. I wish in a lot of ways that I could have relaxed and enjoyed not knowing, just going with the flow. But the problem was that I couldn’t, for a million different reasons.

Mostly that I didn’t like who I was when I was with her anymore, because receiving the impression that I was always trying to attack her made me feel terrible. I am not that person, and don’t want to be. I want both of us to work on the issue so that the other doesn’t feel like they’re being emotionally vampired. I want them to tell me when I have a good point and when my perception is off. I also want you to believe me when I tell you how your communication is making me feel. I pop off in anger because my trauma reflexes work fast when I should have thought more before I said something. This generally comes from being exhausted at being misunderstood for such a long time that first I’m talking about what I’m feeling and over time, my fuse at not being heard gets shorter….. it just takes a very, very long time….. or it used to. I’m trying to be better about communicating what I need, but if I’m not hearing your story because you refuse to tell it, I am not calculating my responses on it. I am telling you the feelings of rejection it has created for you to leave me out of your story.

I thought she needed me to be a part of her support system, which is why I worked too hard on trying to get this relationship to thrive and miserable when I couldn’t do it. I could feel around for her anger, and see how she responded to my feelings. Whether we were building something or tearing it down.

It all depends on your view. After ten years, it was causing headaches indirectly because rumination sets up physically when your energy turns toward it. It feels like weight you can’t get rid of, so you either have to fish or cut bait.

She made it clear that she was ready, and I made it clear that if she went, she couldn’t do things like thank me for something I’d written because it only jump started my heart in her direction, but in all the ways she would want when she was convinced that I was trying to hurt her. That’s why I was so firm on the fact that if she was going to show up next time, it had to be big. To acknowledge that I wasn’t a victim for opening up, that we were equally bruised by each other in different ways, and if our relationship were to get better, we needed to stop being so short with each other. Meeting physically wasn’t even on the table, only being vulnerable. I just became convinced over time that the only way to cure us from wrecking our friendship if she did drop in was to change all the perceptions we had of each other that weren’t true.

To think about how we would have been different and do it.

My work to do is to put down my trauma reflexes, because it makes me write differently than I would handle something in person and generally my impatient or fearful messages don’t come from anything but feeling uncertain. Knowing that communication is hard work, and I have to forgive myself when I fail and accept the consequences of my actions with everyone.

Being angry with people when I feel abandoned is valid, but the words I use to express it are too much, especially when I type faster than I think and rage is building with no way to control it because ADHD, anxiety, and depression.

To have no patience for it is the other person’s right and they shouldn’t be expected to stick around no matter what I say, because words have weight. I pay those taxes all day, every day. I also have the right to step back and post mortem a situation, because reading my thoughts here often fixes the problem of what to do next on both our parts. Sometimes, it lets people in closer. Sometimes, they feel rejected whether I wanted them to feel that or not, because people only understand others’ words and actions to the level they understand themselves.

I can only express my needs, and if it is too much to ask of someone, I am generally patient and loving until it’s been so long that my resentment is building. She thought I was trying to get her attention, and that part is true….. but never in the ways that she thought I was trying to get it. When I was being really thoughtful and vulnerable, I wanted her to think about what I said. That’s the kind of attention that I wanted, that she’d seen the full picture and wasn’t focusing on what she thought was negative, because my intention was never to hurt her. I couldn’t afford to lose her until I was very, very unhappy. Being known for all these negative things instead of all the things I said to build her up made me think of myself that way.

Those headaches were the worst.