Tag: autistic

Business

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

It’s one of my favorite Eminem tracks, and I have done it at karaoke (POORLY). But today I get to say that I had a win, because it made me feel good. I was going to post this in the article about productivity, but I’m neurodivergent. My brain diverged and I forgot. I said that I locked down my personal Facebook page and redirected everyone to my professional author’s page. What I did not say is that I started thinking like an entity and not a person, because now that’s true. Bryn also has an account on this blog, and has the capability to create entries independently of me. She doesn’t always post, yet I have to be prepared for the possibility that she could. I also would have offered one to Supergrover (after I’d added Bryn- it didn’t occur to me before) if I thought she wanted it…. For two reasons. The first is that she’s a wonderful writer. The second is that I would be very surprised if I didn’t give her an account, just access to mine, and you could tell the difference. It would be my voice, just on crack. You’d think I’d gotten better in a hurry, but you wouldn’t have thought I changed style and structure except a quarter of never.

That’s because Supergrover writes fantasy and I don’t.  I am so cerebral that the only fairy tale I’ve ever liked in my life is the one she handed me. I think that she thinks I get lost in thinking of her as the evil stepmother when I’m trying to reach “happily ever after.” Every story deserves an “HEA.” I can already see it, feel it on my skin. It just looks different than hers, and I have to be at peace with it. I am.

So, I started thinking of my blog as the beginning of Lanagan Media Group when I added Bryn and became open to the possibility of adding others; I felt an amazing amount of business savvy in locking down my personal profile. People don’t need to become friends with Leslie, they need to become friends with Lanagan Media Group. I am not a person anymore- because I have another author, I’m a brand.

But that brand is not Bryn pedaling my voice and views. It’s being able to talk about those things and discuss boundaries. We just don’t have to discuss much because we agree on most everything politically and neither one of us has a conniption fit when we write about the other. If we had a fight and she wrote I was a bitch that day, good for her. I probably needed to hear it. That’s because I know that when we have an intimate moment that strengthens our relationship, she’d reflect that, too. She’s not out to get anyone when she writes about herself, she’s digging deep and letting the right people go with her….. Because they like her for who she is and not who they think she is.

Sometimes, people don’t notice that it’s not me, so I started asking Bryn to introduce herself at the beginning of every entry she writes. I love it when she posts because she is naturally so much funnier than I am. My entries are not as full of laughter, because when I write, I am focusing on myself. How many of you when you sit alone and think are consciously trying to make yourself laugh? I am, and that’s the only reason there are jokes in here at all. However, no one does it all the time. Bryn just likes making herself laugh more than I do, and it shows.

Bryn is also neurodivergent, which is why we don’t have a problem in communication most of the time. Everything the other says is #relatable. Therefore, I am stereotypically #blessed.

I’m talking about her so much because she gets here tomorrow and I haven’t seen her since way before the pandemic, so the right amount of time to be over the top excited and can’t think about anything else.

I’m also excited to meet Dave, her boyfriend, and get to know him in the flesh as opposed to “this is Dave” occasionally as he walks by the video call. 😉 It’s necessary to get in good with your best friend’s partner, because we both need a person to talk to about her, because we both love her. We want to support her. I am not offering either of them more than that, just that when push comes to shove, I’m Bryn’s friend and not Dave’s. I am not ANTI-Dave. 😉 I am only anti-Dave if Bryn becomes anti-Dave. Just like Bryn would never in a million years be anti-Zac unless I became anti-Zac, and I’m the happiest I’ve ever been. I have both freedom and security. It’s a lot easier to deal with life’s ups and downs when you know you always have someone in your corner no matter what. And both Zac and Dave are Navy, so obviously we both know what we’re doing in terms of picking men. Navy, you are a different breed and we’re here for it.

Zac and I have similar stories- he joined the military because he didn’t know what he wanted to do after high school, but he wasn’t interested in school. I tried to join the Air Force for the same reason, because at the time music classes were the only ones I liked and I wanted to try to get into “Airmen of Note.” I just wasn’t medically eligible and Zac was.

At the time, being in the military and also in the jazz band seemed like the easiest way to work as a musician every single day and not worrying about chair tests, ever, because even if I got last they wouldn’t kick me out altogether. No matter what happened, I could work as a musician, even if I turned out to be a crappy one and did something else for my day job. As it turned out, what I did not like was grade school.

I had a great college experience because that’s the first time academics are on a level playing field with neurotypicls and neurodivergents alike. That’s because in college, they don’t do “daily work.” You are perfectly free to inhale all the reading in one night if that is the way your brain works (and mine does). I couldn’t see the forest for the trees in grade school, but I kicked the shit out of college unless it was something I didn’t understand, anyway, like Logic or Trig.

It’s not school I objected to- it was the system of education. So, if you’re a neurodivergent who struggles in grade school, don’t worry about college because it’s a choose your own adventure. Study every day, or study for 27 hours in a row before a test. Your choice. You do you. Don’t be afraid that you’re not smart enough for college, because “smart” and the way your brain works are two completely different things.

I did a lot better in school when I wasn’t micromanaged and my brain could just be my brain. That I wasn’t set up to fail by not having papers in my bag that day. I was excellent even in classes with the Socratic method, because I would inhale the reading and be able to talk about it, and in classes where reading wasn’t mandatory (as in, we didn’t discuss it), I wasn’t punished for saving up the reading til later because I knew it would be on the test….. So I had to read it at some point and did. Class and the reading were often disjointed when they didn’t reflect each other, because both we as students and the professor would get off on tangents, especially in International Relations (we were obsessed with the war in Kosovo at the time).

So, for all you ADHD/autistic kids it’s okay to stop worrying about what you’re going to do in college because you might find when you get there that college jives more with the way you think than high school did, anyway. No matter how you do it, it’s right.

Just like now, I would have a problem with being required to write long essays every day on a given topic, but I write them to myself because I think they’re important. I am lucky that they have become important enough to other people that the reason I allowed other authors was to increase my reach while I was asleep, because I’m on Eastern time and Bryn is on Pacific. It was a very Pacific strategy.

I am capable of synthesizing and adapting ideas. I got that one from ITIL, which is the Bible on how to run a helpdesk- “follow the sun.” Maybe one day I will make friends close enough to add in New Zealand and Australia rather than requiring one of us to move there. 😉

I worked for Alert Logic, and we had a “follow the sun” approach, which led to one of the greatest victories of my career. The vice president of the company in the UK took a support call and transferred it to me without hanging up the phone. He was absolutely blown away that it was 0300 and I was chatting to him like it was just a normal workday…. Asking who his Doctor was (I asked all British customers that just to calm their asses down before addressing the issue at hand. If they’re calling to say something doesn’t work, they want to fight. Don’t let them. A cappuccino machine in a dress is the one true way). This vice president said that if everyone was like me, they’d have a better company. Unfortunately, my manager did not also think this.

That’s because I thrive on my own structure, which I had a lot of at night, especially when I transferred my business phone to my cell phone so I could answer calls in my pajamas in my home office, which I did when I was the one following the sun, handling international customers from midnight til 9 AM.

It was so intimate to be the only voice in the dark on my end with the busy chatter of their offices in the background. I often got to know people quite well because you have to do something to pass the time when files are transferring, etc. because it’s not enough time to put someone on hold. So, we’d chat to each other. I also got to know my British coworkers in Cardiff better than most because I was the one on the American end who was handing things over.

In fact, I once met a “Davies” that looked very much like Greg, and in retrospect I wish I’d asked if they were related. He’s one of my favorite comedians of all time, and on “Who Do You Think You Are?,” Greg finds out that he’s Welsh. I also had a fascination with Cardiff and “The Doctor Who Experience,” but I did not get to go before it closed. I’m sure that if I’d stayed at Alert Logic, I would have gotten a rotation in Cardiff at some point, but they were not the best with autistic employees who didn’t know they were autistic. Hindsight is 20/20 on agreeing that why I got fired was unfair, and yet it wasn’t their fault, either. I cannot hold them responsible for something they did not know, I can only lament that I did not know to tell them and move forward in a different direction.

Which reminds me- I get so much attention from the daily prompt tag that the next time I get to use it, I will say it again. If you want to read me, you’ll have to follow me, because I don’t appear in #dailyprompt every day anymore. That’s because even if I use it, I don’t have the specific tag for that day to put me into that feed. So many people have gotten used to reading me on that tag alone, because of the number of people that showed up every day back then vs. now. It’s not that I don’t do well in other categories, that’s just a big one for exposure. I got a year of it, so I should be grateful, and I am. What would be more helpful is another year of prompts rather than reusing the same ones.

I suppose I could create another author tag and use THAT account, but I’ve been theantileslie for so long that I don’t think of myself as anyone else, except for possibly “Rev. Argo,” because that’s how Bryn used to address my mail (I did her wedding years ago, am ordained by the church of the Latter Day Dude, and Argo is my favorite movie). If I had thought of it on Dec. 31st, I probably would have done it. It’s too late now. But maybe next year if there are no new writing prompts to be had.

Writing prompts make it easier to blog, just like sometimes Alzheimer’s patients come into lucidity about the past if you prompt them. Details come up for both of us that wouldn’t have come up otherwise. I find that especially the way I write, no writing prompts is ever going to be the same from beginning to end, because it’s going to bring up different aspects of an experience depending on how I view it that day.

I don’t think the same thing about every situation all the time. I make peace within myself by seeing things in a hundred different ways, because there are a hundred different ways to explain what happens when I’m around other people, or two hundred stories total because my 100 won’t match theirs. A lot of it is that autistic thought processes don’t seem “correct” to neurotypical people. Because our pathways are different, they are wrong.

Sometimes, I have to get used to the fact that I’m wrong whether I am or not, because I cannot get people to see that my thought processes are not “crazy.” They’re DIFFERENT, because I cannot even begin to think like someone else and in a neurotypical world, difference is bad. Very bad. They googled it, and they do not like it.

I have known this for a long time because I am not officially diagnosed as autistic, I am in the process of waiting for a diagnosis and doing all the research/online tests I can do until that appointment. However, I have been diagnosed as ADHD, and had I known more about ADHD when I was at Alert Logic and why it’s like autism, I could have been more specific in my demands for accommodation. Very few of the things I need in a working environment are specific to Autism or ADHD. Both accommodations are nearly identical. If I had known that I take in information through sight and that’s why I have trouble talking on the phone and writing at the same time, I might have gotten accommodation for it. I cannot process what one person is saying and process a response and write down my experience while it is happening, i.e. documentation. There are ways around a problem if you know you have it. I could not help myself.

That’s what all this autism talk is about. It’s not trying to “prove” I’m autistic because there’s no real way to do that. We all look different, we all have different ways of presenting. I especially know that you’ve met autistic women your whole life without knowing it because most women don’t know whether they’re autistic or not. It never would have occurred to their parents to get them tested because classic presentation is young boys. That means there are millions of undiagnosed women in the work force and we all struggle a fuck you amount. That’s because they’re caught in a system not built for them, but never taught that it’s not built for them. They’re just angry and frustrated because obviously, it’s not the system. They’re just failures.

Up to 80% of autistic people are unemployed at any given moment, and for women, this is mostly expressed in not being able to handle life like a “normal woman.” We are taught that we are failing when we cannot handle being a partner, mother, and coworker/employee all at the same time. However, the more and more roles we take on, the more we’re spread thin without realizing it. The potential for constant meltdown/burnout cycles gets larger, which makes us look like we’re shirking our responsibilities because all wives and mothers are built to handle a million details and you’re just defective. I am so glad that I’m queer, because I have no doubt that if I’d bought into what being a wife and mother really was to a man and married someone to have that life, I would be dead by now. This is not saying that my husband would have killed me, but it is not unfathomable that he would be enraged by my lack. No, I’m talking about not having gender roles in a relationship kept me from feeling like I was failing as a partner all the time.

Life is relentless as an autistic person in an allistic world, because you cannot convince someone that you really didn’t know/understand something. “Everyone” knows. I would like to punch this mythical “everyone” in the face. They’re setting me up for failure, like commercials that try to convince people with no money that they need extravagant cars.

I thrive in my own system, and so do many autistic people. I just don’t think that many women have the language for it. I hope I’m giving it to them straight, because autism is probably a diagnosis they never would have thought they had because no one ever told them it was possible. There’s a woman I hold in my mind when I say this, and I hope she knows it’s her. It’s a face with many, many names when I follow the sun.

That’s because I’m not a brand, I’m an archetype. There are millions of women out there just like me, and I’m trying to find them. It helps not to feel so alone. I am already friends with lots of autistic guys due to the nature of always being online and having been on the Internet since it was born. I already indulge my autistic male side because men are more likely to know they’re autistic.

I have said that I’m enby and I mean it. I have just already met my quota in autistic men and want to get to know other autistic women, because it affects us differently in terms of the role we play in society. There is no room for an autistic woman to be herself unless she ignores a MASSIVE amount of American culture.

I get called “difficult” a lot when I don’t understand. It also doesn’t take much for a woman to be difficult in my society, so I am guessing that whether or not I am difficult depends on your perspective. I have definitely had to turn a negative into a positive, going even further against the grains of what female means in order to understand myself. I am not all of anything. I am a little bit of a whole bunch of things. I contain multitudes, and I’m not a good enough writer to have thought of that first but it doesn’t make it less true.

So, you should follow me because I am not going to be the same person tomorrow. You will perceive a different aspect of my personality then, because Bryn will be here…… And also because I’m a different person every time my outlook changes, because what I present depends on what I pick up.

Therefore, I would also like you to pick me up.

You know what I mean. Get your mind out of the gutter. 😉

Hopefully Not a Darwin Award

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

If you could have something named after you, what would it be?

Generally, things are named after you posthumously, and I don’t want to be given an award for the most original way to die, like accidentally rocking a Coke machine onto myself….. that’s a classic. In DC, I basically have the option of a museum, a statue, or a gravestone. However, the plots around Gore Vidal are already taken at Congressional cemetery, and I don’t live in The District proper. I’m not sure there are any other requirements to live there. But it wouldn’t matter. I’d rather be cremated because I don’t see anyone needing my body after the doctors with it (I am an organ, skin, and donor). I also don’t have a special attachment to one place, but a lot of them.

I’d like to become one with the Columbia River Gorge, because no one is going to rename that after me, but it’s where I’d like to spend eternity. And if you put me on the Washington side, I WILL KNOW. I don’t know how I will know that, but I do know that I’d take a lot of chances with ghosts, but I’m not one of them. I could outsmart me easily, because I create the logic. I don’t have to follow it. I am sure it is something that seems like a joke to me and yet is the source of all my real problems. I don’t have to follow what I say because I know what I think. I forget about the translation layer between neurodivergent and neurotypical people that makes me automatically sound immature and a little bit crazy because I haven’t thought it out. I’m like “The Doctor” in that way. People spend time with me and wonder how I get so far on half plans. It’s because I’m not threatened when they don’t work out or change. I just assimilate the new information into whatever the plan was before.

I realized I was struggling without Daniel because there wasn’t someone to social mask in the mornings. There was nothing to build anything with if we didn’t take the raw materials with which we started and put in the work. I don’t want to throw raw ingredients into a stock pot and hope for the best.

He told me that some of the things I said made him not want to engage. I said, “that’s fine and we can table it, but these are the important conversations to have and we can’t ignore them. Problems keep revisiting you.” He agreed with me and we moved on. I am not trying to make anyone feel bad, I’m saying, “this is the problem. What do you want to do about it?” Most people do not think of it as a problem unless it affects them. They rarely care when their actions affect you. What’s good enough for them is good enough for you in all cases, regardless of how their first family communicated.

I’m guilty of the same thing, but I’m trying to learn from my mistakes. I do not need everything to be doom and gloom all the time, but I do need for people to be emotionally mature and tell me how they feel instead of attacking me for bringing something up. It’s an easy and cheap shot that I will never let anyone get away with ever again. It’s the equivalent of “it’s not that bad. You’re imagining it. You’re dwelling on the past.” No, I’m telling you the feelings that are coming up for me now because of what happened in the past, and we can either deal with it now, or we can deal with it forever, because if this is always a one-sided conversation and it is important to me, it becomes a dealbreaker.

Yesterday, Daniel asked me how he could show me the most amount of love. My answer to that was twofold. The first is that if he really loves me, he’ll want a housekeeper before I move in…. one of those jokes that’s not meant to come off as a joke because I’m autistic/ADHD and I don’t remember anything going anywhere and I don’t create messes, I maintain them. They are piles, but it is my emotional support detritus.

Here’s why “emotional support detritus” is a thing. The first is that few houses come with built-ins where you can see anything inside. Every cabinet has a door. The neurodivergent brain has to have everything out in front of them all the time, because they do not create memories of where they place things. It’s a need for iron structure and an inability to create it with ADHD. I am a Virgo. Back to school has excited me since the 80s. I have bought every planning system known to God and man. The thing that has worked best is my original Palm Pilot with Graffiti 1. I never got the hang of Graffiti 2, and I am still butt hurt about it.

I might look on E-bay to see if I can find a Palm Pilot and a dock, because the form factor is so much smaller than my iPad and “Scribble” is harder to get used to than I thought it would be.

Interestingly enough, Graffiti 1 works really well on the Apple Watch, but it would be better if the Apple Watch supported the Apple Pencil because it’s so much easier to hand write with a stylus than it is with your finger, especially one as touch sensitive as the Apple Pencil.

I write like it’s Graffiti 1 anyway, because it’s easier than having to get all my letters perfect. It knows what I mean…… except for voice dictation. I have better luck when I’m on Bluetooth headphones, and I cannot be very far from my phone, because I think the voice files are actually processed on your phone rather than your watch.

I want an Apple Watch version named after me, because I have some good ideas. What if CIA gave us those batteries that lasted months without a recharge, and a chip that would fit inside a watch and be so powerful that you don’t need your phone for anything. I have a feeling that would involve creating a larger memory ROM, but surely if they have enough room for as much as they do now, they can put more RAM on the board. The biggest problem would be overheating, but if they can make tiles for a space shuttle to guard against heat, they can probably design something like that to absorb heat in an Apple Watch.

The battery is the main thing, because Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and a 5g connection all take a lot of battery at once, and that’s before it starts processing apps. The one I use the most is “Find My iPhone,” because I can make it make noise from my watch….. unless my phone is dead…. then I’m on my own and that’s not a pretty sight. Although because of the Apple ecosystem, as long as I have a wi-fi connection, I’ll still get iMessage on my iPad. I will still get iMessage on my phone, as well as SMS.

Although I think if I ever get a new Android tablet, I’ll want it to have a slot for a SIM card because I won’t use anything for texting on an Android but Signal, Wix Secure Messenger, and WhatsApp. I use Facebook Messenger because it’s easy, but it’s not encrypted, either. If you want to chat with me on either of those platforms and already have my phone number, please do.

On my author page at Facebook, you can leave all kinds of comments, and the more engagement I have, the closer I am to being paid. It also makes it where anyone can message me, you don’t have to be a follower (although it would be cool, no lie). Sometimes I wonder if I should do an FAQ on Facebook as an introduction, but I don’t know what people would ask. I’ll answer anything, you just have to respect that “no” and “that’s too private” are valid answers.

Anyone is welcome to contribute, from my biggest fans to my biggest detractors. I do not think I am the expert on anything but myself, and your stories are your stories. I often get so many likes on a post that I don’t know what triggered the reception. Is it the time of day, is it my content, is it my characters, etc.?

The biggest surprise is being more popular in other countries than I am here. I have a huge following in India and the UK. Plus, I have flags all over the world where I know who they are. If you don’t want me to know who you are based on geography, I would suggest a VPN. 🙂 I have so many people addicted to this web site that know me in real life, because they’re in the position where they don’t want to be written about, but they inhale everything I’ve written as truth because it is interesting and presented in a way that hopefully everyone can understand it. That I try as often as I can to use universal examples so that I’m not attacking anyone. I am laying down the facts as I see them.

Very few people are willing to stand by and let themselves be written as a villain, because that’s how they see themselves in my writing- not that I intentionally portray them that way. I have made it a point to record every up and down in every relationship, so that you don’t see me as paining anyone as perfect, not even Jesus.

Speaking of which, I am watching a docudrama on Netflix called “Testament,” and it’s all about Moses, starting with the story from when he was a child. The documentary part is interviewing all kinds of scholars from the Abrahmic tradition because he’s the only “character” that appears in all three holy books. There is a lot more information about him that way, and the Jews in the conversation have been very enlightening, because Jesus was a Jew. It’s fun learning about the traditions he would have been taught as a child, before he started branching out……. because in order to understand the future, you have to understand the past.

I can absolutely believe that as a historically known INFJ that his divinity started the moment he started arguing with the rabbis in the temple when he was 12 years old. That his divinity does not come from resurrection, but about being able to go toe to toe with the best theological minds in the world when he wasn’t even a man yet. His bar mitzvah was still a year away.

To me, I believe as Pete Rollins has said, that “a/theism is the greatest love story ever told, and the truth is in the slash.” To me, theology is not the end goal, whether there is a heaven and a hell, whether there is an afterlife at all. It is the ritual and the argument.

I got sidetracked when I was talking about Gordon Atkinson, who used to blog as “The Real Live Preacher,” as if he was a carnival act. I have never related more to anything in my life. He really opened up to me in those essays, and I understood myself so much better after reading him. I didn’t grow up to be a pastor, but I grew up with a pastor dad. It was hard not to feel like “The Real Life Preacher’s Kid,” because when you are a public figure’s family, you’re all in the fish bowl together……. and sometimes, two things happen…… severally or jointly. The first is that people think preacher’s kids are somehow better than everyone else. I mean, I am, but let’s not talk about Lindsay. (KIDDING)

I only say that because I really bought in. Lindsay was a walking wild hair, and I envied her for half my life because of it. Still do on days when she has to be “on” and I’m in burnout mode. I do my best work by standing behind her and just listening.

I did not have the strength (and sometimes still don’t) to have equal relationships with people by calling them on their bullshit. She learned it at three. I learned it at 45. There is a slight difference between those two ages, and I have to say that it probably comes from birth order. I was almost six when she was born, because her birthday is in June and mine is in September.

Therefore, I don’t have a lot of memories of what it was like to be an only child, but I do have quite a bit more than someone whose younger sibling was born when they were a toddler. I was blessed to have a sibling, because I was that kid. I talked about different stuff than most kids. I had the vocabulary of some adults by the time I was two or three because no one ever talked down to me. I was expected to keep up, and I did. Before Lindsay was born, I didn’t have that mostly neurotypical kid to intervene on my behalf. My main interest and what served me all through school was finding an outcast and sitting next to them, because I only wanted to talk to one person at a time.

Everyone thought it was because I was a preacher’s kid, and I’m sure that’s definitely part of it, but it’s not the whole story. I hate small talk, and if I was only sitting with one person, it wasn’t a good bet that we’d be doing small talk for very long.

That’s how Daniel became my boyfriend in 2nd/3rd grade. We were both “that kid.” We had more to talk about than basic 2nd grade shit, because we were both way beyond our peers with reading and music.

I will say something again that is meaningful to me about choosing Daniel. Not only did he know my mother, she taught him music for at least a year. So, that meant that Daniel was in some of my school plays with me, and my mother trained his voice. I can’t wait until we have our own house that will fit a piano, because I want to hear Daniel play my mother’s piano, as well. I am sure that it will become four-handed duets in no time, because I can’t keep the left and right rhythms going at the same time. If he doesn’t already play piano, I can at least teach him “All Blues” by Miles Davis.

Yes, Jason Moran. I know you’re terribly impressed right now. It is almost like I’m the savant you missed in taking on students. A pity, really (it’s got an easy bass line and like two or three chords). Although I’m pretty sure I’ve heard him play keyboards in his music, so I might get an accompanist out of this deal. 😉

I might get an accompanist, anyway, if Colin wants me to lay down some tracks for his band. I think we’d have a great time together since he plays guitar and I sing, plus he has professional recording equipment in his attic. I can’t wait to show Lindsay that room, because I think it would be her heaven. Maybe for once we could be in the same band. 🙂

Lindsay was in a band in college that I really liked called “The Cosmonauts,” and my favorite t-shirt at that time was “I’m with the band.” It went over really well with my in-laws…….. because I was wearing a nice sweater and when I took it off, it sort of amused and horrified them. I explained that it was my sister in the rock band, and I can’t tell whether that impressed or horrified them, either.

I have never been in a family that was really accepting of me, because I always felt like I had no right to take up room. When I felt like I had enough clout with Dana’s family to have my say, Dana was horrified because I was changing her family dynamics. Well, of course I was. You are introducing a whole new person.

With Kathleen, I think she really bought into the fact that she only wanted to have babies with men. And, to be honest, I think she was afraid of me becoming even more psychiatrically unstable because the research on taking antidepressants while pregnant suggested it would be dicey. But I didn’t care if Kathleen was the biological mom. I would have been happy either way. We just didn’t have enough money to swing it, or blamed it on that, anyway.

I think eventually I realized that I didn’t want to have kids with her, because even if I wasn’t the extra kid, she’d always treat me like that because that’s how she treated me currently.

My biological clock went CRAZY when I got together with Dana, because she was the right person to have kids with, even in retrospect. I would have preferred her to carry the baby, but she wasn’t buying it. She said she’d do it as a last resort. But by the time wee got to the OB/GYN, the phrase “geriatric pregnancy” did not sound appealing and we just kind of put the idea away.

I don’t think either one of us were actually capable of integrating an infant into our schedules without major changes, most notably getting out of cooking because Dana would never make enough money to support housing for both of us if we were depending on me to make all the money. My job history isn’t that stable with all the medical conditions I have, and it’s hard to integrate just how many doctors’ appointments I have without a cooking job, because my days off weren’t generally Saturday and Sunday. I could schedule my appointments in the morning and still be on time for work.

However, I have IT to fall back on, and as far as I know, Dana doesn’t. I didn’t pressure her to go into it at all, Aaron just noticed she was a great coder. She wanted to be a teacher, but didn’t make that a reality, either. We moved to Houston so that she could teach, because you didn’t need a Master’s there. She was rejected by one program and didn’t try to get into any others. It’s a shame. She would have been a marvelous teacher. I just don’t think she was in any shape to be a teacher by the time we arrived in Houston.

I don’t blame her in any way, shape, or form. The only appropriate reaction to an abnormal situation is an abnormal reaction. She was very depressed and I understood intimately. The problem was that I was also very depressed, and I couldn’t handle Dana’s depression at the same time.

Then, I got an influx of “new relationship energy” that was supposed to be clean, light, and fun. Well, since I was a jackass and told her my feelings were starting to change, she started not telling me things, as if that would make the situation better. I was guessing too much of the time as to what would make her happy, all the while making her ridiculously angry and not knowing why.

Enter Daniel.

“Oh, wait. You’re autistic. That changes EVERYTHING. If you’ve told me this before, I don’t mean to make you rehash, but tell me again how your autism affects you.”

It was the end of all the feeling like he was being bombarded by questions, because he’s a Doc. He saw which way that train was going and hopped on.

As we were talking, he said, “do you think the authoritative part of your personality is that way because you feel safer to express what you feel to me?” That was a lightbulb moment for me, because it’s exactly the thing I’ve been trying to explain to everyone for all time. If I don’t think you can handle my feelings, I won’t tell you what they are. If you don’t like my tone, you can tell me to rephrase something. But the more I don’t feel like I have to social mask around you, the more I let my guard down and I start writing like I’m blogging- to an international audience and not an audience of one. So, even if it’s not a personal attack, it comes across like one because I am not running what I say through every filter ever. I want those closest to me, especially someone I want to build a life with, to be able to take me at full strength. Daniel has agreed that he’s just as intense as I am, but the thing that was the most valuable about this conversation was feeling seen. And not just seen by Daniel as my partner, but seen by Daniel the doctor as well.

Otherwise, he wouldn’t have said, “oh, shit. This changes everything.”

It does, and I’m looking forward to every fucking minute.

So Many… Just Roll With Me Today

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

What experiences in life helped you grow the most?

Last night, I was rereading the long letter from Supergrover (having so much to read helps when she’s out of pocket because of course the second time I read something, a different aspect will jump out), and she was talking about one of her kids’ partners. She told me that the kid’s partner had told the kid that the turning point for them in their journey with alcohol was losing her kid. A tear came to my eye and I thought, “alcohol and bipolar present the same. I am this kid.” Apparently the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Her kid is her, and I have no doubt they have the same type affect on people. It wasn’t the point of the letter, but the things that affect me that she’s written are mostly the things that connect to something deep inside me.

I felt more relaxed than I’d felt in years. Supergrover didn’t understand our pattern, didn’t understand why I didn’t accept certain things about our relationship, me surprised at how conscientious and dedicated she really is at being a friend, and how because I didn’t believe her, I missed out on a lot of things. But the reason I didn’t believe her is that she wasn’t showing up. She wasn’t laying her true feelings on the table. When she got so angry she couldn’t see straight, finally she had the strength to say what she’d been hiding for a very long time. That’s what I mean by “breaking her open.” I don’t care that she was angry. Her tone wasn’t the point. Her offering was…. and that offering was “I’m hurt and tired.”

Now, it’s her job to decide whether she wants to ask me about what I’ve written, or if she’d like her pre-conceived notions as to why I’d write what I’d write stand. She thinks that I continually paint her as a villain and the times I paint her as my friend are somehow invalid. It does not make sense to her that I can love her and be angry at the same time, but yes it does. When she got into full swing, she sounded exactly like me, picking up style and structure, painting her feelings as fact (about other people, but same style)….. and I wondered what the difference was in her tone and mine. What is she reacting to that I’m not reacting to in her?

We often hate the things in others that we hate about ourselves. She learned that I’m sometimes just as private as she is because I don’t want to rock the boat, either…. and didn’t like that I chose to talk about it here because she thought I was attacking her. No, I was reflecting on a long and hard road, which looks different if you think it is at an end. In effect, she was offended by the grieving process, because I think I’ve done my fair share of denial, anger, and bargaining- to name a few. I have said a lot of things that weren’t favorable to her when she wasn’t being any more favorable to me. She called my blog a “Get Out of Jail Free” card to be shitty to her, and I didn’t know how to explain that if she really wanted me to let her go, it was going to be ugly inside myself. That I had a million different feelings to process and none of them had to do with the last 15 minutes.

I had to process 10 years, all without ever really having the input I needed. However, I’ve always gotten what I needed when we were tracking together, and I can’t hope for much, but I can hope that we’re at least back at the same starting gate. Or perhaps we’re on different sides of the concourse, but still both seeing the Nats…. and that’s something.

She said she was furious beyond belief at some entries, and moved by others. I would cut off any one of my limbs to know which entries moved her, because I have heard all about the ones that make her furious.

I had to process the time I wanted to be the partner, to when I knew she had a partner, and going from the friend who would have come to the wedding to the person that would have officiated if I’d been asked. But she didn’t give me the strength for that.

By the time Bryn got married, she was done with our church, so she asked me to marry her instead of her pastor. The wedding went off with a hitch. 😉

In fact, the thing that meant the most to me is that the groom, whom I had maybe all of two days with before the wedding, congratulated me on a job well done, and he said, “I had a lot of trepidation when Bryn said that she had this friend who wanted to do the wedding, because I wanted it to be perfect. And it was.” I don’t think he knew my back story- that I had prepared for this moment unintentionally by learning how to do weddings from the age of five. As I have said, the joke is that no one in my group of friends wanted to wait until I was done with grad school to perform a ceremony I had memorized by nine.

Although the wedding was taken directly out of the Book of Common Prayer; we just took all the religious references out because Bryn absolutely believes in the power of the universe, but I don’t know whether she would translate that to “relationship with God,” as many people do.

The thing my dad taught me that stuck with me is to go through the wedding at the rehearsal without saying the vows. Unless it was just the three of us, if they’d said the vows at the wedding rehearsal, they would have been married AT THE REHEARSAL because there were witnesses. This presented as funny only once. I got confused for a second as the vows started because I didn’t look down at my portfolio and said the groom’s name where the bride’s should have been. Bryn corrected me because she caught it and I didn’t- brain fart- and we laughed and moved on.

The thing that my dad also taught me is that brides and grooms get very nervous at their weddings, and you can coach them to the extent that you can with something like that. If someone gets tongue-tied, I say, “if so, your answer is ‘I do.'” I have never met a couple where if they hesitated during their vows, it meant they had cold feet. Most people are anxious at being in front of public.

In terms of the wedding itself, I missed Dana terribly for two reasons. The first is that I cannot imagine how much fun we would have had visiting our old haunts, and I know she would have loved being a preacher’s wife for a day. It was so fucking weird going to Burgerville without her. Yet, I did not call her and tell her to meet me there because I couldn’t. I never want to get back together with her, but I also really miss being her best friend, the part where we never, ever got angry enough to be physically violent. There was not that kind of emotion tension to create that kind of fight.

I know that this is still, in part, true for her as well because of what she said when my mother died. I hadn’t talked to her in months, maybe a year or a year and a half. The first thing I said was “thank you for picking up. I wouldn’t have called unless it was important.” She said that she would never not pick up because she figured that if I was calling her, it must be important. That is a long way of healing from standing me up at the bank, literally. So, even if she didn’t want to be a preacher’s wife in person, she definitely was the strength I chose to lean on that day. It was like she was my phantom limb the whole time, and I never felt alone, because we were every bit as much of a team as our then-pastor, as Dana, Bryn, and I all met at the same church, and we both folded into Bryn’s family…… even though because I had dated Matt, I could tell he was in a pissing match with Dana and she didn’t notice….. whether she was blind or not is debatable, because someone can present a game to you and you can say, “I’m better off pretending this doesn’t exist because it’s not worth my time to care.”

All of this is to say that Dana, Bryn, and I have a very long history, and it’s why I jumped on a plane to Portland and felt sick when I landed. I could feel my anxiety melting the further we went down 99W, because Bryn lives in Newberg, the 100% insurance I wouldn’t run into anyone I didn’t like. I don’t think we went into the city except karaoke night. I did my usual, “I Feel Lucky,” by Mary-Chapin Carpenter. It fits my voice and after I’ve had a beer my accent gets stronger. If that is true of another Southerner I know up here, it wouldn’t be a bad thing to hear that out of her, either. It’s a more rolling lilt than mine, because for some reason which I will certainly look up on YouTube (linguistics lectures are fire), the Southern accent gets softer during the drive from Texas to Mississippi.

And yes, when I spelled Mississippi, I did say in my head “M. I. SSI. SSI. Crooked letter Crooked letter i.” And I’m a music nerd, so my slowed so I could do the rhythm with my fingers as well. I love that language is music whether or not it comes with notes. It’s why I’m a hard core gangster rap fan, as well as lighter stuff like hip-hop. I am learning to write dialogue, just like I’m learning plot and character from Issa Rae on Netflix.

The reason that I want to learn dialogue like this is think about Amy Sherman-Palladino and Aaron Sorkin. They’ve both made their careers by speeding up dialogue to 33o bpm, and because the rhythm is faster, your brain contains it because you have to strain to keep up not to miss anything….. and the rhythm reinforces it.

For instance, who doesn’t remember the way Alan Arkin said, “How’d you cut your hand, Josh?” They may not remember the rhythm, but it will certainly bring up feelings…… because Yo-Yo Ma was also there.

I asked you to roll with me, and got off on a tangent as per my normal.

I have no doubt that said pastor was mad as FUCK, but I hope that she understood it wasn’t about trying to keep them out, but to keep us in. We are not saying fuck you to that world. We are making our peace with it so we can leave it behind. We are processing feelings that go back to 1997…. about our friendship, about who we are and always have been to each other, and how “for all our mutual experiences, our separate conclusions are the same.”

I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that Supergrover would love to meet Bryn, perhaps even more than she wanted to meet me, because Bryn has a story she needs to hear…………. because Bryn has been my friend since 1997, when she was a teenager (and so was I, but I was 19 and Bryn was maybe 14). I am not saying it would ever happen, but I know that Supergrover would roll her eyes at some of what Bryn had to say because it will just seem so very familiar to her, as if Bryn and I are speaking with one voice.

I can’t get them together, because Supergrover and I aren’t there yet. But what I can do is say on my blog that Bryn is coming to visit me in  May, do with that information what you will.

One of the sweetest things about Supergrover’s letter was that she said my words felt like “pricks on her skin that grew into big holes she couldn’t close anymore.” What I thought was happening was happening. Instead of asking me why I’d write what I’d write, she saved it all up until she was so mad she couldn’t see straight, and tell me she was busy. I could tell, and I wasn’t angry that she wasn’t responding to me fast enough. She couldn’t see that what I wanted was for her to open up to me and tell me all the times I’d hurt her rather than kicking the can down the road. I’ve said so many heavy, scary things that I cannot count them. It is why I said that I’ve been naked in front of her so many more times than I have with a lover. It is a different voice for me, that my internal monologue was also, in fact, her external monologue. It is a weird feeling to know someone so intimately through reading their work and not giving that person a hug. It begins to feel like a rock concert, and I mean this on a deep and spiritual level.

Yesterday, I told you that she’s my tuba, or vocally the basso profundo in my life. Not the lead trumpet player, the top note. The base of the chord upon which everything is built. Who hasn’t gotten close to the woofers at Third Eye Blind. Who hasn’t felt the way your chest expands and your skin buzzes? That’s how it feels to have another person (especially one like her, the rock part) inside me, because she’s never been separate from me and we’ve never learned to pick up the other’s social cues. Incidentally, as an autistic person, if we did have a day to day relationship she’d be the perfect person to social mask when my sister wasn’t with me. She doesn’t have time for that, I’m just telling you that the way she has her shit together is what I want.

The worst part is that she thinks she doesn’t.

It’s understandable. She lives on no sleep. I’m not sure she’s had myelin on her nerves since the Reagan administration….. and I can’t tell you the line that told me that, but it was funny.

Again, reading her words, her true feelings, relaxes me and I read to the rhythm of Dave Grusin, because I like the theme to “Three Days of the Condor……. among many, many others. St. Elsewhere is probably at the top, followed by Doogie Howser, M.D. The reason I like the theme is that I’ve never seen the end of the movie. It got weird (like the misogyny in old Bond movies). I think this is fair play because the novel is called “Six Days of the Condor,” so it seems they only filmed half of it and gave up. The difference between our relationship now and our relationship at first was that in the first few weeks, the rhythm was “Your Love is My Drug,” because she’d said some very exciting things. New relationship energy ate my lunch. I have no compunction about confronting people on problems before they happen to establish boundaries, and neither does she. I warned her that this could turn into an emotional affair because of two things. Internet chat creates a sense of intimacy that may or may not be there in real life. That you become disconnected from your body, so sexuality and gender become irrelevant. This is what I meant about saying that I hoped she was going to be Cynthia Nixon, and self-deprecating that it’s because I’m not that good a writer. I was not saying that my writing is my way into her heart and therefore I thought I could change her like when we used to quote Ellen Degeneres about “winning a toaster.” I thought that reading me would change her, because women don’t fall in love with other people’s private parts all the time. This is because sexual relationships with women are built on emotional connection, just like they are with straight women. You can break up a marriage faster than you can break up two women who’ve flipped each other shit since high school.

But I can tell you the exact moment her feelings stayed the same and mine went haywire. I was telling her that her story felt like a drug, and she said, “I’m sure I’ll drink your liquor, too.” Not meant to be a pass or a flirt, but so smooth af that my knees knocked. If you’re lesbian or bi, did I make you do the thing…….. Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ. Her gender and sexuality didn’t fly out the window, mine did. It didn’t matter what she looked like, I wanted more and I was in.

If I could describe our relationship in one sentence that would resonate with my generation, it would be that our relationship on the surface seems like it’s “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.” It’s really “Bel-Air.” I feel that way all the time, every day. If you are not familiar with both shows, because “Bel-Air” is so new, let me catch you up.

“The Fresh Prince” is cute, and everyone knows the intro….. which is the scariest event that happens in the whole show (so far) portrayed as comedy. In “Bel-Air,” you find out what happened that day, how he really met Jazz, etc. It’s violent, and even in California you see the real problems in their family. Carlton is an addict because he’s a perfectionist and has anxiety. I identify with him on two levels, because I am both versions of Carlton on the shows, and the actor is from my neighborhood (I don’t know him, he was born after I left).

What I have noticed is that if you want to learn anything from powerful people, you don’t try to be a gladiator trying to impress them. You become the Olivia to their Cyrus, but not when they’re working. When they’re sitting on the couch drinking wine and eating popcorn after having fought gloves off all day. Because the fighting isn’t personal and those moments don’t matter as much as a conversation with a good friend about What Kind of Day Has It Been?

When that involved snuggling in my dreams, I knew I was fuccccccccccked, because I knew my dreams would go deeper than that while I found homeostasis. It was hell on earth, because she wasn’t going through those physical changes and I was. When you know your heart has barked up the wrong tree, you can’t tell your heart just to “snap out of it.”If I could write what really happened between us, you’d read it to the tune of a billion dollars, especially if she was my co-author. It would become a franchise series on Netflix, because our story has never been told before. It is an original idea, one that hasn’t been represented on screen much, if ever. It’s why I hope that those 10 seasons are all here. I don’t want to turn my blog into a Netflix series, I just hope that much story has been told.

That I am at least a good enough writer for that. I want our story to be quiet, yet enormous. There are so many differences between us that make us interesting, yet nothing can tear us apart for a moment of any day.

Let me tell you the day I knew what kind of situation my situation was in. How I fell in love with her the second time. First of all, Ifigured out how that woman who’s loved her friend for 10 years and nothing could tear them apart actually worked, so I was more capable than I was in the beginning. Secondly, it was something she said. She said that once marriage was marriage, it was for life. That it existed great sex, no sex, whatever. That’s how lesbian marriages work every single day. I finally had some words and context I really understood because it was written in my language. Everyone knows that couple that’s been together a hundred years, but they lost interest in each other during about year 12.

So, I know why she was angry I blocked her on Facebook, but I wasn’t. I needed to stop seeing her picture in my feed all day. She blocked me on instagram, and I was so grateful because I can’t see her profile unless I’m logged out. The only time I saw them is when they were referer stats on my blog, because I wasn’t logged in on all web broswers. It gave me some room to breathe, and our entire relationship was based on e-mail, not getting to know each other in person or in a group, which created different outcomes. Our relationship existed in text only between us, and it broke my personality in half. That’s why I couldn’t stay with Dana. I had grown past her and we were on separate paths no matter where in the world Supergrover and I were because Internet. She’s handfasted as my yellow string, and it runs between us. I used to call it a chord, because it worked in both our first languages.

The pleasure of my life was when we returned to them. It’s the life experience that helped me grow the most, by far…….

But what I need you to remember is that though it’s Three Days of the Condor visually, the other three days are in the book.

I just haven’t noticed all the ways not speaking each other’s love language has harmed us, because I could see what she was doing to show me love, but I couldn’t see that she was receiving what I was saying with love. She’s hurt beyond belief at some of the things I’ve written and painted it as fact that I’m out to get her when she doesn’t know the first thing about what I have to say, because I’m not talking about our real issues here. She thinks she’s the villain in the story when I’m saying that we tumble and roll. I am often the villain in this story, and have said as much. She sees how much I try to explain how her choices affect me and chooses to believe I’m being nefarious. I’m being INFJ autistic Doctor Who Malcolm Tucker.

In my head, she could be amazing in both roles.

Nothing That Would Change Anything

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

What advice would you give to your teenage self?

My life didn’t get interesting until I was 30, and just got more interesting from there. I wouldn’t want to give my teenage self any advice that would alter the events that led me to DC, to Zac, and to Oliver, who is a dog.

That’s because in order to get here, I had to go through some really rough stuff- and yet none of it is anything I would give away or trade. I found my place, even at 23, but I had to go and come back. I don’t know why. I really liked it here. I just didn’t think I could make it on my own. I do not have that capability, to take on the 1,001 things it takes to move in 30 days and also find a roommate. To be fair, though, I didn’t know about Craig’s List back then. Perhaps if I had, I wouldn’t have met the people I needed to meet, and that’s the one thing I wouldn’t want to change for the kid inside me.

So, in order not to change anything:

  • I’m sorry mom doesn’t understand. Don’t spend your life worrying about it because there’s nothing you can do to make her change. There will be small steps, but no giant leaps. Stay as close to her as you can, but admit to yourself when spending time with her makes you feel unloved.
  • Lindsay is going to be big one day. I just won’t tell you how. You could learn a thing or two from her if you’d let yourself.
  • You’re ADHD, Autistic, and Bipolar. That’s something I will tell you right now, because when you get older it’s going to be harder to get tested for autism, and you need to get on meds stat. You’re struggling in school and you don’t know why. Your doctors might not, either, because there’s not a lot of research in the year you live on women and autism. But give yourself at least that head start on life. I know hearing those things is intimidating. Go to a psychiatrist, anyway.
  • You need to practice gratitude and mindfulness because when I was your age I took some kind of Scantron quiz that inventoried my personality. My psychiatrist said that I had the lowest self-esteem of anyone who’d ever taken the test. Write every day. Go back and look to see if what you wrote is still true. Give yourself a chance to see yourself as you are, not how you feel in the moment.
  • In every relationship, you need to ask yourself what the other person is bringing to the table, and when you feel ignored or sad or hurt or whatever your emotions might be, listen to how people respond. If it feels like they can’t hear you, they probably can’t…… and there’s a lot of don’t want to in “can’t.” Find people who can hear you.
  • There is no such thing as a 50/50 relationship. It will often look like 60/40 or even 70/30 because of confirmation bias. But notice when you feel like you can’t get a break, can’t do anything right. You’re not stupid. I won’t tell you what they are, either, but stupid isn’t on the list.
  • Because of the autism, you’re going to meltdown a lot. Find appropriate outlets for your rage. There are going to be many inappropriate outlets, and I will tell you that you find most of them. But not all. Because you have all of these disorders, you are going to have to learn to be more patient, thinking longer before you speak, because there are so many words that can’t be taken back which you realize just after you’ve already said them. Even when you’re on fire, you can’t take that out on someone else. And yes, I know that your nerves are on fire, that you go into a red mist rage with every physical symptom imaginable. It’s going to hurt you if you don’t take care of it.
  • The nerve endings on your thumb that you sliced into while trying to cut a lime will never grow back. I’m 46, so I will update you if the situation changes (not a chance, we’re stuck).
  • You will love soda your whole life because that’s one of the things you and mom will talk about on the phone. There’s not a lot you can do to keep her talking if you talk about your own life, but she’ll tell you all about her job, her friends, her husband, etc. It’s annoying that she never has any questions for you about your life, because she really doesn’t want to know. Do it, anyway. Find things you can talk about. Find a lot of them.
  • Mothers don’t generally last as long as you want them to; Lindsay and I will never be the same. I figured it might give you some perspective to know how few years you have left with her. Find different ways to bridge the gap. But don’t miss a chance to leave Houston, ever. You’ll get along better with her when you don’t live in the same city and a visit is special.
  • You’ll want a passport very soon. Might want to start on that. She’s cute.

Bold of You to Assume I Need Sleep Now…..

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

If you didn’t need sleep, what would you do with all the extra time?

I would play it by ear. I don’t have the kind of mind that would plan it out in advance. I function way better as the red team than the planner/finisher.

Some people are unfamiliar with the term “red team,” but it’s journalism slang for people who point out the flaws in your plan. There’s a whole episode on the red team in Aaron Sorkin’s “The Newsroom.” Very, very much like prepping a presidential candidate for a debate; the red team researches the blowback you’re going to get before you publish something.

It is so much easier to red team than it is to create it because an autistic mind sees patterns and can tell you what doesn’t fit. Other people can do it, too, but allistic and autistic people have different criteria for pattern recognition. This pattern recognition is created by our autism, but also our extensive social masking. We research neurotypical people, but we do not take it in. We do not become neurotypical by socializing with you. We make ourselves seem more acceptable to you and you interpret it as “getting better.”

But, if you try to tell a neurotypical person that they’re wrong about something, you’re fucked. Because mental health issues mean they treat you with kid gloves. Your opinion comes across as “why does this child think she knows anything?” There’s a huge superiority complex that comes from not having mental health issues or processing disorders. It’s such a catch-22 because you can’t hide it and living with the consequences of telling people is a concentrated tisane of depression and anxiety, served to you every morning even when you don’t sleep.

It makes people feel better about themselves when they’re in conflict with you and you have mental health issues. People are so much more likely to write off my feelings as symptoms of my mental health than actually consider the fact that they might have hurt me. I am responsible for hearing when I have hurt someone and responding; I am also responsible for knowing when people are seeing symptoms when I express needs. Normal things that people should care about, should worry about, all of the sudden become “you should take something for that.” Bitch, please. My psychologist thinks you’re a freak show and my psychiatrist says “not enough medication in the world.” Truly, there is no medication in the world that will fix someone’s perception that it’s always your brain (therefore, you’re always wrong) because you have a diagnosed problem with yours and they don’t. It would be gaslighting if it was malicious, but it’s not. It’s every bit as systemic as racism.

It’s the sign, being treated like a pest. That’s the sign that someone thinks of you as mentally ill and not a person anymore… but not consciously. It’s not personal, it’s global. I am a diagnosis to a lot of people, and I finally stopped catering to them because I started treating me like a diagnosis as well. It didn’t do anything to make me feel better and often made me feel worse…. and in fact, a lot of the “symptoms” people see are indeed symptoms- of autism, not depression and anxiety or hypomania. In some ways, it was such a blessing because the symptoms I thought I had from depression were actually processing disorders. I felt lighter than I had in years, because that means my depression isn’t as bad as I think it is.

There’s never going to be a time I can wean off of my depression medication, but there is a lot of comfort in things being unique to me as a person rather than brought on by depression. They just tend to work in tandem. If my autism gives me demand avoidance, my depression will tell me I’m useless and worthless. Anxiety will tell me that if I do not get with the program, I will keep on being worthless. The boss music moves faster, and the threat never appears.

Therefore, I’ve never fallen into a pit of fire, but I haven’t saved the princess, either.

I take that back. I have saved the princess once. I bought an NES controller for my PC, and downloaded an emulator capable of cheats like a Game Genie. The only time I’ve ever beaten Super Mario Brothers was turning up the cheats to full-on invincible. I didn’t have to do that for Alduin (main storyline villain in Skyrim, a dragon).

If I didn’t sleep at all, I’d probably play video games more. I don’t have time for them, which is why I stick to Skyrim and don’t pick up new titles. If you get into Skyrim, it’s different than getting into any other game. There are so many makers of free content addons called “mods” that add quests and characters that you’ll never finish it all. I haven’t even finished all of the quests in the main game, much less expansion packs. While Bethesda is amazing, the creators didn’t make Skyrim immortal. The modders did. It’s basically a video gamer’s blog, because they keep updating the story and the software as newer hardware comes out (getting Skyrim Legendary Edition to run on Windows 10 should be in your quest journal).

Besides, I’m a monotropic thinker. I am happy disappearing into Skyrim more than once rather than getting used to new game mechanics every time. I can change them slowly over time if I want. Part of the joy of the creators’ community is that they’re able to create new animations as well.

And, of course, I love the Thieves Guild, and not because they’re bad. It’s because it’s the closest you get in Skyrim to being a spy. You’re tasked with burning someone’s beehives and stealing something out of someone’s house without anyone knowing you were there. I may not be Jack Reacher, but I get to feel like it for a little bit.

It is so easy to me looking back to see how intelligence became my special interest. Hearing about my great uncle when I was a kid made intelligence feel secretive in a good way. I know for sure that my great uncle was a watchdog on CIA and the military, part of the solution and not the problem.

I have a couple of stories that prove to me that the American government is not lily white from that era, so I also do not think of spies as superheroes. Because James Bond is, well, James Bond, no one thinks of spies as the babies they really are. Most are recruited at the same age as people in the military. CIA recruits at universities as well because they always need people fluent in more than one language. As John le Carré points out, when you’re old enough to do those jobs well, people stop asking you to do them.

What I do think is that I identify with living a double life. My personality on the street is not shown online, and my online personality isn’t me in real life. I am not hiding one from the other, you just can’t only know me in one way and see everything. It’s not the way I’m trying to present online and in person. “The medium is the message.” -Marshall McLuhan.

If I never slept at all, I think I would spend more time researching. It’s my favorite thing whether it’s intelligence operations or biographies of real people. This is because the more non-fiction I read, the more I have a library of images in my head to make correlations. Reading about intelligence is like reading any novel. You find random facts about everything while on one topic. That’s because nothing happens with one decision. With worldwide intelligence, you may have to visit Mexico and Iran in a day. So, in the course of one operation I can learn the habits and mannerisms of a policeman in Oaxaca and a tea shop owner in downtown Tehran.

I am deadly serious in that I believe the Netflix version of “Carmen Sandiego” is the most realistic show we have about intelligence available currently. Carmen is a young woman, but I’m not sure how young. Her friends seem to be teenagers, so maybe college? Anyway, she has a ground support team (ginger twins named Zack nd Ivy) and a handler, Player.

Player is not on the scene, he’s kind of like Justin Long in “Galaxy Quest.” He’s at the computer with the floorplans in front of him, but he’s never in Carmen’s physical location. And because they’re an intelligence agency unto their own, they’re not trying to mimic another one poorly. I really like the relationship between case officer and handler when it’s written as a funny and touching buddy comedy, which this is (my other favorite is “Spy” with Melissa McCarthy and Miranda Hart). In this version of Carmen Sandiego, Player is written very much like her little brother, and it makes child labor so endearing. 😉

Speaking of “child labor,” I love The Disney Channel. They’re the ones that have 14-year-old children saving the world at every turn. I believe that’s a lot more realistic than expecting me to figure it out. Plus, I love writing for adolescents, because it doesn’t take fancy language to make a good story.

It is not lost on me that I bond with these weird little families because Player is coded as autistic. Carmen is coded as CPTSD. Zack and Ivy are clearly ADHD. Ivy is also coded as queer. When you’re the ones picked to live in the shadows, you don’t get to pick and choose who comes with you. The relationships just keep getting bigger to accept who everyone is. Player is never going to be on the ground support. Zack and Ivy are never going to sit still. Carmen is never going to let other people control anything, because she deals in burning beehives.

If you love “Doctor Who,” you’ll probably love “Carmen Sandiego” as well, because it’s very much the same idea. Zack, Ivy, and Player are very much Carmen’s “fam.” And she has more important companions in her life, but that would involve spoilers I’d be devastated to give you before the story unfolded on Netflix.

Often the best representations of intelligence agencies across the world are fictional, because then people have so much more license with it. Less chance CIA would get upset with me if I changed their name and gave them global power to track down alien activity. Maybe throw in Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones as the main characters. I don’t know. Seems risky. Think anyone would watch it?

I am watching very closely at how fictional characters are written across the board. My alternate history combines my two greatest passions in life, so I don’t know whether passion for cooking fed intelligence or the other way around, but now they are inextricably interrelated into the plot of my novel. The one thing that will happen for this alternate history with certainty is that OSS will not transition to CIA. It will transition to something else (or stay OSS, because its future would also be fictional). To me, it is better to create my own intelligence agency with its own fictional structure/rules than it is to guess what CIAs structures are and be wrong. I am a Virgo. I can’t be wrong. It creates a blip in the Matrix.

I have archetypes for my characters thanks to YouTube. There are lots of interviews with people from DIA, CIA, NSA, etc. Here is the one truism I can tell you from hours of all that. In every single one, someone says, “when you were a kid, did you think about working in intelligence?” In every single one, they say “nope. It just fell into my lap.” I think this is due to age. Most of the interviews I’ve watched are with people that are at least my age. When we were kids, spies were approached. There was no “go to CIA’s web site and apply.” Future female spies will be able to say that they applied when they were 18, all they did was send in a resume.

In fact, the way Tony was recruited was through an ad in the newspaper for a government artist. He was intrigued because he thought, “what would the government want with an artist?” Turns out, when an intelligence agency wants people to forge passports and documents, they call it “government artist” in the newspaper. 😉

I am certain that people still get approached because there are people out there doing all sorts of things that would be useful to CIA. For instance, you might love languages or cartography and think you’ll end up as a professor somewhere. But when you get up to six languages or images no one else has, someone will be impressed.

And honestly, we’re starting to be impressed as a country. People loved Madam Secretary, which is a great example of a show that shows how government works (heightened, but realistic). Not everything is accomplished in the shadows, but……….. “for everything else, there’s Visa?” When I think of CIA and State, I don’t want to picture Elizabeth. I want to read the real stories of the people in those jobs. I have read every word Hillary Clinton has ever written, both fiction and non.

I suppose I am trying to find what any writer is- the ability to find themselves while constantly researching other people.

The One Where I Use The Term “Manage” Loosely

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

How do you manage screen time for yourself?

I am obsessed with screen time and I have no plans of changing any time soon. We have covered why, that I communicate more naturally via SMS and e-mail/messaging than I do verbally. However, I know that not every conversation is appropriate to have via text, as well. I draw the line at text message breakup, which is why I have been so pissed at The War Daniel and Sam. It hadn’t been long enough for me to say I was in love with either of them, but it had been long enough that I knew I loved them. Even Sam, at three weeks, I knew I loved her with an intensity I hadn’t felt in a long time, but intensity was all over the map. If she wanted a bestie, I was there. If she wanted a wife, I was there. If she wanted to date other people so our relationship didn’t move too fast (the goal when I didn’t break up with Zac), I would have been there and I know that because I was.

She didn’t want to become the lesbian U-haul couple, but didn’t want to do anything to prevent it, either. I didn’t want to be the girlfriend that anticipated her needs from day one, so I didn’t read between the lines and break up with Zac, anyway. It wasn’t that I lied and cheated. It was that her ex-husband lied and cheated, so the further she got towards reality, the more she realized that she thought something was happening to her that wasn’t. She felt the emotions of him cheating and wanted to lock me down, and the bitch of it is that she could have. She just insisted from the beginning until she broke up with me that she’d gotten too involved with a female ex and they were living together within a year and it was a disaster. She thought she could be cool, and as it turns out, she likes being in a relationship and pouring everything into one person. She found another person who also does that. She just didn’t realize it because I took her at her word.

I also think she thought she couldn’t handle my neurodivergence because she already had an autistic kid, and even if I’m wrong I’m not. I don’t know how it would have been to be the partner and mom of an autistic person simultaneously. That’s because there are times when I know I would have gotten overwhelmed and had a meltdown, and she shouldn’t be expected to survive my burnout sessions when she’s already got so much on her plate. What if her kid and I were in burnout at the same time? How would I handle autistic rage in a teenager? Having done it before, I know I’m solid. This is because I (and all autistic people, frankly) get calmer when other people are in trouble.

We have the bravery to do for others what we cannot do for ourselves. When we are out of our minds because our environment is threatened, we fold into ourselves because we have been pegged as “problematic.” Neurotypical people don’t have that jump scare at a changing environment, but we will watch it happen- their discomfort- and all of the sudden the mama lion comes out. We will risk losing social masking, function, and start stimming if we have to because someone is going to pay attention to the fact that our friends are in trouble. I would be Karen on a stick to get Bryn some ketchup, but I would enjoy mine plain to avoid a social interaction.

We lose the ability to care about what we’re putting out there when others’ safety is threatened; we feel the disaster that occurs within us and try to prevent it happening to others. It’s watching for meltdowns that don’t occur in neurotypical people, essentially having an autistic person’s back because we’re used to it and unable to realize other people don’t need it.

Autistic computer programmers seem like the most narcissistic assholes on earth, because all of them mansplain and people look at female “IT Guys” and see autism. They look at men and see “mansplaining.” That’s almost certainly the biggest disconnect in IT. Autistics of every gender are attracted to IT because they’ve always worked there and adjusted their environment to fit. For instance, I have always been the kind of helpdesk person who prefers to sit with the coders. I should have stayed in web design, but I got out when databases entered the picture. That’s because I had to jump from design to development in a hurry with no ability for logic to that degree. I know this because I took Logic in college instead of math and had to take it twice before I got a D, so I might want to take it again before I decide to take on Python. I’m even shit at MySQL when it comes to complex search terms. Logic is just not my wheelhouse, because I’m a monotropic thinker. Programming would be easy if you could write a program as “one thing happening in sequence.” In coding, you have to understand everything, everywhere, all at once.

This realization hit me this morning and it stopped me where I live. In terms of autistic people being programmers and having a tendency to isolate (like in their mother’s basement) and hack or code, making fun of it is severely ableist. “Comic Book Guy” is at the same time hilarious and tragic, hopefully the point Groening was trying to make. But it’s not a sad life because he can’t talk to people. It’s that few people are willing to ignore his accommodations and see him as more than his exterior….. in effect, getting a gift and focusing on the wrapping paper.

I am a writer in coders’ wrapping paper because I can have the personality of a helpdesk person as long as it’s the sensory environment of the server room. Better yet, I am talking to them in stereo headphones that block out everything else if I’m expected to write down what someone is saying while I’m listening. The good thing is that if those conditions are met, I type 90 words a minute and can take down everything they say down to the punctuation. Even then what I cannot do is sit in a room full of people who are also on the phone. That’s how 99% of helpdesks are set up to save space and encourage collaboration, which is great for 90% of people, maybe more. ADA accommodations are critical, which makes it harder to get a job because special does not equal valuable.

My screen time is dictated by the fact that I’m not Comic Book Guy, but I’m not not him, either. I have to fight through a system that was not built for me, and I just have to be okay with that. I have to work through autistic meltdown and burnout while people see me as defective and I also just have to be okay with that…. in relationships, at work, and in my own mind because nothing will ever get better in my lifetime and I’ll die mad about it.

Things like meltdown, burnouts, and demand avoidance are disabilities, not laziness. Our brains just aren’t built to accept it because we have no executive function. Asking a request of an autistic person will immediately cause loss of function. The best thing you can do is try not to spring things on autistic people because they have to prepare their environment to accept a demand in the first place. Failing that, writing everything down and giving us concrete steps that we can refer to later is key, because we can’t retain information verbally as easily as we can in text, and repetition is key, thus rereading the instructions.

The only way you can get things done quickly is if their excitement lines up with yours. For instance, I would have strength to go to the International Spy Museum easier than I would have the strength to stomach a rave, even though both are supposed to be fun (at a rave, I do a drug heavily called “caffeine.” It’s really fun. Look into it. 😛 Kidding, I don’t drink when I party because those are the experiences I want to remember the hardest. I don’t get many dancing and lights memories. Although I had a couple of beers at the Charlotte Cardin concert because beer and Canadians go together like “peanut butter and ladies.” The concert was at Union Stage, where they make beer in-house and it’s very good. I’m glad I branched out. The difference in preparing for that environment is that I didn’t go alone and I got notice a month in advance. Lindsay was with me and it made all the difference. Home became my environment and the club was superfluous. It reminded us very much of going to see Ben Folds Five at Numbers in the ’90s, about the same size club without the contact high. I also didn’t lock my keys in my car and we didn’t have to wait for our parents to come and bail us out. Charlotte Cardin didn’t wait with us until they got there, either, but Ben Folds did. I was 19 and looked younger. Lindsay was 14 and looked older. However, neither one of us looked like adults. I loved that he felt sorry for us because he was a dad long before he had Gracie.

One of the reason that I don’t get sensory issues about going to the Kennedy Center and The Reach is that Jason Moran and Robert Glasper both play there, which is the same feeling as my sister being with me because I’ve known them since ninth grade. The second is that Ben Folds is the artistic director for a concert series called “Declassified,” so it’s another feeling of home even in someplace unfamiliar. The best part is that there are a lot of artists that make me feel this way, because I’ve either sung with them, we have mutual friends, or we went to school together, and even Beyoncé is on that list. I’ve stood in the same room with her, but we’ve never met. She falls under the mutual friends category…. as does Yasiin Bey (Mos Def) because he was on tour with Robert the last time around.

I told Robert to tell Yasiin that he was my favorite alien (he played “Ford Prefect” in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy), and walked away realizing I’d lied because The Doctor is actually first. But oh, well. If they run across this, I’m so sorry.

If they do, it will be while managing their own screen time.