Tag: bloggers

Vlogging in Your Head

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

When I’m writing, I think of it very much like a lecture about me. I am trying to create a video in your head like one Joel Wood or Lia Hatzakis or Paul Cuffaro or any number of YouTubers would make, where they’re just walking down the street and talking to the camera. Paul is walking around his farm and fish room, but it’s the same concept. They all narrate their lives like they’re standing up in front of a crowd. Because my dad was a minister, to me this tracks as a completely normal thing to do. However, my dad didn’t usually preach what’s called a “confessional sermon.” His sermons were generally not about him. Sometimes he would include funny things that happened with my mom, me, and Lindsay that week, but he rarely just put everything on display.

That is my department, and he calls me “Chief.” Because my favorite two spies in the UNIVERSE were called “Chief,” now it pleases me to no end. I’m not Chief of Disguise, but I am chief of……….. Something. I tried to think of a pun, but I’ve not nothin.’ If you think of something that rhymes with “disguise” and also refers to writing/blogging, leave it in the comments. I don’t have prizes, but if it becomes a thing maybe I’ll acquire them. Lanagan Media Group lives to serve. 😉

I should update you all that Bryn’s grandmother died yesterday, so please send her all the love in the world. She already has mine, but that’s not enough. She needs love in groups. Fanagans, do your thing.

I can’t remember who came up with “Fanagans,” so I’m going to pick Dana. The only thing I do know is that it wasn’t me. I don’t have enough self confidence to believe I have fans all over the world even though I do. It’s sometimes too much to take in, that Zac, Supergrover, Bryn, Dana, and I are famous in a very small niche…… However, the reach is literally every country in the world. Since this blog was conceived 11 years ago, I’ve gotten all 208. Just obscure, like Micronesia and Vatican City. I can say that a few are VPNs, bots, etc. I cannot say that for all of them.

In terms of stats, my biggest fan base is in India. Again, this is not surprising to me because there are more people in India, as well as the popularity of the WordPress app/web site there. The next biggest group is the Commonwealth, which I group because it changes at least once a week. Sometimes it’s Canada, sometimes it’s Australia, sometimes it’s Britain. My US following is smaller, but it’s growing every single day as I get more popular on Facebook and I get promoted in the daily prompt. My reader retention rate is enormous. If someone reads once, they’re almost 70% likely to read again, and I have an enormous fan base that reads my entries as soon as they come out. My favorite comment about this has been “we have now reached the point where I am anticipating your entries coming out.”

I hope that I am showing confidence, not arrogance. My self esteem has been in the shitter for a very long time, and the straw that broke the camel’s back was Daniel saying “just because you write in bulk doesn’t mean you say anything of substance.” Well, his professional peer-reviewed ass hasn’t had fans for 24 years. Beat that with a stick.

I do things with intention and purpose. I don’t link to anything to create reader retention unless a prompt has come up where I’ve told the story recently. This allows two things to happen. The first is reader retention. The reason I have it is that I demand it. If you don’t read something, it will move down on the page and it becomes obscure. That creates the OG fan base because my blog has a real “guess you had to be there” feel because otherwise you are going to be using my search feature extensively. People don’t do that. The second thing it accomplishes for my friends is allowing the past to stay passed. Everything blows over easier when they realize that every day is a new piece of paper.

However, thanks to my fans, my archives aren’t bird cage liner. It takes a very long time for people to discover your content on Facebook and WordPress. Some of the entries that are the most shared are two or three years past when it was written. The only thing that took off immediately was my article on marriage. I think it’s hilarious that I wrote a marriage article seen all over the world. That’s because I realized I wasn’t very good at it. Thus, poly and dating Zac because not being married and just having a boyfriend suits me completely. I do not have a need to have multiple partners to be happy. I am happy. The only reason I wanted to be with Daniel as well is that I wanted what’s called an NP, or nesting partner. Zac will never be that for me and I respect his boundaries. I still want so social mask someone because living with someone makes that possible.

In the meantime, I am social masking my housemate and that works well. I have changed my schedule to his, because when I’m alone and have no schedule, I am just as good a writer, but a worse human being. I get demand avoidance over showering, cooking, basically anything until my executive function says “MOVE.” Everything is an emergency with executive dysfunction because your brain cannot plan anything in advance….. Or very little, anyway. You live and die by Google Calendar, because you WILL not remember it if you don’t write it down. I have been late to work because I forgot I had work today (it’s easy to do in a kitchen because your schedule changes weekly). I have never told anyone that before, that I’ve been late because I forgot we were doing work that day. But now I’m spilling it because that’s the disability.

That’s why it’s hard to stay employed, because people think you’re full of shit or a fucking child. People without brain disorders have absolutely no concept, but they become the authority on your mental health if they’re bosses. It’s not a disability, you’re just an indolent asshole.

I’m a good writer because I don’t get demand avoidance over it every single day. Your brain sometimes overrides your disability when it’s a special interest….. Or it happens to me because I’m ADHD as well. If I was simply autistic, I would be 10x more likely to be engrossed in writing to the exclusion of all else, because autistic people are bad at transitions and tend to stay hyper focused on the thing they know the most about. For instance, it being hard to drag Sam away from penguins on “Atypical,” or being able to drag Extraordinary Attorney Woo from whales.

Ok, shows with autistic people. Gotta talk about it.

In a lot of shows about people with disabilities, they’re designed to make the neurotypical person look like the hero caretaker and the autist to need that care. The show isn’t about being autistic, but how kind people are in tolerating our quirks, not caring when it goes overboard into infantilizing an adult. In short, you are not a hero because you manage to put up with me. I mean, thanks, but I don’t ever want a friend who shows up out of pity. I would rather be alone, because I can, again, entertain myself. It is more fun to be alone than to put up with that crap.

My life got better when I stopped allowing it. I sound like I know everything because I just throw emotional bombs down like they’re nothing. I take everything literally, so if you ask me a question, I’m going to be sure in my answer even when I’m not, because the autistic brain is not putting everything through a social convention checklist. Ask a question, get an answer. We can’t care any less when you react to it, because it’s something we can’t do anything about. We either sound like dicks or we don’t talk at all because people just say that we’re dicks when we talk to them. Why bother?

My friends’ biggest problem with me historically is that I call them on their bullshit, they scream “you don’t know me,” and within hours/days they come back and say “I hate it that you’re always right.” It’s relentless, because obviously when I talk people take a defensive tone. I cannot win, so I’ve stopped playing.

My boyfriend and my best friend are on the same page….. Something my friend Sarah Anne said about 15 years ago and it’s apt here. “Just let Leslie be Leslie, and let the world fall in love.” It is the most profound thing anyone has ever said, and it wasn’t about my career and my friends’ attitudes toward it, but it’s the perfect fit. She was giving me advice on preaching, when my world was quite a bit smaller.

I often wonder if the people who’ve visited me from Vatican City have stolen lines from me, because I know it’s possible. I’m confident that I’m a good enough preacher to rip off blind. And remember, I don’t need to be a hero. It’s not important to be recognized when there’s a possibility you just gave a Cardinal something to say on Sunday morning.

Because I write about success and things that are interesting to powerful people, like leadership, I think of my fan base as small, but with abilities no one else has. A lot of my audience is more successful than I am. Margaret Cho comes to mind, but I don’t have any evidence that she’s a fan. She just Tweeted my marriage article on Twitter. Sharing one article doesn’t mean she came back, but it doesn’t not mean that, either. I have no idea who is reading based on my web stats unless they’re a part of the WordPress community and leave a like within the app. You have to have an account with WordPress to do that. Everyone else just clicks on the link from Facebook, Reddit, et al. Margaret Cho is not my only reader with that much clout, so my assessment that my audience is small but powerful is correct and I feel solid about it. I have been underestimating my abilities my whole life.

Daniel’s words pushed me to the fucking wall and I thought, “ENOUGH. You just watched Jonna Mendez own herself in front of an entire room of people and she likes your writing and she likes you. She would not think it was impossible that I could do the same. You can’t think of yourself as a shitty writer anymore. Man up.” There is no universe in which I think I couldn’t give an interview at the Spy Museum because they already know me there. It’s just that currently, I don’t have a book to promote. Maybe I’ll do a nonfiction on NASA and CIA or something, but I’d have to find something Vince Houghton didn’t in “Nuking the Moon.” It’s just easy money if the book is good because people genuinely like that topic.

I absolutely do not think I could fail at writing nonfiction, because that’s what I do every single day. I just need an editor because I clean up nice.

It’s an idea to read Zac in on helping me with a nonfiction book, because not only can he edit me, he can fact check me as well. Like, holy shit, the perfect boyfriend dropped into my lap…………… Because I got the confidence to ask for it. I asked Zac out, not the other way around. I’m getting a lot of things these days by asking for them, and it’s sort of embarrassing how long I didn’t know that. I was an arrested teenager for years. I couldn’t set boundaries in relationships for anything in the world because I didn’t know how. I’ve felt steamrolled in every relationship because I was a people pleaser. Once I just started throwing truth bombs on the table and keeping the friends who stayed, I was a lot happier than having friends who I tiptoed around because my self-esteem wasn’t high enough to participate in a give and take. I got love by pleasing other people. Now, I just pick friends that allow themselves the luxury of having productive fights that make you closer, because you’re not holding in all the things that make the other person annoying because you just let them keep annoying you without saying anything and letting MASSIVE resentment build.

It’s not okay, building massive resentment. It will always backfire. Instead of a happy relationship, you’re focusing on yourself and telling yourself that you’re not getting anything because no one notices you. There’s no award for trying to be good enough that your parents don’t see you as a problem child. Your needs going unmet is a you thing, not a them thing. When you say nothing, you become part of the problem.

It’s counterfeit kindness.

Smiley

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

What are your favorite emojis?

I have jokingly called Zac “Smiley” since we met. That’s because George Smiley was John Le Carré’s main character and Zac is not in a big three letter, but he works in both military and civilian intelligence roles. I was delighted one day when I said something in voice dictation like, “you’re adorable, Smiley.” Siri wrote:

You’re adorable 😊

So, if I had to pick one out of all, it’s the OG. I was around when it began, and I use/say it almost as much now as then.

I feel like I use emojis the way they were intended, which is to indicate which lines are jokes… not a mode of communication. To me, that is like saying “I need 300 words on my desk by 1500, but make sure it’s in Wingdings.” Therefore, I hardly ever use emoticons that I can’t type.

It’s not fun to me to stop and insert imagery like a web designer. I will add emojis at the end, but only sometimes. Mostly I am concerned about getting you an answer, not picking pictures.

My other top two are a winking face and a smiley with the tongue hanging out because they’re easy to use at 90 wpm. I also try not to use them in every single paragraph. They are decorations, not cake. My feelings may have more to do with the creation of the web not being what maintains it. As in, I may be telling you things that no longer apply. In my background, they were lifelines to ensure that you let someone know your intent in a chat room, because an emoji transcends language. I get that going to pictures is nothing new and hieroglyphics are valid, but that’s not how we did it in the beginning. I’m not advocating we go backwards. I just haven’t had a situation where I needed to stop talking and use emojis instead. It has never come up.

I also don’t expect other people to be writers, so I am not telling you what you should do, either. I am saying that my habits are built from having specifically a desktop since I was eight. It was a different feel not to have the Internet on all the time, like a utility. You might have only been able to chat for a few minutes before someone accidentally picked up the phone. The phone lines carried both data and voice just like the internet does now, but picking up another phone in the house would drop the data connection and you would be “kicked off.” I have to explain this because not all my readers are my age.

I wish I could remember more of those early conversations, because I didn’t realize how quickly my day to day life was changing. My watch has a faster processor now than my desktop had back then.

I have a watch that would have genuinely been helpful at CIA during The Cold War, and I would not doubt that they had something like an Apple Watch long before we did. It’s not because I think there’s a deep state or anything shady. It’s that with all the technology research CIA does, a computer that’s capable of sitting on your wrist like a Pip-Boy can’t be an original idea. Jonna used to take calls from her staff after “Get Smart” and “Dragnet” from officers saying, “can we do that?”

But there’s a second reason, and that’s that during one of Jonna’s talks, she said that they do such specialized things that one person will spend their entire career on one thing, like batteries or cameras. That’s because once an asset got to the place where they were supposed to plant the bug, it had to last a long time, because who knows how long it will be before we can get into that room again? And in fact, she was talking about “The Americans,” the scene where the maid hides the bug in Caspar Weinberger’s clock.

(I thought it was really funny that Ollie North consulted on “The Americans. It’s just the richest ending to that story I could imagine, because it was a major one. I remember it and I couldn’t have been even a teenager yet.)

We, the people of the chatrooms, have conversations exactly like this because we’re always looking for the next new thing, computer-wise. Zac and I have a Chinese Wall on technology, because he knows I’m interested and I’ll ask way more questions than he could possibly answer. The only thing he’ll say is the history of something if it’s UNCLASS. Like, “we have stuff that looks similar.” If he says “looks similar,” that’s kind of my cue to go read a book. 😉

I have never been in a chatroom where we weren’t discussing computers or the chessboard at some point. I have no doubt that I’ve met half of Anonymous by now. I know for certain I’ve met one. I didn’t even have to catch him at anything. He took some Ambien and came to my house because he still couldn’t sleep……… Then I didn’t sleep for three days.

However, he was the kind of hacker you want. Someone who’s a hacktivist on the good guys’ side. White hats do exist.

In all of my years on the Internet, it’s been as nonbinary as everything else about me. I got sucked into the world of hacking, but I don’t hack. It’s kind of the way Lindsay is woven into the queer community in Houston even though she’s cis and straight.

Oh, and I should write this down. “Enby” is short for nonbinary. It’s the gender that most fits me, and yet I don’t care if people think I’m male or female. Pronouns are not about respect to me, because I think it’s more important for me to know who I am than anyone else. Pronouns are a non-issue because I don’t make them one. The easiest thing is just to say “they” if you don’t know, anyway. It’s funny how my gender often depends on how people perceive me, which most of the time is female, but when people don’t look closely, I’m always a “sir.” Neither bother me in the slightest.

(And for the record, if you misgender me, just apologize and move on….. Because you didn’t misgender me and I’m not offended. Plus, I do not need your entire history with trans people as an apology. I’m sure your nephew is great.)

The truth is, though, lots of people on the Internet are nonbinary by now, whether we like it or not. The Internet has changed the rules of the game because you become disconnected from your physical body during emotional intimacy. It’s not that way for everyone, obviously, but it’s a good observation of most. For instance, “straight guys” trolling gay chatrooms because they’re curious and don’t want anyone to know they’re chatting with other queer people at night.

And most of the time, that comes off as rage bait. It’s very popular to come into a gay online community and start asking things like “so which one’s the wife?” And you watch a mix of insults go by because it’s our space.

It is also true that a disproportionately large neurodivergent community exists on the web because we built it. I have always worked with other autistic people without being able to identify it for myself, because I did not know that I was social masking, first of all (in a way that other people don’t), and I also didn’t know that you can have a full range of emotions and pick up all social cues and guess what? That’s not what autism is, either. It’s a criteria, but it’s not all of it.

Being autistic is absolutely why I gravitated toward Linux. It wasn’t to play around with Linux, necessarily. Part of it was learning Linux, and it was exciting because I could do things that very few people my age could do. The better part was a group of people who could understand me in my own language, which for years turned into me being the only woman in many rooms (because that’s mostly how I’ve presented at the office, although we all kind of look nonbinary in  Oregon because we’re all wearing the same Columbia jacket we got on sale last summer at REI.

I wouldn’t have learned any of the things I’ve learned about myself without an Internet connection, because I didn’t have many queer friends growing up locally in Texas, but I had a ton of them in Australia.

So, I suppose the easiest way to say it is something you’ve heard all your life, so I hope it makes sense.

“My kindom is not of this world.”

😉

Gratitude Journaling

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I just caught a dog rifling through my trash can, so I am not feeling particularly good about myself right now. I didn’t know that the dog was smart enough to open the trash can himself. I shouldn’t have doubted it, and I can’t get him to clean up the trash, either. So, I cleaned it up…. by myself…. again.

I’m not bagging on David, my housemate. I am bagging on Jack, who is a useless housekeeper. My coworker needs a visit with HR for a performance improvement plan. I don’t know how to keep a dog out of the trash except getting a different trash can or keeping the door closed all the time. I’d rather just train the dog, but again, Jack is very smart. You have to get right up in his face before he will even begin to think you have half a brain. So, we’ve been working on “sit,” “heel,” and “bring Mama a Diet Coke.” That last one was a joke that Heather Armstrong (Dooce) wrote about her dog, Chuck, the former Congressman.

I’m trying to keep Heather’s name alive because she’s a part of the zeitgeist, but no one has influenced the direction of this web site, because Supergrover and I both loved her once upon a time. It was the same for me- I fell out with reading her when she got on the influencer bandwagon, because like my beautiful girl I thought it lost something when Dooce stopped getting so real. There was no more Dooce (a typo she used to make while typing Dude), no more Asian Database Administrator (probably good she took that one out), no more dry humping and Sprite.

Sometimes I feel like Dooce is gone and I got the best of the best and you just got me. I keep trying, though. I’ve just realized that what I thought was Texas old guy is actually Utah blogger, apparently, and I know her writing well enough that she would be pleased by this. Unfortunately, I never got to meet her. We just ran in the same circles. If I had an hour with her, I’d ask her about blowback.

I’ll ask her about the friends she lost, and the friends who came to take their places. It’s something for which I’ll always be grateful, and I’m glad she came up in my mind while I was trying to say “I’m not in a very good mood, so I need to find things for which to be thankful.” I count blessings, every single one. It keeps me from thinking that I am failing all the time, because I recognize when I have a win.

I continue to be thankful for my house, and even Jack. He continues to be “my dog,” and he’s as lovable as every dog ever. If he’s ever missing, I know he’s in my bed as far under the covers as he can go. He’s shaved almost to the skin right now; when the wind is blowing in from the windows he shivers. It’s how I like it, because it’ll be 55F outside, but I’ve got a sheet, a blanket, and two comforters on top. I think I’ll be okay.

At the same time, when I take sleeping pills my body temperature goes way up, and having the windows open keeps me from sweating because of them. There have been a few days, though, where I woke up and thought I lost three pounds because I’d shake the blankets off, it would be too cold, then I’d pull them all back…. All night. It was glorious, let me tell you.

I’m grateful for a comfortable place to sleep, and a room with so many new possibilities. Neither my lamp nor my shelf with a light came with light bulbs, so I ordered some retro LEDs. They look like they’re from the early 1900s. I have a floor lamp without a shade, which is why I thought it would be nice with the bulb exposed to go decorative. I am hoping that I will have enough light, because each bulb is 60w. I wanted higher than that, but I couldn’t find any yellow bulbs that came in 75w or 100. I do not like the bulbs where they take all the yellow out and it leaves a slightly blue glow on everything. I do use 100w white bulbs in my bathroom because I want to get dressed in the most unflattering light possible. That way, when I get myself fixed up, I will look better when I leave the house. It’s good to have goals, anyway. 😉

I’m grateful I have a bathtub again. Hayat replaced our bathtub with a stand up shower long ago, so it’s nice to be able to sit and relax when I want. I liked the stand-up shower, too. I’m not knocking it. I just had trouble shaving because I am terrible at balance. It’s not that one was bad, it’s just that with a bathtub I can also sit in lavender and eucalyptus salts.

I’m grateful to still have a garden. David is the gardener, I’m just the enjoyer. I’m going to have to put some lavender out for me, because I’ve talked many times about talking to the bees. It’s real. I don’t mean that they can hear me, necessarily, but that it does make you feel better to talk to them.

I’m grateful for DC. There are limitless possibilities for beauty here. There’s kayaking, biking, hiking, sailing- basically everything I could do in Portland is also right here. The two cities mirror each other in lots of ways when it comes to layout. That’s because people in DC do not think of Arlington as the same city, but if you look at it from the sky, it looks the same as Portland being divided by the river north to south and Burnside east to west. We are a bridge city, and I can’t wait for Bryn to see it from the air. The only real difference is that when you land at National, there’s not a long airstrip parallel to the river. If the pilots at National can’t stop in time, they’ll fall into the Potomac.

Seem to remember something about that in the news when I was a child.

Zac says he has never met a person that loves this area as much as I do. Zac has never left and come back for any real length of time. I wonder how it would look different to him if he’d lived here in his early 20’s and then traveled all over. I missed the Potomac because the Willamette is always cold. Always. I cannot remember a 4th of July in which I was not absolutely freezing my ass off. I once drove with a housemate up to Mt. Hood for lunch (we weren’t skiing that day) and it started as we were driving home. It was June 27th. DC is the beauty of a city with a river running through it that is also not 54F and raining 280 days a year. I love Portland a whole lot, and I would move back if I had to do so. It’s just not my first choice for a number of reasons, and the weather is at the top.

The only pro here would be getting to live in the same city as my best friend, because the position has been filled- end of story. That being said, occasional video calls and visits are fine. I do not have a need for Bryn to move here or me to move there. If so, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. I just can’t think of a good reason all our time needs to be in person.

There are moments, of course. You don’t move to your partner’s or your best friend’s city because something is happening. You move there to be available if it does. That’s because even now when something is going on with Bryn, I can’t help but want to jump on a plane. Therefore, I’m not sure I’ve ever been more surprised than when she said she was jumping on a plane to get to me. It’s getting so exciting thinking about her visit, and it’s already the 25th. So, not many more sleeps. I’m grateful.

I’m grateful that both Bryn and Dave want to see SPY so it doesn’t feel like I’m strong-arming them into going there on my account. I live here. I can go any time I want (and do). We haven’t decided what we’re going to do all days, and I know they’ll probably also want time to themselves. We just need to talk about dates so that I can send Zac an invitation. I live and die by Google Calendar.

Zac’s acceptance is not mandatory, I just want him to know he’s included in the fun and he’s said that he does want to meet Bryn. So, now Zac will have met one friend I met in high school and one I met my freshman year of college. I’m glad I can bridge those gaps in time, and it makes me happy that Zac is going to learn just so many “Borum-isms.”

I am grateful for “Borum-isms.” It’s a specific cadence, and I will pick it up instantly because it’s not based on accent but rhythm. Bryn’s dad said something so incredibly profound that I’ve remembered it for over 20 years…. “the hardest part of teaching is remembering what it was like not to know.”

Bryn also reminds me of Arya Stark, and I don’t have to squint. But by that I mean she is take charge alpha dog all the time, which means that she is strong and firm, but also the most loving person in the room because the alpha’s job is to manage the whole pack by seeing their needs and helping them……. serving, not owning……. as opposed to whatever the fucktard morons think it is this week.

In some ways, I’m grateful for guys like that because it reminds me of Roy Wood, Jr. who said that he appreciated businesses with the confederate flag outside because then at least you had a tip it wasn’t going to go well for you. If someone is advertising on the internet that they want a “tradwife,” they probably mean that they want someone who will take all their bullying all the time and call it Biblical. Therefore, there’s no confederate flag, but there’s a big waving red one.

I’m grateful for the ability to see red flags and work on them. I see them in myself by rereading my work. Throwing words on a page and seeing what they look like once they’re outside you gives you enough separation to say “ok, that’s good…. but that’s bad.” Not the writing, the way I behaved.

I am working to find peace within myself, so don’t think I don’t notice when I’m angry and figure out a way to resolve it in myself. I think I have. My tone is completely different than it was a year ago. A lot of it has to do with Supergrover finally telling me what she really wanted. She wants peace and rest, I assume for both of us. Maybe one day our paths will cross again, but I doubt it. I require something she does not have, which created the initial attraction to each other in terms of energy. This is because she has something I don’t, which is pragmatism and logic. In some ways, our personalities are exactly alike. In others, they are diametrically opposed.

But leaning in through all of that made me who I am today, and I’m more confident in myself as a result, and grateful I ever got to meet her at all. I am so angry that what she chooses to highlight in our relationship is all the negativity and not our incredible potential for joy. Maybe she already has these things with everyone else but me, and it’s because I’m a shitty friend that I don’t have these things with her and I’m whistling Dixie because no one else ever has a problem……. I would tell her the same thing I told her when she said she was giving up Diet Coke. “Yeah. Uh huh. Keep talkin,’ sweetheart.” No, wait. It wasn’t about Diet Coke. That was another day. And now I’m laughing my ass off, but that joke is above your pay grade.

I think the thing that makes her spit nails is that I’m right. What I realized through my mistakes is that I didn’t have to sit in them just because I’d made a long time making them. That my history with her meant a lot, but not at the expense of my own health and happiness. It’s not because I wouldn’t have done it. It’s because I expected her to pull her weight. I would have done anything for her, but I realized that she didn’t feel that way about me, and it was stupid to think that, in retrospect. I did not feel that way every single day. I recognized her hurt and talked about what happened often, but she never took the bait and opened up to me so that I could better understand her. I thought, “I am going to end up giving her absolutely everything I have and she’s not going to notice in the slightest.” I’d listened to the whispers and the screams long enough.

I’ve said this before, but I did not get angry that she was also angry. I was furious because she refused to tell me anything that gave me any headway. All I could do was talk about myself when it was the last thing I wanted to talk about. I also didn’t always want to talk about her, as if I was mining her for information. I wanted an easy give and take, the strength and comfort of someone I’d known for a very long time.

There was every reason to stay except having a feeling of safety and security when we talked, because it was missing for a very long time. Any attempt to lighten the load was wrong, so I didn’t get tired of her. I got tired of how I felt about myself. She says I’m “a lot.” She has never really grasped that she’s a lot. That for everything she’d like to change about me, there’s something I’d like to change about her. What I cannot get her to see is “this is me. Take it or leave it.” And that’s what we’ve both been trying to say to each other for years, mostly at the top of our metaphorical lungs. I have found that it is much more fun to fly with a dragon than to be touched by its fire.

I’ve thought for many years that if I did ever see her face to face, that I would go mute. That she’s the only person I know where that would happen. It’s not that I am not interested in talking, it’s that I would be completely overwhelmed before the conversation began. But I know us. We both know how to make each other laugh. After a few minutes, it wouldn’t be weird. One of us would say something to break the tension, and the spell would be broken. This person that we’ve each built up in our heads will be gone, and it will seem like we’ve never met.

Here is something I also know. I will never know how much of my e-mails she’s taken in until I hear her talking around other people, because I know what I’ve written. I would know when she was quoting me and when she wasn’t, and I would never say a thing. It wouldn’t mean as much to her as it would to me.

I do know that if we were at the same party, one of two things would happen. The first is that I’d be telling a story and get a detail wrong, and from across the room I’d hear, “THAT IS NOT WHAT HAPPENED. This is how it happened…..” The second would be her seeing someone else mistreating me because despite how she feels about me at any given moment I know she’d eat off their legs.

What I mean about getting a detail wrong is that all of the sudden she becomes very, very familiar with absolutely everything I’ve ever said when she is irritated. When she’s irritated, she quotes me back to me. How much she’s irked is inversely proportional to my joy at watching her quote me, because the more angry she is, the more likely she is to do it. I don’t do anything to irk her on purpose, I’m just saying that after a fight, when I feel calmer I go back and reread everything. I notice style, structure, all of it. Even when I’m devastated, I still find beauty in hearing from her at all because I rip her off mercilessly. Without my e-mail history, I am so much dumber, I promise you. I hope that in some ways she feels the same, because my dexterity helped her when her own words failed her. It’s something I hope she knows, really- that wherever she is in the world, my heart is with her. That’s because everywhere I go, her heart is with me.

So, even if she was trying to avoid me at a party, she’d never make it. We don’t have any mutual friends so far, and I’m not interested in making them…. mostly to protect the innocent.

I also know that no matter what, as long as I don’t start going with the crowd, she’ll still be in my audience. I know that when she told me that Dooce sucked now and she wasn’t going to read anymore and I told her it was her job to tell me when I should retire because she could just re-send that e-mail.

Come to think of it, that’s what would happen at a party. She’d hear me use a joke or two I’ve told in front of her and then we’d be picking up the end of each other’s sentences because we’ve both heard them before.

We could also have a lot of inside jokes that other people wouldn’t get, but we’d be falling out. For instance, me being the president of Overthinker’s Anonymous not because I am smarter, but because president is a public-facing office.

I think part of me hoped she would join Lanagan Media Group, because she would be great at both writing and podcasting if she had the bandwidth. She told me that she was always looking for what to do in her next career, and I think part of me hoped she would say “writer,” but I didn’t push. I got her stuff to help her in her own direction. She’s talked about writing before, but in a faraway sort of way. The bits of her story I’ve gotten to write because our lives overlapped are unique and beautiful. I know she thought it was unique. One out of two ain’t bad.

I feel like the way autism logic works, people think you’re much more negative than you mean to be because neurotypical brains are used to hearing things in a certain way. There are patterns to neurotypical speech that contain social cues. Autistic people can imitate them, but they cannot understand them. However, not being able to pick up social cues is only one of the criteria for autism. You do not have to have every single one to “prove” you’re autistic. For me, it’s a mixed bag. I do not recognize social cues in a person based on what they are thinking, but from the millions of faces I’ve seen before that looked exactly like that when X…… or when my parents described people’s emotions to me without meaning to…… I started understanding speech very, very early. Therefore, I have overheard things and ruminated on them for years before I understood them. But it’s because I’ve ruminated that I have accurate heuristics for the most part.

It’s easier to social mask when you’re hearing phone calls regarding pastoral care, because if you’re the pastor’s kid, you’re learning how to talk to people while they’re upset…… and mostly at each other. For instance, people who need marriage counseling, etc. But of course there’s a lot of people angry with you, too. Mostly over the things you’ve said.

Being a creative is being a creative. Preaching and writing are two separate skills, but they are two ways of expressing the same ideas. With me, it’s readers who don’t come back. For pastors, it’s church members who inexplicably disappear. Therefore, I am used to an ebb and flow in size and don’t get wigged about stats. I check them, but I don’t focus on them. The only stat I really like is how many flags I got that day. I like how far my site goes. This week, the leaderboard has been Africa- hello to South Africa and Ghana.

OH! South Africa!

Speaking of which, I started watching this YouTube channel called “Flipping Johannesburg,” and it’s incredible. It’s tempting to move to South Africa in some ways because land and resources are so cheap. I could build my own house or purchase one in disrepair so that I could have more land for cheap and more room to overhaul. The last house I watched on “FJ” was 800,00R, which is about $40,000. It was a U-shape with everything from a garage to staff quarters to a huge pool in the middle. I am certain that it took a lot of work to get it where it is today, and also a lot more Rand. Because of this, I am grateful that when I cannot go to South Africa, Flipping Johannesburg brings it to me.

And finally, I am grateful for Zac. He and Oliver, who is a dog, have made me feel more at home. It’s so much fun to have two hiking buddies. It’s nice to have someone to hold onto when I walk. It’s exciting to see him when his car (Antimony) comes over the hill to the Kiss and Ride. Yes, that’s really what they call the place where you pick up and drop off.

If he gets there first, he’ll park. If I get there first, he barely has to slow down and I’m on his way home, anyway. It makes me feel good that he’s relatively close to the Metro so it’s not a big imposition to drive me around. He also knows that all he has to do is say “I’m busy” and I’ll Uber. He does it just to be sweet to me and I appreciate little things. Like, how it is problem to worry how I’ll get around? It was Sam’s whole deal, too, except that Zac (for some disastrous reason) thinks that I am a fully functioning adult and doesn’t have an issue with saying “God, I’m slammed. Meet me at my house.” Therefore, Sam never got to see that I’m a perfectly capable adult. She drove me around and sulked about it because she offered and then regretted it. So, of course the easy thing to do would be to stop offering to drive me around so that I don’t have the choice to say yes or no. Because I can feel energy very well and if you resent that you have to come get me, I’ll know it. I feel it like a scar on my skin.

I would only need a car if I moved from the DMV metro area and out into Virginia or to the eastern shore. With a combination of bus, train, and/or Uber I can get anywhere. I just need a little bit more notice. This is great because if you call me and say you want to do something short notice, I probably won’t want to do it, anyway. I am bad at transitions and like to have my calendar planned out in advance.

Therefore, I am limited to staying in the city because I don’t want to lose excellent transit without a car payment and insurance. A car is just another place for me to let stuff accumulate. I’m not sure I used my car for much more than a high speed crap wagon.

“High Speed Crap Wagon” is my new band name.

I’m grateful.

I Have Absolutely No Idea What to Say Today

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Despite my best intentions, today may be a “show about nothing.” That’s basically all I know about Seinfeld because I wasn’t a fan back in the day. I don’t remember a lot of what I watched in high school except “Animaniacs” and “Jeopardy!” At that age, I was usually sitting on the floor of my bedroom with my headphones on trying to be Miles Davis. I assure you that I always thought I sounded better when I was alone, because I wasn’t focusing on pleasing the crowd and making a show go well.

I do remember the highlights. I was more happy that I impressed Doc than impressing a crowd, because I did a solo in “Come Rain or Come Shine” and Doc’s response was “Leslie Lanagan! 9th Grade, ladies and gentlemen. NINTH GRADE.” I was also the soloist on a local Houston TV show called “Black Voices” (yes. Really. But it wasn’t because Summer Jazz Workshop was all white. It’s because I beat out everyone else. I got that solo from Konrad Johnson, director of one of the most famous jazz bands in  the nation- Kashmere High School. I’ve mentioned this before, but Kashmere got a chart on the soundtrack to “Baby Driver,” and Konrad, who has now passed, is memorialized in a bigger way than just locally in Houston.

When a black jazz director picks the white boy for a solo on a television show called “Black Voices,” it means the fucking world. I have rarely felt more “I’m on top of the world” than that. It’s also really funny in retrospect.

If I had to describe my sound, it’s very much like Wynton Marsalis. This is because he’s who I studied the most closely to learn both jazz and classical. Let me tell you about the time I met Wynton. I walked right up to him and said, “Wynton, I’ve waited my whole life to meet you.” It’s funny because I was 15 and also true. I’ve been listening to Wynton since I was in the womb because my dad is also a trumpet player. You can see him most weeks on the Second Baptist broadcast in Houston, or streaming over the Internet.

My dad’s claim to fame is that when he was in high school, he went to the 50 yard line and played “The Star Strangled Banana” all by himself instead of having a singer and accompaniment. I have no doubt that it was absolutely gorgeous, because I inherited his “elements of style.”

Speaking of which, a bookstore worker was talking on Reddit about how this person came in and said she needed a book for her daughter, who was a writer. It was by “shrunken white,” and EVERYONE was confused. But what writer wouldn’t have known it from “shrunken white?”

(It’s “Elements of Style,” by Strunk & White.)

If I have any advice to give writers (because I’ve done it so many years, not because I think I’m “all that and a bag of chips”), it’s write where you feel the most comfortable. Sometimes, it’s at my desk. Sometimes, it’s under the covers.

Write where you feel the absolute least threatened, because your emotions will flow through you a lot easier that way. You’re still writing about your own head when you’re in fiction mode. It’s just expressed as your characters.

That’s because we’re making it up as we go along, hoping you’ll track with us. Even if you’re an architect to plans in advance, that’s no guarantee that people will track with you. It’s your system, not theirs. I am not an architect. I’m a gardener. I start at one place and dig down. Otherwise, it’s not my diary.

It’s trying to impress the crowd, and this time, I don’t want to do that. I want to move and challenge people so that they’ll come along with me and not the other way around. The right people will gravitate, and whether that’s a hundred or 10 million is of no consequence to me because I’m obviously going to write whether people think it’s worthy of money or not. I don’t have to be validated by anyone else. I have received enough praise and been compared to enough people better than me that I feel solid. I don’t have to worry that I’m so far not successful because of lack of talent. If Margaret Cho and Jonna Mendez both think I can write my ass off, then I fucking can.

So, I don’t have to believe the people who say I’m a hack anymore.

In terms of writers to whom I’ve been compared, I get David Sedaris the most frequently. I can be as funny as he is, but I’m not. We don’t often share the same goal, which is to make people laugh outright. Mostly, I can’t because I don’t feel like it. When I’m not feeling funny, I’m not.

And that’s why people come here- to see both the good and the bad- not because mine is better than anyone else’s, but that mine exists over people who aren’t writers. There are lots of people with web sites that don’t actually say anything. I don’t want mine to be one of them.

I would be a powerful speaker in public if I liked my voice, because I have been told I already am a powerful speaker in public. I know this solidly because I have preached sermons multiple times that have been well received. You don’t graduate from being a preacher’s kid without having picked up some tricks over the years. Just because I’m not a minister doesn’t mean I don’t have that patois when I’m writing or in front of a crowd.

I don’t have to believe the people who say I’m not a good preacher.

My grandfather always said “write it tight” because he was a publicity man for Lone Star Steel. He actually learned the same type photography as Jonna Mendez, basically hanging out of an airplane to take overhead photos. It’s interesting to me that she was a spy and he was publicity and yet they learned the same tricks.

In terms of writing it tight, I do in certain sentences because it fits a mood. That mood is the one I’m in at the moment. I am INFJ, neurodivergent, nonbinary, queer, poly, etc. Therefore, I have never made a decision on what kind of person I am in my life.

“The Counselor” personality is a thousand years old when it is born. We are born with a desperate need to search inside ourselves for answers, because we have an absolute neediness when it comes to wanting to improve the world. We need to feel wanted and valued, but the way we do that is by trying to lead people by laying out our vulnerabilities first. It is not a narcissistic game, but a realistic understanding of what it will take to create connection and resolution vs. power over.

My personality is enormous in the smallest of ways. I don’t approach this blog like I’m a god, but that I am whispering into the night and hoping it resonates with other people. This is true among people who do not know me, but is not true among people who know me.

Therefore, I feel like I know Jesus on a deep and spiritual level, and anything written to amplify his life into being divine is not the message and never should have been in the first place.

Sticky, sticky blood theology bothers the everliving shit out of me. That’s because it’s focusing on what I believe was a marketing campaign to spread his story. That I don’t have to have mystery and magic to think that the historical Jesus is valuable and actually taught people things to which they should pay attention. Our entire religion backfired during The Crusades because supposedly religious superiority launched war off a nomadic preacher who taught people to love each other.

Again, it’s the strangest transformation in history.

The first mistake was turning Jesus from a brown person into a white person, and blaming Jews for the crucifixion and not the Romans. He was a destitute homeless person, basically. But he did it by choice.

I do not understand people who trade his supposed glory for what he was actually trying to say– to you and to all the other people in history who have colonized others. My favorite line in The Gospels is “render unto Caesar what it Caesar’s, and render unto God what is God’s.” This is because it’s like he’s telling power to its face “you do you, but okay.”

It’s the messages they’ve missed in the middle of the mess. And I am so tired. Evangelicals are exhausting because they treat Jesus like this professional Christian superhero when he was basically thrown away like white people have thrown away black people for hundreds of years.

There is no reason for this foolishness…. And yet, they persist.

Focusing on the resurrection is not about any of that. It’s being willing to believe that if you will be forgiven for your mistakes, it means you’re allowed to make them. It does not mean you don’t have to say you’re sorry….. And that’s the kind of Christianity that’s woven into the Republican Party.

You do you, but okay.

Sigh.

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Describe a random encounter with a stranger that stuck out positively to you.

Apparently, if I had just waited until today, the perfect story and the perfect prompt would have lined up. I wrote about a very meaningful encounter with an American Uber driver who was from Afghanistan originally. It always hurts when you can’t make them line up if you’ve published a story that would have been good for the prompt, like, less than 24 hours ago. That being said, I cannot answer all of the prompts because I’ve already answered them. This is either one in which I still have the post in my draft folder, or I took off that day. A large percentage of my readers come from the daily prompt, because people’s answers are highlighted and moved up. That’s how my audience grows every single day.

I am growing most rapidly in India, and honestly I think that’s because WordPress is more popular in India. There’s also not really a language barrier because my Indian housemate and her daughter were both taught English in school. Plus, Indians and I are the same tribe. We’ve been supporting Windows users since we were kids. 😉 I do not know what it is about my personality that attracts Indians, or people from any other country, really. I do consciously think about the fact that I’m writing for an international audience, though.

That’s why so many of my illustrations come from the Bible and Doctor Who. Jesus and The Doctor are two of the most recognizable figures in the world and not just to Americans. I am definitely a Christian and a Whovian, but it’s more than that. Both the Bible and Doctor Who give me an endless library of images with which to explain things to people who have also read/seen these things. There are not many things I can talk about to an audience that read global.

It is also why I talk about intelligence so much. Intelligence feeds my writing because it shows that I am an American, but I am not American-centric. I believe that we are allowed to work in our best interests, but none of this over the top “America is right about everything and other countries are stupid” bullshit. We could learn so much. We just haven’t, and won’t. We’re not smart enough to be humble and admit when things aren’t working and say, “hey. France has a good idea on this. Maybe we should take a look at it.” Substitute any country in the world for France, because there can be good things found in any government right along with the bad.

In short, I want to show more people than just Americans that I hear them, that their stories do matter to me, that I am not an American imperialist but a seeker of knowledge. For instance, Argo is my favorite movie. But when I really get down to brass tacks, can I really say to myself that the US was right to do what they did? I do not want to exclude Iranians and their story by invalidating their feelings and their history. I love that the movie starts out by saying that the Iranians were angry, and the way the voiceover plays out, you hear the anguish in the struggle. I rooted for Tony and the houseguests. I did not judge whether the United States was wrong or right for putting themselves in that situation in the first place. It is too complicated for me to comprehend, because I was not an adult at the time. I was two.

I am a student of the chessboard without assuming that the United States will or should win every game.

For instance, people have thought I was crazy for saying I’d like to retire in Mexico (not likely, but an interesting thought) because of all the drug cartels. I said, “well, if I get hurt by one of the cartels, at least I won’t be in debt up to my eyeballs.” We would be happier with socialized medicine, but most people (even those on Medicare) don’t support it because they don’t understand it. Think about all the school shootings, all the public events that have been ruined by gunfire, and the tremendous amount of money those people had to pay to recover from the privilege of being shot.

People say “if you don’t like it, just leave.” If I leave, there will be no one to vote for these things. Telling me to get out is so much easier than working with me to find a solution, my problem with that mentality in its entirety, and most of what I hate about Republicans and have since the 90s.

Republicans don’t do solutions. They didn’t like The New Deal any better than they liked Obamacare. This has become a pattern. They’re fine with just sitting back and saying no to everything while problems persist- while also not coming up with anything and being angry that Democrats get credit for cool things and they don’t.

For instance, Mitt Romney could have taken on nationalized health care as easily as any Democrat, but he didn’t win the presidency, first of all, and if he’d told the Republican party he planned to overhaul national health care the way he did in Massachusetts, he never would have been the candidate in the first place. This is why they can’t have nice things.

Hillary Clinton started fighting the Republicans on health care in the 90s, when Bill took office…. and it took until Obama to get even the barest minimum. It’s not a complete overhaul, but it’s a start. I have no doubt that’s one of the reasons why Michelle Obama’s focus was on preventative care and not trying to take on legislation like the “Patient’s Bill of Rights.” She focused on diet and exercise, which is the best you can do without medical or legal intervention.

The Republicans aren’t the idea machine, but it’s not because they can’t be. It’s because they won’t. It’s their personality now. All they do is try to stop the Democrats, they don’t try to come up with ideas that will work better. They don’t collaborate with Democrats, so there’s no Republican buy-in to basically anything that represents moving forward.

We are not the same country that we were under Eisenhower, and Eisenhower would not understand the current Republican party any more than I do, because our thinking is very much the same. The GOP has gotten more and more conservative, which has made the Democrats more conservative in order to be electable. What people think of in America as “liberal” is very conservative in the rest of the world.

Very. Conservative.

That’s why it’s hard to see that Donald Trump is a fascist for some people. They do not realize that we were already so tilted to the right in the first place. That fascism wasn’t a huge leap because we’d been sliding toward it so long. It is astounding to me the number of Americans who think Trump is perfectly capable of being president from prison. I am not kidding. There have been polls.

Joe Biden isn’t as liberal as you think he is. He’s not even the most liberal person in our party. In terms of world leaders, he’s very conservative, because the other leaders in the world do have socialized medicine in their countries (the major players). It is impossible to say that conservatives in other countries are equal to our own….. A good for-instance would be comparing Republicans to Tories. When Tories get angry, they don’t try to defund the NHS and take away gay marriage.

I will say that the United States has a history of crazy in the political arena. It is only relatively recently that we stopped rolling our eyeballs at that level of insanity and electing it instead.

Now it’s time for me to go put together my desk chair, because now that I have a really comfortable one, I’m going to be in it all day long. That’s because I put my desk at the foot of my bed so that when I’m writing, I can turn my head to look out onto the greenery and the trees. So much of writing is turning your head to look at the trees.

It’s nice, because I’m normally looking at the whole forest.

The Importance of Being Earnest

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Yesterday, I started an entry about the whole move. I didn’t finish it before midnight, so I was going to finish today. Then, I decided I just wanted to start fresh this morning. I got an amazing night’s sleep, something I desperately needed. I will also be taking a bath in eucalyptus at some point. I’m not miserable, I’m just not young enough not to hurt after a move.

Although technically, I did all the packing. Zac moved. By the time he got to my house, I was completely toast because I’d stayed up all night trying to get everything ready. By the time Zac arrived, all we had to do was throw the totes in the back of the car. However, they were a bit too heavy for me while I was exhausted. So, Zac wins the award for being such a thoughtful person and taking over so I didn’t have to bust ass again.

What happened is that I was trying to fold my futon into a couch, and the mattress was upside down and backwards to be able to do that. There’s a special hinging system in the mattress so that one part of it has to be on the seat panel. When I flipped it over to the mattress side, I wrestled it all by myself and didn’t see the “this side down” tag to avoid this problem. So, on Friday night I turned my legs and arms black and blue trying to make more space in the room for sweeping, etc.

The futon and I fought. It’s not easy to admit when you lose to an inanimate object. However, in the end, I did get it done. It was a victory after all the sweat and bruises. So, again, I was glad that Zac could see I was wrecked from lack of sleep and exertion. I honestly believe that the pain is not all due to age. I really fucked myself up, but what other choice to you have in those moments? Where the only answer is “figure it out,” and the problem brings you to tears. So you cry and do it, anyway.

When we were finished with moving, we decided to watch Slow Horses and order pizza. Then, after we’d eaten, Zac pulled out a small box of cannoli, a delightful surprise. He’s been my rock through all of this, and I know for certain that if he’d had the bandwidth, I wouldn’t have been packing alone, either. That’s because it’s a huge give and take. We both get demand avoidance, meltdown, and need to call each other because neurodivergence, what the fuck?

It is a misnomer that autistic people know exponentially more about our disorders than neurotypical people, because we have the lived experience. This ain’t necessarily so, because data is not lived experience. We are as confused and mystified by our behavior as anyone else around us. That’s because I’m self aware enough to know when I’ve hit a wall, leaving my my mind divided in half, doing odd things and trying to figure out why.

Is it that I’m an INFJ and naturally introverted? Is it meltdown, burnout, demand avoidance, anxiety, depression, hypomania, CPTSD, etc.? Those are a lot of heuristics to consider, so managing myself in terms of patient care doesn’t always go so well.

As I was telling Bryn the other day, “when you treat yourself as if you’re the best doctor you’ve got, you probably need a second opinion.”

I need more psychological support than I’m getting, because I need an autism specialist- both for working out problems and the process of creating values and visions.

I am always about “values and visioning,” because that’s language from the church in terms of creating a mission statement. It works personally as well as it does in groups. Therapists aren’t just there to help you overcome your problems. They also help you when you’re stuck career-wise and don’t know where to go from here. Mostly, that involves talking to yourself until you figure out that you have always had your own answers, you just need to be guided to them.

If it helps, I think of my monologue here as therapy, so maybe you can think of your therapist as your raw blog entries. You’re just saying them out loud to the one person who actually knows what to do to help you emotionally suit up for a healthier future.

“Half this game is 90% mental.” -Yogi Berra

In terms of finding that for myself, what I have learned is that being on my own for so long has made it where the bare minimum effort on Zac’s part looks enormous to me. Just the fact that he does things like pick up income due to our income disparity is huge. This is because it says “I want to do this thing with you and I enjoy your company so much that I would rather pay for you to be there with me than worry you’re not going to be able to swing it on your own.” It doesn’t feel like chivalry, but…. not going to lie…… yes, it does. He just only sometimes feels that way. Most of the time, it’s just that he recognizes his own white male privilege. It’s one of the best conversations I’ve ever had in my life, because it was so comforting to see that he wants his only goal in life to make his world better. This doesn’t just extend to me. It extends globally.

Zac’s small kindnesses are so endearing, because it’s not about all the chivalry. It’s remembering things I say and respecting my words as equal to his own. I have not known many men like this, because most of the men I’ve known who date women think their opinion is superior because they’re the provider (generally). When women become the provider, men often get jealous enough to derail their careers. I remember one instance on reddit in which a woman was making bank in her field because it was so incredibly niche and had a lot of sensitive information. He interviewed for a job at one of her competitors and she had to divorce him immediately because he forced her hand. It looked too bad in her niche field to even date a competitor, and this woman had been married a long time. She told him all of this before the interview, and he did it anyway.

I know intimately that I will never have any of those issues.

I have also learned, and I think I’ve written about this before at some point, that it surprised me how little difference there is between dating a man and a woman when both parties are queer. Dating a straight person generally leads to keeping them insecure and anxious that you’re going to leave them for the same sex. There’s still such a cultural stigma on homosexuality that two things are running concurrently. Jealousy and homophobia are best friends when you want the worst possible outcome. On the flip side, gay people think of you dating the opposite sex as betrayal. Frankly, I understand and respect this outlook, because it seems like we’re watching you embrace the thing that oppresses us. There is also no world in which gay people don’t treat bi people like they’re “not queer enough.”

I will give you an example. I surf dating apps just to see who’s out there, and I am astounded by the number of lesbians who have on their profiles “no men, no bisexuals.” This basically comes across to me as “Irish need not apply.” No one ever thinks of bisexual couples who are in the system have the best ability to change it. Since we’re more accepted, we have a bigger platform. I think it’s shitty to use heterosexuality as a shield, but I don’t think it’s wrong for me to date men, or treat other women like trash because they have. It’s really hard for me, because that attitude is friendly fire. I need gay people to hear that in 7.1 Surround Sound, and the bisexual community is over it a “fuck you” amount. Straight people who have this constant insecurity that we’re going to leave them for gay people, gay people have this constant insecurity that we’re going to leave them for the enemy.

🎶🎶 One of these things is not like the other.……… 🎶🎶

I get it. I really do. I don’t have to agree with you, because that’s not my problem to solve for you. Bisexuality has nothing to do with cheating. Cheating is cheating. Bisexuality has nothing to do with polyamory. You’re either wired for multiple partners or you aren’t. They are two separate mindsets/skills. Therefore, that does not have anything to do with sexual orientation, like we’ll die if we don’t have both.

All bisexual people are saying is that their partner’s equipment is a non-issue, it’s not a barrier to a romantic relationship. They are NOT saying “I’m incapable of marriage.” Whether they are or they aren’t is a separate conclusion from attraction.

However, with Zac I don’t feel invisible, and that’s what happens to bisexual people in heterosexual relationships. We both look queer as a three dollar bill, so we don’t exactly exude heterosexual privilege when we’re out and about. I realized that dating a bisexual man was not losing my connection to the queer community with my partner. That it’s important to share whether you’re in a heterosexual relationship or not, because we’re on equal footing when it comes to being oppressed by the system. It’s amazing how often queer cancels out white in a racist theocracy, theocracy being the key word here.

I am tired of the Bible being confused with the Constitution. It’s gone on long enough. I’m tired of atheist hate of Christians because we deserve their hate so much….. In America, Christ’s actual messages have been mangled into a religion he could not support.

If you dare to judge me, you are a Roman, not a Jew. Period.

That’s because Jesus was on the side of the oppressed. American Christianity would make him vomit. It’s tinged with racism because slave masters would use Bible verses to keep their slaves in line and justify their monstrous behavior………..

Not counting on the fact that the slaves would empathize more with the minority who was beaten and killed just like them. That it was religion that gave them enough courage to stand up and fight for freedom. If you are straight, white, male, and cisgender, you don’t see with striking clarity the horror of the situation……….

That Jesus was under the exact same constraints that Americans are now. It’s just that the conservatives weren’t Republicans and Democrats, but Pharisees and Sadducees. Same software, different case. Therefore, white supremacists do not see the irony in being the people who oppress others in his name, repeating the cycle for 2,000 years. Conservative evangelical faith does not see the liberation in the story….. sometimes through thoughtlessness, sometimes through malice. The thoughtlessness is because people who aren’t oppressed don’t need liberation theology. They don’t need to feel inspiration from the fact that a minority was murdered by the state.

Not only that, he wasn’t murdered for actions, he was murdered for ideas. He was murdered by a government who didn’t want the people to think.

“It’s people like you what cause unrest.”

So, when you think about it that way, if you are a Christian policeman with racist beliefs, you’re not actually being a Christian. You’re being a Roman.

You’re not the people for whom your sins were forgiven lightly. That’s because I’m betting it’s easier to forgive the whole world as an abstract concept than it is to forgive the people who are actively in the process of murdering you when you did it.

You are as worthy of redemption as everyone else, because grace and mercy are free of charge. But the more you exclude people, the more you separate yourself from the Jew you claim to adore while mangling his words into everything he didn’t say.

Where in the Bible do you find that Jesus would have accepted the behavior of people like Donald Trump? That is the real mystery of your faith, because your blinders keep you from seeing it. Your words and Jesus’s actions don’t line up, so how dare you think writing your own headcanon and retconning everything to support the crazy idea that Jesus would support war and greed, things like that is everything wrong with white church.

You don’t see the hypocrisy. You don’t see the discomfort you create, even in your regular followers because your services are so fear-based. Why do people have to say they’re a “recovering Christian” at all? Do you think that Jesus would ever want people to go through recovering from trauma given to them in his name?

It is the weirdest transformation in history.

However, a lie can get around the world six times before truth can put on pants.

I am trying to find the truth in it all….. wading through the bullshit of exclusionary Christianity that harms people all over the world and trying to decide what’s worth keeping. My biggest gripe is that the squeaky wheel gets the grease, so when most Americans think of Christians, they think of Evangelicals. My reputation proceeds me in the absolute worst of ways.

This is problematic because atheists think that all Christians go to some sort of fucked up Bible college and are fed all these bullshit ideas. They don’t think of Harvard, Yale, or Oxford Divinity School first. To them, The Archbishop of Canterbury and Joel Osteen have the same amount of education.

I know most of you know this, but for the record, I’m going to bet the Archbishop has more.

Most people don’t know this, but the former Archbishop, Rowan Williams, was really good friends with Christopher Hitchens. They have some marvelous debates on YouTube if you’re interested.

I think this is a good point because people like Williams are being left out of the conversation. That Christians are intelligent, but there is a war between people who interpret the Bible and people who take it literally. Unfortunately, the people who take it literally, as if the pen was actually in God’s hand, have entwined themselves with the Republican Party and are the loudest idiots in the room.

When people think of Christians, their brains don’t jump to Martin Luther King Jr. and Raphael Warnock. They don’t think of William Barber and Bernice King.

They don’t see liberation theology because they don’t need it.

Zac is an atheist, and he’s the kindest Christian I ever met in terms of showing actual Christlike behavior.

If an Atheist is a better Christian than you, that’s the point at which you need to decide which God you actually serve. Are you tapping into the universe, or trying to control it?

Are you a believer, or are you Pilate, washing your hands of the whole thing because hey.

He’s just a Jew.

And that is the importance of being earnest with ourselves about the Republican Party. We need to decide when we’re going to stop following the Sanhedrin and state that murdered him, or admit it’s been a good run..

The choice is yours.

The Next Logical Conclusion

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Now that I know I’m autistic, what do I do?

It’s quite daunting having to reparent yourself with the skills needed to deal with an autistic kid, only you’re 46. It takes so much energy to be you and parent you at the same time, and I’m sure this resonates with a lot of people. The best part of being an adult is that there’s no one to tell you to go to sleep. The worst part of being an adult is there’s no one to tell you to go to sleep.

There’s no one to tell you to pack your lunch. And there sure isn’t someone to tell you to take a shower. Because parenting yourself is something that “you should already know how to do by now,” and is squarely in the wheelhouse of demand avoidance and a desperate need to fake themselves out of it with social masking. It seems unhealthy and codependent, but having someone to social mask is literally combatting meltdown and burnout. It keeps our routines stable so that we don’t spin out mentally/behaviorally. I believe that exactly all of my problems with Supergrover stemmed from meltdown and burnout, it’s just at the time, I didn’t know how to voice that. I could not tell her “this is too much, I’m overwhelmed.” I would not back down. Meanwhile, my disability is working overtime to prove that I can help her, support her, all that. She has different friendship needs than most people, and I was trying hard to show that I knew why and respected it. In fact, most things she thought of as “crazy” were about respect, but you can’t help a little old lady across the street if she doesn’t want to go. She’ll bang her purse on your head.

There’s already a perfect end to her story in my head, and it’s more than I would ever hope for in this lifetime, but not impossible. It’s a phone call. She and Michael are telling me that we have an important event to attend. Or maybe it’s just the two of us- who knows whether said event would be as important to him as it is to us. That’s because the event in question would be honoring someone who thinks the world of both of us.

But right now, I need to disconnect. I remembered that I had some tags on Supergrover’s public page, and I untagged myself so that they weren’t public anymore- not even I can see them. I’m not worried though, because our relationship has never lived on Facebook. It’s been in the quiet moments of the night, where a blank page starts off as intimidating, and then feels like a blanket.

As I’ve said, I write about Supergrover to calm myself. Echologia to bring me down when I feel shortness of breath, heart, and brain race. That’s why everything swirling around me is creating shutdown in terms of not knowing where to start. I defeated it last night, but I’m not sure I have the energy to do as much today as I did yesterday. I’m what you would call “indoorsy,” so when I suddenly have to exert as much will and energy as possible when I don’t have it, the wind gets knocked out of me pretty fast. Going to the gym would make my body stronger, but it would not stop me from getting lost in my own little world and falling off the elliptical. I have done it thrice.

With my kind of autism, I take most information in through sight. I can observe and note human behavior, but my processing differences make it feel like a double standard. How do I know how other people act when I am nothing like them? Learning to social mask. “I think I can remember how to act like someone else I know.” I do not pick up the morals in a situation if they are opposite to my finely tuned sense of justice. I pick up how someone else has dealt with a situation. And because I’m imitating someone else, it feels like the only time I use my real voice is here.

But the reason you can’t claim you know me based on my writing is that you cannot see my third dimension, all the thoughts that don’t end up here. There’s a lot more I can’t say than I can, and the things I can’t say are harder than the things I can, and with the little knowledge I do have, that makes me cry and shake enough.

It’s not because I’m a naturally depressed person. It’s that digging down into yourself and looking at your worst flaws is the worst job on earth. I wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t constantly rewarding. More people identify with my writing than don’t, and for the people who don’t identify with it, or have a problem with something I’ve said, they’re free to bring it up with me…….. or not. But I already know that if you’re covering up a feeling, you’re going to treat me differently and have the audacity to say my perception isn’t real.

For instance, I could never tell where I stood with Supergrover because sometimes she was like a loving aunt/big sister character in my life, and at others, she said really hurtful things like “you only know random factoids about my life.” I knew this was bullshit, just a dart.

I know this because all of the sudden, when it was my story to tell, did she start having a problem with the things she has told me. So, which is it? Am I the person that only knows random factoids about your life and you aren’t worried about anything I’ve told you, or is that the brave face you put on when you know I’m entitled to my own stories? I know this because she told me I was entitled to all of my feelings, while also raging that I’d let go of information she would have liked to keep quiet and it was incredibly hurtful.

I don’t just know random factoids about her life, because if that were true, she wouldn’t spend time analyzing my work to make sure she’s still unidentified. She’s said many times that her story ceased to be mine and long time ago, so I thought nothing of writing about our mutual trauma because it is indeed what handfasted us. I couldn’t explain anything without explaining it first. Otherwise, I just look like a lovesick teenager chasing after someone who doesn’t want me. This is not correct, and it never will be. We’ve both loved each other to the best of our ability, and love isn’t enough when you both need to stop treating each other as if they’re trying to trying to fight you all the time.

It was gaslighting, and a lot of it, but not because she was a narcissist. She was afraid, and there’s a big difference. The gaslighting was pretending for years that we were fine.

Morgan Freeman: They were not, in fact, fine.

If I take everything literally, that you have no worries about what you’ve told me and you haven’t, that your stories aren’t mine anymore, etc., do I actually deserve her ire in this case?

It would be helpful to know so many things. How many people know she’s Supergrover, for one. How much detail do I need to hide because more people than just me know that identity? Who is my audience that directly affects you? Why are you waffling on whether I am a straight up problem or not? If I’ve caused someone pain, I want to know the specifics. Otherwise, I will spiral out for days and days trying to figure out what it is that I’ve said that they’re mad about.

She comes by it honestly, because for us to really engage, we’d need some time to ourselves, even if it was asynchronous. She doesn’t often have time to write letters that are anywhere near the length of mine, so I think that she thinks I always expect that of her, too. I don’t. But if I’ve had a specific need go unaddressed for years, I only want the problem to be resolved, not assurance that you have read every single thing I’ve ever written. Ignore the rest, it’s all chatter. But it really got to me when she said that I was so demanding of her time and ability to give of herself, when I have been saying for 10 years that I do not deserve her and I will take what I can get.

Anything above that is off limits, but when you don’t give me any limits, I’m going to dream that way. I wasn’t “being demanding,” I was dreaming of a time where she naturally had more bandwidth- retirement. But, you’re going to think that I’m demanding of your time if you never tell me what your boundaries are. She said that three words were all she could manage until I called her on her bullshit for months. That she had to stop not giving me information and blaming me for what writing came out of it.

A lot of this is wrong and misguided because we didn’t have any boundaries. A lot of this is wrong and misguided because I was using one concept for another. A lot of this is wrong and misguided because I said I could read facial expressions and body language. But not when I constantly get “all is well, you’re worried about nothing……..” right up until she’s so angry that being apart is better than being together.

I don’t think I was wrong for bringing up a problem so we could solve it. I did think it was a problem that I couldn’t make heads or tails of her feelings until she said enough words that I knew my anxiety was for naught. But how could I know that without any information at all? It was so confusing, and why I resigned the game. I was tired of constantly being confused. For instance, “you have absolutely NO idea what I’m dealing with,” scaring me away from writing at all…… and “I have had the choice, countless times, to stop what I was doing and didn’t.” Telling me you’re that busy while also running from me is unacceptable. It’s a coverup, and very conditional love. If I don’t walk on eggshells because you’re mad and won’t tell me that, then I can just fuck right off. Is that in any way a fair and balanced relationship?

How do I make you happy if you don’t seem happy with anything?

And by making her happy, I don’t mean that I have the capability to change people from within (although I have been told I do help). She has to find those changes within herself, because I’m not here to suss them out for her. Why she can’t be open and honest and has to stick to the people-pleasing schtick is on her, and I finally saw her get out of that rut……..

She stroked my ego mightily, and my chest puffed up. When she told me that she couldn’t control anyone’s reactions, she quoted me directly without realizing it. Or she did and she was trying to hurt me by throwing my own words in my face……….. and I turned out to be teary-eyed and impressed. I’ve always had the motto “help her, anyway.”

So, when I saw the same behavior in Daniel- get angry at someone for bringing up a problem instead of acknowledging there is one- I was out and quickly. The relationship with Supergrover destroyed me, and I didn’t want another 10 years of fighting a battle that someone needs to fight on their own. It’s not my job to tiptoe around anyone. When I told Supergrover that I had issues I wanted to talk about, she said that I should find friends who didn’t bring issues into my life. There is no such thing. It was Daniel’s first answer as well. If we can’t solve this in five minutes, our relationship isn’t worth jack or shit. It’s too much. If there is a battle inside someone, even two minutes of vulnerability is too hard and it hurts too much. They won’t let go because they’re afraid of losing control, but life doesn’t make sense until you realize you never had any control in the first place.

If I could tell Daniel what I know about my story, the most private parts, he would shit himself for saying I that “just because I wrote in bulk doesn’t mean I write anything of substance.” This is because I’ve never met anyone who could play “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” quite like SG. And she thought I wrote something of substance. I will take that ego boost over anything else that happens in my career. My ability to write could be taken away tomorrow and I’ll know that I accomplished every single one of my goals.

The first was to be seen and heard.

The second was to have people who identified with me that would tell me when they liked something and when I was an asshole with a God complex. That’s because I don’t have to take a single piece of your advice, but that doesn’t mean I won’t hear it. I will be angry and defensive at first, so I usually pop off and regret, another thing I’m learning to manage, because my response is always different than a knee-jerk reaction. But sometimes I write down my knee-jerk reactions because they’re important to prove to me later where I need to grow.

I also think that Supergrover and I should have a conversation about “painting my feelings as fact,” because I could write the way she wanted me to if I understood what she meant. And the reason I’d defer to her is that she was a writing major…….. and yet somehow still thinks of me as “the talent.” I do not know how to write in a way that doesn’t make anything look like a fact, because I am narrating a plot as well. She’s whipped my ass into shape as a writer before, so I have no doubt she could help me with this, too. However, I will do some research on autobiographical writing and see if anything resonates with what she said that gives me a little more context than wondering how and when I’ve been an asshole.

I play AITA all day long with myself, because it’s the fight within me of “say nice things” and “no one forced you to come here.” As I’ve said, the people in my real life knowing what I think of them is their choice.. If they want to be here, welcome. If you always have a problem with what I say, I encourage you to change the channel….. because seriously. Who even am I? Who cares about my opinion?

The only person that really should is me, because it informs how I feel about myself.

How I feel about myself this minute is that I’m proud I handled my move all by myself so that it is free to me- as in, I’m just going to hand my deposit and leftover rent directly to Colin on day one, and my rent hasn’t gone up, so I don’t have to make up the difference.

With Silver Spring, I have gotten two miracles in a row. Hayat and Colin were both the first people I called, and they both turned out to be right for me. Towards the end of April, I’ll have been here a full nine years, and I’m only missing it by a week.

I know from experience that we still might get one more light snowstorm, because when I arrived here in late April of 2015, there was snow on the ground. It was melting, but still. It had snowed on like, April 20th or something. I think I arrived on the 23rd.

Hayat texted me that it feels like it was just yesterday she picked me up at the Metro. I understand the sentiment, because in some ways, it really feels like I just got here. In others, this has been the longest 10 years of my life…… but so necessary in terms of growth and development that I cannot trade them. If I hadn’t become a blogger, I would not have seen autism coming. I would not have seen being nonbinary coming. I would not have seen how any of my friends affect my life, from besties to the smallest interaction.

It’s small interactions that get me the most, because I’m the worst at casual conversation. If I did something weird in front of you in 1993, don’t worry. I’m still thinking about it.

While I pack my “going to Zac’s” bag and try not to flip out that we’re seeing Jason Moran tonight. If I’d had time, I would have ordered a Senators baseball cap for the event, because Duke Ellington’s first job was selling peanuts at games, where he got to know Teddy Roosevelt peripherally because every once in a while Roosevelt would ride his horse down to the field.

So, if you ever doubt the power of living in Washington, remember that a middle class black kid from DC became friends with the President of the United States…………………. long before integration was even a thing.

In fact, that’s the perfect analogy for my life. I have the brain that’s capable of seeing patterns in world conflict like a president, but I have only managed to convince the people around me that I’m selling peanuts.

What I have learned through living in Washington is that people prefer to be treated like they’re all alike on a human level, and revel in friends who aren’t obsessed with who they are and what they can do for me, a classic Washington stereotype. Republicans sniff each other’s butts by asking how much they make.

People do that to me sometimes. Someone asked me how much my sister made, and it was so fucking rude. But, we were at one of Lindsay’s work events, so I didn’t want to go apeshit. I just said, “she’s a Democrat. Aim low.” The truth is that I only know she makes more than me. That’s it, because I don’t ask those questions, and she usually doesn’t volunteer that information except when she’s telling me what a job potentially will pay her if she gets it. I always tell her to aim for the stars, because not only does she travel, she eventually wants to live in a different state where the cost of living is a lot higher than Texas. She doesn’t know how she’d do it, it’s a pipe dream because she doesn’t often think about moving. But, every little bit helps when you are trying to save up for a dream.

I will use DC as an example because she doesn’t want to come here, so it’s not giving away where she’d look if she was actually interested in leaving Texas.

In DC, MD, and VA, buying a house here is ridiculously expensive, and the closer you want to “inside the Beltway” or “downtown living,” the price skyrockets exponentially. An apartment in the city is going to run you about $2500/month. Even in Silver Spring, you won’t find an apartment for less than $1,000…… maybe, maybe if it’s an efficiency. However, management companies are ridiculously relentless in raising rent, so you’ll be paying over 1k/mo in no time if they advertised cheap rent to get you in the door.

And, for $2500/mo in DC, you still only get a white box, especially in neighborhoods that aren’t riddled with crime. If you are in an area with violent crime, depending on where it is, you’ll still pay $2500 because it’s walking distance to the Metro or something like that. Housing does not go down when DC is only 60 sq miles.

Buying a house might be a little cheaper if you have the funds to renovate. You can get a good deal if it’s just a lot with a barely standing building. The land is the expensive part, not the construction.

But then you have to live in DC, and some of their laws are just plain strange. It’s weird that things come through the Senate, because DC’s needs are thrown under the bus by pork barreling.

Like, the bill will be something like “$15/minimum wage” or whatever it is that will do the city good, and someone will put a total ban on abortion in the bill. So, the bill gets struck down and the Republicans say “they wanted this minimum wage so bad, and then they didn’t even want to compromise.”

Make someone else look like that bad guy, because nothing you’ve done has ever elicited a reaction.

Global and national are the same as local.

Generally, if a person will react in a certain way, a country will also act like that. It’s a chessboard, and I see patterns all the time.

The important part is to just keep stitching. The quilt will come together eventually.

Or, with autism, maybe it never will. But I am not interested in turning myself into a person I was never meant to be.

Moving Parts

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Leaving my home is starting to get daunting, but not in a way that’s leading to shutdown. I’m packing up all my stuff just fine. It’s more the change emotionally, which it always is with an INFJ. I often feel like I am just one giant walking nerve in society. My work is to direct the positive energy coming toward me, because I pick up on all the things people are going through and it weighs me down. That is not said to guilt anyone, just to say that some people are built to soak up emotions like a sponge and some people are built to be afraid of that. My empathy leads me to a dark view of the world, because I’m the person that’s safe to use as a stranger on a train.

So, people will think nothing of a five minute conversation in which I learn they’ve been raped, kidnapped, beaten by their parents, they’ve just lost a spouse/parent, or whatever the biggest secret they have might be. I hear “I’ve never said this to anyone” a lot. It is mine to manage, because since these are random interactions, it’s not like we’re going to work this out in therapy. I assure you that the people of the DC Metro lead amazing lives for all they’ve been through in childhood….. and this is limited to no particular line. Though I will say that I am on the Red and Blue most often.

I have that face that says “tell me anything,” which I often think of as the jackass magnet on my forehead. I used to think it was their responsibility to know that their story has power and what it would do to me to hear it.

Now I realize most people don’t even know they have a story.

So, it’s my responsibility to wash the negative energy off of me. I do that in many ways, mostly cooking. I try not to cook without listening to something, because I don’t want to feel someone else’s emotions while I’m trying to concentrate. I feel other people’s emotions all the time, because in public, I pick up on the energy around me. At home, I read the news.

The world is suffering. How much more or less today is of no consequence. I just mean that the stories of the people on the ground in Palestine, Lebanon, and Israel are just as important to me as the couples I hear arguing in the grocery store. As an INFJ, I am often thinking about other people’s marriages in the checkout line. I would never, ever talk to anyone about this, like “hi! I have some excellent points to make!” It’s just the personality of an INFJ to try and solve everyone’s problems all the time because we want everyone to live in a utopia that we think we can drag into being all by ourselves.

We are a deluded people by nature, because our eyes aren’t on the present, but on the what could be…… that “what could be” is often more idealistic than most people can process, and because of my autism, never in a way that makes sense to a neurotypical mind. Being a writer is the only way I know where I can lay my thought processes out as they are, without filtering. Because what happens then is that people become interested in the way I think, and it seems cool/foreign/brilliant to them. When I am trying to fit into every day society, I do not get the chance to lay out my thoughts the way I need for clarity and let other people judge for themselves what’s important and what’s not.

People who don’t know me as a writer have never seen me at full strength, because it takes so much more energy for me to fit into someone else’s order than it does for me to create my own. My alone-ness doesn’t translate to loneliness, because I think of my audience as the other half of a conversation. If I run out of things to think about that are rolling around in my own brain, I have a shit ton of fiction prompts and I’m not afraid to use them. I am not using my strength as a writer to avoid people, I communicate easier in writing than I do in person. I feel like more of my real self when I’m at my keyboard, because it takes away all my shyness and hesitation at having a conversation. Because of catfishing, I know there’s an equal chance that you’re giving me the real picture of who you are, or you could literally be anyone. I have to trust that you are who you say you are, therefore I treat everyone the same. The Internet is the great equalizer.

For instance, it would not be unusual for someone to pretend that they were the president of the United States online. I’m sure people do it every day. So how do you know when you’re talking to the real Joseph R. Biden?

You don’t.

In the beginning, none of us were smart enough to catfish. I mean, I’m sure there was some of that, but we were all so excited to be on the Internet that it wouldn’t have occurred to us to have elaborate schemes for it yet. I cannot tell you how many heads of Fortune 500 companies I’ve met, how many famous musicians, etc.

It could have all been bullshit.

But what if it wasn’t?

Do you know what I mean? I completely suspend disbelief when I talk to people online and just join their reality, because I have absolutely no way of verifying whether what they’re saying is true or not. I just have to accept it. I know that I have met some very powerful people, but I couldn’t tell you who was telling me the truth or not.

So, the answer is to treat all people who tell me they’re powerful that they’re not lying…. it would make me a shitty friend to assume they were lying, and an asshole if I was later proved wrong. There are examples all over the Internet of people being the kind of idiot I don’t want to be, like people who criticize Stephen King’s analysis of his own books.

It is only when I think our lives are going to cross over that I start requiring any proof of any kind. If you’re just some rando who wants to shoot the shit with a friend at the end of the night, that’s one thing. If you want to start coming to my house, that is a completely different relationship and I am vetting you a different way. For instance, taking an interest in their field so that I have a detailed story of what they do (the more they drop details a propos of nothing, the more they’re telling the truth…… and truth doesn’t come on the Internet by asking for it, but by talking about other things. For instance, if someone has told me they work for a government agency, I won’t look it up. I’ll just listen to how they talk about it over the years.

It also matters who they are at home, whether I think I’d get along with them in a social setting, and how fluid they are with inviting me into their lives after they’ve already told me so much about themselves. Sometimes, the reason that people don’t want to get together in real life is that they can’t remember everything they’ve told you and they haven’t, so they’re afraid to burst your bubble. I won’t let it get that far off if the end goal is in-person.

I start asking for pictures right away, asking for a meetup quickly as well. It’s too easy to go too far down the wrong road with writing, and different when there’s absolutely no chance of you meeting on the ground because of the distance. It would take an astronomical sum of money for me to visit my friends, because most of them don’t even live in the US. Having friendships with other people who like to chat on the Internet isn’t time-based. All of our chat rooms were filled with “good mornings” and “good evenings” at every hour of the day.

You know intimately that you’re probably not going to meet anyone in Australia because that would require time and money, etc. So, the fantasy stays intact, no matter what it is. Most people don’t completely cover up their lives, they just massage it so that it looks better. I have never truly been catfished in which nothing was what it seemed, and I feel sorry for the people who have, particularly the women for whom it was dangerous.

Supergrover is by far the longest internet-only friendship I’ve had in terms of people who are integrated into my daily life. In the beginning, I’m not sure that either one of us went an hour without talking, and I’m not sure I ever really slowed down. 😉 Over time, it became as if I hadn’t felt something until I’d written about it to her, first.

That’s the most painful part of this whole process, to be honest. I am slowly making other things my touchstone, so that it doesn’t feel like something in me is missing if I haven’t talked to her. If you’ve had a relationship in plain text, it often feels as if the person is constantly talking inside of you.

I hate that she stopped. I’m allowed to hate it, and I do, with a driving passion. What I can’t do is reengage. That has to come from her, because we’ve reached our peace. She says that she does not want to get into a cat and mouse game with me, but I cannot see for her that this is not a cat and mouse game. I also cannot get her to see that she was the one playing games, because when she came clean with me, I celebrated it. Even though she was angrier at me than she’d ever been in her life, I celebrated the fact that she finally told me the words I needed to hear after straight up avoiding them and hoping I’d just figure it out on my own. The games stopped when she stopped hiding, and now I won’t accept anything else. Letting a relationship limp along under its own weight instead of putting it out of its misery is not my style. So, in essence, I resigned from her cat and mouse game, not the other way around. Not putting any more on her plate for her to be angry about was of the utmost importance to me, why I always felt so small around her. She didn’t tell me to take up less room, I just did and resented it because she got used to me taking up very little room and liked it that way. When I emoted, I was not allowed to take up any more room……. but nothing was wrong. All of that is now over, but I don’t hope for a future.

Next steps would be actually working toward something new, and I don’t think either of us is there…. maybe not now, maybe not ever. But what I do know is that like I’ve said before, it’s a strange feeling when your inner monologue is also someone else’s external monologue. That’s not guilting her, that’s not wishing for anything she doesn’t want to give. Those are just my feelings about the situation- that it would be hard to reconcile, but when it balanced we’d be rich.

Again, though, my way is to talk through everything. Her way is to avoid things and tell me I’m demanding, along with telling me that I’m the only one of her friends who ever has a problem with her. And I’m thinking, “how fake are your other friends, then? No one ever has a problem? Ever?” Meanwhile, she has plenty of problems with me, she just doesn’t want to talk about them and doesn’t want to let me go, either, because she knows she’d hurt my feelings either way.

I’m the one whose feelings she’s allowed to hurt, because I care that I hurt hers. She’s not just screaming into a void. For as many problems as I have with her, there is an equal annotated list on the other side, and if she’s talked to Michael or her other friends about me, I am sure there are several PowerPoint presentations on her desk entitled, “Why Leslie’s an Asshole, Part One.” Relationships are hard, and we’ve proven to the other that we don’t run. We hide, but we don’t run.

Otherwise, she would have stopped answering my Thu’um long ago.

The Postcard

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 2 Comments

Twice now Zac has traveled and sent me postcards from wherever he is. I am pleased by this, because he often writes messages that I’m embarrassed the whole house can see, but it’s all in good fun. At this point, I think it’s more for shock value…. or he doesn’t know that he’s sending a postcard to six people.

However, it’s always touching that he remembers me when he travels. He asked me what I wanted, and I told him a football jersey or a scarf from wherever. It’s my standard answer, because even if I don’t wear all my scarves at one time, I hang them up as decoration. I also asked him to bring me a specific brand of candy that I had the last time I was in Paris, which is not where Zac was, but in Europe you can find them quite easily. They’re sour gummy Smurfs. My dad and I had a couple of hours to wait where we were just sitting in a French hotel lobby. There are gummy Smurfs on the table. By the end of the wait, there were gummy Smurfs on the table. Anywho, if Zac forgot, it’s no sweat off my nose. I can find nearly everything I want off Amazon, and with American prices, getting things imported is really not that much more expensive.

For instance, red bush or honey bush caffeine free tea is one of my favorites. Locally grown is about $9.00. Imported directly from South Africa? $11.00. Locally grown and sourced is great unless you are changing the fundamental nature of how something is supposed to taste. Red tea grown in American soil just doesn’t taste right.

It’s the same with licorice allsorts. I’ll eat any brand because it’s available, but Bassett’s is the gold standard and again, maybe a dollar more than Gustav’s. I also like British hard candy, because Americans don’t like currants as much as I do (delicious in pancakes, btw, and they’re on the raisin/Craisin/nuts/salad toppers aisle at the grocery store (in little Sunmaid boxes).

I’m not really in the mood for fall food right now, but I might experiment because fall pancakes are so delightful. I make mine with pumpkin spice or apple pie spice, cranberries, pumpkin seeds, and lots of salted butter. I don’t need syrup. I eat them as soon as they’re ready. I stand over the stove when I eat most of the time, because that’s how cooks do it. I don’t need to save up pancakes to serve to other people, so I just make a few and start cleaning up the kitchen. They don’t have to stay hot to be delicious with that much butter.

Last night, Joshua Weissman taught me how to make popcorn properly, and it’s not something I would have thought of. Fry your popcorn seeds in ghee, because the water in the butter will turn the popcorn soggy. You can make your own or buy it, but the outcome is the same.

When I’m not looking specifically for movie corn, I bring it down a notch. I put popcorn seeds in a paper bag and pop them in a microwave (you don’t need to buy the pre-made packets. Popcorn seeds and a kids’ lunch bag are sufficient). Then, I just spray Pam or butter-flavored Pam on it to get my spices to stick. So far, I like Old Bay and Tony Chachere’s best.

Slap Ya Mama is even better, but you have to be careful with it because heat builds, and if you don’t specifically make a choice to miss you lips, the pain of capsaicin on your face will remind you not to do it again.

Speaking of which, this is why when I’m making a very hot marininara, more of a Diablo sauce, I use penne. Less chance for the chili flake to drag on your lips, like with spaghetti.

You also have to be careful and wash the oil off your hands with Dawn before you go to the bathroom. At least one of Dana’s culinary school mates did it to himself.

The only time I like capsaicin on my skin is when my arthritis is acting up. It relieves the pain in my hands quite nicely.

Cooking is therapy, particularly marinades or dry rubs with lots of cayenne and no gloves. I would stick my hand into a vat of Carolina Reaper sauce if I could. It was the easiest and cheapest way to stay sane on the line, because your hands effectively “get high” and you can function again, because the pain and strain feels like it’s much further away.

It feels like the pain is floating on your skin, rather than of it.

My rheumatoid factor is normal, so I think I can blame the kitchen for this much pain. But it’s not narcotics bad. It’s Aleve bad. Nothing sharp, just persistent. I have found that I’d rather take ibuprofen because a fresh dose more often is a lot better than your pain medication running out and you’ve hit the limit.

Take the limit on Tylenol seriously. It would not be approved today due to liver function issues. So, I’m careful, but I’m always on something for pain.

My official diagnosis, and I’ll have to get a second opinion on this….. but I’m damned clever…. is that I’m 46 and YMMV (your mileage may vary for those who haven’t been on the net since ’99). In my very humble opinion, no more diagnosis is needed, because by this age, some things work. Some don’t. I have not broken down, I have merely failed to proceed.

And I just have to Rolls with it.

Ok, so speaking of Rolls Royce, the reason they’re so unreliable is that they were never meant to be driven the way Americans drive them. England is tiny. They don’t put clicks on their cars the way we put on miles. OF COURSE a car is going to last longer the fewer miles you put on it.

I feel like I have lived my life putting more clicks on me than I can handle at any one time, and I’m at a crossroads as to how to accomplish that. It was important to me to be a military dependent so that my family could travel together, not that a relationship is made valid by a stupid piece of paper I couldn’t have til 2001, and even that was only in Vermont.

Editor’s Note:

When Kathleen and I got married, we planned a whole trip around it. We went from DC to Woodstock to the first town over the Vermont border we could find. Why did we have to drive all the way from DC to Woodstock, you might ask? We had tickets for Rent on September 14th, 2001. By the time we left DC, there were no hotels for MILES AND MILES. We were driven by 9/11 to take the trip anyway, and just circumvent NYC because we needed our benefits so bad. We knew everything would be booked. We did not realize that Woodstock would be the first town we’d even find a room. It was 0400. People keep saying “never forget,” but living in Alexandria and hearing the plane hit the Pentagon, knowing that we had Broadway tickets in New York that would take years to redeem…. it was all too much, and yet, we kept going. It’s one of the true “nevertheless, she persisted” moments of my life.

To say that Kathleen and I didn’t want to marry each other and did, anyway is not accurate, I don’t think. I think September 11th scared us enough that we realized we couldn’t be without legal documentation now that it was available. We didn’t rush into it as much as 9/11 forced our hands. In that respect, neither of us did anything wrong. We were not fools rushing in (by and large). We were fucking terrified and we earned that right. We couldn’t even talk to our parents for three days, and when I asked my dad if he thought we’d be safer coming home, he said, “no. Stay where the fighter jets are. They could hit Houston next.” It doesn’t seem like a logical target until you start thinking about crippling the “all bidness.” If Pasadena and Deer Park were bombed, it would take years and years to recover.

It’s fun to shit on those areas because it’s full of rednecks that fit the white male Texas archetype to a T. Unless they’re being really offensive, I enjoy good ol’ boys because it is exactly like standing out by the fence with Hank Hill. I’m such a writer that it’s not about cars or construction or whatever traditionally male topic is being discussed. It’s learning about those things while watching how men interact. I can honestly say that the reason I am so proficient with Linux today is not because I enjoyed Linux. I mean, I did, but that was secondary to sitting and talking with Luke and Joe while they worked. Joe was the system administrator. Luke and I were the content creators.

That’s how this blog started, in a roundabout way. I learned about web design and blogging in those early days- “Clever Title Goes Here” premiered in 2001 or 2, now that I think of it.

When I thought of the reason I’d put my blog start in 2003, it’s because I blocked out 2001-2002. It’s not because Kathleen and I were a train wreck. It’s that I gave my coworkers my URL, and this one guy at XOM decided he was the authority on homosexuality because he goes to church and all that, and would be passive-aggressively irritating at work, then leave comments on my web site that I should have reported to HR, but what the fuck would they have done in that day and time?

It really fucked with my head, which is why I don’t talk about writing at work anymore unless I know the person really well. And even then, just the barest minimum to introduce my audience to them. For instance, I doubt that Jaz from Alert Logic cares that you know she called me “prehistoric,” and I said, “why do you think there are so many dinosaurs on my t-shirts?”

“T-Rex Hates Pull-Ups” is my favorite.

I also don’t think that my coworker Jesse told me I couldn’t have any more candy because “you haven’t blinked since you got here.”

I hope that Aaron and Michael realize what soft spots I have for them, how we’ll always be connected because of our time together. Interestingly enough, Michael was Navy cryptography, so apparently personal and professional intelligence is a recurring theme in my life. 😉

It’s good to have a constant that’s so interesting, because people that write really good spy fiction have often been spies themselves. It’s not just John le Carré. There are lots of spies who choose to make their livings as a writer after they get out. For instance, Jonna Mendez and Tracy Walder write non-fiction. Alma Katsu and Ian Fleming are the general go-to in popular fiction. le Carré is not for beginners.

Again, reading le Carré is about actively wanting to know a TOM CLANCY AMOUNT about intelligence. I’ve said that before, and it makes Tom Clancy fans laugh. They know he’s going to be accurate down to a right and left wing nut. He’s like the Tolkien of DoD, and I have found that applies to le Carré as well. However, to me that’s adrenaline. For some people, it’s tangents that stop the story from progressing.

I like it when authors I genuinely enjoy do things that make the page count longer. Doesn’t mean it’s on purpose, as if longer means better. I just mean that if I find a world I like, I tend to want to stay in it for a long time.

For instance, I really like this world we’ve got going on between us. It’s not just fun for me to write, it’s fun for me to read. I lose the sense that I’m me once time has passed. The more I start to see the person I was rather than the person I am, patterns emerge and I can see them more clearly. It’s what made me see that I was better off with raising friends to partners rather than spending all my time looking for that one perfect person who completes me. I honestly got tired of waiting, because every time I’ve tried to have that fairy tale with someone, it has been busted for one reason or another. Whether it was their fault or mine is irrelevant. I didn’t try to understand all this to place blame. I’ve changed over the last decade because I saw that the perfect dream was unattainable because of my neurodivergent mind, and “you’ve got to dance with them what brung you” (title of a Molly Ivins book).

I adjusted my life to fit me, rather than trying to fit into others’ expectations of me, because they were built on a lie. It is not a lie that I have been consciously telling to myself so much as the impression I give to others and gets reflected back to me. It’s that my disabilities are not real. I am perfectly able, physically, mentally, spiritually, ecumenically……… grammatically.

Editor’s Note:

I often think of this meme in my head…. “you’re a terrible writer.” “Ahhhh…. but you have heard of me.”

I think what I’ve learned through my relationship with Supergrover is twofold now. The first is that if you are moved by some entries and infuriated by others, I am doing my job correctly. I am recording real life as it is, not trying to curate anything so that we all look like people that should be admired.

I stab the knife into my own chest harder than anyone else’s, because I will tell you all day how flawed I am, how I’m subject to red mist rage, how that kind of meltdown leads me into burnout, etc. I am not putting myself over as a paragon of anything, and that’s one of the things I asked Bryn, FLAT OUT. “Am I painting other people more harshly than I paint myself?” I check with her on this a lot because I don’t want it to seem like I just “go after people.” She said, “no. If anything, I think you go overboard in telling everyone every way in which this could possibly be your fault.” I laughed, because it’s always funny when it’s true.

I will analyze a problem six ways from Sunday, trying to figure out what it is that drove both our motivations in an interaction, because when I am interested in someone, I am interested in not only their problems, but keeping our relationship healthy as well. So, I love those friends that come to me with their problems, but also acknowledge that they are capable of being a problem, because they’re not always convinced they’re right, and they know them. They’ve met.

And even if I don’t like the person that they’re talking about, I will give objective advice, because you know what divides a friendship? Telling someone they shouldn’t love someone else. For instance, if Dave is being a twat to Bryn, I wouldn’t tell her to leave him because that’s not my call…. if I did, she might get defensive and that would be counterproductive to my PowerPoint presentation on why she should break up with him.

I’m only using Bryn as an example. Replace Dave with Michael and it’s how I feel about Supergrover as well. It’s not my job to make their calls for them, just to support them in whatever they do. And in fact, in the 10 years that I’ve loved Supergrover, I’ve realized that the most devastating news I could hear is if Michael didn’t want to be married anymore. I think they’re rock solid, I’m just saying that even though I was sorry I couldn’t be her everything, that didn’t make me stop wanting her to find him.

That’s the thing you learn about polyamory that you don’t know until it happens to you. When your definition of love stretches to include red and yellow strings, all the jealousy stops and you begin to enjoy hearing your partner’s stories with their other partners. One of the things that I did with both Kathleen and Dana that stopped us from really growing as a couple is that I both lived and worked with them. I am not making a case for poly here. I am making the case that when we spent that much time together, we didn’t really have any differing experiences with which to converse. A lot of conversations were repetitive because so were our days.

There are ways to fix it if you’re mono, the repetitiveness, but I find that I’m happier when Zac says something like “let me tell you about this cool thing I did.” I want him to be happy in his other relationships, and to console him if they end. It’s the same with Bryn. They both have the capacity to be whomever they want to be, because I’m not going anywhere.

All I ask them to respect is that this is my slice of life, and they do- graciously I might add, because the three of us do manage it. They don’t have editorial control over anything, but I do discuss boundaries on what I can and can’t publish. My rule with every relationship is not to report hearsay. So, conversations between Zac and I are valid. Conversations between Zac and his partners are private, because I wasn’t there.

I only want to write about the ways in which our lives overlap, and hope that everyone knows that when a relationship is painful to me, I’ll say so. But I also won’t let that stand as we progress back together. I am not attacking anyone if you take everything as a tapestry, all the weaving of my own opinions as to how life is treating me….. and how I’m treating it. It’s how I make people come alive- I chart day to day and then everything looks different. My entries from five years ago are not the entries I write now. Not even close.

That’s because in real life, everyone contracts and expands depending on their self-esteem. Mixing your self-esteem and someone else’s opinion is a toxic mess. It deregulates your emotions to an enormous degree. I’ve made that mistake several times in my life, and I think that’s what’s different about me now. My self-esteem doesn’t go up and down every time someone talks to me. If someone doesn’t care what I think, I definitely don’t return the favor. But I’ll remember everything about the interactions between us that I both loved and hated.

That’s how you fall in love with a writer. They don’t remember dates, but they remember how the air smelled the first time they met you. How a picture struck them just right. How a smile becomes a lifetime. They can portray you as you; they can make you laugh, scream, and cry in a way that no other person can because they’re not just your lover or your friend, but your favorite book as well.

It is said that the two worst days in a person’s life are when someone starts writing about them…………. and the moment one realizes they’ve stopped. I know this is true because people will be angry as SHIT at me, and because they only want me to paint them as angels, swear they’ll never speak to me again. Then, a few years later, they’ll be mad that I used to write so beautifully about them, and why don’t I write about them anymore? This comes with absolutely no recognition of the fact that they emotionally destroyed me the last time I did, so why would I be eager to repeat the experience?

I wouldn’t be so connected with Supergrover if the relationship hadn’t been necessary to both our mental health. That there’s a reason I didn’t just block her and move on my merry way as if nothing had happened. But her refusal to talk about any of that is not my problem, because I’ve offered. That’s all I can do.

She doesn’t come off in my blog entries like a villain, or at least, I hope that’s not what you pick up. The truth is that people have problems, and I only own half. I am constantly trying to figure out how much I am responsible for a problem, not trying to cast blame on someone else. I am deciding what is mine and what is yours, and it comes across as judgmental because it is. First of all, I think like a judge. I am trying to balance everything, not trying to guilt people. I am trying to find out the facts to be able to make a decision, and yet it comes across as an attack even though I am extraordinarily precise with language.

My pet peeve is “you made me.” I have never made anyone do anything in the history of their lives. Therefore, I make a conscious effort to say “this is how your words made me feel,” because that is casting judgment on how they’re treating me in the moment, not who they are as a human being. Weighing facts, not people’s worth.

I’m a line cook. Therefore, lots of my friends have been mentally ill or substance addicted, and/or have been to jail. I’ve found more in common with them than I’ve ever had in common with someone who does everything right. A person’s value is not kept in holding them to the worst mistake they’ve ever made.

I’d rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints. The sinners are much more fun.

Resigning from the Game

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I should have known that this is exactly how things were going to turn out with Daniel, but I felt like it was important to keep the promise to myself- to see whether rehab had indeed cleared his mind and whether we could make the plans we made fit a future now. I did not want to be the person that abandoned their partner while they were in the worst part of their lives. I couldn’t be that person to my partner, and I wasn’t. I can be proud of that.

But in retrospect, there was a red flag on day one that I couldn’t ignore, and I ran from it, because I knew that I had made a horrible, horrible mistake unless Daniel was telling the absolute truth, and there was no way of knowing whether he was telling the absolute truth from this many miles away. He said that he was still drinking, but it was night and day now. It’s not the thing you want to hear from someone that’s been to inpatient if you know even a couple of things about alcohol and the brain. It’s not that they’re not telling the truth. It’s “are you willing to gamble?” Because maybe they are. Maybe one or two beers every once in a while is their new normal. But I’m not willing to gamble.

I was for a few days. Seriously. I wanted to know how Daniel thought, whether any of his thought processes had changed over the year we were apart, how he treated me now vs. how he treated me then, etc. Absolutely nothing has changed. At no time did he consider my feelings before he went right back to saying that we were starting over while also treating me like a fiancée, so which is it? Do you want to pretend that we don’t know each other or do you want the intimacy that comes with being a partner? I don’t share all my thoughts and feelings with just anyone, and I found out that he cannot handle them.

Even after having a talk about the way I process emotions and the difference in the autistic brain, it was still all about how I’m just so mean to him and “putting all this stuff on him.” Meanwhile, he does not have any answers for my questions and no indication as to what “putting all this stuff on him” even means.

I told him that no person worthy of me would ever spend a minute trying to make me think that my feelings don’t matter, and then I blocked him and walked away, while also telling him that I wouldn’t be back. I already have two people in my life that are willing to open up to me and share with me. I don’t need to fight through to be heard, and I have discovered I won’t.

I wanted a partner to build a life with, because Bryn and Zac already have life partners, and that’s unlikely to change. And by that, I do mean that Bryn is also my life partner, but with best friends, it’s a little different. I mean that she’s my off site document repository, because she knows my files better than I do.

Also, I know this sounds crazy, but the idea of marrying your best friend is starting to seem so much more sane than marrying your romantic partner. Like, why would you place something as important as marriage on a relationship that’s dependent on sexual attraction? It doesn’t make sense to me, but that’s how it’s done….. for most people.

Daniel told me that he wanted to be my favorite person, and I told him that he was…. because I didn’t have the heart to tell him that the position had been filled in 1997 and 2013, when my heart expanded to give huge palaces in my head to three women, not shoving Bryn and Dana away in favor of anyone else. When my definition of love got bigger, I did.

There are so many follow up questions that Daniel never asked, just treated me like the classic sitcom nagging wife. I have never been in a relationship with gender roles before, so I made no attempt to understand any of that. If he wants to marry a nonbinary mind, he’s got to understand that I am his equal. He can’t just dismiss my concerns; I will walk and I did, because I will not learn gender roles for anyone.

It was easy for the world to revolve around him, because only I had to respect his time. We had one conversation where we were actually focused on each other, and that was on the phone. The rest of the time, I sat and waited because he said he had time to talk and then everything that could possibly get in the way made it where our responses were 10 minutes apart. I couldn’t focus on anything because I was caught between thinking that we were having a conversation and not knowing whether I should wait for a reply or not. When I said this was irritating, he jumped all over me about that, too, when what I wanted was “sure- I’ll tell you when I’m doing something else because I also value your time.” If I have someone’s divided attention, I’d rather you finish what you were doing and come focus on me. Because it means that you won’t really focus on me. My words won’t resonate because you’re too lost in something else, like having a conversation with someone who is listening to a podcast with the TV on in the background.

I told him that I was excited about the future, but that didn’t mean that there weren’t things to talk about. That throwing problems out on the table and seeing what they look like in the light wasn’t a bad thing. He said, “you’re right, of course.” Then he proceeded to berate me for acknowledging our problems.

In the past, this would have made me start trying to learn all the ways I can move in a relationship that won’t piss someone off, giving up the parts of myself that make me unique to please someone else. I’ve been there so many times, and it doesn’t help anyone. I’d rather keep finding other people who have also gone through that transformation. It says “I am not threatened by another person having feelings.”

One of the things that really got me was the incredible double standard. Daniel told me that he gets so busy with his writing that he disappears for days, so I thought nothing of it when I was in shutdown/burnout mode; I didn’t contact anyone. I can’t think of a single person who has ever chastised me for that except Daniel, as if I should have somehow divined that he was not okay with going a day without contact from me. Although I probably would have said something to the effect of “what I hear you saying is that it’s ok for you to dissociate, but when I do it I’m a bad partner.” What’s good for the gander has to be good for the goose, because again, I am not into being the classic definition of a wife.

He said something about “trying our best,” and I thought, “that’s not what I’m going to remember about you. So far, you’ve taken every problem we need to work out in order to be together and shut down like a steel trap when I wanted to talk about it. You see me as blaming you…. so until you see me as a partner that wants to work with you instead of someone who’s ‘laying all of this on you,’ I can’t help you.” I cannot live with someone who’s in Fantasyland right now, and it seems like he’s changed his mind about moving to Maryland, because originally, we were all going to find a place somewhere between DC and Baltimore, because Daniel is overqualified to work at Johns Hopkins. It’s fine that he doesn’t want to move anymore, but he could have said that instead of just invalidating my feelings. I was talking about Avery moving in with us or something like that…. I can’t remember what. But I said something about DC and Baltimore and he said, “or Dallas or Austin.” I never want to have that conversation again, because it was like he was doorknobbing me. I would never seriously think about moving back to Texas unless the circumstances were dire.

Plus, I don’t like Austin. I just don’t. It looks like Portland, because they wanted to be all weird and stole all their slogans, then just like Portland, big industry moved in and it wasn’t the same place to live anymore. But in the end, to me it just feels like a city full of bumper stickers that say Keep Portland Austin Weird, and The People’s Republic of Portland Austin.

They were also the first Texas city to get a Voodoo Donut, but you will never in your life know how weird it really was. The FDA shut them down for making doughnuts with NyQuil and Pepto Bismol in them, as well as caffeine. You aren’t OG Voodoo Donut unless you’ve been drunk at 3AM on Burnside….. before the second location, before the hype, before the notoriety.

That’s how I feel about Portland and Austin. The donuts will never taste the same, but Austin can imitate the feeling of those donuts………. poorly.

There are better donuts out there that have taken the place of Voodoo in PDX, but for a while Voodoo was this enigma.

I also don’t like moving at all. It was great when Daniel was headed up here already, that we’d talked about him moving here about this time last year. I realized that his PhD put us in the way of that, but I wasn’t daunted. However, I did think that it was very unfair of him to change plans without me and not let me know up front that in order for us to be together, he’d also like me to “come home.” I could have saved him a lot of trouble. That’s not a doorknob conversation. That’s a conversation you have to be up front about, and that’s my whole problem with Daniel and the many other emotionally unavailable people in my life. They call me demanding when I lay my feelings on the table and expect them to do the same so that I know what problems I need to work on in our relationship, too. But, if you think that the problem is always me, it’s not a relationship anymore.

I have always been the unseen child. I do not have to be the unseen adult, unless I just want that. I thought I did. Turns out, I had to let go of a lot of things to make me realize who I was. My destiny is not to belong to one person, but to belong to many so that I never have to put all my eggs in one basket ever again. I don’t want my husband or any of my partners to feel less important than the others, because they’re all a part of my family.

It is cooking, where we all make each other’s lives more interesting. For instance, I love hearing about Bryn’s journey through all her relationships. I love opening up to Zac and knowing that he’s capable of going toe to toe with me. I didn’t reach out to Daniel in a time of need, but abundance.

Daniel had been in a poly relationship before, so it wasn’t like I was springing anything new on him. But he didn’t want to talk about his own boundaries, only that he never wanted me to pit him against anyone else. There’s no way I would or could do that. It would be comparing bananas and oranges and giving up one rather than realizing that they’re both great in different recipes.

I didn’t want a relationship where Daniel lived in Fantasyland, thinking I’d wait around for him all the time while he did whatever he wanted while also wanting to be married while also not wanting to compromise on anything while also saving things up and exploding.

You have been reading about that relationship with someone else on this web site, which made me especially gunshy when I saw that shit coming towards me again. Blame the person for bringing up a problem, find a way to turn it back around on them, and be extremely stubborn about being vulnerable so now I always feel bad about bringing up this problem because I know this is how you’ll react every single time.

So many women learn the land mines because they feel they need a partner worse than they need to stand on their own two feet. I’m not that person, and I never will be.

I know you have your shit. I know I have mine. The difference between us is that I’m willing to tell people the truth as I see it. As in, “this is how your words are making me feel.” Then, they choose how they respond. When it is immediately defensive, I know they’re not ready to compromise on shit. They can’t even be open and honest with themselves, so why would they be with you?

When you know yourself really well, you don’t feel the need to get defensive all the time, because you know that you’re just as fallible as the other person. It’s always a matter of working out compromises with other people if you want a relationship with them. But if your reaction to another person telling you what they need from you is “there’s absolutely nothing wrong with me; how dare you,” then you’re in for a world of hurt. That kind of defensiveness takes years to work through in therapy, and you’re not a hospital for broken people. It’s too much to take on, because you’re either walking on eggshells or “starting fights,” with absolutely no in between.

Again, it took two hours for Daniel to go from “I’m having a bad day” to “you know what? This isn’t worth it.” It took him two hours to blame everything on me in my sleep because I just wasn’t attentive enough. I wasn’t attentive because neither was he. He showed me how to act. I wasn’t going to give him anything he wasn’t willing to give me.

Also, Zac and Bryn and I don’t talk every day, so it wouldn’t occur to me to treat Daniel differently unless he asked me to, and even then, I’d feel like a fuckup when I didn’t want to engage because my autism was struggling that day.

For all Daniel’s talk about understanding autism, it didn’t translate to actually improving communication, because I told him how I don’t social mask and he continued to treat me exactly the same…….. while also saying he got it.

In short, it was too much of a roller coaster, and it was easier to cut him loose and move on, knowing that I am the person I said I would be, and I will never have to play these childish games again.

Every Day Blogging

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

It’s starting to stress me out that you can’t answer a blog prompt against, because I don’t really have a topic to start from each morning. Today wouldn’t have been a good one, anyway, because I don’t have any more morning/night rituals now than I did the first time around. The point still stands, though, that it was night to have a jumping off point and a tag everyone starts with every day, #dailyprompt and #dailyprompt-x, the number advancing every day. Well, since I have both tags for all of the prompts from last year, that’s why they already look like they’ve been answered this year. I’m sorry I’m on about this, it was just the main thing that kept me from being lazy and not posting something that day.

But yesterday wasn’t about laziness. I skipped yesterday because I was in burnout mode. I was more overstimulated than I’d been in a long time, because my schedule was all messed up. I needed time to recover and I took it. I slept, mostly. I am not as young as I continue to think I am.

If I have learned nothing from going to psychiatrists and psychologists over the years, it’s that medicine and therapy absolutely work and are valuable……… but so are sleep and sobriety. I don’t practice total abstinence from alcohol, because it’s okay to enjoy it once in a while. It’s just that if I am taking an antidepressant and drinking a depressant, I have not made any forward motion.

When I was in the restaurant business, I drank a lot more because that’s what we did after work. But, then after Dana got her DUI, we went to all these classes on medicine and alcohol (legally required for her, I just drove). It sent MY brain on fire. When I realized what was actually going on in my brain when I drank, I had a light bulb moment. It just didn’t feel like an every day sort of thing anymore.

Therefore, when I worked in a pub here in Silver Spring, I rarely drank. Occasionally I took them up on a beer, but they also had Maine Root Mexican Cola. That won nearly every night. It was a pub. None of the drinks we served had ice except for soda. With the choice of a room temperature beer or a cold soda with ice after a 12 hour shift on grill, it was a quick and easy decision. Give me the cold one.

I have shifted my focus into accommodating who I actually am instead of who everyone told me I was. Whoever I thought Leslie Lanagan was, I cannot say from before. I can only say that I saw the expectations in front of me and found all of them easy for a short period of time, and all of them untenable long term. I learned who my real friends were when I stopped social masking, and Doc was the first person who recognized it before I said it. “Do you think the authoritative part of yourself comes from you feeling more confident in confiding in me?” Yes, 100%. The more you allow me to be me without social masking, the more I want to talk to you. The more I want to open up to you.

I can only speak to the fact that the more I get to know myself, the more I learn how wrong I’ve been. Treating myself as perfectly mentally stable and perfectly physically able, just lazy and a drain on society has nearly killed me several times. I know that because I can only treat myself that way so long without realizing it’s not producing results.

Once I started being kind to myself, I could be softer, as well. That’s because I was living under everyone else’s expectations of what I should be able to do. I was not raised to be neurodivergent, and in some respects, not raised to even be fallible, either, because that is opening the kimono. The parish doesn’t get to live in the pastor’s house.

I didn’t “choose to air all of this out on my web site” re: Supergrover. I decided she wasn’t worthy of listening to my story anymore, because she’d told me she was tired of it. That did not mean there was no more story to tell. She just asked to stop listening to it. There’s so much context she’s missing, and what bothers me is that she told me that I’d aired some things she wanted to keep private, and in no way did I know any of that. When I started explaining, I went by the timeline of her e-mails, especially the ones where they said that her stories weren’t mine to carry anymore, that everyone already knew. She didn’t tell me any of it- no anger, no disappointment, no hurt, no anything. She just let it fester and wandered further from me. The thing I needed most was intimacy, but she didn’t want to give it to me. Not my call. It’s perfectly valid. But so is my hurt if that is her response. I am not saying that she did anything wrong. I am only saying that it is not her responsibility to have my reactions for me. If she wants distance, it’s just a different way of ending the game than I would have done it, but I get the same result and cannot be angry about that.

She says it’s a lot, that every letter is so dense. And at the same time, I don’t think she’d be as obsessed with reading my letters if they weren’t so deep and chewy. What brought us together has driven us apart.

Therefore, I went to my only other safe space in writing….. the part where it’s just me in my room, thinking to myself. I am writing these as letters to me in the future, which is why I cultivate this web site as what my friend Kristie called “my pensieve.” I am a really rare breed, I think….. someone who’s willing to let another person read their autistic mind in real time. I think it’s important, because generally, autistic people aren’t raised to be autistic. They know how their neurotypical adults handle the world, but they have no clue how an autistic person does it. And then add to that the large number of older women who are getting diagnosed now because it was entirely missed in their childhood due to having social masking beaten into them early. That social masking, those expectations, are what make an autistic person feel like an alien.

That’s because I am an aggressive taskmaster with myself, authoritative and stern without love because in addition to not giving myself empathy, I am a relentless perfectionist who doesn’t give a fuck about my feelings. I haven’t cared how bad I’ve made myself feel for not being perfect since I was born, because that’s how the outside world has treated me for years as well.

With autism/ADHD, you never “get it together.”

Thankfully, Things Have Calmed Down

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I feel a sense of peace this morning that I haven’t felt in a long time. I found a great house, and I’m moving in roughly two weeks. I think Colin is okay with our first plan of me moving in on the 13th, but he needs some time on his end to get my room ready, too. The only thing I was trying to avoid was being home while my landlords show their house, but it won’t be the end of the world if I have to wait.

In the meantime, I’m on pins and needles waiting to see Zac, because it’s been a while. Nothing is wrong between us, just jacked up schedules right now for both of us. But again, we’re going to see Jason Moran on the 10th, and then that weekend is drill for him, so he’s going to help me after work both days (if needed). I told him if he wanted he could stay at my house on the Saturday, because drill weekend is at Ft. Meade, which is 20 minutes from my house and quite a bit further to his (Zac lives out in Virginia at the end of the blue line). I’m hoping we can get it all done in a few hours, and I don’t think that’s impossible as long as I have everything boxed. I only have four pieces of furniture.

Other than that, I think I have everything I need. My dad sent me some canvas moving boxes, and I think I’m just going to fold everything as opposed to trying to find a hanging box for all my button-downs. I hate packing. Anything to make it easier. Thank God I don’t have many dishes.

Speaking of dishes, I’m out of coffee and I’m a bit peeved about that. The only reason I’m not a full-on maniac is that I have Stash English Breakfast tea if I get desperate. I wonder if I could go door to door begging for someone to take pity on me. It’s 0551. Surely someone is up.

They are.

I could get coffee from Hayat, but I’m lazy and upstairs. Hayat (and the coffee) are downstairs. Don’t you see it would take ALL THAT WORK? 😉 Hayat has gotten up at 0400 since the day I arrived, and I started waking up early because of her. Originally, I was such a light sleeper that her coffee grinder would wake me up, so I just started going to bed earlier and earlier.

Now, I’m on my own schedule, which seems to be “be lazy. Sleep in until 0500.” So, if you get a message from me in what seems like “the middle of the night,” I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. I just write things when I think of them and forget about things like notifications. I’ve gotten good about asking people if they leave their notifications on at night or if my texting them is going to bother them- leaving notes rather than expecting a reply.

This gets problematic because people are programmed to respond right away. So, they’ll say that the notifications don’t bother them, but they weren’t serious. And now they don’t want to hurt my feelings. PLEASE hurt my feelings, because if you tell me that I can text you at any time, because you have your phone on “Do Not Disturb” or whatever, I’m going to believe you. If you change your mind and it is indeed annoying, then don’t let me think it’s fine when it’s not, because I will not pick up on your subtle cues to stop.

I mean, sometimes I will. But not if you only text me back and I can’t read your voice and it’s too polite to really tell anything. I have problems with polite, because I take things literally.

Well, when I’m not being sarcastic. Sarcasm I can do. One of the many services I offer (that tends to get me in trouble). I’ve thought I’ve been weird a lot of my life, but as it turns out the autistic sense of humor is often dark to deal with the pressure. I’m not weird in a crowd of autistic people, because someone is likely to make a darker joke than me, and that’s hard to do. It’s always a slow clap moment for me when someone manages to out-dark me.

I will be taking no further questions. 😉

Making things right with The War Daniel needed to happen, even if we never get further than we are right now. Our future plans don’t matter so much as being friends again, and being able to be there in lockstep for Daniel’s daughter, Cora. I think that’s been the hardest part of this whole separation from Daniel, because Cora is 25 years old. Trying to judge the parent dynamic from the friend dynamic is tough, because I didn’t want her to know how I feel about Daniel at all (she does now, I’m talking about when we weren’t speaking). It wouldn’t have been fair or sane to make her “monkey in the middle,” and I am definitely sane/brave enough not to do that. It’s basically the only piece of our relationship that does fall under parent/child dynamic, because no matter what happens between Daniel and me, Cora is already an ironclad member of my family. I’m never going to walk out on that kid, so all I ask from Daniel is that he just let me.

No matter what his relationship with me is, just let us be, because my relationship with Cora cannot be dependent on him. I know she’s my kid, not just my rainbow kid, because I don’t believe I’m going to get out of this without becoming her stepmother, even though we’re all adults, because she already sees me that way. That’s how she was introduced, and was overwhelmed that I am bisexual, because all of the sudden she had an ally in the house. Trust me that her parents are doing the best they can, but it’s one thing to be in the queer cultural zeitgeist and to be standing outside of it.

Daniel and I are already talking about getting married again, but on the delayed timeline of his doctorate. This is because we both want to travel, possibly live overseas, and the easiest way to do that is to fly standby on military bases, which Cora and I can do as long as we’re military dependents. The only time we would have to fly commercial is if Daniel wasn’t with us. You cannot fly unaccompanied using the service member’s benefits.

Last night, we were talking about places to move where we’d be able to get back easily, like Manila. We were trying to think of places it’s less expensive to live, but still has protections for Cora.

Daniel and I had the sweetest conversation last night. He was telling me how much cheaper UAE is than the US, and I said that I was great with going to UAE and seeing if we liked it enough to stay, but that I didn’t think it was safe for Cora or me. That I could pass as straight, but that’s not me and I’m not down for it.

He said, “sweetheart, why would you ever want to pass as straight?”

I was very touched, but I said, “to get by in a Middle Eastern country, no other reason.” Instantly, his tone changed into the English professor he is and he said, “I’m not moving ANYWHERE my women aren’t welcome.” He’s on board.

I love him. I really do. If the stars line up, we’re going to go back to Caldwell Zoo in Tyler to take pictures, hopefully recreating a few. I remember one that we need to do, and it just flashed into my memory (Achievement Unlocked, MASSIVE XP). I don’t know if it’s still there, but they used to have a playground. My mother took a shot that day of Daniel and me sitting under the play structure. I have no idea what we were talking about.

Probably Sartre or Proust, who knows. But we were definitely THAT KID.

I’ll get to show him where I was born- in Tyler, at Mother Frances Hospital, with “the statue of Jesus directing traffic.” I could see how things are going at my grandfather’s house.

It’s interesting, my grandfather gave his house to my cousin Jason, because his whole job is refurbishing homes. The plan is that once Jason is done overhauling the place, it will serve as a lake house for all of us. It’s out on Starlight Lake in Lone Star, where interestingly enough, my mother’s sister also has a house. So, we can go back and forth between relatives like we used to do when we were kids in NE Texas as well. My grandparents lived at most five miles from each other, if that.

I honestly stayed at one house til I got bored, then called my other grandmother to come and get me. I can say that because they’re no longer with us……. but they saw what I did. 😉

The vibes of the houses were so different, because my dad’s parents were Anglophiles and have a million video tapes I’d love to get my hands on with a video production server. They have stuff that Mike’s Movie Magic doesn’t have, and I swear it. Old PBS showings of BBC plays and TV shows that no one would ever find again. If those tapes still exist and I have room for them, I’l put them on a server and give access to my family.

At Christmas we usually watched “A Child’s Christmas in Wales” or Gene Wilder’s Willy Wonka, who was terrifying…. yet not as terrifying to me as “The Wizard of Oz.” Never again if I can help it (I do like “Wicked,” though, minus all the stage theatrics that really made me jump. However, I think the age at which I saw it is directly responsible. Three or four is too young for flying monkeys.

In this case, anyway.

I am terrified of Oz on some days, and some days it’s all Glinda, all the time.

Answered

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I’m getting tired of the daily blog prompts saying I’ve already answered them, because I often have new ideas the second time the prompt comes around. Today, though, I’m glad I got nothin,’ because there’s been a change, and I really can’t tell you why. Magda decided that she didn’t want to move with me, and told Colin she wasn’t coming. I don’t know why. So, I was very scared that all of the sudden, I didn’t have a place to go, either, because I couldn’t afford to pay for both rooms all by myself. Colin said not to worry, that I could still move in, and my body relaxed. I think he hopes Magda will change her mind, but I have never seen it happen. I feel bad, that maybe we’ve done something to alienate her? But that’s impossible because neither one of us have had conversations since the last one we had together.

So, I have to stop worrying about all of that and just be glad that when my boyfriend arrives to be the muscle in the operation, I still have an address to point him.

That struck me as funny all of the sudden…… that if you never really thought you’d ever have a boyfriend, God laughs and you wind up with two. 😉 Two that know about each other, and aren’t threatened by each other………. very much like I wasn’t threatened by the idea of Michael for Supergrover even at the height of feeling absolutely waylaid by an arrow to my Achilles’ heel. We had two completely separate roles in her life, and I was incredibly far away. He was on the ground. It’s the same now. Daniel is incredibly far away. Zac is on the ground. Neither of us should expect the other to be monks for years on end, and that’s not what poly is, anyway. It’s not being able to divide love up between more people, but to love multiple people 100%. That gets tricky in terms of time, but not feelings.

I have never told Bryn that I loved her INSTEAD OF Supergrover (nor told Dana I loved her INSTEAD of Supergrover, or vice versa), so I wouldn’t do it to anyone else. Bryn doesn’t tell me she loves me INSTEAD OF Dave, and I’m glad because again, two completely separate roles in Bryn’s life. W

e’ve been through so much together, more than I’ve been through with either guy, she’s been through more than she’s been through with Dave. I just don’t care whether it’s a yellow string or a red one, if you’re connected to me, you’re important. My time is just as sacred for my close friends, and always will be.

It helps that The War Daniel is in the Navy, because since his classes are online that does open us up to him being able to visit on standby. As long as I have a way for him to watch wrestling on Wednesday nights (God help us all).

Colin has cable, but he’s interested in cutting the cord. I wish I still had my old computer. I’d have a media center set up for him within the week, because I already know how to cut the cord effectively. You can have everything, including a DVR, for the cost of a cheap computer. Well, I suppose the DVR also depends on how good the signal is from your antenna, but the point stands. I can also install Kodi (media center software) on my FireStick with a little bit of hackage.

And yet, all of that is a story for another day because for right now, it’s about how to fit all of my stuff into my new moving boxes. I want to pack everything except for the sheets/blankets and some clothes. Boxes stacked in here will be easier to keep clean and neat should we have visitors. The visitors are by appointment only, but I’d like to mitigate my ability to be me as much as possible.

No one was here to rescue me on this one. I had to do it all by myself. I had to reach out to people and tell them I was interested in looking. I had to be brave and make phone calls, which seems ridiculous and yet Gen Z just went, “oh my GOD, are you okay?” I ended up in a wonderful situation with more space than I thought I would get (at first, I’m sure someone will move in). The other thing is that I get to stay in my neighborhood, and it turns out that’s pretty important to me, too. I’m a Marylander now.

That may not always be the case, as I love Virginia, too. I just feel that it’s easier for me to own my space up here. I will never run into anyone I don’t want to see, and that covers a hell of a lot of ground. You cannot imagine how relieved I was to learn that there’s a Waffle House on my side of the river, as poorly as that trip turned out.

It is definitely time for a change, but not one so big that I meltdown and burnout in a cycle until I relearn my surroundings. I wanted to avoid all of it, and I think I’ve managed successfully…….. because did I mention that Colin lives two major stoplights from my current house?

Wrestling, though? WHAT WAS I THINKING?

Pickpocketing

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

What’s a secret skill or ability you have or wish you had?

I love Skyrim. When you pickpocket someone, you get to see the inventory of their pants.

For me, pickpocketing would be about magic, not stealing. It would have been a hit at parties if I set it up in advance…. that someone will lose their wallet, and can claim it later.

I will have all the wallets in five to seven minutes, because that’s how long I’ve got. Take longer than that, the easier it is to catch you in action.

In real life, I’m not comfortable racing against the clock, even in a video game. The exception is the kitchen, because I’m not solo. This is unacceptable to my ADHD. I thrive on ironclad structure and the other half of my brain hates my fuckin’ guts. This is because when I create iron structure, I cannot maintain it. I am happy for a little while with rigidity, but the longer it goes on the more my ADHD can’t handle it. That’s why my energy levels for tasks are different all the time. My ADHD makes it its mission in life to ensure my autism is miserable.

I have demand avoidance down to taking care of myself. Yet, at other times I can be the life of a party. I’m sure depression and hypomania play a role in my energy levels, but now that I know so much about ADHD and Autism (through endless panels and lectures on YouTube), I am finding that maybe I’m not depressed. Maybe I have been mistaking depression for autism. Every one of my symptoms of depression and hypomania feel like what the psychiatrists and psychologists are trying to explain about how AuDHD works. To me, it’s a reframing, because it doesn’t feel like depression and hypomania all the time. Sometimes, I am very stable and still have demand avoidance down to taking a shower.

I am fairly certain that I have pathological demand avoidance syndrome, because it takes a Mt. Everest amount of energy for me to do anything. I’ll know once I go through the autism diagnosis process. Basically, they treat you and if it doesn’t work, then it’s pathological. “Pathological” is a scary word, but yet it’s not. It just means it can’t be treated. It’s more scary to tell someone you have something pathological because they don’t think “pathologist,” they think “serial killer.” Not a good look.

Yet, that’s still the name of the condition, and it’s already on the spectrum, just a major part of some people’s cases of autism. If you’ve met an autistic person, you have met one autistic person. For instance, I’ll talk your ear off about The Cold War, but I don’t have food issues and I don’t have too many sensory issues. I don’t have emotions like neurotypical people, but I do have them. I just process them quite a bit differently, and writing gives me an outlet to do it.

So, honestly, I don’t need some mythical power to be a “Super.” I’ve got my superpower right here.

The Calm Before the Storm

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Today or tomorrow I am meeting another potential roommate that lives in my neighborhood. My landlord referred me to him via NextDoor, so hopefully I’ll be able to secure something fairly quickly. As we told each other, it’s at least worth a meeting to see if we get along, and he has a dog.

The funniest thing he said was that he was saying he lived alone, and I said, “I’m autistic and ADHD. It would probably work out better for me because of less sensory input.” He said, and it was so cute…… “I am somewhat neurodivergent.” I told him I laughed out loud at that one. We’re both introverts. He works for a government agency and his house is cute as a button, plus updated on the inside. I looked at some pictures online, but it was from the sale of the house. I have no idea what it looks like furnished yet, but I’m eager to see.

He’s a little older than me, the same age as Supergrover. It’s how I know he’s young enough to vibe with me and not too old to think of me as a constant annoyance because our age difference is too great. My worst nightmare was getting stuck in a group house with five 20 year old interns on Capitol Hill. It wouldn’t have been bad. I would have connected with a lot of Washington elite that way, but it wouldn’t have been the right vibe. If it works out that I move in with (let’s call him) Colin, I feel that I could go the distance with him, because I moved my entire childhood. The only place I have lived longer than DC is Portland, and even that was broken up into two chunks. The first was going to see my family, and at that time, I really meant it.

The second time, I had to go see about a girl. I had it bad, but I didn’t realize it until we drove from Portland to Houston together. That woman helped me move into my apartment in fucking August (I repeat….. in HOUSTON, TEXAS) and I let her get on the plane back to Oregon. What in the actual fuck was wrong with me?

If I have any regrets in life, it’s not taking Dana seriously at six weeks when she told me she had a crush on me. It took me three or three and a half years to accept that I had a crush on her, too. That’s because I don’t know what possessed her to tell me she had a crush on me, except yes, I do.

Carol, Dana’s then-wife, was not threatened by Dana having a crush……… and oh my fucking God.

Oh my God.

I did to Dana what Dana did to Carol. It just so happened that my new relationship energy was never going to go anywhere, therefore my pie in the sky ideas for a romance with a straight woman were grounded until my mental health went off the rails. That’s what I mean about the hurt being unintentional. I take responsibility for my behavior, because it happened no matter what my mental health might have been at the time. It is more about forgiving myself for not having the right tools to deal with my feelings, my medication, or my mental state while my medication was, in a few words, completely fucked up.

Again, I learned I was poly because I never lost any love for Dana, I only gained it for SG! Dana and I went down the tubes of our own accord, but not exactly. There was no preconceived plan on Supergrover’s part to institute a divide and conquer move. As she says, our relationship happened organically despite a whole bunch of things (which meant more to me than platinum, beautiful girl).

I can’t tell you how Supergrover is feeling except hurt and tired, because that is what I know for sure, and it’s probably going to make me cry.

  • Whenever I feel anxious that she’s distancing herself from me, she surprises me with all the love that comes through in black & white. Every. Single. Time. As I have said, she doesn’t say “I love you” in words. She does it by showing up. Consistently. No matter how mad we are at each other. No matter how bad the fight is, there has been nothing in 10 years that has ever torn us apart. Somehow, we keep the yellow string going even when we’re out of pocket. When I get the most anxious is generally about the time that she swoops in and reminds me what’s up. The Mama Wolverine claws are coming out, she will go Alduin on their asses, etc. We have that part down.
  • Keeping out of each other’s lives has been a mixed bag, because having context and not creates two different sets of problems. There’s the problems we have with telling our story together, and the problems we have with telling our stories apart. Lancing the boil was getting back on the same page. Again, I don’t know what will happen, but she said that she didn’t want to get into a cat and mouse game. It’s not if she shows up. Not being honest about your true intentions is a cat and mouse game. I love her enough to struggle all the way until we’re ridiculously happy again, whether there’s a context to our relationship or not. I’m ready for a different kind of honeymoon phase because I’m tired of putting each other through the wringer for no good reason.
  • I have loved her so much for a decade, and I feel like she has returned those feelings to the best of her ability. That she couldn’t be a better friend than she is right now in terms of being the kind of person that sends birthday and Christmas presents because we have such a long history together, and it’s so intense.
  • I don’t want to put anyone above her ever again, which is why I say that I’m as settled as I want to be. I am never going to get in another fight over emotional affairs because never once when I got married did I think I was going to go blind. I thought Dana and I had enough strength in our relationship to get through it, but I underestimated the pull I felt toward SG! The wave went over my head, and I’ve never been the same. But it’s all for good- I love my life, and I wish I could convince my beautiful girl of that instead of always thinking I’m saying “this is all your fault.”
  • I’m not sure why she thinkgs this is all her fault, because she laid out all the times she’s been a dick and the times I have as well. That means “Things Fell Apart” at both our hands. It is both our faults and neither.
  • Despite not having enough context, I think this is the relationship that reflects me the most deeply because since I’m reading her, I pick up her words and phrases all the time.
    • Painting my feelings as fact
    • Pricks on my skin I just couldn’t close anymore
    • It’s not “very” anymore, it’s “to an enormous degree.”
    • “I love his takedowns of the orange gelatinous shitbag.”
    • Me: How’s your day going? Her: picture of dumpster fire…. this has been especially useful lately
    • “Pick up my toys and go home,” which she got from me and now says all the time- at least to me. I don’t know how much I affect her speech at work/home/etc. If so, I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. 😉
    • When she edits me, she’s very rough. I like it. I’ll get notes like “WHO TF IS PANCHO?”
    • Her husband had a thing and I asked her if she needed help (med assistant- she travels). She said no, but how kind of me to ask. I said, “it seemed nicer than asking how you broke him.” Later that day, I got an e-mail that said, “I keep laughing at this.” I smiled at that for three weeks straight. I got her. ❤ Maybe grasshopper is not as far away from satori as I think. So, because it tickled me to get a note later in the day that I was still laughing at something she said, I send them to others.
    • It was a door I never should have opened, but I used to love flirting with her because she was so fucking quick. I got in over my head fast, and I couldn’t take it back. Again, I knew I was fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuucked. I won’t tell you what she said, but I told her that all she needed to do was realize that my feelings were valid and real, and to be sensitive to them. That there was no reason to act, just to know they’re there. It was not to encourage, but for her to have empathy because I knew it couldn’t go anywhere and I was flipping out anyway. I can’t believe how much it meant to me when I said, “surely you spent longer than you wanted getting over someone who turned your head when it was a bad idea?” She said, “yes, surely I have.” She really saw me, and I will remember it forever. She has also never once invalidated my feelings, and been moved at the things I’ve written about her. She makes me happy without even trying, makes me proud just by breathing. The fact that she’s not my romantic partner means both jack and shit. She’s just always the one at the back of my mind, the one I quote all the time while she doesn’t know it…….. and I am sure that is a two way street even if she doesn’t say it out loud, because over ten years of writing, we have a million word associations between us……. most notably, “influencer.”
      • It was her brain that made me absolutely crazy about her (this is the part where you don’t get her reply that was so perfect it made my desk chair sag, I was laughing so hard). I joked, “besides, can I really make a decision on whether I’m in love with you or not if I haven’t seen your rack? What kind of idiot do you take me for, woman?” That was the moment *she* came in Kings full over Aces and I thought, “Christ. This needs to last my whole life, no matter what it looks like. I will never find her anywhere else in a million zillion years.” In fact, I actually told her this. That I wanted to fix us because I couldn’t go to the Supergrover store and pick out a new one. She’s the Vera Wang you can’t afford.
  • I realize by writing all of this down, it just seems like I’m begging her to come back. It’s just not true. That’s because if she does come back, it will be a great day in my life….. because she knows that I don’t want the surface level of her. I want the brain that made me crazy about her in the first place. I feel that if she lets me into that space, the way I let her into mine, what used to be a “cat and mouse game” will once again be stable, because in a lot of ways, we’ll be discovering each other again for the first time. Just because we’ve had a weird and hard road in the past 10 years doesn’t mean it always has to be as difficult as it has been. I’m just tired of covering up feelings with gifts, because I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel when I get them. What emotions are behind them when her e-mails say so little? No, these entries are not begging. They are the precious things I will want to read 10 and 20 and 30 years from now…… because she’s the best thing that ever happened to me and thinks she isn’t. I can’t fix that for her, but it’s not for lack of trying.
  • I will always love her with this much depth, because she gave me too much over the last 10 years to hold any bitterness or anger anymore. She has said that some of the things I’ve said are incredibly hurtful, and I’d like to talk about them. But again, I do not know whether she needs to separate from me, or whether she’ll be back after some time, space, peace, and grace. She has it coming from me in spades, because “surely grace and mercy will carry me all the days of my life” (Don’t call me Shirley!). As I have said before, it is not my job to talk now. I have talked enough. She knows how I feel, and she does not need to hear me again.

No, all of these memories are for me…. the ones that Oliver, who is a dog, has already heard.