Today’s writing prompt was a waste. Something about interviewing someone. I am not calling someone at 0700 on a Saturday for anything, a lot of the time because my friends live in other time zones.

I call my dad too early a lot of the time because I’m high energy in the morning and it just does not compute sometimes that not only is it early, it’s an hour earlier for him. I do not feel as bad about it as I probably should, because when I lived two hours behind him, he had no problem calling me at the ass crack of dawn. I wish he’d call me at dawn here, because as a restaurant employee I was not as flexible about it as I could be now. 😉

Making an interview a daily writing prompt is just not that great because I am looking for a jumping off point inside my own head without making me dependent upon waiting for other people’s input. It’s standing there in front of the “pull” door and pushing with all your might. I mean, this prompt does have some barrier to entry, anyway. In order to get it done, I need two things. The first is the courage to ask people if they’d be willing to be interviewed. The second is waiting for them to have time. I need this blog to run on my schedule, which is why I turned it around on my audience. The comments section will eventually become the entry, because maybe someone won’t comment for five minutes or five years, but it will be *something.*

I am sure that Bryn would have picked up if she heard the phone in her sleep, and she’s on vacation so she could just roll over and go back to sleep once we’re done, but it’s 0415 in Oregon. I am going to go out on a limb here and saying that moving on to a different thing to write about is actually saving our relationship. 😛 However, she will attest that among our mutual friends, she would have the least offensive reaction to being woken up. I’m the best friend, and she has priorities. I don’t think I’m the be all and end all for her, I’m just glad to be 1 or 2 on the call sheet, depending on the situation. If the problem is with me, she calls Dave. If the problem is with him, she calls me. Dave and I are all good. I love him because she loves him and that will never change. However, make no mistake. If Bryn decides Dave is out, he’s out. It’s not that I don’t value him as a person, we just haven’t known each other since 1997, so that boundary is pretty firm. Besides, Dave is a good guy and I don’t see it happening. I’m just saying Bryn is my ride or die and Dave gets a seat in the car as long as she’s navigating and controlling the music.. 😉

(In olden times, children, the passengers looked up directions for the driver. It was very 20th century of us.)

If I was really going to turn this entry up to stupid o’clock, it would be contacting Supergrover after many months and being all like, “hey, I know you’re probably mad af, but inquiring minds want to know.” She has absolutely no idea how much people love her, because even if she doesn’t think I write her in 3D, no one else does. That’s because they aren’t taking anything personally.

I think if there’s anything I could ask her, it’s “could you speak more to being written as “Flat Stanley?” This is because what she has said already is that I alternate between lifting her up for being her and excoriating her for being her. I honestly laughed at that slightly, because I thought, “what does she think being written in 3D actually is?”

I think that she thinks me acknowledging there’s a problem means I think less of her when the opposite is true. My love for her runs deeper within me than any river. When we met, she immediately got under my skin. Just made me explode into growth after years of being an arrested teenager. My response was to blow up my whole life because I could not stop vomiting emotions about someone else and say married. This is not limited to emotions about the friendship/relationship in this thing we’ve created and managed (now that I’m over it, “this thing we’ve created and managed” has become stupid funny. If it’s funny once, it will still be funny a hundred times later. Welcome to the Lanagan family, where our motto is “if it’s funny, run it into the ground.”). I was recovering from emotional abuse as a teenager, and picking out all that shrapnel was best done on my own. I should have recognized that and got out of my marriage quicker, because I needed to be introspective and it naturally pushed everyone away, anyway. I could have avoided all of that, and I didn’t.

I don’t expect anyone to forgive me, but I forgive me. If I can’t have compassion from others, I will have compassion for myself. It’s the only thing that matters, in the end. They don’t have to live with me, but I do.

It was really difficult forgiving myself for something entirely relatable when you live in my body, not so much to people who can’t see the thought processes zinging around in my mind. I was too green in a situation I didn’t understand and didn’t handle it well….. immediately. Within a couple years, everything was back to normal on my end, but not hers. She emotionally shut down and blamed me for painting my feelings as fact. I was not trying to be an arbiter/dictator. I was trying to reach common ground and I got tired of doing it all by myself.

I shut it all down for my own sanity, but at the same time, a decade of love tilted at a hundred and crazy percent doesn’t calm down overnight. She is my personal forest fire, and cleaned my clock with it. But it didn’t burn everything down for malice. No. By the time the fire ended, the slap bracelet was an empty field of ash enriched earth. Ripe for planting something self-sustaining when previously the growth stopped in its tracks when I felt anxious and overwhelmed.I also didn’t have any love or forgiveness to give myself before it happened, and afterward it became my mission. My beautiful girl said many times “why do you expect everyone else to fix you?” Two things about that. The first is she was right. I did need to develop inner strength. The flip side of the coin is that if she needed me to step up, there wouldn’t even be two seconds between “I have a problem” and “what can I do?”

If it were in my power to do so, I would wrap her in foam rubber and make everyone keep a six foot distance. That’s not your badass out there in the world.

That’s mine.

People get tripped up on love when there are problems/issues because I am trying to be objective and they think it’s a referendum on them. I’m actually saying that I would love them like a house on fire no matter how many issues there are. We are too old not to believe everything will be perfect for all time. We just have to make our quirks line up. I can do that because she is a 3D character.

As I told her, “Flat Stanley” has a history of exquisite topography.

It reminds me of a scene from “my so-called life.” Rayanne’s mom is talking to Angela’s, and Angela’s mother is not so sure about Rayanne. She literally looks perturbed when Rayanne’s mother says that for Rayanne, the world is black and white. Angela is the only one in color. It’s such a good line that I’ve remembered it since it aired. This is because if you have an emotional connection with me, you become the only ones in color.

Years and years ago, before my handwriting turned into a carpal tunnel pile of garbage, I collected fountain pens. It was never about the pens. It was about bottles of ink from black and espresso to peacock (favorite) and purple. Green, never red. When I changed moods, I changed colors.

But I didn’t change muses.

She is black, espresso, peacock, purple, and pink. Green, never red. She lives in every color.

I just decided to stop pushing on the pull door.

Doesn’t mean she fades to gray.