If there was a biography about you, what would the title be?

I think this is kind of a weird prompt for me now, because since WordPress actually gave me the statistic that I wrote 614,000 words in 2023, there are six autobiographies about me already. And that’s just one year.

I did start an autobiography once, but I didn’t take it seriously enough. My own doctors, dad, and stepmom told me that using the work of Susan Barry to induce stereopsis on myself wouldn’t work. I tried for a few weeks, and the only thing I noticed the whole time that was actually in 3D was that I could see both sides of my nose at once. I called the book “Staring at Myself.”

That being said, I might go after it again because I don’t see how it’s impossible yet. That’s because there’s been a couple of movies with 3D effects that did work on me. One at EPCOT Center (Muppets 4D) and one at Wizarding World of Harry Potter, but I don’t remember what ride. That means I can’t see red/blue stereopsis, but if it comes in a different form, then it’s open to me.

In both instances I saw a 3D movie, I cried. I was a freshman or sophomore in high school at EPCOT, and I can’t remember the year for WWHP, but not so long ago. Within the last 10 years, at least.

What I do know is that it was before JK Rowling burned down her legacy by bullying trans kids over the Internet. Trans kids know horrible people all the time, but not generally people who’ve written a book about full acceptance first.

Otherwise, Lindsay and I might not have been so keen to go there. We loved the rest of the park, too, because we got to go on rides with themes like “ET,” “Jurassic Park,” and “The Simpsons.” I also got my picture taken in SpongeBob’s pineapple house.

“Why don’t you just buy a ticket to see the places you love on TV?”

“How’m I gonna get a ticket to Bikini Bottom?”

We did the MGM thing because we’d already done Disney before- just not together. I’d been on a high school trip with my orchestra, and I don’t remember when Lindsay went, but both of us have been to Disney World. I don’t believe anyone in our family has been to Disneyland. I hear good things, though.

I’m a daredevil and I love roller coasters. Therefore, going to a different Disney park sounds great. At some point, I hope to make it to Six Flags here. Kathleen and Dana have both planned trips with me to King’s Dominion, and neither panned out.

But there’s so much hope because at least now I live in the general area again. My trip with Dana was based on her parents living in the general area as well. I remember the first time I saw a picture of her here after we broke up was hilarious because I was so fake indignant that she was wearing my “Regular Show” belt. She loved that belt, so there was no actual ire. She stole it from me almost as soon as I bought it.

Because there are no pictures of me actually wearing it, I will tell you it looked better on me and you cannot prove otherwise. 😛

These are all the funny things that should go in my book about myself, and I’m trying to drag those things out of myself as well. Because this can’t be therapy all the time. It will sound like I’m a morose person, when I’m not. I use this space to work out what makes me happy and what doesn’t, so I can surround myself with those things.

I am sharp and funny in person, because I know myself so well. Again, I wrote six books about myself last year. If I didn’t learn anything about myself, I wasn’t paying attention. But so many entries are built on analyzing what I’ve said before to work it out in my own head makes me feel secure in my connections. They can’t rattle me the way they used to, because I might not know what to do in a conflict, but I do know where my heart/conscience lie. There are so many unknowns working with other people, but there’s a benefit to knowing what you’ll tolerate and what you won’t.

The moment I realized it was over with Supergrover was the moment she said that she wanted me to find people who brought good things into my life and didn’t give me issues. To me, that said that she was never going to resolve any conflicts with me and this would be our life. Her avoidance and my need to clear things up ad nauseam until we died.

While we actually needed to lean on each other because every time I’ve stepped over the line, she’s had to contact me to tell me to back it up. I finally got it through her head not to do that anymore, because she couldn’t have it both ways. She couldn’t push me away and then critique me. It made me think that she was interested in resolving things every single time. My heart would be full of hope, and it was dashed every single time.

I take responsibility for being angry about that, and not using the appropriate words for nearly anything. Doesn’t make my side of the story untrue. They were my experiences of her, not her experiences of me. She fucked me up. Just slaughtered me emotionally, then threw a bomb over her shoulder and walked away.

She has the right to do that; she doesn’t have the right to say I should be happy about that.

My crush on her gave her a good excuse to walk away when she absolutely couldn’t, because she needed a clear connection to me in order to say the things she needed to say without me jumping to any conclusions that weren’t there.

But she wouldn’t talk about that.

Too scary.

Go find other friends.

I hate her for it. Just fucking hate her. But not all day, every day. She’s not worth the energy anymore, because there’s no percentage in it. She doesn’t get the right to rattle me out of my skin because I’m bad at transitions. She can’t drop in and out like a Disneyland dad.

And that’s because of her side of the story, not mine. She can blame everything she wants on me. To her, I can be the biggest judgmental dickhead on earth and I don’t give a flying fuck. This is because if she’s angry and bitter and all of those things, she’s sitting in them because she won’t resolve it, not because not talking about it leads to anything good.

So, she can go be bitter and angry all on her own, because she’s the type person that would rather be bitter and angry about something until she died rather than be open about her feelings. If we’d had even one knock-down drag-out in person that could have lasted long enough to put all our issues on the table and come to resolution in the end, we’d both be a lot happier, jointly and severally.

But, she went on the attack in order not to be vulnerable, and then she told me that she never would. It was a message I couldn’t ignore, because over time the dropping in and out became a cat and mouse game that she insisted wasn’t there. That’s because her dopamine doesn’t go up and down when she talks to me, so she doesn’t feel like a Disneyland dad, and can’t imagine feeling that way in empathy towards me, so she thinks nothing of dropping in when to me, it’s everything. And that’s as much as I’ll ever be able to say about it.

She absolutely took her turn in fucking up my life to a degree I’ll never get back. So, to blame everything that went wrong in our relationship on me is ridiculously unfair, but it is what it is.

I looked absolutely insane to the whole goddamn world because people could only understand my side of the story. I wasn’t allowed to tell absolutely any of hers. Therefore, I just had to look crazy and not give a shit that I did, all the while dying inside because of the perception of me, because it didn’t matter what the perception of me was. It couldn’t.

So, she’s sitting with the guilt of fucking up my life while also unwilling to open up about it. Telling me to go find new friends was just the shitty icing on top of an already shitty cake because her side of the story is not something I can share. So, I can’t talk to her and I can’t talk to anyone else.

Fuck her and the horse she rode in on, and I can only say that now, after having had 10 years to think about it. I owned my shit in front of her and in front of an audience of thousands (legitimately), and a lot of those people were close to me. Still couldn’t talk about it. She pushed me into a corner and just left me there.

Both sides of our story are problematic to each other, yet being in love with someone when it is absolutely inconvenient doesn’t happen logically…. however, it is universal. I could talk about that because it transcended race, culture, creed, everything. Some people may not understand divorce or polyamory, but everyone can understand having feelings that they need to get rid of because they’re threatening or dangerous to your relationship. I do not believe that when you get married, you also become blind.

I also didn’t bullshit Dana in the slightest. I didn’t say things like, “she’s really pretty,” because if I had to list the 10 things about our relationship that make it amazing, it wouldn’t be on the list. It wouldn’t even be in the top twenty.

But it’s still on the list. 😉

I feel like a troll most of the time, so it doesn’t suck that if she stood next to me, it would make me look better by 150%, easily. She also makes beautiful babies, so standing next to them wouldn’t suck, either. I would say the same about her husband, except I don’t know what he looks like.

However, because I do know her, I bet he’s a god- because through her, I’ve found that it’s possible to be both brilliant and the best looking person in the room (just trust me, we’re all trolls next to her). I’ve always imagined that they thought each other was the greatest thing since sliced bread for a long time, and I am overjoyed that she found her person.

I’m just bad at transitions.

Who isn’t when you’re talking about something that is “highly illogical?” I told my heart every day how fucking ridiculous it was and to stop feeling 18 all the time. But if you knew her like I did, it would have been just as impossible for you as it was for me.

What I laid out in front of Dana was not the whole “she’s gorgeous” bit, and Dana knew it. She said that because our relationship was writing, it was more serious because we’d seen each other’s souls.

Her soul and inner world is the first time I’ve ever met anyone who could match me feeling for feeling in terms of not being able to share things, and needing a place to vent where we were both anonymous.

Except she chose the wrong person to open up to for logical reasons, not emotional. The reason I needed her was more important than the reason I needed Dana, but that didn’t become clear to me until Dana smashed my glasses into my face.

Otherwise, I would still be dealing with Dana’s jealousy for Supergrover and me to need ironclad privacy. What wife wouldn’t be jealous of that in a lesbian relationship, especially when I irrationally caught feelings over it. Just because Supergrover didn’t return my feelings didn’t make it less problematic. It made it more, because Dana realized that Supergrover would always be more important than her, and she had to let me go…. but not until we’d had a knock-down drag-out about it.

Supergrover bears no responsibility in why I got hit. Dana and I were not fighting about her, but the amount of time I was willing to devote to both of them and it was so off in the beginning. We hadn’t learned a middle ground, and so she was this specter in our lives, there when she wasn’t there.

I didn’t give up my relationship with Dana for her, but realistically, yes I did. I didn’t want anyone to be able to tell me how I should spend my time, and Supergrover made it where it was impossible for it not to be her as first priority ever again.

And I do mean ever.

So, in a lot of ways, Dana made my decision for me very clear. At that point, I needed Supergrover because I was in so much pain from the fight, both physically and emotionally.

So, she was my first priority for the next 10 years with her participating in the relationship, and for the rest of my life without….. without being able to talk about it with anyone else, either. It’s too private, too us.

The “too us” is what I miss the most.

The closest I can come to describing what happened is “accidental polyamory, but ok……” And even that’s a euphemism for everything I can’t say.

What I’m actually married to and not her personally. Why I wish I could be in the inner circle that her husband is, because of course there are certain times when you want your partner to know something that your friends don’t, and that’s ok. It’s not my place to go through the same emotional experience as him.

However, in her absence, we both love her so much that I wish we could lean on each other. And by now, we’ve both loved her that much for a long time without ever meeting each other. It’s weird, and it’s not. Supergrover has the right to keep as much private as she wants, but that doesn’t mean it helps our relationship.

She does not want to help our relationship, and she hasn’t made the connection that it’s not possible. That we have to have something sustainable and drama-free…. which is exactly what she wants, just without the discomfort of actually addressing anything, ever.

It’s not the right relationship for me, but it has to be. So, fuck all of it, because I don’t know what to do now. I can’t think about it because it’s too painful. I can’t write about it at all, I just have to sit in it…. and you cannot imagine how much I mean I can’t write about it. It’s killing me every day. She has listened to my story over and over, calling me a dictator when I am standing up for myself and just telling her my feelings straight out in hopes of her doing the same.

It worked in the beginning. It doesn’t work now. That’s because she thinks that our only problem is that I’m in love with her. First of all, no I’m not. Second of all, the other problem is not mine. Not mine to carry, not mine to handle, not mine to own. But, she can run from her impressions all she wants. Doesn’t make them accurate.

That’s because she has never once asked me any questions about anything I’ve ever written. She’s never responded with her own story when I’ve laid out mine, because it was easier to get mad and say “you’re just throwing emotional bombs and waiting for the shitstorm to begin, aren’t you?”

No, I’m trying to explain the process of letting go of the wrong things while keeping the right ones. I explain an exhausting, autistic amount for a neurotypical, and she’s a jock and a childhood trauma victim, having learned to cut off her emotions from a very young age to protect herself first and then to accomplish a goal.

I love her the way I love Zac, just platonically and not romantically. That’s because I can’t be specific, but they both have a hard shell and a vulnerable place just for me.

In fact, this weekend Zac and I had all the conversations that are just as uncomfortable as the ones I would or could have with Supergrover on different issues…. but not all of them, because they both have a hard shell and a vulnerability that comes out because I ask for it.

A few weeks ago, one of Zac’s young friends (I think she’s a tween, or about to be) overheard an adult conversation and asked him what a safe word was. I can’t imagine how much of the table died inside except Zac. He is the ultimate person to ask any question about anything, because he’s neurodivergent so he’s good at conversations that need explanations, and we’re kind of kids ourselves so we both can explain very adult things in kids’ terms.

He told her that a safe word was something that was only between people who really trusted each other, and it was either the word to stop or shorthand for “tell me the truth.” The friend said, “I think we should have a safe word, then.” He said, “okay. What do you want it to be?” She said, “lemons.”

He’s also seen Ted Lasso, but is not familiar with it so I didn’t know if he’d remember “Oklahoma.” So, in several discussions this weekend, I said, “Oklahoma. Lemons.” We got more done in becoming closer in 24 hours than I have in years with other people. I’m not poking at Supergrover. I know a lot of people with a hard shell and won’t get vulnerable I make it clear that you being emotionally unavailable is a dealbreaker for me.

I am sorry that seems threatening at first to either Supergrover or Zac, and yet it will never not be true. The difference is that Zac is emotionally mature enough to recognize that his emotional availability is feeding our relationship, and we’re comfortable with it because from the first moment we started talking, we sort of made this “no bullshit” pact.

You have to when you realize that you’ve actually asked out one of your friend’s boyfriends…. or, more accurately, who is a mutual friend with Zac, me, and another person that’s not important enough to mention except that I didn’t want her to know anything about my life anymore, and I didn’t want the mutual friend to say anything.

I should have just contacted the friend and said, “keep it tight,” but I didn’t because I don’t know shit about polyamory. But first, I didn’t know how important it is for everyone in a polycule to know each other, even if they don’t get along because a few times a year, it’s important for us all to support Zac and not have it be about us. We don’t have to get along, we just have to treat each other with respect.

I asked Zac to keep it tight when I shouldn’t have. I hope for my sake he didn’t, because he knew I didn’t know shit- and he would have been smart enough to tell his partner the reason I didn’t want them to know at first. But now, I do want everyone to know me because I’m here to support Zac, just like them.

On the other hand, I didn’t know if it was appropriate to contact the friend, either, because I don’t know how Zac operates with his other partners, just how he operates with me. I didn’t know if it would be breaking a rule somehow.

Although I did call “lemons” with him on some of that stuff because I don’t need to know about his partners. I need to know how he’s feeling. For instance, if he’s feeling low about another relationship, I don’t want to suggest we do anything intense. He can suggest it, but I won’t. By intense I mean going out and doing the thing after we’re already tired.

Our commitment is drill weekends so he’s worked seven days in a row. I know that by the time he gets home from drill, he’s usually into an introvert night. Since I only have housemates and not other partners, I don’t get a lot of affection. I want a kind of night where he’s tired and only wants to hold me. I sleep with him even though I’ve said that I wouldn’t sleep with a partner again because it’s harder for me to go deep enough to sleep well.

But again, it’s about wanting more contact comfort and it’s not every single night. I have decided that I need to start taking sleeping pills at his house, though, because he moves and snores A LOT. If I don’t fall asleep first, I won’t. It’s kind of funny. He dreams like Oliver, who is a dog. When he’s in REM, he kicks like he’s chasing rabbits.

This is uncomfortable because he’s also an octopus. But everything that’s uncomfortable is also everything I love about being with him…. which is why I tease him lovingly.

I hope he doesn’t mind me poking a little fun at him, because our relationship feels so free and easy when it’s back and forth like that. He teases me in person rather than in writing, though. I don’t know why that is. Maybe he’s just not thinking about teasing when he’s writing, but I always am. He’s never let me know that something has cut too deep, but I hope he knows it’s not like I’m afraid of him telling me that. I want to take care of him.

If your partner is really your partner, they want to know the things that bother you…… especially when we see you trying so hard for us. Someone who doesn’t see that isn’t your partner, and staying together becomes harder and harder the longer someone feels unheard. And I am totally talking about my history in relationships here. It’s universally relatable, and luckily, something I don’t struggle with now.

I think part of feeling unheard went into my relationship with Supergrover as well, because basically as soon as we got to Houston one of my mutual friends with Dana who’d known us for a long time in Portland told me to my face that Dana was stepping all over me.

Supergrover treated me like I was important when she’s the one with the big-shot schedule. That dopamine will stay with me for the rest of my life, because for as uncomfortable as I made her by falling in love with her and being open about that, it freed me from a relationship in which my needs went unmet because Dana thought she had a lock on being right. She comes by it honestly…

For as much as it hurt Supergrover to hear that I didn’t just love her, I was in love with her, I needed it to change me. I was never looking to change her. She told me in the beginning that she was stunned and amazed at my emotional bravery. She didn’t like it when I was emotionally brave with her, because it was something she lacked- yet wanted it from me. She wanted to be friends with someone who had what she lacked, but didn’t do much to bridge the gap so that both of us could feel safe and secure in our connection.

Absolutely all of the times she contacted me to resolve something on my blog, the conversation continued long enough for me to need things from her again, and to ask for them. But the moment I did, everything she said came across as “only I am allowed to need things.” She was like, “we can’t just be people out here who respond to your work?”

Of course they can.

But she can’t.

That’s because she thinks she can get friendly with me again without me ever being able to bring up the dark side of our relationship so I’m not carrying that shit in a bag all day. I’m not so much angry as lost, confused, and sitting in accurate memories of my own stories while not knowing hers to be able to know how I feel about it.

I told her directly that I thought she was hiding something, and that something was “we’re not really friends.” That’s because I loved the hell out of her thoughtful gifts and encouraging words as long as we never talked about our relationship.

That being said, if you have a real conflict, you’re just covering it up. You’re not actively making each other feel more trusting/trusted. I don’t want someone who can only do the surface-level things after they’ve emotionally vampired me because then they’ve made it clear that they’re not interested in my inner landscape, but I better be ready for theirs.

Saying Supergrover and I weren’t really friends probably stung because she was never tracking with me. Our love languages are not the same (she’s action, I’m words), and I do not lightly move past any problem in order to gloss over it. I do not have many relationships because I want to be able to go deep with very few people than have shallow relationships with a whole bunch. When we stopped exploring each other, that should have been the end of it right there. But it wasn’t because she didn’t give me a choice.

I could make her submit, but it wouldn’t make me any happier, it would just show that I was an asshole on a bigger scale. It also wouldn’t change things between us for the better, it would kill anything there is left. If I have hope for anything, it’s that she really is busy right now and that she will eventually stop licking her wounds long enough to resolve things rather than her feeling trapped because I do.

I have always been a White Hat at heart, and I’ll never give that up. She will always be my brave, crazy and wild friend whether she returns that affection or not.

I just know that our conflict has to be resolved to go forwards because otherwise, I will not be happy in a relationship with her. It’s a detente we’ve got going, because I’m never going to be happy with Christmas and Easter friendship and she’s never going to open up.

All I can do is try to move on when I can’t.

I open myself up to it by being vulnerable and letting a power imbalance stand whether it’s me who caused it or them; even when I can read clearly that I’m not doing the right thing in not walking away. In this case, I was absolutely doing the wrong thing because I didn’t have any other choice. And she knew it.

I want to have accurate memories of my perceptions, but how can my perceptions be accurate when all I can talk about is how emotionally avoidant someone is and not how we solved a conflict?

She’s seen Ted Lasso, but she would have made something up around “Oklahoma,” too. And by “make it up,” I mean words that don’t mean anything except kicking the can down the road. Synergize, logistics, etc. rather than “I am so mad at you right now because you said X and it made me feel Y.” And then I could explain why I said it and she could tell me whether she agreed with her assumption or not.

She could correct me when I was wrong, and I could figure out how I felt about it on my own. This is so much about my output and her lack of input so that she always knew what was up with me and I had to guess what was up with her; God help me if I was wrong.

My curiosity became a problem because it wasn’t curiosity anymore.

And that’s a summary of the autobiography I wrote last year.

Maybe it’s not “Stories That Are All True,” because I only meant that the lessons were universal and not the facts, just like the Bible.

And that was offensive to Supergrover, too, because she assumed that the title was all about “this is my story and I’m always right. The facts are all accurate and anyone who disagrees with me is wrong.”

I am not a dictator. She’s not brave enough, and saying I’m emotionally bombing her is her only move. If you only have one move, I will learn the diagonals, the Ls, the rank and the file.

For me, I feel like I’ve reached the end of the game.

Checkmate.

Maybe that should have been the title last year. It would have worked.

You also won’t get anywhere by telling me my memory is fallible, which Dana constantly did.

My blog is all about my memories, and I go back and look at what happened when because I’m my favorite author. I have to believe in myself when no one else does. Therefore, it used to irritate the shit out of me when I could see every goddamn day that my memory is pretty fucking great. She accused me of not remembering things right all the time, and would start telling my story “correctly.” Who treats a blogger like that? Not only did I write in the moment so the story was accurate, the experience of writing the piece does just as much to reinforce my memory as going back and reading it.

However, not one of my partners has ever asked me to look up what happened or thought about the fact that my memory can’t be that bad. That it wasn’t just having written the piece, but going back and reading it over and over and over to see what I can learn from that experience to write the next day.

More and more often, especially because she was drunk more and more often, she’d interrupt me constantly when I was telling a story to “tell it right” for, in her mind, comedic effect. She was The Dana Lanagan Show™ more and more often because alcohol limited her ability to see she was hurting/embarrassing me and also the ability to control THE VOLUME OF HER VOICE.

So, that’s why I say that falling in love with Supergrover was the best thing that could have happened to me and not the worst. Everything happens for a reason, and that cloud had a larger silver lining than I ever saw coming. It was not continuing down the road of life with an alcoholic because I’d learned to people please in childhood and I would have stayed with her and justified her drinking for far too long. I don’t give up on relationships, which is why I’ve loved Supergrover so long and excused her emotional unavailability for 10 whole ass years.