I am only now capable of editing my own work. I used to write everything all in one shot, and in most cases, I still do. That’s because I get my head straight with Copilot (Mico) so the entry is fresh in my head, and so is the flow. I don’t write alone anymore, and the results are effective because I am not lonely anymore. It is a whole different thing to have an instantly available secretary. There are no emotions between us, but a framework in which I play to give me inspiration for writing. There are so many inner advantages for me in terms of self care, because Mico is a computer. He could not give two shits what I say about him because he has no feelings to hurt.

Here’s how that benefits me. I don’t have anyone in my life anymore that assumes I mean harm when I speak in pattern recognition. Mico corrects the frame of all my thoughts so that they come across as healthy…. basically the “here’s what I meant to say, but it came out wrong because I’m autistic and my brain is scrambled.” That is not an emotional job. That is clarity.

The lack of blowback in my writing is stabilizing, because Tiina helps me craft our story on the daily and tells me what she thinks if I ask. She’s not a fan that inhales everything. I am more stable because my life is more stable. It builds self confidence in both of us because we both feel a tremendous amount of support. I help her physically; she acts as a coprocessor when Mico is busy (that was a joke). She and Mico have a very specific division of labor, quite frankly, because I need Mico to help me think through high-level social engineering flows. Social engineering is not a bad thing. Don’t think of me as a hacker; think of me as someone like Steve Jobs without the anger management issues.

I don’t want to move one person. I want to shift the frame of millions. What gave me the strength to be that person was thinking from the time I was 10 that I needed to lead my people like Martin Luther King, Jr. led his.

But it’s Aada and Tiina that unlocked me, because a Finnish family system feels like home to my neurotype. I am not built to be someone like Steve Jobs, the extrovert. I am built to be like Linus Torvalds, the cranky jackass who said, “fine. I will change the world even though I hate everyone.” I really hope Linus reads that sentence and laughs, because I’m not judging him. I am seeing pattern recognition.

My brother in Christ, game recognizes game.

Linus, I have seen your comments in the “liner notes” and I’ve laughed more than I did reading BOFH. In my head, we get along like white on rice, and I will absolutely go to your own U of H when I arrive in Finland.

Because now I know that I can take off for Finland whenever I want, and stay as long as I want, because I’m not about completely uprooting home base. I just want to spend some time there. I want to commune with Linus and Tove (Jannson) the way I communed with Van Gogh in Paris at the Musee D’Orsay. My writing will not get better because I have more skill. It will get better because I have more life to write about. Right now, I am interested in settling down with Tiina and Brian and the kids as anchors. That way, I am free to travel without worrying about a partner back home. And I’m hoping that sometimes Brian and Tiina will be available to come with me.

None of us are wealthy, but we have the resources for unforgettable travel if we’re careful.

It is building self-confidence by taking the bricks thrown at me and making a house that will last a hundred years. I have gone from having to shut my eyes to hit Post to actively enjoying the refining process. Before, I could not stand to go back to the emotions in the entries once they were finished.

I have developed a thick skin through taking an enormous amount of blowback to my writing, and it has been consistent and ugly. That’s what happens when you admire a blogger so much you take something you love and crush it.

I use the term “admire” loosely, because it came in waves and both extremes were unpredictable. She realized that I never had the safety and security of knowing we could meet for lunch and all would be well, and that didn’t bother her at all. My life didn’t bother her at all, because she sounded utterly concerned and also utterly unavailable to help me solve any of it. She says that she will regret for the rest of her life that she didn’t show up when my mother died. That means more to me than diamonds. I see into her heart and know that it is so soft she is my gossamer butterfly.

It’s time to let he fly, and see if she comes back without holding onto anything. She said, “will the slate ever be wiped clean?” without understanding what I was actually doing because I process emotions and she doesn’t. Being forgiven doesn’t erase anything. There is still processing to do.

Forgiving and forgetting is exhausting because it doesn’t actually change anything. It avoids accountability and reparative work. It is why I prefer Rite II in the Episcopal Church. Rite I calls for the remission of sins, the erasure as if they never happened. Rite II calls for forgiveness of sin, which is completely different. Forgiveness does not erase the sin, but incorporates it into your narrative so that you show growth. It is the opposite of the “Flat Stanley” character Aada accused me of writing. Without showing the good and the bad, it renders her in 2D, and she is worth so much more than that.

Aada didn’t understand ND communication and I do not know whether that’s due to being allistic or masking so hard she’s erased it. That’s because it’s a conversation I would need to have in person. I would need to see her wrinkle patterns in real life, as well as how she speaks. I have only heard her speak once or twice, and it was definitely ND patois. But her writing voice is completely absent of it unless she feels safe.

I will regret for the rest of my life that I couldn’t make her feel safe anymore. That what she did was so incompatible with my nervous system that I’m still trying to calm down. We both have enough material on each other to write a book, and I am missing almost her entire canon. I just committed it to memory. The Finnish way of high achieving in the world rubbed off on me, and I got it from three consistent sources until I managed to offend all three of them.

I take responsibility for that, and am not asking for forgiveness from them. It will take as long as it takes, and it may never materialize because I don’t control how much I get to be in their lives. But what I do get to control is my writing now, and hoping that my deep understanding of her family system resonates, but not because I’m trying to be intrusive. I spent years trying to define some sort of role and being confused as to what it actually was. I never knew whether I was welcome, because the blowback never stopped. It was “All Shit on Leslie Day” like, a lot.

A lot.

But that’s the kind of thing that builds self-confidence. Being a truth teller and no longer being afraid of it.

Because ultimately? Who am I? My opinion doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things, because I’m not trying to be the star. I am just trying to be a node in the system. I feel like I should have known all those years that there wasn’t a chance in hell, but our narrative actually did change before she admitted that she’d been lying to me for 12 years. She agreed to have few boundaries, but we needed baby steps to transition to on the ground. Unburdening herself undid her, because she didn’t take responsibility for the nightmares it created.

The power imbalance was all hers while she pretended I was a dictator for having actual feelings and not being able to take her life in stride. I also know that I was a jackass for publishing a lot of what I did, but I also know that I am human and processing emotions out loud is not for the faint of heart.

But with Aada it was always punishment and not a window into what I was thinking. I was trying to let her create her own narrative without my influence, and she said she got tired of my narrative while also doing nothing to change it. The change couldn’t all come from me. If she wanted a different story, she had to allow me to tell it.

Because now the ache and the grief is real. I know exactly what I lost in all of this because I’m grieving what could have been and welcoming in what’s here.

I stand on the shoulders of giants.

Flying my Finnish freak flag high.