I write in a way that moves people, not all of it pleasant. So, the kindest thing anyone can ever do is offer me space to be myself. It was different being treated like a real writer by Aada and Tiina because I impressed them with craft. It’s not a mystery. Aada and Tiina are the same cognitive style and share the same culture. I didn’t plan that one out, but it stands to reason that if my writing appeals to one, it will appeal to the other.

They are a near-miss, but they should find each other eventually. They’ve both survived the torrent that is me.

I have decided to stop being unaware that I have power in a room that most people don’t, which is pastoral energy. I am a big personality that is hard to argue with and being completely unaware of it has cost me more than I can say, because it’s not about what I’m putting out there. It’s how I’m being read. To some people, I am delightful. To some people, I am just too much.

Those are not my people.

Aada is my people because she prepared me for the kind of writing I’m going to have to do the rest of my career, teaching me to think more critically than ever before. I’m grateful for that aspect of our relationship because keeping up with another writer is serious business. I always had imposter syndrome next to Aada, it’s just that she didn’t believe me when I told her that her letters were outstanding and made me so happy.

I hope that when she holds space for me, she holds space for the lost version of who we could have been to each other, because I saw what that role looked like in Tiina and it would have been spectacular. All of the questions I’ve ever had have been put to rest, because I did not need to find the details of what I was missing, but the shape of it. To have the relationship fracture in the same way because I was not sure what Tiina wanted, not because I was all hot and bothered. Once she clarified, it was fine. But struggling with the other end of that problem gave me empathy for the Aada of 12 years ago.

I don’t know why I was such a jerk on the “think it, say it” plan, but I think it’s because she used the buttons on her clothes to hold in her feelings. I was overfunctioning because I could not get feedback. Like, “I cannot get you to tell me how you feel no matter which way I say it, so I am going to stop couching my language.” If I had said that I would probably be a lot further ahead in life. I get passionate and say things impulsively that cost me all the time.

Alternatively, the people who do not jive with me fall away on their own, and the people who are interested in what I have to say read more and more. It’s not about finding people. It’s about finding the right people.

Part of finding the right people is knowing who can hold space for you without trying to change anything. People who know what’s theirs to own and what’s not so that you can be you at full strength.

Suddenly wanting to know how Aada wanted my blog to be was the first step to losing myself, because then it became writing in service of the narrative that things were fine when they weren’t. Telling Aada what I did made her uncomfortable. Aada telling me what she did crippled me as a writer. They were not the same, and I did not know that’s what she was doing at the time (and neither did she. She’s the least malicious person I’ve ever met.). When you do something, you cannot know what is going to come of it 12 years later. Aada didn’t do anything but set my writing off in a different direction, ways that both excited her and were problematic.

The answer was infrastructure so that I wasn’t replacing Google with Aada. I did ask her quite a bit, though, and am mourning deleting all her emails. I wasn’t angry, I was scared. There was no reason to be; I lost the frame and treated her like an enemy. I am deeply sorry for that, and I am certain that there is nothing I can say that will make anything better. But that is the dice you roll with mental illness. Some things go away when corrected with medication. Some problems still suck.

But I am still deeply confused over whether I actually have psychotic features or whether I had some sort of intervention last year. It feels far away, like it happened to another person now. But it felt like being trapped in a movie where I was confronted with everything in my life that had ever made me uncomfortable.

When I was back in Kansas, I dreamt of Oz for months trying to piece it together. Heytch was in love with me? I don’t think so. Heytch and Mummo created a nonprofit for me? Yeah, that doesn’t track, either. But how it looks in retrospect is not how it feels in the moment, and I could not have made these ideas up on my own. I got them from somewhere. I just will never know whether it was internal or external forces. And my life is so complicated that it could have been yet another person putting their names on it. Occam’s Razor is that I hallucinated it all, and that is the belief that keeps me the most comfortable.

It’s still a different ball game when you know who is capable of intervening and how.

My dad and sister dropped everything, and I was grateful. But they were not the only ones I wanted. I felt the loss that Aada couldn’t be with them…. and wondered if my friends were right.

If maybe Aada was a figment as well.

And then I remember that I have pictures of her and her dog on my phone and I relax a little.

Jesus.