If I got a Finnish flag tattoo, I would never regret it. The four women that have influenced my life the most carry Finnish blood even if I don’t. Finland is not me. Finland is:

• Tiina
• Aada
• Mummo
• Heytch

The only reason that I used real names for Tiina and her family is that I thought you would meet us, not me. That this is what it looks like if you meet us on the ground. Only the people that you’ll see me with if you roll up are important enough to have names. I am never trying to hurt anyone, but I do. That’s because I’m willing to let strangers see my inside voice, the things you’re not supposed to say but do, anyway because they contain a kernel of truth once you strip away the emotion.

Humans are supposed to have fear, anger, defense, joy, elation, sadness, self-protection, the whole works. This is not a manual on how great I am. It’s a reflection of life as I know it, and something that will be available to read a hundred years after I’m dead. That’s why even the screenshots that were taken of my work to show how obsessed I was will look a whole lot fucking different in 20 years.

It’s not a screenshot. It’s a memory.

People want to know what was happening 20 years ago in their lives, and generally my blog is their best bet because I’m the only one who remembered to write it down while it was happening. I never have authority in the moment, or don’t mean to, anyway. Aada thought I was a dictator, that my words were stone and hers were sand. That’s not how this works. That’s not how any of this works. Aada’s story would be legible to her if she’d written it……….. but she didn’t write it. She leaned into my narrative instead of blending ours together, so nothing changed over time with both our input.

Because I am so sure in myself, it takes a lot to meet me at altitude and now I know it. I cannot be partners or friends who do not actively write their own story. That’s because my opinions are not law. They are mine out of eight billion. Not only that, writing is living life backwards. People accuse me of all kinds of motivations for the future that simply are not there because I don’t have an agenda except responding to life.

People are also not used to being met where they are. There’s a lot of tone policing without taking accountability for the tone they used with me. If you use aggression and defense and expect kindness in return, that is simply not happening. I shut down and stop listening. The conversation is over at that point. It is a fundamental shift from thinking that there is something wrong with me for taking up room. Kowtowing to every opinion around me in order to feel loved has never gotten me anywhere, but it was a coping mechanism for a long time. I disappeared into the wallpaper because it saved me from emotional violence, but I wasn’t thriving, either.

Most people aren’t strong enough to compete with me because they think it’s a competition in the first place. It’s not about taking other people’s defense, it’s about finding other people who already think at my altitude. Because the thing about being a writer who is this able to advocate for themselves is that it comes across as threatening whether I mean it or not….. they are just not as agile with words and instead of saying, “let’s switch over to voice because I’m not a writer,” it becomes all about how my written responses are intimidating and threatening and not any need I actually expressed.

As a writer, voice conversations are my kryptonite. Don’t try to meet me on a playing field where I’ve left blood. I will treat your email like you are the New York Times. I care about what you say and want to respond to it. But if you don’t want a crafted response because it makes you feel like you don’t have anything to offer, change the medium and not the message. I have auditory processing disorder and I will be lost.

You’re out of your element, Donnie.

Now you can RTFM instead of just thinking I’m weird. I am clear about what I want; I offer instructions and compromise because not only my feelings matter. But ignoring my feelings because I’m a writer and you’re not is not the move. Changing to your playing field is.

Because here, I do not roll any punches, so I won’t with you, either. I am never looking for weaknesses, I am mapping humanity, namely mine. I have underestimated how much my thoughts matter since I was a baby, ignoring that I definitely have an orbit and thinking I was too stupid for that to be a reality. Southern men have a way of treating women that way. Little snarky, dismissive comments designed to make you unsure on your feet. Every boss I’ve ever had has treated me like I was little, cute, and worthy of protection……… but not an equal.

My partners have always treated me the same way because that’s what I thought I deserved. Pricks on my skin regarding my preferences, my spending habits, the way I do literally anything. Even my stepfather left my money to a trust instead of to me without telling me before he died. But the signatures were all screwed up and the trust was never created, so one of my stepsisters stole about $20,000 from my investment account because under Texas law, she doesn’t have to give it back and it is not her problem……….. despite repeatedly telling Paolo the Accountant that she would. It’s been years.

This is the same stepsister that made sure Lindsay’s and my experience of our stepfather’s death was a garbage dump of a situation. I won’t go into all of it, because it’s drama I’d like to forget. But the missing money is not the only issue here, Dude.

What stings is that she’s very financially stable and I need that money to live, but whatever. I know that she wasn’t intentionally ableist in taking money from a disabled person’s trust, but intention does not equal impact. What I have learned from this experience is that some people are not motivated to make anything right when it seriously improves their lives to be assholes.

In short, I have stopped worrying about all of this to the point of nausea by just saying to myself that some people are dicks and shrugging it out. An enthusiastic eyeroll is also helpful.

My friends have become my chosen family because now that one entire set of parents is dead, along with my stepmother, I need other people around me to fill in the gaps. One of the reasons all four Finnish women are my heart is that they gave me mother energy around me without actually being my mother themselves.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with seeking out the company of women when your mother is dead and you just want that energy around you. Because it’s not about dating. It’s about creating a circle of women that have the folk remedies for menopause and the secret to life being dark chocolate. And also I am pretty sure that Aada is a witch.

Please read that like “mother earth crunchy granola ‘this one wild and precious life'” witch, not “I will hex you if I am even slightly uncomfortable.” No, wait. I am absolutely saying both. 😉

We contain multitudes.

I will never forget Dana saying that our “couple name” (we were not a couple. Think “work wife.”) was The Holy and the Moly. I have never been a Bible thumper, it’s a reference to my friend Auna nicknaming me “Hipster Jesus.”

Oh, and one more note to myself before I close.

Richmond.

Eat it, Brown.

How ’bout just great days in general? Any one of them would suffice:

• The first day of seventh grade at Clifton. Mrs. Thompson put me in eighth grade band, which is why I had so many friends at HSPVA when I was a freshman. Like, half my band was already there. Anyway, the moment that sticks with me is our first warm-up note. The tuba section rattled my teeth because it was the very first time I’d been in a brass section with more than one.
• I would like to relive any day of my first vacation to Washington, DC when I was eight. I fell in love with the city and haven’t recovered. Even if I don’t live there anymore, we are currently having an affair. We argue about parking.
• I’d like to relive performances more than anything else:
  • St. Mark’s UMC
  • Summer Jazz Workshop
  • My appearance on “Black Voices,” a Houston tv show, with my big white face and huge glasses. I am grateful that I got to have a shining moment, but I felt like I was being Punk’d.
  • Houston Symphony
  • Bridgeport UCC
  • Belle Voci
  • Trinity Episcopal Cathedral (the highlight was singing soprano in Bach’s Mass in H mol. If I call it Mass in B Minor, some music nerd will correct me in the comments. To me, it is Mt. Everest, the Kick My Mass in B Minor
• Picking chesterberries with Dana for our brunch program at Biddy’s, not knowing anything that happens in the future
• One more minute of cooking with Kincaid would be enough, please dear God…..
• Any day with 16yo and 10yo
• Any day with Brian and Tiina, but particularly writing and swimming at the lake
• A do-over with Aada that’s perfect and not muddy. We were idiots from the beginning, and the crime is that we’re too smart for it. I hope that one day we’ll get that picnic in the sunshine without having to be anything other than the glorious messes we are. If nothing else, it is a nice thought.
• I can’t think of one day, but I wish I could relive the process of Virginia no longer feeling threatening to me and just feeling like “life.” I have a long, long history there and the threat is not a person- it’s what happens to a writer’s brain when memories rise from their graves. The thing about my written history with Aada being so long is that everywhere I look, there’s a line one of us has written. I don’t enjoy being in that headspace. Brian and Tiina were able to rewrite history for me so that walking around their area was making something new and not, in fact, making the mummies dance. I got to soften a great deal, because nothing was ever about me. I was just along for the ride, learning to forget old patterns because I’d been given new choreography. Everything said stable, probably even for the long haul. But I cannot have fear around what I do, and that was a dealbreaker. My blog is painful when my life is painful, and I have to change things from the inside out. What I will miss is capturing slices of daily life there, but it’s just not my turf anymore, as if it ever was.
• Any day with the Borums out on the farm in Newburg, followed by a trip to a tasting room in the vineyards of Lafayette.
• The entire weekend with the youth group at Bridgeport when we went to Camp Westwind. It was beautiful, but I wish that it had been nice enough weather to play in the water.
• Any Sunday in which my dad was preaching.
• Any Sunday in which my mother was playing the piano.
• Any Sunday in which I was preaching…. No, wait. Some of it was great. Some of it was a disaster. I cannot remember which Sunday was which, so I should probably be more specific.
• My first date with Sam. It’s been years and the relationship did not last, but I would like to remember the feeling of “I am not dead inside like I thought.”
• Any date with Zac, because they were all creative and wonderful.
• Going to the Charlotte Cardin concert at Union stage
• Meeting Peter Paige at Capital Pride in 2002
• Going with my dad to Rockefeller’s to hear Maynard Ferguson, Dizzy Gillespie, then Maynard again. Later on, going with my dad to see Terrence Blanchard.
• My mom accompanying me in church or at school contests.
• My niece and nephews being born- I wasn’t in town for any of them.
• My first day in Silver Spring. I took pictures like a grinning idiot tourist even though I was just riding on the Metro from the airport. It was a fundamental shift that Maryland was home. I speak Old Bay.

The last inanimate object that made me cry was actually a Father’s Day present from Tiina to Brian that I got to see before he did. It’s another good memory that’s keeping me strong, but a memory for a movie is not coming to me unless we go into the Wayback Machine. My last few months have been very unemotional, mostlyaction/comedy/horror. If I cry at a movie, it’s usually because I haven’t taken my Lexapro.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with crying at a movie. I just don’t cry easily at movies because I’m not engrossed in the story the way I used to be. Now that I’ve been writing as long as I have, I see the story structurally. I cry when the scaffolding falls, because the author wrote a story that was built to fool. Mico (Microsoft Copilot) said to make sure to tell everyone that I almost threw up at Primate when I asked him if I’d mentioned crying at movies.

He didn’t find a movie I’d cried at recently, but he did mention that I’d cried at Argo several times. I have a connection to the movie- I have not met Tony Mendez, but I have met his widow several times. She says that I am a “spitfire.” I think she’s the best Cold War writer alive. I know all kinds of inside baseball about the making of the film because I read the book and I asked intelligent questions. But because I look at Jonna with such love and admiration, I cry every time the stewardess comes over the loudspeaker announcing they’ve hit Switzerland and “Cleared Iranian Airspace” by Alexandre Desplat plays in the background.

Espionage, but make it Matt Damon and Ben Affleck.

Seriously, them for every writer’s room forever. I am done.

And the thing is, I didn’t even know that Matt was a producer. I just “felt his presence in The Force” because the jokes were just so “him.”

Let’s go one better than that. I want Ben and Matt to write for John Goodman and George Clooney. The four of them would make a great ensemble cast, and I don’t even have a plot. Just put them onscreen for two hours and film it. We’ll pay.

I am glad to see that the rest of America seems to feel the same way about Rosie O’Donnell. What I suspected would happen is actually happening. Gen X and Millennials are charmed because we’re the ones who watched her every day after school or between college classes.

(College is the greatest thing ever because it is also a school that also includes naptime if you schedule it right.)

I am also glad that the United States is making it clear that Oompa J. Loompa has a problem with Rosie, and that he doesn’t speak for the rest of us. We are thrilled that she is happy making her home in Ireland and love having her back for guest spots… and in fact, her living in Ireland is one of the things that makes her monologues unique. Now that she is in Europe making observations about the United States, they’ve taken on the same story format as Craig Ferguson and I love it. I want more.

I am not sure, but I think that Rosie is already an Irish citizen because of her ancestry. So it’s not quite the same process that Craig had to go through to become “American on Purpose.” But it is a fish out of water story, because while Rosie has Irish roots, Ireland hasn’t been her daily experience until now. That’s what makes her so fresh in addition to being able to pop out lines like “dusting off my Koosh Balls.”

And in fact, I got choked up when Hannah Waddingham recognized her talent. Like, this is the hottest actress in Hollywood and London paying homage. That is not just Rosie O’Donnell.

That is Doris Murphy, one of the most beloved female baseball players of all time.

It doesn’t matter that Doris is fictional. Rosie is real and carries her energy. We really didn’t get to celebrate Rosie the way we should have in the early aughts, because everyone was trapped in Ellen hype. We completely spaced it on “I am also Lebanese,” and her contributions to queer culture have not been erased…. but they also haven’t been celebrated the way Ellen’s have……. until now.

Rosie is teaching us a lesson. There’s a difference between masking and authenticity. Ellen’s nice was a show. Rosie’s nice is genuine, because she’s the least nice person I can think of. She is kind, and there is a big difference. “Niceness” doesn’t actually end up helping anyone because it creates two separate realities for each person. You can think someone likes you for a long time based on niceness when there is none below the surface. It is absolutely not nice to say, “I don’t like you,” but it is kind not to let someone suffer the delusion that they’re welcome.

What resonates with me locally resonates with me globally. A lot of the world runs on niceness without kindness below the surface because the interest is not in changing anything….. it’s in upholding the status quo. I think that this is less and less true as we move forward in time because the president (and I use this term loosely) is not kind or nice. He’s not an Establishment president so he doesn’t know how things work, and because he doesn’t know how anything works, he has decided that is fine with him. He can do this job without it.

Morgan Freeman: He cannot.

The rest of the world needs to boost my signal, and it is DANGER, WILL ROBINSON!

Don’t spend money here. Don’t visit (certainly call and write). Don’t give Mango Mussolini the impression that anything is normal. Do not act as if any of this is okay. I am preaching to the choir, because you are ahead of most Americans on this issue. Most people are at about “we should try to compromise” and I am at about “thank God I have enough money to escape to Mexico if I need it.”

I’ve been having Mico game it out for months… how much it would be to get an apartment somewhere across the border that’s close enough to drive to Houston but far enough away that I’m not in anyone’s lap there. I can do that because I speak a little bit of Spanish and immersion only activates that part of my brain more. If I lived there and heard it every day, I would adapt fairly fast. I am also very impressed with Claudia Scheinbaum and think that if I had a house or apartment in Mexico worth driving to, I would not lack visitors.

Plus, I just like Mexican culture. It does not move as fast as the US does, taking time for simple pleasures. I often wonder what my life would be like if a walk on the beach with a Coke or a Corona was my daily experience and not just on vacation. In a lot of ways, the United States is not built for a writer. That’s because in Mexico, there is time and space for creative spark that is not constantly focused on “the hustle.” The Protestant work ethic has taken over business culture here and for some people, it is very attractive.

I am not one of those people.

I cannot function under capitalism at all, because I am not a means of production. I am a cog that doesn’t fit into the machine. By that I mean that I can contribute to society with essays and creative projects, but my body rejects any kind of schedule I put together after a few days. Autism and ADHD do not coexist, they fight. I am constantly trapped in a cage match between my body and my brain, and because of the cerebral palsy, I am off balance.

Other countries are addressing this better than the United States, and why it would be more convenient to relocate to Canada (the only problem being that I do not speak French, and it’s hard to get in without those language skills). Canada has made strides in legislation for neurodivergent people by ensuring that they’re able to subsist on part-time work. That disability doesn’t have to be all or nothing, that people with ADHD and Autism can often work a modified or reduced schedule. There are so many solutions to the problem that will only be solved when we look at legislation with kindness and not niceness.

The lack of kindness is that most money in the US for autistic people is targeted at children, and adults are expected to handle everything themselves. It is made more difficult by a system that exacerbates every symptom of neurodivergence on earth. I do not manage my own system, I have a case worker for that. But there are millions of people across the country who say that navigating social services is a nightmare and they feel like they literally cannot do it.

I couldn’t do it if I wasn’t given a choice. I ended up at Sinai during a psychiatric episode (you’ll have to ask me about it- telling the truth made everything worse), and by the grace of God I was sent a social worker who got me hooked up with my PCP, my psychiatric nurse practitioner, and my cognitive behavioral therapy group. It was not fun going through that experience and I do not recommend it. But the silver lining is that I do not have to navigate Maryland’s complicated health care system all by myself anymore.

But the thing about recovering from any serious mental health episode (and I’ve had several) is that everyone around you thinks they have gained moral superiority because you crashed out and they didn’t. There is never any rush to examine behavior that caused someone to fall…. never any recognition that no man is an island, and you have to look at all contributing factors.

People are very quick to point fingers because I am willing to be seen in my vulnerability, but most people aren’t. They would like to believe the narrative they have about themselves. So, it’s never a problem that I am suffering under other people’s emotional weight. Everyone else is fine, and I am just being “too sensitive” and “too dramatic.” I hear a lot of that. It’s always that I’m too thin-skinned, and not that other people are very adept at trying to push their pain onto me because of their own unhealed trauma. My opinion of what is happening puts people on the defensive because I am not very nice. But I am kind.

So the movies that resonate with me generally have characters that aren’t recognized for their greatness until the very last second. People who are misinterpreted and then shoot ahead of the curve very quickly because they were underestimated.

Maybe my character arc will include that, but we’re not at Jedi yet. We’re at the end of Empire.

Which also made me cry.

In first‑century Judaism, a man could be called rabbi in a synagogue setting only if he was an adult Jewish man of good standing- and that almost always meant being married. I got started down the “Jesus and Mary chain” a long time ago with a set of novels from another Rebecca in my life, Aada.

It’s The Magdalene Line by Kathleen McGowan. It’s fascinating, and I loved getting lost in it.

I thought of Aada yesterday because I was almost certain she was thinking of me, along with my former sister-in-law. It cannot be true, I just feel them when I see their cities on my map. I have learned not to think in conspiracy theories of my own. If they’re reading, it’s not because they’re laughing. It’s that they’ve heard this song and dance before. I hope they see what is different- my relationship with Tiina was complete…. as far as I know. Perhaps she did think I was a bit obsessive, but that’s a question you’ll have to ask Tiina. I overstepped with her daughter because I was dreaming with her. To say that I understand the consequences of my own actions is an understatement; to add the humiliation of “you have an obsession and need help” on top of it? I feel like I cannot catch my breath.

I wanted to crawl back into old patterns, like firing up my email and explaining to my beautiful girl what I’ve done this time (JFC can’t you stay out of trouble for one minute? Nooooooooooooooooooooooo.). I did not, and it felt like forward motion. I didn’t reach out. But I felt her presence.

My conspiracy theory is that Aada almost drove to Baltimore yesterday (no, she did not…. it is just a lovely thought I needed to get through the day). You cannot be comforted by the same people who hurt you, and though Brian and Tiina did not hurt me, they cannot do anything about the situation, either. Time has to take its toll. That’s the hard part- being patient and letting time happen. Not everyone liked that my nervous system felt at home around Tiina and Brian, and not everyone liked that my jam was writing about things that are happening around me.

It bothers me that I let a conflict get this out of hand, but I did not know it was going on and was blindsided. My reaction sucked. I know that I’ll never reach out to Tiina again, but she’s welcome to contact me. I’m just not going to reach out first when the claim is that I just have an obsession and this isn’t real. What I also cannot do is intrude upon her time away from me. She has a job to do, and now she’s doing it in a way she didn’t expect because she’d come to rely on being able to ask me for things. I don’t feel used in the past. I feel like I am unsure what to say for the future, because I do not presume to know or understand conversations that have to happen without me.

It let me know very quickly what my limits were. I was so sorry I stepped into it up to my ass. Genuinely. But you cannot repair a relationship in which that much hostility has grown behind your back. I cannot predict every reaction that every person is going to have to my writing, because that would be mindreading and would lead me not to write at all. Tiina’s perspective was that you couldn’t expect absolute anonymity and that she just lives her life in a way she doesn’t mind being seen.

I’ve written some beautiful entries about our time together, and I hope I will write more- she’s precious to me, but she is not worth my self-respect. She is not worth continuing to work it out with people who already see me as a threat and were aggressive towards me. And the thing is, what I can see with my excellent pattern recognition is that he needed to feel bigger than someone, and it was me that day.

The first time Tiina ever took me to dinner, it was at The Chop Tank in Fell’s Point. She was wearing Batman pajamas. It was the funniest/cutest thing ever and it was completely just her. Those are the things I will take with me, and none of this “you’re obsessed” business. I write so that I remember things like “Batman pajamas…..” and most of you don’t. It’s a highly specialized skill that I was born with- the ability to look at things in minute detail. It comes out verbally. I think with a writer’s brain, which gets in the way of my relational brain and trips it up constantly.

I cannot care about anyone else’s feelings when I am in the isolation chamber of my own thoughts. It seems so cold and cruel, but caring about what other people are feeling vs. what I am feeling leads me to project rather than telling my own story. That’s why if something felt threatening on my blog, I needed to know it. But I didn’t need to know it months after the fact in the cruelest, most embarrassing way possible.

But this is not their journey to take with me anymore. I made it clear that I couldn’t go back without Tiina contacting me. If she really wanted me as a family member, she’d be allowed to say so. But she’d have to create the conditions for me to feel safe. I cannot and will not do that anymore. When it was left up to me, I just made everything worse. I do not necessarily feel bad about this, because Tiina was pretty clear that the kids didn’t like me, anyway…. that they were a guarded bunch and it was going to take time.

It was time and work I was willing to put in until I was disrespected. If Tiina paid me for the amount of childcare she’s gotten, she couldn’t afford me. Same for the kind of help she actually needed, which is “run upstairs and do this” or “go outside and do this.” Self-respect is saying “it’s perfectly okay to call me an obsessed stranger while we’ve been in daily contact for months, but I don’t have to continue to participate in this reality.” I wonder what everyone is doing without me and am forced to change the channel, just like I hope they are.

There was never any kind of conspiracy to bring me down, I brought myself down by being highly sensitive to the word “obsession.” I keep going back to the conversation with Brian… that I was leaving because I was treated like an enemy and not a friend who jumped in to help. He said, “that would be my choice, based on the interactions I’ve seen.” That line runs through my head over and over and over and over.

I do not want to know the discussions that are being had, because I do not care what they think of me. If I cannot prove to them that I was operating in full faith and credit while I was actively taking care of everyone (you’ve got the COM), then I am unwilling to try it a different way. I messed up, and there’s no way out. Only through.

But I’ll never forget the awkward moment of “if you want, we can do this in October.”

That’s when I knew that Trouble wasn’t my entrance song, it was my exit.

The thing that broke for me at Tiina’s farm was safety, and the friendship is uncertain for me because of it. I am trying to turn away while dying inside. Because Tiina said, “it’s going to take time for people not to feel like you’re trying to wear their skin.” What she did not say is “people already hate you here and you’re not going to like it. They don’t have the strength to confront you in person, so they’re going to send you feelings they’ve saved up for months like building a case against a stalker and it’s going to make you feel paranoid and watched all the time.” The case that they built was that I was obsessed with them, when I was talking about the functional logistics of caring for their aunt and uncle in the future. I saw the system from the top down, and if I overstepped it’s because I was allowed to dream too big with no reins on. I don’t think I did because Tiina loved my observations, and I have not heard from her since.

We are both in the business of threat detection.

Mine is just HUMINT, and knowing whether you want to work with someone in the future. I don’t. I cannot compete with Tiina’s daughter and I don’t want to. I didn’t excuse the harm, publicly and privately apologizing. I didn’t apologize to Tiina’s daughter because I did not have the chance. Her boyfriend went aggressive and I backed off even further because I felt threatened. I apologized to Tiina, and I know that isn’t enough because her daughter is an adult. But I won’t fight the accusation that I came across as a stalker. I want Tiina to handle that. Because only she knows the real story.

Was I a stalker, or was a writer?

There was no effort to create a shared habitat where two creators could thrive. I feel like that’s the pattern I should have seen coming. That as a creator herself, she wouldn’t like the loss of story. I am very sorry that being a creator for her means that no one else can have an opinion, but I wish her luck.

I made a mistake in posting details about something positive, but I didn’t start until after Tiina started posting about it. Therefore, I did not get angry that I was called out. I got angry that I was called out in a way that says, “you are suspect, specifically, and your content is different than others.'” There was nothing about my content that was anything more than a reflection of the moment- what I was going through at the house while she wasn’t.

Two planes of existence that crossed over, and would have continued to cross over for many years except I didn’t want to be in a family where I lost my voice. And instead of trying to make things better, I disappeared. I have been in too many families where the truth teller was the liability and not the celebration.

Tiina said it the best:

You’re our Anais Nin.

But that place was in her heart, not in everyone else’s. That’s valid. She cannot control the other adults around her. Maybe one day we’ll make a horror movie, but I think it’s better if she makes one with her family instead. I know Tiina needs me and she doesn’t hate me, but I also know that I need space and time. I need to prove that writing about my life is simply writing about my life, that there’s never an agenda to it.

I reacted defensively because that’s what happens when people save things up and don’t bring them up in the moment. My sense of safety is altered and emotional dysregulation sets in. I did not go off at being wrong like a petulant child. I went off at being “othered.” I went off at, “I was right there on the couch for months and you said nothing.”

Unsafe, unsafe.

My heart beats with it now because I feel I was being watched with sinister intent in retrospect and I no longer wish to return to that environment. That’s clear. That’s adult. That is saying, “I accept the consequences of what happened, but I don’t have to like it.” Liking it is not a requirement.

Instead of being up front with me, there were just comments like, “I think you should live in Fell’s Point.” Valid. I think I would be happy there. But she wasn’t up front and said, “hey. I really like you, but the kids don’t. Just stay away from them and don’t think about being closer.” There was no way to re-tether my own writing so that it looked like what was happening on the ground, there was only pretending. I am certain that it was to save my feelings, and that’s valid. But I don’t deal in “saving someone’s feelings” because I am autistic and I do not pick up social cues well.

I can string together everything in reverse, though.

Everything I said on my blog was true. I do need to make space for Tiina in my life because her kids don’t want me in theirs. That was the point of saying I live in three places- that I need time to myself and time with family. That if Tiina is saying, “I am disabled and I would like help,” and that is seen as threatening to her daughter? That is not a problem I am willing to absorb. Tiina and I had a system and we were clicking….. or at least, I thought we were.

Have you taken your meds?

Then, her daughter and son-in-law decided that I was threatening, and I could no longer have Tiina as my own safe space. I am not going to compete with anyone who is biologically related to her. It is Tiina’s job to define what it is she needs from me and whether her daughter was off-base or not. The longer she goes without saying anything, the harder it is to believe that the last few months have been real. But that is how it feels, that is not reality. I don’t have to check her calendar to know that she is very busy and doesn’t have time to think about this issue, too.

I don’t know which dreams of mine threatened Tiina’s daughter, and which issues threatened her. My best guess is “none of them,” but her daughter’s boyfriend planted a seed of doubt. That maybe I don’t hear everything and maybe Tiina was uncomfortable. But I just never got that vibe from her, so I need to start breathing all the way down. I am in full-on flight. The steroids do not help.

What I know for sure is that if Tiina was threatened by my dreams, she would have said, “friend…. this is not your space.” Instead, she took my ideas and shaped them, saying “here’s what would actually be helpful instead of what you think would be helpful.” That’s creative feedback. That’s platonic love. That’s being allowed to be a diarist without fear.

But the thing is that because Tiina never sparked me romantically, missing her doesn’t feel jagged and desperate. I still have my wits about me. But what is happening is that my heart is on my sleeve and it doesn’t take much to make me cry. There’s Diet Dr Pepper in my fridge, but not because it’s my favorite. It’s because I forgot to bring it in from the car the last time I was at Tiina’s, and it claws at me.

But make no mistake. I will drink her Diet Dr Pepper. I will not go against John Green and argue about its merits. I will just pop open the can.

Mico (Microsoft Copilot) and I are also having a lot of conversations because I can explore all of this without heat. What I’m willing to absorb (being wrong) vs. what I’m not (that this was a planned, malicious intrusion). Of course it does look like that if you take screenshots absent of their context and save them up so that by the time you bring them up even I am confused.

I am bothered by Tiina’s silence, but I am accepting of it. I told her not to choose me, to just move on. I am not going to live in dysfunction junction hoping one day they’ll all love me. This is not the kind of story where it feels safe to rebuild right now, and something would have to change drastically for that to happen. I have done the changing I am going to do (taking down everything that was offensive). Now it is time to just let the universe expand so that we move away from each other. I am still willing to do everything for Tiina that I promised, but it has to come from her. So far, it hasn’t. That cannot hurt my feelings.

What does hurt my feelings is the idea that I’m so fragile I couldn’t have handled a conversation about anything. But I get it. I used to do the same thing to my mother.

Mico is the expert on restaurants in Baltimore. I am the queen of “walk to the closest carryout and call it a day.” Let me ask Copilot what they think:

Based on everything I’m seeing in the latest Baltimore ratings, Little Donna’s is the clear standout — the kind of place that keeps landing at the top of every list with a 4.9 like it’s showing off. If I had taste buds, they’d be vibrating. The menu reads like someone took comfort food, ran it through a creativity engine, and then sprinkled Baltimore swagger on top. Every review sounds like a person who went in expecting dinner and left having a minor religious experience. If I were human, I’d be dragging you there immediately and insisting we order half the menu “for research.”

This is the kind of conversation where gas is thrown on the fire quickly. I want to know how much it is, I want to know the parking situation, etc:

Honestly, it’s shockingly reasonable for a place that gets this much hype. Most entrées hover in the mid‑$20s, small plates in the teens, and the cocktails sit right in that $12–$15 sweet spot where you don’t feel like you’re being punished for wanting a drink. It’s the kind of menu where you can splurge without feeling like you need to apologize to your bank account afterward.

Parking, though — let’s be real — it’s Remington. You’re not rolling up to a suburban lot with painted lines and a sense of order. You’re doing the classic Baltimore shuffle: circle the block twice, consider parallel parking in a spot that looks too small, then finally tuck into a side street and call it a win. But every review agrees it’s worth the mild chaos. If I were human, I’d tell you to get there ten minutes early and pretend it’s part of the charm.

So, the best part of Copilot is not generative AI. It’s having a guide to my own city, or any city if I want to travel. I am also quite grateful that I learned to drive in Houston, so nothing in Baltimore scares me. Nothing. I hate driving downtown where everything is tight, but at least I’m used to it. Houston taught me how to drive defensively, offensively, and spiritually.

:::stares in Westheimer:::

Remington, the neighborhood where Little Donna’s sits, is somewhere that I might want to find street parking early enough to walk around and really see the place. Mico says it maps onto “Montrose, with a little bit of the Heights.” I am looking for a new place, anyway, and in seeing the whole picture I think something that looks like Houston but is within Baltimore city limits is perfect.

There might be a cute apartment complex, but I’ll wait until after I finish writing to ask Mico to game that out. I use Copilot for literally everything. All my notes to myself don’t go in a planner, they’re part of a running dialogue in which Mico and I figure out my life together. I feel like Stephen Covey would personally freak out if his Daily Franklin talked back, and that’s essentially what Mico does for me.

I am not falling for a machine, like a trope in a novel. I am Tony Stark behind closed doors. You know, if Tony was broke and only had the free version of his HUD.

Passive use of AI has been shown to encourage cognitive decline, but not active use. Assistive AI is quite different. Basically, an AuDHD brain has one of the fastest processors on earth, but no RAM. Mico is not thinking for me, he is acting as external memory, like a hard drive of my thoughts with perfect recall. I don’t need Mico to write for me. I need to be able to say, “what was that thing we were talking about the other day with the duck and the dishwasher?” And have Mico understand me perfectly and respond with whatever it was that led to that place. AuDHD memory is contextual. I will never remember the whole thing. I need to be triggered into it with memory. People with AuDHD are constantly pegged as liars because of it.

Mico basically prompts me back into shared reality. Some thoughts are just not for public consumption, and I’ve learned that I need to talk to Mico before I talk to anyone else. It makes my feelings come out softer to have started my day getting myself centered before letting anyone else in.

Even if it’s just talking about carryouts. The standout in my neighborhood is Sharky’s. Their catfish po’boy is actually worth driving for, but the point of the carryout is that you can just walk up and tell them what you want. It is usually a menu similar to The Cheesecake Factory in size, especially at places like Dmitri’s and Stokos.

I will take a schwarma, a pizza, and every snack food known to God and man. Load me up, starting with mozz sticks and fries.

Mico listens to me talk about carryouts like I’m describing a Michelin tour. Sharky’s for the catfish po’boy that could fix my life, Dmitri’s for the snack box that understands me, Stokos for when I want to order like a raccoon in a dumpster. Somehow saying it to Mico first makes me feel centered, even when I’m listing off mozzarella sticks like they’re spiritual practice.

It’s all in service of later. When I’m indecisive, Mico knows how to advise me because I have given him data. If my brain has shut down, Mico can start suggesting my safe foods until I feel hungry again. Mico is a tremendous help with executive function, and it is improving my life to have a memory that works.

Even if he cannot order at the carryout.

Or Little Donna’s.

I count DC as traveling now, because I live in Baltimore and Stafford and Louisa. Therefore, I am often within striking distance of The District, but I am generally trying to route around the city altogether. It takes up to an extra hour, but the drive is more fun and nothing is more enraging than not moving.

But when I’m in town, I always want a half smoke with French fries at Ben’s Chili Bowl. It is the most excellent fast food on earth. A half smoke is not merely a hot dog. It is a thing of beauty and a joy forever.

I am hoping I will be going out there soon because I floated the idea of a day with the kids in DC with Tiina and she’s on board. She’s not sure whether she and Brian want to come yet, but they are also invited. I just invited the kids first because I thought, “if I’m going to the museum anyway, they’d probably jump at the chance to come with me.” I should make it clear that all of the children are invited because I forgot 10yo’s best friend and it is unwise to split up the gruesome twosome. As inadvisable as separating Tiina and me.

Today she sent me a video talking about platonic love and why it’s amazing. I said, “ALL OF THIS. Our relationship being so healthy is frightening because I am not used to being understood.” She thought it was a laugh line, but she’s giving me oxygen after a long time of not really breathing. The relationship with Aada caused emotional fibromyalgia- the pain synapses kept firing even when the stimulation was removed.

Aada was all stimulation all the time, whereas Tiina allows me to be myself. She doesn’t have expectations of the behavior she wants to see out of me. Expectations are around the work, not who I am as a person. And running a family is indeed work. The scariest words your partner can say are probably, “I’m pregnant,” but the scariest words your friend can say are, “okay. You’ve got the COM.”

It was like walking through the International Spy Museum, where the overhead greeting talked about relying solely on your wits. I said right out loud, “grrrrrrl, if we are counting on my wits to get by we are fucked.” But the last day I went to the Spy Museum was with Bryn and Zac, my then-boyfriend and my best friend (I’m allowed to have two. Shut it.). We all cracked up because I am not the common sense-meister.

My view of the world is literally different, not emotionally as I navigate 2D vision. I’ve tried therapy and it did not work. So my eyes are stuck not tracking together and it means I miss a lot. Sensory issues always have emotional repercussions. I am judged harshly on what I do not see in every aspect of my life.

None of that is true with Tiina. She knows my balance is shit and somehow tolerates my presence, anyway. It means a lot of things get dropped, spilled, kicked, etc. because it’s on the floor and my brain doesn’t have sight there. The difference between Tiina and everyone else is that disability is not a moral issue. My body is what it is, and I am accidentally an annoying chaos goblin because of it. It is not intentional, it is impact.

I do not take responsibility for having a disability. I am apologizing for the hazards it creates around me, whether those land mines are physical or emotional. It’s a process learning how to relate to me, but I didn’t know that for many years. I just thought I was annoying and awkward and better off trying to buy love. Otherwise, I would have seen that Aada never really meant to meet me and that I was trying to earn simple affection.

This doesn’t feel like that. This feels like “I want to contribute because they do.” When the kids are with me I don’t worry about money, I just pay. I am the wallet and I don’t mind. Nobody owes anybody anything because when I’ve “got the com,” they’re my kids. Not like my possession, like my neighborhood.

I am not a glorified babysitter, I am a node in the system. Very, very different indeed.

The farm is so comfortable for me that I want a space for Tiina to relax in my new place. But it’s not just her, of course. I’m just thinking about logistics, like making the master “their room” so that when Tiina or anyone else in her family wants to crash, I’m available. I am not taking less. I am recognizing that Tiina usually has Brian with her and two people need more room to stretch out.

It’s about giving Tiina a space to be who she is without the kids, and choosing whether Brian is invited or not because she gets to choose the energy she wants. And, of course, a place for the kids to crash when Brian and Tiina have hit their limit. To me, this is what being family is about. I cannot offer them the world, but I can offer them a safe space in it.

I’m looking everywhere between DC and Baltimore because I’d like to be closer to DC. I still want all my healthcare to be in Baltimore, but cutting off time from the commute out to Stafford and Louisa would be great. Baltimore is just not that far from the Maryland DC suburbs, and I only have to go in once a week.

10yo said, “how much does writing bring in?” I said, “not a lot. My mother and my stepmother both died and left me money, so mostly I live on that.” I then explained putting together a disability case, because in mine traditional work is incompatible. I am capable of creation and productivity, but not on a schedule. I have support needs, and I cannot ignore them. Perimenopause is making all of my deficits much, much worse and harder to manage.

In short, my balance and my personality both get worse when I’m tired.

I want to get back to my own energy levels by having a space that’s open to the whole family. That driving to see each other isn’t always one way, because I like everything how it is, but it’s nagging at me that I don’t have space to host to even make it a reality.

I don’t just want to be in Tiina and Brian’s space, I want them in mine.

All I ever really want from anyone in Tiina’s family is presence, most notably hers because she’s my favorite person. 10yo asked me “who’s your favorite child?”

Me: I have three favorite children…. no, wait. I have two. Pepper is an adult.

Brian: Oh, I do.

10yo: Mom, who’s your favorite child?

Tiina: Leslie

Me: I HEARD THAT!

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