Tag: dailyprompt

Your Blog Makes You Sound Like a Dick, Part II

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

What strategies do you use to increase comfort in your daily life?

One of my now former friends said that to me, and I will never let go of it because it makes me angry and it’s also the truth. It makes me angry because I’m a spectrum. I have every emotion known to God and man coursing through me all the days of my life. To overfocus on my anger and not accept my love is based on what you see, not what you get. I am responsible for what I say. I am not responsible for what you understand. If you go into it looking for the fact that I’m an asshole with a God complex, you’ll fucking find it. This is my web site. It is the only thing I own cold, therefore it’s the one space I have in my life to figure out who I really am. You don’t want to see the actual struggle? I can recommend quite a few web sites that are crappier than mine. Enjoy.

However, if you focus on all the love inside me, you’ll find that, too.

I do not want to be the sort of person that lives to please anyone, especially now.

Remember I was talking about a guy who wanted to date me that completely went off the deep end and I laid down some truth for him? He deactivated his Facebook account. Therefore, I know he overfocused on “I don’t want to waste time on a man I don’t know” and not “if you want to know me, do it.” I meant that he was already so into it that I didn’t have a chance to catch my breath before he was talking marriage. Again, it had been a little over a week.

This is someone that I could see being friends with and possibly more down the road, but I’m not going to commit to anything on no information. I ran headlong into my beautiful girl before I knew what was up, and it was a mistake. I was reading over our conversations last night, and it has been a dumpster fire from the beginning. We bonded, and then spent the next ten years trying to undo it. We fought gloves off, constantly, and it became harder and harder to remain calm because writing letters to each other was just a clarion call to attack, because on the Internet, that’s what people do. They become disconnected from their compassion because of the wall of anonymity.

I think that’s why I don’t meet many people in person. I need to think in longhand, because I want to make things clear. I cannot do it as easily while talking, because I’m generally too flustered to get things out.

In the deep dive, here’s something that struck me as funny. At about 3 years, I started borrowing style and structure from her. Without even realizing it, she was fighting with herself in a different body. She Googled it, and she did not like it. My words in the way she would say them drove her up the fucking wall, and I didn’t even realize it so I couldn’t fix it. If you knew her, that boundaries conversation with “Michael” would have been out of central casting, and I doubt she would deny it.

At ten years, I am so much more comfortable writing because she whipped my ass into shape. It was like exercise. What I didn’t do was develop breathing techniques to kill the burn in my muscles. I’d put out feelings, she’d go nuclear. She said something about her ire only being in response to my shitty words, and that’s not true in the slightest. She took a sword and made patterns on my skin, drops of blood gathering at my brow, because I couldn’t afford to lose her and she was slipping through my fingers. She was right and I was wrong, but that didn’t stop the trauma bond from making me feel like I needed a hit.

Most people would think that’s because I’m a narcissist. That is incorrect. I was groomed by one, so when I was a teen/tween I craved her physically and she craved me mentally, because she was all about getting those dopamine hits. In retrospect, it was the best thing that ever happened for me that she finally decided we were done. I was discarded, and it felt like death.

I was reborn, and she was absolutelyfuckingnot.

So, when my beautiful girl and I trauma dumped, my physical reaction was based (somewhat- ngl, not all of it) on my past history, not what she actually said. I do not mean catching feelings. I mean the physical feeling of craving dopamine that’s now missing and finding things to replace it. The way I know I’m not a narcissist is that I recognize the symptoms for what they are and I am working on the problem. I am not trying to find a new “source…” I am fining that I am having fun being a creative and not worrying about my relationships.

Bryn makes gummy bears for a head shop, and she takes pictures of them for brochures and stuff. She said she needed a theme, and I said, “Teddy Bears’ Picnic.” She ran with it and did a balloon, a blanket, some ants, etc. I said, “I know you weren’t on Worship Team, but this is what it was like. Take a theme and fill in the details.”

It was actually good remembering a Big Yellow House memory that was good…… at first. Then, I got frustrated because I thought, “this is not a real church.” Pastors don’t have debates with people over whether we can drink at meetings….. although in other parishes, it would have helped a lot. No one asked me, but you can’t drink at church. Ever. I absolutely participated because I was new and they weren’t. Plus, it wasn’t like we were getting wasted. It was like having a working lunch with one drink. But if you drink at meetings, you’re excluding people who don’t drink and church isn’t about excluding anyone. People who choose not to drink are in a different situation than people who can’t drink. Alcohol is everywhere they look, and it’s hard to sit through a meeting without losing your mind when you need the dopamine so bad. Pastors aren’t supposed to be that person, the one that steps over complaints as if they are invalid.

The next pastor walked into a shit show and didn’t even blink. It was fascinating watching her “handle” a congregation. I mean, she fucking kicked ass and took names in a “no, we’re not going to do that” kind of way. She also never picked favorites, made them her inner circle, and actively sabotaged congregational growth so she could micromanage it. We got healthy over the next few years, and she is personally responsible. She stepped up in a big way, and I will never forget it.

It’s why I’m frustrated that I had no trust capital with my abuser’s partner, because she never asked me anything. She knew she was GREAT. She didn’t even have to ask me. There were several ordained pastors and preacher’s kids in the congregation. Not gonna lie here, either. I have no idea how those ordained pastors put up with her shit, and I’d definitely want to have THAT conversation.

For all practical intents and purposes, she was the stepdad with anger management issues. She saw me as a threat, and treated me as such. The carnage in her wake was also massive, because she couldn’t find objectivity with a map and a flashlight. It bothered me that she wouldn’t talk to me about complaints, because I saw her as a parent who needed help and she………….. did not. It all made sense to me, though, because she was my abuser’s partner. Eventually the abusive relationship settled into our version of “normal.” This is because since I thought of them as parents, I went to visit and then basically to live with them.

Why would I do that if she told the partner she thought I would go away? When the abuser was single, she was all about me coming to live with her because sh thought I needed to get out of the Bible Belt, and she wasn’t wrong. Portland was good for me, even though she dumped me within a month. She stopped hanging out with me and found a new source, pretending she wasn’t having an affair and everyone talking shit behind her back. By that time, the spell was broken for me. I said nothing, but I realized yesterday that her partner is also a victim in all of this.

For instance, Dana’s and my joke was always that there would come a time when _________ smothered would smother her partner with a pillow, and quietly go live with ______. I don’t care if my abuser likes the mirror, or whether the woman she had an affair with does either. Here’s why. I could fill that position with one of a hundred names. Even if she wasn’t fucking them, she had them by the short and curlies. I couldn’t get away, so they couldn’t either…… they were just smarter and eventually lost their minds like I did. It just didn’t take 23 years.

Things were good because I didn’t see myself as abused, I just didn’t understand the panic attacks and from where they were coming. They were flashbacks to being dicked around. They were flashbacks of all the confusion regarding drugs, sex, relationship issues, you name it. I was 14. I was the lockbox for her secrets and lies because she wanted it and I gave it willingly. I just didn’t know what contract I was signing.

Here’s the reason I started talking.

Her college friends came to visit and one of them told me that yes, she had wanted to sleep with me. When she denied it, her voice was fucking dead. She’s a sociopath, and I knew it then. No one goes into that tone, scary and emotionless, when they’re trying to lay the truth on the table.

Say I’m wrong. Say she was absolutely telling the truth. If you were me, would you have believed her, knowing her capacity for lovebombing and discarding? So, I took her shitty behavior and wanted to sleep with the messenger, because the given me the truth. It wasn’t believing them over her so much as it was a pattern for her to lie, and they had no such history with me. There was no reason to believe they were lying, and I’d been told she was trying to abuse me since I was young, because apparently, people have eyes. Who’da thunk?

No one was ever going to get me away from her without putting me in jail, a psych ward, what the fuck ever. That’s because if anyone said that, I never talked to them again. I snuck around like we were having an affair, because we were. Again, it wasn’t sexual. It was that her emotional energy was going to me and not her partner. Not that one. The other one. It was far easier to trauma dump on me than it was to tell her partner she was a train wreck and to get her shit together because she was going down and didn’t want to go with her. Instead, there were numerous stories about her alcoholic, drug dealing partner and how her job might be affected, like the time her partner brought home a POUND of weed.

If you’ve ever seen a pound of tobacco, you know the partner would have been in jail for at least 20 years. It was Texas in 1992. Please.

So, obviously when you want someone to process those problems with, you choose a middle schooler.

I was living at Neverland Ranch, all right.

My strategy is writing through it stream-of-consciousness style because then I can go back and analyze. My judgment is never off about me. It’s off about other people because I hold no authority. I can’t make them emote. I can’t even make them be truthful.

The strategy is learning to put responsibility on the other person to understand. I am not responsible for their reaction or emotional work, so stop doing it. It is unappreciated and invalid to people who don’t want to feel in the fist place, so shoving emotional work in their faces feels like an attack. It’s wasted energy, especially since in looking back over the last decade, I learned that she’d said originally that she didn’t have emotional bravery and never would. It was too hard and hurt too much. But then she would also thank me for calling her out on avoiding something, and I didn’t have that trust capital very long.

To be honest, I was frustrated that she told me through her words that I was her friend, but her actions didn’t line up. I really, really went out of my way to speak in her love language and not my own. It eventually destroyed me because it didn’t work.

I didn’t trust her no forgiveness plan, and not because boundaries aren’t a good thing. It was because she didn’t set any boundaries at all except putting her hand on my forehead and letting me windmill. To me, if you tell me I am forgiven, you mean it. I am not all of a sudden going to pick up on your shitty passive-aggressive attempts to push me away because I don’t see them. She thought I did, and that I was trying to hurt her. That I saw the manipulation she said I was doing, when she wasn’t even taking the time to get to know me to be able to read me like that. She doesn’t understand mental health issues on a practical level and beat me over the head with that, too.

I am not responsible for what she understands.

My reality has always been different from hers, and she’s treated me like I am lesser than because of it. As if her reactions are the correct ones and mine are just designed to piss her off. Meanwhile, I’m thinking about her all the time. I am trying to figure out how to be a better friend, because clearly I am falling down on the job. I had a complex about ever displeasing her ever again, and she treated me like a stalker because of it. It was terrifying, and she had no empathy for it because she thought she was sooooooo right about me.

I did move to DC to be near her. I did, and now I won’t cover it up. But at the same time, it wasn’t why she thought I did. Being terrified absolutely solved my need to be around her, so when she came barking up my tree after absolutely losing my mind with grief, I was unimpressed. I’d already tried to apologize, and she was a jerk about that, too. She wasn’t trying to get closer. She was trying to control me, because she thought that I’d blow her life to hell on my blog and I couldn’t convince her otherwise. If she didn’t have time to read, she’d sic an attack cat on it, and I know that because referrer stats don’t lie. If you’re dumb enough to come to my page from your work web site because you don’t know how web sites work, that’s not my fault. So yes, I knew she was watching, and I knew who she picked to do it. I’m not impressed with the heavy, either.

I always knew.

That didn’t stop me from absolutely groveling, because my dopamine was so low after complete isolation of my own doing. It also didn’t stop her from throwing me a bone once in a while, and it would make me insane. I won’t say more, but she fucked me over in every way imaginable in a divide and conquer move that cost me dearly. I didn’t hold her accountable because she wasn’t. I am responsible for what I hear, as well. I can tell when the difference between idiocy and malice aforethought.

She never thought in a million years that our trauma dump would cut me off from other people. That’s not all on her, but she does bear some responsibility in retrospect.

As I have said before, getting into a relationship with her hits different, and because she’s already her, she’s not so aware of that fact.

The difference between us was clear when I told her that it was terrible when she decided I was worth something, needed something, or read something on my blog and had to interject. Even when her opinion was beautiful, it sucked ass. I needed her so bad, and all she wanted was to be a fan. She had no awareness of the fact that every time she dropped in a propos of nothing, of course I’d react like a lovesick teenager without all the romantic crap. She knew how I felt. She did not need to hear it again, and it was too embarrassing to lay my guts on the table anymore…. and yet, I did it anyway, because I thought being vulnerable was the best way forward, because I thought she’d have more empathy if she understood where I was coming from. Nope. After a while, she continued to be so angry about everything while still ramping up my dopamine that she cared. We have never been telling the same story to ourselves, and it cost both of us dearly.

It surprised me that she absolutely cratered me every time I had feelings. She invalidated my feelings all the time, and I invalidated hers in return. We weren’t making the effort to get to know each other. After all this time, she knows me. We’d tell each other to fuck off. Sometimes I’d apologize, sometimes I got her attention, but it didn’t mean resolving jack shit.

She never realized that it wasn’t a case of chasing her. It was “if you’re going shopping, I know my place is sitting on the chairs outside the fitting room and holding your bags.” Every lesbian in the world knows that schtick. Its not a play. We just want to be near you, because if we can’t have you, we don’t kick you out of our lives if we’re not struggling with rejection. If we are, we’re fucking miserable because we go hard.

I don’t miss feeling miserable in the slightest, I just acknowledge that they were difficult emotions to dam, and of course she had no concept of how I would feel because she’d never been there. Or, I assume she’s never been there….. but I’m betting I’m not the only woman it’s ever happened to, either. I learned how to be direct from her, actually, and it was better to deal with a hard no than sugar coating, which she did at first because she wasn’t confident in my reaction and dicked me over by treating me as if I’d done something wrong when I absolutely hadn’t. She’s done that twice, actually, but I can’t dive into that one because it would be telling her story.

But I keep in mind that now I’m not invalidating her feelings because I’m not “Angry Anymore.”

Now I’m humming in my head 

Growing up it was just me 
And my mom against the world.
My sympathies were with her,
When I was a little girl.
Now I've seen both my parents play the hands that they were dealt.
As each year goes by 
I know more about how 
my father must have felt.

The first line of that song just makes me want to get wasted, because it applies to most people I know.

When you see the range of human behavior, if you’re like me, that’s where you start with strategy. I’m trying to heal the world, one child at a time. Some are older than others.

Stability

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

What are you most excited about for the future?

The immediate future is the most exciting. My sister and I are going through a thing (together, not fighting) and I asked her if I could write about it. She said โ€œwrite whatever you wantโ€ and I said โ€œyou never have to get me a present for anything ever again.โ€ This is not that entry. Weโ€™ve decided to hold off for a little while because OTHER FACTORS AT PLAY. The point is that my next words were โ€œbut if you were going to get me a present, it would be cool if you came up for my birthday this year or next year.โ€ I go about my day thinking itโ€™s a pie in the sky hope and in a few hours we have tickets for Charlotte Cardin on October 24th.

I realize that Lindsay is my sister, but sheโ€™s such a badass that it kind of rattles me when she wants to spend time together because I am so insecure at times. Youโ€™d just have to know how powerful she is to even begin to understand why I feel that way. She eats Republicans for breakfast and doesnโ€™t waste time on ketchup. I have problems with prioritizing two tasks at once. I constantly have to keep a picture of her as a teen in my mind, because Lindsayโ€™s professional persona is intimidating, but the baby isnโ€™t.

I donโ€™t worry about the lobbyist, but Iโ€™m the last woman alive that changed her diapers every damn day. The babyโ€™s needs will always wake me up. The babyโ€™s needs will always come before mine. Nothing in my life is more important than making sure her slap bracelet never comes off.

In December of 1990, the parsonage in Naples burned to the ground. My sister heard a fireman say that the fire started in the attic, and it was lucky that no one was sleeping in that bedroom (hers), because the attic rafters would have fallen on the bed and crushed whoever was sleeping. She internalized it, and things might have been different if weโ€™d gotten another house in Naples. But no, we were moved to Houston before the committee even formed to rebuild. The stress of the fire and the culture shock affected us differently. I got sucked into band at school, choir at home, and โ€œmy first marriage.โ€ Lindsay developed a phobia around going to school (now does it make a little more sense why that relationship knocked me on my ass? I met her six months after the fire.).

My mother was a stay at home mom. I think Lindsay thought that if she wasnโ€™t home to protect my mother, that something would happen to her while she was gone. A trauma therapist told my dad to have a routine with her, and to get her a slap bracelet (I donโ€™t remember whether she said that specifically, or just something Lindsay could keep on her) so that she had something to keep the routine going in her mind.

Every day, my dad would drive Lindsay to school, and heโ€™d say:

Lucky dayโ€ฆ. Gonna get an E todayโ€ฆ. Like I sayโ€ฆ. Wave to meโ€ฆ..

So, touching that slap bracelet made her remember what my dad said, and we were all with her when she touched her wrist. The therapist got an E that day, because it really was excellence on her part.

So, when I think of Lindsay walking into the Texas Legislature to protect queer kids, itโ€™s me who needs the slap bracelet.

I canโ€™t breathe when I think of how hard her job must be and how much stress sheโ€™s underโ€ฆ. And how none of it is her fault. God is not making her life more difficult. People are. People who think The Bible is an authority in the lives of American politicians are trying to make the rest of the country believe it as well. Itโ€™s maddening because we supposedly have separation of church and state, but Texas doesnโ€™t believe in it so they just live around it.

As my friend Rev. Chuck Currie has pointed out, โ€œJesus said โ€˜let all the little children come unto me.โ€™ He did not say โ€˜let all the little children come unto meโ€ฆ.. except trans kids.โ€™โ€ My sister has to tell the Texas and federal government why trans kids need their medication. Their medication. Sheโ€™s not fighting them on their wants and desires. Sheโ€™s fighting conservatives for trans kidsโ€™ basic needs.

Meanwhile, Lindsay and I are both the preacherโ€™s kid from โ€œSaved.โ€

When it comes to Texas Republicans, I want to crash a van into their Jesus, and my Jesus would let me.

Their Jesus is about power over, and is a reflection of white supremacy. The church universal has wasted too much time worshipping whiteness. Itโ€™s not just an American problem. Desmond Tutu crashed a van into South African apartheid Jesus long ago.

It makes me laugh talking about my sister crashing her van into Jesus because over the years weโ€™ve both loved Mandy Moore.

Ok, Iโ€™m going to take a second. Weโ€™ve got to talk about this. Mandy Moore didnโ€™t win nearly enough awards for โ€œThis is Us.โ€ Her craft was simply outstanding. OUTSTANDING. Every actor should watch her, because watching Rebecca Pearson is a master class, particularly when time jumps back and forth so that sheโ€™s playing different ages in the same episode. Itโ€™s a tour de force performance, and she kept it up for YEARS.

I needed to take a break and focus on Mandy Moore for a second, because I started flooding out at โ€œslap bracelet.โ€ There are tears and snot all up in here.

To keep it light for another moment while I collect myself, I think Coca Cola needs to start sending thank you cards to all the Diet Coke drinkers. This is because everyone likes soda, for the most part. Diet Coke drinkers are straight up addicts, and because of the world I inhabit, most of them are musicians. I have never met anyone who drinks Diet Coke that doesnโ€™t drink a hell of a lot of it.

Iโ€™m not sure whether itโ€™s the caffeine or the aspartame or whatever, but it does make you crave it with unusual intensity. I used to drink six a day, and I was a rookie. Every soprano I know carries it around like a water bottle. Diet Coke has even made it into a music joke.

How many sopranos does it take to change a light bulb? Two. One to hold the Diet Coke and one to go get her accompanist to do it.

Itโ€™s a riff on โ€œhow many SMU sorority sisters does it take to change a light bulb?โ€ โ€œTwo. One to mix drinks and one to call daddy.โ€ Iโ€™m betting that the capitalization of daddy varies by age.

Quitting Diet Coke is relentless, and part of it is the carbonation. Itโ€™s hard to give up fizzy water altogether when youโ€™re not used to still. Now add caffeine on top and quitting becomes even more useless.

The only thing that helped me was thinking that even if I was rich, $10 for 12 cans would still seem ridiculous.

Now Iโ€™m addicted to drink mix. It doesnโ€™t even have to have caffeine in it because Iโ€™ve found that the reason I needed so much of it is that I wasnโ€™t sleeping. Now, I take medication for that because especially during hypomania, I wonโ€™t sleep for several nights in a row. That doesnโ€™t happen very often, but my sister is a lobbyist trying to get health care for trans kids and if I was going to stay up thinking about a problem, this is a good one.

My daughter is trans. I hate qualifying it, but I did not birth her. It was better than that. I told her dad in not so many words that he was being an absolute dick to her and to get his shit together. She respondedโ€ฆโ€ฆโ€ฆโ€ฆโ€ฆ. Positively. When we met, she was going to be my stepdaughter. Her dad is out of the picture, but weโ€™re still going strong. So, whether The War Daniel and I get married or not, I have a child adopted through the rainbow flag. Iโ€™m here for it, and itโ€™s a lot. But to be clear, Cora is not the problem. Cora is the recipient of the problem.

I still want to marry Daniel, but I have reservations that will never go away, and he hasnโ€™t talked reconciliation. To me, thatโ€™s that. But you leave a relationship with an *adult.* Cora is now an adult, but the power dynamic is the same. I donโ€™t talk to her about my feelings for Daniel and she wouldnโ€™t know anything if I wasnโ€™t a writer. I feel that itโ€™s okay for her to read my thoughts, because they arenโ€™t directed at her. In writing, I can make it more clear than I could in person that sheโ€™s not the monkey in the middle. Daniel doesnโ€™t think of her that way, either.

To my beautiful girl, I have only found out that the dog is named after a heavy metal star. So, I just have the names Virginia Woof and Sidney Brisdog in my back pocket, as well as a name I picked up for a cat on โ€œWill and Grace.โ€ Jackโ€™s cat was named โ€œChairman Meowโ€ and Iโ€™m still not over it.

Thatโ€™s because Cora is free to talk about her dad, but I do not have an opinion on him. I canโ€™t. He is making his own choices, and I donโ€™t have to like them. I just have to respect them. Also, whether itโ€™s my own echo chamber telling me this or whether itโ€™s my intuition, I think Daniel got tired of my patois reading as male and started competing with me to see who was the bigger asshole. Unsurprisingly, I โ€œwon.โ€

You canโ€™t win against someone who was raised in NE Texas and has bought in to Republican fodder. He thought I was trying to reprogram him and I was trying to impress the seriousness of what his idiocy has caused because he didnโ€™t bother to get educated when Cora came out.

Itโ€™s not inexcusable to be uneducated. Itโ€™s inexcusable not to believe your child when they come out. Disbelief is relative. Daniel thought of himself as having to put up with us, and not because heโ€™s a bad person. Itโ€™s that heโ€™s a self centered alcoholic, but I repeat myself.

Self-centered alcoholic is almost tautology.

If someone is trying to tell you that youโ€™re hurting them and you react as if itโ€™s all about you, itโ€™s best to walk away. Do whatever it is you need to get yourself together, because the world is not going to think of you as the protagonist in every damn story. If you have been raised male, you think a lot about this.

Thatโ€™s kind of the debate between cis and trans womenโ€ฆ. That trans women tend to step all over cis womenโ€™s asses because they were socialized as men when they were young. This is the hashtag โ€œnot all trans women,โ€ and yet it is not untrue, either. Their voices are loud because theyโ€™ve been told they deserve it. Cis women have been property for hundreds of years. Chaos ensues.

I would also say that cis women generally donโ€™t stand up for themselves and trans women donโ€™t realize thereโ€™s a problem. There is a big damn problem, but it is not one that will last forever. The bitch of it is that cis women need trans women because they donโ€™t assume other men deserve shit and act as such. Cis women, not so much.

Itโ€™s especially the debate between cis lesbians and trans women, because they have even less political power. Trans women donโ€™t always see cis womenโ€™s complaints as real. That theyโ€™re being misogynistic and their ire is invalid.

Cis women donโ€™t give a ratโ€™s ass most of the time. We only react to being ignored. I am of the mind that trans women are women. Period. I also donโ€™t think trans women acknowledge how being socialized as a man as a child affects how they walk in the world as adults. That there ARE differences even though with puberty blockers, trans kids are being socialized at a very young age in their true gender.

Cis women also need to deal with their imposter syndrome and learn to kick menโ€™s asses the way trans women do.

My only gripe is with trans women who think itโ€™s all about them. They donโ€™t think that, but I see the dark side. I see the devastation it causes when trans women tell the people who care about them that theyโ€™re not doing enough. How fast do you think things are going to change in the South? What is your deal? Instead of bitching all the time, send flowers.

Notice I didnโ€™t say stop bitching all the time. Just recognize that youโ€™re putting a lot of your injury on the same people who are trying to solve the problem. In other words, take out your anger on someone who deserves it and stop biting the hand thatโ€™s feeding you.

Iโ€™m not sure Iโ€™ve earned the right to have an opinion here, but Iโ€™m 45 years old and people have been all over my ass since 1990. I couldnโ€™t be my authentic self, either, and in some parts of the country my internalized homophobia still kicks in hardcore. I cannot walk into just any bar, either. I wish trans women, especially young ones, would read up on Matthew Shepard. It wasnโ€™t that long ago. The queer community as a whole is being thrown under the bus, and I realize that trans womenโ€™s plights are bad, but I donโ€™t think theyโ€™re worse than they were for me 25 years ago. NONE of this is getting better.

I also donโ€™t think thereโ€™s too much difference between coming out as a trans child now and coming out as a gay kid then. Back then, gays were the last acceptable minority to hate, and theyโ€™ve passed the savings on to you. But donโ€™t think itโ€™s worse for you. You just arenโ€™t looking at the problem from the same perspective, because youโ€™re in hell and no one knows it better than me.

Cora and I have actually had this conversation, and it led to one of the biggest moments in my life. I explained some of the queer history she doesnโ€™t know, and asked her to have empathy. She took the note and made me cry so hard I couldnโ€™t breathe.

When I said that my middle name bothered me she said, โ€œI have a name Iโ€™m not using. Would you like to have it?โ€

And thatโ€™s when I knew that there would never be another Cora, and there would never be another Lindsay, either.

I am just glad that I have them in my future. I wish everyone could.

The Melody

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

What could you let go of, for the sake of harmony?

I am a soprano, but I like being an alto or a tenor. Diva is not my personality, although I was an accessory. Thatโ€™s kind of my jam. Iโ€™m not the star, Iโ€™m the ghost writer. The reason I say that I am a soprano is that I donโ€™t pick parts in choir, and the conductor never picks me for anything other than high As if they can help it. If there is a hell, my sentence will be the soprano part to Handelโ€™s Messiah. Just hold it til you turn purple.

I actually donโ€™t struggle that much with high notes, because I had a voice teacher that unlocked them for me. In fact, check out THIS SHIT. He increased my range from a high A to a high E flat. I am not a diva, but I do have tiny, tiny moments of it. The worst time Iโ€™ve ever been butt hurt by another soprano (aforementioned opera singer, so you know it damn near killed me) was when she said, โ€œI think sheโ€™s an alto.โ€ Thatโ€™s because I knew she was trying to get me moved away from her because people were starting to talk.

Speaking of having an affair under everyoneโ€™s noses, we were. It was just asexual. It was confusing wondering whether weโ€™d ever sleep together, but like I have said before, I didnโ€™t need to be romantic with her to struggle with what real love is. I didnโ€™t have lust. I was like every woman in America. If you need me platonically, if weโ€™re interested in you weโ€™ll give you everything.

Hereโ€™s where that stops.

I have never in my lifetime been this strong in the beginning of a relationship because it sets the tone for the rest of it. If I donโ€™t state my boundaries, heโ€™ll step all over them. He told me he wanted to marry me. Weโ€™ve been talking for a week and a half at most.

Now, heโ€™s butt hurt because the story heโ€™s been telling himself is that it was love at first sight for both of us. How interested could I possibly be? Zac and Bryn are all I need. I donโ€™t have time for much more than that if you are not here in front of my face. As I told him, โ€œthat doesnโ€™t mean pack up and move. It means that the Internet doesnโ€™t get all of my time.โ€

Shut it. Snitches get stitches.

Thatโ€™s all Iโ€™ve got for today. I just wanted to say for the record that boss ass bitches cure you of almost everything. Mine did.

Wordless

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

What is your favorite genre of music?

I am the one that provides the words.

I need music to flow like water around me. I love the word โ€œsoundscape.โ€ I love how composers and writers make love to each other, birthing individual creativity that feeds the other.

Probably one of the reasons the partners Iโ€™ve had havenโ€™t been creative (except Dana). I thought it was a good thing that we were so different, because we were feeding each other. Now, I realize that nearly every relationship Iโ€™ve ever had with a woman became based over time on division of labor. Theyโ€™ll do all the thinking if Iโ€™ll do all the feeling.

I was comfortable with my beautiful girlโ€™s availability because it was no different than any relationship Iโ€™d ever been in with a woman except the relationship I was currently in. That does not mean I choose wrong, or that Iโ€™m a bad person for not getting rid of the Internet relationship. Thereโ€™s several reasons I couldnโ€™t do that, and even when I realized it was necessary, it was too late.

I canโ€™t remember which entry I was reading where it became clear, but I know for sure that I am trauma bonded to this woman and perhaps it just didnโ€™t present for her in the same way. Thatโ€™s fine, and I donโ€™t expect anyone to have my experience. I was just reading over what Iโ€™d written when it hit meโ€ฆ.. โ€œthatโ€™s a trauma bond.โ€ You need her so bad it physically hurts? Thatโ€™s a symptom.

If she doesnโ€™t have an itch on her skin when she thinks about disconnecting from me, then of course we are not the same. I wish Iโ€™d thought about that years ago. I should state for the record that I am not saying she caused trauma. Itโ€™s the opposite. She came into my life while I was experiencing acute trauma, and sat next to me while I took my own medication. No one who sat with me at that time isnโ€™t bonded to me in that way, itโ€™s just not as extremely loud and incredibly close.

I think the itch on my skin is thinking that I am too incomplete within myself to do life without her, but thatโ€™s my trauma talking, not my personality. Even she would be surprised to see how vulnerable I really am, because I donโ€™t write from that place often. It never left my mind that sheโ€™s older and wiser, so be on your A game. Seeing her as younger comes from getting to know her inner voice. I care for that child as much as I care for that adult.

I betrayed everything I believed in because my disease started managing me. I donโ€™t think I came back to myself until I moved to DC and had been here long enough to feel stable. I had to get away from Dana, and I had to get away from Houston. Our relationship looked so much different without those two things, and I was grateful. This is because I moved to Houston with Dana because she wanted to teach, but then when we got there, she didnโ€™t do anything until she had to.

So I was managing my career and all kinds of PTSD triggers everywhere I went. It was unsustainable, especially the day when I learned that my new therapistโ€™s office was a couple streets over fromโ€ฆ. That house.

Getting out of Houston so that I could be myself again might also have been the answer to saving my relationship with Dana, but I donโ€™t think anything could have done that. We got into a pattern where sheโ€™d check out on her phone, Iโ€™d decide she wasnโ€™t interested in interacting, and e-mail my Supergrover. It wasnโ€™t a big series of fights, just more that when we each looked up, the other was busy, so we assumed we could just keep on doing what we were doing. We woke up months later and didnโ€™t have much of a connection anymore. The reason that a straight girl did not and could not have had any culpability in this is that if Dana and I had made more time to be emotionally available to each other, we would have been okay. We just stopped communicating.

Just because Dana was jealous didnโ€™t mean anything my beautiful girl did to contribute had purpose. Dana chose to get angry at the wrong woman.

Actually, she forgot to get mad at two women. She should have destroyed me, and also herselfโ€ฆ. Because I am betting that she does not think of herself as checking out and not caring, and how that might affect my relationship with her.

Because if I tried to engage her and it took more than a few minutes to get her to engage, I gave up. Maybe it was too fast, but I donโ€™t have patience for saying โ€œjust five more minutesโ€ when it comes to a video game and I am offering to take off your clothes.

Gay or straight, Supergrover whooped Danaโ€™s ass, and hereโ€™s how she did it. Dana didnโ€™t start acting like I had serious value until Supergrover noticed I was brilliant.

So, everyone can think Iโ€™m the bad guy until Iโ€™m dead. I donโ€™t care. But the relationship started to fail before I shot it out of its misery.

In a perfect world, I would have seen another woman looking at my brilliance and thought, โ€œoh, thatโ€™s sweet.โ€ Itโ€™s not a perfect world, and sheโ€™s hot as shitโ€ฆ. Therefore I lost mine.

I was the one that tumbled out of reality, because at that time in my life, reality bit (if youโ€™re my age, you wore out that disc. Itโ€™s probably scratched to shit yet still in your parentsโ€™ basement somewhere).

I just wish that Iโ€™d used music to help me more than I did. I wish I could have drowned out both women so that I could hear me more clearly. Perhaps my need would have been filled by something healthier, cleaner.

Music definitely would have helped me move on for good, but even that was confusing because I did have a relationship with my beautiful girl. Tenuous, but there. It was a note that grew up to be a symphony, because I love dissonance in the right chords.

Too much had happened for either one of us to feel the same way about each other without work, and we decided for whatever reason that this was a conflict that could be solved by writing. In retrospect, it made things more complicated because neither one of us can read when it comes to the subject matter. How would our conversations be different had she ever put her arm around me? How would kissing each otherโ€™s cheeks and hugging tight have mixed up the equation? I go back and forth.

Itโ€™s not something I think about a lot, because itโ€™s pointless except in determining that I donโ€™t know as much as I thought I did. Itโ€™s just not possible for each of us to feel as much fear in person, because thereโ€™s more to grab onto in terms of context.

Because of what has happened, I am wary of online dating, because I know what a shit show it has become. Iโ€™m getting a taste of my own medicine in terms of not being able to deal with othersโ€™ emotions, because a guy who randomly reached out to me now thinks we are in a much heavier relationship than I do. I just tell him everything sheโ€™s told me and surprise, it works. So obviously I know that we were not on the same page and she was trying to fix it as well. Our approaches were just so different that they prevented us from seeing what the other was doing or even understanding it.

But itโ€™s not the same situation. I did just meet this guy out of nowhere, and he started acting enamored after a couple of conversations that had legit nothing to them. Nothing was said that could have created a trauma bond, because I donโ€™t talk to anyone about that unless Iโ€™m writing on my web site. I feel like people get enough of my problems if theyโ€™re fans, so I wonโ€™t talk about my issues unless people askโ€ฆ.. or with Zac, Iโ€™ll just ramble around until he finds a point. ๐Ÿ˜‰

I am finding out that being bisexual has nothing to do with sex at all, ever. I have learned that I have dated few men not because Iโ€™m not wired that way, but because men legitimately have no clue about what women go through societally and are so damn condescending about it that some dude will say two things wrong and Iโ€™m like โ€œblock.โ€

To be fair, I havenโ€™t specifically started seeking out men or women. I just connect with people. However, I notice how Iโ€™m being treated and overall, men treat me like Iโ€™m little and cute. Boy, I will fuck you up. Respect me as such.

Itโ€™s because men arenโ€™t looking at me like Iโ€™m half a husband, and it is their downfall. I will never be โ€œthe little woman.โ€ I donโ€™t understand most social constructs and step all over them, so expecting that I already understand everything about male/female relationships is a mistake on both our parts.

When a trauma bond snaps, it feels like quitting caffeine cold turkey and then having to deal with the headaches. So, thatโ€™s a lot of fun as I negotiate being a new person. Itโ€™s why I feel like Iโ€™m not good at dating. I go out and Iโ€™m not focusing on them, but about how long itโ€™s been since I had at least a goddamn Diet Coke. My body doesnโ€™t feel right, and the one friend thatโ€™s always been there for me has taken a back seatโ€ฆ. When music could have handled the detox on its own. Music and I have been together since I was born.

My mother was a classically trained pianist with a degree in piano performance and pedagogy. My father played both classical and jazz trumpet, getting 26 full rides for college. Curtis, Juilliard, Oberlin, you name it.

I am what happens with โ€œthe Mozart effect,โ€ but Iโ€™m not sure whether thatโ€™s a ringing endorsement.

Music has a way of focusing me that other things donโ€™t, and Iโ€™m going to have to make a Supergrover playlist as well, because the music I needed to get rid of romantic feelings isnโ€™t the music I need to feel calm. Iโ€™ll start with the color green. She reminds me of new life, new growth, new everything and the music should reflect it. Iโ€™ll have to go through my music apps, but it should start with something like โ€œSheep May Safely Grazeโ€ yet not exactly that because Iโ€™d be whistling it 24/7.

I just need things that are mathematically complicated in a major key.

Actually, that would be a good tagline for her, if there was one. Never have I met anyone with such a range of emotions that centered on light, often shining it into my darkness while I cleaned up. It was easier because I could see.

I listen to classical music a lot while Iโ€™m doing other things, because it relaxes my ADHD mind to have at least one plug filled. One less way for another stream of thought to interrupt.

Thatโ€™s how I think meeting in person would have helped. Talking would have avoided all the traps of going down the wrong road too far before having to figure out an exit strategy, which as you can see is going really well. Obviously Iโ€™m not bothered by the situation because I never write about it. Eyeroll.

The writing prompt today reminded me just how much I cannot separate the music of my life from life itself. I am put together with blood and bones and skin, and yet that doesnโ€™t mean musicโ€™s contribution isnโ€™t there. Music is the invisible fourth wall providing structureโ€ฆ. So thick you donโ€™t even have to have a stud finder. Just decorate it up, itโ€™ll hold. Like concrete, music drips like water into all your softest places and hardens. Music that moves you will call you to you forever, and not everyone is attuned to your beat.

To turn that back on me, my rhythm changed and I didnโ€™t realize how different it had become. I was a basic 4/4, with a new composer who only knew how to write time signatures by subbing in random numbers. Today, itโ€™s a waltz. Tomorrow, itโ€™s a march. Tuesday is experimental jazz odyssey.

I am living my life with the map on the table, knowing thereโ€™s no way to fit it back into the package.

Which ultimately leads me to my favorite song in life, and a story about my ex wife. I thought it was hilarious that the Indigo Girls were on tour, and Kathleen was late to the concertโ€ฆโ€ฆ.for the โ€œGET OUT THE MAPโ€ tourโ€ฆโ€ฆ.. ๐Ÿ˜› ๐Ÿ˜› ๐Ÿ˜›

The thing that stays with me from the first time I heard it until now is โ€œIโ€™m going to love you good and strong while our love is good and young.โ€ The hope for that love is eternal, knowing a piece of it is in me. I can stop the itch on my skin, I can go back to my life, I can move on. But thereโ€™s never going to be a moment in my life that is bigger than โ€œyou think Iโ€™m smart? You? Really? Are you sure?โ€

With Whom?

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Describe your most memorable vacation.

Describing my most memorable vacation is hard because I’d have to pick between my childhood and taking vacations with partners. To say that there isn’t a story that takes the cake is incorrect. Here is the story of the first time I got married. I hope I made it sound as funny and terrible as it really was……… we just needed health insurance….. famous last words of all couples who have been together for a while and say “what the hell?” The only reason you get a link to this entry is that you *really* couldn’t find it unless you were dedicated to swallowing Stories whole. I posted it for the first time on Clever Title in 2005.

With others, there are snippets, like having fried dill pickles at BB King’s in Memphis with my family. It’s something that is commonplace today, but they blew my little kid mind. I also remember having bright yellow lemon ice cream on Beale Street, as cool and refreshing in my mind today as it was 30 odd years ago.

I remember coffee at Cafe du Monde, like everyone does, but I’m not sure all people think it should be a religion. All things being equal, I think Bryn and I could live in New Orleans quite easily. I should ask her. Moving isn’t a thing with me anymore because I’ve realized I’m using the Internet wrong. I can totally get a house in New Orleans for two weeks or a month via Air BnB.

I’m never talking about moving permanently, because I have friends that have worked at oil companies for longer than I’ve been alive who’ve lived all over the world for a few months at a time. For instance, I wouldn’t want to get a hotel and rent a car in Helsinki. I’d want to put down roots and make home base, even i it was only ten days……. keeping in mind that I have absolutely no idea how to make friends in Finland because everyone is like me. None of them want to be here, either.

It’s only a shell, though. I’ve watched so many videos of people moving to Helsinki (it’s *fascinating* when they’re POC). Finns are the nicest, kindest, sweetest people and also gaurded af if they don’t know you. Same. Hilarity ensues.

Helsinki is a vacation I want to take, though, and not a memorable one from the past.

Again, I’m not sure my “wedding” could beat anything I’d write today. It’s Saturday morning, and I’m trying to figure out how to use Threads effectively (and by that I mean I’m doomscrolling and need to eat).

Me, Myself, and I

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

On what subject(s) are you an authority?

The only subject I am comfortable projecting authority is me, and you would find it amazing the sheer number of people who want to revoke my degree. It is my work not to take their opinions seriously, because they simply have not spent as much time with the subject as I have. Totally nuts, completely self aware, trying to put herself back together. That’s the elevator pitch, I guess. The “completely nuts” will never go away. It just has to be managed, and admittedly it’s not such a great time right now, but it is getting better.

I feel like I lost my shit yesterday, I was so blindsided by a wave of grief I didn’t see coming. Everything I’d ever done to offend anyone was beating down on me, so of course not only did I ruin my beautiful girl’s life, but because I didn’t know she had a boyfriend/husband, I couldn’t freak out about those implications, but I did yesterday because I was berating myself for a hundred percent of everything. Yes, she was a total jerk to me, but I felt that way after not being heard on the same issue for years and then being told that it was tiresome to hear about said issue. It would have been good to know that subject was tired because I thought she hadn’t read it. So much information was lost between keyboard and chair.

And that’s what I’m thinking about. All the thoughts between us that didn’t get expressed and now need to find a box for safekeeping. In allowing myself to get that angry, that upset, I realized what a mess I had created by assuming everything was fine, writing everything exactly the way I always did.

It wasn’t fine. I didn’t start talking to her any differently, same cadence, same tone, same temperature, some everything except the reaction my words would create. I tried too hard, and it came across as trying to get attention, when in reality I was just grieving a loss and hoping I was wrong… that I’d be found.

I’m not upset that she cannot forgive me in the way that I would like to be forgiven. That is not my call. I am frustrated that it took so very long to reach the same conclusion we would have had, anyway.

Or maybe I’m just being hard on myself, because looking at her words, I still cannot find a clear path. I am just going to have to chalk it up to the nature of the Internet.

When I am not looking at her words, I recognize others’ footfalls and get in line. The path that I’m creating is walking away from her indecision, because not knowing whether I was welcome or not made me walk on eggshells a hundred percent of the time while apologizing for my existence.

I could talk about anything with her except her…. which made me in the unenviable position of having to ask myself what to say, which was invariably wrong.

She’s right. It was a hundred percent clear I wasn’t getting what I wanted, because she didn’t want to answer anything, ever, at all. It didn’t make any sense, because she liked talking about my dating life, my mental health, my cooking, my career, etc. She felt free to tell me anything she wanted to about anyone in my life, but got pissed off if I said anything about anyone in hers. When I hurt her, I set up the double standard that she could be as close to me as she wanted, and also to be angry that I wanted to know things.

She could pick apart my dates, and I didn’t even know she was with anyone officially, because she told me she was seeing someone and then never mentioned him again. I am glad that I just assumed it all worked out, because it did.

Now I’m getting tired of the story in my head and wish it would leave me alone. I’m getting the distance I need to be free, and it feels like I’m tripping into the light. It wouldn’t be me if I didn’t.

The story in my head is bigger than me and has to stop adding layers. Enough is enough. I just think I’m done and then another wave hits me.

That’s because during the original break, I never really gave myself enough time to pick out the shrapnel before I started apologizing. This time, it’s been months because something happened this time that didn’t happen before. My faith in her is broken. Hers in me had broken long beforehand, it’s just that she was polite and I was blind.

We just don’t fit anymore, and it was a mistake to think that with time, everything would look better.

Trust me. I’m the authority.

This is a Family Show

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

What’s your definition of romantic?

I’m joking because of course the writing prompt made me laugh. “This is a family show” is how I generally reply when someone posts something on my Facebook wall that I know my mom and dad would have *loved.* If I could think of an example off the top of my head, I would gladly embarrass the people who said such things, because it wouldn’t be mean. It would just be turnabout as fair play. Your mom probably doesn’t want to know what I think of your rack.

Here’s my actual “fuck off” for the day. It has nothing to do with romance, but definitely fallout……………… Your dad absolutely wants to know what I think of your rack. In 2002, my wife’s best friend’s dad asked me to kiss my wife in front of him for reasons. At a party, in a bar, in front of everyone.

It’s actually the biggest reason I was scared that my Internet friend would tell her boyfriend/husband about me. I couldn’t protect her from what he would think/say, and I have no illusions as to how that conversation might have gone. Him taking me as a serious threat was never a fear for me, because I wasn’t. My biggest fear is that I would become a running joke with her husband because he thought it was funny. Every passive and not so passive joke available, that kind of thing. I do not know if anything like this happened, and I don’t think it did, really. I’ve just been through it before, and I’m betting she hasn’t. I’m sure I screwed up more for her than I can possibly imagine, but I’m not acting as if I already have. That’s giving myself a lot of unnecessary punishment, and I’ve lived like a monk for eight years in part because I thought I deserved it. I’m not saying he’s a bad guy, I am saying he is one of a species known for making jokes like that. I cannot know he’s not like that, I can only compare him to all the other men I’ve met and say it’s a probability like everything else. Maybe the percentage is high, maybe it’s low. It doesn’t matter, because no one would tell me something like that.

I hope he’s the kind of man I need him to be, and if he’s not, I hope he lays off eventually. There really is no limit to how cruel it could have gotten for her, and I thank God they’ve met. It’s not like she picked him up off the street when he fell off a turnip truck.

I do not wonder whether he’s better for her than I am, because I already have both my answers. The fact of the matter is that he is both better for her and it doesn’t matter, because there’s no changing either one of us. I’m not male and she’s not queer…. not only that, if I had been male, she would have seen the threat coming and disposed of it. I know this because I felt threatened and I disposed of her friendship first. I told her that I couldn’t be friends with a woman that excited me this much and stay married.

I knew what was going to happen and she didn’t.

Here’s what made everything go sideways. Whether it is true or not, I thought she needed me. Whether it’s my own mixed up mood and behavior or what she was actually saying, I thought she was inviting me to be a part of something bigger than myself, and it was worth the turmoil in my marriage to be that for her.

I am positive that in some ways, she feels responsible for my divorce, even though I have told her all day, every day that she’s not. That I chose her in some ways, in was an inevitability in others.What I do know for sure is that if the stars had aligned, we wouldn’t have been together very long. I’m Type B. She is…………….. not.

So, my perfect picture of romance is generally people who recognize relaxing together and talking about our feelings as productive. Relationships have problems, and ignoring them only kicks the can down the road. I can’t help but think that if we’d ever met, her husband and I would have been perfect for each other also, because we have more in common than we don’t in terms of being that support team.

The most romantic thing my beautiful girl could have done for me is to introduce me to her husband, because we love our girl. Period. If she’s in trouble, we will come. He just has to drive. ๐Ÿ˜‰

That’s an old joke, too. I have vision issues, so I choose to take public transportation. I’ve said that before, but I’ve gotten a lot of new influx, so maybe catch people up a little. So, the idea that if my girl is in troubleย  he’s just the wheels is ridiculously funny. He’s a moose. I’m a squirrel.

You have seen this cliched high school movie a thousand times. I don’t care if her boyfriend is a big jock. That position has been filled. I don’t want to be Freddie Prinze, Jr. in every ’90s movie. I LIKE HER WITH HER GLASSES ON, OK? To me, you don’t really love someone until you love them at the beginning of the movie and not after the glam makeover. Believe me, that’s not her husband’s vibe, either. I’m just pointing out that I am perfectly fine with him getting all the actual romance, because I’m not trying to be Jamie or Roy. I’m Keeley, and she’s Rebecca.

Oh my God that is so apt it hurts.

To me, I couldn’t have any more romance than I’d need in my life if I had a friendship like that, and not because I’m not looking for it. I mean while I’m waiting, I do not see myself as lacking in love. I do not fall into the trap of feeling lonely, because even though the relationship is virtual, it rests in my heart and mind. It is the other half of me, and because of it, I’m not sure that either one of us is individuated in the smallest of ways. We’re not a separate person because we have never been that to each other. We’ve always been inner voices, because we’ve never made the effort to hear each other out loud. I mean, we have.

We’ve sent each other voice messages over the years because it was exciting or faster or both. Her accent has a lovely lilt on some words, mine on others. She has a queer sister, and I joked that I almost wanted to hear her talk more, because it would be like one of those baby gradients…. her accent, my sexual orientation. ๐Ÿ˜›

(Queer sister is unavailable and boy, are you guys sick and twisted. Abssolutelyfuckingnot. It would be like wanting an Oreo and getting a Hydrox and pretending they’re the same thing. Queer sister is an Oreo for someone else. She would only be my Hydrox, and no amount of devotion would fix it. At least if I was missing she’d know where I’d be. In her brother-in-law’s car. ๐Ÿ˜›

Getting my priorities straight is a big damn problem. I have been relieved of all my rights and responsibilities, and yet my mind hasn’t changed pathways to stop my feral nature. I’m not sure anything could be done to stop hers, either. I have a feeling that thinking I’m worth nothing comes from my own echo chamber, not what she was actually saying, but I don’t know what she was actually saying. I figured if I got that exhausted trying to figure it out, I just wasn’t going to. If I was a priority, nothing would stop her from letting me know that. When I said, “love me the way I love you,” it doesn’t mean that I was mad she couldn’t commit to me like a partner. I was mad that I wasn’t a high enough priority to shit or get off the pot, or to even let me know where the signposts were on the map. I am never going to get it if you’re wandering around in unfamiliar territory, so am I, and we’re not working from the same map.

She did not owe me any justification of her energy or time, I just felt frustrated that she felt justified in wanting my love and care, but stopped letting me know that she wanted it. The confusing part came from shutting down and opening up, It was a cycle for which I could not prepare or make stable because once I hurt her, nothing was ever the same.

She will carry fear of me forever, and it won’t stop the good memories from coming, but it will stop her from trusting me until we’re dead. She can say she trusts me, but her actions don’t line up. In a lot of ways, I got her out of mine, because she was asking me to be less. Be less of a writer, because I don’t think you have enough dexterity with words to keep me unidentified. That every bread crumb was an assault. If they are direct hits and I am that stupid, I hope someone will let me know, because here’s what even she wouldn’t have accepted. I would burn down the whole world if I thought she needed it. Fuck this blog. I’m not that good a writer. She is the only person I want in the world more than this. I have appreciated her willingness to grin and bear it over the years.

It’s just for me to tell where I am and where I’m going. We could have worked together, she just wouldn’t show up to the group project. We got an F due to lack of effort. I’m not sure why this is. Maybe because she’s not taking this seriously, maybe because she doesn’t want me to jump in knowing she’s made it impossible for me not to feel that way about her.

I’m all like “have you read any novel ever?” ๐Ÿ˜›

This is because she’s novel AF.

Novel Jesus smiled upon me. I would have loved capers that involved me setting ’em down, her picking them up like clockwork. I picture Mme Precious Ramotswe and her secretary, the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency and the Kalahari Typing School for Men.

I would teach the hell out of typing.

So would she. She’s mastered the art of typing on her phone. I have not. How she sends me e-mails without typos or spelling mistakes while also on the go is disturbing on so many levels, mostly that I couldn’t do it if you paid me. I’m one of those people that if I was on my phone, I would get a paragraph and she’d get “ok.” Come to think of it, that might have been a good solution to the problem of me saying too much. “Leslie, if you don’t stop talking, I am going to throw your keyboard off this train” would have been very effective. ๐Ÿ˜›

She can do sportsball, so now I am picturing us sitting on the train together and watching my keyboard thrown from our seats, perfectly hitting the trash can at Metro Center.

I think we both use the Internet to show people how smart we are, and that’s how we got absolutely wasted on each other’s brain chemicals. We were trying to impress each other, and it worked. She’s an amazing writer, funny af. She manages to convey her actual voice in punctuation, and I think about her cadence more than her actual words. They hit very, very hard whether I’m laughing or sobbing. I got so tired of rain, and frustrated and butt hurt and all the things. I really screwed myself, because I didn’t see that hurting her would result in me carrying around a lot of feelings I wouldn’t have wished on myself in retrospect, because I had no idea how much it would affect my future. It will never be what it once was, I assure you.

It’s a lot to carry even now. It is devastating that our conflict was really “the stuff you’re telling me is hard, but worth it if you’ll support me” vs. “I hate that you’ve told me this because you never forget to tell me what a burden I am to you.” That’s the root cause of every issue we’ve ever had, and I think she would agree, because we’ve both planted stories in each other that would make us feel that way. Our conflict with each other is the same from opposite ends of the spectrum. I just couldn’t express that love coming forward because she was only seeing the need going backward. I wasn’t telling her that she was a burden, I was telling her that I needed to hear more of her burdens in order to feel needed, and if she didn’t want that from me, please don’t give me false hope that will change. I want and need her in my life so bad it physically hurts, but not at the cost of giving too much and getting too little. It makes me feel like crap.

I am so much more than she thinks I am in the best way possible. She thought I was too much in a bad way. I thought she was too much in a good way, which made me fluctuate between elation and frustration. Because I hurt her, it felt like she was punishing me for the things I said to try and get her to open up like I was supposed to know whether I could say those things or not. Then even her responses were cagey, and I knew why. She thought she was burdening me with information, I thought it was really hard to be in a situation where she was emotionally unavailable and annoyed at me having feelings. It is absolutely okay for her to be that……………….. for other people. I told her that she obviously had friends she needed more than me, and it was time to let her go find them, because I was tired of up and down, hot and cold, feeling like a child being punished because I wanted more than she could give and she was a jerk about it. It bothered me that she cared so much and didn’t want to talk about it. It bothered me that she couldn’t tell me what she wanted from me, and if it was nothing, stop writing to me so that I can move past the kind of bond that I want and you don’t. I doubt she calls up old exes, and because she brought up those feelings in me and not in herself, I don’t think she realized how things would play out with me. That I’d feel at times that I was being forced into dealing with my feelings about her a lot more of the time than I could afford to spend. I had to manage my feelings not spiraling out of control because every time I went on a date, I felt like I was cheating on her, because she wouldn’t have cared if I slept with anyone. She would have cared at onboarding, and she worried too much about it. I can’t imagine how much it would have meant to both of us to have this conversation in person. I would have liked to hug her while I told her she was amazing.

That’s because overexplaining is a trauma response. I spent a lot of time wrapped up in how much someone new could have of me as well. A .01 percent of me will be polyamorous until I die, because I don’t have to be romantic with her to juggle what real love is. Real love is work. A lot of it. She asked me to forget an impossible amount of shit. I’m just sitting in it until I can. I am thinking these thoughts, and they aren’t going to the right person. That doesn’t matter, either. I need a roadmap on how to fall in love again. I need someone to drag me into it kicking and screaming. I need someone to fight through all the defenses I’ve put up, because I’ll never trust in the same way, either.

The hardest part of this whole thing is not trusting my own heart not to fuck up everything. That I’m shutting down so much no one else will ever have a chance. Why am I fine with that? Yes. Why am I? That’s a question we’ll both need to ponder.

That’s because I won’t even take a chance at finding another Dana, for everything good and bad that implied. God, I love her so much and she’s blind. If I’m willing to absolutely overfocus on my flaws because I think she’s telling the truth, I think she should assume that I am telling the truth as well. That maybe my assumptions aren’t as stupid as she thinks they are, because she’s got me pegged, shiiiat. I am absolutely the dickhead she thinks I am, and also the angel. However, I am not the angel who fell.I’ve been Lucifer Morningstar the whole time. That’s because I’m not evil, I’m chaotic. I have a full rage of emotions. We are all Lucifer Morningstar, children of God and superior angels complete with witty banter and xenophobia. So many people become Lucifer by thinking they’re God. Divine right of kings didn’t always work out.

Neil Gaiman’s version of evil is my favorite, because his evil is absolutely based on fallibility. Lucifer is a more compelling character than God in some ways, because God does not identify as such until Jesus is born. Lucifer fell from heaven, so he is under the same constraints as we found ourselves when Eve “didn’t read the apple terms and conditions.” I am not being literal, it is a metaphor (explaining it’s a metaphor because Evangelicals won’t assume I don’t mean it’s a fact. See title of blog.

I just want her to can it on thinking that I am always Lucifer’s basest self. I, like him, find “oh, my Dad” moments everywhere.

It makes me feel romantic about the state of the world, even when it’s going to hell in a handbasket………. to paraphrase a church bulletin, “Helen Hunt is now in charge of the Lost & Found, so if you can’t find heaven, go to Helen Hunt for it.”

By the way, Australia is beating the United States in terms of stats right now, and I think that’s an apt metaphor for the paragraph above (please think that’s funny).

Needs Work, tbh

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 2 Comments

How do you express your gratitude?

I feel gratitude flowing through me like water that my mental health issues dam. If I am trying to relieve emotional pain and trying to find its source, the path often leaves out how thankful I am because I am not working on that core. Particularly with writing, it gets out of control because I am not taking time to choose my words carefully. My rage ignites and itโ€™s not pretty when it goes off. I am constantly learning to manage it, because I didnโ€™t know where it was coming from for a number of years. It is hard work developing self-soothing mechanisms trying to recover from PTSD. I have said unforgivable things to the most important people in my life. Itโ€™s not their job to stay when it gets bad, so I am not trying to avoid culpability. I am having compassion for myself in the wake of my own consequences. I am entitled that without infringing on anyone elseโ€™s belief system.

Itโ€™s hard going back to the life I had before I had a goddess that talked back, very much a real description because since our relationship was virtual, the voice I made for her in my head echoed in my chest. โ€œIโ€™m averting my eyes!โ€ โ€œWell, stop it.โ€ Iโ€™ve worked for years trying to shut down โ€œThe Committee,โ€ the tapes in my head that provide my inner monologue. It hits different when youโ€™re trying to shut down your external monologue that is also, in fact, your internal monologue.

The best part of a virtual relationship is that itโ€™s all still here. We donโ€™t have to create new memories. Iโ€™ve saved them all up. When I need her, Iโ€™ve got her just as much as I ever did. Thatโ€™s enough, and she makes me smile and feel strong. So whether she ever thinks working it out is a good idea or not, I think sheโ€™s fantastic. No author has ever met such a beautiful character. I hope I can do her justice, because nothing will mean more to me over time than having a real picture of her in my mind that is not all good or bad but true. That itโ€™s possible to drive me up the wall without dulling my curiosity or want to be near you.

Iโ€™ve always thought of myself as a Merlin-type character. Iโ€™m not so much into fantasy, but my favorite character when I was a kid was Merlin from โ€œSword in the Stone,โ€ because even as a child I was a grumpy old man.

If I have the heart of a grumpy old wizard, she has the heart of a knight. Brave, crazy, stupid, wild, glorious, swings at every pitch and hopes for the best while I am the worldโ€™s biggest baseball fan when sheโ€™s at bat.

Iโ€™m fairly certain that if you could call it a sport, she could letter in it.

Iโ€™m absolutely certain that if you could call it a sport, I couldnโ€™t.

I think one of he biggest things that was helpful in our relationship is that she had to wear suits and crap for work. I didnโ€™t. Our perspectives are completely different. Sheโ€™s been a boss for a long time. Itโ€™s fun busting her balls because I can tell sheโ€™s wrapped a little too tight. I am constantly rubbing up against her ire with kitchen humor, because as she got used to me being an asshole, she could flip shit back at me like the best chef I ever had. Nobody has ever made me laugh harder or be prouder with two letters, and you have to be an OG to know that one.

Guess you had to be there.

Nothing made me more grateful than laughing together, and nothing destroyed me more than realizing sheโ€™d always see my attempts at humor as negative, because Iโ€™d hurt her. I have never avoided accountability. She has avoided talking about how we could make things better so that I donโ€™t constantly annoy her. I feel stupid that I thought I mattered more than I did- that I could have just walked away at any time without discussing anything and she wouldnโ€™t have noticed.

It didnโ€™t start out that way. How it started is not how itโ€™s going, and that meme is solid. Because I hurt her, I was not a grumpy old wizard anymore, and I would have walked away happily if Iโ€™d known then what I know now. I thought she was reaching out to get closer, and now I donโ€™t know what she meant by writing to me at all. My guess is that she has never believed any of this is real. That people develop real feelings even when the relationship is virtual. That surely my love for her canโ€™t be as real and solid as it is. What I love about that is she doesnโ€™t know how stable we are, but I do. I donโ€™t have to dwell in negativity. I can just be grateful we met at all, because in some ways she was a character I needed to meet. In others, my writing has created a character for her. I hope that character loves as deeply as my beautiful girl, because I know what her real life sunshine is like. She turned the sun away from me, but I set it in motion. Iโ€™ll regret it for the rest of my life, because it betrayed who I really am.

Iโ€™m a sweet, quiet geek who fell in love with the smallest place inside her, the one that had been missing. She was a catalyst for that change, so I fell in love with her, too. Thatโ€™s because the love didnโ€™t center around who she was entirely, but the two of us because I liked who she helped me to be. Iโ€™m stronger than I was. Iโ€™d have to be to walk away. I just got tired of trying to be less, so I asked her to be more.

And that was that.

Meeting โ€œThe Oneโ€

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

What are you most worried about for the future?

One off the reasons that my beautiful girl destroyed me is that we affected each other with our secrets to an absolutely enormous degree, so over time sheโ€™d forgotten how deep our rabbit hole went. We went deep enough that in order for me to move on, we needed to start managing practical consequences and she told me she wasnโ€™t interested. What didnโ€™t mean anything to her might have ruined me for anyone else in terms of priority, and she didnโ€™t think of that, I guarantee it. Iโ€™d met โ€œThe Oneโ€ in a very roundabout way, because it wasnโ€™t an affair I had to manage. It was off the wall feelings on both sides. She had to protect what I knew and vice versa. It was mutually assured destruction because she asked me to forget an impossible amount of shit.

I thought it was better to love each other through it, she thought it was better to tell me that I thought she was a bad person. That was never an issue, ever. At issue was โ€œif youโ€™re going to tell me something like this, love me the way I love you. I wonโ€™t accept less.โ€ It wasnโ€™t that I was goading and provoking. I had a genuine issue in talking about an issue because she had a genuine talent in avoidance.

I shouldnโ€™t have settled, and I didnโ€™t. But weโ€™re still managing each otherโ€™s secrets and lies without our refuge in the cloud. It would never be worth that kind of devotion without that kind of love. I do have to forget, and not because I wanted to. Because she thought I couldnโ€™t handle it. I could, as long as she could take it as easily as she could dish.

Thatโ€™s what ruined our relationship. If I said something negative, sheโ€™d rip me a new one. If I said something positive, Iโ€™d never hear from her. My emotions frightened her, always, and they should have. She helped make them that intense without recognizing me, ever, so whether she appreciated my willingness to be hers or not, it was a stone cold fact.

If I say I would have done anything for her, I mean it. I got brownie points for an e-mail about busting my ass at her house after a storm, because we live close enough that it wouldnโ€™t be a weird offer at all. It would have been a weird offer from Houston or Portland, but the move was a coincidence because I didnโ€™t want to just pick up and start over in a new city, and I lived here 20 years ago from the time I made the decision to move back. If Minneapolis had been my hometown, I would have moved there. The first is that because our relationship was virtual, we could be anywhere. The second is that planes exist. I would have eaten it up if sheโ€™d come to Portland or Houston. I would have shown her on a platonic date in either city, and I only say that because thatโ€™s what it would look like now. In the beginning, we could have been a threesome if Dana hadnโ€™t decided to be jealous. Polyamory is a thing, not that Iโ€™m necessarily that in practice, but if I hadnโ€™t been so wrapped up in new relationship energy, I think she would have easily forgiven me and I would have gotten over it and the negative aspects of our relationship would have smoothed over in time.

New relationship energy ate my lunch because it was so different for me and so normal for her. Getting into a relationship with her hits different and because sheโ€™s already her, sheโ€™s not so aware of it.

Which scares me about the future.

Itโ€™s More Simple Than You Think

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

What makes a teacher great?

Iโ€™ve been close to Brynโ€™s mom and dad since I was 19, as well. Hereโ€™s the most important thing her dad has ever taught me, because it has influenced a lot of what I write and preach. The hardest part of teaching is remembering what it was like not to know.

Itโ€™s a very difficult thing to be enlightened and also remember the dark. If you can record that transition, you might be able to explain it. You can help others by acknowledging their fear, and being their Moses.

The phrase โ€œbeing Mosesโ€ means something to me, because Tony Mendez has taught me a thing or two about being a writer/teacher. In โ€œArgo,โ€ he tells State that the only way out of Tehran is through the airportโ€ฆ. That State should โ€œsend in a Mosesโ€ to bring them home. Because the meeting was speculative- so State could say they ran their ideas past CIAโ€™s best ex-fil guy- I am not sure that Tony Mendez meant to say โ€œitโ€™s me. Iโ€™m Moses.โ€

The next scene in my mind is Tony preparing The Six for their trip to the grand bazaar in the middle of the city. Moses is sweating bullets for two reasons. The first is that if he is caught, The Agency cannot claim him. Heโ€™s working without a net. The second is that itโ€™s not just his ass on the line. He and The Six get caught, as Jack points out, they die badly. The entire world will be watching.

That is an extreme example of having to teach someone, but it illustrates frustration on both sides of the equation. If Tony doesnโ€™t prepare The Six, one if not all of them will be pulled in by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard for questioning. Alternatively, The Six are just basic policy wonk diplomats with no training in deception and Tony has to teach them to walk their covers in a day.

Itโ€™s not the same as remembering what it was like not to know multiplication and division, but itโ€™s the same concept. The difference is an age-appropriate level of fear. It clutches your chest whenever you leave your comfort zone, which is not the same when youโ€™re five and when youโ€™re fifty. Itโ€™s a proportional response.

Remembering what it was like not to know is often a failing of mine, because things that are so patently obvious to me are hiding in plain sight for others. I am going to be able to feel you before you even say anything. I can tell what kind of mood youโ€™re in simply by watching body language. I can feel the frustration, anger, etc. steaming off you and the moment when that energy changes. I donโ€™t have to learn someoneโ€™s mannerisms, habits, mood, and behavior to do this. It happens automatically. I will not be able to tell that there is a problem, but I know what it looks like to move in the world showing different emotions. The more people claim there isnโ€™t one, the more I know whether theyโ€™re telling the truth or not, because there is an energy behind truth and white lies. I can feel that shift, and can feel you bullshitting me. Your next words donโ€™t even matter, because the way you stiffened up before you answered betrayed you.

I feel like I can tell the most about peopleโ€™s personalities and group dynamics without saying a word. I stand there and soak up everything in the room. Iโ€™m not just feeling how we are interacting, but how everyone is. I can tell not just how your behavior affected me personality, but also how well you know how to read a roomโ€ฆโ€ฆโ€ฆโ€ฆ

I am not bragging on myself, because others have this gift. Bryn is better at it than I am. Having her is like having a bloodhound. She can sniff out when Iโ€™m upset, and sometimes I think she does it by reading how the phone rings. ๐Ÿ˜›

Speaking of Bryn, she told me that she feels like a celebrity when I write about her on my blog. I told her that she is not the first person to tell me this. My friend James nearly made me die of laughter when he said, โ€œI really just go to your page and search โ€˜James.โ€™ Yes, I am that fucking shallow.โ€ She told me that my entries were the perfect length for a morning constitutional, and I told her that she was nowhere near the first person to tell me that.

I missed my calling. My blog should be called โ€œThe Shit Show.โ€

It was more simple than I thought.

Iโ€™m Not Sure

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Have you ever had surgery? What for?

Iโ€™ve had classic little kid surgeries, but I donโ€™t know if they count because none of them were what youโ€™d think of when the phrase โ€œmajor surgeryโ€ comes around. I had tubes put in my ears. I had the muscles shortened on one eye so it didnโ€™t drift as bad. Nothing where I had to stay in the hospital, except for an allergic reaction. That was at least 30 years ago, and I never did figure out the trigger. Perhaps it was the stress of coming out. I was in fifth grade. It is not impossible, because it was so mystifying that Dr. Leaves thought it could be the pink dye in Benadryl.

With the benefit of time, I doubt it.

Right now I am doing emotional surgery on myself, which I have been doing all along as a blogger. I just feel like Iโ€™ve graduated from stitching myself up to removing diseased tissue. I am getting out all the good and bad things in my life, throwing them up here like a set of X-rays so that I can look at them dispassionately. Itโ€™s the only way I can direct myself, because I cannot feel this level of emotional pain and physically move without it.

I have come to a very good place. This morning, I am just empty. I have spent all my energy pouring everything out, and the tap is dusty. I have to wait for a rainstorm to access inspiration, and that is okay. When the inspiration to write is the ending of a major relationship (in terms of time, not romance), I write until I shut down.

It Is Now Safe to Turn Off Your Computer.

No lol

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Are there things you try to practice daily to live a more sustainable lifestyle?

I have no idea what this means outside of Oregon. In Oregon, there’s infrastructure for sustainability. In Maryland, it is “good luck, God bless.” I want to talk about things I do to sustain my own life.

Being a writer has changed my perspective on everyone and everything who isn’t me. I will make them me by inhaling, life as ink on the exhale.

“Life as ink on the exhale” is the perfect phrase for all of this.

“Writing is ink on the exhale” is a better sentence than I’ve written in a while. I should quit for today. ๐Ÿ˜‰ I realize this is extrapolating data from an incomplete set, though, because I can never explain in a catchphrase how experiences go in and ink comes out. I can’t tell you who and what and why is most important that day. The only reason my beautiful girl pops up so often is that as I’ve said before, she’s my muse. She’s the ink. What is sad about that is the absolute confusion as to why it’s the last bottle. How do you cope with not knowing whether someone even wants to meet you or not, yet tells you nothing’s wrong and you’re the only one who ever trashes anything. I have lived long enough to know that I am only trashing the relationship she wants with me. I can have the relationship I want with her on my own, and in a lot of ways, it feels the same. To me, that is also trashing a relationship……. letting starvation rule over your compassion.

I did not want to be in a relationship that was starving, particularly one that had flourished. The problem came in when I’d wronged her and wanted to be forgiven, because she never got over how it felt to be hurt by me. She could forgive me, but she couldn’t open up again…… at least, not for years. Then, she started to loosen up and I hadn’t been so profoundly happy in years. I invited her to come with me wherever I went in the world, dreaming pie in the sky- and told her to bring her husband, kids, dogs, books, wtfever. I felt safe enough to say something like that because she was opening up emotionally.

I don’t know what would have happened with that train of thought, because she never told me what she thought and I got tired of living in grey area. I would have given her an organ. I never got a fraction of that level of emotion from her, and I’m supposed to believe I’m the one that trashes everything?

What I have to remember is that we don’t know each other. We have created characters for each other that live in our heads, which may or may not be 100% accurate. Absolutely none of that stopped me from giving her access to everything. Just everything. She’s the only one to whom I’ve ever given editorial control of this blog, and the only one that knows the code that unlocks my phone. I have never done this for anyone else, ever, and I will never do it again.

I didn’t give her either of those things to impress her. I did it to make her feel comfortable. I did it so she would know I was listening.

As I listened, ink on the exhale traveled the spectrum, inventing colors as it soaked into the page. I am now strong enough to look at her e-mails now, and I saw something that jumped out at me. She said something about how I thought she’d wronged me, and she’d read it wrong. I said that I had wronged her. Another time, she got mad at me for “the lies you (plural) tell, and that’s not like you (personal) at all.” She thought I was calling her an actual liar, and I wasn’t. I thought she had told white lies about a few things to protect my feelings, and “the lies you tell” is a classic South Texas way to say it, but you’re not talking about a specific person. You are talking about a nebulous “you.” She lit into me, and I told her I was sorry I had attacked her with grammar. In my head, I was screaming. Why would a writer decide to emotionally roast me over the coals like this? What the fuck was wrong with her freshman comp? I thought I had made my point overly clear by being sure to note grammar on both kinds of “you.” I was wrong.

I never understood why she thought she wasn’t good enough for me. Not ever. I hated the way she treated herself in front of me, as if I was a dictator and she was hell bent on pleasing me and angry that she just couldn’t do it. I am certain that my actions facilitated this, but it doesn’t mean I didn’t want a different outcome. I tried to tell her that she was beautiful, perfect over and over, an ostinato to drown out her disbelief.

If she thought she disappointed me by not also being sexually fluid, it would have been helpful for her to say that. If she thought she disappointed me because my standards were so high, it would have helped to ask me what they were. I have never known feelings this intense, but in the way I’d feel if my sister was my first priority, not my wife. She has never disappointed me a day in our lives, and she never did until she felt like she was being picked on and didn’t have enough stamina to hear me out. She thinks I don’t have enough stamina to hear her out. I do. It’s just that what’s coming out of her mouth is total bullshit, and not because she’s a liar. It’s that she hasn’t dived into the wreck. She’s going to own herself the way I have here, and it’s going to be magnificent. You know you love someone when you can see them coming into themselves before they do, and fighting you so hardcore that you know you won’t be there at the finish line. For me, that moment became clear when I realized that I should be more concerned that she has lost me. I am not nothing.

I cannot know her feelings on the matter, yet I also cannot treat myself as if I’m so disposable no one will notice.

I’ve had enough of that, and it’s not sustainable.

Gurl Please

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

What’s the most delicious thing you’ve ever eaten?

I am a cook. I don’t have a way to rank anything because in my world, when I say “apples to oranges,” I mean actual fruit. What I will say is that I have a very advanced palate, so it takes a lot to impress me. It doesn’t need to be fancy. I can tell a good cook from a bad one in one egg.

I was taught by the best, so I’m the best through transitive properties. But I’m the best at home. “No Fish on Mondays” is written from the first person perspective because I was living in a memory, not recalling it. However, I decided that the kitchen was too much for me physically- that I could have cerebral palsy or get my stripes in the kitchen, but I couldn’t do both and I figured that not being a chef was easier than curing CP.

That reminds me of a beautiful memory with my Supergrover, which I only bring up because I need it so bad. I figured out some more stuff that went into our demise that I could have told her, but I didn’t because I was trying to spare her feelings. As a result, I’m working through all of it on my own so that I don’t turn into a bitter queen. I don’t read “angry dyke.” I read “bitchy queen” all day. Anyway, the story is that another line cook sexually harassed me and she offered to kill him. I know enough to know it would have been with her bare hands. Honey badger don’t care. God, I feel the same way. I go apeshit inside when anyone crosses her. Believe me when I say she is a monster in the best sense of the word. It’s a good feeling when you’re the one holding the leash, and the ones closest to her often do. She’s not mean to us. She’s mean for us.

If you don’t have that friend, you don’t have a friend. Choose wisely.

And now back to our regularly scheduled program. It just feels better to write about all the things I love about her rather than sending negativity out into the world. I don’t even know if she’s reading and I don’t care. It’s not about her. It’s about healing me.

So, no way to rank but lots of standouts. I love everything, from cheap to expensive.

My favorite cheap thing is grocery store pizza, particularly the fancy kind with rising crust that actually smells like yeast. If you get your pizza delivered, you can’t enjoy the smell of it baking and it takes the same amount of time now that Domino’s drivers aren’t constantly tasked with delivery or death.

My favorite middle tier thing is pesto sauce. This is because you can buy pasta for a dollar a box and $15 pesto and all of the sudden you have a dish you could sell at a restaurant for more than that.

My favorite expensive thing is sushi, because even at the grocery store, sushi grade ahi is pricey. So is good wasabi. However, being able to “roll my own” has meant a lot to me in terms of education. I can make pretty good sushi-su (sp?), the rice with Kewpie and rice vinegar. I never roll it tight enough, but I don’t care. I could eat ahi and rice out of literally anything. I should learn the difference between Japanese and Hawaiian cooking because I could probably do a poke bowl with one hand tied behind my back…. but again, sushi grade ahi is just ridiculous in price most of the time, and even more expensive at a restaurant, where I’m always tempted to upgrade to yellowtail, soft shell crab, or salmon (seriously, there is no logic to the Philadelphia roll. WHY IS IT ADDICTIVE.)

The funniest conversation I’ve had in a sushi restaurant is that I told Dana that I wanted a Mexican roll (I don’t remember what was in it, probably fried jalapenos). She asked me if I could eat a whole Mexican, didn’t realize what she’d said, and then we both ended up nearly on the floor…… just shaking with laughter. The whites are so pretty next to the coloreds (that was the lights on the Christmas tree). Lord Jesus, help me I’m falling down the stairs I’m laughing so hard…. as if I was listening to the Eddie Murphy routine from whence the line appears.

When I talk about food, I talk about my ex-wife. It’s inevitable, because most of my adventure with food started at “Hi, I’m Dana.” We worked together for three years (I think?) and two restaurants. In the first, we basically ran our own kitchen because we were the only ones on shift. The second was at the Portland airport, and those restaurants don’t come to play. It wasn’t irritating locking up the knives at night, but it was hell trying to find parking at the airport and it took a long time to get from the parking into the building.

The coolest part of my cooking career was having the badge that let you walk directly up to the planes if you wanted. I could literally stand out on the tarmac and no one gave a shit. You cannot imagine how many times I imagined stowing away, but the issue with being on the tarmac is that you have NO idea where the planes are going. To some, that might be exciting. X means airports with international flights, so at PDX I could have ended up in Houston or Helsinki. Those are two very inconvenient cities to arrive with no luggage…. not that any city is, but not to know whether you need ski pants or sundresses isn’t that great.

Speaking of ski pants, I watch this YouTuber named Dave Cad that has ads for the most amazing Finnish clothing company. It’s kind of like REI and Uniqlo, and I’ll look it up if you’re interested in the comments. Anyway, Dave lives in Helsinki, but he was road tripping up to Kilpisjaarvi (sp?), which is so far up it was only three degrees Celsius in late June. It makes sense. Lapland is supposedly where Santa Claus lives, as well as the thrill of seeing Dave’s glass igloo. The glass igloo is so that you can ile in bed and watch the aurora borealis. OMG Bryn. That’s on our bucket list now, too. Note to self…. rent a car. Kilpisjaarvi is the most beautiful tiny little town I’ve ever seen. If I lived in Finland, that’s where I’d settle. I want hygge for the rest of my life (from Norwegian… the cosy feeling you get in the winter…. SO similar to Portland except not constantly raining. Snow is easier to me to deal with than rain, because it doesn’t hurt as much when it’s being pelted at you.

Plus, I’d like to start a garden. I’ve watched a couple videos on Finnish chefs because the palate is so much different than ours. I mean, just straight up BIZARRE. In every piece of footage, I am reminded of Anthony Bourdain in Iceland. It’s my favorite episode of No Reservations because he is the crankiest little bitch I’ve ever seen all the way through it. Comparable to Namibia, where he griped he hadn’t had anything without sand, fur, or shit in it for three days.

That part of the world has completely different plants. Vegan food would be off the chain when fruits and veg are in season. If I did have the strength to open a restaurant, Kilpisjaarvi would be excellent because it’s a tiny, tiny town and I could start out small. (I’m just gaming this out. I’m not crazy enough to do this by tomorrow). I think I’d close in the winter, at least part of the time, because I don’t think there would be enough business to survive on bread, cheese and meat until Spring. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe that’s what they eat. Just don’t drink with a Finn. Ever. You just don’t have it in you, and I don’t even know you.

I would be an excellent Finn, for the same reason that I’d rather spend time alone as much as they would. I may not have Finnish blood, but my personality is limited to one country. ๐Ÿ˜› No DNA test needed.

Actually, I think Lindsay said we do have some Finnish blood, but it’s only like 3%, which is obviously enough to practically knight me there. Obviously.

Stating the obvious to an obscene amount, what would it be like to live in a country where they don’t hate women and lesbians?

That means I’d go check it out even if the food was terrible.

Spirituality and Religion Are Not the Same

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

How important is spirituality in your life?

I put a moratorium on writing about my beautiful girl yesterday, and then I get a prompt like this. Whelp. Here we go. Hold on to your butts.

When I said before that there is a place in everyone that feels infantile and defenseless and I’d given mine to my friend, it was that in 20 minutes worth of talking together, I’d made her God in my mind. Do you remember the movie “Contact?” That when the aliens reach out, it’s to a little girl, so they project an image of her father to explain everything so she is not afraid. What I love about this scene is that it’s not frightening to her because she’s been told that it’s just an image to make her listen harder.

That’s who she was to me. The image of God that made me listen harder, not that I was putting her on a pedestal and thought she was more important than me. It’s true that if we hadn’t been so incredibly different, we wouldn’t have lasted so long. We’d have developed a Venn diagram on friends that would have made us lose the stranger on a train feeling that made me crave her. I can’t even explain that part of it, only that our conversations were so full of emotion that at the time, my favorite song was “Your Love is My Drug.” I was the most complicated 808 percussion rhythm in existence. It was exactly like doing a concerto at Carnegie Hall, where people only expect the highest level of musicianship, or perhaps a music jury to keep your chair in a major orchestra. In the orchestral example, I was a soprano hanging off a ledge with a cadenza to rival Kathleen Battle. The music jury is realizing you’re last chair and learning to roll with it. You’re just happy you got in.

Plus, I’m an INFJ. I am built for people to trauma dump all over me. It makes me want to fix all the things and I will put lots o energy into it because they’re helping me find myself a day at a time. What she never knew that I did was how many hours I gave her while she wasn’t in the room. Therefore, I think she thought I was always winging it, when I was running things past her to correct the story I was telling myself.

She didn’t, and it made her say things to the effect that I never missed a chance to tell her how much her problems were a burden for me. If I’d thought about it, I would have replied that I think of her with every term of endearment that has ever existed, particularly “mulkvisti,” which comes from Suomi and means “one I hate less than the others.” What she couldn’t see is that I was pouring my heart out to her and telling her how much her words affected me. She thought I was rejecting her, when I was telling her that my empathy was so large I was hurting for her, and please recognize that I made sacrifices, too. If she only knew how much love I send through the chord that runs between us (in the geometric sense of the word, not a typo)………. sometimes I put Red Bull in it just in case she’s running a quart low. Those metaphysical images give me life, and I’m rebelling against the way I have seen her treat everyone else and how I am not in that group anymore.

She can tell other women that they’re beautiful, that she loves them, sign off with kisses and hugs. To me, that is what is keeping my mistakes over my head and making it drip on my face every day. That would mean we were getting back to normal, because it made me feel that she couldn’t tell me those things because she thought I’d overreact and think she’d been touched by an angel or some shit. She doesn’t know how much it means to me when she sends me heart emojis, even. To me, showing up is often hearing that I am beautiful and loved despite all my flaws and failures, too. Showing up big would be acknowledging all my love and care as much as she’s recognized my ire.

She doesn’t recognize that at times my love for her is fucking feral, and I know she feels the same way about me because she went apeshit when Sam dumped me. She doesn’t know that I allowed myself the absolute luxury of falling in love with Daniel and my queer as folk “boyfriend,” in quotes because I don’t know what the fuck to call him at this point, only to say that he’s my first thought in the morning and will be on a friendship level for life. This is because she gave me everything I needed in terms of girl power energy everywhere I looked. There is nothing hotter to me in this world than a woman with big dick energy.

Wow, it’s a good thing my feelings aren’t that intense.

So, it was no surprise to me that within days I was completely gone. I love her for everything she used to be, is, and will be. She has said it as no matter what, we have a past, present, and future. I really believed that until she didn’t tell me that the position of partner had been filled long ago, so I hoped too much that she was one of those women whose sexuality changed based on how much they felt demisexual/sapiosexual, not where they were on the Kinsey scale previously. It was a bad pattern to set up, because I’ve kicked myself over what I didn’t know for ten years, especially the part where my brain chemicals made backing down off that nerve scream in pain. I made myself a mixtape like a fucking child, and I will not apologize for going to that place, because acknowledging those feelings helped them go away faster, and I know it. It was easier to ask and move on than it was to pine for her, because I would have done it forever and I know this about myself. I’d be eighty years old without ever being vulnerable with anyone else. It’s not her, it’s the way my personality works.

I didn’t date for a long time, and the most vulnerable reason is that I didn’t want to make anyone else a priority over her. Sam would have been fucked, and now I know that. I couldn’t acknowledge it before, but my attention didn’t turn. I chose emotional intimacy over romance for years, which is why I felt starved of it after I fucked up everything. It came across as pouting that I’d been kicked out of the popular kids’ lunch table, because she was filtering it through her experience of dealing with younger people. Our age difference doesn’t show much, but that is where it pops up most in my humble experience. That feeling provoked comes from the heuristic that I’m so much younger, I’m using girlfriend tactics to goad and provoke her like she’s a senior jock and I’m a freshman.

I had that relationship when I was actually in high school.

I had enough emotional bandwidth to sit down at a table she prepared for me, at first filled with promise…. taking off the last silver cover to reveal absolute confusion……… when all I’ve ever wanted is to be her personal chef- for real, not a euphemism. I want to be a chef, and I wanted her to be my sous. I was working toward that goal by being emotionally vulnerable so that we both could heal and move on. But recognizing that we had issues didn’t come across as goading and provoking until she laid into me and I didn’t take the time not to respond with an absolutely proportional response because I was triggered too badly at being thought of as a nuisance…. and at the same time, it being held over my head that I wrote from a different perspective than what she was actually going through because I didn’t know what it was.

By the time she actually did it, she ended with being exhausted by everything. I thought, “no girl is worth this.” No girl is worth wrecking my life over, even if I do think she’s the face of God. If I left, I could use that without her. Through looking at her picture and telling it how beautiful she is, I could imagine her thinking the same thing even if she couldn’t say it out loud out of fear.

If there’s anything I’ve learned from the Bible, it’s “love people out loud.”

Poorly

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

How do you practice self-care?

My favorite form of self-care used to be taking a bath, but our bathroom got remodeled and now I don’t have a bathtub. It’s not an easy feat to have smooth legs, a standup shower, and cerebral palsy. Most days, pick two. In fact, I have two bags of Epsom salt (one in lavender, one in eucalyptus) that have never been used because I didn’t know we were getting a shower when I bought them.

Self care changed a bit when Zac and I started dating, because then self care started leaning toward getting out and walking with Oliver, and taking the train to his house, etc. I’m not a social butterfly unless I have to be. Most people take care of themselves by staying in. I’ve got that covered. I need to go out.

I find comfort in my bedroom/office more than anywhere else. This is because my house is very, very large and I am a small person. I tend to hole up in favor of feeling safe. I avoid most people in real life because I don’t live with my family.

I am fairly certain that my housemate thinks that because I’m queer, if she touches anything after me, that thing will turn her queer as well. I’ve gone out of my way to assure her that it TOTALLY WORKS. Don’t you dare pick up this peanut butter lest you suddenly find yourself noticing my sweatpants do fit extra tight today, you’re welcome.

Self care is learning to see others’ idiocy, otherwise it would bother me more often than it does that my housemate thinks I can King Midas her into submission (OMG. EVERYTHING SHE TOUCHES TURNS RAINBOW). First of all, ew.

I can also say with a healthy amount of confidence that she’s not smart enough for me.

Self care has been about creating boundaries, which I can’t say has gone all the right way, but has produced all the right results. Having a relationship that was all in my head changed my neural pathways, but there was almost always an air of flying too close to the sun.

The relationship ended my marriage, which I’ve said before; what I haven’t said outside it was all my fault is that we trauma dumped too much too fast and each made the other take on things that they wouldn’t have otherwise chosen. This in and of itself was a crack in my relationship with Dana, but I couldn’t and wouldn’t undo it for anything in the world.

How it worked out was how it was supposed to work out, because I can truly say that I did not choose one or the other. The situation unfolded over years and I retconned it so I could explain it to myself. It was too much to act and process at the same time, and I think that’s what’s happening now. I couldn’t act and process at the same time, so I ended the relationship when I realized what it would take to be on the same page and not having someone to work with on a shared goal, because no goal was set.

It was a roller coaster, when my idea of fun is more “sitting outside by the pool and/or fire.” But that doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy the ride while I was on it, or would turn down another trip if the situation were actually right to do so. I just don’t feel like she’s willing to hammer it out, because instead of seeing questions, she saw entitlement. It wasn’t my intention, but what my words said to her. As if I had an agenda she was constantly failing when I actually saw her as the good kind of trouble. I would do anything for her, and if the situation actually required it, I might even call her on the telephone (no, I wouldn’t. I’m not even that dedicated to me).

If it seems like I’m ragging on her a lot, I would tell you everything I ever loved about her if it wouldn’t result in identifying her. She is just too fun and funny to miss. I would be her second in command at anything just to watch her go off script.

I realized that if I meant as much to her as she meant to me, there wouldn’t be any doubt in my mind as to where we were and where we are and where we’re going because she’d actually want me to know all those things. Now I think she’s just afraid that I value me more than I value her….. that anything truly personal we shared will end up splashed all over everywhere. I doubt it, as we have no mutual friends, but it’s possible if I’ve managed to leave enough breadcrumbs without realizing it because that’s not something I’d do intentionally. I value her privacy, but it’s more than that. Talking about what we’ve shared means sharing things about me that only belong to her. It’s taking that tiny virtual meeting space and opening it up to others, when the purpose of our friendship in the first place was to be the other’s safe space. I would never intentionally violate that. I don’t want to invite anyone else into our space any more than she would want me to do it.

Self care is knowing that I need to turn my attention inward, that I need to protect my energy. So much of it went to her at times that I lost track of me. Not always, but enough. There’s one thing I won’t do, though, and that’s stop praying for her. It’s the least intrusive thing I can do, and probably all I ever will. I am certain that I have said enough, that she is done…. mostly because I told her if she was going, she couldn’t come back unless it was big. That us being so nebulous was kicking my ass. I wasn’t entitled. I was clueless.

That’s because I’d already done the clawing back up part, and it wasn’t happening again without major buy-in. What I didn’t do that I should have was cure her of all her shitty assumptions, like assuming I wasn’t getting what I thought I should out of our relationship. The truth is that she prides herself on not needing anything, so why wouldn’t she think that me being emotional was a weakness? That I’m needy?

I wasn’t needy. I was uneducated. If you don’t tell me what you need and resent the hell out of me for feeling, I’m going to rely on self care.

Truly, I think a lot of our differences can be summed up in our four ages….. ours and our inner children and how those developmental milestones rubbed up against each other. She’s chronologically older, and yet I see her as so much younger than I am. I wanted to protect her because of it, and I failed.

Caring for myself is now harder, because since I failed to protect her, I don’t care as much about myself because I don’t think I’m worth it. I’ve already proven I don’t take care of other people well, why do I think I can help me? I know they’re just intrusive thoughts; most of them don’t even have basis in fact.

I thought of something from yesterday that made me feel amazing. Years ago, I sent her a pen for Christmas. So. Who knows? Maybe I live in her ink, too. ๐Ÿ™‚ Moments like that remind me that thoughts of her are not the intrusive ones. My giggle box turns over every time I think of that thank you letter…. that the pen (a novelty) was the first thing that had made her laugh in a while. It helps to think of these things, because I know that I am not chaotic evil 24/7.

Self care is being a little chaotic evil, though. No true regimen would leave out mass quantities of carbs and chocolate at any time, much less right the fuck now (the cramps are starting and I feel my uterus getting ready to scream).

Ohhhhhh……. the cramps are starting…… that’s why I was such a hot mess yesterday. Sounds like I could use some self care.