Tag: dailyprompt

The Star-Spangled Banner

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 2 Comments
Daily writing prompt
What’s a cultural tradition from your country that you love?
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Love, when it is painful and real, is complicated. Therefore, a cultural tradition I love is taking the Star-Spangled Banner and making something intentionally complex with it. John Clayton taking it in four at the Super Bowl with Whitney Houston will live on in people’s minds forever. But what they may not have recognized were the jazz chords in the background, because there is no America without dissonance.

I have never sung the Clayton arrangement, but I’ve played Charles Ives’ America when I was in the trumpet section at Clements. It is very much the same Langston Hughes feel. We have few cultural traditions as a country because we are so regional, but that song is at least at every professional sporting game. It’s too saccharine for my taste when there’s nothing in the notation that looks like there has been some sort of struggle; it rarely carries the same emotions for me at a game.

Sports are a phenomenon that I understand, but I don’t fangirl myself. Well, except in one aspect. I care about the players as people. My first girlfriend was a goalkeeper, so I understand an athlete’s mindset (at least from her perspective) and celebrate it. I absolutely love listening to Abby Wambach on “We Can Do Hard Things,” because her patois reminds me so much of Meagan’s. The only difference is that Abby does not speak with a Canadian accent. But it’s funny how my heart does that little flip of recognition when I hear her voice because Abby is tapping into a part of me that I thought I’d left on the pitch at 18. She makes me feel young, and I am grateful.

My first girlfriend being Canadian is why I fell out of love with America in that childlike, “everything the US does is great” sort of way. I love America like an ex you’ve broken up with but can’t afford to move out. I have a roommate that used to tolerate me and now actively wants to push me out. And by “roommate,” I mean the political party currently in power. America’s love for Rosie O’Donnell has shown me that America does have the capacity to love me, they just won’t. It’s not politically expedient and no one will vote for it.

Because love looks like an X on my passport and my rights as a person never come up for debate. Donald Trump didn’t have to live in a world where he couldn’t get married until 2008, and honestly, THAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN FOR THE BEST. But what he didn’t live through, I did. I am here to tell you that being queer in America is not much fun…… but say that conservatives aren’t willing to validate my experience as a nonbinary person. Then, the case just gets stronger.

Fuck being a woman in America.

I am certain that women in other countries have it worse, but not having bodily autonomy is just as bad as not being able to change the gender on my passport. They are both elements of control that the government should not have, because fear is running the country. The adults left a long time ago. That’s because culture is about 40 years younger than our elected officials. It’s not that they can’t understand the gender binary. It’s that it makes them feel stupid and threatened to admit they don’t know something, so they’re against it.

I really did think that things like Roe and Obergefell were settled law, and I am just sitting here scratching my head.

I cope the way I’ve always coped, by listening to Jason Moran. He was a senior when I was a freshman at HSPVA, so we know each other. But the pianists didn’t rotate as much as the drummers, guitarists, etc. so Jason and I have never played together. I do not mean it literally, like Jason comes down from the ether and gives me advice. I mean that I cue up his albums and write. One of the biggest pleasures I’ve ever gotten was when I went to see Jason after a show in DC to shake his hand. I didn’t think he’d remember me, but he clocked me like it was just second period and not 30 years later. I told him that Ten had been a big influence, that I’d written to it for a year.

He turned around to his band and said, “hey guys…. she wrote to Ten for a year.”

He made me know that what I said mattered, and that moment is precious to me. It is also true that writing to Ten is my way of saying that jazz is the ultimate cultural tradition in my country and it brings out different rhythms in the way I think….. so it’s no mystery as to why the Clayton arrangement is my favorite.

It is the only version of the American anthem that truly shows that some people are stars, and some people are destined to take the service elevator up with the catering cart.

Hm. I am Truly Stumped.

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
If you could relive one day from your past, which day would it be and why?
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How ’bout just great days in general? Any one of them would suffice:

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

I Don’t Remember

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

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

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

Espionage, but make it Matt Damon and Ben Affleck.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Morgan Freeman: He cannot.

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

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

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

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

I am not one of those people.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Which also made me cry.

Mine or In General?

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
If you could erase one event from history, what would it be?
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There are two different answers. For history, I would like to erase the crucifixion and have Jesus live out to be 110. We are missing some great reflections on religion because Rome crucified Jesus for what he thought, not for what he did. It’s one of the reasons I think hate crimes are dangerous business. I don’t outright oppose them, but I think it’s inherently risky any time the government punishes you based on thought and not action.

It’s one of the dualities of me. I’m as queer as a three-dollar bill and have had my share of discrimination. Getting punched in the face hurts. I don’t care if they called me a dyke first. “Not the issue here, Dude.” I’ve sat through too many Constitutional Law classes not to be able to debate this issue all day, and the bottom line for me is that bigots will always exist. Make penalties for crimes tougher across the board.

I am sure that I have committed more emotional crimes on this web site than I could imagine, because the ones I do imagine are scary AF.

For a long time, I thought I was being punished by the government for what I thought, because I thought my work had been sent to “the boys upstairs.” It never bothered me that I thought NSA was having a laugh… in fact, it provided me with a lot of comedic entertainment. I created a character named Carol that I’m saving up if I ever learn how to write fiction. I have learned character mapping first, so I know Carol intimately.

It started as a joke to make me feel better. Carol was a fictional NSA agent sent to watch my blog and something interesting happened….. she started to love me. Root for me. Takes sides privately because none of her coworkers know who I am or care. She lives in the Blue Ridge mountains with her husband, Roger, a landscaper who built Carol a cusom office that is floor to ceiling glass. She needs a peaceful place to work if she is going to watch me.

I hear there are war zones easier than conversations with me. This is not fiction. This is a diagnosis from US military and intelligence. I am strangely very proud of myself, but not because I am proud of being difficult. I am proud of my mind being so complicated that military and intelligence have commented on it. My brain has more twists and turs than the streets of Tehran, and I’ve thought that I was an idiot since I was a child. Part of the reason that I am so “difficult” is that I have strong ideas on paper, but have auditory processing disorder so talking to me is not the same experience.

One of the finest minds in the world used to say that my emails were intimidating, and I used to stare at those words thinking, “what the hell does she see in me? I ain’t shit.” Then I started getting compared to Sedaris and Chomsky. They’re totally different, but both represent aspects of me. The funniest thing is that when I was compared to Chomsky, I knew his name but was not familiar with his work. Aada said:

Your mind goes all over the place like his does.

It wasn’t Aada that made the comparison, it was Janie the Canadian Editor. Someone with an Ottawa press pass said I was akin to a mind like that, and I’ve never recovered. It re-shaped who I thought I was because the quote is Aada explaining to me why she saw the comparison right away.

Having this high-octane a brain is not for the faint of heart. It’s not about intelligence. It’s about the way information does not organize. It just comes at you like a firehose. I’ve never taken an IQ test, but I’m not sure I would pass. Like, MENSA is not my calling. But I do think that I have a higher-than-average EQ, but only when I actually understand all aspects of the problem. Input affects output, just like in tech.

I am certain that I do not understand all the moving parts with basically anyone in my life in regard to this blog, because everyone has decided that I don’t need that information. That’s because I’ve told them all repeatedly that I do not want to hear it. My opinion of someone does not mean more than anyone else’s, and I am not in the business of mindreading. My focus is on the output of my opinion, and it is not my job to also have a response to it. That is your job, where your story begins.

You can curse my name in your house as many times as you need to in order to feel better. You can tell all your friends exactly how you feel about me and dedicate a daily blog to how awful I am. That is indeed how the internet works. You don’t shut down someone else’s opinion. You have your own. I feel strongly about this because I write about everything. I am not “out to get” anyone, the writing reflects life. It does not create it. Writing about what happened to me with my friends is not an accurate reflection of who they are as people, because the sum total of them cannot be captured in a few thousand words of plain text. Each entry is just a snapshot of my day, and it is very clear when I have been injured.

But it is also clear when my friends are my lifeblood. I feel cut off from them, but I chose it. I cannot choose separation and also beg for comfort from them. That’s not how it works. But thankfully, Bryn was here to remind me that I am not anchorless. My anchor just lives in Oregon and I don’t. There are some days when I just want to pack it up and join Bryn and Evan back in Portland, but most of the time I just think of the weather and die a little inside. If you love Portland, you’ll love DC because “a river runs through it” and it doesn’t rain 280 days a year.

The bottom line is that I can be accountable for the words that I put out there, but I cannot be held accountable for what you think/do when you read. If my writing is toxic to you, then you can change the channel. It is a boundary issue, and a healthy one. If you are not sleeping because of my generally uneducated opinion, the response is a sleeping pill. Not caring more about my opinion.

The point is that my writing is messy and uneducated because I am not writing about academics. I’m writing in a lane where everyone is confused…. the right to think and feel is a hot topic because we are tasked with both individualism and community. I have the right to my own WordPress site in which I talk about my life. That includes epic crash outs from having bouts of mental illness and the emotional dysregulation of Autism and ADHD.

Having my crash outs in public is never fun, and I’ll curate a list of my biggest fuckups for all who celebrate (comment if interested).

The most humiliating email I’ve ever gotten in my life came from Aada, who didn’t know the story behind the story and took me to task over publishing bullshit. Now, Aada of all people should fucking know that bullshit is necessary for survival. I told her exactly what to do that would be helpful and she didn’t want to play, so if she was offended by my narrative, she can take it up with the State of Maryland. Because Aada has never gotten together with me in person, the people around me think I made her up.

Well, of course I did.

Here.

Because anything I write here is not Aada herself but the impression she left on me. That collection of impressions combines to create a character that is sort of like her, but less beautiful, funny, warm, engaging, etc. She has a killer smile, so I have a feeling it’s just not defeatable in person. The character has a dark side because I was wrestling with dark issues. Who she is “in real life” is not who she is here.

I often say that I did not fall in love with Aada so much as I fell in love with the character I created. That’s because when my mind was wandering into the ether, we weren’t arguing. Interacting was just so difficult, but dreaming of an easier time had my mind tied up. When I’m feeling down, I go back to the moment in my life where Aada asked me to drive her to Coos Bay from Portland and I said I was “here to take her when she wanted to go.” I am not the best driver in the world, so we would have gotten to the first Dutch Bros. and I’d have been like, “OK. Your turn.” “Leslie, it has been 25 minutes.” Back then, I didn’t have fancy electronics like Adaptive Cruise Control. Things would be much smoother now.

Although Coos Bay would be a bit of a journey from where we live now.

But going back to those moments in my mind is sustaining, because my friends don’t have to be in the room with me to be supportive. They also don’t even have to be my friends anymore. I don’t hold on to hurt, and I don’t know what to do with the catalog of information that my brain still stores when they leave my life.

The problem with not writing people as 3D characters is that there’s no transition from pain to joy and back again. There’s just curated cuteness. Nothing about my life is either of those things. I am mostly a dumpster fire and I am learning how to deal with this…. my forward motion in therapy is learning how to step into my voice without losing all my friends, and my therapist is also somewhat stumped because he’s a writer as well. It’s a collaborative relationship in which he says he reads my blog for therapeutic purposes, but I think he is absolutely exhausted by my volume.

Valid.

The truth is that most writers don’t have friends outside their own heads.

Jesus is the perfect example of this kind of person…. because even in a crowd, I guarantee you he was lonely. Not everyone got it. I could never compare myself to any kind of divine aspect of Christ, but I very much understand the human ones. The parables were riddles to the disciples. His words were taken as “I’m going to overthrow the government.” Yeah, I don’t think that tracks.

Society has a way of punishing people with worlds in their heads, mostly because they refuse to take the time to walk in them.

I’m Not the Only One Who’s Ever Been Married….

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
What’s a conspiracy theory you actually find believable?
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In first‑century Judaism, a man could be called rabbi in a synagogue setting only if he was an adult Jewish man of good standing- and that almost always meant being married. I got started down the “Jesus and Mary chain” a long time ago with a set of novels from another Rebecca in my life, Aada.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I Don’t. I Go Back to What I Know

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

We are both in the business of threat detection.

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

Was I a stalker, or was a writer?

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

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

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

Tiina said it the best:

You’re our Anais Nin.

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

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

Unsafe, unsafe.

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

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

I can string together everything in reverse, though.

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

Have you taken your meds?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ET’s 25th Anniversary Re-Release

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
What’s a moment when you realized you were officially an adult?
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I felt so old, and I was probably in my own mid-20s at the time. But there are days when I don’t officially feel like an adult now, because the way my money is structured, I have to ask someone to transfer it to me. There’s a gatekeeper, because I don’t control everything myself. It was structured this way so that I didn’t lose Medicaid the moment Angela died. It protects me, and also makes me feel shame because no, I don’t really need money for extra Skittles. But I’d like some.

And the thing is, my dad is not controlling in the slightest. If I said, “dad, I’m not feeling well. I need to go blow money at Wawa like an unsupervised nine-year-old,” he would say that was a perfectly valid use of funds and knock yourself out. Get the large soft serve. It is all about my nervous system and my inability to voice needs. I have traditionally been very bad at it, but I am learning to surf the waves now.

For instance, reaching out to Brian and telling him I was in pain, noting that I was heard and believed but that it didn’t change anything in the short term. That’s fine. I don’t hold on to hurt. It may be that everyone is just busy, overwhelmed, and focused on other things. I am not the center of attention right now, nor should I be. I was not trying to make anything about me but having the boundary that this is my space and others do not control it. I am certain that if I found objection to any of their content, they would tell me exactly where to go with my discomfort.

The hypocrisy was astounding, and not from Tiina’s daughter. From her daughter’s boyfriend. He said that all the breadcrumbs I left revealed something that was already public knowledge because I waited for the official online footprint to start running before I did.

It was placing blame on my shoulders that was there, but not isolated. I was not allowed to be an excited member of the inner circle. I was clearly told I wasn’t liked and to get the hell out, and any favor I did was all by my own choice. That is true- relationships are not transactional. But if I wasn’t seen as a team player, that information is data for the future. If my work and gifts are seen as intrusive, then I need to take them somewhere else. Tiina and Brian never saw me as intrusive, and I had a creative partner who would respond to my entries, even calling me to tell me what she liked and didn’t like about something.

Tiina’s daughter’s boyfriend ignored all of that. He had no idea how many middles of the night chats he ruined not because I am incapable of taking correction, but because I have a hair-trigger allergy to being treated like a threat. If someone is basing their entire lives off the forward motion of this blog and my writing, that’s a red flag. That is “this situation is already beyond workable.” The message is not that I am not responsible, that I lack empathy or accountability. The message is that I am a writer, and you have to deal with me like a writer. You don’t get to pop off and tell me not to write. You simply ask me to leave your life if you cannot stand having a writer in it.

Nothing that I said was threatening. His interpretation of my words was threatening. I just have to keep remembering that, because it’s not a requirement that he believe me. It’s a requirement that I do. He’s an adult. He’s entitled to his opinion. But I’m wondering if he’s ever told Tiina she had an obsession with me. Knowing her as well as I do, I’m sure she would be thrilled by that hot take as well.

Telling me that I need help and I’m obsessed erases all of Tiina’s feelings in this situation, and Brian’s too, for that matter. Tiina didn’t reach out to me and say “I hope we can still be friends.” Brian did. Tiina’s not there yet, and I refuse to put her on my clock. What will happen is what will happen.

When Tiina’s daughter and son-in-law asked me to take something down, they did not mention it was going to come with a side of “you’re ours to bully now.” That’s the part that hurts. The relentless of the mismatch between reality and my writing. Because the reality is that when you allow people to read your thoughts, you open yourself up to an enormous amount of criticism, like you do when you do YouTube or OnlyFans or whatever. The difference is that plain text is the backbone of the internet, and now it’s virtually ignored.

But plain text is also dangerous, especially when you write in long form for people who are built to shut down nuance. The difference is that here, everyone is a 3D character. I don’t intentionally hurt people. I intentionally write down what hurts me and people react with hurt. Because it’s never “wow. It sounds like you’re going through the shit. How can I help?” It is always that I cannot get my shit together and I’m a developmentally arrested toddler. That having a place to write is what is crazy in and of itself, not working within the boundaries I need to be a successful writer.

I am also not reversing the victim here. What I did caused harm to someone even if I thought it was innocuous. No one wanted a debate on whether I meant well or not, just take it down……. until Tiina’s son-in-law bullied me after it was impossible for me to write anything about him, affectionate or not. That is not attacking my bad behavior. That is attacking my right to say what I want. It is always my recommendation that after you leave my life, you simply change the channel. Because what’s not going to happen is that my writing all of the sudden disappears. No one else has that power over me.

Being a writer is a very lonely life because people take your writing so personally. You do, too. You shake and cry while you’re getting it all out. But because the reader didn’t see me cry and shake trying to talk about losing platonic and creative love, they think that I’m cold and heartless and they’re the only ones who really feel. It is not that. It is that we have had an asynchronous response.

Right now, my contact with Brian and Tiina is limited to “seen. Heard. Understood.” That is all anyone needs in this lifetime, because they don’t see me as protecting myself needlessly. That continuing to write would only enflame the situation and I’m right just to stay away. Maybe just for now. Maybe forever. But what I won’t do is live every day in shame over my writing, cautiously asking everyone if it’s okay for me to have an opinion.

The proof is in the pudding. People get over things. They come back.

:::stares in Richmond:::

And Tiina is not the kind of person that would let hard work go unrewarded. I know she saw me. I know she saw me trying to connect with everyone, including their kids. That when I “had the COM,” they were my kids. What they needed was on me as their safe adult. In fact, she actually thanked me for taking 10yo shopping while I was a nervous wreck, driving like someone with a baby in their car for the first time. They would be so offended, because they’re not a baby. But I guarantee you they used to be.

Learning how to relate to kids as a parental figure was hard, and what I think Tiina was trying to tell me is that I was taking more on than she wanted, but she didn’t know how to say that. So she didn’t. If there was a vibe around the house that I was obsessive, it was because I was running on a different plane than everyone else. But I don’t think I was. The relationship with Aada was all adrenaline, all the time. The relationship with Tiina was in the dirt, literally grounding me.

It was not a direct cling to a person, but to an idea. That I could spend my days wandering between Baltimore, Stafford, and Louisa, not having to choose because Brian and Tiina made me feel safe that way. And once that idea took root in my head, I began thinking of ways to give back because of their hospitality. It was never a one-way street or an obsession, and I’m sensitive to that word because it was the same tactic used against me when I was emotionally abused as a kid. Everyone told me I was obsessed with her and never thought, “hm. This could be grooming.”

When I published my thoughts about all of the emotional abuse, the narrative among my former friends was that I was a monster for trying to destroy someone’s career because again, no one takes accountability for harm I endured. It’s only a problem that I wrote about it. It was emotional abuse that started when I was 12 and didn’t really end until I started playing for Richmond. In my head, I am absolutely a Diamond Dog.

But because of my background, I chuckle to myself and think “USG doesn’t want me to have nice things today.” That’s the answer to everything that goes wrong. Tire goes flat? Government. Out of Cheerwine? Government. I walked into a wall and hurt my shoulder? Clearly the government.

What feels threatening is never being wrong. I was wrong in this case. I will be wrong in others. Feeling threatened comes from “this place is not as safe a space as advertised.”

I need to phone home.

This is a Better Conversation to Have with Copilot Than Me

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
Which is the best restaurant in your city?
View all responses

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

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

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

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

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

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

:::stares in Westheimer:::

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Even if he cannot order at the carryout.

Or Little Donna’s.

Take Up Room

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
If you had a time machine and could send just one message to your past self, what would it say?
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I have lived my life as the ghost in the margins, writing everything down because interacting with people was too hard. It’s not an obsession with anyone, it’s an obsession with craft. Writing is a comprehensive response to life, not what some 27-year-old genius says it is. Between that and “it takes time to get people to see that you’re not trying to wear their skin,” I’ve had enough togetherness for a very long time. In retrospect, things look different. Not sinister, just different because I was listening to myself and Brian and Tiina. We were in sync. Writers gonna write, etc.

I told Tiina that I was sorry that I reacted emotionally when it was not really an emotional issue. Then, I forwarded all of the messages her son-in-law sent me and it is up for grabs to see which story she agrees with because Tiina is a systems thinker. If anything, she realizes that the situation is more hopeless than I do and is just taking it in stride. You don’t change people’s opinions of you. You walk away.

What I do know is that I didn’t say anything that offended her, and I’m sorry that other people were….. offended, I mean. But I cannot have that toxicity in my life- not that I cannot be wrong. I can do plenty of that. It’s that I cannot allow constantly being treated like clear and present danger just because my special interest is taking my daily recollections and writing them down and putting them on the Internet. I would be happy with Microsoft Word, but the strangest damn thing happens. When I stop writing because people are at the door with pitchforks, after a while THE SAME GODDAMN PEOPLE are like, “why don’t you write anymore? You used to write so beautifully.”

Take what you get and be grateful.

It’s Always Aada

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
Which author would you love to have dinner with?
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In trying to show someone I wasn’t trying to “wear their skin,” I only made it worse, and I’m not talking about the current situation. I’m talking about what people I thought were okay with me tapped into historically the moment they started to punish me for having an opinion after I already said “I’m out.” You can tell me I have a weird obsession with your family and that’s valid. I will take the thousands of dollars I’ve spent collaborating with them somewhere else. What that jackass ruined was not my blog or my story, but my willingness to be a team player. I do not feel safe because he outright threatened me with consequences I will not absorb just for publishing to my audience what happened.

I overstepped, and I made a mistake. He says that I do not see that part of it. Motherfucker I was doubled over in tears while you were at a fucking birthday party DONT FUCKING TRY ME.

Relationships are not transactional, but I have a general sense of whether or not I am appreciated. What I learned from this experience is that I cannot make a mistake and move on. The narrative about me keeps running and gets worse, so whatever it is I thought I found is gone.

Tiina must know it because I haven’t heard from her and probably won’t. She cannot choose me in this situation and I told her not to. Just move on.

Every Time I Hit Post

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
What’s a moment when a stranger completely restored your faith in people?
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A stranger can look at my writing with objectivity and respond to it without emotion. That’s my favorite part. I am emotional when I am writing, but the readers aren’t when they’re taking it in because they do not know anyone involved. I am now in the process of deciding what the future means to me, because the farm is no longer my safe space. Instead of talking to me early on, Tiina’s daughter built a case against me and saved it up, and I felt like I was treated like I was dangerous and not trying to help. That when I jump in, it’s for everyone, and not just her.

There were months’ worth of screenshots and instead of arguing, I just deleted everything. There’s nothing I can do to fix that relationship but stay away. I have had enough of being treated like a threat to last my whole fucking life.

They have the right to ask me to take things down. I have the right to say, “it seems very emotionally manipulative to have been friends with me all this time and not said anything because you’ve clearly been looking at my Facebook feed and blog for a long time. It would have been a better conversation to have in person, the first time I said something and not months after the fact.” It took time and effort to make me feel this blindsided.

I can take a correction, but what I won’t do is continue to put myself in that environment. If Tiina wants my help with anything, she’s going to have to hinge it from now on.

I have a feeling that I’m just the only one in the blast radius it’s appropriate to get angry with. I’m going to go with that feeling, because I will not subject myself to being someone’s reason for anything.

The Half Smoke

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
What’s the best local dish you’ve ever eaten while traveling?
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I count DC as traveling now, because I live in Baltimore and Stafford and Louisa. Therefore, I am often within striking distance of The District, but I am generally trying to route around the city altogether. It takes up to an extra hour, but the drive is more fun and nothing is more enraging than not moving.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brian: Oh, I do.

10yo: Mom, who’s your favorite child?

Tiina: Leslie

Me: I HEARD THAT!

Feel the love.

How to Save a Life

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
What’s a thing you wish schools actually taught?
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Schools are all about image, but there’s no class on the fundamentals:

  • how do I budget?
  • how do I cook?
  • how do I arrange travel?
  • how do I manage my interpersonal relationships?

Schools used to have a version of this called “Home Economics,” except it was geared toward women…… when I am pretty sure that men also eat when they’re alone (please advise). Nothing about Home Ec was gendered except the expectations of the people running the class. Gay men have been the unsung heroes of Home Ec since time immemorial.

But if kids don’t have these skills, parents are sending them off to school to be the world’s worst roommate. Parents send their little cherubs to college when they’ve never even done their own laundry. Especially if you are neurodivergent, this will probably end up in a dumpster fire. That is because at 18, all of the sudden you are responsible for your own life with absolutely no framework in mind as to how that happens.

I have some of the same issues that Tiina’s kids have, it’s just that I’m so old that tricks that work on kids don’t work on me. I want to prevent this from happening to other young adults, because what no one will tell you about college is that being able to go to school and being able to handle your life are two separate skills.

School barely addresses the first.

Limerance

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
What’s something you used to worry about but don’t anymore?
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It took a long time for me to realize that my life at the farm could be real if I wanted it. Brian was more up front than I was. “We should give Leslie a drawer or something at the lake house.” I have “taken over” 16yo’s room every time I’ve been there in the past, and it’s something about which I feel bad. I don’t like displacing anyone, and I’m sorry for that part of it. But I also love his room and I’m grateful that he doesn’t seem to mind. I have a place in Brian’s house, and it makes me feel welcome.

When we’re at the farm, I just crash out on the couch. It’s comfortable, and there’s usually a dog. Listening to the rhythms of the farm is a whole essay in and of itself, and Tiina has half joked about how to accomplish a room for me at the farm many times…… or maybe she was never joking and just buy the damn air conditioner already, idk. I would build out their entire attic at my own cost if I planned on living there full time. I just cannot because I need Maryland’s infrastructure in terms of health care. Crashing on the couch is my decision, not Tiina’s. When she said, “I just want to keep Leslie forever,” I started thinking about how to make that happen for her.

The way I feel about it is that I can contribute to the financial cost of the farm if I’m the one receiving the benefit. If there’s any way I can figure out health care in Stafford, it makes total sense to say “for the low, low cost of building out your own space, it is a short walk from hanging out to sleep.” It’s my own health care that’s the holdup, not Brian and Tiina’s support of me. I think the reason Tiina and I work so well is that she’s my favorite person just to sit in silence with. Work gets done on both our parts, but our energies aren’t focused in the same direction. She likes diamond painting. I like writing. When I’m at the farm I shift to her sleep schedule because of it. Her presence matters while I’m blogging. It regulates my emotions in a way that writing alone does not.

Tiina also likes music while she’s working, and I am introduced to new stuff because of it. It’s been an adjustment to write and listen at the same time, but it’s recovering an old skill. I used to listen to music while I wrote all the time, and then just lapsed into complete silence. I am not altogether sure this was good for me.

So, the farm is very important to me in terms of equilibrium. Staying grounded, staying focused on more than myself, learning to live in community…. all of the things that have been missing for the last 12 years because I isolated myself on purpose and couldn’t get back out of it until I met Tiina. She was the first person to truly see me as I am, because I came armed with knowledge I didn’t in the past. I learned that having preferences and opinions was not bad, and I wasn’t going to be voted off the island for expressing them. I am allowed to have a full range of emotions and not the emotions other people say I can have. This is the life. This is what you want. Not fame and fortune, but people who let you be you.

The lake house is where I get to stretch out, thanks to a kindness from a kid.

16yo’s room is decorated to my taste, because he’s a book guy. There are very few traces of him as a little boy, but marks of the old man he is becoming. The kind who takes books seriously is my kind of guy. But we don’t talk about books. He, like all young readers, reads in the car. He reminds me of me at that age, blissfully unaware of what was going on thanks to any number of novels. I watch him, shoulders hunched, turning pages as if the world is on fire.

Boy, same.

At his age, I was lost in Richard Wright, James Baldwin, and Nat Hentoff.

“Black Boy” and “Native Son” rewired my whole program. There are plenty of lessons for white people in those books, but what I took away was a sense of queer identity. The books’ focus on Blackness as a systemic concept allowed me to see all the ways queer society mirrors it. All the ways that ideas of excellence are both self-claiming and jumping for approval that will never come.

Excellence has to come from within and it cannot be tied to worth in this country. You cannot be good enough to deserve rights. There is no such thing as The Perfect Minority.

My entire family has a focus on social justice because I am a liberal Christian and they are Jewish. It is a shared sense of tikkun olam, a concept that is missing from the Christian world and is fundamental to who Jesus was as a person…… “if you heal yourself, you heal the world.” I spent a lot of time in youth group singing “let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me.” Yet there was no actual concrete idea on how to do that. The manual is with my Jewish counterparts.

As I was telling a rabbi on Threads, “my Hebrew is mostly limited to transliteration as I struggle through the service.” I am not interested in conversion, just showing up in Jewish spaces as I am. However, I am delighted every single time Tiina says, “I think you are secretly a Jew.” Because that’s what happens when you follow the historical Christ, and not whatever is happening in mainstream America………. Christ, literally.

Here is what is resonating with me about this time in my life: it is a reclamation of things I wanted when I was younger.

  • When I was in kindergarten and first grade, my next-door neighbors were Jewish. This led to celebrating holidays together and my dad performing an interfaith wedding for the adults. I am not new to being a Christian in Jewish spaces, I want it around me all the time. Christ’s own community is a better fit for me than the one we followers built for him. I am not saying the words he said when I attend the Episcopal church…. of course there are bits and pieces….. but by and large shul is the service he knows. I’m not saying Christ has never prayed the Prayer of Humble Access. I’m just saying he’s probably said the Kaddish more.
  • It was my father’s idea that I should audit Hebrew school with the neighbor kids, and we got the call to move like a month after that. It’s a missed opportunity that weighs on my conscience like a rock. Picking up 10yo from Hebrew school is picking up the child I forgot there.
  • I love listening and absorbing. Jewish life is different than my own, and I am learning new things every day. But what is different is that it is not the outside looking in. It is being welcomed into a Jewish community like my Galveston neighbors did in the 1980s. I love volunteering at Beth Sholom Temple, and it doesn’t have to come with a T-shirt, but I am grateful that it does because I wouldn’t look so fashionable without it.
  • My prayer life is more textured than it used to be, because my outlook has changed. I want to work on real-world solutions instead of kvetching at the sky.

Luckily, converting to Judaism is not a requirement to be in Tiina’s family, but if it was, I would take it under advisement and make a counteroffer. I will not convert, but I will eat so much noodle kugel and brisket that no one will notice. Truthfully, me converting to Judaism would be on-brand, and yet not. I value where I come from too much to make that complete a leap. But what I am interested in is Jesus as a first-century Jewish teacher, placing him in his own context and not the professional Christian superhero that seems to guard American shores.

I constantly want people to get a grip. The land area we’re talking about in the Bible is about the size of New Jersey. It was not “the world.” It was “the world as they knew it.”

The problem is people taking the Bible literally and not seriously….. something that the Jews have been doing for thousands of years before Christians were even a twinkle. There is translation to be done, and face value is close to worthless. But Evangelicals keep telling themselves that they know the whole story as it was written.

Morgan Freeman:

They do not.

I wish that Jesus had been a blogger.

No, seriously. We’d have a lot less debate over what he actually meant if we’d had words clearly written by him while he was still alive and not recorded years afterward. If there is any truth to this whole “Jesus is coming. Look busy.” kind of attitude it’s that he’s going to show up and I’m going to be like, “my friend, you need to pull up a keyboard. We have work to do.”

“Jesus never said a word about homosexuality, therefore it cannot be essential to his teaching.” -Jim Rigby

Because I would like an actual Jew to lecture us on what the clobber passages mean, and he’s used to being in front of an audience.

But it is because of farm life and lake life that spiritually, everything is falling into place.

That doesn’t mean that this relationship with Tiina didn’t start out in abject fear of rejection. I was worried about everything. “What if she thinks I’m hitting on her when I just need a friend?” “What if I say I’m good with working with kids and it’s a dumpster fire?” “What if Brian and the kids don’t like me?”

Every single fear has been quieted enough that worrying about limerence has faded into real rhythms that are based on the ground. I am not just thinking about my chosen family, I am doing. I am asking myself “what can I do to be more helpful to the people around me because I require a lot of help in return?” When you are disabled, interdependence becomes important. At first I thought I was just wishing for a friend and trying to make it real. It took time to realize that Tiina was reaching out for me, too.

I did not want another situation in which I was constantly told I was valuable while also being discarded. This has not been that. This has been, “I have an incredible kitchen, and you are allowed to cook in it.” That is catnip to a former line cook with a standard small apartment setup. My apartment is HUGE, yet the kitchen is the size of a postage stamp. I do not understand.

At the farm, everything is above my head within easy reach. My own kitchen is a level of hell I’d rather not subject myself to, because the logistics are awful. I am currently searching for a new place, so the number one priority is never to have this kitchen layout ever again. Tiina says she pictures me in a little place in a walkable neighborhood like Fell’s Point. Now that I have a car, that is feasible. It wasn’t when I first moved to Baltimore because I needed to live near the Metro.

Tiina sees the whole picture as well- that we are enmeshed and separate. I love my life with her, Brian, and the kids. I also love my life in the city. Two or three hours is the perfect transition time from my house to the farm or the lake. I am using that time to educate myself through the cunning use of Audible. My next listen is “Kin,” by Tayari Jones.

The thing that Jones and I have in common is Oprah.

I have never written a book that got picked by her, but I have been interviewed by the executive producers of “The Oprah Winfrey Show” for the reaction to “She’s Come Undone” (Wally Lamb). It went very well, but I didn’t fit the vibe of the show they were trying to produce. My queer perspective was not represented, but that is probably due to the time and not whether my argument was valid.

So, I know that Oprah and I think on the same wavelength if nothing else. If Oprah liked the book, I probably will, too.

There was always going to be an inevitable backlash against Oprah because she’s just that famous, and no one’s behavior is purely unproblematic once they’re in their 60s. People in that backlash seem to have gotten amnesia and do not remember when Oprah was out front and center for queer people. Everyone talks about how brave Ellen was for coming out on national television. Valid, but Laura Dern and Oprah Winfrey both got death threats and deserve to be mentioned here.

History is repeating itself because Tiina and Brian are that kind of ride or die for me. Brian notices when I’m stressed out by oppression more than I do, because after this many years it just rolls off me and I don’t notice it anymore. I observe when people are cruel, but I try not to take it in. Brian and Tiina can see how it affects me without being queer themselves…… and because of their reactions in private, I would really hate to think what would happen if anyone actually messed with me in public.

Queer people are expected to have chill at homophobia and transphobia. Far easier to let the straight people go off leash. I am perfectly comfortable with being Olivia Pope while Brian and Tiina go Cyrus Beene.

Tiina even likes gardening. Hm.

The bottom line is that I am not constantly worried all of this could disappear tomorrow. I am safe, loved, and wanted. But it took everyone in the family to convince me of it, especially looking at it from the perspective of “this is where I’m from. This is where I want to go. My friends are a huge part.”

As long as I pay for the air conditioner.

Upstairs & Downstairs

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
What’s a quote that perfectly describes your outlook on life?
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She taught me how to wage cold war with quiet charm, but I just want to walk through my life unarmed. -Ani Difranco

My mother is dead, and so is a part of me.

What has happened is growing past childhood patterns now that I’m 10 years out in my grief. The silver lining of the garbage dump of a situation is being grateful for the chance to have been stretched in those ways. I am more emotionally resilient than I used to be, and that matters.

But don’t think for a moment that I didn’t grieve. I lost my everloving mind, and you can read my recollections here starting October 2nd, 2016. The picture of her in my mind at the funeral procession (“cakewalk,” in Southern pastor jargon) is still haunting, which is why my humor is black to compensate.

But here’s the difference between me and most people:

I have lived in the trenches. I have been to more funerals and visited more grieving families than you can imagine because instead of childcare at home, I rode shotgun with my dad. When he got a cell phone, I was 14 and thought it was funny to answer it “Rev. Lanagan’s rolling office. How may I help you?” In terms of clinical training, I have the greatest number of hours you can possibly imagine and should have been granted an MSW at high school graduation.

I am sometimes outstanding at conflict resolution, and I know it. But outstanding does not equal consistent, because I have ADHD and Autism. The moments when I can be outstanding come at times when I am not already under environmental and emotional load. This is the work I am doing in my own therapy- how do I regulate me on a constant basis so that my focus can be on everyone else instead of maintaining?

My outlook has widened now that I’m thinking about my chosen family and not how to survive alone. It’s all about how to smooth the transition and relax into a rhythm with them. I told Tiina I’d like to take over more cooking and cleaning at the farm because that is the way I know how to be helpful. I do not feel in any way obligated to do any of this, because I think it’s more fun not to cook and clean all by myself. It’s not just me. It’s the ability to commandeer a sous chef and dish by saying “no Skyrim til it’s done, Chief.” Or whatever it is that each child likes….. there’s a system in all of our brains. The same tricks that work on the kids work on me. I can’t have my phone until X and Y are done, either, because Tiina has shown me the proof is in the pudding.

Rewards for neurodivergent brains work.

Now, I am not a parent, but as the kids’ safe adult I am growing into what feels like a functional one, like an auntie/uncle who is joining the ranks of support. Watching Tiina and Brian parent these kids is teaching me not only how to relate to 16yo and 10yo as the adult in the room, but how to manage my own brain as well. Having a neurodivergent brain is a bitch because nothing in life seems built for you. You just have to work around it, and it is relentless. People see me as angry when I am just exhausted. It writes a narrative for me that isn’t there, and I have learned to accept it.

Most of the problem is that people read my body language and think I’m mad at them, and they don’t ask me any questions. So, the story becomes not what I think, but the story they’re telling themselves; it is a “vibe” they have created, hurting their own feelings because they won’t be honest with me and clear anything up.

ADHD and Autism make me carry things that other people don’t, and cerebral palsy affects the weight distribution because my balance is close to nonexistent. Most people don’t take in their environment like a firehose, literally hearing electricity. I am overloaded before I even show up anywhere, and nowhere is this more apparent than upstairs.

Working with kids is always a full contact conversation.

“Upstairs” is shorthand for “handle something Tiina physically cannot.” Upstairs is frightening because there are no witnesses. 😉 I joke, but the feeling is real. Sometimes I need a real parent to say, “no, you are not crazy. You said the right thing and they are not, in fact, damaged for life.” I think it’s good that I have space to reflect here, because the texture of my writing allows Tiina and Brian to understand me on a level that most friends don’t share.

I understood that first with Aada, but it failed because having no on the ground relationship allowed for little mutual understanding of what I had written. Aada constantly believed the story she was telling herself instead of the one I actually wrote. I loved Aada every bit as much as I love Tiina now, but that did not mean that there weren’t problems….. and me reflecting on them became a problem in which I was constantly beaten down because my narrative didn’t match hers. I refused to kowtow to the narrative that I hated her and wanted to punish her. That this was all about anger and revenge. That my blog was a weapon instead of a diary.

My relationship with Tiina is safe by contrast. Because of the way Aada treated me, I expected that Tiina would absolutely hate everything that I ever wrote and to be careful about everything I said to the point of paranoia and gastrointestinal issues. Instead, she humbles me with praise that I have to sit with to take in because I am not used to compliments.

You’re our Anaïs Nin.

Brian is also on board.

Writers gonna write.

Having them just “be cool, my babies” is everything.

It allows them to know my thoughts about what is happening in a way they can sit with it….. and in a way they can come back to these entries to see what happened when. That’s what I do. I Google myself constantly, limiting the search to my own URL because again………….. ADHD and Autism. I am but a sentient dripping clock.

Knowing yourself is half the battle (hail Cobra).

The way to make everything run upstairs is to always understand what is happening below the surface.

It is a role that makes me more John Bates than Lord John Grey……. although in working with children it never hurts to study a bit of spy tradecraft, so like with everything else in my life, it’s a nonbinary.