I can love my writing with my whole heart because someone I loved did. Her opinion of it changed the air around me, how I felt about myself. I realized I was being read in rarefied air…. and I was, but it was because I created and cultivated that audience, not because of her influence. That’s how the lie changed my perspective on life. The government people that follow me are because they genuinely like me, not because they’re trying to read about people they know.

The heat is gone, and I’d built it up so much I was hospitalized. My story is coherent, my diagnosis is not. Aada’s lies are my “psychotic features.” The story would be incoherent to anyone upon hearing it the first time, which is why I went to Aada for 12 years and have now turned away. She cannot meet me where I am, at least not yet. She cannot hold magic and pain in both hands, she weighs them out.

Everything she’s ever told me has blown back on me as a diagnosis…. which is why I wanted to be able to spend time with her privately. That’s because the story only makes sense between us. I was unscaffolded for so long that I crumbled under the weight of it, and everyone is all like, “Aada, are you okay?” That’s great. I am sincerely happy that she has people around her that care about her. But of course it wouldn’t occur to Aada that I don’t want to know what her friends think. I want to know what she thinks. And what she thinks is that I’m just trying to hurt her. There’s no point in discussing anything if that is her outlook on life.

And it certainly has been. It was an exhausting relationship because I was constantly managing her emotions. I never knew which Aada was going to show up. No one else in my life knew her, and she didn’t want to integrate. It was a closed loop, always, and she ruled my heart with an iron fist and some barbed wire for good measure.

She was intimidated at me wanting more support, and ran from it, always, no matter how small the need. Yet I was expected to carry something enormous without the ability over time. Of course I could in the beginning. I couldn’t be her everything and also cut off from the rest of the world, which is what it slowly became.

The way she has reacted has been childish, saying I must be happy that I’ve damaged her. These have been the most difficult months of my life and I checked relentlessly with outside sources to make sure that I wasn’t hurting anyone. That my roar on the internet was into the void, not directed.

Perhaps we have reached the limit of what we should be to each other. I’ll never know if I’m viewed as a threat to her other relationships or her own mental health. But I also think that when you destroy each other, at least when you come back together there’s no pretense. No performance.

Just honesty, painful and real- if you can stand in it.

I can. I have had to go through all of this writing without support, all of this hospitalization, all of this state rigamarole to ensure I’ve got my head on straight.

Mutual friends rallied all on her side. That is also completely fine, because none of them were there and it’s been years since they’ve been in touch with me, anyway. But I see how the system works, and that is that the truth teller is always a liability.

Part of me cannot stand Aada not being around for this phase of my life, where my AI thought pieces are picked up by the global web. Part of me doesn’t want her with me at altitude because she couldn’t support me in the dirt.

If she learned to show up without puffing herself up and needing authority in our relationship, I would be delighted. It would make my life complete, because right now it doesn’t make sense. We are tied and yet not talking. And yet also not tied because I couldn’t carry anything she actually needed me to carry anymore, because it was emotional vampirism.

I got weaker from our interactions, because she drank deeply.

I let her.

The problem came in when she wasn’t ready for me to bite her skin.

The one that stays with me is smaller, faster, and far more structural than anything else.

There was a time I wrote about someone I loved — Aada — and I did it in the heat of the moment. I wrote without thinking. I published without cooling. I didn’t pause long enough to let the airlock do its job. And even though I felt justified at the time, I still feel sick when I think about it.

It all happened so fast.
That’s the part that haunts me.

Writing has always been my first tool for metabolizing pain. It’s the reflex, the outlet, the pressure valve. And in that moment, I used it the way I always had — quickly, instinctively, without considering the blast radius. I told myself it was honest. I told myself it was necessary. I told myself it was my story to tell.

What I didn’t do was stop and consider the structural consequences.

I don’t know what impact those pieces had on her career. I may never know. And that uncertainty sits in my stomach even now. Not because I think I lied — I didn’t — but because I didn’t protect someone who didn’t deserve collateral damage. I didn’t take the action of restraint. I didn’t wait for clarity. I didn’t give myself the buffer that would have changed everything.

If I’d had the airlock then — the cognitive buffer I have now — those drafts would have stayed drafts. They would have been hammered out, clarified, cooled, and ultimately withheld. Distributed cognition would have saved both of us from the fallout. But I didn’t have that system yet. I didn’t have the HUD. I didn’t have the continuity layer. I didn’t have the second desk in the room.

I had only my own pain and a keyboard.

That’s the moment I return to when I think about why I write the way I do now. Why I let things sit. Why I run everything through the airlock. Why I don’t publish in the heat anymore. Why I treat writing about real people as a form of power that requires governance.

It’s not courage.
It’s Tuesday.
It’s the discipline of someone who has already lived through the consequences of velocity.

I can’t undo what I wrote.
I can only acknowledge the architecture of the mistake:
I didn’t take the action of waiting, and I wish I had.

And maybe that’s the real lesson — not regret, but calibration.
Not shame, but structure.
Not self‑punishment, but the quiet understanding that clarity is a choice, and I didn’t choose it that day.

I do now.

One of the services that neurodivergence offers is being able to see patterns in reverse. What I learned at HSPVA was that I knew an enormous amount of talented people. What I know now is that I missed the assignment. Because it’s 30 years later and I’m not where I want to be… but they are. They all went as small groups to New York, LA, London, etc. I didn’t. I haven’t taken big swings because I was the weird disabled kid who was constantly underestimated. I do not understand why those closest to me are only now beginning to see that I’m serious about writing when I have sixty books’ worth of blog entries already in the can.

Sixty.

I’m really quite tired.

If I’d followed a few of the theater kids to Austin or LA, I might could have gotten a job as a writer somewhere. I could have jump started my career back when I was fresh off the HSPVA high. I wasn’t a creative writing major, I was instrument, but all art areas feed the other. As my musicianship got better, so did putting my feelings on the page. Well, not better…. but easier due to the amount of repitition.

I am sure that other people are really quite tired.

I look forward to your letters.

The truth is that in high school I should have made and retained connections because I didn’t have much else going for me. I was an okay trumpet player (at PVA, which is really good for Joe Average Memorial), a church-trained singer (it shows), and a terrible student (pretty sure I got the lowest grade in Algebra of Dr. Papakonstantinou’s teaching career). There were reasons for all of it. I wasn’t dumb (my perception), I was unsupported (my reality). My needs fluctuate on a daily basis and I am not built for school. Most ADHD and autistic kids aren’t. We’re smart, demanding, exacting, etc. and not because we’re mean and cruel. We mean what we say and say what we mean, and it’s not our job to learn what we were supposed to have said and remember it. That’s just trying to train an autistic person like a dog.

But that is what social cues are. Neurotypical society is scripted, and I never got a copy. Therefore, I am always saying the thing that needs to be said but everyone else is too polite to voice it. It’s not purposeful. I am very good at sticking my foot in my mouth all the way up to my knee. I’m not trying to be uncouth. I am trying for forward motion. That gets lost in pleasantries, and I have trouble with small talk. So people think I’m intense and that’s okay. I have a very specific vibe and not ever.

Just another thing I learned in high school. Meagan wasn’t a girlfriend, she was a mistake. And it’s only now that I can say that fully because she treated me like dirt. It’s not her fault I accepted it. She made up for it later in life and I hold no ill will, but at 17 I learned a bad pattern and it continued until I’d worked it all out. Mostly because I am more demanding of myself than I am of anyone else. I always talk to myself no bullshit and not going to lie, I can slice my own heart with a dirty quill.

What none of the people in my life get is that these entries are not fluff pieces. I shake and cry getting them out when I am overwhelmed. I am physically exhausted from the Aada years, because there were too many moments of anxious tears to unclench yet. I am always waiting for an attack because she automatically thinks I’m attacking her. She has no follow up questions, she’s right about what she read even though she’s TALKING TO THE AUTHOR.

It’s annoying, and I’m glad it’s not a part of my life anymore. I can write all I want. I cannot feel or believe it for them. Aada was a bottomless pit of need because her self-esteem went up and down when I talked; the same could be said of me, but I stepped out of that pattern and I am better for it. I am back to demanding basic respect, and having it for myself. But respect doesn’t mean authority. It means not ordering me around like a dog.

But that part wasn’t Aada- it’s just an example of another form of treatment I’ve tolerated for way too long, and I’ve been too soft. I accepted bad treatment because that’s all I thought I deserved. What I deserved was scaffolding, and definitely in high school. ADHD and autistic accommodations would have helped me, but when I started school my mother decided she didn’t want a special kid and what the hell? I was pretty smart.

She chose…………………………………………………………. poorly.

When people first meet me, they seem to love me. And then as time goes on, they get more and more exhausted by me because they do not take the time to understand. I have a different body clock. I’m easy to be around, but I don’t often have a lot of energy. I don’t want to go out and do many things. I want to go sit on the couch with Tiina and Michael and play Skyrim (Morc the Orc, the struggle is real.). I want to take Tiina on a vacation where we get to do nothing together. Brian doesn’t always like to travel, so GIRLS TRIP!

We’ve talked about doing a few things, most notably driving down to South Carolina to park our asses on the beach for a few days. My ass desperately needs this beach.

I didn’t go out on my date last night because it’s for the 17th and I just spaced it. My week has been weird since I just got home from Houston on Tuesday. But honestly, it’s for the best that it’s next week because last night I only had enough energy to fall down a YouTube hole. I also haven’t heard from her in days, and I have reached out. So who knows if this blessed event is even still on? I’m confused, but I live in gray area most of the time, anyway.

It’s also possible she’s intimidated, but I doubt it. She’s intimidating. She reminds me of my favorite Instagram influencer… and in fact I was delighted when my dad bought her avatar’s hat in Scotland by complete coincidence.

But I doubt she’ll be my favorite Instagram influencer much longer, because I have complicated feelings about Instagram (I’m old. Get off my lawn.). I have complicated feelings about all social media except Facebook, and not because they aren’t valid. They’re just not my lane.

I’m trying to get off the Internet and get out and explore. Mico (Microsoft Copilot) told me that there’s a fantastic Mexican neighborhood in the DMV called Riverdale Park, and that I’d find panaderias with fresh pastries and mercados where I could find Bimbo and Marinela for later.

I am on a core search for:

• Cinnamon Roles (with raisins)
• Nito Duo
• Principe
• Submarinos
• Gansito
• Croissants

The croissants are not French, but they are delicious. It’s a sponge bread texture, and my everyday breakfast with coffee. I need to see if I can order multipacks on Amazon, because buying them two at a time is not convenient.

I am still hoping that Blue Bell or H-E-B Creamy Creations comes up with a crossover for these desserts- even chocolate croissant ice cream would be delicious, but Gansito would have people lined up around the block.

But as it turns out, I didn’t even make it to the mercado. I ate and I was tired. It was very early, so I ate and went back to bed.

That’s why this entry is in the afternoon, instead of my sunup vibe.

More like I was in high school.