Only Other People Can Do That

November 15, 2023 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 3 Comments

What part of your routine do you always try to skip if you can?

It is a slight exaggeration, but I (like all other autistic people) cannot survive while skipping any part of my routine. Mine just isn’t organized by time. It is organized by sense of security. The bigger the task at hand and emotions attached to it, the bigger the sensory issues, demand avoidance, meltdown, and burnout.

Taking medication and not taking it are both things that cause demand avoidance. My routine is generally waiting to get uncomfortable enough while unmedicated because if I don’t experience physical side effects, I will avoid taking pills. Even thinking about taking medication makes me gag. If I had no physical side effects, I would set a reminder. But I don’t have to. My brain notices when a chemical isn’t there and screams bloody murder…. so I got that goin’ for me.

I very, very much wish I could just tell a pharmacist what chemicals I need and be able to choose the delivery, because it would help me a ton to be able to inject myself or drink a suspension. Swallowing pills is hell on my sensory perception, and it wasn’t that way until I needed to take multiple pills every day. My throat has a Pavlovian response to the thought “I need my meds.” It gets tight before I even put the pill in my mouth. If I taste something bad, like the salt in the lamotrigine, my gag reflex will engage. This gets reinforced by happening every day, the reaction more intense over time. It’s a lot to manage. A lot.

If you have a tendency to tell smart/successful people “you don’t look autistic,” please stop. Success is relative. Some high functioning autistic people seem successful, and whether they are or aren’t can only be self-reported because money is not happiness. In every single video I’ve watched about Autism at work, it’s been a vlogger who has at least three degrees, but still no job has lasted more than a few years. Therefore, that means whether someone is working at Wal-Mart or partner at Baker Botts, the odds of them staying employed are the same….. why I admire people like Glennon Doyle, Brené Brown, and Mark Zuckerberg. They do wildly different things, but they all created their own jobs that played to their strengths rather than fitting into a system.

I’m pointing out Zuckerberg specifically because he’s the kind of neurodivergence that best represents me. I have the same sensory issues (I wear the same things, like hoodies), I write content for the web and know how to code some stuff, I social mask through everything and notice when he can’t (watching him in front of Congress was fascinating), etc. I’m just not as rigid as he is because my ADHD pulls me away from complete sameness. He is also the kind of person that whether you were e-mailing him or talking to him the conversation would be wildly different. I promise that people like us are hated all over the world for being cogs that just don’t fit. If Facebook hadn’t been his idea, he would have been fired a long time ago because he doesn’t play well with others. He would have had a better shot at staying employed than someone like me, but only by virtue of the fact that the coding he can do is so monetarily valuable. People are willing to put up with a lot of autistic quirks if not doing so means millions of dollars down the drain. Companies throw out a lot of talent by hiring autistic people without knowing what that really means.

This is why so many people are on disability that “don’t look like they need it.” Taking a shower is not routine. Brushing your teeth is not routine. Making yourself food is not routine. The reason it is not is that for a neurodivergent person, it’s like you learn that thing every day. You don’t “get into the habit.” The reason it feels like learning it again is that you have to put the same amount of effort into taking a shower now as you did when you were eight. It’s not secondhand nature. An autistic person’s strict routine is something they built to keep themselves safe and secure emotionally, but it’s not that they’re different than me. It’s that their structure, their routine is their single interest and they get it done with laser-like focus.

It is not, in IT vernacular, a cron job. Those people are white-knuckling it through life. So am I, because I do not experience my routine as iron like a special interest. I do not demand it of myself……… letting my need for absolute structure and my ADHD impulsivity fight for dominance. I can create a system to defeat ADHD and it will be brilliant. I do not have the executive function to stick to it.

I am the most successful in a relationship when someone else has a strict routine because I social mask it. I am not “codependent,” I literally have no idea how to create a routine to take care of myself and stick to it, emphasis on the repetition being harder than the creation of a system. I swear to God there were days in my marriage I only took showers because Dana dragged me in. It helped more than anything because it kept demand avoidance from eating my lunch. I am often pulled out of my comfort zone because my sensory issues are so high. I have said this before, but I experience demand avoidance in the winter the worst because doing things like changing my clothes is a bigger swing in terms of sensory environment. This is not a bad thing. If I showered every single day in the winter, my skin would dry out too much. It’s just an example of why autism is so hard. Demand avoidance isn’t being childish or lazy. It’s a disability.

I would be great at being married to someone that had an iron structure quirk…….. in some ways…….. as long as my partner recognized that my ADHD would HATE THEM SO MUCH and my autism would never let them go.

Stuff like this is why creative autistics have millions and millions of followers on YouTube and “won’t get a real job.” Creative autistics own things like writing/producing videos about autism (and anything else, but this niché is needed and lucrative). Neurodivergence is devastating and hilarious. They’re finding both ends of the spectrum on camera while I wrestle it out here.

When you’re autistic/ADHD, you start a job with disabilities that make you look “childish.” You don’t develop weaknesses at said job. That’s why if you get put on a performance improvement plan or whatever, you might as well quit. You social mask until you can’t, and then the wheels fall off…… because being autistic at work is a lot to manage all on its own. Demand avoidance will start eating your lunch, because you don’t understand why this keeps happening. If you are undiagnosed, things won’t get better until you research coping mechanisms for your experiences. If you are diagnosed, you know that there’s an upper limit on how much you can do to fit in.

I am also ADHD. I am not the kind of autistic who “gotta be home by 4:00. Gotta be home by Wapner.” Though social masking, I am the kind of autistic person who needs to watch Wapner and would be horrified to let anyone know that. Not watching Wapner would have to feel like gum surgery before the cognitive dissonance was enough for me to say something.

I do wonder what Raymond would have thought of Tivo, though.

Interrupting me is not interrupting a process that needs to happen the same way every day, but interrupting the way I feel as I adjust to a new environment. A new environment is also an old environment by the nature of how sleep works, so “easing into the day” is not a thing. I do not need to have coffee by 0500, get into the shower by 0545, etc. to function. I am disoriented by waking up and not having anything familiar around me.

I need a partner to function and don’t really want to find one. I think I do, but my behavior suggests that I’m really okay white-knuckling my way through life. That I feel more safe and secure by myself right now than I do with someone else. Yes, I have a boyfriend, but not the kind where I have to compromise all the time or learn his schedule/habits. I am glad he doesn’t need me for that because I don’t want to overpromise and underdeliver. I don’t want our relationship to be anything that it isn’t. I love him and Oliver, who is a dog. Love for them is a spectrum from red string to yellow, and we are choosing our adventure together.

I am learning in retrospect that I wanted to marry Daniel because I’d be social masking a doctor all the time. You do whatever you can to learn ways to cope in life, and look around for people you deem doing better than you. The War Daniel, in all of his flaws and failures, has always been a train wreck waiting to happen…… and so have I. Our cars just weren’t headed towards each other until we got so overwhelmed with our environment that we changed directions. We would have been great if we’d kept attacking only the problem.

Social masking Supergrover every day was handy because she thinks in a way that gets powerful people to follow her, so I haven’t learned more coping mechanisms to deal with my disability, but I have learned ways to be more effective in how I speak….. and by effective, I mean “concise.”

Concise is not something I am here, but that’s because this is entirely my place, my rules.

Additionally, every autistic person is an amalgamation of every neurotypical person they know, because they’ve been criticized for every neurodivergent behavior they’ve ever had. Third Rock from the Sun would have worked just as well with the exact same script only substituting aliens for an autistic group house. We are all trying to learn how people do things because our own ways don’t work.

That effort is how processing disorders quickly become mental illness. You don’t develop symptoms of mental illness from autism/ADHD. You develop mental illness from not fitting into the system and feeling horrible about it. My life would be different if I didn’t have the capability to tell when my needs exhausted people. The fact that I do means “80-90% of the time.” That’s because as a preacher’s kid, I have more heuristics for social masking than most people, and I’m female, which carries a rigid structure of behavior in and of itself. Neurodivergent women are often trained into making eye contact, giving affection, and dealing with the discomfort quietly.

When women aren’t social masking, they’re punished like children because their fathers/husbands have been trained to treat them like property, anyway. For lesbians, this is less of a problem, but comes in with male boss relationships if nothing else. Autistic men get away with so much problematic behavior that it’s ridiculous, because women didn’t create a system of power over them in which they have to live up to it. When it comes to how to be a good wife, there are a thousand books explaining the job.

There are a thousand self-help books for men, too, but being a husband is not from the perspective that they should tamp down their behavior- like a 50s women’s rag with lines like “freshen up and run the vacuum around the house before he gets home.” I can understand that a man is autistic AND mansplaining. Just because it’s his autism making him look like an asshole and not narcissism doesn’t mean it’s not offensive.

Perception is reality, but men are not expected to social mask to that degree. Their opinion is expected to be better than mine…. but who knows whether it is or isn’t? There are a million men smarter than me out there (lowballing) that I could learn a ton from, but that’s because I hold their reputations in high esteem, not because I think a man’s voice inherently has more authority than mine…… but they’re programmed to think it does.

There is so much that it takes to make me feel secure in my environment, but a routine is just a good cup of coffee or two in a mug that feels right in my hand. The feel of the mug is as important as the taste of the coffee. A routine is picking up my tablet first thing so that I can look at the WordPress writing prompt for the day and get the creative juice flowing while I wait for the cup to brew (I have a pod-based system; I use Café Bustelo from the can and a refillable pod.).

I only take the time to grab coffee, refill my water bottle, and use the bathroom before I jump into the writing prompt. I think one of my best qualities as a writer is being able to see what comes out when I just let my mind wander a propos of nothing. It’s a writing prompt, and whatever it made me think is okay. If the essay has nothing to do with the prompt, who the fuck cares? It’s not sticking to the instructions. I have understood the assignment because no matter what came out of me, the prompt for it was the same. In writing, there’s no way to really “prompt someone in the wrong direction.”

I write until I get hungry, or I bring my tablet and keyboard to the breakfast table and stuff my face between paragraphs. On those days, it’s generally eggs Florentine and toast, but I’m out of spinach and I’ve started writing before cooking, anyway. 😉

For those of you who are wondering, I’ll probably have eggs and cheese later. This week, real eggs were cheaper, but my actual favorite is those plant-based folded eggs you put in the microwave.

I read that last paragraph again and now it’s about a half hour later. I realized I was starving and went downstairs to grab a sandwich (wheat toast, egg, ham, swiss, salted butter, mustard, and black pepper). The first sandwich was so good I made another one with cheddar.

Cheddar and eggs go well with mustard because it’s a very, very, very rich Mournet. You can either scramble cheddar and mustard into the eggs before you serve them, or just make the eggs plain and put on the rest separately. I don’t know which texture will appeal to you better, but I do know that the flavor is famous. Mournet is a derivative of bechamel, a mother sauce in culinary school. Bechamel is a roux and some milk, reduced for thickness. Mournet adds cheddar and mustard. Stone ground is particularly pretty…. but I don’t notice presentation first. I am trying to make comfort food, my transition into the morning.

I used to binge caffeine, then I looked up this ancient technique called “going to bed earlier.” So, I don’t need as much coffee in the AM as I used to because I’m not counting on it as a replacement. What I do need immediately is water, and I keep a few 20 oz. soda bottles in my room for it. I don’t want to knock over anything without a lid. I ease into the day better with water than anything else, because I learned that sometimes by body said “coffee” because of addiction when it was really saying “I am a plant and I am not doing well.”

The thing about being an autistic person in an alistic world is that you don’t live in a hydroponics farm. All your basic needs are not automatically scheduled. You are at the mercy of yourself, and you’re not a very good boss.

Some people deal with that by having an extreme routine. Some people are paralyzed by them and avoid all social interaction, because when you have demand avoidance over your basic needs, you cannot begin to think about fitting into public because you cannot take on others’ demands if yours aren’t met first. It’s a spectrum of behavior and the masking of it.

You’re so afraid that people will not love you if you stop social masking that it just becomes the part of your routine that you always try to skip…….. if other people will let you.

It Is Easier Having ADHD/Autism

November 13, 2023 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

What is good about having a pet?

Even if I live without housemates, I’ll never live without a pet. In my current situation, I cannot have one unless I keep it in my room all the time. Having a litter box would be impossible because of the smell being too loud, and we already have the maximum amount of dogs on one side of the house (the owners). If I got one, too, the county might notice because of our addresses.

Therefore, I am grateful for Zac and Oliver, who is a dog.

Editor’s Note:

I say it exactly that way because I want new readers to know he’s a dog and for “Oliver, who is a dog” to be something that people think automatically because they’ve heard it so many times and now it’s funny. My inspiration comes from classical music. You can wake up a classical fan in the middle of the night and say “Sir Neville Marriner.” They’ll say “conducting The Academy of St. Martin in the Fields” before their eyes open.

(That line just made Jack laugh. I know it.)

Zac, for those just joining us, is my boyfriend. I joke that I’m his “twinkie bitch boyfriend,” but that’s because I’m closer to that stereotype when I’m with him because we don’t look heterosexual. We’re not building a life together unless the stars align in terms of being happy just as I am. I figure that it’s not up to other people whether I lived like a monk before I met them and it’s ridiculous to think I should have been “waiting for you.” I’m not Blanche, I’m Dorothy. I am sure that if Dana and I hadn’t been such knobheads to each other, I’d be joking with/about the fact that she’s Stan.

It took a lot to realize that I did a lot of negative things, but I am not a bad person. It’s a distinction that people have to make or they’ll hate themselves forever. Being a narcissist is not owning your shit because your ego would never let you admit you did anything in the first place. Narcissists feed on your love and your fear because they know they have control. It starts out small so that you give up power willingly and not notice you’re about to be a boiling frog.

It’s good to have a pet when I’m thinking this deeply about something and writing it down, because stimming to soothe myself is not limited to the feel of the keys. I don’t write at Zac’s much (sometimes I housesit or stay the afternoon to work in silence while he’s at the office). When I do, it is often sitting on the couch with Oliver’s head on or near my lap. He fits his muzzle around my keyboard.

At no time to I stop thinking about something deeply, so Oliver is a good companion when I’m walking. He interrupts my pain signals by having to keep my attention on him (also why a stick shift car is basically an ADA accomodation for me). I’m stimming through every sense and not one, keeping the parts of AuDHD that suck to a minimum. I don’t have demand avoidance with Oliver because I enforce all the rules in a rigid system, I’m not walking in the dark about how Zac trains him. Therefore, I am not spiraling out over what the demand is because I have clear written instructions for the whole process, including a credit card that will work at his vet so I don’t have to panic about how much it will cost if we get hurt.

I have to watch for Oliver’s age and neurodivergence, because he has anxiety around strangers. He also comes off as an asshole while frightened of his environment, but relaxes just like I do when his sensory perception is turned down to normal. Oliver’s not just a dog because I see the same patterns in his behavior that I do in mine, making our relationship free and easy because we understand each other. He understands English to the point where I can say things with syntax instead of direct commands and he’ll still pick it up.

“I need you to get off the couch and go lay over there” vs. “Sit”

Oliver introduced me to the reason it’s important I have a personal/service dog (depending on the plan with my neurologist/therapist/etc.) because it helped my mental state so much. I would also rather have a cat in terms of responsibility, but they only help with stimming when I’m anxious at home. A personal dog can go more places with you, and a service dog can go everywhere.

I would want something like an Italian Greyhound for portability and still being tall enough to handle more challenging walks. I prefer bigger dogs than that, but I cannot carry them…. not important for a couch potato, but Zac and I like to hike. So, small, but just big *enough.* When I get said dog, we will be going to training *immediately,* whether it’s Bryn or a class. This is because of anything that bugs me about dog owners, it’s having little dogs that are terrors and not expecting them to behave like big dogs.

It’s annoying for everyone, for me, a sensory nightmare. I don’t want my dog to breathe without my permission, and I can do it all with positive reinforcement. One of the best things you can do for your puppy is train it in sign language (babies, too). This is because before they have age and experience, they react to everything. Whatever energy is in the room, they pick it up. You need to be able to stop your dog from digging, fighting, jumping, etc. without losing your shit at the dog because if you don’t, the bad behavior will only ramp up because of your adrenaline. Not being verbal takes the energy in the room out of the equation (for the most part).

Editor’s Note

For your baby, they can communicate long before they’re verbal. They just don’t know how without signs. It keeps the crying and tantrums to a minimum when you know how to ask for more milk. They’ll be able to speak in sentences before they’re into toddler diapers. It makes communication easier when a look and similar cries aren’t all the intel you can get.

That’s a thing it’s good to know *before* you have a pet….. whether you’re the kind of person that can be so dedicated to the cause of making your dog behave that you don’t get lazy, because you can derail it by being inconsistent *once.* It’s why I’m so much more into cats. It’s not that I don’t like dogs more, it’s that I have the executive function to take care of a cat and I’m not going to bet against it until I have a partner who also wants a dog or someone I’ve hired because I can’t manage the relentlessness of its care. I don’t want to bite off more than I can chew, and I won’t because a dog’s life isn’t sitting in my house all the time. The point of having a dog is to get me to leave it.

I already know its name should be “Sidney Virginia Bristdog-Woof.” Virginia Woolf is one of my favorite writers and the joke is obvious, Virginia Hall is my third favorite real female spy, and Sidney Bristow is my fictional favorite.

Julia Child and Jonna Mendez are first and second. Don’t let Julia fool you with that “I was just a file clerk” crap. She is a tough motherfucker. I have a feeling that after working with spies, culinary school wasn’t that hard. Jonna is my second favorite because she would endorse the message regarding the first and Julia came long before her- OSS in WWII. Jonna was Cold War/Middle East terrorism…. but I honestly think she has a lot more areas of operation in her portfolio because disguises vary by climate. I doubt she was only limited to Eastern Europe and the Middle East because of it. I also know that at one point she spent time in somewhere like India or Pakistan because one of the chapters in Spy Dust locates her “on the subcontinent.” However, she could have been talking about someplace like southern Africa as well, and that’s what makes her books fun.

She is also a person who *loves* animals and would love appearing in an entry *about* dogs. I am positive she would rather write about dogs some days than her old job. But her old job makes for interesting stories that can’t be duplicated, so I’m glad she focuses on it. Having a dog is universal. Being Chief of Disguise at CIA is not.

I can say this surface level stuff because we actually do know each other on a superficial level. As in, I don’t have any more inside scoop than the rest of her readers, but I do enjoy hearing her live, talking afterwards, and sending her things I’ve written. It’s how I know she’s lost her dog within the last couple of years, but I don’t know if she’s gotten another one yet.

She would think “Virginia Woof” was funny even if you guys don’t. 😉

It’s funny how I can connect the love of a dog to even my special interest because so many people know its power. We all love our dogs because they can love us back in the way another adult can’t. No terms, limitations, provisos, clauses. No divorce unless you initiate it, and those people are generally wrong about it being time. I do not understand giving up a dog when the situation isn’t completely untenable, and I don’t understand keeping an animal alive at all costs because you think you can’t live without them. There are too many homeless pets to grieve long. I say I won’t get another pet. I won’t mean it two weeks later because I don’t like living without a pet.

I’m glad I don’t have to. Loving Zac is loving Oliver, who is a dog.

Satchel vs. The Page

November 12, 2023 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Name the most expensive personal item you’ve ever purchased (not your home or car).

I got the chance of a lifetime when I got the job at Marylhurst University (mostly online, now closed). I met a great group of coworkers and we had a blast together. It wasn’t the perfect job for me because we don’t get to pick the jobs we want down to the curtains, but it was damn close. The reason for this is that University of Houston had 30,000 students, staff, and faculty when I was there. The labs and helpdesk were buzzing with activity, which was great for my ADHD and hell on my autism. It was a lot to take in, and I managed because I was young and didn’t know any better. Marylhurst was none of that.

I was older by then and thus couldn’t have limitations excused. At the same time, I shared an office suite with three other people, I wasn’t taking up four square feet in a sea of fifty other people. It was massive, in the top floor of a library, and it was more at home and settled than I’d felt in years.

With age comes responsibility. By the time I got the job at Marylhurst, I was in a train wreck of a marriage that started out with so much promise I still have dreams in which none of the last 10 years ever happened. My conscience spaces it when I have PTSD triggers or something like that. It’s only my brain trying to protect me and giving me calming images. I haven’t talked to her in years, but my brain doesn’t care. Dana’s laugh always brings out mine, even if I’m just thinking about her and she’s not in the room.

Absolutely none of it excuses the moments in which she purposefully tried to hurt me emotionally and physically. That’s a big statement, that she did it on purpose, and I will not shy away from it. That’s because whether Dana’s intentions were pure or not- her actions stemming from neurodivergence or malice- the effect was the same.

First, I cannot speak to whether Dana is autistic or not. In retrospect, I did not pick up anything that suggests it, because all of the things that would fall under autism I observed fall into ADHD, too. Secondly, Dana is not ADD. She is ADHD, and why the DSM is so fucked up for not differentiating anymore. I have the kind of ADHD that presents classically in women. She has the kind of ADHD that classically presents in men. As children, we were treated accordingly. You can tell that Dana has ADHD, and mine is hidden until you’re close enough to see my lack.

Our marriage made so much sense when you look at our relationships with our sisters. There’s the same age difference between Lindsay and me as there is between Dana and Counselor, and I’m betting that Counselor didn’t pick up on this because she’s never met Lindsay………… I see it so clearly that I married Dana because she reminded me of Lindsay, and Dana married me because I reminded her of Counselor. That comes out in different ways, mostly because Lindsay has the Dana brand of ADHD and Counselor and I are so close in personality that it’s weird how you never see us in the same room. If Counselor had been queer and I’d met her first, we actually would have been better partners to each other than Dana and me. This is because opposites generally only attract in the short term.

The theory holds up because Counselor and I are more like our dads. Dana and Lindsay are more like our moms. Laser beam to her head, Counselor would agree with me. Ask her if she’d like to be partners with someone like Dana having already lived with her. It’s a mixed bag because there is everything loving and comforting about a relationship pattern you’ve had since childhood, and everything bad about continuing a pattern you’ve had since childhood.

My mother knows I’m just like my dad, and I’m sure in a lot of ways knows better about what happened to Dana and me than anyone else who ever lived. She would not have understood specifics, but could have written an essay on dynamics. She could read it blind.

But, for all my best hopes and intentions, our childhood patterns turned on us. I only once had a fight with Dana that was more explosive than any I’ve had with Lindsay. Variables were transient, pattern recognition was absolute.

ADHD and Autism combine in me, but don’t in Lindsay. That means when we turn on each other, we have equal and opposite reactions….. but when we’re tracking together, it’s so good it’s like we’re the front and back of the same piece of paper. Dana and I had that same pull toward each other and the same negative reactions. Knowing in retrospect that I “married my sister” is valuable for the future because it means that who I’m looking for in a partner is more like my mother than my father, how adult relationships are currently classified (and in fact, how I think they should because the relationship with your parents is hierarchical. You don’t learn anything about how you work when a power structure like that is in place.).

There’s more to that story, but I’m instituting a hard out because to say more is to tell someone else’s story. But from what I’ve written, you’d think that I wanted Dana back. This is not true in the slightest nor will it ever be. I will be sad if I never see her again, but not bothered. We both owe each other too much not to restart with a shit ton of resentment, so even if it worked for three months, you wouldn’t be able to check in on us three years after that.

If Supergrover is any character in this story, it is Uncle Phil. We got in one little fight and I did not want to wait around and see if it happened again, so “Bel-Air” became “Silver Spring.” The real deal is that when I decided to pick up my toys and stomp off, I did not make the agreement not to come back. At the time, I wanted physical distance for safety, but I honestly and completely believed that we’d get back together because we needed to live apart and work on ourselves. Didn’t mean the connection was dead, etc.

Over time, I began to realize that’s not how being hit works. Dana broke the physical barrier and I’m not saying I didn’t hit her back or anything like that. I am saying two things. The first is that Dana instigated. The second is that at the time, she was about 300 pounds and I was maybe a buck 20. Her last punch was at my eye, where there was a lot more force behind her fist than there ever could have been in mine. She smashed my glasses into my face, and it took about two or three weeks so that the bruise didn’t show on my face. I was embarrassed to leave the house (and in burnout/depression). I didn’t get better in two or three weeks because phantom pain set itself up on my face for about a year after that. I didn’t think about calling the police, but our next door neighbors did.

It would have had to be that painful for me to let her go. She is the love of my life, but not that I don’t/won’t have others. I think that we would have been all right with counseling and we were too stupid not to see it….. but the counseling should have started the moment she got out of jail (DUI), not when Supergrover entered the picture.

Dana indirectly cost me my job at Marylhurst and I will not apologize for that statement. She wasn’t rude to my boss or anything like that, so I’m not blaming her. I am telling you the reality of the situation. I have two disabilities that affect my executive function and Dana helped it freak the fuck out. I couldn’t regulate for months.

That’s because when she got arrested, she lost her driver’s licence. When she lost her driver’s license, I had to drive her to work. There was no other option, as there was no bus to get her where she needed to go at 0300 and this was before Uber (it also would have been crazy to spend that kind of money on Uber when we had a car).

I would try to go to sleep when she did, not always possible because I wasn’t actually on her schedule, and try to function at work despite having gotten up at 0200 and gone back to bed at 0330….. every. Single. Night.

She didn’t feel that disregulation because she isn’t autistic and it was her job. What was torture to me was a chauffeur service for her. I’m not bagging on her. It’s not like she didn’t feel bad about it or anything. We both did a better job of beating ourselves up than the other one ever could’ve.

At the end of the day, neither one of us could change how we did things. It was a nightmare, and we had different reactions to it. I started focusing on soda and not alcohol. I moved into a sober house without knowing beforehand because my “host family” is Lebanese, and even though not Muslim, they are Druse, a derivative. It’s not that they disapprove of me drinking. I could have a case of vodka if I bought it.

Alcohol is just not our culture. It’s not what we do to enjoy ourselves, therefore no one is itching because it’s not there. I think once we had a brandy together before Thanksgiving, and this will be my ninth coming up. It’s just not a thing. It’s also returning to the culture of my first family, because my parents didn’t disapprove of other people drinking, but it’s not a Methodist pastor’s vibe (in general).

For a Methodist pastor, not drinking is a source of high comedy.

Editor’s Note:

The Jews do not recognize Jesus as the messiah. The Protestants do not recognize the Pope as the head of the church. Two Baptists do not recognize each other at a liquor store.

I don’t think I even tried alcohol until I was in middle school, and even then it was just a sip of wine because I didn’t know it wasn’t grape juice at communion.

After Dana got her DUI, it changed the alcohol game in only my mind, it seems. I found new flavors in new things. She did not. I wasn’t the one with a DUI, I was the passenger that, according to a police report in Multnomah County somewhere, I was “passed out in the front seat with Taco Bell lettuce on my face.” Being able to do that was the point of why Dana was driving in the first place.

She ran a game on me that I should have seen coming and I didn’t. That’s why in an earlier entry I called her an alcoholic, and I’m sorry if I’m wrong. Sincerely. I can only tell you what I observed. She actively sabotaged my ability to drink to take it for herself by agreeing to be the designated driver. She could not see that if she had one, she would not stick to soda after that and leave me in the lurch. Then, when she realized it, she’d drink more because she figured out she could.

I’d start with a Guinness, she’d start with a double Jameson. That right there became me enabling her by anticipating that she was going to do it to me and just accepting my fate. I was always the DD, and it didn’t occur to me to fight her on it instead. If I wanted a cocktail myself, I needed a ride home and compromising on it became a drumbeat I got tired of hearing because it didn’t change. I should have stood up for myself, and didn’t. This is because it is only in retrospect that I see how I enabled her.

It wasn’t on purpose. I was used to the push/pull of that dynamic of becoming a parent to an adult who wasn’t always pleasant. I didn’t mind being a caretaker because that’s how I was raised. I realized in Houston that a DUI was absolutely going to happen again and I wouldn’t excuse a second like I did the first. That at the very least, I wouldn’t divorce her, but she’d have to move out. I didn’t want to be around her culture, and when she hit me, I didn’t want to be around her, either.

There is a direct link between her and the person who emotionally abused me as a child. They know and have loved each other in the past, but that’s not the only thing. Dana was the first of my partners to recognize that she could love us both all she wanted and that still didn’t mean that __ and I weren’t a toxic dumpster fire. She saw the obsession with which I thought of her, and even I thought I was obsessed with her until I found out I had autism. It wasn’t that I was obsessed with her, it’s that I’m programmed to think about a single interest.

Now, why in the hell would a beautiful opera singer become a single interest to someone who wants that life……. who is also an opera singer, but untrained at that point…….. and still hasn’t appeared in a mainstage role but has been offered one (Penzance). In fact, she was a great teacher, but not the one for me. She didn’t have my high range, so it took a different teacher to unlock it. However, she has amazing music comprehension/interpretation and I’m glad I have her concept of musicality (PHRASING!).

I also loved her like a house on fire, listening to all her secrets and lies. Reading her college journal. Freaking out over her emotions and not mine. She used me as a dopamine source, and don’t let anyone convince you otherwise. She has manipulated so many women in front of me that I have seen her run the same game on others because their faces looked just like mine on so many occasions. When she turns the sun on you, you feel like the rest of the world blurs. You’re drawn to the web by the beauty of the spider. In some cases, physical attraction to her is right away. In all cases, people hear her sing and fall all over themselves to meet her.

In so many ways, that taught me how to be a singer more than anything else. Watching people fall all over themselves when they talked to her taught me about conserving energy. NEVER believe your own press. Have confidence in yourself, but becoming needy for external validation will lead you down the wrong path because you’ll emotionally vampire the people around you.

Therefore, in some ways from the outside we look like the same person. Our behavior just comes from opposite ends of a spectrum. I’m anxious, she’s avoidant. She needs dopamine, I need stability. Her interest is based on getting adoration, mine is about genuinely caring and catering to her needs. Her manipulation comes in when she knows she’s avoidant and you’re anxious, because your need to be heard will be blocked at every turn when a narcissist only wants dopamine from you.

They don’t want any negatives in a relationship because they really can’t handle them whether they’re narcissists or not. Knowing whether I was a narcissist or autistic was a very important distinction for me because I knew I wasn’t like her on the inside, but my judgmental bluntness made it seem that way and I had to find out why. None of the things about obsession and getting dopamine seemed true, but that’s what everyone thought because I didn’t have either an ADHD or an autistic diagnosis at that point.

People only knew I was bipolar, and figured OCD came with it. For my friends and family, sometimes they have assumed that PTSD and the breaking of my reality has been the forward note in all of this. They don’t know how I’ve made women I’ve loved my special interest since first grade. I was seemingly obsessed with Mrs. Grant, my dad’s secretaries, Meagan, and all the women they haven’t met after that, including Dana.

I made her my whole entire world, yet separate and secondary from __ because I’d known her since I was 12. I regretted it (twice in different ways- leaving her because I didn’t want to have an affair, and coming back because I couldn’t stand not asking the question…. and not “should we have an affair?” It was “leave your partner because we’re obsessed with each other in a way we can’t duplicate elsewhere and we should stop fuckin’ trying.” But we were only as successful as we allowed ourselves to be- I could choose Dana every time over my mom, dad, and sister.

The separation that comes with establishing your second family was secure biologically. That being said, __ also raised me and whether she intended it or not, I thought there was a possibility of romance. I didn’t by the time I moved to Portland having visited several times since she left Texas. I was secure about all of it, but that didn’t mean my monotropic thought process changed. She had 15 years on Dana, and I’d been every bit as rabid about her in the past and was having trouble not scheduling an appointment to talk about penguins (Sam from “Atypical). I didn’t have any way to stop it, so I couldn’t.

It embarrasses me that it led directly to a relationship where I couldn’t hang because I couldn’t acknowledge a monotropic thought process, letting go of depression and anxiety stemming from it because everyone thinks I’m weird and I feel like an alien.

If I wrote an autobiography and was just spitting titles, at least the working one would be “Jesus, Michael Valentine, Aziraphale, and Me.” Or, more accurately, “The Holy and the Moly: A Love Story.” That’s because it’s universal enough to cover history, politics, intelligence, and my romantic/platonic relationships. Those aren’t the only subjects to which it applies. Yin and yang are everywhere.

A/Theism is the greatest love story ever told, and the truth is in the slash. -Pete Rollins

Dana and I were an overnight success years in the making, because we’d loved each other so intensely emotionally that it became impossible not to pine for the physical in a way that just didn’t take until I had to live without her. I lasted a grand total of 18 months.

And it wasn’t all Dana’s magnetic pull. It was also that I spent a month in Portland alone and my house was more peaceful without Katharin. For as much as Katharin would hate me for having an affair that lasted eight and a half hours, she didn’t realize what a toxic mess she was and felt perfectly justified in being a lunatic and pulling shit on me for life. It was always my behavior, never what triggered it.

Meagan was my ex-girlfriend and I should have known it was “our” house and to consider her feelings when we’d been together for three months. She didn’t remember ex in high school and we were 28 or something like that. She remembered that if I’d been attracted to Meag once, I still was and she felt threatened. Meanwhile, I’m like “Meag was three girlfriends ago.” Just because I now think she would have been a good partner for me as an adult doesn’t mean she actually would have been, or that I would make the decision impulsively to sleep with someone in which there would be disastrous consequences for both of us…. for years on end, not just the next morning. What I said yesterday about actually sneaking off together was based on one thing- the women who we were with the night she was there both gave us unpleasant breakup experiences- not that we were perfect.

Additionally, after we broke up, Meag and I always flirted heavily and she could see that it had an effect on me and avoided it……. but not enough to stop. until we were much older and wiser. Like, if you don’t want to open Pandora’s box, degrade your pickpocket and sneak abilities, okkkkkkkkk…… I made the mistake that we would have another night together at some point, derailing my ability to move on because sometimes it was flirting innocently, sometimes it rode the edge…….. especially in front of her girlfriends.

I think that’s because it reinforced the yin and yang I had with her beard and it stuck with us. It encouraged competition she thought was amusing, but I didn’t when I learned I was always designed to lose. If it wasn’t her beard to keep her safe, it was the excitement of feeling two women fighting over her without having to suffer the consequences because I didn’t have any boundaries. I know why, therefore I don’t care. What I care about is the fact that I let myself be snowed more than once, going home brokenhearted every time until I went to visit her on her new turf.

That’s because going to visit my parents makes all the ghosts rise from their graves. I couldn’t get over her in the same town where I met her, because grace doesn’t leave you where you were found, a running theme in my life on multiple levels.

The relationship with Supergrover doesn’t make me want to run because I don’t see her everywhere I go unless I’m specifically looking for her. I don’t except at times where it’s possible a shared interest would lead our paths to cross. Because of the insecure connection, I actively avoid those things and will until our connection is secure again.

Because she’s suspicious, if I don’t avoid these things she uses the events as evidence I’m an asshole because I’m trying to look for her or trying to get close to someone because she is. I went to school with a lot of people who are now famous.

She knows a lot of famous people. An analogy would be scaring the life out of her because we both showed up at the same theater to see Matthew McConaughey. I don’t know if she knows him, but he’s the biggest star I’ve actually met in real life (not at HSPVA, attended the same church as kids. I just don’t remember meeting him because I was three at most.).

Because he’s a household name, there’s a bigger chance she knows him. For instance, I could say the same thing about Jason Moran and Robert Glasper being threatening, but they’re not as widely known so she might not have heard of them.

Editor’s Note:

The way Supergrover and flip each other shit runs thusly with stuff like this. I make a joke or observation (here or otherwise). I will have written thousands of words around it. She’ll go for the joke and laugh at my annoyance (that’s it? That’s all I get?). For instance, the e-mail I will get in response to this whole entire ass essay (if it happens) is “I do know Matt. :)” No context whatsoever, pick your own adventure. Luckily, that hasn’t been problematic at all (eyeroll).

In return, I do shit like compare her job to one in the service industry and she says, “I accept tips.” I PayPal’ed her two dollars. All I got back was “Dead.” That laugh is worth more than I’ll ever pay for it.

When it’s good it’s perfect because she’s basically George Clooney. Beautiful and impish.

The Holy and the Moly: A Love Story

I just want her to see that she’s the whole book on her own, and so am I. We’re like a YA novel where every chapter is one of us acting as unreliable narrator, because our problems are adult and our reactions to them are not.

We are talking about serious shit with underlying feelings akin to the love and disaster of your best friend finding a new one in third grade…… not a one-off for me as I’ve fumbled my way through life.

Katharin was a narcissist because she was a dry drunk, another bird with a broken wing who treated me like shit while I walked on eggshells hoping it helped and it never did.

The absolute and only reason I made Supergrover my special interest in my writing is because it was the first relationship in which my partner could be first in my mind. Whether she was a yellow string or a red, there was no hierarchy except the hard outs. I called her on her bullshit as easily as she called me on mine. I felt freer than I’d ever been, and I’m sorry I hurt her because of it, flying too close to the sun.

That’s because we came back together afterward, the relationship was maintained with an anxious/avoidant attachment and history repeated itself. I was seemingly obsessed when Supergrover is one of the few topics where you have to make an appointment with me to talk about whales (“Extraordinary Attorney Woo”).

Another character I love is on Apple TV+ called “Dr. Brain.” I can’t remember the real name of the doctor, but the show starts with a clearly autistic child (relatively low function STEM savant in medicine- brilliant intellectually, not so much with the affection. The way he’s low functioning as an adult is what makes him come off as an asshole who “doesn’t look autistic.”).

Yet, apparently my monotropic thought processes will always be such a mystery :::hold for everyone to roll their eyes:::

I also do not know what happened to Dana after I moved to DC. We talked a few times when I got here, but not since. I feel such pain and relief. I sincerely hope that she prefers Fanta to whatever the fuck that was…… if not for her sake, for her future partners.’

These essays are how I learn what I will not tolerate anymore. I am not a judgmental asshole. I constantly want a better relationship and try to provide positive feedback, but when my sensory issues are turned up to hell and I’m having an autistic meltdown, rage takes over my whole body and my executive function goes out the window.

It is not only because autism chooses to hit hard and fast. It is because I didn’t realize that people don’t rage like that when they’re angry. It looks a lot different and you can’t put your finger on it if your brain isn’t the same (especially, but not limited to you thinking it is). My social masking taught me how to fight, how to express myself, but not the way neurotypicals do it. I could only pick out their patterns, not understand them to the degree I could replicate.

I did not comprehend that when I was angry, frustrated, and overwhelmed so were other people, but their emotions weren’t tied up in their health. When people get angry and defensive at me, I respond. I do not have “a proportional response” because I have no executive function. When I get angry, I get arrhythmia, shortness of breath, and sudden drop in blood pressure that makes me feel like I’m going to faint, but I don’t. I’m just frozen.

The reason I know it’s autism and not PTSD depends on the subject. It’s a PTSD trigger when I’m thinking about the source, and autism because the rage has happened since long before my emotional abuse was a thing. Just like other autistic people, that kind of rage can be brought on by anything during meltdown.

It could be “my parents divorced” or “I have to eat blueberries (every one is different) instead of Goldfish (every one is the same). Not seeming bothered by such a small thing is what we mean when we say “social masking.” Pretending that a whole lot of social shit doesn’t matter when we’re physically and mentally in pain.

We put up with a lot of emotional abuse because autistic kids are treated differently than autistic children and you never grow up whether you’re neurodivergent or not. We are layers and layers of social masking over a six-year-old child, and I’m not the first or only person to make this observation. Because I’m a preacher’s kid, I saw this long before Psych 101. Taking Psych 101 led me to be interested in Erickson, Skinner, and Freud to some extent. That’s because I was not interested in going into early education, but how childhood affects adults. Through education and volunteering (youth director at church), I have learned a little bit about both ends of the spectrum.

“Volunteer youth director” jogged my memory and I remembered the two times I knew I really had a win with them. The first was a parent coming up and telling me how much her son appreciated a story I’d told (sermon illustration I didn’t write) about a little boy flinging starfish into the ocean. His parents stopped him and said “it doesn’t make any difference. There’s too many.” He said, “it makes a difference to this one.” The reason it was a win is that his mother told me the story of him telling her two years later.

The second win is entirely because of who my dad and stepmom are as people. My dad was a pastor. My stepmom is a doctor. The scriptures that week were on the lepers that Jesus cured, and how only one of them came back to thank him for it (that’s on brand for humanity). Where they meet is being able to explain to the kids why the lepers were outcasts. What leprosy did to the body and why it made them look so physically different. Leprosy is now called “Hansen’s Disease, and falls under autoimmune diseases.

In Texas, we occasionally see cases because pro tip, you cannot eat an armadillo.

Anyway, the message resonated and one of the kids….. the one who everyone else considered “a mess….” said, “maybe we shouldn’t do the same thing to the Muslims.” I don’t remember the correlation because I don’t remember which country said outcasts were from, I just remember it was the Middle East.

Back to you, Bob. Let’s go to the phones.

You don’t stop having PTSD, you focus on it longer because you’re a monotropic thinker. Once it gets in, you have a hell of a time getting it back out….. and yet when you solve it, you don’t suddenly become “not autistic,” either. Again, Supergrover and I weren’t, aren’t, and never will be a couple, but I learned more about how I behave in one than I have from anyone else in the last 10 years.

I could pick up the “I should be angry about this,” but not “this is how a functional person experiences rage.” I don’t need to learn how to get rid of rage because it’s never going to happen. Disabilities frustrate and anger the shit out of me. It is something that needs constant management, because freedom of speech doesn’t mean freedom from consequences. You don’t have a social mask for something, you better get it.

Autism is a spectrum, and what we mean by “high functioning” is enough executive function to be aware we need social masking in the first place. The classic image of an autistic person is someone who doesn’t, so therefore all people who can social mask “don’t look autistic.” It’s not that I don’t have the same reactions. I have different ways of expressing them. My toxic trait is being in meltdown and it looking like nagging/nitpicking. I’m not, I’m just overwhelmed and headed for burnout and can’t adjust my tone because I’m not thinking about it. So much depends on what happened before I got angry and how many sensory issues are in the room.

The way I manage it is to walk away from a conflict, but reassure the person that I am not walking away because I am angry at them. I just need to process meldown and burnout before I can discuss an issue calmly. That it’s better for me to process on my own so I don’t take out my anger on them.

The added bonus is that while we’re not interacting, they’re still seeing how I’m processing my emotions because I don’t lock them out. Anyone can read here, and I’m sure “anyone” does. 😉 (This applies to many, many people…. like Allison in Galveston, etc.). Whether someone else wants to work with me or not, they get closure if they want it. I’m doing it for myself, but that doesn’t mean they don’t benefit from it.

In fact, sometimes I’m so good at writing about things here that people don’t tell me things because they feel like they’ve already talked to me because I’ve written about them. In their minds, I’ve already “texted them.” It’s not a slam on their reputations because I don’t have much to talk about outside of what I publish to make conversations different.

People don’t have to ask me how I am because they already know. The difference is that I don’t have the same relationship with them because I’m isolated by nature of what I do. Sometimes I’m distant whether I want to be or not because it takes being completely off the grid for me to write. This is problematic when people think of my phone as a leash.

I don’t even carry it most of the time because I have an Apple Watch that will switch hit between Wifi and my cell plan. I turn off the notifications so I have it if I need to call out or if I fall, but my wrist isn’t constantly dinging or buzzing (if you have an Apple Watch, you know the hell of being trapped in a group text). I prefer buzzing to the sound, btw. The reason I don’t carry my phone is that I only need to be able to call and SMS because I use an Android tablet that does everything my phone would with more desktop real estate.

Neither an iPhone or an Apple Watch has a 3.5mm headphone jack, so I don’t get any benefit from better audio when the Bluetooth cards are basically identical. I just don’t have a use case for a phone anymore. The only reason I use my iPad is to watch Apple TV+. My iPad is more powerful in terms of hardware, more irritating in terms of software. If I could buy an iPad and install Android on it, I would. In fact, because I use both tablets as a laptop, adding a keyboard and sometimes a mouse, I could put the entire desktop version of Ubuntu and all its applications with hardware that good.

It’s not that I prefer desktop linux to Android. I can do anything on an Android that I could do on a linux box because it’s the same OS in terms of command line. But there are more applications written for desktop Ubuntu that haven’t been ported to a mobile app (damned inconvenient).

Android has been around for a long time, but really started competing with iOS when Samsung started releasing features that were years ahead of iPhones (and Apple always thinks their improvements are their ideas). I learned the most about Android when I was working for Marylhurst.

It was the storm before the TARDIS landed on my lawn, and the sweet relief of finding my own bedroom.

It’s all connected. The way I acted. Why. How I got to different locations and conclusions with multiple people who all had the same characteristics and wildly different in other ways, leading to me to believe there were no repeats, etc.

That’s why it is such a long essay over a $500 leather satchel (tablet case) I bought when I got the job. It was handmade in Ecuador. I don’t care if I paid too much, the quality makes in an heirloom. It needs conditioning now, and it needs to be worn in even still. But it is the most valuable personal item I have, because there’s way more than $500 worth of joy, laughter, and pain in it.

Even my autism turns up in a joke about it…. that my Satchel is a TARDIS in and of itself. The reason that it connects to my autism is that in bringing up “Satchel,” we have just made an appointment to talk about intelligence.

Again.

Maybe I should have picked otters.

The First Chapter of Something, Probably

November 10, 2023 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

This entry is so long that it’s dedicated to all the people who have told me I should write a book.

One of the reasons that I love Carol so much is that she has two archetypes at the same time. She is a fictional character, but close to my heart because she has Lindsay’s personality and my special interest, which I’m learning about from Zac. He cannot reveal sources, methods, and locations, but that’s not helpful in fiction, anyway.

I want to know how intelligence officers and analysts work at the office, because even though Zac is not a spy (he works for a data collection agency) that world attracts a “type,” and that type just happens to be the one some of the characters in my biggest work in progress need. He is also neurodivergent, which adds to the mystery of how he personally deals with issues when he can’t talk about what’s actually going on and handles information differently- and companies/the government view disability differently across sectors. There are federal standards and unique cultures to every office. They can’t make autistic people look autistic because that’s illegal. So they make up bullshit language around autism that describes our behavior accurately, but not the reasoning behind it. We have to act neurotypical when we’re not or we’re severely punished.

That doesn’t look like disability in a performance improvement plan. That looks like rude, overemotional (meltdown), lazy (burnout/demand avoidance), inattentive to detail (ADHD), underperforming given intelligence (not in any way true at all) and potential (I’m smart as FUCK if you’re arsed enough to see it……. and everyone does until I exhibit a disability. This is also why I don’t do any better while married than I do while having a job. Talk to 50 autistic people. We agree.).

Not being strong enough to lift 60 pounds of flour when I just can’t, yet cerebral palsy, autism, and ADHD are a real thing and we should definitely accommodate you……… in the beginning, when I am social masking because either I’m trying to get a job or, more accurately, the process of sitting in a room with a couple of people and discussing the job with humor is a skill I have because the sensory load is at a minimum. This is tragic because I don’t want the personality of Elon Musk. I want his power, and not because I need it to lord it over people. I need it because I can make a job that revolves around neurodivergence instead of having to fit into a system.

There’s a reason I want to be like Oprah, Brené Brown, Martha Beck, Glennon Doyle, etc. It’s because they all created their careers and made their audience come to them so that they didn’t have to compromise who they were to be successful. I also know that some of them are neurodivergent, even if they aren’t ADHD or autistic. Depression gives you demand avoidance so deeply you can’t take care of yourself because you can’t make yourself respond to your own demands, either.

It’s what creates the need to sleep too much, eat too much, drink too much…. or go the other route and do none of these things, my route to making it through the dark. I drink with Zac when I feel the worst about myself because that’s when I perceive I can be hung over without incident….. then fuck around and find out. It’s why I like non-alcoholic beer so much. It’s the equivalent of having several “water rounds” without actually taking one. However, I’m not bothered at a party where there’s only hard liquor and soda, because I have no problem enjoying the mixers separately.

My favorites are Schweppes Bitter Lemon and Tom Collins mix, but I don’t drink them often because they have lots of sugar. Since I avoid sugar, I drink diet tonic water if it’s available, because you really, really can’t tell the difference when the forward note is quinine. You can’t even tell most of the time when there’s gin in it if you add lime. (Incidentally, my friend Mel says that when we meet up, she’s going to share a bottle of the finest Norwich gin they have to offer with me. Until then, my favorite gins are Hendricks (plain, I’m a purist) and Tanqueray Rangpur Lime. If I have to choose, Rangpur Lime and I’d rather have one martini with it than five with Tanqueray O.O, and not because I wouldn’t like it (haven’t tried it yet). It’s because Rangpur Lime doesn’t come in a zero.

My favorite mocktail so far was made for me at a vegan restaurant that no longer exists in Portland, Oregon (no vodka gimlet with blueberries as garnish). It was called “Portobello,” and it was started because my across the walkway neighbor had the same thought process I did. He was a butcher for a very, very long time and got bored. Same, dude. Same. He gravitated toward vegan because it was the latest trend, and at the time none of us knew anything about it; getting away from meat was exciting. He was doing it before anyone else.

The best meal I ever had was comped, as were all our drinks. Dana and I had every mocktail on the menu, plus a couple of cocktails on the house. We also had things like creamy cashew Alfredo, mushroom paté, very cold and crisp salad with oranges and julienned fennel (actually, chefs, I think it was a batonet but I’ve slept since then), and desserts at the end where pastry had taken recipes for things like cheesecakes and tarts and made them out of soft tofu or Daiya cheese, the root of all excellent vegan pizza- believe it. Melts better than mozzarella, but make sure it’s double cheese (crumbled Beyond Italian sausage is insane). They also made puff pastry as good as I’ve ever eaten using only olive oil and not butter. It was revelatory, and started a lifelong affair. I don’t cook vegan entreés because it’s comforting. I cook vegan because I’m bored with everything else.

It has become another autism-level special interest, as evidenced by the fact that it feeds my blog. In essence, it has become one of the three special interests I’ve never given up. Intelligence comes from my great uncle Foster, where every time he’s ever come up in conversation I’ve strained my ears- better when no one thought I was listening. I know more than they think I do because I remember shit. Cooking comes from Dana. Writing comes from me. It was handed down to me by my grandfather (PR) and my dad (pastor) and my mom (music teacher). This is because my mom and dad’s careers weren’t focused on the written word, but their creativity always showed through whatever they were doing.

The only reason I say that my dad’s creativity didn’t come through writing is that public speaking is a different gig, even if you have my social skills. Just because you know to isolate when you don’t have to be in public to save energy doesn’t mean being in front of people every week doesn’t come with challenges whether you’re autistic or not. All people have a social battery, mine just doesn’t last as long as most people I know. This is true of most autistic people. This is because they think they’re healthier than they are when they’re high functioning and have a few good days. Then, they beat themselves up for having a disability. It’s a vicious cycle because as with a mental illness (which I view as separate from having two processing disorders), the undiagnosed don’t realize that the cycle will never end, they will never “get it together,” they might be suddenly employed and unemployed a lot due to meltdowns and burnout but not be able to pinpoint why, etc.

That’s because until you have a diagnosis, you think all office and relationship criticisms are the truth. That autistic means narcissistic, that autistic means rude and unpleasant, that we are worth accommodating for six months at best because it becomes too much, too fast.

I know this because Supergrover was just as flabbergasted by my reactions as every boss I’ve ever had, because they didn’t pick up ADHD or autism, and that’s not because they wouldn’t have accommodated it. They couldn’t see it because I couldn’t tell them I had it. Therefore, I believed I was a lazy, manipulative asshole a hundred percent of the time when in reality my autism makes me two things. Seemingly two-faced- being able to see a problem from multiple angles when agreeing with both parties is a straight up problem. It makes me seem like I have lied instead of evolved. This was particularly true about six or seven years ago.

I now use my blog as a “separating the men from the boys” test because I can’t not. That’s because it clearly shows people two things right off the bat, before they even meet me. The first is that if they’re going to be in my life, they have to make the commitment to appear here. It is non-negotiable because my blog is already popular and I’m not tanking it for anyone unless it’s absolutely necessary. And absolutely necessary is not relative.

Only for Lindsay and Supergrover have I ever changed anything, giving them editorial control after the fact and been sorry I didn’t give it to them before I published. It’s not because I view their careers as more important than mine. It’s that I’m a flexible enough writer to switch to something that doesn’t revolve around my life because I’d have time to let both them and an independent party review my work before it went out. It’s the bargain I made by being Lindsay’s sister and Supergrover’s Gonzo (because our relationship is a “whatever.”). I genuinely feel about Supergrover the same way I felt about Sam. That my intensity was all over the place and even if she didn’t want to be partners, my feelings for her were strong enough to say “pining after her is stupid when she’ll actually give you time with her if you don’t (in Supergrover’s case). In Sam’s, I would have been her bestie even if she’d broken up with me.

The reason I would have and don’t is that I felt like she was the friend who would always make me anticipate her needs if she wouldn’t talk about the biggest one and dumped me in a hot second. We talked about me dating/not dating Zac for three whole weeks and she waited until I was with him for our first date ever and crushed me at his house.

So.

Even if what I did had been considered cheating (and I feel it wasn’t because I communicated my boundaries loudly and so did she), I didn’t. She took the time and effort to punch me in the stomach while also trying to make a good first impression. I wasn’t even used to my environment with either of them and had to cope with both of them being threatening at the same time. I knew that if she was the kind of person who waited and exploded like Supergrover, I was not going to spend another moment worrying about her, because that’s problematic whether we’re friends or in love with each other, and that experience was hard fucking won.

I don’t give my friendship away to just anyone anymore. That’s because I know it will get deep fast because I don’t have the capability to not. I agreed to marry Daniel in a hurry not because I was in love with him, but because we made the agreement to be partners whether we fell in love with each other or not. He wanted me to be a military dependent so I could get my shit together, being extraordinarily kind as we worked out the details of being able to travel all over. It was a secure environment, not a romance.

It also allowed me the room to make him secondary in my mind because he didn’t care one way or the other. One of the reasons I like dating men so much is that they activate a different part of my brain…. but it’s never in the context of not being queer. In fact, it’s the opposite. I will date a bisexual man or make my straight husband culturally queer and that’s non-negotiable. I will not ever project heterosexual privilege and I will do it without having to wear rainbow shit.

I don’t care if other women think I dress like a lesbian and therefore must be unaware that I’m really queer…. taking me aside and telling me that I’ll never be happy in my marriage, etc. As I’ve said before, it’s the most common story. People assume the most common ending.

The answer is obviously not “The War Daniel” is my fianceé and he doesn’t have a lock on whether I’m bi or not.” Cutting my hair this way and wearing men’s (or size 16 big boys, pants are highwater, tho….) clothes is just being loud about the fact that I’m queer no matter who I’m with. It is not a coincidence that I am more comfortable with bisexual men than straight because being queer and showing it is important to them, too. For instance, the queer employee group at Zac’s intelligence agency is organized and Zac is the president. No one in even 3,000 miles in any direction would peg either of us as straight.

Again, straight women should give bi men a second chance if they’ve been afraid in the past. Bisexual doesn’t always equate polyamorous, that stereotype has been reinforced because society made queer behavior unnatural and the only way to get by was having a wife and kids. Therefore, there were both gay and bi men married to women that were happy to varying degrees. The ones who weren’t bi just lied. Bisexual people are often incredibly monogamous and can be married to either gender with intensity. Gay people can’t.

Gay people taught me early on that I couldn’t be both, so I’ve apologized to Ryan for it many times. I didn’t have to break up with him to explore my sexuality, other people gave me the impression that now I had to because I’d thought about women in that way…. that it changes you so you can’t switch back and forth. You are a Jedi or a Sith. Being a Sith means hiding with heterosexual privilege and keeping your sexuality on the downlow because you CAN come out, you just don’t. Being secretive about your sexuality hurts our community more than it helps you, because you’re biting the hand that would feed you if you helped change it.

Heterosexual privilege helps change legislation, but first it helps cultural attitudes to be visible. It means the world to me that Supergrover wears a rainbow Apple Watch band, because it’s not for me and yet it is. Someone once told me that the rainbow flag was a privilege I had. That straight people shouldn’t buy them on their own, that it should be a gift a queer person gives you. Not only am I glad that Supergrover wears “me on her wrist,” she’s the one I’d let wear my rainbows, too. (Incidentally, Lindsay has also worn rainbow shit since forever and works more closely with the queer population than I ever will.)

The one thing I have that would mean a lot to me to give her would fit in with her whole vibe because she’s a beach bum. It’s a white puka shell necklace that has rainbow shells in a few intervals. It was $10, but priceless to me because I got it the day I went to the Supreme Court to wave flags for Obergefell, certainly the most important SCOTUS adventure into queer rights since Lawrence v. Texas. But she doesn’t have to wear it, and I only say that because the colors would last longer if she didn’t. But like I said, the gift nor the love underneath depend on the recipient; whether she takes it to said beach isn’t my jurisdiction. 😉

The reason she’s a yellow string for me is that these are the things that would be important to me to share with her. Meeting up at Capital Pride would be on brand. She and her first/current families are all the kind of people that would show up together and not make it a thing- which I would not have understood in the 90s and not because my family wasn’t like that. They weren’t like that until I told them. When you know better, you do better, and if you never say anything, you’re part of the problem.

My work to do is to learn anger management, because I am programmed to think others assume I am broken, because that’s how they treat me a good bit of the time. It is not an unearned reputation. Right this moment, I do not have the tools to deal with autistic rage, and I did not learn about this until I read “Spare,” by Harry Wales. I don’t care if it was a ghostwriter, I learned so much about myself that I was glued to it. I read the whole thing in seven hours.

This is because Wales is also neurodivergent, and even if he’s not autistic, people with PTSD (anxiety, depression- possibly ADHD because Wales struggled in school and he’s also very bright- emotionally intelligent while the rest of his family is not, etc.) also deal with demand avoidance, burnout, and fits of extreme rage.

Harry has had PTSD and lived his life like a combat vet for 26 years. I can’t remember exactly, but that would have made him between 12 and 13 when his mother died. I know that because his worst trigger is the click and flash of a camera. He didn’t for one moment run from England because of his family and you can take that to the bank and cash it. Harry would have lived quietly ever after in any castle they wanted if they’d only put so much security on Meghan she couldn’t blink without someone noticing.

What his “family” did was stir up the same racist shit in the British press that groups like the KKK stir up here. You are the enemy when you stay silent. Their inaction told him everything he needed to know. If he didn’t take Meghan somewhere else, the British press would kill her, too. Despite outlawing slavery earlier and getting over it faster in some ways (many more POC/queer/disabled people on television in Britain), the first black princess was not going to get away unscathed. The entire UK fucked Meghan Markle by the whole country down to Prince William being obsessed with “Suits” on Netflix and not bothering to keep Meghan safe when it really counted.

The bitch of it is, they’re not even sorry. It’s okay because Harry has money, so fuck him. That’s the tape that plays in his head because that’s not an unearned reputation for the people around him, too. And that’s how he thinks his public think of him. When his family doesn’t listen to him when he says he’s struggling, he has to find other people who will.

I doubt we will ever meet, but I know I could step off a plane, hug him, and go for drinks like I met him in elementary because we speak the same language. My dad was a public figure. My first experience with PTSD was when I was 12 years old and my house burned down. I was diagnosed with bipolar when I was 21, ADHD and generalized anxiety disorder later. I have been afraid I was borderline for years, but I’m not. I’m autistic and ADHD. That’s why even close relationships alternate between obsession and complete disinterest. I do not nor have ever had an attachment disorder.

It’s the opposite. My people are my safe environment, and neurotypical people don’t often tolerate neurodivergent partners because they become their caretakers and resent it. This is because nine times out of ten they will not do the research to understand what they’re taking on beforehand, and there’s only now enough research on what female AuDHD looks like for the layperson to even understand it. People do this when they find out they’re about to raise an autistic child, and there’s a ton of research on what it’s like to parent one.

They do not do the research in the beginning phases of a relationship so that things don’t go wrong later. There are also now a ton of videos explaining to bosses the tips and tricks it takes to work with autistic people so that communication gaffes at work are kept to a minimum…. and it’s not just bosses, it’s HR education as well.

YouTube has been invaluable at giving me self-esteem by explaining my disabilities so I could stop being embarrassed by them; those vloggers gave me tips and tricks for fooling my brain to work around them (except the CP, that’s a whole other thing). That mental health goes up and down, but processing disorders are permanent. My executive function cannot be corrected with medication.

Ritalin is just a tool in dealing with ADHD, and it often doesn’t work for two reasons. The first is that people think that if they can concentrate with coffee, then getting on Adderrall must be better. Then, the jump between caffeine and Adderrall is too much and the hyperactivity/impulse control/demand avoidance/anxiety about it gets worse…… but not enough to stop.

That’s because it induces hyperfocus just enough of the time that you feel it’s worth it. A good example as to why people stay on it despite caffeine working is basically “a cup of coffee or two would do it, but I like the rush of energy drinks.” That’s why neurotypical kids get addicted fast. They only feel hyperfocused when it is induced…….. and because they’re neurotypical, a cup of coffee or two won’t do it. Induction takes the equivalent of purified meth. This is a huge trap for teenage girls, because first it makes them stay up all the time. That means either they can party harder or they can study like maniacs, literally without blinking.

I have never been addicted to Ritalin, Adderrall, or Concerta because it’s not appealing to me. I hate it with a passion. The second reason it’s a bad choice is that you constantly feel the pull of mentally well and physically sick. This is a huge trap for neurotypical girls, and I know this because more than one has asked me to sell my prescriptions to them (I told them to fuck off because they didn’t know what it was like to need it. I learned that day I was capable of cursing at church.). This is because they’ve noticed that not only does it improve their grades, they lose weight quickly.

And then, whether you like purified meth or not, your body will fall apart because of it. If you see documentaries on crystal meth addicts, you know what is happening to us. It’s just that because it’s more purified, it takes longer for us to look like that on the outside. The worse your ADHD gets, the quicker it happens, because either you have to up your dose because of tachyphyllaxis (a drug getting less effective over time, then correcting for it), or having to go to extended release because you can’t handle the crash between medicated and not.

Meth is not like taking Lexapro or the other SSRIs/mood stabilizers/St. John’s wort. ADHD meds can be equated to anxiolytics (Xanax, Klonopin). You don’t take it for six weeks so that it builds over time and your serotonin is stable, that even if you miss a day (you’ll get physical withdrawal), you won’t have to step down the dose and restart.

The exception to my protocol is a mood stabilizer called Lamictal (lamotrigine), and not necessarily that it would cause depression or mania. One of the side effects is a skin disease I absolutely will not show you. Google lamotrigine for all your JAMA-level horror porn. Meth is the same delivery system as a benzo. You take it, you feel the ramp up, and when it’s gone, it’s gone. That’s why extended release benzos like Klonopin and extended release meth like Concerta are so important. If you’re at work, you can’t have a crash in the middle of the day, even for an hour.

Not being able to do that requires you to be able to take a pill about 20-30 minutes before the first one wears off, and that’s not always possible. Both my SSRI and ADHD meds (when I’m on them) have to be taken at the same time every single day, because even being 20 minutes off will induce a tinnitus-like effect in my ears and a monster headache. When that happens, I cannot help but go into autistic rage because I can’t focus on anything but the emergency broadcast system testing in my head. That’s because all my medications affect different brain chemicals.

The worst time this has ever gotten in my way was the unveiling of the Obama portraits at the National Portrait Gallery. I would have been able to see them in person and I missed it because I was away from home. I’d agreed to stay with Lindsay in her hotel that night, heard about the unveiling on the radio, and was just about to HA (haul ass) when I realized that none of my meds were in my bag. I can get by with a Xanax and a Lamictal, because the Xanax will control the serotonin loss for a few hours (at best). Nothing will stop the Lamictal from kicking my ass. It’s what causes all the auditory activity, making my autism and ADHD unmanageable because I cannot handle my environment when my sensory issues aren’t even external so I can fix them.

My last boss was great and dismissed me in the middle of the day to take an extra long lunch and get my medication as long as I came right back. Luckily, there was no traffic that day, so I did it in a little under two hours and just stayed late. That’s what I mean about ADA accommodations, and if we’d used our work from home policy at will, it would have worked flawlessly. My favorite days at Alert Logic and Decision software were work from home. I alternated between going into my office for overnights and forwarding my office phone to my cell because my boss recognized that staying up all night was easier in our own comfortable chairs and at our own desks. Plus, we could lie on our own couches for a nap at lunch. I went to bed. Once. If you take a nap on your couch, it’s much easier to move again because after an hour you’re uncomfortable and yet rested enough for another four hours of work.

However, screen time for me at night is like poker. Often I don’t need a nap because buy-in is at midnight and you don’t notice the time because your adrenaline is hyped up by the nature of the time. “Rounders” is my favorite B-movie because of it. There are few movie characters I love more than Mike McD and Teddy KGB. Shoutout to Joey Knish.

Martin Landau nailed the 99 theses to my wall. It was a revolution inside me and not in front of me when he told the story to Mike about wanting to be a rabbi, but for all the studying he did at the yeshiva, he never found God there. He said that in “Rounders” before I even started to connect that for me, God had left the building…….. but his monologue was the seed to realizing I was built the same way. It is left unclear whether studying at the yeshiva made him an atheist or spiritual yet non-practicing.

I have decided that I am the latter. I reject the Biblical literalist interpretation of grandfather in the sky and have traded it for secular humanism…… but not entirely. This is because believing that there is a thread of energy between all of us is what created religion in the first place. We are not worshiping the divine, we are the divine.

Science gives us the what. Religion gives us the why. It is why both are needed in our society, because there needs to be exploration of ourselves in both directions. To focus on one is to not understand the world, because secular humanism, like any religion, focuses on how to “bring the kindom of heaven to earth.” It’s just Christian language for cleaning up the hell that’s already here when you’re on the social justice side of the equation. The prosperity gospel is ridiculous, as is the idea that Jesus would support anything that didn’t have to do with community organizing for the dispossessed. That’s what got him killed. Even Neil Gaiman knows that.

It was so much easier to work in my level of quiet in any situation, whether it’s writing, studying theology, or IT. That is absolute silence. Additionally, if I forgot my medication or just wanted another soda, I could get up and get it without the bother of office gossip in between. I’m so good at it and make people laugh so often that it causes hyperfocus interruptions and I can’t transition back to work very easily- and not in terms of laziness (or demand avoidance because I’m in the dark literally to again, tamp down ways for my ADHD to cause “the fuckening.” It’s the idea that up until that moment, your day was going so well.). In terms of building my hyperfocus back from the ground up every time I need something, it’s a tornado effect. I can experience my disabilities and then do three days of work in six hours.

This is because my disability requires me to prepare my environment before I can be comfortable in it. However, the tape of what I need to do is still running, so it’s not like I’m ignoring the work. I am preparing to write it down. This shows itself in everything from notes to official documentation, because it’s all written communication. Notes were scant when I was in a cubicle farm and perfect when I was alone….. or as close to perfect as my ADHD would allow.

It bothered me that they recorded all our conversations and dinged me for the writing all the time. It’s that it would have been an accommodation that truly helped me because I did not have the executive function to explain a problem translating technical terms to English so that my customers understood what was happening (I was explaining things to a layperson like opening or forwarding ports on a router) AND write down the thought process of the experience the customer was having.

Then, I’d get overwhelmed, have an ADHD/Autism moment, and not remember the conversation verbatim so I could transcribe it…… when they could have easily given me a few moments at the end of the day to summarize each case before I went home by giving me the recordings as well. But they were somehow sacred and it’s my voice? I’m not even putting the burden on the boss to listen to every case in this instance, because that would take hours if they listened to everyone’s every one. So, listening to every case is up to them. It would be an ADA accommodation whether the onus was on either of us.

This is how I won two Rock Star awards and lasted less than a year, basically getting fired for neurodivergence. The reason I won the Rock Star award once was that a coworker was listening in. The reason I got the award twice is that I got a call at three in the morning, forwarded by the vice president of the company. He didn’t want either of us to hear the click when he hung up, so he listened to the whole thing, unbeknownst to me.

I got a page of text from him, a personal note saying he couldn’t believe how charming and chatty I was at that time of night, and loved that when I learned he was in the UK, I said, “I have to ask a question of you that I ask all my British friends. Who is your Doctor?” He said he didn’t watch much anymore but that it was Tom Baker. The vice president of one of the best companies in the world knows my name.

By the end of the letter, I knew I’d won his heart just as much as he’d won mine. I just didn’t win anyone else’s over time because they loved me………… at first. Then, they thought of all my quirks and limitations as dumbass attacks. I never had a genuine issue, but things did get better working from home.

Conversations were always in chat. Even better that at home I had access to my stereo Bluetooth headphones and all our apps were web-based, so it was cool to have a Mac or a Linux box at home. Back then, I had a 27-inch flatscreen iMac (running either OS because both are *nix); I wish I still had it, because it was certainly fast enough to run a word processor, a browser, and an e-mail client, even in the days of Adobe Flash (Flash will run on The Ten Commandments before it runs on an Apple tablet). It was the best of times, it was the worst of times and the winter of our discontent, riots the language of the unheard both because I wasn’t heard and I didn’t understand the problem.

At Alert Logic, I had more days at home in the middle of the night, and at Decision Software, our working from home was limited to network outages and snow days, only in daylight. It started my day more naturally when I started sleeping with the sun. I got up early because I wanted to write on the train, which I took unless I was meeting Lindsay somewhere and needed to get there fast. This led to me getting to the train between 0700-0730 because it tamped down my sensory issues to write when the train was less full.

I was often the earliest employee because of it, because I’d go in as soon as the door opened and fuck around until it was actually time to work. A in, I’d get there at 8:15, have some Maxwell house and a donut, talk to my office mate (a godsend because we were both quiet coders), take my meds, wander over to the web team or the IT guy and see what they’re doing.

I was mostly talking to the IT guy about linux because even though I was a marketing database development person (and bad at it), all IT people are unix geeks stuck in a Windows world because businesses only know how to lock down one OS, even when we’re capable o creating the same policies you have for Windows ourselves. As an aside, if you know unix, you know Linux and vice versa. They’re not exactly the same, but the learning curve is small.

Therefore, it’s a short leap between system administration on a Mac to a System 76 (the most famous Linux pre-built computer company). It’s like learning Microsoft Office first and then trying LibreOffice because it’s free. Not the same, but intuitive.

When we suggest new operating systems because they’re more secure than Windows (in 99% of cases),you’re not handing a chef’s knife to a child. You’re giving your IT department the latitude to keep more people safe.

Plus, at work we generally have fast enough hardware to run a virtual machine and work in Linux so network administrators don’t have to mess with it. All of our IP information is bridged from our Windows settings. The point is, network administrators and “IT guys” are the creatives in business working under a chef who doesn’t want to let us experiment to make anything better…. and they’re pretty mean about it considering we’re the subject matter experts. It affects network security in terms of intrusions from the outside world, privileges and credentials on files inside the organization, and data recovery loss.

You know, the trivial stuff.

Keeping a network free of intrusions means you have to work like a spy or faster. Virus signatures come out faster than foreign intelligence cables.). The certification to be able to get authority in the field takes a tremendous amount of effort, something that managers rarely take into consideration because it’s not their reality. It’s also how companies get fucked because they don’t listen to the autistic programmers/people in the security operations center (SOC) or network security operations (NOC) because they’re lazy, rude, and in a bad mood all the time (that’s HR speak for autistic). Meanwhile, they’re incredible at their jobs because they’re stem autistic. Coding and system administration is their single interest and they’ll go at it with everything they’ve got.

A creative autistic fits nowhere into this equation because STEM autism leads directly to profit. In short, their behavior is excused because businesses and governments need them so badly. The NSA will even take in hackers who have previously been black hat if they’re good enough. Same with DoD. What’s more important? The hacker’s past or national security?

Black hat hackers can program rootkits that are small programs hidden in the RAM of a server so that they’re impossible to find. This leads to things like CIA and State getting their lists of assets/confidential informants leaked and things like that. I could smack Assange, Snowden, and Manning upside the head no regrets for what they did, because we won’t know what they’ve done to covert ops for 50 years, if not a hundred. It’s humiliating that the call was coming from inside the house. What if any of them are actually Rick Aames and don’t know it? When he turned on us, we lost 10 assets in one summer. But a group does know, and the group is pissed with lots of underlings, whether it’s the president or the Director of National Intelligence, and they all have the right to be pissed, too.

But this is a situation in which someone could say the complete opposite and I’d agree with them, because I don’t think that keeping things from the American people is always correct. I just think that they more than likely made us bite off more than we could chew and obviously didn’t care or didn’t think of that. Audacity is worse, because no one sees the whole picture of intelligence, not even the president of the United States, because we can only give them as much as we have….. but we are the best set of intelligences agencies the world has ever known, so there is room for as much excellence as we can muster while also recognizing our mistakes. However, NSA has the most power in the room and I would argue the most power in the nation because they basically have a lock on HUMINT (human intelligence), especially because they can figure out ways to watch people when they don’t know they’re being watched. People freak out that NSA might be watching and give up their paranoia willingly when a terrorist is caught on camera making bombs that were planned for, say, the twin towers. But what you must remember, Americans who are terrified, is that Russia, China, and every other civilized nation is also watching you. But NSA is also the only one who can go to bat for you if you are located in the United States and get on the radar by mistake. No one can issue an apology except a United States court, provided there is also video of your innocence.

People generally think about what the NSA is doing to them, not what they’re doing for them. I know for certain that Russia and China have the most eyes on me because that’s where I’ve had the most bots since 2003. I have already learned that even when I mean something innocently, people think it’s not. What makes me think that the Chinese or Russian government would give me a break? If I said something that pissed off the right person at the right time, I’d want to know that I was innocent so someone would go to bat for me. In short, if you get international attention, don’t do anything wrong. Getting caught on the radar by accident is saying something that is legal here and illegal there. In Russia and China, it doesn’t take much and I’ve already had a blogger friend who escaped to Hong Kong then came back to the US. With stuff like that, you never want the US to have a reason to let anyone extradite you, especially when you’re queer. You also don’t want to get yourself in the position of being a prisoner exchange if there’s a chance in hell you did anything that would be considered illegal to the FBI.

If you are an American overseas, it’s better to let them extradite you because you won’t go to trial in a country that’s more harsh than ours. For instance, I’d rather be in an Australian jail than the US, but in a US jail over Mexico or Iran. Considering I’m more likely to be caught over the Internet saying things people don’t like, Russia and China are the countries most likely to care…. even when your critic is an American who fell in love with the Cold War and criticizes it in order to make the future better, not to piss people off. It is how that vlogger views China, a bilingual American married to a Chinese woman. He was only trying to improve his community and country- escaping a future in prison for his trouble.

If you’ve made it to the end, I hope it was entertaining to see me ramble like an AuDHD contradiction in terms. But it’s because I can explain so many things that one tangent leads into another- sometimes more smoothly than others. It’s how I get jobs, literally. I got one of them because my resume appeared among the search results at Maryland Workforce Commission. The CEO of the company Googled me and thought I was a hell of a writer, even commenting to everyone that since I’m a hell of a writer, it was only fair that he let me take pot shots at his stuff.

But writing about all these topics doesn’t mean I can do all of them perfectly forever without accommodation because I’ve proved it in every job I’ve ever had. Bosses do not take the ups and downs of autism well, partially because they can’t see it and attribute performance/attitude to other things. It’s partially because companies say they want to accept you for who you are, but don’t actually help you get there because they say they are welcoming without policies to support it.

It reminds me of my first marriage in the business sense of the word. The reason Kathleen and I got married was because we were in Dupont Circle (then called “the froot loop”) and picked up a copy of the local queer rag, The Blade. In it was a statement from the head PR dude that if you got a civil union in Vermont or married in another country, ExxonMobil would have to honor it. The problem was, they couldn’t. We were the first couple that asked for those benefits and the lady at HR I talked to wasn’t even aware that the publicist had made the statement to the newspaper.

Therefore, the policy on queer issues at XOM revolves entirely around me. I deserve all the credit because Kathleen is a hosebeast and I’m just not going to give it to her. She sold my Yoda (I never could have afforded it. I won it in a contest, life-sized so it scared her and she sold it while I was out of the house when it was a collector’s item that would have appreciated- nearly one of a kind.). And I honestly could have forgiven her infidelities if she’d just decided to be Jack Kennedy about it. I mean, tell me, but I don’t care. The problem was the lying. Eleanor wasn’t threatened by Lucy because Franklin wasn’t threatened by Amelia. I’ll get over it. But that’s what I think now. Back then, I would have been threatened af and worried I wasn’t enough and all the things. Now, I write so much that I need more alone time than most girlfriends would want me to have in the first place.

But what I didn’t do is have ADA accommodations there, either.

I cannot be blamed for keeping it tight because I didn’t know. I had to talk about it and couldn’t. My bosses and partners were every bit as responsible for communication gaffes, therefore we both had to be responsible with future interactions. An employer owes an employee ADA accommodations just as much as neurodivergent people have the right to ask for them.

However, I know plenty of people who say to their partners that they’re neurodivergent and what issues they have with thinking, giving them specific information that is very important and all close relationships blow off. For instance, moms are obsessed with baby books. How often do fathers read them? Mental health is just as important as the medical development of a baby and the health of the mother. When you have mental health, sometimes your executive function crumbles and demand avoidance becoming things like not being able to take a shower because the change in sensory environment is too great (I experience this more in winter unless I drag my space heater into the bathroom with me…. a lifesaver when I make it about 80 when I’m in the cold water.). Things like this are why working from home is preferable, too. It ups my productivity when people don’t care if I stay comfortable and work in pajamas and a hoodie.

I am not making the case that autistic people have to limit themselves to pajamas. I’m saying that they need more leniency on the dress code than most people due to sensory issues that impede their performance. For instance, I’m sure it was a huge damn deal when offices started allowing women to wear pants because wearing skirts instead is hell on earth when your sensory issue is bare legs, and let’s stop pretending that’s not an issue for all women considering razor burn and having to shave whether they have road rash or not.

But the trend of making the skirt part of an official women’s uniform went out a long time ago. Now it’s accepting that autistic people need the flexibility to show up in pants without a tailored waist, a soft t-shirt, and a hoodie (which is not cheap to do when you want to look good enough for work and yet tamp down everything that will bother you once you leave the house. Pain before beauty is not an option for anyone, much less people with sensory issues. I am pointing this out because of Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg. They both wear (wore) the same thing every day so it became a decision they only had to made once…….. and owned their own business so that they could do that because no one enforced a dress code on them. I would say it helped them be successful. But what do I know? In 20 years, people won’t even know their names (this is a joke, they’re immortal for evil or for awesome).

Mental illness affects everyone from princes to paupers, but if you know one mentally ill person, you know one mentally ill person. If you know one ADHD, autistic, or AuDHD person, you know one of us. People have preconceived notions about how alcoholics, addicts, and neurodivergent people should or could act, and they impose their standards on everyone else. No, every one is not “a little bit autistic.” I hear that a lot. Everyone has problems, but few are reinforced in processing disorders and depression/anxiety stemming from them. The pressure of internalized hatred of neurodivergent people makes our disabilities worse. The pressure of showing up to a job when you’re seen as problematic often induces meltdown and burnout, essentially being paralyzed with indecision in the moments you don’t already have a social mask for something. And that’s before anyone gives you a demand to which you can’t respond right away. That’s after you’ve conquered the demand avoidance over the things you need to function. Being unable to ask demands of yourself feels the same as being paralyzed over possibly hurting someone else.

But here’s the thing. Lack of accommodation only helps to keep what employers view as “problematic behavior” under wraps. We cannot be trained like a dog into neurotypical responses and wait until you get frustrated enough to fire us over it because we can’t mask at all times, forever. It’s exhausting, like having a job at work and a job that never ends when the world doesn’t adjust to include us. “Less productive” is relative when you’re talking about autism and ADHD, because performance depends on communication and neither party is good at it. Mainstreaming sucks, but neurodivergent people get irritated, too, because not every autistic person’s quirks will line up with mine and vice versa.

But I started this journey by thinking about Red Mist rage, because Harry Wales thought about it first.

If you were him, you would have been beside yourselves, too. When Princess Diana died, Charles told him, patted him on the knee, and left the room. They didn’t expect him to ignore the press once. He felt hung out to dry the first time, too.

Would you have let it happen again?

Being neurodivergent is knowing when to run, because people who love you will want to give you accommodations and the people who don’t might want to, but don’t educate themselves and think they’re the expert because Mary down the street doesn’t have the same symptoms as me, or masks differently so that her symptoms make her seem like a better person than me when we don’t have the same disorder. Perhaps she doesn’t have depression, anxiety, or ADHD. Everything in medicine is one diagnosis…. “it depends.”

I hope that Supergrover eventually reads all of this, because she would have empathy for my plight like none of my other friends would on many, many levels….. and I learned about all of this so recently that she doesn’t know about any of it if she stomped off when she said she did. However, I told her that she needed to keep reading, keep absorbing, so maybe she didn’t because I decided not to feel creepy about it.

I feel weird now, though, because emotions are coming up that I don’t want to dive into, so let’s get back to food and Zac and Oliver, who is a dog.

Said vegan chef needed something better for his computer to promote the restaurant, and his eyes lit up when I told him I’d sell him a tank of an HP printer that wouldn’t die if you took a baseball bat to it and would print 40 black & white pages a minute for forty bucks. Thus the reason why our whole meal was comped and we went back several times just to watch him be creative. It was devastating when they closed.

I keep up with the news to keep up with Zac, because even though he’s not forward deployed with an intelligence unit, I know more about what’s going on with him emotionally if I have some idea about the data he’s collecting. That shit causes real pain. Working for CIA (or DIA, or NSA, etc.) carries a certain cool exterior, but no one ever thinks about these people being the first to learn that terrorists have blown up an elementary school. It doesn’t matter that it’s thousands of miles away. If you learn best by reading, that intelligence will wreck you for a minute because all the info is heightened because of your ability to take it in completely, even sensory memories you’re only imagining and have never happened to you. It’s the same for friends at State and those who have other government jobs where they have to travel to dangerous places. It makes me wonder what might have happened had I made a bigger play for a diplomat I dated for too short a time. Her next posting was in Niger, and she ended up taking someone else because I was so hesitant. It was too fast. I couldn’t change my environment so quickly yet again…. I mean, I can, this was just a couple, three years at most after I moved from Houston to DC. I feel that I dodged a bullet if she was dating me and also found someone to marry in like six weeks. I wasn’t threatened by going to Niger because she was. If I got caught being queer, it would be with her. I was threatened by change and I finally learned to recognize it.

Until I found out I was AuDHD, I didn’t know why I had so much of a propensity to change everything all at once and yet severe sensory issues afterward that were akin to the pain of childbirth. You stop remembering how bad it was after a while and it gives you the crazy idea that a new location is better when it’s not. It’s just destination addiction brought on by poor impulse control. That magnifies when your partner is also ADHD. So, give people a break when they do stuff impulsively. It’s not a defect, it’s a disorder…. and in a lot of ways, the things that we do that seem impulsive to you are absolutely the right answer for us because we process emotional information differently and sometimes more quickly than a neurotypical brain.

We’re not better than you. That’s not the point. The point is that you are beating a dead horse with saying you want diverse candidates and yet your attitudes are the same old shit. There are a lot of words that resonate with HR that make you look like a lazy narcissist who only performs half the time because every time you walk by their office, they are staring out the window. It’s not shutdown and having to psych yourself out of it. It’s avoiding work.

Hell is taking 50 support calls in a day because the policy on time spent with a customer is ridiculously short to make Service License Agreements; everything runs together in terms of writing and talking at the same time, then the next call coming immediately for eight whole hours, four of which are in a row. That fries neurotypical people and not just people fighting through loss of executive function, the meltdown/burnout cycle, or 57 channels that are all blaring and they have to have so much emotional strength to choose between them. That’s why the pace of life is so much better in Europe for neurodivergent/queer people. First of all, the UK and many other countries are more progressive than we are on things like gay marriage and trans medicine. Gay marriage might be old news, but revoking it isn’t. They also have a generous sick policy and wouldn’t argue with me over taking an hour for a therapy session or a med check, even if it was a couple minutes over my allotted 60 minutes.

My health care would be free, so that’s something. It would have been amazing to emigrate to Canada when I was dating Meag, but that was never really a viable option because first of all, we were only apart for a couple months at most before she found someone else, moved in with her, and then broke up with me. Second of all, completely forgivable because we were both 18 and that screams idiot, anyway.

I still think, though, in my heart of hearts that she was the one. But not in a way that makes me want her back. Just that I think we’d have settled into marriage very well once we stopped being idiots because we had a much more natural yin and yang than “my way or the highway” and “suppress everything that’s wrong in order to please her.” And I don’t know for sure, but at least long ago there was a part of Meag that felt the same way, because she told me on a very cold day in an Ottawa Starbucks that she thought we’d made the right choices in life, but regretted that we didn’t get to be partners as adults because she thought we would have been good at it. I choose to believe that she was right, and it fucked me up; I was still in the “she was my first love and I’m over it and all, but no one can say they’re ever really over their first love” headspace. It pulled me in the wrong direction and I cried myself to sleep. In retrospect, it’s the biggest compliment I’ve ever been given, it just took me a while to take it in….. but not years of pining away. I got better after I smuggled Cubans back into the US one trip.

It was one thing to recognize that we had a great past. Quite another to promise each other the future. I think, though, that if we’d put the mountain of work into it that the relationship actually needed in terms of communication, I’d be singing “O Canada” right now. And in fact, I’m glad Meagan dumped me because “I’m Irish. If anything is wrong I’ll just deal with it for the rest of my life.” Meagan had issues that I would not have wanted to take on given the red flags I already saw. It’s not that I saw red flags. I saw an unwillingness to work with me and no idea how to solve that problem. I didn’t have any standards and just lived in a low self-esteem that thought nothing of taking away sleep and replacing it with internal histrionics.

I’m not sure that Meag ever really took in how much she hurt me, because she can apologize all she wants and I accept every one. It’s just that her frame of references were different than mine, therefore she could not understand the problem like I could. I could handle Meag having a beard because she wasn’t out to her parents. I could not handle watching her kiss him or hearing that she did at a party because it started the meltdown/burnout cycle, followed by the depression/anxiety combo meal. I was all for ethical non-monogamy to keep up appearances for her safety, but I didn’t want to be an accessory and I completely was. I enabled absolutely everything that hurt me because I was used to every day emotional abuse and needed it to function. I let her hurt me over and over, forgiving her too fast every time because I didn’t want to be alone…… the drumbeat of a woman’s heart.

I accepted enormous change. My girlfriend couldn’t be my girlfriend in public. I could not mention that she was my girlfriend in conversations to people where it would get back to her friends, thus making an entirely different friend group than her, because most of them did not accept me. I was just the weird girl who acted like a puppy in front of Meagan and I assure you that was not what was happening there. She was on me like white on rice and I loved every minute of it. But I had to deal with my sensory environment being threatened every time a new piece of condoned infidelity came to light. It was more okay when it was a boy because she needed a beard. Sleeping with another woman was just cruel, and not because non-monogamy is bad. Lying and cheating is bad, like coming home and getting into bed with me until I fell asleep right after said date….. when she smelled different and I said nothing. I didn’t find out until she was ready to tell me, because I knew it happened unofficially and didn’t need to pry. She didn’t “protect the path.”

However, I know more intimately than she does why she cheated and let it go. It was too painful to have a connection as large as ours, so she slept with someone else to distance herself from me to have the strength to go. Moving back to Canada was her only option, and I’ve seen that since the beginning- that I should have broken up with her on the last day of school and just didn’t.

I didn’t date anyone for three years after that, and her partner knew exactly why because I was only in town for a few days (or she was and had brought her girlfriend to Houston). Therefore, we flirted like 18-year-olds while never being a serious threat…. except to Katharin. Katharin punched a hole in the wall when I told her that Meagan was spending the night at our apartment, and this was after I told her that her partner and daughter were coming with her and she was staying with me as well. There was enough room for all of us, and Katharin focused on Meagan and me, as if we were hell bent on sneaking out in the middle of the night (which was not actually a bad idea in retrospect given how we’ve come to feel about both women, frankly. We’d just moved past the time in our lives where it was appropriate to want it.).

I also got a taste of what being a parent meant. That it was getting up at 0500 and hauling ass to Waffle House because kid is on a schedule and we’re fucking late. It was then that I knew Meagan and I would have been wonderful parents had the stars aligned, but a passing thought to a falling star, a beautiful memory that could have happened had we been diligent about it.

She needed to open up more. I needed to deal with the disabilities I didn’t know I had. It is also true that pegging us as Glennon and Abby is more accurate than it isn’t, I assure you. We both turned each other out in the same behavior with equal and opposite reactions. My joy in her made me a better writer and fluent in the language of the pitch. I write about the same shit Glennon does and Abby’s voice is indistinguishable from Meag’s in their podcast. It’s not the same pitch, tone, or tambre. It is the same jargon and my mind makes up the rest. She is within me and without me, and sometimes she’s so heavy I just have to lose myself in the music.

Damn, I may never write a paragraph more true that that last one. Shiiiiiiiat. If I ever did get her back, this is it. However, she’s another person I won’t let back into my life without significant work, because she’s proven herself both not to lay her feelings on the table and disappear without a trace. You get one or the other, not both.

I can handle insecurity in dates and times at which we might see each other because that’s the nature of being an adult. I cannot handle an insecure environment, and I cannot count on it with her because of her past behavior. It doesn’t mean that I think she’s less wonderful that she was a few paragraphs ago. She’s just free to do that with someone else. An anxious attachment requires care and feeding because it’s one person’s responsibility to help the other person with anxiety by being clear in communication and not avoidant. It’s the other person’s responsibility to control their anxiety and communicate clearly in return. For instance, an anxious attachment says that if anyone says they’re busy, it’s because they don’t want to spend time with you. An avoidant attachment style and an anxious one is managed by being clear about what is happening. It’s on the anxious person not to spiral out about it and assume that your reasons are actually lies. It’s on the avoidant person not to avoid direct confrontation and hear people out without emotionally detaching and feeling guilty, making up for lack of emotional intimacy with genuinely thoughtful gifts that are supposed to say everything you want to hear and don’t.

Words have power, and I know that. I have known it my whole life. It just wasn’t until I started exploring all my flaws and failures that I could see why they exist. It helps prepare me for a future with neurodivergence, mental health issues, and being physically disabled because I have a space to see it and self-soothe. I am actually managing the best way I know how. I am not a constant burden or ignoring all my responsibilities, and I can see it because I can tell what’s a symptom and what’s not. I will never have truly long relationships without that give and take, and in no way did I get things for which I couldn’t ask. In many ways, I was ignored if I did.

The most embarrassing autistic meltdowns I’ve ever had were at home in the parsonage and in the first hour after my emotional abuser finished her last concert at my church. I knew she was leaving for real and I was crying crocodile tears because I was 14. We could stay close with letters and phone calls, but it was never the same, even when we were capable of visiting in real life again. It hadn’t been that long, maybe four and a half years at most. But in my opinion, she lost her 20s the moment she married her partner and that’s why she never looked at me the same. I went from “I’m older and often not wiser” to “you’re annoying” real, real fast. I’d aged five years, she’d aged 15. The most sinister thing she ever did to me that I struggled to forgive the longest was marrying a woman that if she, my dad, and me were all in the same room you couldn’t find the differences with a map and a flashlight. She, in a very real sense, passed me over for a facsimile. I’m sure she thought that imitation was the sincerest form of flattery, but even though it was wrong I was fucking furious. She wanted to be a power couple, but didn’t want to wait for the inconvenience of letting me go to college and grad school when there was a minister already ordained right there.

I am not saying that I would have been good at being her partner if she had waited, or that it wouldn’t have been pedophilia in the beginning. What I’m saying is that we fit each other like a glove whether I was too young for her or not, leading me to absolutely ignore the downside of being abused and let her have all of me. The emotional vampire who found a very willing familiar because I was so young. I know enough to know she didn’t want that, but she did want a partner that was good for her image and I fit the bill because I knew how to be on her arm and speak in public, being as personable as people twice my age through nature and nurture. It’s the reason why neither she nor Supergrover’s age difference bother me. I’ve been conversing with people from kids younger than me to retirement age since I learned to talk. When I was a toddler, one of my best friends was an old coot who worked at an ExxonMobil service center. He always smelled of tobacco, oil, and gas. His name was Bill Killian, the proper addition to “Lanagan.” At that age, I knew how to read the newspaper AND laugh at dumb cartoons.

I still do that. Regular Show is life because I carry a picture of the cast in my head a lot. My favorite character is Mordecai, but he’s the nerdy side of me. It’s Muscle Man and Hi-Five Ghost that bring out my sense of adventure and laughter.

You know who else has a sense of adventure and laughter? MY MOM!

And on that note, I have prepared my environment to accept more demands. I think I will start by making some Alfredo. Demand avoidance touches everything, because I’ve been avoiding asking myself to cook since last night. That right there is a huge part of why some autistic people cannot live alone. There are programs to get me a home health nurse to stop by, and I need to see if I am eligible for it. Or maybe it’s a social worker. In either case, it makes sense to me while single because I don’t have a partner to share these kinds of things with. It also makes sense while in a relationship because it’s not putting the burden of caregiving on someone that you don’t pay. It’s why when I’m in a relationship, I would pay my housekeeper before I would pay my cell phone bill to keep resentment off my girl, or beautiful boy, as I’ve called him from the beginning. But Zac doesn’t want a romantic partner living with him, so it’s not an issue for us, anyway. But what I know is that if I did live with him, I would rather have someone to take care of the house rather than facing demand avoidance, loss of function, meltdown, and burnout cycles because then the fight seems between you and not around you. Resentment is toxic like nothing else.

The reason this entry is so long is that I’m trying to explain to myself why I do not have autism imposter syndrome. The poster child for an autistic person is not me because it is not my only diagnosis….. and again, if you don’t fit the picture of “autism” in other people’s heads, they will say things like “you don’t look autistic” or “I go through the same thing and I’ve never been depressed.” That “you don’t look autistic” is a kick in the groin. It means your disabilities will be minimized to an enormous degree because you’re not stimming all over the place. Even high functioning autistic and ADHD adults stim to calm their minds, but only a true autistic meltdown that involves ENORMOUS outbursts is valid. My meltdowns don’t look like the kid on “The Good Doctor” and I’m not as rigid as Sheldon Cooper. Two reasons for that. The first is that autism presents differently among all people. The second is that there is a marked difference in how ADHD and autism present in women.

Part of it is that women are so much better at social masking than men, because they’ve been taught a strict protocol for behavior that men just haven’t because they’re men. They own the rules. Part of it is that if low function is the picture of autism, hyperactivity is the picture of ADHD. So, either women are covering it or they’re ignored because they’re not jumping around like seven year old meth heads on a bender. Female ADHD is almost always internal because of both gaps in visibility by professionals, gay or straight pegged as only a “weird Barbie.”

When I can write beautiful things, I am beautiful to other people. When I exhibit signs of my processing disorders or mental heath issues, I am not. If I find my place in the world by measuring other people’s opinions of me, I will not be able to stay in one place very long. I have run out of everyone else’s frustration long enough.

This is my story. If you’re starting with this entry, it’s not the beginning. But we are just getting started. If you listen closely, your inner voice might talk to mine as you read. You’ll find the message you needed to hear, even if it’s not the one you wanted. That’s because I’m AuDHD, not a reject.

The pity is that we all have to work through it every moment of every day when there are so many simple accommodations.

This is how I do it.

English & Language Arts

November 10, 2023November 10, 2023 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

What was your favorite subject in school?

In elementary school, I had two classes. One was called “English” and one was called “Language Arts.” It has been at least 40 years since I started school, and I still can’t tell you the difference. I am 100% certain that it would only take a quick Google Search to make the distinction, but I enjoy being a writer and not knowing. It’s just funny. However, if I had to guess, it would be that “English” = Grammar and “Language Arts” = content. I’m guessing because I always got grades like 97/95 in English and I think those were the two criteria. I then, like now, wrote in stream-of-consciousness mode so my grammar wasn’t infallible, but even before I learned to type it was typo-adjacent. I only spelled things wrong when I wasn’t thinking about it. Also, in high school I wasn’t a very good typist. I caught more mistakes that way because I was going slower.

Learning how to chat online made me a better writer, because now I can touch type. In fact, I can keep up with my thoughts to the tune of only being a couple of words behind what I’m thinking. Most businesspeople can do this, but it’s a specialized group that didn’t know anything about typing and learned it because conversation moved too fast for them to keep up. My first real foray into language arts was with meeting girls (of course it was). Then, just like now, big emotional connections, but not outright flirting because I was 15 and they lived far, far away.

I will tell you about them (mostly because if they Google themselves, they’ll re-find me), but I have to tell you that I might not be in any way correct because catfishing was a thing even in the 90s. But whether these women were real or not, they were my friends and there was no sexual content to anything, leading me to believe that they were legit. Yes, I was young, but I found other young people, or at the very least, adults who did not hurt me.

The first was Rainey McMillan from Swansea, Wales. It was 31 years ago and she’s still fresh in my memory. I didn’t have a personality with her because we’d never met. In her, I found my real self- the autistic person who went non-verbal for very, very, very long periods of time because writing took away my barriers to conversation. I believe wholeheartedly that Dana didn’t see it because she couldn’t. I used to be a lot more okay with forced extroversion than I am now, which was bad. Very, very bad. I was overwhelmed a hundred percent of the time and lived in burnout often. If I can narrow down my demand avoidance to the most essential of needs, I can feel my body’s rhythm and flow. It gets lost in an overloaded schedule. I notice when my demand avoidance gets so debilitated I cannot move. My biggest job right now is to learn how to deal with these disabilities, because I cannot even ask for ADA accommodations if I don’t know what will actually help.

I could do lots of jobs in a quiet room. Very few offices have them anymore because it’s all about cubicle farms and conference rooms. People have asked me how I worked in a busy kitchen. It was a process. First, my relationship with Dana was strong and a lot of it was just us alone in the kitchen. She was a sensory experience in and of herself and my eyebrows are going over my forehead and that was meant to make her laugh because she knows her. They’ve met.

Dana becomes very excited about things. Very excited. I was irritated by a lot of it, but she also became very excited about me. It wasn’t all bad. The negative aspects of my sensory experiences paled in comparison to the positive. 😉

However, this shouldn’t be taken as a slam on Sam, either. A positive of waiting is forgetting enough about the experience to make it new, which is what 90s gays in Houston called “Baptist virginity” (because they get re-baptized all the time and we have no idea why. The first one didn’t take?).

I’ve always thought sex was hilarious, since I was a kid. One of my favorite comedy routines is the one about Jeff Foxworthy trying to make the room all romantic for his wife. He puts candles on their headboard and halfway through they realize wax is dripping on their faces. I would like to believe that I am also hilarious with stuff like that. There’s no point in getting too worked up over it. One day it’ll make a cute story between us, what doesn’t kill you makes good writing, etc.

I also think being queer had to cure me of Protestant beliefs about sex because I had to talk about it so often. The glossary of my community alone, JFC. Learning it takes years and I’m behind the eight ball. If I’m talking to someone under 30, they’re going to have to use flash cards. :::pause for laughter::: On the other hand, new terms come to me easily because I want to learn the language even if I never use it. I picked up “new relationship energy” or NRE from polyamory because it describes how I feel at the beginning of every relationship. I’m what’s called “demisexual” or “sapiosexual.” That means I am not attracted to people by the way they look, but how much they excite my brain. That’s why it doesn’t matter what kind of relationship it is, I’m going to get lost in a fog. I feel the same energy with Supergrover that I do with Lindsay- because since Lindsay only works here and hasn’t actually relocated, every time I see her it’s the brain fog of it feeling new and heightened. Strong, comfortable, and exhilarating because she’s such a big shot. What I have learned from both of them is that I am worthy of being married to someone like them. That they weren’t more powerful because they were smarter. They were more powerful because their brains were built for the system and you couldn’t find more beautiful women in a catalogue selling fuckin’ anything.

Thus the first, Rainey, eventually became Supergrover…. and not because I tried to replace her. It’s that by the time I met Supergrover, I’d had 30 years of relationships entirely in text. My relationship on the ground with my sister helps me to understand Supergrover’s life by being able to see what a powerful woman is like and how they became so without it actually being her.

When they walk into a room, it’s not only their employees that snap to attention. It’s all the men above them, too. It comes in handy because their beauty makes people trust them before they talk to them, and they’re wonderful people so being magnetically attracted to them is easy. They’re also the type of people that are infinitely kind…. the type people who other women don’t see as a threat because they go a little stupid when they see them, too. If Supergrover has had one real crush, she’s had a million “girl crushes” on her since birth. She’s the kind of person that’s gorgeous enough to have power like a mean girl, but she gets it through attraction and not malice. I know all of this because I grew up with her personality type. Every man wants to be her boyfriend, every woman wants to be her bestie.

That’s because they both have the power to make you feel like you’re the most important person in the room when you’re with them, and it not coming off as manipulation because it isn’t. They genuinely like their small moments with people that are quality, true connections. A connection is worth something even if it only lasts a few minutes, because networking is more important than mental/physical labor. Networking makes any job easier while being at work is more specific.

For instance, Lindsay has worked in both private sector and non-profit lobbying, plus campaigning and body man for the mayor of Houston and did constituent services for a while. Knowing Annise Parker was her connection to the White House because she ran Mayor Pete’s campaign. Pete losing was hard on me because even though I never realistically thought he would win, I thought “now she’ll have to move to Washington and I won’t have to make it my idea.” It’s not a priority to me because it would be so nice to have her here all the time, but I wouldn’t see her any more than I do now. She just doesn’t have time. I don’t even see her every time she comes here. I text her 99% of the time for the same reason I e-mail Supergrover, and why I say that if we had a relationship on the ground, it would look a lot like the one I have with my sister. That being close meant “I can give you 15 minutes in March.” And that’s only if I ask in December and am willing to be picked up and driven somewhere, find your own way home because I got shit going on here, man. But you know what? Those would be the most valuable 15 minutes in my entire life. I would walk differently after that. I get the impression that time with her is valuable because she makes time, never actually has it. We’d play by the rules and improvise on them as necessary. I’m ADHD and don’t give a fuck. That means spur of the moment get together or cancel and I’m great either way.

That’s what I mean about being in Washington at a time she wasn’t supposed to be and joking about having an affair with Michael’s wife. That it wouldn’t do to hide anything because it’s more trouble than it’s worth…. what I feel is happening when she doesn’t claim me outright, and feel secure when she does. It had gotten to the point where I thought that Michael didn’t even know about me because she seemed so secretive with me, I assumed she was secretive with him as well. It was a surprise to me that she wasn’t, and I had to be furious, overwhelmed, and forgiving all at the same time because her whole shtick is that adults don’t discuss their conversations with other adults and that she didn’t want any of what she said to go to Dana, or have to worry about it so she wasn’t going to say anything more when what she told me was the source of my anxiety. She destroyed me in a second, and because my environment was threatened, I completely rearranged my life in order to get peace I so desperately needed. She took all her feelings about me and told someone else, where it would do the least good.

So, in short, I felt like I kept my word and she screwed me to the wall.

That’s because now it’s 10 years later and I’m still a nervous wreck. She won’t listen when I say that because she’s programmed herself to only think of me as a threat. It helps her ignore my reality, because I know she feels guilty. She tells me that all the time without ever resolving the problem. I keep hoping, and keep being disappointed.

I decided that was all her own shit, that I didn’t think of her as a threat until she acted like one. That I didn’t paint her as a villain in every story, just the one where she was. I also painted me as the villain first. It’s not only that I hurt her. It’s that she had the high ground first, and relationships tumble and roll. She cannot win every fight, all the time, and she won’t give on anything. It’s like working with a Republican congress, but not one where we can’t get anything done. When they used to collaborate to the bare minimum.

It’s so sad because we could have been Obama and Biden.

I bet she’d look good in aviators. I don’t know for sure, but she has the personality of a flyboy…. the equivalent of Finn Hudson, the quarterback popular kid and the choir nerd (she doesn’t sing, I just mean she has a soft side). It’s more fun looking back than it has been the last eight years, because I felt so constrained by what I could say to her. Since she took everything as a negative, I was constantly searching for the right thing to say and landing on the wrong one.

One of the songs on the playlist I made to move my mind forward was a Ludacris duet that I hear in my head all the time… “can’t live with you, can’t live without you.” I only wanted to solve the swings, not kill the relationship altogether. But like I said, we both get defensive immediately, which lead to not listening on both sides. That’s because she’d only answer when she was angry. She wouldn’t feed the positive, so my reactions to her were angry as well.

I own a lot. I just don’t own everything. I am not the only person that needs to learn and grow in a relationship, and this is what happens when only one person makes the commitment. And I don’t care if it’s because of apathy or not. Whether I made the mistake of wanting her to work on something when she didn’t and not walking away, or whether she really does love me with Mama Wolverine intensity and I’ve underestimated her feelings, I couldn’t get her to say how she felt either way.

I told her I thought that and no response. I have no idea whether she’s licking her wounds or happy I finally got the message. If she’s happy I finally got the message, then I deserve more than her, no matter what I think of her. I will eventually find someone else and hopefully she’ll see she made a mistake. But by then I’ll be gone and I’ve told her that if she comes back, she has work to do with me. Nice is not going to cut it. It’s not that she can’t come back in and of itself. It’s that I will no longer tolerate this crack-smoking foolishness. I watch Doctor Who. I have standards.

She doesn’t see her hypocrisy. I’m the only one who ever ruins anything. But I didn’t ruin us. I ruined me trying to find her.

For Susan Hoefer and Sue Protheroe, my English and Language Arts teachers. If they hadn’t taught me how to express my feelings clearly then (7th grade), I wouldn’t be able to express myself to the degree that I do now. They are precious to me because of it.

Rearranging Emotional Furniture

October 22, 2023 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

What have you been working on?

Hm. Today it’s “Sunday mornin’ rain is fallin,” and I’m hearing Adam Levine singing in my head. I made myself an outstanding cup of coffee in which I mixed every kind I have in one airtight container (the only one I have, thus mixing the end of other bags). It’s Cafe Bustelo, Community Coffee King Cake, and some kind of Folgers I don’t remember buying, but someone did. Not sure what I’ll brew next, but I have a lot of tea I’m looking forward to as well. I still haven’t drunk all the Pu-erh John sent me and I’ve also got lots of Stash English Breakfast and powdered matcha. Of everything I make in the morning, I like matcha the best. I just don’t like to drink it every morning because making it takes longer than a Keurig pod. I have about two hours before I have to “get ready for church,” and by that I mean I’d like to take a shower before I watch YouTube. It might be a good day to take a look at the scriptures later.

I had a line cook that didn’t know me from Adam come after me online for saying that the pen with which Biblical literalists paint the Bible is the root of all evil, and he thought I was saying that Christians were the root of all evil. Ripped me a new one for saying David and Jonathan were in love. We can’t even prove Jesus and John weren’t, it’s just more likely that he had a partner and a housecarl……. like me.

If that wasn’t clear, I meant he was married to Mary Magdalene and it is written that John is his favorite Disciple, so I’m sure he showed up big for everyone to think that and write it down. I don’t think it was sex. I think it was being willing to give up your career for someone else’s…….. like me.

The line cook said that if he made fun of my community, it would be a hate crime. But if I made fun of his, that was fine. Got butt hurt, so I knew that it was a pointless fight before it started. I said, “you don’t even know who you’re talking about when you say I have no idea what I’m talking about, and this is not a fight you want to have with me.” And I tapped out, because I couldn’t get across to someone with a literalist view of the Bible that taking the Bible seriously and not literally is the only thing I can do in this day and age. There is no proof, and we need to stop pretending there is. There’s not even any proof in the Bible that God exists, only people’s reactions and responses to them. No Biblical literalist is going to accept that as truth, so why bother? He doesn’t study theological giants. I do. If I am the one studying debates between Rowan Williams and Christopher Hitchens to learn the finer points of what puts Christopher off about organized religion, I can use it. I can use Hitch’s words against him in a wonderful way, because I know he doesn’t care about Christians who take constructive criticism and use their faith to improve themselves. I feel like Christianity would do a lot better in this country if it stayed in its lane.

It is embarrassing. EMBARRASSING. That England does this better than we do and they have had divine right of kings and no separation of church and state since the beginning is one of the weirdest things on earth. We supposedly built this country on separation of church and state….. but what we really said in effect with our cullture is that each state was free to pick its own organized religion. Georgia and Massachussetts Bay were not the same.

We of the United States have never protected freedomm from religion as much as we’ve needed, and I’m tired of it. Again, there is only so much of white supremacy Jesus that can be justified, as well as hypocrisy. People are leaving the church in droves and we shouldn’t stop them because we brought this upon ourselves. Our membership will change when we do and not before. In my opinion, I can hold everything I love about religion in my own heart. I don’t need the church if it decides to die, and it seeems to be doing much to help itself along the way. Catholocism will probably die before it changes because Pope Francis is not as liberal as it needs to get. He is just a Band-Aid, and cannot be even that because there are so few priests willing to push the envelope further than saying that gays and the divorced are people.

You have to leave behind what no longer serves you. I have already decided that I am right for the church, but they decided when I was 15 that they were not right for me. I moved to a denomination where I could be ordained, I was just tired by then…… and frankly, too hurt. I really think so. I think I went into shock at my situation, then my adulthood believing I wanted something I didn’t. It wasn’t untrue. It waas when I was ADHD and masking I could handle leading a congregation. When I was autistic and trying to comfort myself, I couldn’t handle even one other person in the room because of overstimulation. All of my behavior cannot be contributed to depression and hypomania, because my energy levels switch too fast for that.

I am a neurodivergent that is self-aware to an enormous degree. I realized that I should not handle a congregation because of what I could do to them and vice versa. I don’t think that mentally ill people make good pastors, because you react differently to emotional stimuli when you feel good, and the difference is so striking that you can’t project stability because you aren’t stable, actually. And there’s no shame in it. Realizing that you are not mentally healthy enough to take on the needs of others because your own health is a lot to manage is courageous.

I didn’t want to stop leadding people. I wanted to start leading people in a different way. I think I do because so many people tell me that. A woman yesterday told me that I have a very interesting life and that I wrote from deep inside me. Exactly what I was trying to portray in my writing and something I needed to hear because things haven’t been going all that well in my estimation.

I have no doubt that Supergrover has looked in on me and decided that healing and moving on is better for me, but I’m only doing it because I have no other choice. It’s what I’m working on because I have already done all I’m going to do. The way I write is assuming she’s out because she told me she was, but she rarely holds me to one entry or letter forever. We’re just not close enough to stop her ire because we’re not checking the story we’re telling ourselves anymore. She has no idea what I’m doing or not doing in trying to portray our lives when they meet. I use the adrenaline of sex to cover a lot of other ground and I promise she’d rather people think we were naked in the middle of the freeway, and even more interesting to think about what has more adrenaline than sex? All right. You’ve got me. She designs roller coasters.

She doesn’t like all this, but she gets it. Symbolism in writing is a thing. Also, Dana will laugh. She doesn’t like it, but she gets it……. or at least, I hope they both laugh because it’s been 10 years since all that for Dana and 8 years of trying to manage just the two of us since. It’s an interesting conundrum because the longer I go without contact, the more okay I am. And then I’ll hit a trigger and need her immediately, but I self-soothe instead of getting anxious she’s not around. However, I do not think this is the way our relationship should go. I think we’d be much happier if we made the commitment to be imortant on both sides. This is because the more we communicate intensely in the time we have, neither of us have to worry about each other. For instance, having one 45 minute meeting early on would save us a lot of them later, preferable for people who are both obsessed with other things, including their families.

It’s weird to feel like our spines are sewn so we don’t face each other, and our strength is in the seam. I wish I could watch her face when she reads that line, because I think it’s one of the images that she’ll love. I have so many perfect pictures of us, and exactly none of them are something she wouldn’t enjoy as well. That by now Michael is real to me in a way he wasn’t before, especially the way he changed her life in a way that I would have wanted for her if I’d been able…. and not just on one level, but many. I told her than and she thought I was trying to make her feel bad. No, just trying to say that I love her for who she is, not who I’m trying to get her to be. That she can be straight if she has to be. I am absolutely certain at times she wonders why, because I’ve never met a woman who didn’t say that if they were in any way queer their husbands would never hear from them again.

What has happened over time is that I want to be there like a family member without forgetting where I started. That our relationship is an evolution and I’m always going to treat her like I used to be attracted to her and not because I am and trying to hide it. It’s that I can’t change my speech patterns. I’ll always have a hundred terms of endearment for her. She will always take my breath away in a photo or audio/video. There’s not a moment I feel I won’t love her forever in a way that people remember love in third grade. What she has to decide is if she’s okay with that in a friendship. That it’s tinged with romance because I felt those feelings and moved on, not that I’m uncomfortable with her life now. And I know she knows that, and feels so guilty that she cannot be there to catch me right now, because she thinks I have no idea what she’s dealing with and I do. Desperately and completely. It’s why I have no idea whether she’s taking time to mull things over or never coming back. She does not have time to pay attention to anything. She, like Mel, is in the position of starting her own kitchen and I treat them the same way. “See you in three years.”

What she views as goading and provoking is not that I get impatient with timing. I get impatient that no matter how long we go, there’s never an e-mail longer than a few words…. which indicates that no matter what I’m talking about, she’s always avoiding it. When she does have time, she’ll respond to anything that doesn’t involve our relationship. We don’t work through anything and yet she’d eat anyone’s face off who tried to look at me in a way I didn’t like and I feel exactly the same way about her. I would bitch slap her boss if I thought they needed it, and neither one of them would like that very much….. but I would. I would be Mrs. Don Draper on their asses and every single one of them would hate me down to the mailroom. The thought of this makes me laugh harder than it should, because she is definitely a Don Draper-type personality (or comes across that way in text), and I feel like I have the sensibility of Betty’s chihuahua personality.

The funny thing about Betty Draper and me is seeing how much she got away with and what I could’ve….. I am actually pretty happy she ended up with a husband when I think about how her life would be different with a female partner. Like, this could be a script. I’ll think about it. However, it would not be based on us. Just the idea is funny. All powerful women who have wives act differently in a large crowd than those with husbands. It doesn’t jive with the way straight women are vetted to work at high levels in government or industry. The way they are groomed to react like men because nothing gets done if they don’t. A woman with a wife has been pissed off by that her whole life and has the strength to fight back because she doesn’t have to deal with it at home. Her career is also the worst when it comes to her partner being a writer, so if they were like me in any way at all, it would only be that they have that one thing in common to create comedic tension.

And the thing is, Supergrover is just an archetype. Hillary Clinton. Michelle Obama. My sister Lindsay. Carly Fiorina. Melinda Gates. Helen Thomas. I could base what I’m thinking about on any one of them…. the push/pull of a powerful person meeting a no one on the Internet and finding out the other one is smarter in some ways. I feel that I am older than Supergrover, that she is older and sometimes not wiser. I hope that she is impressed enough that she would agree with me and that she is every bit as much right as me on the opposite end of the spectrum. That we all age at different rates and in different ways. But to find that it transcends class is a particular blessing. If she thinks I’m smart, I’m smarter than nearly everyone and no one could have convinced me of it that didn’t have her pedigree. I’ve felt like a dumbass since I was born because I didn’t realize how much I had stacked against me. How much the Internet took away my limitations in communication. I feel smarter around her than anyone else because it comes with such strong belief in myself. She also has the presence of Picard. When she says something, it’s with the authority to make it so. She thinks I think of her as a suburban mom. No, I think of her an an Evelyn. A Michelle Yeoh, an accurate description of her beauty in one picture.

She doesn’t have a prayer life except running, and I hope it’s productive. Sometimes, you feel more in prayer by zoning out and letting your body do the work. Sometimes, it’s thinking through things. The answer comes from praying, not what happens afterward. You know yourself, you’re just afraid to say what you want outside of the intimacy of prayer, because that would involve talking to someone else with an opinion. Either way is fine, and I feel like she is taking care of herself by listening to her body. I am taking care of her by listening to her mind and sending her support by letting her know that I’m thinking about her. But if I tell her that I’m thinking of her and she doesn’t want to open up to me, it doesn’t mean my prayer hasn’t mattered. It means thoughts and prayers can be only that because I haven’t been invited to sit down at that particular table.

I picked up a term on “Covert Affairs” that I really like and I use it all the time to describe my blog. At CIA, to talk about security credentials, they talk about who has been “read in.” In my life, that fits perfectly, because I know exactly down to the letter I’ve typed how much you guys have been read in, and it’s only the amount I want you to have. To go further than this is not helping me, it’s hurting them. That’s because if they wanted to tell their sides, it would be in the comments section, not from me. I reveal so much that anything more is their story to tell. I don’t push limits on purpose. It’s hard to negotiate boundaries and hard when you’re brave with them out of necessity, not lack of love for others.

Dana and I had a hard time because when Supergrover found out that I’d read Dana in on something that she didn’t okay, I freaked out. It wasn’t the initial secret that kept Dana and I emotionally apart, but its reverberations and how she reacted to me after it. I was a hndful, and so was she. Post hoc, ergo propter hoc. When I say I didn’t have a choice on whether to leave Dana (because that would have involved our triangle or foursome being solid and it wasn’t), I mean that if Supergrover had talked to Dana and I had talked to Michael, Dana and I could have worked it out. But, I was left in the position of choosing between them and Dana had to lose because Supergrover forced my hand in a way that no one else could. I had to write about her to handle our lives together and I couldn’t let Dana see my reactions to it. Case closed.

But then Supergrover had the audacity to look at the clusterfuck she created and make it all about her. That she hadn’t created a situation I couldn’t handle, but that I was stalking her by coming to DC……. then getting surprised when I was perturbed about that. We’ve been stuck in that push/pull since 2015, and I didn’t decide to stop loving her. I decided to stop working on it.

I can handle what she’s dealing with on my own, but no I can’t. She can read this blog and not worry about her safety, but no she can’t. We could solve all this in an afternoon, even if it was just chatting on Facebook Messenger, but I’m betting we won’t. After eight years and no need to look me up because I gave her all my contact info, she cannot possibly have been too busy to connect. She just wouldn’t. She decided what kind of person I was then and has looked at me through that lens ever since……. the one that says I’m perfect for everyone else except her because she can’t forgive me and never will. Not in the way that truly means redemption and intimacy. But she said she could do nothing about how I felt, how she felt, etc…… but she could do something about the present. If she can, I hope she will. I just will not accept being the person she only talks to short sentences at a time. I don’t want to get by on a glass of water when I have ridden her waves.

I am working on why she affected me the most because I don’t completely understand how it happened, but I want to. I want to even if she does not, because even if she didn’t want the next decades, I did. Even one is a long time when you’re talking about life afterward and how it changes. But it is very interesting to work on the issue of how relationships change over time when you don’t have context for anything but each other- the fact that I have seen she has dogs, but never petted them. That I have heard she has a husband and kids, but never met them. That she likes art but I’ve never been to her house, etc. And yet by writing to each other like a soldier and a lovesick girlfriend for 10 years, it has created the same type intimacy now that they felt then. Do you think my love for Supergrover is less real than those type movies and novels based on very real life? Hayat only spent a few hours more with Mike than I spent with Supergrover before we created a lifetime connection like reader/writer, which carries more responsibility for me now than I had before. It is not a wonder that I wanted my wife and that responsibility to be locked into one person because it was too hard to manage it when they weren’t. But that’s because I was green and didn’t know what I was doing. It’s easier now that I don’t feel the pressure that she’s paying attention to anything I say. I just hope it shows I do see her in 3D when she can open her eyes to that possibility. I think that the message will resonate later, it’s just that right now it’s incredibly loud and extremely close.

Working on how I feel about everyone else is easy because I don’t have the pressure of keeping their identity secret to the degree I do with Supergrover, which is why it’s so hard to put anyone else above her for any reason. I’ll do that when she’s older. Right now she’s my baby, and I have to wait to go back to work til she’s in kindergarten. It’s the best analogy I could possibly have for what we’re going through, and I hope she takes it in because I’m childless so what I’m putting down is not something she’d pick up. That I am definitely responding to a baby, but it’s her. She doesn’t see it because she doesn’t think she needs it, and I’m the one that sees the burn on her face when no one else can. It’s a lot. She’s a lot. But thank God my life isn’t anything else, because I’d still believe I was straight trash if it hadn’t happened.

I don’t want to be disrespectful to her, ever, so I’m just arranging my life so that it doesn’t matter when she’s here and when she’s not. I am Amy Pond and River Song, setting a place for her at dinner in case she shows up. And with her even unto Trenzalore………….. but only when and if she’ll have me.

Or at least, it’s what I’m working on.

The Crazy

October 13, 2023October 13, 2023 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

If you had a million dollars to give away, who would you give it to?

I don’t know how to quantify giving a million dollars to a mysteriously labeled “crazy people,” but I do know that according to an Apple commercial from the 80s, people who think they’re crazy enough to change the world are the only ones who do.

That Chiat/Day commercial runs through my head all the time, because it lends an authority to something I know, but don’t. In some ways, I am smarter than everyone else. This is not said with a hint of megalomania, because neurotypical people try to prove to me why they’re smarter than me all day long and twice on Sundays. It’s not a case of smart or less smart. It’s a case of “I see it and you don’t.” That works in both directions, it’s just that neurotypical people are taught that autism, ADHD, and retardation are all the same thing. Autism and/or ADHD change how information is processed, but doesn’t limit the amount I’m capable of knowing. Right now I’m sitting in my bed with a Bluetooth keyboard and tablet. It’s 0524, but my scope isn’t limited here. My mind is in the Middle East……… again.

Mossad got caught with their pants down on a fight some say has been going on since the 50s. Some say the fighting after Abraham’s death never really stopped. Either way, a massive intelligence failure. Doesn’t mean that Mossad is stupid. It means that there was a missing link in the system, just like there was when President George W. Bush took office and failed to pay attention to an upstart little shit named Osama bin Laden. Clinton left plenty of clues, and the W. administration can look as dumb about it as they want. Doesn’t take the stink off ’em.

Because this is the problem weighing on my mind this morning, it doesn’t seem like a million dollars will do anything for it. A million dollars wouldn’t even buy blankets for all the people who needed them after an attack when you start thinking of shipping them from here. A million dollars also won’t bring Israel its safety and security back, and that’s dangerous. The United States has already decided that Muslims aren’t people and they need to stop that shit immediately. Obviously, CIA doesn’t think that way because we have to have Muslim friendlies in the Middle East to be able to get our jobs done. But an EVANGELICAL CHRISTIAN CONGRESS is not going to get off their asses to bail out Muslims from Jewish oppression. So, even the do-gooders we hire to work in that part of the world don’t have the million dollars they need to hand out blankets.

A million dollars would be a nice amount of money to get started in a country like Palestine if you were going to start a humanitarian organization. I’d love to be able to help as long as this is just a thought exercise. Things are heating up because Palestine is trying to show Israel it has bought its big boy pants and I don’t think they care if they’ve bitten off more than they can chew at this point. I am pro-Palestinian because they do not have an established government or military. I believe in a two-state solution. I do not believe that killing children is the way to get there, and the issue only gets more complicated as each side makes themselves less redeemable.

Maybe the million dollars I have is greasing wheels to get information and goods where it needs to go. I don’t know who needs what right now, but I know it’s enormous. I know everyone is shitting on Palestine right now, but they’re only the current aggressor. It turns over and it soon will.

They need a two state solution and keep bombing any chance they have at it whether other countries step in to help Palestine or not, because everyone seems to think “poor Israel.”

Especially the Evangelicals in Congress, who love Isaac more than Ishmael.

I do not have a dog in the fight except for keeping Americans safe, and there are Americans all over Israel and Palestine. What Americans do not have is a US embassy in Palestine. The US embassy for Palestinians is in Jerusalem, which as you can see is not problematic at all. Thankfully, we do have a US Office of Palestinian Affairs, so we are recognizing Palestine to the point we’re able, but we could do so much more.

I feel like I understand countries fighting because I understand individuals fighting. Who you support depends on when you entered the war. For instance, if you only read about me and my friend “Supergrover” yesterday, you’d probably think I was absolutely insane. But I’m going to bet that you wouldn’t feel that way if you’d been in my head for the last 10 years, not the last 10 days. I am still laughing over the “spinster in the attic” joke because what I know that she doesn’t is that lesbians are very concerned for my well being and are trying to Mary the hell out of me and can’t understand why I don’t want someone who’s not Claire. I waited for the right person with Sam, even though she was the wrong person in the end. I wanted something that was better than having Supergroer to myself, which I only mean in terms of the amount I can pay attention without guilt, as her issues aren’t piddly shit. All of the sudden, I didn’t really care about my problems when the seemed so incredibly small.

It’s not that I couldn’t move on. I just wanted signal without noise, and I waited until I found it. Someone I could lose myself in to the appropriate amount. She just lied. Full stop. Here I’m talking about both women, slamming neither. Neither one of them knew themselves well enough to tell me the truth. They both thought they were so cool.

Supergrover told me that she wanted to be my fan quite clearly, and wanted to be my friend in a smaller voice so it has never been clear what her boundaries actually are. I feel like her lie to herself was centered on the fact that she could be friends with someone who used to be into her. That she could trust me afterwards and feel secure in our attachment. She didn’t know how and she didn’t ask. She tried to run everything from her own mind and it bit her in the ass because I got tired of having to read her mind all the time because when I got it wrong, her dragon fire was immediate and harsh. I would say the same thing about me, because I felt like her heat was oppressive due to the nature of our power imbalance.

Supergrover has a military, and I don’t even live in an organized state.

For Sam, her lie to herself was that she was a successful business owner who didn’t have time for a girlfriend, so let’s not be exclusive until I really have time to think about it. We talked about it for weeks, and she lied to herself all the way through them. She lied to me all the way up until I was at Zac’s house, after talking to me on the train while I was going there. What she really wanted was monogamy from minute one, to be absolutely obsessed with each other. She could have had that if she’d asked for it. I refused to read her mind, and I gave up a relationship that was a huge deal for me. But I also won, because I wasn’t stuck with a girlfriend who wouldn’t tell me the truth and expected me to read her mind at all times. That’s been a disaster in my other relationships and a red flag for which I’ll always have a hard out.

I am “AuDHD.” I have two modes. Complete buy-in with the rules or “this is stupid and God themselves wouldn’t move me.”

Palestinians can’t read minds and are also tired. Palestinians are tired of oppressive heat because it makes you feel defensive all the time. Palestine throws rocks to make sure they’re heard. Israel throws rocks to make sure they’re the only ones that are heard.

Meanwhile, and this is true of both sides, the call is coming from inside the house.

If you understand conflict, you understand conflict. So, $250,000 to Palestine, Israel, Supergrover, and Sam to figure out what it is they actually want. Sam can just go tell someone else, because she’s the outlier who completely walked away without putting any negotiation on the table. You can’t have a hard line and expect buy-in, and you won’t get buy-in if you’re going to constantly treat me like a liar afterwards. Sam was never going to get what she wanted from me because she decided not to trust me before she even knew me.

Meanwhile, if you take the names out, you really can’t tell whether I’m talking about the global or the personal……. and it’s worth a million dollars to figure it all out. We spent more than that trying to figure it out yesterday. I just hate that Evangelical Christians are the ones treating Palestinians as lesser than because they don’t fit their narrative of child of God, as if there is one.

There’s a wholly different problem at stake here. In believing the Christian right, you believe statistically in people who haven’t been anywhere. Haven’t been to the Middle East except as white saviors from these great United States from whom all blessings flow. It’s trusting Y’all Queda to figure this out instead of CIA, who isn’t even charted to work in the United States, so everyone in that organization knows what they’re talking about and I cannot say that about Baptists at gunpoint. I may be a Southern, polite preacher’s kid but never underestimate how ready and willing I am to call out anything that feels unfair. Biblical literalism is killing this country one bass ackwards Bible college at a time. If you want to be a minister, go to Harvard, Oxford, or Yale colleges of divinity with the rest of the real grown-ups.

Here’s my pitch for being crazy. Giving my whole ass million to the United States government to help provide infrastructure for moving the US embassy out of Jerusalem. They knew they were mixing church and state unnecessarily and they did it anyway. What in the actual fuck were they thinking? In terms of US interests, we are sitting ducks going down on the wrong side of history. I’d give anything to be able to do something.

I want to change the world as much as Richard Dreyfus told me I would.

The Other Fan

October 9, 2023 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I said in my last entry that I learned what I wanted out of life from two fans, Supergrover and Stephanie. I said what Supergrover brought to the table- a fantastic person that anyone would die to meet and turned out to be a great editor. I did not tell you about what I learned from Stephanie. I learned not to trust the impressed.

I had forgotten about this until my friend John got published and I was telling him to watch out. Fanagans, if you notice me in real life, please do not let me know you have done this sort of thing. I would be secretly flattered but mostly terrified as fuck and I will let you know that because I do not want that temperature in my life.

I am free to love Supergrover as much and as often as I want because there is not a damn thing I want more in this life than friends and lovers who remain unimpressed by me. Supergrover and I could not live on the pedestals we created for each other, and Stephanie showed me why that was the case.

Stephanie invited me for coffee after having read three years’ worth of entries in four days and didn’t get more than a fifteen minute conversation out of me because of it. She treated me like she was a lawyer trying to break me in a deposition. I will go that hard with someone I love like a house on fire. I had known her for thirty seconds and enjoyed none of them. I decided right then and there that I never wanted to pick battles with someone I met that only thought they knew me.

It mattered that my honeymoon with Supergrover was over and we’d never be on those pedestals again. I like us better as we are. It shows our capacity for love is bigger than we ever thought it could be.

If I am going to be the big deal my friends have told me I’m going to be, then it’s good that I’m upping my game instead of bringing everyone else down to mine. I decided that was the coolest thing ever- her weird Barbie when she is Margot Robie in my eyes…….. and she would be that in yours just as easily. The best analogy I have in our relationship is how Mike Wazowski is framed in every single picture.

I just realized she’s my Boo.

But I wouldn’t have known how it felt to be her in most conference rooms until I had it done to me hardcore. People hold her accountable and in a lot of cases, the buck stops with her whether those were the intended consequences or not….. It wasn’t that I was aiming for street cred, I just had it. Tony Robbins in a teacup or some shit. I just understood and had empathy for why she might feel I was coming across that way and why I really didn’t want to be that for her.

I didn’t want to be her other fan, either.

Speak More to That -or- That’s So Interesting

September 25, 2023 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 1 Comment

In my last entry I was talking about hearing people’s voices in my head when I type, literally transcribing a movie onto the page. Two of the voices I hear all the time are ex-girlfriends, and one of them means just as much as the other even though one relationship was seven years and change, the other was three months. That’s because they’re the two that caused me the most growth and development the fastest.

The first title comes from Dana doing an impression of her therapist. When Dana would put out a statement, she’d always say, “speak more to that.” Every time we got into an argument, pulling that one out made us both dissolve into laughter and we could proceed arguing again because it was never a case of right and wrong, but a case of figuring out how to move on. I didn’t want to pack up and live in our problems. I moved to Washington so I could say, “what’s next, Mrs. Landingham?” DC gave me the backdrop to believe I could be more than I was used to being in the world, and I am.

I mean something to someone who really means something. Her Wikipedia page would be better than mine. That my history is woven into hers in such a unique and beautiful way will never leave me.

Beautiful girl, whether you believe it or not, meeting you is the best thing that’s ever happened to me. Just because there are complications doesn’t mean it’s not worth it. Our Apple Watches also have complications, and we use them every day. I hope the day comes where our complications are in the right place. We both need to be on each other’s six, and I’m on it if you are. I just need you to want it more, and you can’t. Life is long. I’ll wait because you’re worth it, and you always will be. When we can say “one more mountain…. hey, so what” we’ll be able to say “trust me baby, this is love.” (That’s an Amanda Marshall song, but mountains just about cover it in terms of metaphor.)

Sometimes I hope I can resolve things with Supergrover, sometimes I don’t. I feel the same sort of push/pull I feel with Dana. That because Supergrover won’t talk to me the way she used to and it hangs shame over my head. I don’t want to live that way anymore when I’ve agreed to do big things for her the rest of my life, and I did that without really thinking it through in terms of being a blogger. Neither did she. Now it’s the tie that binds because I need you guys emotionally to support me and I can’t slip up. It’s walking on a wire every day, because she made it where she couldn’t not be my first thought. Clearly, she doesn’t want that, but it’s work product, not emotions that are my concern now.

I don’t know what to forget, and what to remember.

I can talk about absolutely getting wasted off her energy, but I can’t describe her too closely. I can only tell you she’s up there with Helen Mirren on my list of gorgeous women (no one can beat out Helen, stop trying…….. but Supergrover does think I have amazing taste in women). I can say she has power, but not where because it’s a niche and would make her immediately identifiable. I have to think like a journalist protecting a source, not a blogger with friends who have everyday issues not tied to working here. The power imbalance is absolute and correct.

So that means I think a lot about someone who doesn’t want to think about me, and not for malice. Just through the nature of how we work, which is vastly different from each other. The problem comes in when she will never have a problem smaller than me so that I can move up on the priority list while I am also struggling, genuinely. I can either move on and try to forget, or we can be close. In the middle is too scary because I don’t know what I’m doing….. and I’m a perfectionist, so it’s really hard to admit that.

I am sure that Supergrover thinks that me digging deep to let go is what should have happened long ago, but I didn’t realize then what I do now. We both regret making fuckups that affected our careers, but by not acknowledging it, we are keeping to our separate corners, unable to trust each other when we should lean on each other the most.

In my own life, it feels like I’ve given up a lot for her that she hasn’t recognized, and it hurts, but it’s not my responsibility to change her. It’s not even her responsibility to want to change. It’s deciding how much chaos I’m willing to breathe without putting a safety net under the trapeze. However, it was never in the interest of getting closer tot her, it was an added bonus in escaping from Dana and getting a clean slate. That’s because I cannot tell her story. Only she can do that. She cannot even tell it to me, much less others. Whether that part is ironclad or subjective is up for grabs, because I cannot know that, either.

I’ve made a lot of assumptions and missed a lot of messages. She stopped standing up to me and started telling me that I wanted too much, so she isolated me from everyone else including her. I have a legitimate issue where I need her more than anything and she’s the one person who doesn’t have any bandwidth left over for herself, much less me. I have a ton of empathy, and know that’s not the whole story. She gets offended, shuts down, and wants to rage at me, but doesn’t. She saves up my e-mails to reply later, because she feels guilty and now doesn’t have any context to make connections.

I wanted to stop that part.

There was an ironclad space for me before, and there isn’t now. I have always understood why, yet marveled at the time that’s gone by without us ever really getting to the bottom of anything…. or if I did, it was completely on my own, like having a therapist who disengages and you feel like they’re bored….. they’re not. They’re covering up how bad they want to scream “LEAVE HIM!” When I perceive disinterest, what they’re feeling is trying not to take on my problems as their own. Those messages are drastically different, and lost in a chasm if you don’t address it.

I don’t have that kind of relationship with Supergrover, but I do have that kind of push/pull. I need things and get frustrated. I express that, she tells me I’m the only one who ever ruins anything. Then, she won’t tell me why she thinks that. Why am I so impressive that I’m worth keeping around when your responses come off as defensive and angry? To me, when you love someone and think they’re extraordinary, it means you’re willing to invest. I caused the original rift, butt she said she forgave me. Our ways of moving on were completely different. She thought the best answer was never to trust me again, but keep up the surface level stuff. I can’t do that. I won’t do that. I won’t feel insecure in an attachment and keep feeding it. I don’t care if she’s mine in a way no one else is (and frankly, I’m hers in a way no one else is). When she doesn’t look at my letters with love, she feels guilty and runs away. She shits on herself every time, saying that something isn’t good enough for me when it’s just that we have more to work out, and it’ll keep. Life is long.

She doesn’t feel as excited and impressed by her as I am, therefore why should I be interested in her? Meanwhile, she is 3D chess built on a Rubik’s cube. As I told her, “if you think about your story hard enough, you should want to hit that, too.” That was a time in which jokes like that actually made her laugh, because honestly. It’s just true.

We are connected because “what God has put together, let no man put asunder.” She is not God in this case, but she’s the face I use when I need to visit that place inside me to work out my shit on my own.

Through it, I can maintain a connection to the God I serve and how it is both Old and New Testament, vengeance and promise, everlasting life, and even still I’m making it up as I go along with fake as Christianese.

I just think of it as “the church has left the building.” If I translate that into line cook, it’s “we don’t have to talk about it. Just eat it.”

Going into your closet to pray has always been an excellent turn of phrase for me, and now it’s even more important. I don’t have to speak out loud to be heard. You guys listen enough as is. But you are the God that can take it, the face made up of many names, wants, and desires. I use God as the punching bag, not my beautiful girl. I can’t be sure that God is listening, but sure as shit, you are.

The second title come from an old girlfriend who knocked me on my ass with clever. she was a Rhodes Scholar who had the facade of a kooky teacher, but that was for show. She was brilliant, and a fantasy. We were at different places in our lives, but that didn’t stop us from having a ton of fun and leaving each other better than we found us….. eventually. It was hell when we first broke up because we had to live with each other, anyway (that has no bearing on my current situation……… Jesus. She’s straight. I’m gay. And we still would have had an easier time of it if we’d had triplets. I can laugh about that because we’re both past the age where we’d want to have kids, anyway.

But I know her. If I said “let’s foster” even ONE TIME we’d have five kids by EOB. But to be fair, that was her 10 years ago. She probably just adopted half her neighborhood instead. It’s one of the things that makes her Supergrover to me. It’s fun to have a hero that is also approachable. I think it’s because I am, too. I just talk about my life and invite other people to talk about theirs. I don’t choose friends based on what they can do for me, as much as they think I do when I don’t feel my needs are being met despite fulfilling theirs. Deciding how much energy they get of mine when I’m not getting theirs. It’s not dependent on how each other feels, but how well we can communicate to a happy medium where both people feel like they’re being heard. it is much more lonely to feel alone when someone else is in the room.

My ex-girlfriend used to touch my hand and say “that’s so interesting” to show that she really was intellectually turned on by something. It showed joy and passion on her face for every subject on earth. The whole time I’ve been writing, she’s been touching my shoulder and saying “interesting” the way she’d say it just so. I hear her in my head all the time, as a lot of my life is so interesting.

I cannot speak more to that.

I just know it’s there, and I’m grateful. I am settled within myself in a number of ways. I hope for a resolution in the end, it’s just going to take more than she thinks, but less than I do. If she thinks love is best served by avoiding conflict, that’s fine. I just need her to not do it to me, because she’s reinforcing the idea that I am no longer a value add and hasn’t stopped…….. when to me, I am Jay and she is Silent Bob. She is Harold. I am Kumar. We would look so cute together in a picture because if she’d just posted a photo of us in real life with a caption that said “I’m dating Pete Davidson” people would have believed it. They would have thought she was just as out of her damn mind as his other loves, while also being quietly pissed that they’re not dating Pete Davison, too (or her, for that matter. Christ on a cracker.).

But one relationship taught me how to feed the others. My relationship with my ex-girlfriend settled into her feeling at home with both Dana and me. There was a much larger age gap between us than Supergrover and me, so I was used to the yin and yang of having different cultural references and having to look them up. They’re west coast, I’m Houston. They’re Tupac, I’m Bun B. Different issues, different playing fields.

I am not explaining the rules of the game. I am giving color commentary on what it’s like to play it when there is no discussion or alteration of rules. You have to improvise and work with what you’ve been given.

Yet the more I speak to things, the less information you have. It’s just so interesting.

I’ll Have to Ask My “Wife”

September 5, 2023September 5, 2023 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

What does your ideal home look like?

I may have accidentally gotten myself married off this weekend. Of course it’s all in jest, but I did make a genuine friend. It all started with an in-group chat re: a woman saying that she had just been on her first date with a woman, and was already sweating bullets over what to do next. Here’s my reply:

She’s a woman. She’s on pins and needles. Text her right now before she has a heart attack. And yes, I’m kidding. But trust me when I say that most women who date women are not direct and it’s confusing AF. You’re lucky you knew you were on a date and so did she.

And then I said, “and if you post in two weeks that you’re getting married, SO HELP ME GOD.”

It was then that the real conversation started, because I hit a nerve I knew I would. It’s just too easy, because what I’m talking about is fairly unique to women loving women and common in every country/culture. It has become a joke over the years, so much so that I’m surprised U-Haul hasn’t built an entire ad campaign around it.

So, anyway, a woman replied to me with a gif of a woman driving a U-Haul and I said “we need to focus on her right now. Stop flirting with me.” She thinks that’s funny and we keep talking. We have someone ask for a wedding invitation and someone offer to plan it for us- in “colors that are bold, yet somehow neutral.” I don’t think I’ve laughed harder in months.

We ended up friending each other because of a different part of the conversation. She says she’s an introvert. I said, “I was going to tell you I’m an introvert, but it’s so much worse than that. I’m a writer. And if you really need an excuse to poke your eyeball with a fork, I’m also a novelist.” Her reply? “Omg. So am I. Jesus. We’re already married.”

It was then that I knew she was a keeper. 😉

Well, in terms of a professional contact. I really don’t have many writer friends, so I asked her if I could friend her to talk shop. What started out as a joke turned into a genuine connection in the span of a few hours…. even if we don’t end up getting married in two weeks.

Here’s how my old life influenced my new one. For the last 10 years, I have had a boss ass bitch in my head giving me confidence. I am no longer one of those women who can’t be direct and just goes with the flow right up until they can’t. I wasn’t treating women like I had to be afraid of their opinions. It is not my job to be likable. It is my job to be myself and to let the right people gravitate toward me. It’s not being mean. It’s being in charge of my own vibration and making it loud enough that people either boost the signal or walk away. They have control over the amps, not my volume control.

So now, when I think of the perfect house, the only thing I require is a space that is totally and completely mine. Reflection is what I need to decide whether a problem does or does not go to 11.

As for decor, I haven’t even finished planning my “wedding” yet. Give me another two weeks. 😉

Making My Own Space

August 31, 2023 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

What daily habit do you do that improves your quality of life?

What really helps me is a place of my own. I think about it all day, every day. About how in this house I have one. It is my space and no one is allowed in without permission. There is no social expectation on me to share my bed with anyone.

When Dana and I moved to Houston, not long after I realized that our house was huge enough for Dana and me each to have our own rooms, and I set it up that way. It didn’t have anything to do with my relationship with Dana. It had to do with the fact that we seemed to be exceptional at everything except sleeping next to each other. When I moved into my own room, I slept deeper than I had in years, and it made me a convert. One of the things you can do to make your relationship better is to sleep in separate beds as long as neither one of you are taking it personally. Dana definitely did take it more personally than I did, but also rolled with it, so at this point, I don’t know if my needing space was good for both of us or not. If It was too selfish, I apologize. Cosleeping is just not going to be a part of my life going forward. I have to take care of me in this way or I do not function well.

If Zac and I were on a relationship escalator, the thing that would work in his favor is that he has a huge house with many bedrooms and absolutely no expectation for me to be in his. I am betting that neither one would turn down the other’s invitation, however…….

That’s the difference. Right there. Even in a couple, you need to carve out room to still be the two individuals you used to be.When I could sleep better, I could handle having the rest of my identity being leslieanddana. It wasn’t the relationship I objected to. It was the cultural norm, thinking that there was something wrong with me because I didn’t want to sleep next to her every single night. So, I looked it up. Lots of couples suck at sleeping together, and sleep is too precious to waste.

Not cosleeping is dating energy. It’s as fresh and as hot as you want it to be… But that is my answer. It is not everyone’s. I’m not saying it’s the right way, just my way. At this point in time. I am both too young and too old not to know what’s coming down the pike. If I say never again, the next person I date is going to have a toddler that likes to sleep with his ass glued to my face. Never say never.

It has nothing to do with the way I feel about my current life… and everything to do with the way I sleep. I get night terrors, and I’d rather be alone. They don’t happen often, short and intense. I don’t think I’ve been with Zac long enough for him to see one, because if he did, he would have said something. That’s because I see him so rarely that sleeping next to him is a treat, not an obligation. If we were closer, the novelty would wear off. I can make it work for a night here and there, but in negotiating living with another partner, I need to know it is not demanded of me unless there are extenuating circumstances like a toddler sleeping with his ass glued to my face.

Although now I’m getting old enough that my partner’s kids would be teens/20s or there would be an age gap between us. Not that I am complaining about either thing. It’s just reality. The only thing of which I am certain is that if I do have children, I will not birth them. I know I am physically capable of carrying a child at 45 or 46, but I have no desire at all. Just put it in the negative numbers.

Thinking about the one thing I do every day- being safe in a space of my own- lets me branch out to an enormous degree. My thoughts can run wild because there’s no one to interrupt them (although interruption can be a good thing when I’m going down the wrong road). Being alone allows me to be a better writer because I am living in shifts. I am reacting and reflecting. To take away a space of my own limits rumination, certainly, but it also curbs creativity. I don’t just bitch in these sessions. I’m trying to figure out what’s signal and what’s noise.

For instance, I got a Facebook meme THIS MORNING bitching about the U2 album Apple put on their phones once. That was in 2013. As if that is the worst problem in your world….. to get FREE MUSIC (and if you didn’t want it, you could just delete it).

When I listened to that album, I found one of my favorite songs, “Every Breaking Wave.” Of course my favorite song of 2013 came from that album, but knowing why is above your pay grade. That’s an inside joke, and I know who will laugh when they get here. People who have real problems just roll their eyes at stuff like this, and that’s a large part of the joke.

I remember the conversation surrounding it- not funny until we ran the conversation into the ground a hundred times. Basically it was all about perspective. There’s conflict all over the globe, as well as hunger and a thousand other problems, but you’re cranked up because you lost maybe 150 MB on a 16 GB phone. What the fuck ever.

I have two paths of thought regarding this. The first is that there are so many problems in the world. Why is this something they remember over 10 years later? Alternatively, most people don’t like to get vulnerable. Bitching about U2 is infinitely easier than walking into your own valleys of vulnerability. Even then, I said something along the lines of “honey, I get it. The world is fucked up. But more today than yesterday?” Said person was also using the surface level to express fear and doubt about much bigger problems.

At the time, I was sort of going through a thing vicariously through someone else. A friend of a friend had been murdered. So, of course the U2 album was going to set them off. It was the right thing at the right time to blow off some steam.

It wasn’t that the world had become worse. Ours had.

I think about those kinds of memories all the time in the name of putting them down. I wake up every morning and reassess the day before, and it has been habit for 20 years. Although I haven’t always posted daily. I’m on my 61st or 62nd day of that, trying to get it ingrained as a habit. I was going to talk about writing every day vs. cosleeping, but two things about that. The first is sleeping alone informs everything else. I could not do what I do without rolling over and accessing my tablet first thing. The second is that I already have an entry called “This,” It asked about my collections, and these entries are it for me.

They don’t take up space. In my room.

And now, without further ado, the best thing that came out of the worst thing that Apple has ever done, apparently:

Right Now- 0500

August 28, 2023 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

What’s your favorite time of day?

Most of my audience is overseas, so they actually wake me up most days now. That’s because my watch starts getting notifications before my alarm goes off, generally regarding the entry from the day before. I sometimes start writing right away, sometimes I go downstairs to grab a cup of coffee first. But this audience is my first thought of the day because the Pavolvian urge to grab my tablet and keyboard when someone likes an entry is ingrained. I’ve been on WordPress a lot longer than I’ve done Facebook, but it’s that kind of vibe.

This morning, I wrote out the title of the entry, then promptly decided I needed something to drink and by the time I got back around to picking this back up, hours had gone by. It’s ADHD in a nutshell. Every new promise in the morning must be followed, even ahead of the five promises you’ve already said you’d explore. I have a lot of new beginnings because I have trouble finding middles and ends. ADHD is particularly talented at making you feel like a dumbass. and being a writer is a way to cope. Having a record of what’s happening is a way to keep track of progress… or not. Writing is such a wonderful tool to give yourself therapy when you can’t afford it or can’t get a doctor right away. Even when you do get a doctor, they still can’t spend more than an hour a week with you. Getting better takes so much more effort than that.

People wait to do therapy until they’re in a couple, and I had a thought about that. “If you don’t have time to fix yourself, why do you think you have time to fix someone else?” I’d rather be healthy before I get in a relationship because it keeps conflict to a minimum. I don’t have a problem saying what I mean and meaning what I say. I can give what I require.

I don’t have time for people who don’t have time to fix themselves, because it makes them want to fix me. If there are problems in our relationship, it’s not always going to be 100% my fault. I don’t want to be in a relationship with someone who is so defensive that they think it is because they cannot acknowledge their own humanity.

It’s good now that I know what I’m looking for, because maybe I can avoid that trap in the future. I seem to enjoy people who don’t emote, probably because I don’t want to deal with it….. while also being frustrated that they can’t deal with my emotions, either.

Looking for healthy patterns in which we both have each other’s backs is very important, as well as taking all the lessons I’ve learned over the last 10 years and not making the same mistakes. I have a clean slate in this regard. I am no longer holding onto the past as if I can make it better for the future. I am realizing that those are going to be two very different things and the trick is not to be threatened.

I am threatened by everything, to a certain extent. I already know I don’t fit in most places, and I am sometimes fearless, sometimes a wallflower. I make room for all of those moods, but I don’t expect everyone else to do so…… which is mostly why I write my reflections here. Then, they’re just an open secret because if the people involved want to see how their characters are playing out, they’re welcome. But they’re not required, and I will write them out just as easily as I wrote them in.

The writing reflects life, not the other way around. When I talk about knowing where I’m going on this web site, I’m talking about knowing what emotional changes I have to make within myself because so many times I’ve reread things I’ve written and thought, “that probably sounded better in my head.”

I’m still reeling that my beautiful girl thought I wrote her as a flat character, when I can see every emotion I’ve ever had about her in these pages, more in the words you don’t read.

The urge to write about her has faded except for batting cleanup.

I never could get through to her that her good parts and her bad parts come together to make her the purest person I’ve ever met. That I didn’t hate her for what she’d done, I made my life bigger to accommodate her. That I was in it for the long haul if she was, because I had prepared.

She thought I was saying that I wished our relationship never happened, and I cry at that thought even now. In trying to make it better, I made it worse.

That doesn’t mean my thought process was wrong, it means that she didn’t get the intended message. I’m not sure how it got turned into the complete opposite, but that’s not my call. I don’t have to love it, I just have to live it.

What does feel good is knowing two things. The first is that I cannot un-know or un-say anything. It might lead her to look at my writing in a different way when temperatures aren’t running so high. I do love her in a way I cannot even understand, it runs so deep. But I will have that whether I have her or not, so I have not lost anything in the transaction.

I told her that I poured my love into the character because I could not pour it into her. She has said too many times that she does not accept it. She doesn’t really accept that I have a different reality than her, so I cannot expect her to understand her way around the whole problem. I cannot even do that.

But what I can do is make sure that she knows I was never coming from a place of destruction. That we had to be in the shit for a little while to create something new that we both would enjoy. Like, why should she be the only one that gets to make fun of me and Michael? I am sure that all three of us could make each other laugh with witty retorts.

I just don’t hold out hope for that dream anymore. I told her that if she started acting like she actually forgave me, then she’d be allowed back into my circle. If not, I will know I just chose the pattern I love the most. That it was always about trying to find someone to please. I know that is true on my end, and she has a choice to make as to whether she tells me how she feels or not. So far, the answer is “not,” but I do not think this is a permanent state. Mostly because life is long and it isn’t over. I know that if I’ve been able to keep up these wild and crazy feelings for 10 years, it has never been a game to me. I do not believe it has always been a game for her. I believe as she does that no matter what, we have a past, present, and future. We just have different ways of getting there and cannot seem to jump into the chasm where objective truth is found.

But there’s another part of our relationship that has nothing to do with her at all. Over the last 10 years, she has not only become my real friend, but the one that puts me in the mood to write. When I say she’s my muse, it’s that she’s the one that when she says it’s a good line, I can take it to the bank and cash it. She’s gotten me published professionally by being my editor for the last five years. She’s told me that she’ll edit my book if I wanted, and I know it was a bad career move to walk away from that, but there was so much more to it than that.

It’s because editing my book is her love language, and that part of our relationship is as strong as epoxy. That glue holds us tight. Where we fail is speaking in my love language, because communication is a two-way street. She thinks that I’m the only arbiter of what friendship is and isn’t. I don’t think of it as that at all. I think that I lay out my thoughts and feelings and she thinks she can’t argue with me, get me to see things differently, change me as easily with her words as I change her with mine. I just didn’t think it was fair that we always spoke the way it meant the most to her, and not the most to me.

I think she thought that I needed her to do something so far out of her comfort level that she just didn’t have time and didn’t want to try. The opposite was true. Could you just change how you talk to me when we do interact? I am tired of you thinking that I am goading and provoking you when I am asking for your input? You think I’m asking for too much when you don’t understand the question.

Because she lives in my ink and talks inside my head, echoing in my chest, she’s part of my lifeblood now. I can feel her words coursing through me when I receive them, and it doesn’t matter whether they’re sweet or angry. They are all small pieces of artwork in a tapestry…. or one of those landscape photos made up of individual faces.

She has a beautiful face. It’s the one I look to for love, and have for years. I cannot do that if she doesn’t want it, so my work now is to take everything I’ve written about her and look at what I do want from it and what I want to leave.

What I know is that you can’t change anyone else with your own words, and you need to be prepared for relationships not fulfilling you and not worrying so much about getting out of them. Yes, everything feels new, but in a good way. A life where I am free of past mistakes in their entirety, and not because I wanted it that way.

As Kristina Mahr has said, “I took the tags off this love before I knew I was sure I wanted it. No, that’s not right. I took the tags off this love before I was sure you knew you wanted it.” I know for sure that even if my beautiful girl was interested in women, we would make horrible partners to each other. We cannot even make our love languages work with deep female friendship. I do think we could make friendship work, but because we have distance from each other. I can’t tell a partner to go home, but I can tell her. 😉

That’s because she would understand implicitly that we are both interested in socializing until the battery is dead. Please leave by nine. A group of people is a “no thanks.” We joke that I am the president of Overthinkers Anonymous, and she is the VP because president is a public-facing office. I still can’t get over that one, it’s so funny.

My last witty retort to this was “what a day. Need to find a meeting except there’s only one chapter and it’s really only us. We’re not friendly, Bob.” I said her real name, but “we’re not friendly, Bob” is a quote from my favorite Robin Williams movie, “RV.” You just have to see it to believe it.

Anyway, if you are also a member I will be holding a drive in late September. We’ll pass the hat for dues and coffee. No Folgers, and I get to make it before every meeting. “Leslie, you have one job.”

The point in all of this is that I learned a lot, and God I love her more than anyone or anything on earth, mostly because I’ve had 10 years to get used to the idea. She knows she’s it for me, in some sense, because even when she’s not in my life, she still lives in my ink.

I will look forward to the day when I can take all these life lessons and pour them into someone who wants them…. including her, but she has to show up. I’ve learned to celebrate the people who do. It’s why I think of Bryn and Zac as my partners in crime, both of them, because they serve different roles and I’m happy this way. Maybe it will change, maybe it won’t, but I’m not looking a gift horse in the mouth.

I feel that it’s important to take guilt off of everyone when they don’t show up, and just do my own thing. I cannot make other people’s calls for them, especially on the telephone.

I’m not friendly, Bob.

The Little Things

August 21, 2023August 21, 2023 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 10 Comments

What do you enjoy most about writing?

The first draft of everything is shit. -Ernest Hemingway

I knew I was a writer long before my dad got me a button for my bag that says this. However, the button told me that my dad did indeed see the real me. I hope he knows that he picked the one writer that actually does represent *all* of my demons except that Hemingway was clearly an alcoholic, the one trap I’ve managed to avoid.

I know my mood and behavior is erratic at the best of times, and I have to control it with medication. Alcohol just takes all the good things my medication is trying to do and replaces it with chaos. I can be a fun drinker, sure. It’s not the drinking part that isn’t helpful. It’s the road to recovery from a hangover, when the dopamine from the alcohol is gone and I’m clawing back up to normal. That takes longer when you’re 45 than it does when you’re 24 (thank you, 24). The entry that I wrote while I was hung over on the train back from Zac’s is the first time I’ve even drunk enough to be hung over in eight years. That’s because Zac drinks all the time and I drink so sparingly I have no tolerance at all. We get together and I try to keep up with him because I could have as a line cook. As a writer, not so much.

Hemingway also said “write drunk, edit sober.”

I’m not that kind of writer. I understand where he’s coming from- that you need a completely different perspective to edit your own work than to write it- but I cannot lose myself to that degree. I mean, I can. There are just things I don’t want to tolerate anymore, and “hung over” is at the top of the list.

As I was telling “Mellow Fellow” (who is actually a woman and yet, she still hasn’t told me her name…. I should look it up…), I like the taste of alcohol, so I find that a little bit in fizzy water is sufficient. Zac buys Italian fizzy water by the case, so I find that choosing something from his varied collection is my favorite thing. Last time, it was whiskey. This is because my favorite shift drink at Biddy McGraw’s (pub where I worked in Portland, now closed) was Tullamore Dew and soda served tall with lemon, and please make sure it is LOADED with ice.

Speaking of which, I’m from Texas, where we drink Ranch Water. Ranch Water is tequila and soda with lime. Less sweet than a margarita and equally delicious. I’d just use a *little* better tequila than I would for a margarita because you’re not adding flavor to it except a tiny bit of lime juice. Fizzy water doesn’t count. 😛

If you don’t know what “served tall” means, it’s a cocktail with more mixer. I like cocktails in a pint glass because my mixer is usually soda water or Coke. Most bars are great about this because they care about the food/bev cost on liquor, but not giving you 10 oz of bubbles instead of six. They also don’t care if you drink it down a bit and ask for a refill on the soda part…. if they’re a good bar and not a bad one.

That’s because good bars cater to people like me. The difference between a good bar and a bad one is taking care of the people who don’t drink or drink very little and still want to have a good time. For instance, having mocktail specials and a mocktail of the day in addition to the alcoholic drink sales. The difference between a good customer and a bad one is people who think they don’t need to tip as much on nonalcoholic drinks even though the bartender is still making you the most labor-intensive drink on the menu. A mojito is a bitch to make during the pop whether it has alcohol or not. You are tipping them for their time.

Having nonalcoholic drinks in a bar while I’m typing is one of the things I like about writing. I can do the job of writing for this web site anywhere….. but it’s not generally a bar. It’s at Zac’s.

Zac is the consummate host in this arena. Not only does he have a collection of alcoholic spirits, he also has some of the new nonalcoholic stuff coming out that I’ve been jazzed to try. Spirits like Seedlip and Ritual, beers from Athletic (one of the great beer companies of the world even without alcohol… fight me).

I wandered off from writing about writing to writing about cocktails because Hemingway makes a VERY, VERY short connection between the two. 😉 The Hemingway Daquiri is one of the best cocktails I’ve ever had in my life. Here’s the recipe, just put it in a martini shaker and serve it up. If you don’t have a daiquiri glass, just use martini (I get martini glasses at Dollar Tree because they are generally so unstable that it comforts me when they cost so little). By “maraschino liqueur,” it means “grenadine.” I shake it until there’s lots of ice chips, but purists strain them out:

Three things. Pineapple juice is an acceptable substitute for grapefruit, you could probably put any liquor into it with this combination of mixers (it just wouldn’t be a daquiri), and I don’t like it watered down with ice, but you can multiply this recipe as much as you want and serve it in a pitcher instead. In terms of other alcohol, I think gin would be perfect (laughs in British).

What I like is that for every Hemingway, there’s a me. Someone who enjoys tea and coffee while they write and doesn’t really have an editor mode. I get other people to do that.

Everyone seems to understand the tortured, alcoholic writer. Fewer people understand that I am just as tortured as he is, I just don’t drink. I would rather use my demons than ignore them. The fact that we’ve made friends is through this blog alone. I sit with my issues every day in the name of not letting them win. I don’t think people realize that I’m sober as a heart attack when I throw down, particularly with people with whom I do not want to be loose-lipped, because I’ve sunk my fair share of ships that way. I’m done with all that, too, unless I’m in a safe space like Zac’s. That’s because I know he’ll just put me to bed with water and ibuprofen and wake me up with a large cup of coffee. No harm, no foul, no interference on the play. This would not be the case with all my friends.

So, when I’m writing this blog, know that I’m more careful than you think I am. Even when I have negative emotions, they are very real. They might be affected by my bipolar disorder or my ADHD, but they are not ever fueled by drink. I don’t write drunk, ever. It’s just adding kindling to a fire, and I’m done. My emotions are large as is, and I have problems enough getting people to roll with them.

Most of what I like about writing is that people understand me. If it’s not my close friends (“Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Even Jesus was subject to sick burns from his friends.), I am understood across the world. It informs my faith in writing, this knowledge about Jesus. It makes him more like every other relationship I have in the cloud. It feels like we are basically the same person, that I would have fit in with his crowd back then as easily as he would fit in with mine.

Jesus is also a little bit like Zac, ironic because he’s an Atheist…… Jesus was the consummate host. Like, if I wanted a Hemingway daquiri and I was short on cash, I could just ask him to make me one……………….

If Jesus really is watching over us, here’s what I know he knows.

The creative process is a cruel mistress, but his work has influenced billions of people over the years. I hope he knows he made it big through nothing other than wrestling with his demons……. literally.

What he would like about writing is what I do; we’re making ours the story that sticks.

Access

August 20, 2023August 20, 2023 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 5 Comments

What do you love about where you live?

There is a very underrated quality about Washington that I’ve found to be true not only in the last eight years, but also 2001-2. Washington attracts a “type,” and they’re generally misfits in other places. That type is writer/news junkie. We come in all shapes, sizes, and professions. A lot of us are lawyers. Some of us work for the government. Some of us work at the newspaper. Some of us sit on the floor at the Spy Museum bookshop and don’t buy anything. 😉

Washington is the only city in the world I’ve found where being knowledgeable regarding American politics, intelligence, the military, and world news is seen as an asset and not a liability. The American people want “folksy” most of the time, but they’re only meeting the candidate and not the 200 people that work for them. They are not the same. We’ve got veterans who’ve been strategizing since they were in diapers, they wanted to get here so bad. In this day and age, do not ever underestimate how “The West Wing” affected this town. If you were in college when you met CJ, Sam, Toby, and Josh, then you are probably some version of one of them now. That’s not a bad thing. They all came here thinking that we were as idealistic as that show. We weren’t, but they “made it so.” With the influence of Trump, that’s changed a bit because we weren’t dealing in two different realities back then. Yes, there were Republicans, but they were more like Arnold Vinick and Ainsley Hayes than Glen Beck and Donald T****.

That’s because staffers have more in common than they don’t. According to President Clinton, it’s criminal the way candidates work interns (except he used the word “shitbox” and I thought that was particularly hilarious despite the soul-tearing irony of Bill Clinton making the right kind of sense about interns at all.

People have no idea how government works in the rest of the country (overall) and vote against their best interests all the time. The reality is that we do not have the infrastructure for any third parties. This is because ever time a third party emerges, one party splits and the other one wins. I took an entire class on political parties in college and this information stands up. We haven’t managed a third party since 1856. In Congress, voters don’t know anything about committee assignments and will screw over their state by electing a freshman over someone who’s had enough clout to move up in the system. This has had disastrous effects in recent memory as Congress has been overrun with extremists, because their rhetoric is so fascist that even though they’re the minority, there’s too many.

But this doesn’t take away anything from the beauty of the Mid-Atlantic. In terms of what people know about Washington, they see the federal government and don’t know it’s a great place to hike, bike, kayak, fish, etc. If you’re into skiing, there are easy road trips to the slopes. If you like the beach, there are plenty. I was in a sailing race in Annapolis once with my sister. She was working with a local lobbyist who took us out and didn’t tell us until we were already underway that we were in the middle of a regatta. We lost, but it was fun. The point stands, though. Both the Chesapeake and the Atlantic are extraordinarily fun.

The similarities between DC and Portland, Oregon (where I lived for 12 years) are striking. First of all, a river runs through it. The Potomac and the Willamette both run south to north, making the southern boundary for The District. However, the layout is exactly the same in terms of neighborhoods. The places that will remind you of southeast Portland and The Hawthorn are on the DC side. The places that will remind you of The Pearl District complete with Trendy Third St. are in Arlington and Alexandria. There is just as much beauty to Great Falls, VA as there is to the Columbia River Gorge.

Virginia really is God’s country when I think about the Blue Ridge mountains. I have driven through them once and it was one of the most moving experiences of my life. I felt a presence, the one we all do when presented with the absolute miracle of nature.

I haven’t explored Maryland as much as I’ve wanted to, simply because I don’t have a car. It’s not that I can’t get there, it’s that it seems like a lot of hassle. I’ve ridden the train to Baltimore a few times, and it’s great. Seriously. It’s just takes about an hour and a half each way (it’s further north than BWI). I love it when I travel sporadically. I’m not so sure I would want it as my morning commute. I would deal, though, because getting on the MARC is available in Silver Spring and I don’t have to go to Union Station first, which shaves a lot of time……. but it’s still three hours guilt free that I should be doing something else. I can read, write, listen to music, or watch TV. If you’ve ever been stuck on 95 N in rush hour trying to get to an Orioles game, you’ll know why the train is far superior.

I think of myself as having a driver. 😉

Baltimore is one of the cities I considered when moving to Washington, because to use another Pacific Northwest reference, Seattle is the Washington and Baltimore is the Portland. Not the same industries, but the same vibe. With John Waters and Divine, there could be a show every bit as outrageous as “Portlandia,” if not more so. The other thing about Baltimore is that it’s more affordable than DC. A great apartment relatively close in can be had for under $2,000 a month…….

People move away from here to the middle of the country because it’s less expensive and then figure out they have to live there. It costs real money to live on the coasts, but to me it’s worth it because I’ve gone out of my way to find the cheapest deal available and my rent hasn’t gone up in eight years. That’s because I don’t pay a rental company. I literally live with my landlords and they’ve adopted me as one of their own. It will be a huge deal when I move, so I’m not going to unless circumstances absolutely require it.

That’s because downtown Silver Spring is cool AF. We have an outdoor living room and streets that have been blocked off downtown so that you can walk around and take everything in. Lots of festivals happen in the summer, and in the winter the outdoor living room becomes a skating rink. Everything is frozen over from Thanksgiving to New Year’s.

I am a huge soccer fan, and Houston didn’t have an MLS team. I’ve been rooting for DC United since my girlfriend introduce me to them in high school. I have had a DC United piece of clothing in some shape or form since 1996. My favorite player was named Raul Diaz Arce, who was young and energetic. He played like a dancer. I was in love with his movements as much as I was with Meag’s. I honestly think that my love for soccer absolutely stems from the fact that she was one of the great loves of my life. We aren’t in touch, but she’s still with me and will be for the rest of my life thanks to this passion.

Speaking of Meag, I figured out why I’ve struggled with making her accent authentic (to her. I’ve always fooled Americans joking around). It’s because words like boot and boat don’t actually sound anything like either of them. The vowels are a dipthong as big as the country. As in, they’re right in the middle and if you weren’t born there you’re always going to swing right or left. As an American, I think I’ve at least grown enough to be convincing on a recording to people who haven’t been in love with me and wouldn’t give it to me for anything in the world because it’s going to be a thing between us until you die mad or not.

I feel as if I have just performed a Canadian Public Service Announcement. You’re welcome.

It’s not just soccer. The first time I came to DC, I was eight years old. I wondered until my junior year of college what it would be like to live here. That’s when my first wife got the offer from ExxonMobil and given the choice for her to start in Houston or Fairfax, Virginia. That’s how we ended up in Alexandria for 9/11. I am so glad we did it. I wouldn’t have wanted to miss that institutional memory for anything in the world. It’s just one of the things that makes me feel that DC is every bit as much a part of me as Houston.

DC is the place where, three times now, it has made me feel the entire spectrum of human emotion. I am steeped in everything it has taken to keep our country together and how it’s falling apart. We are in a crisis where we are going to have to rebuild culture from the ground up. There is no such thing as alternate facts, and people’s attitudes are just getting worse. What gives anyone that doesn’t work there the right to disagree with people paid to do what they do? Not for little things. For opinions that take years to develop. Years to become seasoned and ripened. Years of technological and scientific analysis. We are here to shape that future for the government, which locally leans liberal. People think of DC as full of conservatives, but remember the Congress just works here. Locals are truly progressive and I promise it’s as weird as the clash between places like Columbia Heights and Shaw vs. Arlington and Silver Spring.

The short answer is that the thing I love about where I live is me. It is part of my identity now. I am the Kennedy Center. I am the Lincoln Memorial. I am the reflecting pool. I am also Ben’s Chili Bowl, Madam’s Organ, SE Waterfront, Howard University. I am gogo music and mumbo sauce. I am Frederick Douglass’s house.

I am able to be it all, because I write it down. And that’s what I love about where I live.

Describing the Color Choice

August 9, 2023 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Part of the reason my entries about the woman I call “Supergrover” is because she won’t answer a lot of basic questions about herself, and yet I have access to her heart in a beautiful and unique way. I got in through the back door in the hacker sense of the word, because nothing would ever have happened between us if we hadn’t kept to staying out of each other’s real lives.

I realized a few days ago that I had burned down the entire house on mutual friends. However, I wasn’t being encouraged to do so in any way. It was my reaction to her words, always. I cannot describe what she or anyone else went through at that time in our lives, and so far I’ve been handed more confusion than answers.

The closest I’ve ever gotten to feeling secure is “someday, perhaps” and “also. Thank you.” She’s quiet when she’s sincere, and those words echo just as much as the ones that hurt me. There is no possible way that she does not come across as a 3D character, and I will not believe it. I cannot write both the entry she referenced and a letter to her husband telling him to be good to her because she wouldn’t let me be good to her as well. If I can think those thoughts, why can she only accept the dark ones as the truth? Why can she not see that I am woven into her like The Impossible Girl, the one whose DNA is spread within The Doctor’s. I got there by only being her inner monologue as well. Our similarities show in our writing. One thing touched me deeply, and she said that I portrayed her as flat as if it’s not a wheel with many spokes. I told her that if she took every entry from March until now, she’d see the many different spokes in the wheel. That I remembered every one and wrote them all down.

You cannot think someone is worth nothing and a villain if you’re willing to go toe to toe with her husband and have it out. Who does that? Someone who thinks there’s no such thing as “the friend zone.” It’s better when we’re in each other’s lives than it is to be apart. I’ve written about that pain in exquisite detail so that I don’t forget a moment of it. There was a passion and drive within me to have her in my life at whatever level she could accept me into hers, but then it became about the cost/benefit analysis of living in so much confusion. I told her it caused anger and issues that needed to be resolved. She didn’t want to resolve them. At no time did it mean that I became that person who wouldn’t safety net her through anything. I am still her red telephone, and what I know is that Bryn and Zac would not deprive me of her, because they’re always rooting for me to succeed. I just would have to balance Bryn’s needs as well, because I cannot abandon her after the ways in which she’s made me grow. We have the ability to have a very deep and meaningful relationship because we have lived in the same place. We were raised by the same “parents.” We both lived to tell the tale. She’s my partner in terms of the one I’d want you to go to if something was up with me where I couldn’t be contacted. That’s because she’s the only one I’ll talk to when I really need to reach out. She feels the same way about me.

Just because you haven’t gotten married to someone doesn’t mean that loyalty and confidentiality mean less. That my vows to my friends are less important than the ones I’d make to a partner. I look to Bryn’s face for love because I can. I would look at my beautiful girl the same way if I thought she thought it was a privilege to be let in. But that power imbalance kept both of us from really laying things on the table.

Oh, the stories we could have told. Stories that are both true and factual. I still have the picture in my head of a photo shoot I want with her, and I hope it makes her laugh if she remembers what I’m talking about. Let’s just say it involves gender role reversal and leave it at that. I’ve checked with me and her husband absolutely wants this picture, too.

To think that I want to paint her as the villain when I’ve poured out everything in terms of how I feel about her makes me lean on the memories that make me laugh.

Here’s the best one of all. In ten years, she has never sent me a voice mail of her saying her own name. I say it like it sounds. She says it the way she likes it, but I can’t correct it and I’ve been saying it wrong the whole time.

I call her all kinds of nicknames because I can’t say her fucking real one.

Now that’s describing all the colors. She’s not a villain. She’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met in my life, and I don’t understand why she thinks she isn’t.

She is my red and my violet. My whites, greys, and blacks.

I paint my feelings as fact, but never once have I used PhotoShop to make it prettier, or to crop something so that the framing looks better…. like I have that good an eye naturally.

It’s all a spectrum. It’s all an ADHD mess. The temperature of our relationship centers on hot with drive to reconnect, not hot with passion. It never will. But painting my feelings as fact shouldn’t go unnoticed here, either.

I love her, and I won’t apologize for it anymore. I don’t even care if she believes it. I know it to be true, and I cannot be held together by one entry alone. I hope, for once, she’ll focus on this one.

It’s one of my favorite colors.