It’s About 0615, and…

June 14, 2024 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Jack is licking the t-shirt I left at the end of my bed, which is the one I wore to Cielo Rojo. I am certain it has lots of interesting smells. He gets to enjoy Rachel Bindel’s cooking as much as I did… in a manner of speaking.

Oh, wait. Now he’s moved to licking himself, and I find myself really laughing over whether I should tell you Jack is a dog at this moment. I don’t know any men who lick t-shirts, but I wouldn’t put it past any of them. You don’t even have to go on the dark web to know that.

Today’s writing prompt is about describing a significant moment. Sure, I can pick things out that have meant something to me, but I try to see the beauty and pain in all of life itself. All moments are significant depending on how you’re looking. It also depends on perspective. Are you looking for negative? Confirmation bias is real\

I didn’t tell you all the funny things that happened in church because that’s long enough to be a book. I think my favorite story about my mother was that she and Herschel Walker had the same birthday. It’s applicable because their birthday just passed- 11 June. So, my dad and probably the worship committee get together and make Herschel and my mom a cake. I don’t know whose idea it was, and I’m not casting blame, especially since the pastor is not in charge of preparing the cake before worship (not that he couldn’t. My dad is an accomplished cook and baker).

The cake had relighting candles.

So, my mother and Hershel kept trying to blow them out, at first not realizing that they kept relighting. Hershel got so frustrated he put them out right in the cake. No one saw that coming and we were all howling.

I don’t mean to portray my childhood as all negative or all anything. It’s just what I’m thinking about depending on the moment. What has come up for me that day? I’ve also written down all my church stories in other entries, and I feel like I’m running out of material given that those memories are from 0 to 17. “Childhood is the credit balance of a writer,” according to John le Carré. Not if you can’t remember it.

The hardest thing for me was packing up my house in Houston to move to Sugar Land. It was leaving HSPVA, it was leaving The Heights, it was leaving everything cool about living in Houston. There were big surprises coming, I just didn’t know that yet. I didn’t know what kind of high school Clements would be. I just knew it wasn’t a performing arts high school. There’s only one Robert “Doc” Morgan and he doesn’t live in Sugar Land.

Leaving him was the worst part of leaving HSPVA. He told me that he was going to miss seeing me do my senior tune. Then, I found myself trying to comfort him and saying that I’d already gotten it with “Come Rain or Come Shine.” It made me feel good that I wasn’t the only one that was sad I was leaving. Quite a few other people were, too.

There was a major drawback to going to another school, and that’s that I’d been out of the closet for almost two years, and I didn’t have to tell anyone. A frenemy took care of that. My mother told me I couldn’t come out at Clements and I told her I’d never come out to anyone except a girl I liked and look where that got me. And besides, at that point, I wasn’t looking to date anyone else. I missed Ryan, and he was there to catch me in a friend way if someone messed with me. I lost that, too.

Ryan, my eighth grade boyfriend, and I went to different middle schools, but both ended up at high school together after we broke up. It took a minute, but we were back into our rhythm of each other’s comic foils. We’re still each other’s comic foils, and it feels good to be friends with someone who’s known me since I was 14 and we’re 46 now. Our birthdays are only 20 days apart. I get excited for Ryan’s birthday like I get excited for my own, as if I have a second birthday to look forward to at the end of the month.

Tonight is a Zac night, and the only reason I’m writing about it is to remember to get my stuff together after I’m done writing. I’d like to do my laundry, including all my towels, once we’re done for today. If this entry ends up being a hundred pages long, it’s because in the back of my mind I am thinking “I do not have to do my laundry as long as I’m still writing.” You are very, very important. 🙂

Right now I am debating with myself over beverages. I know I want coffee and water, just not sparkling or still. Let me think about it and I’ll get back to you.

I ended up getting a Gatorade and puttering around the house. I took a shower and put product in my hair. It’s on its last dregs, so I’m glad I have the same hair product at Zac’s. I like Gorilla Ear Wax I bought some for him to try it. I think he likes it, because occasionally I smell it on him. I am divided over whether I like the Ear Wax or the Snot. The difference is that Ear Wax is gel mixed with wax. Snot is just gel. If you’ve never tried either, they’re worth it, especially in the South. Gorilla Snot has a hard hold sport variety that will keep it from dripping in your eyes when it’s hot outside…. or at least you won’t burn the fuck out of your eyes if you’re outside…. like in marching band.

I use a two-in-one men’s shampoo and conditioner, which I would not recommend except I put leave-in conditioner in my hair before the product…. or afterwards if I’m using wax. A two-in-one is just not moisturizing enough.

I also do not know how I figured this out. I know I did not read it. I think I just picked it up from watching a guy on YouTube giving a talk on shaving because there was a shit ton of Bond memorabilia in his bathroom. Anyway, it occurred to me that a shaving brush would probably clear my pores better than a wash cloth, and I spend at least two or three minutes stimming in the shower by brushing my soap on like foundation. My skin looks really good. I have a Viking, but I found an even softer one in David’s guest bathroom that he said I could use.

You have to moisturize heavily if you’re going to use a shaving brush, because your skin has to rest between brushings. I use an all natural lotion bar that my former housemate, Magda, made for me. It is literally a bar of wax, or it feels like it. It smells like citronella, which keeps bugs off me and doesn’t smell weird with my cologne and deodorant. It’s summer. Who doesn’t smell like citronella?

Although in the summer, I tend to switch out the all natural wax for heavy duty sunscreen while my face is still wet. It needs about 20 minutes to soak into your skin fully, so it’s activated by the time I leave the house. I am terrible about remembering to reapply, but I’m rarely outside longer than an hour and a half. Jack is a small dog. He just kind of runs himself out, and that takes a quarter of a mile most days. If he’s feeling good, we’ll go a half or three quarters. He’s an older dog, and I have to be on his schedule. He’s my baby dog and my grandfather all in one package. I feel this on a deep and spiritual level, because I was always a child and 45 as well.

It makes sense why I scrub so much. I feel like I have to get off dog hair and the smell of dog, even for a little bit. That’s because I can’t help myself. He can walk all over me. But I get a little space to be dog free. I have to. He goes apeshit when I’m on my period. David and I are both waiting for menopause with bated breath, because we’ve picked up after his shit long enough.

Because when I put it in the trash can and close the lid, then he drags it all over the floor, it ceases to be my shit. It hurts that you really can’t fire these underperforming employees. The best you can do is put them on a performance improvement plan. They’re just too cute, and there’s too many pictures. Kind of how I felt about my sister at first, too. 😉

Yesterday, I showed David how to make Jack sit and wait for his leash to be put on, because it makes things so much easier. David showed me that Jack also knows the hand sign for sit, which opens up so many more conversations between Bryn and me because she trains her own dog in sign language.

So, with Jack, we need to work on leash training. He pulls and will not heel in traffic. I need to get him to start sitting at intersections as well. We are doing very well so far, but it has led to a situation where I’m the alpha. I don’t think that David notices or cares. It’s just that Jack knows that not minding me comes with consequences he does not like, so he will try David. He will not try me. No, sir. We do not do that. Your behavior is frowned upon in this establishment.

I speak baby.

That line made me think “I wonder if there’s a new ‘Doctor Who’ to watch while my laundry is going?” I’m betting there is, and if not, I’ll watch a rerun. I don’t have the channels I need to watch all of them (As an American, I cannot get a TV license for the BBC, and I don’t have HBO Max. I’m holding out on HBO because I think eventually the catalog will move to Disney. It’s just that right now they only have the episodes they started with, not the entirety of new and classic Who. It makes sense that they will eventually, because their oldest videos are some of the most popular. Adults looking in nostalgia or teaching their kids to love what they loved.

Love is why Doctor Who endures. It’s parents and grandparents wanting to share this thing they loved with their children and their children’s children. Remember, it’s been on since the day Kennedy was shot. In fact, the show was almost bumped because of it. It might not have been a big deal except that the BBC hadn’t said when they would air it again……….

It was actually Jodie Whitaker that got me started down this road of nonbinary, because I didn’t see it in myself until The Doctor regenerated as female. I saw gender on The Doctor, not gender within them. I recently learned that nonbinary falls under the trans umbrella, because anything that’s not cis does. I was shocked by this, because I’ve never in a million years thought I was trans. That’s because I’ve never had body dysphoria. There’s a reason for that. I am built not to care what body I’m in.

Here’s what I’ve learned about being nonbinary that no one will tell you. You learn it when you transcend the system. The medium is the message. Women and men are attuned to hear each other differently, so there’s a nuance to what they say before they say it based on what they’ve heard before. Confirmation bias is real.

I feel that I know men better than some straight women because I ask them different questions than they do. They don’t think men are interested in things that they really are, but when you give them enough time and space to let them have an opinion about traditionally female things, they definitely do. Most men want to feel more beautiful than they do. They walk around feeling like crap about themselves because of magazines, too. But you don’t know that if you don’t ask.

This is especially true of gay men who want to fit a stereotype. Twinks starve themselves and an overwhelming number of gay men become gym rats to become the magazine ideal, even if they aren’t interested in exercise normally. The gym is a way to meet men, certainly, but you must look like a picture in a magazine to get that kind of gym experience. Gay men are as consumed by their bodies as straight women trying to get dates…. that they are not enough on their own. They must kill themselves for beauty.

I am not against exercise. I am anti being an extremist about anything. I am against clearly pushing your body past what it can take to get off that one extra pound, and it is that serious in my community. This does not exclude straight men and it never has. Straight men aren’t asked to be vulnerable in a way that gay men already are.

It’s not that straight men don’t have body issues, it’s that a queer man will tell you.

These are the guys that pretend they’re not bothered by magazines and then moan that they’ll never get a girlfriend because they don’t look like them. It’s all the same issue. Men just don’t show it. We think men don’t go through a lot of things because they don’t show it.

A man’s biggest fear is abandonment. And so is a woman’s. A woman is programmed to be perfect at taking care of the home. A man is programmed to be perfect at providing for the home. Both have a tremendous societal pressure on them and how they deal with it is seemingly not the way to do it in everyone else’s eyes.

I honestly don’t think you get this perspective if you’ve never fallen under the queer or trans umbrella. This is because you’ve never had to let go of any gender roles. You’ve never had to switch it up because your body has always fit that programming. So has your mind. Straight, cis people don’t think outside the box. Queer people haven’t been given an option to think like other people. How do you think like married people, even about taxes, when you can’t get married? How do you get your husband to mow the lawn while you do dishes when it isn’t that cut and dry. In a gay marriage, you divide the labor by strength, not gender. You can’t.

Straight, cis people are programmed to think it’s weird, but they’d be happier if they let go of it. Like letting go of thinking that if your wife makes more than you, it means you’re failing as a provider. Men get very passionate over it, sometimes violent, because that’s not their programming. That’s not what men have been taught to accept for millions of years. Some of them are acting on their most feral natures, and don’t seem to understand why women don’t want that while complaining about gold diggers. It’s a lose-lose proposition. Either we’re dependent on you for money and you’re a stingy bastard, or we make our own money and you’re threatened. You are stuck in a moment and you can’t get out of it. If you’re going to be the provider, you can’t complain when I ask you for $200 to go to the grocery store.

That’s because I’m betting you have no fucking clue what it costs to feed a family for a week. You have decided you don’t have to know that. You just have to be there to financially control us when we’re asking for reasonable things. I would shit a brick if my husband didn’t immediately know I needed money for new clothes when he just saw me fall and rip my trousers to bits. I would not expect my husband to give me a life of luxury. There’s a difference between managing a home and expecting you to work while I play. I manage the home so that you can provide. I’m not just sitting here, twiddling my thumbs.

I am not talking about my reality. I am talking about the reality for most stay at home moms. Fathers say they want this, then financially abuse the hell out of their wives with being stingy about it. If we ask for too much, we’re gold diggers. They are happiest when we can manage on nothing, because to ask for money twice in one day is not that two needs came up, it’s that I’m needling you for money.

So, women go out and get their own jobs. It’s not threatening when we’re secretaries, teachers, or waitresses. It’s terrifying when we’re CEO, CIO, CFO, etc. It’s terrifying when we achieve titles you never will. So, we can deal with your jealousy a lot better than we can deal with your financial abuse, so either start handing over more money so we can raise our families or stop complaining about how we choose to spend our time outside the home.

I’ve always been a perfectionist when it comes to being a provider, which is why I haven’t seen my neurodivergence. I’ve only seen failure. I didn’t know what symptoms I was experiencing to be able to forgive myself, and in some ways, I never have. I can be a while lot of things, but as a writer, it’s better to he a jack of all trades, master of none. I can pull connections from my life that no one else would make.

Like being a preacher’s kid makes me one of the best waitresses and babysitters on the planet because I play to the people, not the money. They want to pay me more because I genuinely do a good job and genuinely care about everyone involved. It’s really hard to find an employee that cares more than me. My neurodivergence gets in the way on a number of levels, the biggest being practical. In terms of being at work, I need to go to the doctor “all the time.” There’s no room for demand avoidance, meltdown, and burnout. There’s also no room for missing an hour or two and coming back for the rest of the day and doing the rest from home that night.

If I was higher up, I could do that. The higher up you are in a company, the more you’re allowed to do your own thing. It’s like you can’t have a life until you’re old enough not to have to deal with the same struggles as a poor person, or a sick/disabled one…. which are all too often the same thing. It’s the inversion principle on a very sick and twisted scale. By the time you can take off the kind of time it takes to be sick/disabled, you have to have accrued enough sick time and vacation that you probably don’t need it.

I would like to know how these people manage sicknesses in advance. In the United States, this often presents as giving everyone in the office the flu. Honestly, it’s better that way. No one believes you’re actually sick in an e-mail or a phone call. They’ll send you home if they see you throw up in a trash can, no note necessary.

The thing I hate most about working from home is that it encourages employees to be absolute workaholics. They sit there and think, “I could be reading, or I could be getting stuff done in advance.” No, they’re taking on more work than necessary because the work they were supposed to do at work is already done. They’re asking to get twice as much work as everyone else, and other people are glad to pile it on you.

There are only a few jobs I can think of where you need to be available 24/7. I cannot count on Zac for anything, because the military is his real spouse. If they call, he’s out of here and neither of us has a choice in the matter. So, first responders, military intelligence, and medical professionals. I don’t even think flight attendants should be on that list. I think the airlines should hire more people so that the number of flights per day that you do equals eight hours. If it’s a long haul flight, they have enough people to do the route that you don’t have to do a turnaround.

Once you get to be really senior in an airline, you are allowed to pick your routes. It’s alarmingly like being in the State Department. The higher you are, the more choice you have over your next assignment. And, of course, because I’ve seen “Pan Am” I think every stewardess is a spy and I secretly pine over her no matter what she looks like.

This reminds me of an e-mail I sent to Supergrover from CDG. “I saw a really cute French girl, tripped and farted on her. I have to leave the country immediately.” I should have told my dad that story. He’ll laugh when he reads it here. The memory is so embarrassing that I’ve blocked it out. I don’t even remember what she looked like, but she must have been something. Supergrover, you would have absolutely laughed your ass off if you’d seen me walk into that door.

For those who aren’t Supergrover, I told her that I went to dinner with someone and she was so cute that I ran into a door and hurt my nose trying not to look at her. We went to Chuy’s, so I’ve always thought it would be hilarious if we met at a Chuy’s. However, that is not the only time I’ve walked into a door over a cute girl, so maybe I should be glad she doesn’t want to get together. I don’t know what I would hurt next (it is interesting to me that she is very beautiful, but really not my type. For most people, they love her face and her mind comes next. Hers became the face I loved from the inside out, just like with everyone I’ve ever met that sparked my interest. No two of my partners have looked the same, but a lot of them have brain gremlins in common. It’s not that I don’t have my own brain gremlins, they are just separate and apart from theirs. Different playing field.).

The other time I walked into a door over a cute girl was at a club in Logan Circle. I ran from her because it was really bad timing, but what happened was that the club was having a buy one, get one free drink special that night. I knew that I didn’t want both of them, so I offered mine to a woman near me. I think she thought that implied something, but I wasn’t offended. I just chatted to her like I would any of my friends to see if there was an actual spark or whether she just felt obligated to talk to me because I’d given her something.

Let me tell you why I am still kicking myself.

She was a church secretary in an African American church for 25 years, and at the time, I was interested in going to Howard Divinity School, because it’s UCC.

I was in love with every single one of my dad’s secretaries to the point of insanity. Our witty banter went from one to 11 very, very fast. She also had 21-year-old twins, and I was fascinated by that because we’re old, but we’re not that old. I wondered what it was like growing up with them, eager to have children that don’t live in my house. 😉 Just all these puzzle pieces were falling together so fast that I didn’t have room to breathe, and I felt that U-Haul type pull and I wasn’t ready. I was still getting over my own mental health issues, my divorce, my relationship with Supergrover, moving, all of it. It was too much.

Because my mind went to Jell-o when, at the end of the night, she walked up to me with her phone number on a napkin and kissed me on the lips. It was the boldest move I’d ever seen anyone make, and I was so scrambled that I hit a glass door on the way out. It didn’t shatter, but I sure felt it. I had scabs on my face by the next day…. probably another reason I didn’t call her. My very graceful exit. What I do know is that we would have been dynamite if I had been healed from my relationships. What I knew is that if I was in a relationship right now, it would end like all the others because I wasn’t smart enough to understand myself.

Alas, the piece of paper is long gone, but it’s a very sweet memory because it’s the first time I realized that divorce didn’t mean failure, that I could be lovable to someone else. I just needed time to figure all of that out, and I knew it wasn’t going to happen on her timeline, because I didn’t even know what that was. Feeling the dopamine of a potential relationship would have pulled me away from my quest to understand my own motivations and issues in relationships, because her needs would have trumped mine immediately. That’s just the way I’m built.

I needed to learn how to compromise from a place of strength, not tiptoe around people hoping they’ll notice me. I can do that now, because Zac and I are both hugely emotionally capable and dive into each other to the extent that we have the bandwidth. Sometimes, you just don’t want to talk that deep. It takes bandwidth. What I love about sitting next to Zac is that neither one of us requires stimulation at all times. We can sit in companionable silence and have that be enough- and in fact, more than enough because you know the relationship is genuine when companionable silence exists. My favorite thing is when Zac is working from home and in his office while I’m typing on my Bluetooth keyboard in his bed. The rhythm of his work feeds the rhythm of mine, like going to WeWork or something, but without having to pay for it. He just doesn’t work from home all the time because I will have to check with him, but I do not believe his house is a SCIF. However, there’s a lot that’s declassified enough that he can use a VPN and a government-issued laptop at home. Therefore, sometimes it doesn’t matter where he is geographically, and sometimes it really, really does.

I keep in mind what it is he’s working on, and become completely absorbed in what I’m doing. I don’t know when he’s going to have to take a call or whatever, so it’s easiest to tune it out. In fact, I was writing the other day and I asked Zac if he was working. He said, “you couldn’t hear my typing?” No. I was writing and I went deaf temporarily. I also tend to stim and get lost in petting Oliver, who is a dog….. another thing that tunes me out from all else. I am now so glad that I have Jack, who is also a dog, at home for this very reason. I’ve enjoyed having Oliver as a mascot while I write, because it’s like I have an audience that doesn’t talk back. I try hard to write to impress both of them. I want to be the person they think I am.

I am not happy with my hair right now. I think I need a fade for summer, because it’s just not short enough not to be a mop on top. The picture I posted a few weeks ago is no indication of how ragged my neck looks now. I go to a punk rock barber shop in downtown Silver Spring called Raphael’s, because I’m going for a genderqueer haircut. Barbers don’t question me. They give me what I want. A woman will tell me it’s a shame I want to cut it all off, as if my femininity is found in my hair. I am not a Rapunzel sort of bitch.

If I’m feeling particularly feminine, it doesn’t matter if I have a fade or not. My jewelry and my outfit determine my gender. If I have on a short skirt and a low cut top with lots of jewelry, men will flock to me whether my hair is long or not. Just like at CIA, they are not trained to see a person, they’re trained to see a form. If that form is curvy, it will look curvy no matter what I put on it. The number of men that have grabbed me around the waist despite practically having a “no thank you” sign on my back is insane.

I forgot a big misconception about being bisexual the other day, and it’s important. You are not half and half. Not all bisexuals are neutral and have a preference for one or all sexes. Therefore, what I meant is that if I am looking for male attention, I will find it because I was born female. It doesn’t take anything more than that. I just don’t look for male attention under normal circumstances. After domestic violence, it’s interesting that I found I wanted a protector, and it’s okay that he’s male because that makes him more physically capable of protecting me. But it’s not because I wouldn’t date another woman. It’s that I have no pattern of domestic abuse with men, because I’ve never been with one long enough to have that fiery a relationship.

My preference has not changed over time. I’ve just been scared, and I already have all the female energy I need in my life with Bryn, and Supergrover if she decides she wants more. I don’t think she will, I just want her to know that she’s welcome… that she jumped to a conclusion that was not there in a lot of cases.

I want to be in her life to whatever level she’ll accept me, but I don’t want a blanket statement that we’ll just write to each other. I wanted solid steps on how we plan to get to know each other in different ways than we know each other now.

None of that has to do with an on the ground meeting. I love her no matter what she does. I just want us to try harder at communication than we have previously. I don’t think that’s a bad thing, but it’s going to take her a while to digest my words and figure out what I’m really saying. I’ll wait forever, because it’s no skin off my nose. I don’t have to close the door to her. I have to close the door to our toxic pattern. Fixing that would bring me back around to being closer to her. Winging it will ensure another week in which our dance of intimacy gets more passionate and we repel each other like magnets.

I don’t want to be 100% That Bitch. I said something to her that I meant as “I’m done coming up with topics.” She said “I’m done, too. Please don’t contact me again.” One of these things is not like the other. She absolutely went to guns on me, and that’s what I have to stop. She doesn’t have questions. She has defenses.

I stopped deciding to put my time and energy into her because I realized that if she could jump to that conclusion so quickly, this would be a harder pattern to break than I thought. She said that she was coming from a place of friendship, and took a pot shot at me while saying our relationship wouldn’t change. That I could count on not knowing anything about how our future would or could shake out.

Instead of telling me all the things she wouldn’t do, she told me all the things she wouldn’t. That’s why I decided I wanted to let her come up with her own safe topics. That I wasn’t going to try and do her emotional work for her and guess what was going on anymore. I have never been treated as right until she got vulnerable enough to admit it. We did not continue talking in that vulnerable way. The wall went up again. She says I decided she would never be vulnerable again. I did not. I was repelled at the idea that this was a bait-and-switch. I’ll tell you that I’m your real friend, but I have no idea whether I want to integrate you into my real life or not, and the whole e-mail was geared toward ways she wanted to continue hiding herself also while having a 10 year history of being avoidant.

When she was vulnerable, she admitted that was a problem in other relationships, too. I knew that the pattern we were in was universal. It’s how people operate from their first families, not their current ones. Nothing she did had anything to do with me, and it comforted all my anxieties that she really does think about me, often, just doesn’t have the time to respond. That meant more to me than gold, because I got to imagine who she was thinking about right before she thought about me.

She has cool friends because she does things. I could have cool friends, but I like sitting at home and letting her and Lindsay control doing all the things. Them doing all the things and just hearing about it is way more interesting to me than actually having to get dressed up enough to go with them. They have to wear suits and crap. That gets expensive for me because I need something tailored to my frame. The closest I can come is a big boys’ double breasted suit, but it doesn’t have the same proportions as adult clothes and I just have to roll with it. I wear a men’s pea coat, but when I’m wearing it, I have a sweater or multiple layers under it. So, I don’t necessarily feel comfortable in the gallery of the House (Lindsay is a lobbyist and attends to see the vote on her bills).

The last time I was with her when a Thing happened was when we were in the gallery waiting for her bill to come up. At that time, she was working for a drug company and one of her territories was Maryland. We were in Annapolis when Baltimore became a sanctuary city.

I spend most of my day in jeans and t-shirts so that I don’t have to wear suits and crap for work. But sometimes, I wish I did. Theirs is rareified air, invaluable marketing, and an absolute no brainer as to why I wouldn’t want to meet people on my sister’s back. I shy away from hurting her reputation. The last thing I would want to do is have a negative impact on anyone’s career.

Everyone I know has careers that I celebrate. Including the one where I ramble about anything and everything and people show up.

Carol Works Very Hard for Free

June 11, 2024 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I have mentioned this before, but I use Carol as my secretary. I was looking for new content on my blog, and wanted to have questions that might shed new light on old themes. I don’t want to remain the same, and being questioned is invaluable.

Based on the content from “theantileslie.com,” here are some thought-provoking questions an interviewer might ask to delve into the author’s experiences and insights, showcasing the depth and range of their work:

Your blog offers a candid look into your life experiences. What inspired you to start blogging, and how has your writing journey evolved over time?
- Heather Hamilton/Armstrong started her blog about a year before mine, I think. I know they were very close, but I don’t remember what year. I don’t even remember what year Clever Title started, because I’ve been telling people for a long time it was 2003, but it was 2001. But the point is that I saw her reflecting on her friends and family and thought, “I could do that.” Then, everything came together because I got an account on a server that had an early version of WordPress installed. It was love at first sight, because the first rule is “write what you know.” I know people and how to portray them in an engaging light. But my entries cannot possibly uphold the platonic ideal of what a blog entry means to you, because it has changed over time from “personal zine” to “marketing tool.” Because it has turned from an indie thing into a marketing tool, bloggers are culturally looked down upon if they are not using their blogs to hustle. I know my blog has ads, but I don’t get the money from them. Automattic does. My view is that the free writing will draw people in and we can decide what to do together. Do they want a premium tier? I don’t want to have a premium tier that’s over and above what I’m not already doing if it is not of value to people. I have learned the value of waiting to be asked. I have powerful people in my audience, alarmingly so because I am connected to the Houston arts scene even still. Someone knows someone. Other people have let me believe that I am going to be a star, and I don’t know what to do with that except say “we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.” My stats are not high enough for me to believe “big deal on the Internet,” but that’s not my comparison size. A church looks huge to me. Huge. My reader count is higher than the population of some Texas towns. That’s enough for me. It’s not that I don’t believe I’m not successful. I just don’t see what it is about me that makes my friends think “big deal.” Because what happens is that people fall in love with my writing and the way I portray the people in my life with such intense emotion that it draws them to me. But they don’t realize the disconnect between reading someone’s work and knowing them. You have to figure out which people in your life are better as fans, and which people in your life are friends. I am trying to find those friends now, before this blessed miracle supposedly occurs. Every Jed needs a Leo, and every Leo needs a Jed.
You’ve touched on themes of spirituality and technology. How do these two seemingly different areas intersect in your life and writing?
- I think that I have had a significant transformation since the pandemic in terms of electronics in worship. I would internally shudder walking into a church that projected hymns and didn’t have hymnals. The screens just look so tacky, especially in a cathedral. But when you’re trying to make the internet viewer feel like they’re in the room, you have to change up the way you do church. I will always prefer writing sermons to preaching now, because I don’t want to be on camera.
Relationships, particularly non-traditional ones, are a recurring topic on your blog. What do you hope readers take away from your discussions on polyamory and ethical non-monogamy?
- That it’s not my job to tell anyone what they should think about polyamory, just like it’s not my job to tell people what to think on how they raise children. Even if I also had babies, one parent criticizing another is just rude. Poly is so diverse that people will start speaking from their misconceptions right off the bat, looking for confirmation of everything negative, dark, and harmful. There’s no focus on the reality of the situation. Most people are “monogamous.” Because no one else ever attracts anyone else after marriage. After marriage, you simply go blind.
Your blog posts often reflect a deep sense of introspection. Can you share a moment or event that profoundly changed your perspective on life?
- No, but I can tell you about the way my blog has made me feel over time. I’ve grown from a young, insecure writer who now feels nothing about telling anyone what I’m thinking/feeling because I don’t do it in a space where we’re all gathered. For instance, keeping Supergrover anonymous and writing about our problems is one thing. Getting into a fight with her where other people could hear it? Never. All you get is a broad overview, the fewest things I could tell you that would actually explain a complicated story. Enormously complicated. Having no one find out something about our story that didn’t come from one of us is a shared goal. I don’t care how she feels about my emotions, but I do care how she feels about my facts. All emotions are valid. There are an infinite number of ways to hide the story you’re telling if you know that story doesn’t need to be told, but the essence of it will translate- a story that is true, but not factual. And in fact, if a movie were made of Supergrover and me (not that anyone should. She would be mortified, and I would on her behalf…. although she does speak money. Aim high. I’m not for sale, but she might be. 😛 This is the adult equivalent of “if mom says it’s okay, dad says it’s okay.” I am not her gatekeeper. She is mine, and that’s a good thing. My friends keep me from swinging at every pitch. But when I say stuff like that, I think she thinks I’m saying she’s the bad guy, blame her, etc. No. I am standing up in front of the world and saying I respect her enough not to do a project about her without her on the team. Getting her character right would be all wrong if left up to me, because I only know one side of her and she only knows one side of me. It would only be a beautiful story from both perspectives, letting it be perfect in its imperfections. She’s worth millions at the box office, but I don’t think she believes it. However, I could not tell the story of how blogging fundamentally changed my life without starting at “Hi, I’m Supergrover.” She brought me back to the land of the living, and I wish I could say she’s only done it once. No, she’s done it many times. I am actually frustrated that she won’t let me rescue her. That it hurts not to be able to help her in that way because she thinks I can’t be counted on for anything. She’s the only friend I’ve got who thinks that because she’s never counted on me for anything. If I love you, you become the most serious thing in my life. Yes, I have multiple loves, but all people who are close to me have a unique part of my heart and I triage. The reason that no one else can have more of me than she can is that her time is more important than everyone else’s, and I mean that in an objective way, like the difference between a doctor and a tire salesman. The scale is different at work when there are lives in your hands. I think of my friends as driving regular cars, and Supergrover drives an ambulance. Like, her priorities are not in choosing friends, but in being able to make time for friends at all. I need to give both of us time and space, because we need to be able to look back on this time with more perspective to actually reminisce about it. Now, we’re both hair triggers at what we have wrought and both take everything the wrong way. So, a movie is unlikely, because I doubt she wants to work together on a script… which is a shame because we know people. Margaret Cho retweeted me once. We are obviously now best friends. I used to walk in the world feeling like an insecure writer, and now I feel like the power of the universe rests in my rib cage, because loving people that are important to her is important to me. Ergo, I pray for all the people she works with, not just her. I pray for her family, not just her. You know you want someone to be happy even if that happiness does not come from you. Besides, along with the pain she’s given me plenty of happiness as well. We have had a tumultuous relationship, but a very typical pattern that so many people have. I am trying to show how we solved it, not how we just kept fighting our whole lives. I want her to look at me like Tony Stark looks at Spider-Man. Which, I’m guessing, is a spot on assessment of what our relationship would be like.
  - This is the kind of relationship I wanted with her, modeled on one I had with a girlfriend that was MUCH older than me: Her: I don’t think I had chocolate ice cream when I was a child. Me: ……sideye…… had it been invented yet? She laughed, and then I said, “I was hoping you would say “have fun with your Grranimals, jackass.” Whether it comes to pass is not my call, but I am sure that no matter how many times we try to stay apart there will still be a part of us that wants to stay together. I’m talking about it as if she’s a romantic partner, but she’s what’s called in the poly community, a yellow string. Zac would be a red. The difference in colors refers to romantic vs. emotional support. It’s a way to let everyone know “how you’re related.” At this point, it feels like we’re the same person. I wish I was kidding, but I’m not. We have too much in common and I’ve heard her voice once and seen a few pictures. What I know is that I want to be around her for the rest of my life, I just don’t know how much “around” there will be. Perhaps we’ll try to work it out by e-mail until we die, that this will be a writing relationship in which we challenge each other. I am comfortable with that, but it’s not my end goal. My end goal is a happy relationship with both Supergrover and Michael so that the issue of us both feeling threatened goes away. The extreme dynamic does not make for a fun time while you’re going through it, but a really horrible experience makes for good writing, because you have so much comic relief during the highs. Supergrover would not be free enough to write the whole script until she retires, because right now every day looks like coming home every day feeling like you’ve been hit by a truck…. while insanely sleep deprived. Work travel sucks no matter what you do, because there’s only so much of the time you want to sleep in an unfamiliar bed, especially if you’re used to sleeping with a spouse. I suggested a weighted blanket. I hope it helps.
As a writer, you’ve explored various genres and styles. Which piece of writing are you most proud of, and why?
- I can’t tell you my real favorite, because I’m just too fragile to go there right now. I will say that “The Visitation” still flattens me. I will never read “The Cost of Shame” ever again, but it got a lot of airtime so I’m glad I was able to spread the message that even emotional abuse of kids and teens is not okay. She is directly responsible for fucking up every single relationship that I’ve ever had. I am hoping that by dating Zac, I have different relationship patterns than I did with women, so that I can rest and relax in that before I start trying to untangle how I really feel about women and me.
- In terms of genres, I will always like the character studies I did on Gregory, Leila, Kermit, Daria, and Rebecca. Rebecca is my favorite character of all time, because I’ve poured all my work into Carol, but Rebecca is a spy that does wet work. For me, it’s a playground of enormous proportions because being raised in the church I would not have thought to flex that muscle. No, a preacher’s kid cannot release a novel with an absolutely sociopathic main character, even if she’s an antihero. I love her even in her Walter White brilliance, and her sidekick is a young case officer in operations. So, he’s good at his job and also a very loose cannon. Think Toby and Josh. Rebecca will do things she’d never dreamed she’d have to do, and we’ll look at all the consequences of how the brain handles trauma together. Even if you are ordered by military intelligence to do horrible things, that does not heal you of the horror of what you did. No one should have to live the aftereffects of war. Rebecca will grapple with all of that. Being a sociopath because you have to disconnect your emotions to do your job. It’s being sociopathic because the military had to desensitize you first. Abu Ghraib was obviously filled with very mentally healthy people.
You’ve mentioned Doctor Who as one of your interests. If you could write an episode for the show, what story would you tell?
- I have absolutely no idea how, but I’d like to bring back River Song. Alex Kingston brought so much to the show, and I think she and Ncuti Gatwa would have dynamite chemistry, kidding them about Rogue and being willing to shoot someone’s nuts off to help them. Pro Tip- don’t but Ncuti in a fez. We’d never get him out of it either, Stephen Moffat. 😛 A better idea would be for me to collaborate with Neil Gaiman so that we could bounce ideas off each other. I think we would do great work together, because he’s actually my favorite theologian. Everyone is a little Crowley, and everyone is a little Az. Moral relativity means that divinity and humanity are the same thing. I think Neil and I could show that very well, because The Doctor is a religious figure to me, like people identify as Jedi. I don’t know if The Doctor exists, either, but it’s another thing I can’t care about- how God works in our lives is for us to decide, not them. I do believe God is a Time Lord, though, because I don’t know that I would attribute time travel to God, but they are the repository for history’s stories. I think we could do a lot with that… me and Neil. Us writers.
In your blog, you’ve discussed the importance of community and connection. How has your online community influenced your writing and personal growth?
- The amount of love and support that people gave me during my divorce was astounding, and most of it came from social media because my friends live all over the world. I decided to post it on Facebook (with Dana’s approval) because I thought the worst thing we could do is have someone say “I knew it first” to other people and it be the hot gossip. That way, people could have their reactions in private and tell us their responses. I think we handled it well. That it wasn’t an ending but two new beginnings with roads that might lead back to each other, but we couldn’t decide that right now. The fight happened after I was hospitalized. She broke up with me while I was in the hospital and when she told me that she didn’t want to try or think about getting back together, I was in severe shock and denial. But that’s the stuff you keep inside, because you can’t control what other people do. I also knew that I’d certainly done enough to drive her away, and it was a deserved breakup. I own my half, and that’s what gives me so much peace to look back at my life. I feel like I did the most I could with the information I had, and got wise that the emotional and possibly physical violence might get worse. Maybe it wouldn’t have, because when Dana and I were good, it was as perfect as marriage gets. I just spun out at a bad time because Dana was spinning out. Neither one of us walked away clean in terms of regret. Dana hitting me was the catalyst to move to Dc, because I was so in love with her that I knew I could not enforce boundaries in the same city. Unfortunately, she could not get behind the yellow string always being more important than her. I was Leo. She was Jenny.
- When I moved to DC, my community was on a whole different level. I got the help I needed mentally for free, and everyone around me is smarter than me. I have to keep up, and it makes me feel good that most of the time, I can. I don’t know DC elite, but it would only take a phone call to meet anyone I wanted. I just don’t call because I don’t do things.
You’ve shared insights into your creative process. What challenges do you face when writing, and how do you overcome them?
- The biggest fear I have in writing is all the time, every day. It is relentless. What is the balance between telling my story and telling someone else’s for them as I try to guess what’s in their heads and decide what I’m going to do about it. I don’t necessarily want people to know what I’m going to do, but if they’re going to read me, I need them to respect that this is my space to vent. Peace in our relationship doesn’t come from raging that I write. It comes from changing the channel. I will not stop writing because not only does it change me, I have proof that it changes others. The highlight of my career is that I made a doctor cry on the toilet.
Your blog serves as a platform for your voice and experiences. How do you handle the vulnerability that comes with sharing personal stories?
- By having my absolute knee jerk reactions here, thus giving people a chance to respond to what I’ve said in the comments. Zac is a member of WordPress, so we can share information across blogs easily, and he has a WordPress account, so at least he sees me in my feed. Zac is just as important as Supergrover, because he’s intelligence. It’s a transferable skill to be able to have comfortable conversations about difficult things. We can do hard things, but it’s often hard to take the first step. My vulnerability is hopefully other people saying “if she can be that vulnerable, I can, too. If Supergrover writes her story to me, if she was as vulnerable as me it would be a bestseller, because she’s funnier than me and she grew up in the South. My writing imitates a lot of people, but she could rival Haven Kimmel in “A Girl Named Zippy.” If she’s reading this, go buy that book and hold your calls. You won’t be able to stop laughing in order to speak. My favorite line in the book is “when it became impossible to live without a pet chicken…” I have no idea what her life was like as a child, I just know the way she tells stories. There is no more important balance between vulnerability and stoicism than that, to keep her stories her stories. Mine are just okay. If she decides to write a memoir like that, “buy a hat and hold the fuck onto it.” However, there are so many authors that just prefer to write in private, and I think she would see that she’s funny and touching as well. Just once, I would like to see Supergrover see herself the way I do. A love so deep that in these pages will live forever, because the story is so deeply passionate in terms of both of us sticking to our guns and fighting it out that it won’t take romance to keep your interest. If we did not have passionate and furious arguments, we would not keep coming back to each other. You only get that angry when you care.
Looking forward, what themes or issues are you eager to explore in your future posts?
- The same ones I do now, just different takes because life repeats. If you read every day, you do not see enormous changes. You are looking for something repetitive to complain about, creating solidarity. That stops when you are so involved with a project that piques your interest that you don’t feel like you’re working, you feel like you’re making a difference. But it has to be outside of work. The thing you love that if other people love it and think it’s worth money, they’ll buy it. Like Nick Offerman’s hobby being woodworking. He has a bigger platform, but it’s not like smaller makers are doing different or inferior work just because he’s a celebrity. He sells his goods because they’re actually artistic and outstanding. When you have a passion for something, people notice. They want to support you the more you have a fire in the belly for something. Inertia builds. My stats have gone up exponentially since I started, and with a thousand followers and a 60-something percent reader retention rate (I don’t remember because I got the number in January when WordPress does extra for year-end stats. I don’t have to punch up the numbers when 1800 people across all my platforms follow my blog, because it posts on all the major blogging sites, Facebook, X, etc. Facebook is the only company where I have registered a business account.
- If you value keeping this web site free, please like and share me all over everywhere, because then I’ll be paid by Facebook and the money won’t come out of your pocket. Help me be brilliant at getting Facebook’s money and I’ll keep trying to entertain you and heal me at the same time.

Smiley

April 27, 2024April 27, 2024 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

What are your favorite emojis?

I have jokingly called Zac “Smiley” since we met. That’s because George Smiley was John Le Carré’s main character and Zac is not in a big three letter, but he works in both military and civilian intelligence roles. I was delighted one day when I said something in voice dictation like, “you’re adorable, Smiley.” Siri wrote:

You’re adorable 😊

So, if I had to pick one out of all, it’s the OG. I was around when it began, and I use/say it almost as much now as then.

I feel like I use emojis the way they were intended, which is to indicate which lines are jokes… not a mode of communication. To me, that is like saying “I need 300 words on my desk by 1500, but make sure it’s in Wingdings.” Therefore, I hardly ever use emoticons that I can’t type.

It’s not fun to me to stop and insert imagery like a web designer. I will add emojis at the end, but only sometimes. Mostly I am concerned about getting you an answer, not picking pictures.

My other top two are a winking face and a smiley with the tongue hanging out because they’re easy to use at 90 wpm. I also try not to use them in every single paragraph. They are decorations, not cake. My feelings may have more to do with the creation of the web not being what maintains it. As in, I may be telling you things that no longer apply. In my background, they were lifelines to ensure that you let someone know your intent in a chat room, because an emoji transcends language. I get that going to pictures is nothing new and hieroglyphics are valid, but that’s not how we did it in the beginning. I’m not advocating we go backwards. I just haven’t had a situation where I needed to stop talking and use emojis instead. It has never come up.

I also don’t expect other people to be writers, so I am not telling you what you should do, either. I am saying that my habits are built from having specifically a desktop since I was eight. It was a different feel not to have the Internet on all the time, like a utility. You might have only been able to chat for a few minutes before someone accidentally picked up the phone. The phone lines carried both data and voice just like the internet does now, but picking up another phone in the house would drop the data connection and you would be “kicked off.” I have to explain this because not all my readers are my age.

I wish I could remember more of those early conversations, because I didn’t realize how quickly my day to day life was changing. My watch has a faster processor now than my desktop had back then.

I have a watch that would have genuinely been helpful at CIA during The Cold War, and I would not doubt that they had something like an Apple Watch long before we did. It’s not because I think there’s a deep state or anything shady. It’s that with all the technology research CIA does, a computer that’s capable of sitting on your wrist like a Pip-Boy can’t be an original idea. Jonna used to take calls from her staff after “Get Smart” and “Dragnet” from officers saying, “can we do that?”

But there’s a second reason, and that’s that during one of Jonna’s talks, she said that they do such specialized things that one person will spend their entire career on one thing, like batteries or cameras. That’s because once an asset got to the place where they were supposed to plant the bug, it had to last a long time, because who knows how long it will be before we can get into that room again? And in fact, she was talking about “The Americans,” the scene where the maid hides the bug in Caspar Weinberger’s clock.

(I thought it was really funny that Ollie North consulted on “The Americans. It’s just the richest ending to that story I could imagine, because it was a major one. I remember it and I couldn’t have been even a teenager yet.)

We, the people of the chatrooms, have conversations exactly like this because we’re always looking for the next new thing, computer-wise. Zac and I have a Chinese Wall on technology, because he knows I’m interested and I’ll ask way more questions than he could possibly answer. The only thing he’ll say is the history of something if it’s UNCLASS. Like, “we have stuff that looks similar.” If he says “looks similar,” that’s kind of my cue to go read a book. 😉

I have never been in a chatroom where we weren’t discussing computers or the chessboard at some point. I have no doubt that I’ve met half of Anonymous by now. I know for certain I’ve met one. I didn’t even have to catch him at anything. He took some Ambien and came to my house because he still couldn’t sleep……… Then I didn’t sleep for three days.

However, he was the kind of hacker you want. Someone who’s a hacktivist on the good guys’ side. White hats do exist.

In all of my years on the Internet, it’s been as nonbinary as everything else about me. I got sucked into the world of hacking, but I don’t hack. It’s kind of the way Lindsay is woven into the queer community in Houston even though she’s cis and straight.

Oh, and I should write this down. “Enby” is short for nonbinary. It’s the gender that most fits me, and yet I don’t care if people think I’m male or female. Pronouns are not about respect to me, because I think it’s more important for me to know who I am than anyone else. Pronouns are a non-issue because I don’t make them one. The easiest thing is just to say “they” if you don’t know, anyway. It’s funny how my gender often depends on how people perceive me, which most of the time is female, but when people don’t look closely, I’m always a “sir.” Neither bother me in the slightest.

(And for the record, if you misgender me, just apologize and move on….. Because you didn’t misgender me and I’m not offended. Plus, I do not need your entire history with trans people as an apology. I’m sure your nephew is great.)

The truth is, though, lots of people on the Internet are nonbinary by now, whether we like it or not. The Internet has changed the rules of the game because you become disconnected from your physical body during emotional intimacy. It’s not that way for everyone, obviously, but it’s a good observation of most. For instance, “straight guys” trolling gay chatrooms because they’re curious and don’t want anyone to know they’re chatting with other queer people at night.

And most of the time, that comes off as rage bait. It’s very popular to come into a gay online community and start asking things like “so which one’s the wife?” And you watch a mix of insults go by because it’s our space.

It is also true that a disproportionately large neurodivergent community exists on the web because we built it. I have always worked with other autistic people without being able to identify it for myself, because I did not know that I was social masking, first of all (in a way that other people don’t), and I also didn’t know that you can have a full range of emotions and pick up all social cues and guess what? That’s not what autism is, either. It’s a criteria, but it’s not all of it.

Being autistic is absolutely why I gravitated toward Linux. It wasn’t to play around with Linux, necessarily. Part of it was learning Linux, and it was exciting because I could do things that very few people my age could do. The better part was a group of people who could understand me in my own language, which for years turned into me being the only woman in many rooms (because that’s mostly how I’ve presented at the office, although we all kind of look nonbinary in Oregon because we’re all wearing the same Columbia jacket we got on sale last summer at REI.

I wouldn’t have learned any of the things I’ve learned about myself without an Internet connection, because I didn’t have many queer friends growing up locally in Texas, but I had a ton of them in Australia.

So, I suppose the easiest way to say it is something you’ve heard all your life, so I hope it makes sense.

“My kindom is not of this world.”

😉

It’s Too Easy to Do the Wrong Thing

April 3, 2024 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I have a lot of people tell me this when they’re in relationships with me, and I have found that it is a fighting tactic of which I’m not very fond. They say “you’re demanding,” but what they mean is “I’m overwhelmed.” That’s because it is not on one person to divine the other’s needs, and there is no way that the problem is always me. However, it is a very effective cheap political shot, as if nothing in their behavior ever elicits my response. I’m just “mean.” When that happens, I disengage. I don’t want to play games. And, I’m hearing Supergrover’s voice in my head as I type this, “I do not have room for that temperature in my life.”

Last night Daniel invalidated my feelings, so I disengaged and went to bed. I didn’t want either of us to say anything they regretted, because he sighed in exasperation, which came across as passive-aggressive in the first place, and I knew it was time to go. It was enough for one day, because I was tired enough that I knew I’d go nuclear on him and I was heading a fight off at the pass. I said, “I don’t want to play your games,” took my sleeping pills, and went to bed.

I wake up, and he’s mad about all these slights, real and perceived, that he has not expressed before, so one of two things is happening. Either he’s actually concerned/angry about these things and has been covering them up, or he’s just making up things to throw in my face so that I’m “forced” to feel bad about the fact that I withdrew.

What I have learned over time is to go to bed angry. Let that shit work itself out in my dreams, rather than taking it out on the person I love because we’re fighting while we’re exhausted. So, I got some sleep, and while I was asleep, he went from “I’m having a bad day” to “you know what, this isn’t worth it” in two hours.

He absolutely spun out on his own because he was anxious, so it wasn’t a real breakup. He doesn’t know what the right thing to do is right now, because he thinks I’m demanding due to old tapes. If everyone tells you that your feelings don’t matter, then you’re going to believe they don’t. If you don’t believe your words have power, then you’ll say anything because no one is listening, anyway. I understand this innately- it’s a trait of all neurodivergent people. But it is not my responsibility to fill that hole inside him and make him secure enough within himself that he doesn’t think I’m abandoning him every time I go to bed.

He asked me to stop bombarding him with messages because it was too much- he, like Supergrover, assumed that I needed answers to everything rightthefucknow, when I was making a list and checking it twice over things that were important to talk about as we plan the next few years. However, because it had been a problem with Supergrover, I was prepared for it. I could never convince her that I wanted an answer eventually, that I wasn’t on a time constraint because I was looking so far into the future that the moment didn’t matter. She could be as busy as she needed to be, as long as she was willing to lay her guts on the table and tell me what was wrong. I cannot divine it over text.

But I would if I could, and often tried.

So, I stopped writing so much to Daniel at a time and started recording my thoughts either here or in a notebook (because I doubt you care about the dull details that create dreams, you care about the dreams themselves). I want to get married to Daniel because the piece of paper has a function beyond just saying to the world that we’re in love and want to be together. We could do that in front of our friends and family without ever filing government paperwork and it would be every bit as meaningful.

But there’s a huge difference in marrying a civilian vs. marrying a veteran. Dependents are entitled to so much more if they’re married to or a child of a service member, even in Daniel’s retirement. There are perks that are thank you for your service all over the place, like not having to pay tax on things when you buy at the PX, getting to fly standby on military planes when Daniel, Cora, and I are all traveling together, and a health care system in which I’d never fall through the cracks. It’s a lot, and it’s a big decision, but Daniel has already offered. I don’t think we’re there yet, obviously, if our communication needs this much work.

But here’s why it does………. God help me. I am marrying myself, and it’s not so easy to be married to you. I do not mean that I’m a selfish bastard, I’m saying that we are so much alike that it’s akin to having a child and thinking, “I wanted you to look like me, not act like me.”

This time, it’s on Daniel to figure out why he spiraled out so fast, and learn how not to do that. Not my circus, not my monkeys. If he’s as serious about this relationship as he says he is, he’ll have to learn to own his half, because I am not here to suss it out for him.

I am in no way a psychologist. I just “speak” psychologist and this is the best way I know how to explain what’s going on without putting blame on either one of us. Medicine and how the brain works over huge population samples gives me perspective that I am not trying to analyze them, but to explain to an audience what I think is going on and how I feel, because that kind of empathy helps me move forward in a positive way. The empathy part is going out of my way to try and prove that I’m wrong. To give people the benefit of the doubt because I can analyze behavior with an omnipotent third eye, calling myself out on my own bullshit in the process.

There is just no room in my life for people who don’t want to know what part they played, because relationships don’t last that way. If one person expresses needs and one person hides, it’s a hard pattern to break……… but I have to, or Daniel, et al, will make me afraid to emote at all.

That is not what I want in a partner. We’re going to be giants together, with room for all our feelings…… no one ever has to hide in fear and spiral out alone.

Daniel seems to waffle on conversations about the future, but it’s for good reason. I’m not saying that he’s avoidant because he wants to be, only that he has to be right now…. but not forever. He’s in the middle of his disability case that could make his pension even more attractive, so he can’t predict things like cash flow and his ability to “move about the country.” At the same time, without any kind of vision, I flounder. And if me wanting some sort of working boundaries is taken as a problem because I am telling you what I want/need and feel like you need to keep everything close to the vest.

I have a huge capacity to love, but also a huge capacity to feel needed. The lovebomb/discard cycle will not happen with me, because I won’t allow it. It’s harder with an addict or a patient with mental health issues like PTSD, but not impossible. It’s not because the person is a narcissist, it’s that their first reaction is trained to be fear and protection of themselves. If you bring up a problem, their first reaction is to try and make their environment safe, and that includes the steel shutdown with the automatic locks, sometimes with the cocking of weapons to show you shouldn’t get any closer. That’s the point at which I know our conversation has come to an end, because I am not going to fight through all that. You’re going to explore why you felt you had to “suit up” and come tell me what you were really feeling that made you react that way. You are not responsible for my reactions, but I am allowed to have them.

I’m allowed to feel pissed off that Daniel once again broke up with me, but he fired himself out of anxiety and abandonment, just like I did with Supergrover. I felt abandoned even though she didn’t feel that way. I didn’t need any more safety and security than that. That way, I’m not counting on a response, but it’s welcome if I get one. I would have treated her like I treat Bryn for her whole life if she had been as honest with me in all of her e-mails as she was in her last one.

Here’s the line that got me. “I could write all night, but I won’t.” In that moment, I knew I hadn’t been lovebombed just to be discarded. That’s because the letter was already pages long, and then after she said she didn’t want to type anymore, she typed for several more paragraphs. It made it feel so much more personal and intimate, because it was like she was saying, “I could write to you all night.” The only thing I worry about with both Daniel and Supergrover is that I have done this thing: