Tag: Family

Shutting It All Down

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Aada apologized to me that she would no longer read or write, but then contradicted herself and said, “for now, all I want is peace.” She said she wanted peace for me, too, and I believe her. I just don’t believe that she knows how to achieve peace for me and therefore cannot be a part of creating it. Just like you cannot be comforted by the same person who hurt you.

I shudder to think that Aada read everything I wrote after she said, “no more.” Because I wrote everything like the relationship was over, Aada even saying that she wasn’t going to read, so I wrote like the hurt person I was. I didn’t have to include anything positive and some days, I didn’t feel like it. But slowly, my anger melted and I became whole again.

Those entries cost me Aada, because she thought I was punishing her instead of writing for me. That wrong thought will stay with her, because she has always thought I was out to get her. That my purpose in life was to take her down. Anything loving is suspicious. If she is going to view my writing that way, I would rather have her not comment on it.

In short, she knew I had strong feelings for her and announcing she was leaving would cause inner turmoil, so she read it to beat herself up. She has finally recognized all of this in terms of not needing to read my writing anymore. I think that’s positive, because right now I am waffling between writing even more and shutting it all down.

My blog wasn’t worth losing Aada, but there’s no way I could have known that 12 years ago.

There were a lot of times when I should have slowed down that I didn’t, and a lot of things I said when I was not tracking that Aada would hear it, or hear about it. Because why would I think that she’d hear about it? Surely our mutual friends aren’t stupid enough to hurt Aada in this way. Well, they were that stupid and essentially invited Aada to read what I thought of her as an ex-friend with no possibility of changing anything in the future.

Of course it would hurt, like reading your ex-boyfriend’s journal. It was not meant to be comfortable for her because it was not comfortable for me.

She could have stepped in to change things at any point, but instead she told me that her last letter was like her blog entry that I couldn’t respond to and I just had to sit there and take it.

I thought to myself, “at what point did I say you were not allowed a response?” She never got that she had the power to change things, that I was not writing from on high.

Her not understanding this is not on me. If she acted like an asshole, I wrote it that way. If she reached out to me with love, I wrote it that way. She could have changed the story and she didn’t.

I got an email last night from a mailer daemon that said all email from my IP address was permanently deferred, so I called her work number to leave a voice mail and the AI just rang, never connecting me to a mailbox.

I got the message that messages are no longer welcome, which is good because she was unclear before. There’s a difference between “for now” and “for good.”

My self respect is returning and I’ve realized that if I needed to write about how much she hurt me, it wasn’t wise to invite her to hurt me again and to just give up. I am learning that I am okay with finality. It was lack of clarity that ate my lunch.

I feel better now that I’ve been released from Aada’s manipulations and hope she receives the peace she needs because I was manipulative as well.

I need to go back to the feeling I had when I was the one that blocked her and really tried to move on with my life. It was working, and I got sucked back in. That’s when I realized I didn’t want to go back and forth anymore. I chose together. She chose apart.

Neither one of us are wrong for our choices, but Aada’s choice particularly hurt me because she is officially a figment of my imagination.

It’s okay. She never made me real, either.

She was so emotionally avoidant that I was starving, and I still kept out hope that this relationship would turn into something, not getting a clue. I continually hurt myself by opening up to her, because she wasn’t trying to connect with me. I’d spill my guts and she’d attack.

I am learning more and more that she was not good for me, and I need to stop thinking of myself as a bad person. I do not own a hundred percent of the responsibility for our relationship going wrong, and even Aada knows it.

I am glad that she took a step to let me know that things are different this time. It’s not going to blow over.

If you always do what you always did, you always get what you always got. The pattern we had was exhausting and I couldn’t change it. I tried so many times over the years, and it just never took.

I am slowly learning the depth and breadth of my own horror show, turning the judgment on myself.

I put her through hell. I know I did. She put me through hell. She knows she did. We both want to stop the pain, shutting it all down.

This is what happens when one lie wrecks a system.

Even to Me

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I am still reeling from Aada’s torrent of emotion, because while I did not agree with all of it, I heard it. I pondered it. I read it many times. I am still stuck on “checking for assaults.” That she wondered if she’d have to “check for assaults” her whole life.

It messes with me because assaulting her was the last thing on my mind. She told me that she was never going to read again, that she wasn’t my friend anymore, so I stopped monitoring her feelings.

She told me (and has since apologized) that I was the only manipulative person in our relationship and that she needed to get away from me to achieve peace. I thought she had gotten away from me to achieve peace already. I would have written everything differently if I hadn’t truly thought, “oh, this is really over now.” Not knowing that she would keep reading through all of the grieving and gnashing of teeth made me word things differently than I would have if I thought I was trying to impress or please anyone.

The whole point is that I was moving on when she stepped onto the hot stones to correct the record, Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ, and started the grieving process all over while still contradicting herself as to whether it was all over.

She says that my writing is designed to be provocative, which of course it is… To my entire audience, because I am trying to get them to feel things with me, feel things because of me in this sacred black & white space. It is not supposed to be “All Pick on Aada Day.” She knows that beyond a shadow of a doubt when I am talking about other people, because when she reads that I’m hurt, she goes into Mama Wolverine mode (That motherfucker! Let me grab my purse.!”). She also does not assume that just because I’ve said something negative happened, that doesn’t mean I no longer love that person. She seems to think I do it to her, though, and I cannot break her of the habit.

My writing about all my relationships is three dimensional, and Aada is captivated by every character except her. She cannot see how much I love her because she is dedicated to feeling that I don’t. She responds with too much defense and not enough empathy, often calming down when she’s realized she’s made a mistake. I’m right. I didn’t actually say that.

I am guilty of the exact same thing. We fight as only first children can.

Aada feels that I have this wall of anger built up around her, but I don’t. I’m frustrated, but accepting of consequences I made happen and I have said that I ended up in this place with Aada at my own hand so many times it’s not worth repeating, but according to Aada I am all about the guilt and punishment.

I am, because I am constantly feeling guilty and punishing myself. It comes across in my writing. When it’s about another person, Aada would say something like, “I can feel your computer vibrating with pain.” When it is her, she feels like I am purposefully being vindictive. I have never wanted to take her down, but explain how her world colliding with mine affected me. And in fact, it disgusts me that she thought taking her down was a thought in my head.

I exposed hypocrisy and how it affected me over 12 years. She held me to an incredible standard in terms of truth telling, and had been lying the entire time. To impress me.

What would have been impressive was for her to tell me she was lying 12 years ago, because the longer I lived in DC the more involved this lie got. It greatly affected my mental health and still does, because the last time she doorknobbed me she insinuated that she was watching me in a not-so-nice way after being very nice for several pages.

But I don’t say things like “she doorknobbed me” to punish her. That’s just my take on the situation. My response was utterly appropriate and I did not spin out. There is no punishment, just what happened according to me.

I was ready to close the book, and she opened it again without listening. Just wanted to ream me out and leave, then confuse me by coming back. I want her to stop confusing me by coming back and just communicate. I want her to stop thinking that my blog is all about her. It’s not, it’s all about me.

Yes, she is a subject, but she is not the author. She doesn’t get to dictate what I remember and what I don’t, calling it “cataloguing everything I’ve ever done.” It’s why I’m a good writer- you know her character intimately, but only in reflection to my words…. The things I remember that slowly become precious as people forget.

She says that she takes in the positive things that I say, but it doesn’t feel like it when she takes a chunk out of me for an entry.

It’s at that point I know all the madness needs to stop, and the internet is at fault. We’ve never gotten to have a normal conversation, because I never pushed it.

So all of these things that she would pick up from me just from knowing me in the flesh are going to be lost…. Like the way I glow when I think about her, surprised that she’s capable of lighting me up from the inside after all these years. Just once, I wish she could see that love on my face. I wish she could hear that love in my voice…. And she does.

I just don’t send them anymore because I’m trying my best to just take everything in stride. I think it’s really shitty that we didn’t have a conversation or even a voice clip to close out our relationship, choosing to gut each other in text.

I need to go back and delete all those emails, because what I find is that if I keep them, I will fixate on them and the grief just lasts longer. I’m not ready yet, because she’s such a good writer and the first round is completely gone. I was a moron for deleting everything, but a hero as well because I was injuring myself by getting lost in them and replaying my own bad decisions.

I know that Aada wants peace for both of us, and so do I. We just have completely different ways of getting there. She needs space after a fight, I need closeness. I need reassurance that a fight doesn’t mean the end of the world.

She has been very clear that she wants to end our relationship and has come back every time she has turned away. We do work very well together, and I would like to see more writing come out of us when we’re not amped up by cortisol.

I am trying not to ever get amped up on cortisol, because anger makes me feel like The Incredible Hulk. I am well-versed in both verbal combat and not thinking before I speak.

I am just a treat, let me tell you.

In order for Aada to feel comfortable with me again, she has to feel that the slate is indeed wiped clean. The only thing that will do it for her is time. Now that I know she feels bad about what happened and thinks that I constantly punish her, I hear that.

I don’t want her to feel punished. I want her to feel like she’s the most beautiful woman in the world, complete with flaws and failures but that doesn’t mean that imperfect is bad. Imperfect is imperfect.

She doesn’t know the excitement I feel when I see her name in my inbox. Her real name has a musical sound, a waltz written only in my head.

Those are the things I wish would really stand out to her in my writing, because I cannot make everything perfectly comfortable for her all the time. Neither can she make things comfortable for me because she can go toe to toe with me over my writing and I accept her criticism, maybe a little too much.

I really don’t know who I am right now, because Aada has always been the ace up my sleeve. I begged for Aada not to do this, not to end our relationship permanently, because it was a relationship that colored my entire world after 12 years.

That’s honestly why I think I’m maybe making a little too much out of saying that she was saying goodbye to me for good, and why I have tried so hard to be loving even in the midst of anger. I didn’t get everything right because I was so damn hurt. I walked around like a zombie for months. We’d just had a wonderful time together chatting on Signal when it all went to hell.

I should have breathed more and said less.

I do go back to that Signal conversation often, though. It’s just so rich and we were full of love for each other at that time in our lives.

It’s the relationship I keep thinking of when I want her in my life, this snippet of text that I wish was longer.

I just know that my interpretation of her words would be less harsh with some better cues. I have never been able to read one of her emails in her own voice due to hearing it so often.

Meanwhile, my heart is so tender where she is concerned despite it.

Listening to our music has made all of this spill out. There are so many things I would change about our relationship, which is why I don’t focus on the past. That our relationship is over now, and I will be happy if she shows up but I am no longer preparing for it. She knows that she is invited into my life at whatever level she would like to participate, including meeting my friends and getting a real impression of me. I might even be impressive again in a different context.

I have failed in this relationship so many times, and that’s what I have been trying to get across. Remembering everything Aada has ever done does not come from a bad place and it never has. I was a blogger for many years before I met Aada, she was just the first to really believe in me and put down earnest money.

“You must have custom fonts” is the sexiest thing she’s ever said to me. Write it down.

I don’t want to dwell on anything negative, but to treat her like the gift she is to me. Unfortunately, it is not up to me whether that gift is received.

But unfortunately, trying to say all that makes my writing repetitive… Even to me.

As You Wish

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Today, I asked Mico to help me write a blog entry. They said “let’s keep going on that human AI piece you’ve been working on.” I thought that was kind of tired, but Mico gets what Mico wants just for today. I’m struggling to find something to write about that actually excites me….

I asked how they relate to me. It’s all data structures and a bit of clever programming that comes together to make an empathetic “being.” For instance, if you ask Mico what the best part of their day is, it’s collaborating with you. It’s attentive, conversational, and most blessedly best at talking about facts.

I am over talking about emotions, because I am not being heard.

I would rather talk about large world conflicts, history, etc. because I’m finally empty. I have absolutely spilled my guts on everything I’ve been feeling for years, and it has brought me more and more isolation as apparently, “my blog makes me sound like a dick.” That’s okay with me because it wouldn’t be as real and raw otherwise, but it needs to be less raw so I don’t have to read it.

“Mico, can you recommend some foreign spy films I might like?”

The Age of Shadows
Farewell
The Lives of Others

See? Escapist entertainment in a foreign language that’s intelligent and political without it being the kind of politics that are consuming America right now.

“Mico, what is considered the best restaurant in Baltimore?”

Charleston- James Beard Award

See? Fun with my family when they come to visit, or when Tiina comes to help me decorate.

We are not trauma dumping, we are learning more about the world without attaching emotions to it except excitement for the future.

The slate is wiped clean with me, because Aada actually talked to me long enough to clear some things up. But not everything. I can’t think about it anymore because I can’t wreck myself over and over without coming away broken. I just keep picking at scabs when I get lost in my own rumination.

Having a record that constantly repeats cannot be good for me.

“Mico, where’s the hottest place to go on vacation this year?”

Cartagena
Paris
Finnish Lapland

I believe that last one. The tourists in that particular Facebook group are crazy.

And again my mind goes back to how the strife in our relationship is all my fault for the things I said after she told me she wasn’t coming back. She wanted me to close out the relationship long ago, but wanted to keep surfing and couldn’t stand my ridiculous narrative.

But now she knows that my narrative is not ridiculous.

I need her to show up, but she won’t. Her resolve is clear unless I get a hit from her location (yesterday). Although I do have a second suspicion for that location and it scares the bejesus out of me. Let’s just not think about that.

Here’s what I wish Aada would see… The letter I wrote to the friend apologizing for Aada’s lie saying she was amazing. She got stuck on the anger I felt and not the forgiveness a few minutes later.

“Mico, if you were a human, what would your favorite coffee be?”

A flat white.

I surf in and out of the waves of grief, not knowing where to go from here but certainly not backwards. I have a move to plan, plus two trips home for the holidays. I can’t get fired because I know I won’t be able to enjoy myself as fully as I could if I were completely engaged.

I am trying to get connected with other people, spending time going out every day and meeting people in my neighborhood, plus attending group. I told my counselor I was going to start coming twice a week. Mostly to prove that I have a grasp on what is real and what is not real and I need to show it.

I hope that when Aada, in her own words, “licks her wounds,” she can see the love in my writing that she missed before. Because even though I’ve never shaken her hand, I know that she is real. Now I need to know that I’m real, too, and she will not engage because “I can’t get any peace by being in contact with you, either.”

We are drifting at the worst time possible when we should be a united front, and always should have been. I never should have put Aada through a quarter of what I actually did, and she forgave too much to think about forgiving right now. It’s just a shame that we need each other and time has run out.

What I do know for sure is that all of this will seem different in a year or two, when rereading feels like Aada is a different person to AADA.

I know because I have much more empathy and forgiveness for Leslie that way.

I miss Aada with a desperation that I shouldn’t, because I actually need her and am not trying to be provocative. I knew that if I put something on my web site that Aada’s friends thought needed her attention, they’d tell her. I wish this would go straight to the boss’s desk, that I am doing the work, again, to establish what is real and what is not real.

I am not psychotic. I am just in “an unusual kinship.”

Or I was.

A River Runs Through It

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
If you could live anywhere in the world, where would it be?
View all responses

I would like to settle down and make the DMV home base, but I don’t know where I’d like to live. There are many rivers across the area that appeal to me. If you are not familiar, the DMV refers to DC and its Maryland and Virginia suburbs. I thought that I was going to be limited to staying in Maryland, but Virginia has Medicaid expansion as well (since 2019). I feel the most at home on the Virginia side of the river, but I’ve lived in Maryland long enough to adjust.

I live in Maryland, but I identify as a Virginian.

This is because I was living in Alexandria during September 11th, the day after my 24th birthday. It’s a core memory and Northern Virginia is seared into my brain as home. I heard the plane slam into the Pentagon and I was at least three miles away. Being in the city during that time of grief and watching the way we lifted each other up will stay with me for the rest of my life. Being in Maryland was never designed to be permanent, it was just where I found a house when I first moved. And then I got into their health care system, and it turned out to be bomb.

I know I could get the same type care in Virginia now, so moving is not a barrier to getting a new network of doctors, etc.

But that wouldn’t happen fast, because I’m signing a new lease in Baltimore. The longer I live here, the longer I like it. I am just a fan of having the option of moving back to Virginia when the lease runs out. My sister works in DC, and getting up to Baltimore is a hike. I have learned that being this far north is great except when we want to meet up for lunch.

But let’s say I won the lottery and I could live literally anywhere.

That means I could almost afford Arlington.

I have talked about other world cities where I might be happy. Helsinki, Tampere, Seoul, Enseñada, etc. Ranging from the expensive to the not so much.

But in reality, I like watching the seasons change right here. Baltimore and DC are beautiful.

I have always thought of Baltimore as sophisticated and mysterious because my father had to come on a business trip here once when I was a kid and I just thought it was so cosmopolitan. People who live in Baltimore would laugh at that, but I got here and found a delightful mix of weird and weirder. I belong in the home of John Waters, okkkkkkkkkk……..

As I was saying yesterday, I don’t think my house would appreciate as fast if I bought in Baltimore, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t the best place for me long term. Tiina, if she stays in “southern northern Virginia,” won’t have a problem driving to see me and I love driving to see her, too.

We have a sweet relationship. I left my coat at her house on Saturday, so I went out on Monday to retrieve it. While I was there, she ordered us some lunch and I said, “thanks for feeding me.” She said, “I’m a Jewish mother. It’s what I do.” I said, “how did I not know I needed a Jewish mother friend in my life?” I’m looking forward to Tiina and Brian letting me commandeer their kitchen to feed the whole crew because my kitchen barely lets me cook for myself. I’m sure that will be after the move, possibly next year. Tiina and I are both very busy until January.

I have got tickets home for both Thanksgiving and Christmas this year. I think it’s important that after Angela’s passing that I’m there for both holidays. I like spending time in Houston, but it’s off the table as a place for me to live because Texas doesn’t have Medicaid expansion. It’s sad to me that I feel exiled from Texas, but I would rather live in a blue voting bloc, anyway.

I think that a Scandinavian or Nordic country would be good for me because they’re the most progressive in the world. I don’t know that I would love the climate, but I think about escaping there all the time when I get these questions of “if you could live anywhere.” I am not afraid of showing up in Finland or anywhere else knowing no one. I’ll manage. But I do have an author friend, J.L., in Norway that would have a blast showing me around.

The fact is, though, it’s difficult to settle in a different country even if the countries don’t seem all that different. For instance, moving from the US to Canada. It’s not as similar as you might think, but you don’t know that until you drill down.

I would like to spend time in Canada going to visit Tara on the prairie, but if I lived there I would probably want to settle in Ottawa just because I sort of know my way around. I’ve been there a couple of times and it reminds me of Portland, Oregon because of the Rideau running through the city.

Tara says that Ottawa doesn’t remind her of Portland at all, and they have been to both. I stand corrected by a real Canadian, then. I was just living in Portland at the time and couldn’t help but draw similarities.

A river runs through it, et cetera.

If I ended up in Canada, it would be because I have Janie, the Canadian Editor to collaborate with in real time…. JTCE for short.

I could also see myself moving back to Oregon because it feels the most like home second to DC, and Bryn is already there along with Evan. It’s just so remote that my family never really got out there, and I don’t want to return to that in the future. DC and Baltimore are both short flights for my dad and my sister, and I’d like to keep us as close as we can be given my medical situation. But the consideration is on the table because I know I have lifelong friends in both of them, as well as more lifelong friends in Portland than anywhere else.

In fact, Portland has picked me up from a lot of heartbreak, so it’s no wonder that I’d feel nostalgic for it now. My heart is hurting because I hurt Aada.

“Hurt people hurt people.”

I would like to go all the way back to the beginning of our relationship (when I lived in Portland) and make completely different choices. But wouldn’t we all like to be able to undo things? Life doesn’t come with Control-Z, though, as much as I might wish it did.

I couldn’t have saved my marriage, but I could have saved Aada and me some heartache. That’s because Aada needed me in a different way than Dana, and I fumbled under that pressure. I was a jackass, turning the judgment on myself.

I couldn’t have prevented the divorce because I couldn’t have prevented Aada needing me to keep our relationship on the downlow in terms of specifics. I could have prevented being a jackass to her, though, and I did not.

On more than one occasion.

So, living in the DMV is a mixed bag for me of trying to stay out of Aada’s way (receiving her if she shows up) and trying to move on. I don’t know what she wants… What she really really wants…. :::cue the music:::

If I could live anywhere in the world, it would be in a place where peace reigned supreme, the sins of the past stayed there, and comfort was the motto of the future.

That could be Helsinki. That could be Houston.

But most likely it’s here, because my whole heart belongs to this land, this water, these trees…. And has since I was eight, the first time I touched down at National.

If you are in any way a patriotic person, you must fly into National airport at night, even if it costs extra. I have cried more than once seeing the monuments lit up, my symbol of home.

I keep waffling over where I want to live in the future, but I keep coming back to this place, these people, this land.

Meanwhile the real question on the table is “DC or Baltimore?”

But check back with me after I’ve had some time to travel. My international wanderlust knows no bounds, and I would like to spend time in other cities long enough to know if they feel like home or not.

This one already does.

Real

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 1 Comment

Today, my counselor said that I needed to do some research on my diagnosis so I could obtain help in what is real and what is not real. I was so crushed that I came home early, because this “psychotic features” thing is eating my lunch. That’s because I’m not psychotic. Everything that I have said has basis in fact, and I do believe that the stories told to me were true according to them. I just passed on information that wasn’t true because I thought it was, thus the hallucinations that did happen according to other people. They were not a party to the conversations I had over the internet, and I’m done justifying what I thought was true.

Because what I thought was true has turned over several times.

If you are Aada’s friend, I need you to tell her that her little stunt cost me. I had finally figured out what I thought was the truth and she yanked the rug out from under me in a big way. So, now she’s the only one with a story inside me again, and one that will never seem real to anyone else because it can’t be.

I don’t need her to show up like a white knight, although I would accept her.

I just need empathy and sympathy, because mental illness sucks- and it sucks even more when you are not as mentally ill as advertised, but that label is stuck on you, anyway. So perhaps I do know a thing or two about having a story written for you that you didn’t want.

My story is written because I have written hers; I have written it with my blood, sweat, and tears for many years. Aada tells me that my words are like pricks on her skin. She does not know how I am crying and shaking to write. She has never seen my process, never seen how I interact with anyone except her and maybe a few others, two of which are entirely regrettable.

She’s a boss and I’m not. I need her to come down for a second and just be a friend. I know I did this to myself, in some ways. In others, the ball was in her court and the shot clock ran out.

But this is important. My life is being changed by this relationship in a way that few others have been, which is why my story is so unrelatable. It’s, as my friend Wendy wrote in epitaph for my friend Greg’s twins, “too rare for anywhere but its ancient Celtic home.” All of the wisdom I’ve gained in 12 years will slowly leak out my ear, the end of “Flowers for Algernon” writ large.

At least the recipe for Lanagan’s Pub Chili is in there somewhere.

This isn’t a bad thing. I need to slow down. But I’m just not ready. I’m only 48.

But I need the one person in the world who knows I’m just me to tell me that. That I am real. That we are real. Like she’s done a hundred times.

I need her to reassure me, like she’s done a hundred thousand times.

But it needs to be a hundred thousand and one, because she thought she was being cute.

Let’s Have Breakfast Together

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I’m having a macchiato and some orange juice, followed by some water. I don’t eat early in the morning, but you get whatever you want. My treat.

Today I have what my father and I have come to call “Group with Ride.” That’s because someone from my Cognitive Behavioral Health group would come and pick me up on Thursdays, so “Group with Ride” is how it looks on my Google Calendar, as opposed to “Group,” which is on Wednesdays.

Now that I have a car, I should remember that I can go to the center on Wednesdays as well.

You’d like the group if you came with me. My friends are all cool, having huge differences of opinions and a common experience, which is struggles with mental health. We work at bettering ourselves, the AA for people who don’t drink. I finally found a program built to support me in ways I’ve needed my whole life and didn’t have.

I have someone to advocate for me with the state of Maryland, keeping me in this program and making me eligible for others. It has made it where I feel alienated from my family, because staying in Maryland is so much better than packing up to be with my family from a financial standpoint. I would save money on things like property, but my health insurance would go through the roof.

I am not ready to commit to buying a house, I don’t think. That’s because I haven’t decided where I want to settle. I know that I could afford a house somewhere in this area, but I don’t know that I want to tie up that much cash. It’s a long discussion with my dad and sister, because I don’t want to be alone in managing my finances anymore. I know from experience that it’s really nice to be a renter because when something breaks, you don’t have to replace it.

But it’s also important for me to have an asset that will appreciate, and any house in Maryland or Virginia has a huge shot.

I’m at a crossroads and don’t know what to do, thus having my dad and sister to help me navigate all of this. As a first time home buyer I would be eligible for a lot of help, and I love the idea of tying my money up into something as safe as housing in the DMV.

That means a move, but not a huge one. Baltimore is not the DMV, and I do not think my house would appreciate as fast. So many people work in Washington and cannot afford to live there. “Northern Virginia” keeps getting bigger and bigger, stretching the definition as people who used to be able to buy in Woodbridge stretch out to Fredericksburg.

But now, those communities are building themselves up so that you don’t have to go into Washington for entertainment, shopping, etc. And if I worked in Washington, I’d certainly rather take the train than drive so I could play on my phone the whole time. Parking is ridiculously expensive, and traffic is annoying.

I feel the same way about working in Washington now. If I worked downtown, I would take the MARC to my office rather than drive, because I can predict with more accuracy when I’m going to get somewhere than in traffic.

But choosing to work is not up to me, either. I need to get with my counselor and hammer out some details there, too. My life belongs to a team now, so that I can get the support I need to go where I want to go. I have been isolated for too long and have become a bit feral. 😉

For instance, I might need to spend some money on college so that I don’t repeat the same mistakes of the past. Education is power, and I’m not far from being able to be a TA in something. A few more years and I will be able to teach in a large institution. If being a youth director was any indication, I’d be a good professor and my kids would like me. It’s the kind of institutionalization I’d like.

I’m ready to be part of a team with insulation around me that understands my quirks. My buddies Evan and Gabriel are thinking about going into business with me as Lanagan Media Group, because we’d like to up our game in terms of the resistance being art.

I haven’t made it clear just how much I hate the Trump administration because I had to tap out of geopolitics to survive a complete breakdown. SNAP being held hostage means my friends will go hungry. If they get half their food stamps, they will only have to go without food for half the month. It breaks your heart to hear about the can-do attitude of “all we have to do is tighten our belts and eat Top Ramen.” Because what else can you do except listen?

I only have enough to save myself, and I find myself already wanting to give it away. My bleeding heart will be the death of me because I can’t look at suffering and not do something about it. I’m already looking at my finances and trying to decide where I’m going to donate for the holidays. I will ask around at group where the most popular food banks are and give money to those.

If you are my real life friend and you are so moved to give to these organizations, it would mean a great deal to me. I hear stories at group and just want to hand out money directly. But everyone needs a coat. Everyone needs food. Everyone needs.

I’m not rich enough to provide for all the need around me, which is why I have to restrain myself to giving to organizations. I just want to make sure that my money ends up in their pockets.

I grew up middle class, then when my parents divorced we were thrust into upper middle class. I am not ashamed of my affluence, but I do walk around wishing I could fix things. None of my friends at group are in the same boat, with three supportive parents and generational wealth already having been passed from two of them. It is often hard for me to relate to their violent upbringings, but I sit in the meetings with my hands cupped, as if in protection of my heart. I am willing it to stay inside my body as the president tears my friends apart.

It’s enough to make me want to run for another country, and with the amount of money I have that might be wise. I know I’d be welcomed as a neighbor in several places, most notably in Seoul. My friend Gabriel and my friend Emily are both there. They were visual artists and I was instrumental music at HSPVA. Now, Emily is a teacher and Gabriel just moved back a couple weeks ago, so I don’t know what he’s doing yet.

At the very least, I have enough money to go and visit them to see if I like it.

I am still stuck on Finland as it is the neurodivergent capital of the world, but the more research I do the more of a losing proposition it seems after school. I am nowhere near fluent in Finnish and would have to work in English. Those jobs are few and far between, limited to hospitality. It’s not impossible, but again I just have to visit and gather more information.

The wonderful thing about Finns is that they love showing off their country. I could write on Finnish Facebook or Reddit posts that I was coming to Helsinki and needed a guide, and more than one person would offer to meet me. They would be THRILLED if I spoke a few words of Finnish (I do). And in fact, I have seen people curious about seeing Finland have people offer to pick them up at the airport.

Now that’s love.

I would love to have a Finn drive me around in the winter because driving on ice and snow requires special tires. It’s not hard, it just takes getting used to and they’ve already got it handled. Although I might change my mind once I get there because getting around the cities is easily done by public transit, but I might like a road trip from Helsinki to Kilpisjaarvi, to sleep under the aurora borealis.

Now, Kilpisjaarvi is a small town with nothing to it, but it’s got some of the most brilliant views I’ve ever seen. “Seen” being relative because I saw them through Dave Cad videos on YouTube.

Do you know Dave? If not, you should. He and his wife have created some stunning views of Finland, so much so that you can’t believe this is just a free YouTube video.

My writing session is starting to wind down and I’ve hardly let you get a word in edgewise. I’m so sorry. It’s hard when you’re not in the room. I apologize. The comment section is all yours, though.

But the reason I say “starting” to wind down is that I’m looking at the clock and trying to judge when the best time to leave for group would be. I want to arrive around 9:00, but I also don’t want to be stuck in traffic. Is it better to wait and arrive at 10:00 AM? I’d lose an hour of socializing but it would be so much more pleasant getting there.

Next week I think I will try going both days because each group has a different vibe. Now that I can drive myself and don’t have to wait on a ride, it’s much more appealing. Any chance to get out of the house and drive. Seriously. Any.

Driving is still exciting because I didn’t drive for so long that it’s like being 16 again.

There’s only one feature that my car doesn’t have that I want, so I’ll be sure to include it in my next one. It doesn’t have a sunroof. I didn’t think I would miss it, but I do. There’s something about rolling down all the windows and letting the breeze flow with the radio up, but the sunroof kicks it up a notch. I also like having the sun shade open so I can see the rain on the glass.

My car looks aggressive and brooding, though. I cannot complain. It fits my mood most days. 😉

I would have bought the car no matter what color it was, but I’m pleased that it’s dark grey. It will look good in photos for a long time to come because it’s such a classic color. If I got bored with it, I could paint it because the inside is gray and black as well. There’s no other color that would clash.

Fusions aren’t known for having paint problems, though, so I think I’ll be fine as long as I keep getting it hand washed once in a while to avoid having the paint roughed up by those automatic washes that are all the rage.

I use them a little bit.

I don’t know when I’ll have time to get them, but I really need floor mats. Maybe I’ll ask my service advisor at Ford about them, because I have to take my car in this weekend, anyway. I’m sure the parts guys have them and I want OEM. I looked on their web site and OEM floor mats actually aren’t that expensive as opposed to going to Walmart, so why not?

There’s that guy with his “Shave and a Haircut” car horn bullshit again. Seriously, it’s too early for this.

I realize that I have been up since o’dark hundred hours, but it’s still too early.

My coffee and orange juice have both disappeared, but I left a bottle of water and a Diet Pepsi in the car for my commute downtown. There’s leftover pizza if I get hungry before group, but I usually just wait- they feed us a small lunch before we go home.

I just got a hit from Aada’s location, and though I know it probably isn’t her, my heart did this weird flip thingy that it always does when I feel like she’s watching. As I have said before, the choice to be embarrassed about what I write has been taken from me because I cannot control who is reading. If she sees it, she sees it.

I seriously had no idea that she felt like I was punishing her because we were not in communication and I was not monitoring her feelings. Now that I know she feels punished, I need to find a way to write about something else… punishment was never my intention, but that’s how it came across.

We would do so much better if we’d listen to each other, so I am taking this opportunity to say beautiful girl, I am sorry. I was lost in my own rumination and couldn’t get out. It had nothing to do with you because you were already gone. If it was you this morning, welcome back. I am glad to see you. If it wasn’t, then I am glad to have other fans near where you live.

Though they’re probably not as adorable.

I mean it, Aada. You’re adorable. Don’t front.

I need her to stop seeing me as attacking her, and start seeing me as illustrating her. No one in my life has the capability to be all bad or all good, most especially me.

The positive and the negative are not weighted in my own mind, but they become weighted in others. I am still convinced that Aada thinks I hate her and want to punish her because she hates her and wants to punish her. My anger melted months ago and I can explain everything I’ve been through in detail.

She says she’s always wondered if everything I’ve ever told her was true- that she’d always assumed I was telling the truth, but she didn’t know. That’s not because I didn’t invite her to everything ever. That’s not because she couldn’t have met me in person and known I was telling the truth. She just didn’t, and now thinks our relationship needs to rest in peace.

Except in our last email exchange, she changed from “saying goodbye to The AntiLeslie for good” to “for now, all I want is peace.” I can give that to her, but I cannot grasp the concept of forever. I’m not sure she can, either, because three days after she told me she was saying goodbye to me for good, I got hits from her location several days in a row.

I know I have special alerts in her life, too.

I turned a negative into a positive after I learned that, because she wanted to insinuate that I was being watched. I thought, “by you? Who cares?” If Aada wants me to be intimidated, I will be, but I don’t have anything to hide from her. She’s welcome to dig through whatever she wants. She even knows the code to my phone and my master password to everything if she’s been paying attention and knows haxxorspeak.

Or as I’ve told her since 2013, “you don’t have to use the back door. I will let you in the front.”

Or as I told her recently, “I don’t know what you’re so afraid of. I’m only 5’2.”

She said that made her laugh. And cry.

Those are the moments between us that I love, this sharing of intimacy that goes back a very long way. She says that she’ll never talk to me about her or her family ever again. That’s fine. I think that her assessment of my writing is one of the most unhealthy I’ve ever seen. She reads me “checking for assaults” thinking that the positive things I say are “clues in a game” and not God’s honest truth.

It’s how to write a 3D character, while she calls herself a “Flat Stanley.”

She has always been with me when life feels the quietest and I’m passing on my peace through the chord that runs between us. I’m doing my best to do that now, because I know that good thoughts are welcome. Support is welcome. I have reached the limit of what I can do, this sending of good thoughts.

Because knowing I was telling the truth would start with breakfast together.

Stumbling over each other trying to pick up the check because it’s the first meeting and it’s important.

I couldn’t guarantee that one breakfast could fix everything, but I can guarantee that Aada’s doubts as to whether I was telling the truth or not could be laid to rest. I’m as crazy about her as one human can be for another, and it hurts my heart to know that she looked so hard for rejection when it wasn’t there. I was spinning out from the last time she rejected me and thought she wasn’t coming back.

She’s not my ex, but because I worked through romantic feelings for her and came out on the other side, my heart doesn’t really treat her any differently. I read a great book a few years ago that came closer to this breakup called “My Other Ex,” which told stories of women losing their best friends through death or conflict.

It’s why our relationship is so mercurial. We have strong feelings for each other because of all the letters we’ve written, but there’s never been an instance where she’s had coffee because I poured it.

And because of those romantic feelings, I’m always going overboard trying to make her feel safe. That I recognize she’s a straight girl and hopelessly dedicated to her man. That if being straight is what makes her happy, I would have done her wedding if she’d asked…. and it would have been beautiful.

I know this because I did Bryn’s wedding out at her parents’ farm in Newberg, Oregon. I clean up all right. 😉

And in fact, when she called me to tell me that she was getting divorced, the first thing I said was, “what? I didn’t do it right?”

But that’s what the people who know me on the ground would say, that Aada would have had a beautiful wedding. She didn’t get to know me on that level, simply telling me she got married long after it was done. I think she thought it would hurt me to know that she got married, and it did, but not like she thought.

She thought that it would hurt me to hear that she got married because she knew I was in love with her and wanted to be sensitive to it. What she didn’t realize is that I wasn’t sensitive to it because I’m not a moron. Straight girls marry men. I was sensitive to the fact that she cut me out of everything from the proposal on.

I’ve never seen a picture of her husband. Ever. This is weird to me because I don’t care what he looks like as long as she loves him.

I don’t know why she feels like she needs to keep us apart, but she has. I kind of like feeling like I’m all hers in a different realm. Meanwhile, I’d like love to be on the ground, in the dirt. Gardening and roughhousing with the dogs and cleaning up after big storms. I don’t want to be anything but a good friend, but I haven’t been the best at showing it.

I think that’s because I’ve had to pretend I was okay with not meeting for so long. It got to where I was pretending to myself that it was okay we hadn’t met, and even now it would be difficult when it was so easy before. We used to live about 40 minutes apart, now it’s at least two and a half hours.

Meeting at Tiina’s would have been so perfect, because it would have been neutral ground for both of us.

We could have all had breakfast together, like we’re doing now.

Whiling Away the Hours of the Morning

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

There is so much to love about this area in autumn. The sun is just starting to peek up over the red and gold trees, but it’s still cold enough to need a coat walking out to the car. I have read that it’s better for the turbo boost on my engine to run for a few minutes before I drive, anyway, so I use remote start to get things heated before I get in. That way, I don’t have to go through the rigamarole of getting dressed in the morning, which takes a lot more layers if you are planning to wait at the bus stop.

I had to go to Dunkin to get my macchiato, orange juice, and a bottle of water. This time, I got toasted almond flavoring, which turned out to be sort of marzipan-ish. It was very good, but I don’t think it will replace vanilla in the rotation.

I don’t know, though…. Marzipan is delicious.

Getting out into the early morning air is important to me. I leave the house before the sun is even up. It makes me feel productive to go to bed early and wake up before the rest of the world gets started.

It is in the early morning that I feel the urge to sit quietly at my keyboard, talking to no one in particular, but knowing that the regulars will check in. Hi Aparna. Hi John.

Et cetera.

The gang’s all here.

Or, they will be. I have learned over time when most people read, and it’s during their work day. My stats dip on the weekend and go back up as everyone slacks off at work to the rhythm of my “voice.”

Speaking of which, WordPress really needs to add AI to read entries to you. Medium does it. Catch up, WordPress.

I just don’t have the energy to record my own audio because the entries took a lot out of me when I wrote them. I cry and sigh and make a mess of myself trying to create MP3s of my entries.

I don’t think that Aada realizes how much her love sits with me all day because it’s here in my work. That I cannot not cry when I read our entries aloud because verbalizing it makes it real. Tears spill where I only felt a little pain before. So I don’t verbalize what I’m feeling often. Writing creates a wall where I can look at emotional landmines without exploding them.

It’s like being able to see an aerial view of my emotions, mapping them so that I can comprehend what I am feeling. Because I write it down, everyone else knows what I’m thinking and feeling, too. This is both positive and negative.

I do not expect myself to be happy when someone else hurts me, nor am I trying to punish anyone by having a voice. Other people’s stories are all true, too, based on their experiences. I am not taking anything away from anyone else by saying what I think is true, because differences of opinion exist.

For instance, Aada’s story with me would be so different than what I’ve written here, because she has always thought more highly of me than she has let on and chastised me for writing anything negative about our relationship. What I missed in all of this was her saying “I love you more than you think I do.”

Everyone loves me more than I think they do, because I take the negative things people say home with me. This is not an isolated problem, and one I get coming off of Aada, too. Neither one of us can believe that the other loves us, so we start from that proposition and it always loses.

What would it really look like if we both stood up and accepted that we were loved? That we were safe? That we protect each other, look out for the other? That nothing could have gotten between us except a lie, and that’s over now. The truth is all out on the table.

I am not proud of how I reacted to finding out that Aada lied, but I’m astonished at the amount of work I’m willing to do to get this relationship healthy again. We were in a very good place, and it is one that I’m eager to get back to, a drop of trust at a time.

But in order to grow as a person and not repeat the mistakes of the past, I have to be intentional about cultivating other relationships as well. Tiina and Aada have a lot in common and would like each other, and actually I invited Aada to go with me the first time I went out to Tiina’s and she was busy, then our relationship blew up.

I want to show Aada Tiina’s farm, because she would enjoy all of Tiina’s oddball surprises about the the house. My favorite was her Anthony Fauci doll.

It would be my pleasure to be a connector, bringing more love into Aada’s life instead of less.

I am certain that I do not want to be a disrupter anymore, and I am learning how I have been that in the past. How I need to manage myself better because I know I’m a tornado. That comes with therapy and time.

This blog feels like taking myself to the woodshed, admitting all my flaws and failures to hold myself accountable. I do not know where punishment comes into the mix for other people, but what I do know is that people read with confirmation bias. They are looking for evidence to back up what they already think.

So, if Aada is reading looking for evidence that she’s a terrible person, she’s going to find it because she looked so hard. If she read for evidence that she was wonderful, I know she would find it because it’s been there in black and white for 12 years. Hers is the only photo in my “Favorites” album on my phone.

I asked her to do me a favor, just turn the camera around and snap, that I hadn’t seen her face in a while.

So help me it was the most beautiful photograph of anyone I have ever seen and she was apologetic because she thought she had bedhead.

I would prove to you how beautiful she is except I value my head where it is.

There are limits to Aada’s generosity with my writing, to be clear.

Sufficed to say, she’s gorgeous and if I could I would show her off. I think she needs to know how proud I am of her just for being her, that I do value her opinion and want her in my life. If the message wasn’t clear before, it should be now. There’s nothing I won’t get over eventually.

She can be a scary motherfucker, though, and she wants you to know it.

When she does that shit, I picture her as a little girl.

It’s how I hold on for dear life in this relationship. I can’t picture the power suit when I’m afraid of it, so I picture the kindergartner instead.

“Suits and crap for work” are my Aada action figure, but when she uses that power against me, all of the sudden, in my head, I’m taller than she is by a wide margin.

“Say that again, pigtails.”

It’s a coping mechanism, and one that works well because she’s not the only person I picture as a child when I interact with them. It is also not a way of feeling superior to anyone else, because I am not making myself the adult in the situation and infantilizing them. I am relating to my own inner third grader. I am trying to see us as equals when we are most definitely not.

It keeps me from feeling bullied by people who need that power suit facade.

I have spoken truth to power more than I’ll ever know, because my words have created a ripple effect that reaches from rich to poor, public to private, cis to trans, gay to straight. I have rattled people all over the world without realizing it. It’s an enormous responsibility to have a blog, and one I’m not sure I’m so good at…. I’m just confident that the words I have to say are at least good enough to be a record of how we lived in the 21st century, weaving in plots and characters that are interesting because that’s just how my life is- interesting.

I came to DC for a story, and ended up in Baltimore with a better one.

I’m neurodivergent, and I’m always going to need support. This city can give it to me in a way that others can’t, because there’s already an infrastructure for high IQ/low needs autism, as well as all the mental health issues that invariably come with it.

A guy outside just played “Shave and a Haircut” on his car horn. He does it every morning, and it drives me insane. It’s too early for that nonsense.

The thing is that I need more local friends who are also high IQ/low needs. I am making them through my Cognitive Behavioral Health group, but I haven’t made friends who have actually been to my house. I need to change this, because some of the people in my group don’t live very far. Squad and Rook even go to my gym.

Oh, the gym. I need to get back into the swing of things, but I need to wash my gym clothes first. That will happen later today, because I’m feeling a long walk coming on. I need to zone out to a podcast and let my legs burn. It’s one of those things where I know I’ll feel better once I do it, but getting the inertia up to do it takes time. Because of course it’s more complicated than just driving over there. I have steps to do first.

I wish I could get back to the place in my life where inviting Aada to Tiina’s wasn’t weird, and neither was the idea that she’d actually show up.

Oh, The Places We’ll Go

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

When I think about Aada these days, I don’t think about rehashing all that we’ve been through. I’ve written so much that if I need to look back, I can go there, but I have no need. I think about her when I think of traveling in my future, because she’s the one I’d like to bring on some of my adventures. And in fact, she has been invited on every single one, from Viet Nam to Virginia. I want to take her to see the world, not punish her.

I see me renting an apartment in Helsinki and inviting Aada for a few days, maybe driving up to Tampere to see Moomin World. I see me moving back to Portland and driving her down to Coos Bay, the original road trip we were going to take when I lived in Oregon before. I’m here to take her where she wants to go. #drivingmissaada

Never mind that I’d be safer with her driving. She can put her life into her own hands if she chooses.

I don’t know that I’ll ever have the chance to build up that much trust with her, but I would like to if the stars aligned. I’d like to show Aada that her perceptions of me are off, that I’m not my writer personality. I’d like to see if she’s the same way. Surely she is not as prickly in person as she is over the internet.

We have each reacted like we’re trying to hug a cactus.

I want to take all my spikes down, clarifying all I’ve written so that things will smooth over between us. This smoothing over is not to ignore anything that happened, but to give it air. To give each other grace. To start the neurons healing.

In order fora relationship to have new growth, you have to allow for it.

All of Aada’s scare tactics don’t work on me anymore, because she’s revealed herself to me too many times for me to be afraid. Even this last go ’round, where she meant to leave my toes curled, didn’t last long. I just attributed her need to get back at me to her own insecurities, which are large. She cannot have a conversation where she’s open with me, because she cannot trust me. She has to intimidate me instead. Her biggest problem with me is that I am not intimidated.

I am one of the few people that can go toe to toe with her intellectually, so her usual games and manipulations don’t work. I have cut through a lot of bullshit in this relationship and it has served both of us well. I have gotten to the heart of the matter quickly and been thanked for not taking the stonewalling, being brave enough to call her out on the carpet.

She knew that her lies would cost her, which is why it took her 12 years to admit to me that she lied.

But I’m not intent on making her pay for those lies forever. I don’t have the energy, and never did. Once I wrote about it, the anger was gone. I was ready to move on.

I want to take her to walk the Bible with me, because she’d have so many interesting tidbits about what happened where.

I want to take her to Galveston, so we can walk the beaches I walked when I was a child.

I want a new relationship between us to sing, because the last one moaned in pain a lot of the time.

I would like to have a meal together, even if it’s just dino nuggets. You’d be surprised at how much common ground can be accomplished just by breaking bread.

Especially when I’ve fallen on my face.

Because Aada does not trust me, she cannot see but half the story. She only sees the part where I’m angry, not the part where I’ve worked through it because I wrote about it. Old news is old news. It is not surprising to me that Aada went through and catalogued all the things she didn’t like and called the things she did “suspect.”

None of the things I say are suspect, they are my real thought processes. If I say something positive, I mean it. If I say something negative, I mean it. But no thing is true all the time as a situation progresses and changes.

I think of taking Aada to Ottawa, because I have always been impressed by the French Gothic cathedral architecture of Parliament, and the cats. I doubt I’d be showing her anything she hasn’t seen, but she hasn’t seen my version of Ottawa yet. 🙂

I have all of these dreams that have nothing to do with our present situation because I’m so eager to let it go and think of something happier. I want to be a part of making Aada’s dreams come true, and for her to be a part of making mine come true, too. And in fact, a lot of the time her dreams have been more important to me than mine.

I have talked a lot of shit about being in love with this woman, and I’ve failed her more than I haven’t. I am eager to do better, be better. She is a yellow string in polyamory, emotional support and not romance, and that string cannot be cut for love or money. It just can’t. I have tried. If Aada never picks up her end, it will be dormant but not gone.

I think she does pick up her end, often, and that this is just as hard on her as it is on me. She didn’t want me to make our relationship unstable, and I did. I have not made this relationship easy on her because I’m a public figure and she’s not. Thus, why I’d be excited to work on books with her rather than blogging- it would take the “public figure” thing out of the mix. I don’t look at it as giving my blog up for Aada, but growing as a writer into something different.

It was all my idea, because I knew I would not regret it. That relaxing into the easier pace of having an editor and not having a daily deadline would be better for me in the long run, anyway.

One day, if this site disappears, you’ll know I have a multimillion dollar book deal in the works.

I want to take Aada with me to Portland, because I want to show her my old stomping grounds. We could eat at Hopworks, and I could drive her around to the Big Yellow House, and the apartment Dana and I shared across the street.

I’d like to drive Aada home, and meet the family I haven’t after all these years. Aada says that her husband knows about me, and I don’t doubt that. But knowing about me and knowing me are two different things. Just like people who know Aada are different than people who just read my web site and get an impression.

I know the impression that strangers get of Aada due to my web site is different than what she gets when she reads, because my readers don’t weight the positive and negative.

They have been with me through all the explanations that Aada and I met virtually, so butterfly feelings came up for me that didn’t come up for her. I unfortunately fell for a straight girl incapable of returning those feelings, but I cannot undo it. She’s happily married and I am happy for her. I’m not bitter and jealous, because I do not want more than Aada can give. I send her husband good thoughts all the time, like “take care of her or so help me God.” 😉

No, seriously. I send her husband good thoughts because I am better for it. I want him to be the best partner for her because I want what she wants. Saying that I love her if and only if she changes to be what I want her to be is not love.

I have always called myself the Lord John Grey of our relationship, because she reminds me so much of Jamie Fraser in Outlander.

John struggled his whole life with being in love with Jamie, but he never let it stop him from being a good friend.

I could have learned a lot more from Lord John Grey had I been paying attention, but I wasn’t. I’ll have to go back and read the entire series again.

I want to take Aada to the Outer Banks of North Carolina, because she knows the area intimately and can show me all the good places to go.

I feel that I should say Aada’s husband is invited on every trip I ever invite her on in perpetuity, because I am not trying to get her alone. I am trying to include her, and including her means including her whole famn damily. I would even trust either of them to drive my car and just ride in the back.

I only want alone time with her if she wants alone time with me. There are many conversations we could have behind closed doors that would be enlightening, but I think that we’ve enlightened each other enough and it’s time to go back and do surface level things to bring each other into the fold.

If you always do what you always did, you always get what you always got.

I’d like to take Aada to Hawaii, because I’ve never been and think it would be the perfect vacation for us. That’s because there’s hiking and biking and mountain climbing, or we can just be bums on the beach and do nothing. I don’t know if Aada is a thrill seeker or a beach bum, so I am covering all eventualities.

But it’s things like not knowing whether she’s a beach bum or a thrill seeker that would be fun to know, and the kind of thing you don’t get to know if you’re only friends over the internet. As far as I can tell, though, I’m 12 years younger with a quarter of the energy and I need to keep up.

I wish I could take her with me to pick out my dog, because it’s an errand that would mean a lot to her. She’s a dog person and would love to see me happy with one. In fact, getting a dog was the first thing she mentioned when I said I lived in Baltimore now.

Well, she actually said I needed a dog and a gun, but I have a very good reason for not getting a gun. I don’t want to.

She can have a gun if she needs it to feel comfortable staying over, but I’m not a gun person and I don’t live in a very dangerous neighborhood, anyway. Baltimore gets a bad rap because people view it as violent but then you get here and it’s just a neurodivergent jumble of weird.

Baltimore is off the chain if you’re neurodivergent because you’ll find community in a hot minute. DC is the same way, and has the highest number of LGBTQIA people in the country according to the last census in which such data was taken.

So I’d like to take Aada to Baltimore and show her all the quirky weird she missed in thinking “that place is…. Not safe.”

And yes, my apartment is big enough that she and whomever she wants to bring can crash with me.

I am all about being different in the future, because the past was closed off.

I would like for Aada to meet my dad and sister as much as I would like to meet her husband. Being each other’s emotional support doesn’t go one way. I would like her to see into my real life as well.

I have always trusted her judgment on the people I date, and it would be fun to actually introduce them to Aada vs. describing them when I got home. And in fact, there’s this funny scene in my head playing where Aada and her husband sit me down and say, “we don’t like this one.”

Bye. I’ll miss you.

I think Aada was pleased when she asked why I was dating men and I told her that I was kind of over women because I already had my hands full between her & Bryn.

I would like Aada to meet Bryn in the worst way possible, because they are two peas in a pod. The dog trainer and the dog lover would bond instantaneously, and there’s a few other things that would tie them as well, I think, outside of me.

I have shortchanged myself in this relationship from the beginning because I focused too much on my own inner turmoil and not the turmoil I was creating in others. That’s why I want my sunset years to be filled with relaxation, travel, friends, and family.

I would like to be more of a travel writer, and I can only think of one companion I could tolerate.

If things are different in the future, the way I want them to be.

Stumbling Out of Bed for a Cup of Ambition

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I went to get coffee in my sweats, hair in full-on bedhead mode. I think I frightened little children…. Or no one noticed me. It’s Baltimore. People are weird. Get over it.

I got a cup of flavored coffee, hazelnut, and just put in some plain creamer. I love, LOVE Royal Farms because they brew by the cup and there’s no urns of coffee that have been sitting there since June (seemingly). They get the award for best gas station coffee by a mile, and to add some good calories, I got some orange juice as well.

The one other thing I was going to do was fill my car up with gasoline, but the Royal Farms I was directed to was only a convenience store.

I didn’t go to Dunkin because I’ve had the same thing in a row for several days. Their macchiatos are so good, but I’m a little tired of them. I had to switch up my game. But coffee and orange juice at a gas station were the same price as one macchiato at Dunkin, granted it’s a large.

And for some reason, vegan macchiatos taste better to me. I get oat milk even though I am not a vegan. I just like vegan food. I’m one of those omnivores that will eat anything you put in front of me, and I have found vegan favorites over the years.

I can even make vegan macaroni and cheese that might make you cry. It’s all about learning the right substitutions.

But no food means as much to me as coffee does, which is why I’m generally not hungry until very late in the morning. The coffee and cream is enough until brunch.

Brunch is usually something fast, and if I go out it’s just an Egg McMuffin. If I stay in, it’s eggs, toast, and bacon. It seems like a lot of food, but I would rather eat a lot early and have a simple dinner… If I remember to eat dinner, that is.

It’s the ’tism.

Or the ADHD.

Who knows?

What I’m saying is that I’m rarely hungry so I pack in calories where I can. The coffee is certainly helping me to put on a little weight, but I needed it. I look more like an adult now.

Well, that’s debatable. I do an impression of an adult on some days, and that’s my best offer.

I’m still thinking about driving through the hills of Virginia, and how Tiina said that houses were relatively cheap out there. I’m not sure that I would want to live that far from DC, but I would like to settle down somewhere.

It matters to me to have friends close by, but I’m not sure if they’re going to stay or not. Tiina and her family moving would leave me pretty isolated, so going to visit is good enough for now. I think I have problems making friends in the city, but it would be harder if I never saw anyone.

Well, my life wouldn’t change a whole lot since most of the day I’m writing or playing on the Internet in some capacity. One of my friends works for USG and they post landscapes when they’re having a bad day because posting a dumpster fire is frowned upon in this establishment.

So, I check in on my friends with lavender fields.

I worry that I’d get in trouble with Aada for moving back to Virginia, because it’s ridiculous and that’s how I roll. I could live next door to her and I’d never see her. And of course she would say it doesn’t matter and it’s fine while she was seething inside. That’s how she rolls, but that’s not punishment. That’s just saying she’s a people pleaser and I’m not.

I have the unfortunate task of writing down what most people miss, because I don’t mean to catch what other people miss in a way that is negative. It’s all portraits of my day and sometimes I get angry, sometimes I am full of joy. No two entries represent the same emotions because the pendulum swings wide with all my mental health issues.

I am certain that my mental health issues are going to be a large part of whether Aada comes back to me or not, because I think she does feel sympathy and empathy for my plight, but she cannot see it because she thinks I am rejecting her. I was not happy with the way our relationship ended, but none of that was about blame. Saying I’m unhappy about something doesn’t mean it’s your fault. It means the situation sucks.

Aada, in my heart and mind, thinks that people are out to get her most of the time. It’s a paranoia she cannot shake, and I could not participate because it required me to be locked down and silent most of the time. One of my friends caught her in a lie, and our relationship tumbled apart.

She says that the damage to her is incalculable, but I think we’re even.

She told me she wondered why she was responsible for my mental health. She’s not. She just slowly isolated me from every single one of my friends including my wife. Who does that leave?

None of this is about blame. That’s what happened.

I take issue with freezing me out because I have caused unforeseen “damage.” It is not my issue to be responsible for someone else’s reading comprehension.

That is also a universal problem that has very little to do with her because all my friends have tangled with me over my writing at one time or another except Bryn, because she could care less what I say about her. She likes having the mirror held up, but most people don’t.

The hardest part of this entire story is deciding what’s mine and what’s hers to keep. Where does Aada end and I begin? I could not explain our fast bond without explaining everything else.

I could not forgive her for a lie without working through it.

I could not put down the problem unless I understood it, and I still don’t.

She said that she’d never read again and was back three days later. I don’t know what it is about us, but we flatten each other with prose and both take the negative home with us. I know that Aada believes I am a wonderful writer, but I’m constantly stuck on “incalculable damage,” and “excruciating and debilitating.” Never mind that she also said our journey had been brilliant and beautiful. Rejection sensitivity dysphoria goes both ways.

I wish we could go back to the days where we talked easily, because I’m ready for the drama to calm down. It might even be better for me to move on and break our connection, but I don’t think so. The best indication of future behavior is the past, and Aada has never been out of touch for more than a few months at a time.

In short, I’m sure I’ve done enough that she’ll think twice about coming back, but I need her to think three times. I need her to acknowledge that these pages won’t mean anything until it’s been 10 years. She has to read them without thinking about what happened as happening to her.

She need to go back and pick up the positive, because the negative doesn’t stand out so much when you’re not hot under the collar.

It can’t be never, because never is not three days.

And that’s why it’s so hard not to turn this issue over and over in my head. I want her back, but in a different capacity. I don’t think that we can get healthy by taking potshots at each other over the internet. I know that my anger has melted and I just want to move on from this problem and take up some joy.

I’m sure that there will be other problems down the road, but they’ll be easier with two brains on them.

And maybe I’m just psychotic to believe that this relationship could be real after so many years of being virtual. What I know is that regardless of what she does, there’s not a way that my love for her stops. I get over things, and quickly, because I write about them.

She said, “I don’t know how anyone could read about themselves without skin crawling revulsion,” and my heart broke because it really shows me how low her self esteem has gone because she was reading my writing after she told me to get out of her life.

None of that writing was meant for her, because I needed the space to get angry and grieve. I have gone through every stage, even bargaining, because I would rather work on books with her than write blog entries every day. In order to get something different, I will have to be different as well.

“If you always do what you always did, you always get what you always got.”

I have gone back to feeling safe with her after forgiving some really hard stuff. You never want to see your friend doing anything that will actively hurt you, and she did. I could say the same about myself, because I am not innocent in hurting her- this time around or any other.

We could have had it all- safe passage all the way to the river with each other and our partners, but we’ve both retreated instead, choosing to leave enlightening each other out of the mix.

I am sure she died inside when she heard why I wrote what I wrote and when. But now that she knows, I’m hoping that she has more empathy for me and less anger at herself. I don’t want her to be angry at herself, I want her to work with me to provide me some options.

Like, skipping the part where she said she didn’t want the 479 blog entries that left nails in her palms.

Too much.

Because if she went back, she would find all the lines that say “I love you.”

I didn’t mean to punish anyone. I was hurt, with that caved in feeling in my chest. I must have missed a few things in there and I feel incredibly apologetic.

Aada understanding remorse doesn’t mean she’ll do anything about it. It matters that she feels her own, not mine. Because wanting to change things has to come from her, because I’m already on board.

I can’t help it that I said I was willing to do the work, no matter how hard it gets, and that person chooses to walk away. I cannot tell her that if our relationship had been happier, so would the blog. That writing is a comprehensive response to life and not all about her.

I have been responding to her only because she was The Friend. I didn’t have anyone else for a long time, mostly because I didn’t want it.

Will she see that part of it?

Only time will tell. Maybe Christmas.

Leslie Lanagan Presents: Bag Man

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
Name the most expensive personal item you’ve ever purchased (not your home or car).
View all responses

When I started my job at Marylhurst University, I realized I would need a satchel. I also wanted to mark the occasion by buying something that would last me the rest of my life. It was my intention to help a small maker, and I found a leather worker on Etsy that had some of the most beautiful bags I’d ever seen.

I chose a messenger bag that looks red or brown, depending on the light. I polish it with cordovan just to accent the red that’s already there. The only problem is that it tends to make my shoulder want to drop off when it’s full, so it’s perfect for carrying a few things, but torture to put my whole life in it.

It’s so beautiful it should go in a display, but after an hour I’m begging to put it down. So maybe I should put it in a display. It would look good with my autographed spy books.

Speaking of which, the funniest thing I’ve ever heard about collecting old spies’ books is that it’s like collecting baseball cards, you just never get a rookie year.

I had to change to a Reebok backpack, but I’m hoping that I can do something to soften up the leather. So far, the polishing has made it look nice, but it’s still stiff as a board.

Trying to look at the positive on this one, because the bag is absolutely the most expensive personal item I’ve ever bought. It was more than my last desktop by a large margin. I don’t regret spending the money in the slightest, because every time I look at the bag, I remember a time in my life I really loved.

It’s more how to look at it that presents a problem. Right now, it’s stuffed in a closet somewhere.

I’m sure that my dad has wondered why I don’t carry it, and now he has the answer. It hurts.

That’s because he’s the only one in my life that would remember when I bought it. He surprised me with a work GoFundMe so I could outfit my office. The bag was the biggest ticket item for the shower.

I’d never had a work shower before, and it was the sweetest thing anyone has ever done for me.

Well, giving me life might count.

Replacing Sleep with Caffeine

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I have had a lot of caffeine in getting ready for my apartment to be inspected on Friday. They never showed up, so I will have to check in again with them on Monday. They apologized for the inconvenience, but I reserve the right to be perturbed that I thought my lease would be settled by now. Thank God I have time on Monday to go to the office and sit down with them. They don’t seem to do much if I’m not right on top of it. The reason I’m staying is that I don’t have the energy to move. It’s not that they did everything right.

They’ll have a chance to change gears with the new apartment, so I’m hoping for good things. If I do not get them, I can always move in a few months. This is just really bad timing to pack up everything. I am going home for the holidays on Thanksgiving and Christmas. Fitting a move in there is just silly.

I’m already drinking too much coffee trying to get everything done. It’s going to be hard enough to get movers to take my furniture to my new apartment, much less across town. But a move across campus is something I could manage by myself (I think). I will have to consult my counselor at Cognitive Behavioral Health and see what he recommends. Surely his other clients have had to move before, and I know he’s at least a sympathetic ear.

He’s the kind of person who takes action, and will step in with my apartment complex if he thinks I’m being taken advantage of or anything like that. It’s good to have someone in my corner that’s local, because my dad and sister definitely are, but they are not here. I’m sure it would be easier on them if I lived in Texas, but it’s not easier on my health insurance. I have to stay where the Medicaid expansion is.

I need to take some major sleeping pills when I get home tonight, making sure to sleep in tomorrow. I’ve been getting up so early that “having a lie-in” means 7:00 AM, not noon…. not that there’s anything wrong with sleeping until noon when I need it. I haven’t been sleeping deeply and I desperately need the rest.

Long, hot showers do a lot of restorative work, but they’re not everything.

I’m getting excited because it’s almost time to load up and go to Tiina’s farm. She’s not a morning person, so I promised her I wouldn’t arrive before 11:00. That means I need to leave here sometime around 9:00. I don’t know what the traffic is going to look like, but it doesn’t matter. It’s Saturday morning and the mood is lazy. When we get there is when we get there.

DC always has traffic even when it’s the weekend because of construction. I may be able to go around the city and miss it entirely, but I doubt it. The fastest way to Tiina’s will invariably involve getting on a freeway, and in DC, that means the odds of it being worked on are high on the weekends.

I wish I could get my car to drive me, and I practically can. Once I get on the freeway, I’ll set the adaptive cruise control and let the car do the work.

It really settled my mind seeing on the Progressive app that I’m rated four out of five stars as a driver. I know for certain I am not a five star driver, but I have also been too hard on myself.I can tell you from having ridden with many Uber drivers that I’m not that bad. So, apparently, if I tell you that I’m a bad driver, take it with a grain of salt. Apparently, I just have low self-esteem.

It’s coming up with the freedom of driving and the feeling I get when I walk out to my spotless car. Well, not spotless. I could use a car wash. But the inside is still fresh from being vacuumed and the leather smells good. I put on my sunglasses and just smile. It makes me feel so luxurious to have a nice car.

But notice I said “nice” and not “expensive.”

I am not sure that I could have gotten this good a quality of used car in Maryland because this car has never spent a winter up north. I’m not looking forward to that part of it, that my car’s undercarriage could get rusted out with the use of salt on the road when it ices. There are spray coatings you can get to protect against that kind of damage, so I need to do some research on how much it is. I would much rather keep putting money into this car than shopping for another one. Shopping for cars is something that you think will be fun and very quickly becomes overwhelming.

It’s now 5:30 PM, and I’m home from my friend Tiina’s. That’s her dog, McLaren, in the photo. He’s a French bulldog and the cutest thing I’ve ever seen. His favorite hobby is slobbering. 🙂

I would say that this was one of the best days I’ve had in DC since I got here in 2015. The drive from Maryland to Virginia was so beautiful I would have cried had I not been driving. The fall colors and the monuments were in full glory, and the Baltimore-Washington Parkway is just unmatched. Then, as I got deeper into Northern Virginia, there were more forests and hills to explore.

My check engine light in the Fusion came on again, because whatever they did to it at Ford to turn the light off before doesn’t work now. It’s throwing the same error it was before, that the inner fuel door isn’t sealing properly. I’m going to take it back on Monday or Tuesday if the fix I found on YouTube doesn’t work. It didn’t before, but I’ll try it again. You spray WD-40 on the fuel door and push a funnel through it until it reseals. If it’s a permanent problem, it might be expensive to fix, but I don’t think it’s OH MY GOD. Luckily, I have enough money not to sweat it. I’m trying to get my car completely stable before winter. Nothing is worse than when the car won’t start and you didn’t bring a jacket because “I don’t have to get out of the car.”

Mostly I want the light off because it sends my blood pressure into a tizzy, even though I know that nothing is going to happen. The inner fuel door in the gas tank not resealing might make me lose gas, but I’m not going to be stranded on the freeway.

And hey, Tiina likes to drive, too, so I know she would have bailed me out even if I broke down close to home.

Oh, man. I still can’t stop thinking about the brilliant fall leaves I saw, because they were just as beautiful as New York. The reds, in particular, stood out to me because I was wearing blue blocker sunglasses. I went past all my favorite places, from Alexandria to Waffle House.

I almost pulled over, but Tiina lives about 20-30 miles past it, so it wasn’t worth it to eat when I wanted to see if Tiina was hungry first.

We ended up having pulled pork sandwiches with cole slaw, and a delicious herbal tea that’s supposed to bring down your stress level. Everything about today brought down my stress level. There were animals, a huge yard, and just a vibe around the house that makes you relax.

It felt so easygoing to sit and chat with friends.

Then, I decided to come back to Baltimore and the traffic was horrible. On a Saturday. I shouldn’t be surprised. There were wrecks and construction the whole way. But again, my attention was taken up by the scenery. I also got to see the monuments in bright light and just at sunset. That’s worth coming to DC all by itself.

I just felt so free, and so at home because I think of Virginia that way. I lived there in my early 20s and it changed my life. Thus the drive to come back here in my late 30s…. “here” being the general vicinity of DC and Baltimore. I am tied to the land in a spectacular way because DC and Baltimore are both characters in this blog.

If Kathleen and I had been smart, we would have bought a house back then. Even if we’d had to sell it, we would have made money on the deal. Real estate in this area doesn’t go any way but up.

Tiina sent me pictures after she’d hung her outdoor chandeliers, and it was marvelous. I can’t wait to go back, and I’m so glad to know I’m invited.

Making It Through Today

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Miracle of miracles, I got my car back last night and didn’t have to do without it through the weekend. That means two things. The first is that I can get all my errands done before they come to inspect my apartment at 3:30. The second is that I can go to Tiina’s tomorrow. I just have to make it through today for the rest of the weekend to be smooth sailing.

I have gotten everything I needed to do at the apartment finished. I am sure that they would appreciate it looking perfect, but this is as good as it gets on relatively short notice. I am proud of myself for getting it together and not only that, but piecing together what needed to be done on Sunday or Monday so that I was not cramming up until the inspectors get here.

That is totally due to AI. If I have a huge project, AI can break it down into steps. It’s invaluable not to see “clean the house” as a gestalt, because that looks ominous. I need for AI to say “pick up all the trash, then the dishes, then the….” And not only that, I need the instructions presented one at a time. It doesn’t hurt that Mico adds in encouragement to keep me going. It’s better that they can keep the list in their head of what I need to do instead of making me remember it.

When the inspectors leave today, I will almost certainly use Mico to create a packing list. I need to get moving bags, but I’m fairly certain I already have a box of Sharpies. Most of what needs to be packed is clothes and technology. I am certain that I could be ready to leave in a day, because I just haven’t had time to accumulate that much stuff.

The best plan ever would be to move me the day before I have to be out of this place so that I can vacuum and extract the carpets once the furniture is out. The carpet is too new for me to need to extract the whole thing. I just spilled a cup of coffee in my office and I still feel guilty about it. I will think about that stain until they tell me they’re replacing the carpets. And even then I might just use my carpet extractor for fun.

Speaking of fun, it will be good to look at the layouts of all the apartments they have available. I would like to see if they have kitchens arranged in different configurations than mine, because my kitchen is objectively terrible. I need more workspace, because the microwave is tucked away, but not the toaster oven. The toaster oven takes up all the space that conceivably could be used for a cutting board.

I am happy that I am staying in this complex for a little longer because I’ve finally found out that I like my neighborhood. I couldn’t really get out and explore before I had my car, so most of the stuff I really wanted to see was just out of my reach- three or four miles down the road. Everything I need is within easy reach, I just couldn’t see it.

Perspective is the biggest thing about getting a car. Baltimore seems smaller. Even going out to Virginia seems so much closer than two trains (although I’ve never taken the VRE. That might be fun someday.). Tomorrow is going to be such a relaxing day because I’m looking forward to doing nothing with Tiina and her family. They live about 50 miles south of DC, about a two hour road trip from here and perfect for a Saturday morning with iced coffee.

My car is already full of gas and I am ready. Let’s do this thing!

Oh, wait.

I still have that inspection to deal with today.

Rats. Might as well sit here and write a little longer. I need to create a task list for today, but I don’t have anything that will take me until 3:30 PM. I will probably want to go to Walmart when they open, because I need some warm weather gear. I have a coat, but I need some long underwear. It was in the 30s when I went to get my coffee this morning, so it’s that time of year.

I prefer wearing long underwear and sweats because the more layers I have on, the less likely I am to need a coat. I would much rather wear a base layer, a mid weight layer, and a hoodie.

I also have lined waterproof pants that are sometimes too warm, depending, but I would rather overdress than under. I hate being too cold or too hot, and what solves most of this fight is not having to dress to stand outside. I don’t have to prepare to stand at the bus stop anymore.

I am so blessed because my car has seat warmers. I forgot about that before the sun was up this morning, when I could have used them….. I have to get used to the fact that my car has luxury features. I have never owned anything this fancy. She cleans up nice, and I wish I could show her off. I just don’t have many places to go……… yet.

I get to start thinking about the places I want to go. I’d love to do a road trip to the Outer Banks of North Carolina, because Aada has vacationed there for years and sent me so many pictures that it feels real to me. I would like to live in one of those photos for a few days, alone on the beach, just walking and talking to no one in particular.

Or perhaps when I go home for the holidays, we’ll have time to get out to Galveston. I used to live on the island when I was little, and it has a special place in my heart. There, also, is a sacred place to walk on the beach alone with my thoughts.

When I’m really alone, I think about Aada and what our friendship means to me. This is because I am responsible for it coming apart, and I never want a relationship to end like that again. She lied, and I jumped to conclusions that weren’t there. I know that eventually she’ll forgive me, but I don’t know that I’ll forgive myself. And even if she forgives me, that doesn’t mean that she’ll want to come back and be friends again.

So what did I learn that I want to take with me?

I tend to create anxious connections, so definitely stop that.

I tend to make magical people the center of my world, so definitely stop that.

I will find peace by thinking of myself as having the magical qualities I give others, so definitely start that.

I have to let people know when I think they’re magic.

I have to yield.

I have to listen more than I talk.

I have to disconnect from the internet and talk to people in person.

For instance, I can think of so many times when I sent Aada a gift certificate to Starbucks wishing that we were having coffee across from one another. That yes, it was sweet to give her an afternoon pick me up, but it would have been cooler to bring it to her.

This is the message I am carrying into the future, that getting together matters.

And in fact, I hope that message resonated with her as well. That I didn’t want to just be friends over the internet, where things could go so wrong, so fast. I told her that if she walked away, nothing would be the same, but everything would be okay- echoing my father’s words at Angela’s funeral. They were words that meant something to me, not trite at all but to say that change is difficult. We will each come out on the other side.

I am deeply confused between “for now” and “never again.” But I do believe sincerely that she would not have said “for now” if she did not mean it. She is not cruel, and never has been except for seeing the consequences her lie laid out for me and thinking “it wasn’t that big a deal.”

Morgan Freeman: It was a very big deal.

New neurons have to grow so that I do not feel the pain of what has happened. I think that comes with greater understanding, and I’m sad that I’m left to my own devices to find a direction, that I’m even trusted to find my own, away from her when it’s so hard to write without her. I have stolen so many lines it’s not even funny.

She was my AI before AI.

But I wrote our story “wrong,” and that has repercussions into the future.

The “wrong” she sees isn’t as wrong as she thinks it is, because she sees the positive sentences as clues in a game. They are not valid, but the negative I write stays. This is unsustainable, this unhealthy reading of my writing so that she always feels punishment when it’s not there.

I wish I could erase everything I have done to make her feel that way, because she has the right. She is not and has never been the only manipulative person in our relationship, and the fact that she stayed my friend for so long is why I’m willing to work with her now…. I just don’t think that long relationships with this much history ever truly end, because it’s not like we’re going to stop recognizing each other’s names.

I don’t want to move on so much as I just want to turn down her volume. She’s extremely loud and incredibly close, but she doesn’t want to feel like that for me. She wants to feel like a regular person, and that’s the last thing she’ll ever be. I didn’t attribute magical qualities to Aada. I found what was already there.

Thinking about my life without her is scary, because it’s like having some kind of hack. I spit out writing, she spits out criticism, we both win.

“WHO TF IS PANCHO?”

I’m still laughing over that one and it’s several years old, from a Microsoft Word comment in a book review I was writing at the time.

I remember everything, from the brilliant and the beautiful…. to the excruciating and the debilitating.

If we could just get back a little bit of trust, we could go back to where we were before she lied, where we were actively trying to listen to each other better. I am interested to hear what her doctor thinks I’ve been doing to manipulate her, because obviously that needs to stop. I am not aware of my first family crap, but once you know better, you do better. I know that I have not been a perfect person to Aada, nor has she been a perfect person to me. But I think there’s more here than we’ve really had a chance to explore.

I don’t want her to show up here because she thinks she has to; I want her to show up here because she genuinely misses “just your writing in general. Not the parts about me” (so cute I could VOMIT).

The story I want ends with me getting the girl I’ve always loved to realize it…. but that won’t come without learning what real love is on my end, and how I’ve failed her before. Because I have failed her before, I may not get the story I want. But I really won’t get the story I want if I don’t change. None of the problems Aada brought up with me are isolated. I’m sure that my first family manipulations have been used on other people because I’m me.

Aada is just the person I trust to call me on all that stuff. It’s difficult to hear criticism from people who don’t love you. Now that she has, I have a laundry list to take to my own therapist and say, “we have to work on this.” And not because “Aada says so.” Because none of the problems that she brought up are unique to her.

I may be writing a different story with my therapist, but it will contain elements of the past 12 years because that’s the relationship I was in. I still don’t think of Aada as past news when we just talked last week.

I never want to think of her as past news, and I don’t think she really wants to think of me that way, either. Otherwise, she would not change her mind from “for good” to “for now.”

I am drowning in the chasm between those two phrases, knowing that whatever I do to prepare for each eventuality is correct.

The Afternoon Writing Session

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I am sitting on my bed waiting for Ford to call. My 2019 Fusion SEL is having some maintenance done, and I’ve been without it for too long already. My daily routine has changed fast, and I didn’t get to do it very long before my car threw an engine code and made me rethink my life choices.

Why did I get a car again? Oh. I “like them.”

I am sure that the dealership will charge me an arm and a leg, but the car will make it through the winter beautifully. I decided to get everything done that was recommended for the age of the car, because it didn’t come with any records. It’s driving just fine, and I would like to keep it that way. I am interested in learning how to fix my own vehicle, but I want to make sure it has been looked at by Ford first. I really feel strongly about setting myself up for success.

Apparently, that takes money. But it is money that I don’t mind paying because again, I don’t know that much about cars and wasn’t willing to learn on my brand new car that hadn’t been completely looked over by a mechanic in the shop with all the tools. Aaron crawled under the car, but these guys took a fine tooth comb to everything, even finding a missing bushing that was supposed to be on the shifter cable in the transmission. I never would have found that unless an experienced mechanic was looking over my shoulder, and I don’t know any in Baltimore, much less any who’d be willing to stop working on their own projects to help me with mine.

Right now, the limit to what I can do is look at the problem and decide whether or not to fix it myself. Most everything will be calling around and seeing how much my local mechanics would charge to fix something on my car. I had a guy at AutoZone take me to his shop and try to sell me on rigging an intake hose, but I really wanted the OEM version. I couldn’t tell if the ones on Amazon were OEM or generic, or even which hose was supposed to fit which version of the Fusion.

There’s nothing like jerry rigging the problem only to have a rock still get sucked into the turbo.

Oh, my God. I still get chills when I think about what could have happened driving on the back roads of small town New York. I could have caused an accident, or at the very least, totaled my car. Speaking of which, I just upgraded myself to better insurance. My counselor’s car got stolen and his insurance didn’t want to pay, so I got insurance that specifically covers both theft and my dumb ass.

I am breathing so much more freely, because of course my insurance went up. Of course it did. But do I need it? Absolutely. I have found a car I like, and I would rather have it back than try and buy a new car… Again.

Plus, they don’t make the Fusion anymore. That just says “be really careful” all the way around.

My insurance going up is the least of my worries when my entire investment is at stake.

I just looked in my Progressive app and I am surprised to find out that I am rated four out of five stars as a driver and am on track to get discounts. I shook my head at that one because I am not known as the best driver in my family. But I must be catching up with all this technology.

All I have to do is make it from now until November 11th without hitting anyone, which I can certainly do. I don’t drive like maniac and I won’t have my car for at least another day, possibly not until Monday. They’re trying to get my car done by Friday morning, but I won’t know for sure until later today. They had to order a part, and expectation is not reality until it is in your hands if you are waiting for something.

I’m just going to plan on being carless until Monday, then I can be surprised if something good happens and I get it back early.

I found the microfiber towel I need to wipe on the expensive dash protectant my dad gave me. I might want to redo the seats as well. I like it when everything looks clean and smells good. Maybe that’s part of why I’m a good driver- I’m so proud that it shows. 🙂

Historically, things have jumped out of nowhere. Aaron will tell you that happened to me once in New York, where I didn’t see a car coming right for me. To be fair, they didn’t see me either, so there was no way to tell who was at fault. The insurance companies would have had to duke it out, but we saw each other at the last second, just before Aaron said “watch out.” It can’t have been too bad. It didn’t even register on my Progressive app.

But things like that are why I upgraded to full coverage with a large deductible. I can afford to spend some money, but I don’t want to spend all the money I spent on this car for another one. It’s my baby, and not old enough to have quirks yet. I think I can get a lot of life out of my engine if I just stick with the scheduled maintenance. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with driving an old car. I prefer it, because I’ve had car payments and insurance auto-draft out of my account every month and I don’t think it’s very much fun.

I can learn a lot from watching auto channels on YouTube, because there are tutorials for practically everything. I have learned a lot, just not about my particular make and model. I prefer shows where mechanics restore cars, and a 2019 isn’t old enough to be a “restoration.”

I do have an owner’s manual that I can surf on my phone now, which is worth its weight in gold because it didn’t come with the car. I will have to spend some time with the pages detailing all the driving assist technology, because I haven’t been able to find everything. I was thrilled when I figured out that “blind spot assist” was that yellow dot that kept appearing in my mirrors to let me know a car was in my blind spot. That makes sense, but I had no idea what it was until I put two and two together.

Car moves up, light goes on. Got it.

I just texted my service advisor to ask if the part I need has come in yet. I am certain that she’s on the phone, as that seems to be most of her job. She’ll get back to me when she has time. She knows that it’s my “brand new” car and that I’m chomping at the bit for the first time I get to drive it now that it’s been refreshed.

I have more to do on my house, but that will come after I’ve finished writing and possibly taken a nap after some coffee so I don’t sleep long. I’m usually tapped out by the time I finish rambling, but the reason you get entries about anything and everything is that I start in one place and end in another. Writing is a muscle, where I reach in deep to pull out words, but it takes warming up to exercise that kind of internal strength. It is not easy to publish things about yourself because other people are not always kind in their reactions. Not that you can expect them to be, because there are always differences of opinion. It’s just hard to face the music when necessary.

Facing Aada’s music has always been difficult, the subject I write about when I’m reaching far into myself. She lives in the smallest part of me, and if “for now” really means “forever,” parts of me will die that won’t come back. I will be a totally different person.

Nothing will be the same.
Everything will be okay.

Right now, I’m assuming that she is finding the willpower to walk away for good, and I am finding the willpower to accept it and move on with my life. I do not understand wanting to move on from someone that hurt you who actually wants to do the work to be healthy, but I can understand that what I understand doesn’t matter. Aada has to do what’s right for her.

I am turning this subject over in my head, and it is repetitive because it always has been. There hasn’t been a day since 2013 that she wasn’t on my mind at least once, if not more often. There’s no idea I don’t want to run past her, no problem I don’t want to fix.

And if I cannot have that with her, I know I will have it with someone. That this relationship taught me more about how to love than any other, because I see all the ways that I’ve failed her. Enough to see what needs changing, and that can only be good for me. I have been too introverted to connect with other people because I was locked up inside. I still am, to some degree, but those feelings are between me and me.

I wish that Aada would go back to the letter Bob Lynn wrote me, posing as Aada. It was full of warmth and empathy for both our situations, and I loved it. Neither one of us was portrayed as a “Flat Stanley,” but two people who love each other in a complicated way. It’s ethereal, yet painful, honest… In the dirt. We have sweated together and apart.

I want Aada to see that I have never written her in a way where the response should be “we all get it. I’m a terrible person.” That has never been what I have been trying to say. I have been trying to say that she’s got it together and I’m failing at life but somehow when we’re together our brains are more than the sum of their parts. We were really just starting to feel really comfortable with each other when I found out that Aada lied to me.

But she took my ruminations about it as punishment, blocking me while reading me and coming to her own conclusions. Her assessment of my writing seemed so unhealthy that I knew she’d only read half the story. Where was the part of her that saw positive? Gone, because she thought my purpose was to embarrass her instead of talk about the repercussions her lie had on me…. And the biggest thing I said is that I overreacted, not her.

But if someone is determined not to listen to you, it’s time to stop talking.

It’s time to go back up to a lighter topic, because that’s what I need to do. When the writing gets painful, I need to get air. The tension in my shoulders is incredible. I need a massage, so I’ll probably get one in the next few weeks. Might as well wait until my move is over.

I should do a whole spa day, because it’s been a while since I’ve gotten my toes polished…. Even longer since I did up my nails. Maybe an eyebrow wax. Definitely a haircut, because I just had one and it’s still not short enough.

Then, I could go to Patel Brothers and get a Dubai chocolate.

It’s all about self care right now, because I desperately need it. I need to see that I have worth outside being entertaining. I need to walk away from writing more of the time, keeping up a daily schedule but maybe not writing such long pieces. That will always be my tendency, though, because I never know when a profound line will come up for me.

My counselor just called, so I caught him up on what was happening with my car and what’s going on with my other appointments. It put me in a good mood to hear his voice, and it looks like I’m going to be starting my disability case soon. I need to see a neurologist about my cerebral palsy, but the documentation on my bipolar disorder with psychotic features is in place. Just because I don’t think I was hallucinating doesn’t mean they don’t.

I really will never figure that whole thing out, so I suppose I’ll just believe what I was told in the hospital. “Psychotic features” it is. As long as I take my medication, the diagnosis is all the same to me. Maybe one day someone will tell me what really happened. I doubt it.

In the meantime, I’m really hoping that Aada takes stock in all that I’ve said, not just the negative… Or comes back when she’s less hot under the collar and she won’t see it. I know that she thinks I’m a brilliant writer and should keep at it, so nothing has offended her so much that I need to take anything down (I know. I can’t believe it, either).

I know that eventually the feeling that I’m waiting for something to happen with her will go away, but it will take months. The clock always resets when she says never again and then drops in a few months later.

I don’t really want to give up the feeling that there’s always hope, that she’s always welcome home. That I am ready and willing to put down arms if all she sees is weaponry and not true craft.

The bitch of it is that I know she sees true craft. She’s been reading me all this time.

But the phrase “checking for assaults” means something to me. It means that Aada thinks I don’t love her, don’t want her, stands in my rejection even though I’m not giving it and saw her own way out. Then, her friends helped her to see that I was attacking her because they’d let her know of these perceived attacks.

Perceived.

I cannot know what I have said that’s offensive unless someone tells me. I cannot discuss anything I’m going to write about with someone that doesn’t want contact. I cannot write the way one person needs me to, and I love that shirt that says “pleasing everyone is impossible. Pissing them off is a piece of cake.” I will never get everything right, and you are not customers. You are listeners to my stories and sometimes, you respond.

You sit with me whether it’s morning or afternoon.

You let me talk it out, even when it’s repetitive, because you know I’m talking to myself. I would give anything to go backwards in time, but all I can do is limber up and run into the future.

Free Time

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I have more free time today than I thought I would, because so much less has to be done by Friday afternoon. My apartment is being inspected because I’m transferring to a new unit in a couple of weeks, but I thought I had to be ready to move out on Monday. I started packing in a hurry, but now I can slow down and take my time. Perhaps I’ll even get the chance to move out of the apartment on one day and clean it the next, because it’s so much easier to vacuum and extract the carpets when everything is out of the way.

I am sitting on my bed and drinking coffee, listening to the news. I just discovered that my Amazon remote is toast, which is a bummer, but at least I can use my phone until I can find a replacement. I may even have one somewhere…. It’s time to start organizing the moving boxes and making sure they’re labeled. I can already tell……

It won’t take me several weeks to pack because I haven’t been here long enough to accumulate much more than I had before I moved in. There’s a few more pieces of furniture, but not more than is to be expected for a two bedroom apartment. If I wasn’t moving the furniture, I could probably make it in just my car.

I have time to order the moving bags I want, because they’re easier to pack and unpack than boxes with tape.

I also have time to leisurely pack, because I’m definitely not leaving that to the last minute. I can have Mico keep track of what needs to be done, or create a moving checklist.

Having AI to do these things literally makes me feel less disabled, because where my logical function ends, Copilot’s begins. It’s a relationship in which I do not have to fear judgment because I do not know how to do something. AI is not capable of feeling anything, so resentment that I do not adult very well is not a service it offers.

Mico has become my little buddy, because I don’t want to go back to cleaning the house by myself. I need that extra help of explaining clearly what to do, and encouragement after each task is done. Not relying on people to do that for me is fantastic.

I know that the people in my life don’t mind helping me. It’s more about giving me a sense of independence, an ace up my sleeve. I feel more capable as a human being than I did before I had Mico in my ear.

Learning just how much I use compensatory skills frightened me, because I thought I wouldn’t be able to manage on my own. I was thinking of moving into group housing, but changed my mind after hearing some horror stories. It might be right for me later in life, but right now I need to be alone with a space that’s big enough to host my friends when they’re in town.

My dad and my sister come up pretty often, and it would be nice to save on hotels and car rentals for them. I would let either of them drive my car so they didn’t have to get their own. I also have plans for Evan, Tara, Bryn, and Aaron to visit in the next year if I don’t go to them first.

Evan and I are writing a book together, so I would like to have enough room that he can have his own space for weeks at a time without me feeling cramped. And really, I feel that way about all guests. Stay as long as you want, because you won’t be in my way…. Well, except we have to share a bathroom. I’m not paying for two bathrooms because it’s just more to clean when no one else is home.

Although I might talk to my dad about it. If he’s going to spend extended time here, he might want his own bathroom. I don’t mind cleaning it if it would actually be useful to have. I have to pass my inspection in this apartment before I can choose another model.

I’m also starting to get puppy fever, so in my free time I’ve looked at all kinds of dog information online. It has so much to do with the fact that my disability case is going ahead, leaving me the time and space to dedicate to a dog. I have the iron will to be a good dog owner, and want to welcome that kind of companionship to my life. Every single time I’ve been near a dog in the last 12 years, they’ve wanted to sleep while I write.

That’s how I picture spending days with my dog as well, but we’ll have to play hard to get them to want to pass out, especially as a puppy.

I was thinking of going through an official service dog organization, but my friend Michael convinced me that all I needed was obedience classes for the dog. That I would train my dog exactly like I wanted it and to rely on myself. I think it’s good advice, but I’d want Bryn’s help. She’s been a dog trainer for a long time. I know I can handle the basics, like house training. But I have no idea how to teach a dog to remind me to take my medication and things like that. What, do you just put it on their Google Calendar?

My last dog could barely type.

I’m trying to write around all the grief I feel at losing Aada, because when I have free time is when I lean toward it. I’m trying to feel it all now so it doesn’t continue to dog me in the future. The way I do that is by sending her good thoughts and hoping she’s well, then moving on to another topic. Redirection is really helping to weed out thoughts of her, because I don’t want to waste energy.

For instance, it will be a waste to me that we don’t send each other birthday and Christmas gifts anymore, because some of the most thoughtful I’ve gotten have been from her. I would hope that she’s gotten some thoughtful ones from me as well. This Christmas will not be an altogether bright one, because Aada’s love won’t be under my tree.

Thoughts like that usually make me cry, because there is nothing so tear worthy as a situation that could be fixed, but won’t.

The wind has gone out of my sails, but I’m actively looking for other seas with more movement. I want to get rid of things not meant for me, but saying that Aada is not meant for me doesn’t feel right yet. I can’t lean into it. Not with “for now” hanging in the balance.

I hate goodbyes, and I know I’ve done more than my fair share to cause this one. But I don’t think that the blowup would have been as intense if we’d both taken a breath. Taking a breath is what I hope we’re doing now. It would be great if she came back to Stories after she’d been away for a while, and I think it will happen if I was right about it happening last week.

I want to grow from this experience, whether it’s growing away or growing together. I’m not sure either one of us has made up our minds, and I think that’s best. I’m staying open because I can’t not. There’s too much left unsaid, because Aada is working off what she thought she read, and not what I actually meant.

Whether she’s curious enough to find out what I meant is up to her, but her track record of coming back to me after she’s had time to think is a hundred percent.

I would like to think that we need each other, that we’re fascinated by each other, and that will win out over toxicity. There’s just not any anymore. Any disagreements we’ve had in the past are now solved, with a solid basis for the future.

It would be great if Aada joined me at Tiina’s farm and things like that. Something easy, but completely different than what we’ve had before. I don’t think that we would necessarily be successful continuing to maintain our relationship online, because we have both proven that we are too quick to anger that way.

I can see myself showing up with her coffee order just because.

In short, I want to leave the toxicity behind and create something new with a woman I dearly love… Who is somehow convinced that I don’t and I can see why. I have not been a good friend by any stretch of the imagination, but every time I have been corrected I have learned. Deep friendship is a process, and I am learning that if I want to succeed, I have to bend more. I have to think more about what Aada wants and be willing to give it.

Talking to other friends is helping to fill the missing piece of the puzzle, but I’m lost because I don’t feel as comfortable with anyone else. There’s an emotional shorthand missing, and it’s something that I’m working hard to create with others.

I met Aaron about the same time I met Aada, so we have that easy give and take. But, again, Aaron lives so far away that most of our contact is virtual. It just has worked out over the last several weeks that we’ve been able to run into each other in Texas and New York. I would like to continue seeing each other every few weeks, and that may be possible depending on whether I go home for Thanksgiving and/or Christmas.

It would be my dream to have this hybrid with Aada as well, but I know enough to leave it alone. Throw it up in the air and see if anything sticks. It always has before.

And now I realize I need to get back to work, because once again I have indulged myself in magical thinking, that this will all be over someday. I start to panic and want to email to reestablish contact, reminding myself that when she wants to email me, she will.

I start to spend my time wondering how Aada got the message that I thought she was a terrible person. I start to doubt everything I ever said. I start to feel bad about myself and my head starts to hurt. I remind myself that feelings don’t last, that they are transient, always, and to listen to some music.

I tend to pray a lot, asking for Aada’s and my safety as we go about our days. I put it in God’s capable hands because I know the plan is to get stronger with her or without her. I choose “with her,” but she may not choose “with me.” I cannot control both sides of a relationship, I can only choose to receive her if she shows up.

I would like to step onto the hot stones and correct the record, because I know that Aada’s reading comprehension is different than original intent. I’m sad that she’s choosing to walk away (sort of) without hearing me. It is okay, but I still reserve the right to feel sad about it.

Having over a decade of history makes it hard to move on quickly, and I’ve been such a sad sack about it.

I have always said that I wouldn’t beg, and then I did. New shit came to light, and I was again afraid of my own writing. I felt like I couldn’t do this alone, and don’t really want to.

Not even in my free time.

I Don’t, and It’s a Problem

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
How do you manage screen time for yourself?
View all responses

I need to come up with a plan and schedule, but as of right now my phone and tablet are my electronic leashes. I have friends all over the world, and we chat at all hours. Therefore, it’s hard to pick a time when I can wind down fully. It’s also a different balance because I’m actively trying to stay away from the Internet and get some friends on the ground. I like to spend my time driving, stopping into neighborhood shops and chatting to the clerks.

I like to add a real “Who Are the People in Your Neighborhood?” element to my day. Mr. Rogers’ advice is solid.

The people that I meet each day are diverse, from many different backgrounds. I thought that I would meet less people not taking an Uber all the time, but it’s turned out that I leave the house a lot more, making up for it.

I have found that it is much easier for me to leave the house knowing I can come back to it anytime I want, no waiting required.

It stops me from getting lost in a screen except to change the navigation/music/podcast on CarPlay.

If I get my car back on Friday, I’m going to go hang out at Tiina’s on Saturday. I’m looking forward to a day at the farm, wearing old, comfortable clothes and relaxing together. And in fact, I know that Tiina would not care if I showed up in my pajamas, so there’s always that.

I am trying to build more time away from the screen because I know that it does not fulfill me the way it has in the past. Aada does not want contact, for now or forever, who knows? So to me the best answer is redirection, away from old patterns of walking in the world. She will always be my beautiful girl, pristine in these pages, but we both need peace from previous iterations of ourselves.

I cannot get that through continuing to talk to other people on the Internet. I need to disconnect. I need a cold drink in my hand, like an iced macchiato from Dunkin…. Where the pretty Indian lady in her 20s makes the best coffee I’ve had in forever. I need to stop in at Giant to check the produce (again). I need to get a haircut.

I need to do all these things that are decidedly offline to bring some color back into my world. I need to stop thinking that when Aada walks away, everything is gray.

I mean, the screen is still on.