Michael told me that if I didn’t believe my care team, then I was the weakest link in the chain. Aada told me that she would rather ride off into the sunset with her story intact. I have listened to neither of them thus far, but I no longer have a choice. Apparently, Aada has lied to me to such a degree that my limbic system reacts when I hear her name… that she is not only in danger, but I am responsible for her troubles. Michael says that Aada is responsible for her own troubles, that if she hadn’t made up such a ridiculous lie she wouldn’t be in this mess. Because of the problem, I have been hospitalized many times, two of them recently.
Because if I stick to the story Aada told me, I am “having an episode.”
Aada said that changes were coming and she was preparing for them, and that it would end our friendship permanently. She could have died for all the contact and information I’ve been given, and I cannot care about that, either. Three hospitalizations in 11 years because I’m supposed to be crazy is more than I can take.
My pattern recognition says that Aada and Michael’s patois is the same, and Bryn warned me about that. That the relationship with Michael doesn’t feel entirely safe because it’s the equivalent of thinking that Aada somehow spoofed a Facebook account to talk to me. I trust him, anyway, but slowly.
This is because my entire hospital visit was designed to hurt me, with coloring pages and a version of the UCC’s “Daily Bread” publication and a piece of either Diane Syrcle or Susan Leo’s clothing. How all of that, plus Diane’s niece being my nurse, is impossible without Aada’s influence and a man on the inside. If there is a camera running in the hospital, you can see when I received the clothing from Susan and Diane’s closet that I reacted like I’d been shot- the scent memory bowled me over and I lost control of my legs. I went down in a heap, and helped myself back up.
No one else had these intricate designs, like a coloring page designed to elicit future plans in Finland. No one else had Fishdom hacked into a game to lead me around the hospital, and no one else was told Jonna Mendez was waiting for them on the top floor. It was all a game.
A game that played with my head, from a “liar.”
Now, I’m supposed to believe that the entire 12 years I knew her was a lie, and that’s hard to swallow. I know my own truth, so I am caught between telling the doctors what I know and telling them what they need to hear so that I am not institutionalized. There are several institutions I’d like a meeting with right now, but a mental hospital is not one of them. I’ve had enough.
The whole idea is that she lied about being a case officer, that she never worked for CIA at all, and I just fell for it. That the last 12 years of my life have been one big fever dream. I can forgive all that. I struggle to forgive not telling me when she would age out, because lie or not, I spent years worried that she was stuck in a “shithole country” worse than ours and couldn’t reply. I didn’t have to. She was grounded the whole time.
I know more about intelligence than I did, but apparently that is because she likes spy books and movies. That she made up an entire narrative and she’s as sick as me.
Except I didn’t engineer her whole hospital visit to make sure it inflicted maximum damage, and I could tell you a whole lot more about that except I like the friends that helped her. I don’t want to see them ever again, but I like them enough not to name how they participated. And then there are four other friends who I’m not sure they even knew they participated. K, L, S, and S were innocent bystanders as far as I know. The others are in the intelligence community and helped pull off the most embarrassing stunt I’ve ever seen.
By the end of the night, Meagan didn’t want to talk to me because my father had done something to her. Dana had been hurt because J had done something to her. Nothing was real, but designed to challenge my assumptions.
There were groups created just for me, like “Double Trouble.” I didn’t choose them because medical marijuana is a thing and you had to be sober, plus I’d just been offered a trip to Finland with one of the Doubles and it had turned into Sinai hospital. She sent me a beautiful video of the ice hotel where we’d be having dinner, then when I showed up, I got a tour of the hospital, then locked out.
I know Aada well enough that she wasn’t dumb enough to let me go wandering around Baltimore alone. There were signs from the traffic lights as to where to go. I realized I was on camera and talked it out. The lights responded to my voice because if you’re Aada, you just make a phone call.
Facebook has fucked me up to the point where I don’t want to use it and yet I’m a digital creator so I have to. WordPress is the same, because all my AI was disabled so it couldn’t create images from my text. I’m guessing that’s because Aada didn’t want a featured image with a spy in it, because I wouldn’t have made it, but AI would.
Even though all of these things actually happened, they do not seem plausible to the real world. So I used to be Bipolar II, and now I’m Bipolar I with psychoactive features, yet my personality hasn’t changed.
Aada did what she always does. She disappeared. As Michael said, “if she was really your friend like Bryn, where is she now?”
In the wind.
Where I wish I’d left her if she was going to leave me to deal with the fallout alone. She left a yellow string partner who would have done anything for her in a mental institution. Her lack of situational awareness cost me, so now I have to just try not to hate her.
Both dreams are crazy big, and both dreams depend on American voters.
If you choose Trump and his minions in the next election, because we don’t know how serious Trump is about dismantling democracy and Hitler did it in 50-odd days:
I will have seen the signs and proceeded with the move to Finland. Aada is not the reason I wanted to go there, and in fact did not even tell her I was learning Finnish. She surprised me with that knowledge, and I was flat embarrassed she knew. I didn’t want her to know that her home country does autism better than this one, and that’s why I’m moving. Her reaction that autism meant you were slow meant, “I’m done with this conversation.” There are no sentimental baby pictures in my future apartment, there’s just a large Moomin doll and all my culinary school children around me because there’s no way I’d go to school in Finland and the other kids wouldn’t be half my age. We will have started a restaurant or made a media company or both. In 10 years, that’s enough for my US passport marking me as female to be a pleasant memory because I do not hate America. I would like to take America with me to Finland.
Ramona Quimby, Age 38 (the request to which I responded) can be half a Finnish project because the topography looks like Portland to me. We can certainly recreate Portland and Vancouver there.
If we choose Corey Booker and his crew (don’t think that wasn’t the purpose of THAT):
Booker doesn’t have minions because he’s not a top-down leader. I still have culinary school dreams in Finland…. Culinary school in Finland will have been fun, but it opens up opportunities for me to come back. I also cannot go to culinary school until my lease ends, so it is possible that I will find a job here before I leave that would allow me to become part of the rebellion, or at least part of the solution. Right now, I’m looking at applying to jobs for writers that pay per hour, because I don’t want to work more than my program allows. It would not be in my best interest to get into these programs and then immediately defeat them. I was just assigned a proper psychiatrist/psychologist combo package and I have not met him yet. Staying in the US is hard, but not impossible.
Either way, there will be a company called Lanagan Media Group, so the United States and Finland have to decide how much I’m worth, and I mean it sincerely. I already know that in Finland, I’m worth real money, because say I do move there and public perception is that I’m so autistic I can’t live independently. They can do that. Because all the while, my writing will be changing to reflect Finnish culture and values, earning money that goes right back into the Finnish economy because I will not live in the US past my lease if I can help it. That lease makes me feel more trapped than anything else, because I have to stay here, and I was burglarized because I was a dumbass and left the patio door open. I was home, and no one was hurt. But Finland feels like the refuge I need after struggling with being neurodivergent my whole life without knowing.
I have coped by smoking with the ghosts in the back of my head (“buy your own smokes, boss).
Mostly my mother, but there have been others.
It’s why I’m so inspired to think bigger. She never let a little thing like depression get her down, so I won’t either. She was forced to go on for a long time and my blog probably added to her distress. But she could have sued the hell out of me- words only have the power that the reader ascribes to them, and though it would have ended our relationship, I think she deserved her pound of flesh if she wanted it.
I think she did, because she didn’t want me to write about anything that happened when I was a child. No one does, because it is not helping them. No one knows what I do, and I am always the best according to popular legend. I am not a derring-do out loud, though. Two people in my life think that wanting to contact famous people means I want attention. Nope. It’s something that Oprah Winfrey said about using your own platform, your own influence. I missed the assignment at PVA because I needed people to bring awareness to social justice issues.
A trust has been created in my name so that I don’t have any money. I realized that I wanted it when I was riding around on the van in group. Things must change, and they must change now:
All of my Apple products are wrong, because the poorest people in the world don’t have them. It doesn’t matter that I upgraded from an iPhone 12 mini to an iPhone 13, and that my Apple Watch is a hand-me-down. I look like I have more money than I do. I am grateful as fuck that my family can afford to give me these things, but to keep me safe on the streets of Baltimore I need a Samsung that has a crack on the face and a sports band that cost $50 on Amazon. I AM NOT JOKING. I need to be able to go to Xfinity and pick out cheap ass shit, because to not is to mark me as “not from around here.”
My instincts are always wrong if I want to stay alive, because I’m always the person that is willing to spot the one without money. I would rather take people with me than have them stay home out of fear they cannot afford it. So, my first inkling of survival in a therapy group in inner city Baltimore is “you cannot do that. They ALL need money. You are the one that will starve.”
Because my trust is made up of inheritance, I’m terrified to spend any of it. I write about what I want to do, and so far all I’ve bought for LMG is two used Fire tablets. I need an iPad as well, but that will also be used. That’s because I don’t want anyone in the company to look like they have money. I cannot do anything about the fact that my family has money, but I can do all I can to give it back to them so that when people come after me, they’re not losing anything. I’m a popular target these days.
My family has money, but I don’t. It’s important enough to say twice because there have been years where I’ve been nearly homeless due to my own money mismanagement and have been close to an eviction because of a boss not paying me when they didn’t have money. Therefore, I will never offer to pay anyone anything unless I have it. Those who work for LMG are aware that it’s not really anything yet, but I’ve got my top brass team in place.
Walkabout
If you’ve been through PTSD, you know that going walkabout is probably the only thing that’ll save your life. “Walk it off, soldier” seems like the meanest advice you can give someone because it comes across as “I don’t care.” If you didn’t grow up in a military family, you have no idea that walking it off is code for self-soothing and emotionally regulating on your own. I didn’t grow up in a military family, I was married to a Marine dependent. Therefore, she did not see me in her nest and drop me out screaming “FLY BITCH FLY” like she should have. Luckily, I have other friends for that.
I hope to have a prosperous media company because I’m approaching it like a care and connection agency. I walk around Baltimore collecting stories to write about, mostly here but they’re informing what I want to do with screenplays as well. Unlike famous people, the homeless and the disenfranchised have stories that have not been told. As a writer, which do you think I’d rather focus on? Meeting people in a position of power is about saying:
I am autistic and I cannot read a room. But you can.
Walking while listening to “The West Wing” is my favorite way to exercise because of something my dad said when I was a kid… that the first rap song was in “The Music Man” (with a BIG bass drum… big bass drum). It is from that movie that I got the concept that music and speech are the same thing, and I would bet that something similar happened to Aaron on the way to the forum.
Connecting “The Music Man” to the punctuation inherent in Xhosa comes from Trevor Noah. That Xhosa is one of the only languages in the world where you can hear its punctuation out loud. In short, I’ve been walking and talking since I was a child… emphasis on the talking because I don’t walk that easily.
This is what it’s like to be an empath preacher’s kid in my daily life:
My blog makes me sound like a dick because I am this person in an Uber. It doesn’t seem related, but I have to have a place to vent about everything that happens to me because taking on these stories is not easy. I have rituals for “washing off” negative energy because there’s only so many times I can hear someone is a shit father (usually) or a shit mother (more rare, but men talk more about it because dollars to donuts they’ve found a sympathetic ear who’s a stranger and they don’t have a best friend). Meeting anyone in IC is an anathema to my work as a listener, because I cannot share any of that information. I just have to let it sit and fester inside me. It’s why I felt tortured over world events a good bit of the time and “everyone knows what the group is.” Now that it’s all in retrospect, it’s frightening how well my little company is known, but with great power comes great responsibility. I have situational awareness and I wouldn’t date anyone else in the IC unless they worked in the mail room. That means they have security training, but they won’t have been read into anything truly heinous.
Neither was I. I just have a good imagination so any piece of information and I was off to the Google machine in a way that no intelligence agency would want an untrained autist to do.
There is no bigger danger to intelligence and medicine than an untrained autist. That’s because I’ve had two friends in the IC tell me that I’m too smart for my own good and they have to pull back. Believe it or not, it’s unfair, but it’s love. It just feels like emotional avoidance when they don’t replace it. Ok, so don’t talk about work. How’s your dog? I listen to baby dogs snort and snuffle to avoid talking about anything real. Most people do this, I’ve found. Memes are popular because everyone wants to comment that there is a dumpster fire with emojis and graphics, the modern day eight by 10 color glossy pictures, I suppose.
I have been bucking up against that practice because it looks fake because it is. What’s the Kellerman quote about deep emotional wounds? You need a surgeon, not a barber. Until about two years ago, I thought that if you were CIA you weren’t allowed medication and had a bastardized version of therapy that fits the government’s needs, not yours. Though I do believe that Carrie Mathison was a great case officer, I could have done without all the illegal shit it took to get her the right meds, because the whole bit about her not being able to work for CIA if she was mentally ill was fake. I am sure that it’s true that if you’re caught in Russia, they won’t give you your medication. But I believe they train you not to get caught, and there would be nothing better to help people not get caught then actually addressing their medical and emotional needs.
Is there room for shame and vulnerability in the Intelligence Community?
I think there is, it just looks different for the general population than it does for them. The problem is that lies build, even lies told to protect your friends and family. It gets worse when a case officer is hell bent on protecting themselves, and they really, really hurt you. Even if it comes with an apology, it’s not enough.
One hurt was on Homeland. One hurt was on Supergrover. One hurt was on Zac. All three of them were erased by Mummo, from whom all blessings flow.
Mummo is Finnish for grandmother, and the woman I social masked to figure out who I was in return. I just am her mirror opposite in some ways, exactly like her in others. For instance, we both wear men’s clothes and cute glasses, but she’s a boring cis straight girl and I’m, well… not.
I misspoke when I said Supergrover had made it clear she was attracted to men. I meant that she made it clear she was attracted to cis men. I don’t rate, and that’s fine. She met me when I self-identified as a woman, and she was halfway to married, anyway. Having a preference for cis men doesn’t make her a bad person, nor does feeling love for her make me one. It was just problematic in the way it began, because when IC overshares about their personal lives, you really cannot give consent. You can because you’re an adult, but you can’t because you have no idea what contract you’re signing. You just have to learn to hang all on your own.
I realized I could have had a career in intelligence if I’d bought Duolingo the moment I’d moved to Washington, because I wasn’t interested in Finnish back then. I was interested in Arabic, both MSA and the Levantine dialect. It was all self-confidence based. I didn’t really believe that I could learn Arabic, and now I can conjugate basic sentences in the hardest language in the world:
Metsässä kävelee hirvi.
This translates to “there is a moose walking in the forest.” Finnish is NOT English, however. Metsässä actually means “in the forest.” A direct translation isn’t really possible…. “in the forest, there is walking, a moose” is as close as direct gets.
Hirvi puri kerran siskoani.
Sorry, wrong piece of media. Those responsible have been sacked.
A trick I will give you for Medium is that if you speak a different language, use Google translate. I don’t know what it is about the code, but when you paste from Google Translate into something else, the AI on Medium knows it’s a different language and will read it that way. If I just type, then the AI sounds like it’s lagging, because Finnish is light and quick. It’s probably all the kahvi.
I realized that I needed more to write about than what has happened in the past, so the way my past is affecting me now is starting Modern Standard Arabic on Duolingo. Here’s my Facebook status for today:
Now that I have done several languages on Duolingo, I can tell you that the language support for Swedish and Arabic is better than the other languages I’ve tried. I will have to get on my tablet to see if AI support is offered in MSA, but it is in Swedish and it’s invaluable. Where AI comes in is voice recognition. You cannot pass a level until the AI can understand you. MSA on Duo actually starts you like a kindergartener, learning the vowel clusters and not full-on words. It also teaches you to read by making you identify those vowel clusters in Arabic. Marvelous.
People think I’m interested in MENA so I can walk the Bible. This is indelibly true. Preacher’s kid is who I am. But it is also true that I want to walk John Brennan’s “Undaunted” as well. 😉
I thought I wouldn’t be good as an intelligence officer when I was young enough to get into CIA or the military at all. I have proved myself wrong for my own pleasure. This represents almost two months of Very Finnish Problems, plus Swedish, Spanish, Russian, and Modern Standard Arabic. MSA is how I got the level up to five. I realized that because of imposter syndrome, I’d never tried to learn it when there was someone living in my house that could have taught me for 10 years. But, she doesn’t speak MSA, either. She spoke the Levantine dialect. I’m interested in both, but MSA is what they use on the BBC in Cairo…. which I need to watch…. because I’m a sharpshooter. 🙂
I got Sharpshooter level one a long time ago, then got frustrated with Spanish because I already know it. If you already know a language and you’re like me, the way it teaches will drive you crazy. Once I immersed myself in Finnish, Swedish, and Russian, I got the flow.
Duolingo is worth every penny, but you have to know what it’s designed to do. It absolutely cannot tutor you. It can build your vocabulary while you are waiting to be tutored. My friend Randy taught me that (quote o’ the moment? “is that big oil Randy?” Yeah, I’m not that bright. I’m sure he didn’t know anything about MENA 25 years ago when I was actually IN HIS OFFICE EVERY DAY, JFC).
An autist’s pattern recognition makes everything work backwards. I could have had everything I wanted with the right information, but no one was forthcoming or forthright. Things We Do in the Shadows proved correct, except someone let me in on a few things and then left me there, shining her light on someone else. This is not to say she did anything wrong. She was protecting herself from me. It does not render either of our stories invalid. She’s just not a writer, and I am. It’s funny that it never occurred to her before this week, because she didn’t buy me any fonts.
She didn’t know I was a writer, obviously.
She didn’t make a choice to become enamored with a blogger and then burn them when the flame burned bright on both sides.
Or she did, but that’s not my story.
My story is that everything makes sense. Working for ExxonMobil and focusing on Arabic instead of my wife would have led to better results, but I’m the partner that props up her man. It’s sickening to watch, apparently, because the partner in question doesn’t even have to be male. I react like the minister’s wife, not the minister. That’s problematic because she was not the model I’d like to be in the world, but she’s not not that, either. It’s a process of separating the wheat from the chaff, slashing and burning what isn’t good for me and keeping everything that can stay.
Intelligence can’t, because it twists up my guts. Arabic can, because when I’m walking the Bible, I expect to go to integrated neighborhoods if it’s safe in my lifetime. I would also work for the new inevitable Palestinian intelligence agency once they are a state with verified intel, why we cannot just wash our hands of Israel.
But what could I do at 50 or 55 besides translate documents? Pffff. Like that’s helpful. 😉
Turns out, I never really wanted to be intel. My heart bleeds too much. I want to be where I’ve always been… in my office, holed up, listening to people. Apparently, air conditioning is very important in Palestine. I would also like a pool. No one will come visit me if I have neither of these things except Bryn and Aaron, because they know what contract they signed. I’d never bring them anywhere dangerous; I just mean that they love me and moving to Palestine would complicate things, but it’s not a dealbreaker.
And if you think that my life would be different in MENA vs. here, remember that I could live in Georgetown or College Park. I live in Baltimore City.
That is also a choice, and a calculated one. Because I’m a sharpshooter. I’m trying to get relief to the people who need it. Evey Winters and Shane Torres are in. I just need to pick a venue and decide what I need them to do. Evey even said she’d roll up her sleeves and work for me (she doesn’t know how to cook). Shane was FOH at Tapalaya, which is why I want him to represent “The Sinners’ Table.” I want to name it after John-Michael Kinkaid.
It’s not because he died a sinner or anything cruel. It’s that he was going to be the chef of the whole operation when he was tragically killed on the side of 59 South. It has only been since December 8th, and I still feel dead inside at a loss I’ll never get over.
I treat everyone I meet as if they’re John. Because maybe he’s not really gone. Maybe he’ll show up in a different face. Maybe he won’t. But how am I supposed to know that in advance? I don’t. So everyone is John until proven otherwise.
Isn’t that the lesson they teach about Jesus, too?
I’m doing my best, and trying to make up for past flaws and failures. I can do that better now because there is no part of my life drowning in the dark.
The solstice has passed, and the days are getting much, much longer.
My heart is open. I am buying things I need that I have ignored, like clothing. I wouldn’t spend money on myself. Most of it is nice stuff that just makes me look like a jock. It’s designed to be nonbinary with bras built into tank tops, etc. But I did have to honor B’more just a little bit. It’s a Ravens t-shirt with this slogan:
Flock around and find out.
You just don’t realize the power of a murder until it’s coming straight at you. You’re trained to look at every problem… wait for it, Lamott…. bird by bird.
There is no blame in my story. The buck stops with me. But it stopped 11.5 years ago without anyone trying to further a relationship with me. The longer there was no meet and greet, the weirder my life became. I didn’t feel free to miss a thing, because I felt like something would happen if I wasn’t there. I didn’t do anything, I just talked. And the longer I talked, the more I realized that two people in my life practiced law. The way it was presented to me in the hospital is that I was an experiment based on the 11.5 years it took for someone to fuck me up…. and no matter what the people say, broccoli is our friend. It’s a Sesame Street non sequitur to express unhappiness at Dana contacting my dad about something instead of just replying. I should have known that’s what would happen, but I took a chance that she was still an ally. She does not have to protect me, I was letting her know what was up. Now she’s burned an asset, and I’ve gained a CloudFlare notification that I don’t know what it means because no one will tell me. I am both sicker and more well than I’ve ever been. It’s just that no one will tell me what mine is to write and what’s not. What’s my life, and what’s everyone else’s? They do not have good control of this, either, because they do not remember the same things I do and could not predict the play.
I didn’t play either of their games because I didn’t trust their systems. The law and the government have never helped me.
At the very least, I know one of two things:
She really wasn’t there.
I was told she was there, but she wasn’t.
Both of those things could be true.
That is her question to wrestle with. Why would I remember that name after all these years? Why now? Don’t worry. I need this to stop, too. I’m dying inside. It’s why I’ve done so much to get well. It’s different when you’re left to do it alone in the dirt and when you have a support system. I have done terrible things, and I am sorry. But I am not sorry for the fact that Dana is part of my story. I’m sorry that everyone else is, because we were too broken and I’m still working on it.
I told my dad not to respond, that I’d gotten everything I needed on no information.
I mentioned the FBI in my last post. That’s what happens when you’re an American who writes about CIA. FBI has eyes on. All I’m saying is that I’d rather work with the publications review board than against them, but my attempts at fiction are weak. I wish I was a fiction writer, but the way around it is to change dates and times. So, we met in any city I’ve ever lived at any time IC said we did. This story is not about that. It’s about the stories that don’t get told. The partners who are allowed to know they work in IC, which is an underserved community because people don’t think of intelligence being as dangerous as being in the military. Fortunately, or unfortunately, my great uncle is the legend in my family because his C and/or DIA helicopter went down over Somalia in the 1980s, which cemented my star on their wall. Strange things have always been afoot at the Circle K.
“Chefs are just spies with better tools.” -Anthony Bourdain
I spent my time in the kitchen, so I already had the patois of a spy in the field. FOH and BOH gather information on customers the same way, and it is just like CIA talking to low value targets. Information passes up to the chef, he is rarely seen on the dining room floor unless you give him five or 10 minutes to put on a clean shirt and a fresh jacket.
I made her cry with posts about marriage and laugh with posts about sex. That part, I hope I can still do. “Those that lie, love their audience.” I am no threat to the intelligence community because I wanted to know the color commentary, not what anyone actually did for a living. It’s more trouble than it’s worth for me to know where and when Zac is, but that’s not why we’re not together. I just mean that I know firsthand what it’s like to be an intelligence officer. What is helpful to know and what is not. I once wrote a marriage article for all people, but if there’s an addendum, it’s “don’t ask, don’t tell.”
I had to learn the hard way that there’s a limit to how much sensitive information you can hold without being tortured by it. Nothing that anyone has ever said has hurt me on face value. I just didn’t want to be an insensitive jackass and say timeout. That is not what the preacher’s kid is built for; it’s not what autistic people are built for, either. I chose people to be around me that were in the intelligence community because I felt lost and frightened all the time. The stories about my great uncle are not kind in terms of how my family was treated post-mortem. Therefore, I have a vested interest in staying frosty, but excited enough to tell you about the cool parts. It’s kind of like Craig Ferguson deciding that he would get rid of his fear of flying by becoming a pilot. I know that I am not cut out for CIA, because I am their mirror image. I hurt too badly for all involved to be objective, when their whole job is objectivity.
I also don’t want to be the jackass that publishes unverified information, for two reasons. The first is that I’m not a conspiracy theorist. The second is that I’m not an asshole. The jury has been out on that one for 11.5 years and I’m sure has been decided in the other direction by the other parties. It’s fine. I don’t have to forgive anyone but me, and that’s harder than forgiving someone who hurt you. She kept saying that nothing was ever enough for me because she used me. She needed me to be the empathy machine and couldn’t return love in that way…. or wouldn’t, I’m not sure. Because I was never sure if she was reading me in a personal or professional capacity. I was never sure how many times I made her throw up both her hands and her lunch at my illness. She knew all of those things about me, but it wasn’t a two-way street.
The truth is that I can write around a lot of things, but I don’t want to; I’d rather have a team of people tell the real story, but have it be the actual people to whom the story happened…. both what they told me happened and what actually did.
I am not responsible for a Virginia candidate dropping out of a race because I suggested an affair, because the person I said that to provided no background as to what she actually meant and I was not poly at the time. Whose affair were we talking about? The story from the very beginning, because I wrote it as it happened, is that SG! doesn’t have feelings for me. She overshared, and it made me react like a boyfriend who wanted to wrap her in foam rubber and keep her safe from harm. I was devastated because there was nothing that could be done about it in either direction to make it a better situation.
She has made it perfectly clear that she is very attracted to men.
I made it clear to myself that I was very attracted to my wife, and pretty girls are a flash in the pan. It’ll go away.
But, SG! isn’t the Virginia candidate. Who knows what she said to my ex-wife, the one actually from Virginia? At worst, I said something stupid when I was drunk (or they did, unclear) and I’m forgiving myself because I don’t say stupid shit when I’m drunk. It’s not possible when you cannot generally finish a cocktail but once in a Blue Moon.
SG! does know her, though, thus began a source of humor- updates on our favorite Instagram influencer. We just love her for different reasons. For me, she actually has influenced my clothes and glasses frames. I would pay money to see SG! dressed like our favorite Instagram influencer, but I’m betting they’re both a good time in different ways.
She does indeed love me in a “hell no, I will not pick you up at the airport but here’s money for an Uber” kind of way. She just doesn’t know how to show it because she can’t. I’m betting the story is that I’m going to be sued now, but all I want is to get better, anyway. I am hoping that all of these groups add up to the number of hours I’d get for damage inflicted, if there was any. The internet is strange. I don’t have to learn how it works anymore because no one knows.
Truly.
Meta is my favorite company in the universe, and the next MIB movie should be an interworld Facebook. Of course, aliens can communicate online. Online can also be more than it is to its users, and I live by the Gospels of Matthew and Mark.
That would be Mullenweg and Zuckerberg, btw.
Zuck was a dick to a lot of people, but I see a little too much of him in me. Decision fatigue, mostly. Betting he grew a beard to interrupt pattern recognition for neurodivergence. I’m cutting my hair differently. My glasses take up a lot of my face and my hair doesn’t need to compete so much.
I’m finally seeing that no one can fire Cinderella, and I’ve been Hal all along. I’m so sorry.
“She thinks she’s CIA. Has anyone told her?”
SG! finally picked a TV show I like… she’s darker than me and seems to prefer violent trauma porn in her viewing activities, and I’m pretty sure she’s read “The Murderer’s Daughter” as well. I did not like “The Enemy Within” and I loved “Homeland” until I found out something that made me sick. It was all a lie. You can take psych meds at CIA. That wouldn’t mean anything to the general population, but it would have affected my efforts greatly after having been rejected by the Air Force (I’ve never been huge into the military. I was a trumpet player and wanted to be literal “top brass.”). Intelligence seemed easier because I’d gathered intel on people since I was young, which the candidate proceeded to exploit.
She pretended to be someone who catfished me when I was a teen, when I thought she was actually a very nice girl from Swansea, Wales. Because my great uncle (the brother of the hero helicopter pilot) came onto me when I was 17 by sending me explicit messages, I died and was born again online. I killed “LDLanagan” online until I was an adult. Back then, I was “NoPnNoJn,” the slogan for Winter Park, Colorado…. no pain, no [Mary] Jane…. a ridiculous mountain. I had to reinvent myself as a pro-level skier so my great uncle couldn’t find me out of the other teens he diddled with until he died in prison. Therefore, I’ve always had a hero complex about CIA. That if Foster had been alive, Gene couldn’t have hurt me. Foster did not live long enough to see what his brother was doing, which was retreating to CIA’s jurisdiction. He did not live in Wales, but in England.
The reason I think I’ve always been a monster is that I violently hurt two girls when I was a kid to the level where you just don’t see anger like that in untraumatized kids. I believe something happened to me, and I will never know if I’m right… but the clue is that when I was two, I was terrified of men with mustaches. I would go to anyone else; my mother would exclaim proudly.
I have never lied. I found a memory. I will never know, but I have always suspected.
I have a story, and the people involved didn’t want to help me with it. They decided that only their lives were important and left me to twist in the wind. So, since they’re gone and not coming back, I have two choices. The first is to stay silent and not cause unrest; the second is to cause a lot of unrest because I trust the FBI inasmuch as anyone can because “All Cops Are Bad.” Luckily, NoVA and SoMD are full of cops I like… the ones that can admit they’re complicit in a system. The blessing and the curse is that I am a documented bipolar patient who had “hallucinations” in the hospital… but who knows how many hallucinations were true stories too good to be true? Even I will never know that.
Wicked.
I have been changed for good, and that’s all I can say about that… because I am not sure about better or worse, just like Elphaba. I just know that I cannot go backwards, cannot seek solace in any of my old friends, and just need to live out my life in peace. I’m not cut out for government work, and not because I don’t have the smarts. I betrayed a friend after she betrayed me. She wanted all the benefits of being my closest confidante without any of the hard work. Therefore, it became harder and harder to put in work for her. I know what I have done is permanent, but you would have to read about the last 12 years to know both why I felt betrayed and why it was time to just let go and wash my fucking hands……….
Except I can’t.
“Out, out damned spot.”
I have always put in work for people who put in work for me. Her idea of work was being as remote as she possibly could so that nothing was ever fun or light; I am not the person that can be fun or light in the middle of fighting.
Here is our life together in a series of Jonathan Kellerman quotes, taken from “The Murderer’s Daughter:”
“They deserved more than the pathetic lie known as empathy.”
“Pre-monster happiness was out of the question.”
“In matters of healing, the body initiates and the mind follows. Malcolm had told her that. Only once, but it stuck.”
“Pals and chums and confidantes — what the textbooks sanitized as a social support system — were fine when you stubbed your emotional toe. With deep wounds, you needed a surgeon, not a barber.”
“Caulfield was basically a snide, spoiled twit. The arrival of the Messiah would leave him unimpressed.”
“Since learning of the catastrophe, she’d retreated into an insensate fog, as if locked in a sterile glass bubble where her eyes worked mechanically but couldn’t process and her ears were unplugged speakers. When she took a step, she knew she was moving, but she felt as if someone else was pushing the buttons. Her brain was flat and blank as unused paper. It was all she could do to sit and stand and walk.”
Now, imagine if you felt like that and you were responsible for it.
No one who loves me wants me to stop writing. There are enough of them that the quota is satisfied. Everyone else can come and go. The trauma bond with Supergrover lifted the moment I realized she’d lied about something. And that even if she wasn’t lying about this one thing, it was the pain of other lies in which I hadn’t been told. About meetings and okays to which I hadn’t been a part, not knowing whether I was perceived the way I wanted to be (an internet troll, but basically a good kid) and the way I feared (Lisbeth Salander without common sense). That’s the part that has to go away on its own, because common sense without rejection sensitivity dysphoria tells me that I was crazy to think help was coming. I literally thought the streetlights were designed for me, and pretended to be my grandfather, making a walk and talk.
My phone was findable, but dead. There was nothing else to do but walk and talk to myself. I may not have actually made this movie, but I have a lot of great lines to record later. Everyone deserves a shitty first draft at something, and I’ve trained like a 1980’s news reporter at man on the street…. if the street were empty. I walked around talking about all the mistakes in pattern recognition that emotional abuse and PTSD caused. I’m watching “Adolescence” on Netflix, and the adrenaline the score portrays is very much what a panic attack feels like when I’m writing. Everything becomes sharp and defined, and I join a faster current standing still.
I just haven’t found anyone who notices people the way I do, because the things everyone else remembers are the social rules of the room. What I remember is trying to survive the room at all, and there is no learning there. Every room takes the same amount of effort. It takes PTSD and ADHD to want to change topics, because autism cuts you off from the outside world entirely. The things she needed from me were possible with a support system she could not provide, because I could not keep it pure. I was not programmed that way. By the same token, I kept none of my promises because she kept none of hers. I promised to keep her when I couldn’t. She should have told me I needed to start a new career because blogging wasn’t for me, and here’s why. I can help you write x, not y. Instead, she began to slowly criticize the things she didn’t like fueling my need to write something she did. Now I’m the one with the jacket that says, “I really don’t care, do you?” She bullied me by not knowing that emotional starvation is bullying. Like, I’m clearly invested but she keeps me on a string, can’t let me go. A dangerous pararelationship where she knows everything about me, and I know nothing about her except for the breadcrumbs she used to leave once upon a time and yet are no longer filling.
That’s a lie. Her biography is a gas if you’ve been friends as long as we have. Pattern recognition in reverse makes me laugh with delight. But it doesn’t feel dangerous anymore. Mostly because it’s not. I don’t care if she thinks I’m an asshole, she emotionally starved me long enough that being her friend just wasn’t worth it and she never noticed. Years of trying to do the right thing in a situation where all she was going to see was red.
Red, her color when I’m always dressed in blue. That’s because she doesn’t blush. I’m always red.
She asked me to do one thing, and I didn’t do it. I’ll regret it for the rest of my life, but she said it was the signal she needed to go work on her own. That she was done. At what point had she not been done? What was I losing, exactly? How much work had she actually planned on spending? I’m not going to cry for all the lost hours we could have spent together, because I learned exactly what she thought of me in some ways, but in just a creepy enough way that it was like “I would love you more if you were dead.” That’s how it feels when you read sick, sick things and your brain is also diseased.
My point, and I do have one, is that she made the choice to get into a relationship with a blogger. One that made her emote in ways no one else does or can. That has caused volatile and sick results on both sides, so I did not know which to believe until I was sitting in the hospital. They were right. I was the disease. Publish her e-mail, and let it be the end. You can’t come back from that, ever. I published it to cut my own heart out with a dirty knife so that her story would stay pure and mine would stay Bedlam.
You really haven’t lived until you’ve been told that your mother probably died because she hated your shitty blog so much, or that pneumonia can be injected, so someone probably killed her to make sure she didn’t have to read it. Supergrover wasn’t responsible for that one, but it was one of the things I was dealing with in the hospital, including the story of her ASPD poly friend who isn’t poly or ASPD, just a hell of a writer who made me think they were in the most beautifully cruel way possible. She said she was my River Song or some shit and had tattooed her hand. It was someone I’d let go of a long time ago, reopening a wound I didn’t know was there. If the story was true, it was really sweet. If it wasn’t, I liked her story just the way it was. Her being straight made me look at all straight women differently.
She said she sought out one of Zac’s partners to learn more about me. What would have been cooler was just asking me for coffee, but you do you. Because say all she wanted was information. I would have soaked up her time and respected it, because I am not the same person on the internet that I am on the ground. Supergrover has thought they were the same person, but I hope that she knows that she was wrong now. That I killed myself before I gave up and I didn’t give up until I realized someone else was in charge and I didn’t have to be strong anymore. She told me she’d never talk to me again and I had to not care. I had to save me. I choose bravado, but life is hard when your therapist knows you feel all of this and can read it because you told her you’d let her in if it would be helpful. Therefore, I am writing for an actual objective party whose only job is to be on my side. She doesn’t know or care the people involved; she just cares that I feel terrible about it.
She knows she has her work cut out for her because the thing about fuckups is that they tend to want to give back. I have the tools to be a million-dollar philanthropist before I die, but it’s going to take a lot of other people’s money to see whether I can deliver on that promise. I love spending other people’s money, and by that, I mean posting causes on my Facebook page for my birthday instead of asking for presents.
Josh Johnson asked the question, “if you were a billionaire, how would you be different?” First of all, my money isn’t my money. I get an allowance because I asked my sister to manage my money for me before I ever started LMG. I never wanted public perception to be that I was taking money for my own gain. Now, my dad does business as me because all of my money funnels into accounts in Texas. I don’t pay as much tax, which is good because I don’t make much money. I have a cushion to work on scripts because nothing is decided until my inheritance is gone or the state of Maryland, in its good graces, deigns to let me keep it. This is another reason why paying for a move to Europe seems sensible. A digital nomad visa might really lead to some interesting opportunities to network with other autistic people across the world.
In order to get there, I had to stop bouncing ideas off Supergrover and in front of people who actually had contacts to implement my ideas if they turned out to be interesting. I’m not a self-promoter, I put myself in a think tank. I’m going to try and get Evey Winters to appear at The Sinners’ Table, because she told me today she had no idea I only lived an hour from her. World Central Kitchen started somewhere. The Sinners’ Table is not my table, it is the historical Christ’s table…. where people were queer. They did porn. They lied. They were traitors. They said they wanted to stab people through the internet. They were Republican and ushered in devastation by accident. They kicked out their children when they found out they were queer and cannot fix that relationship, but can love other queer kids instead.
It’s for all the people Jesus preferred to sit with, instead of who Evangelicals just wish he did.
A scene is playing in my mind, because new learning has come from an ancient place for me… my own beating heart. The reason I learn so much there is that I’m not the only one in it.
I will say it in English, but I know right now that hearing the AI read the title back to me will make me cry (this was first published on Medium and I have only listened to it 86 times and I need another hundred because the baby said, “lovely post, btw.”:
The Finnish mother rocks her American baby and sings quietly.
The room is quiet. Esteban is gone… there is war. Only Aino remains. Aada drinks deeply, struggling to stay awake. Aino is not sure who she is singing for, but it is a blanket for both of them. I’m a silent observer of a mother and a baby I love, their connection filling me. Aada is not a baby anymore, as that war is long forgotten. It is questioning what those melodies might have been that pique my interest. How do you sing to your baby when your husband is at war?
Whenever anyone said something smartass about Daniel not being an MD, my standard reply was “my stepmother has done brain surgery in an operating theater. My boyfriend has done brain surgery while his team was being fired upon. OF COURSE he wasn’t qualified to do brain surgery. In the Navy, you GET qualified. It’s a very short course.
Singing to your baby is different in peacetime.
This is not peacetime, either.
I can’t remember who said, “y’all can go to hell, but I will go to Texas,” yet I am reminded of it by my motto being “y’all can go to Texas, but I will go to HEL.” Little airport humor for you there, Carlos. Aada says she’s not sure she’d live there, but my heart hopes my guest room has some of her stuff on the walls. I have, in fact, pre-ordered.
I have felt that strong a connection to that baby’s picture for many, many years. She’s older than I am and I was concerned about the microclimate of her pram. Like, WTF? I THINK SHE’S OKAY (well, that’s debatable but we are both “works in progmess.” Our roles are now somewhat opposed. The most hilarious thing happened. Just about the time she got over her girl crush on Brené Brown was when I realized that I was….. just a different version of Dr. Brown. Her, to me: “I just realized that vulnerability does not solve everything. I AM TIRED.” Me, to me, internally: “lord help me Jesus I’m fallin’ down the stairs.”)
I don’t say, “like, WTF?” I have been under the influence of a cis woman and it should wear off in 24–48 hours. However, I will not call my doctor if it doesn’t, it just means that she’s brought a few of my female social masks back. As I was telling her, my female social masks have failed and I’ve forgotten how, in a sense, to be a woman. She reminds me a little too much…. but I’ll keep her.
This is because she finally came clean with me. The reason she’s been so avoidant is that she’s a superfan. She wanted to impress me, and it backfired. We had a huge blowout, but that’s the thing about blowouts. Everything is clean and new again.
Aada is Supergrover, but of course I used a Finnish name generator. I feel I have to neurodivergently explain this because it is yet again another situation where I thought I was going to look like a stalker for moving to a country in which I didn’t even know she’d actually lived. That’s because I moved to DC to meet someone else, and Aada stayed far away from me to cover up what she’d done, making me feel like absolute shit because I thought she loved me- not like that. I thought she loved me like “hell no I will not pick you up at the airport, but here is $50. Dinner is at SIX.”
It’s so much more profound than that. I was right. We need each other now, and we’re bound by the brain. She joked about two old women in Home Depot or some shit and I thought, “I hope we do nothing together someday.” She’s different. Softer.
More vulnerable…………. and it solved everything.
Peace does not happen in a day or a week. I have a general sense that things are calm because my rejection sensitivity dysphoria said, “she thinks you’re a stalker” and her rejection sensitivity dysphoria said, “if this brilliant writer finds out I’m a nobody, I’m done.” This push/pull lasted until I put a stop to it and our friendship. Just went scorched earth because I had her dead to rights.
There is no more reason for her to be evasive. She can show up as her whole self, knowing that I love her truly in her perfection. Divinity is humanity. It is loving each other through these things that make me wonder how her äiti raised such a beautiful girl. We’ve been pen pals for over 11.5 years. She has turned me into her from the inside out.
I have also raised a very, very fine Lanagan in return.
Nonbinary children lose a set of social masks the moment they move away from their first family. This is because if their partner is female, they’ll lose their male social masks because they’re not living with their father. They’ll lose their female social masks when they’re living without their mothers.
Therefore, it is not surprising to me that coming out as nonbinary happened about a decade after my mother died, because it took that long for my female social masks to erode, but once they were gone, I could not bring them back. Having other women in my life is not the same. My behavior and judgment of it is my mother’s voice in my head, judging my father’s reactions. I know this to be true because like most people who have had breakups, a tiny drop of her hated me because I reminded her of someone she didn’t want to spend time with, yet here she was spending time with them.
Our relationship was so much more complex than just me being queer. I handle everything like my dad would, so I constantly hit every emotional trigger he ever wired.
I’m not saying that the relationship wasn’t a success. It had to be if it lasted 23 years. People grow apart.
Resentment doesn’t have to be monstrous for it to be felt by children. They just didn’t have the best relationship after they divorced, and I came out as queer. That meant that whether it was me or Meagan, she didn’t understand. I didn’t feel safe talking about any of my relationship issues with her because she took it so badly the first time around. Yes, the first time around. She didn’t think I was old enough to decide something like my sexuality which was translated to “you need to be straight for my comfort level.”
It’s devastating to be bisexual, because when you’ve been in a heterosexual relationship before you come out, you see the depth and breadth of your family’s homophobia. I am not saying that I was only with Ryan to please my mother. That’s ridiculous. You just can’t believe how acutely mirror neurons pick up the difference in how my partners are treated based on gender. That’s why if my Dad asked to meet Zac, he’d go because I’d enjoy it. Zac and my dad both love cigars. I love sitting and listening to men talk. I never introduced my mother to another man. I knew I had heterosexual privilege (when I dated men). I didn’t need to be reminded of it. To feel acutely that since I had a boyfriend, my partner was valuable was so painful it put me on the ground at 14. Therefore, I have traditionally shied away from relationships with men because “falling from grace” only needs to happen once. Going back up is when you realize that straight people are homophobic and queer people are prejudiced. Now that it can’t possibly get back to her, I can say out loud that the message from the moment Zac said he’d be opening to visiting with my dad if they were ever in town at the same time, I said “sure.” Because I know in advance that Zac wouldn’t matter less than Dana to my Dad, but I would see that bullshit constantly in my mother like I’d “leveled up.”
My family is not a monolith. There are too many opinions and feelings among us to say they did anything about my clan. I had the range of receptions, from good to bad. However, nothing truly extreme on the evil end of the spectrum, like getting disowned or excommunicated from the church. Just limited from being ordained and married in the church denomination where I’d been baptized. It was a long day’s journey into sideye and love the sinner, hate the sin (with pie).
However, it is actually David that I social mask, because I live with him
Today is just going to be a hodgepodge of questions about relationships. They’re not all about my relationships, because it’s a prompt from Carol. Keeping in mind that these are questions from a machine, I will try my best. She gets some things right. 😉
How do digital interactions shape our real-life relationships?
It depends on what kind of person you are. Do you live your life mostly on the ground without paying attention to the Internet, or are you connected umbilically? How long have you been using the Internet? What age were you when digital relationships started? Were you 15 or 40? The biggest thing I can think of is “divide and conquer.” Which world has more of your attention? If your attention is in the cloud, your life on the ground will suffer. If your attention is on the ground, your relationships in the cloud will suffer. Mostly because those two crowds don’t interact with each other. There’s a chance for jealousy that one group knows you better than the other- and they don’t. They each know different parts of you that the other doesn’t.
Can long-distance relationships truly thrive in today’s world?
If relationships were about logic, I think every long distance relationship would be a success now- there are too many tools to make it forgettable that you’re not near each other. But you don’t get contact comfort through the Internet. The biggest problem with long distance relationships is that generally one person is committed to it- going out and having their own lives- and the other is sitting at home waiting by the computer for news. A long distance relationship only works if both people are comfortable leading their own lives. Zac and I aren’t in a long-distance relationship, but poly is a good example of something similar. Zac would be horrified to find out that I sat and waited for him on anything. He wants me to have a full life, and I want that for him. It’s a new way of doing relationships, and I like it. The trick in a long distance relationship (as with poly) is wanting your person to be happy whether you are providing that happiness or not. By definition, if you live in Los Angeles and they live in Vancouver, you’re both going to have people taking care of you that aren’t your partner. You can either be jealous or grateful. Hint: grateful makes long-distance work a lot longer……..
What role does vulnerability play in building strong connections?
It doesn’t just play a strong role in building relationships. It plays a strong role in maintaining them. I know when people are telling me one thing with their mouths and another with their eyes. That’s because the person won’t get vulnerable about what their eyes are saying…. it is the scary truth they’re not brave enough to speak. I’m not very good at giving people their white lies about me. The things that make them feel more comfortable. That’s not necessarily a good thing, but it is definitely an autistic thing. I know you’re hiding something, and I won’t rest until I know what it is- even if it ends the relationship, because I’d rather know how someone really feels than to accept their pity friendship. I would rather have no friends at all than friends who don’t tell me things “not to hurt my feelings.” It’s counterfeit kindness. Your neurotypical friends can see through that bullshit. I can’t. I will take everything you say as literally as a heart attack, and not only that, I’ll remember what you said. People’s best way of dealing with me remembering what they said is to deny they ever said it. Again, vulnerability is huge in a relationship, and masking true feelings never works. Ever.
How do cultural differences impact romantic relationships?
There were so many people weirded out by the fact that I was in an interracial relationship on the streets of Houston that people totally forgot we were gay. Small blessings.
Is it possible to maintain lifelong friendships in a constantly changing world?
It depends on the kind of person you and your friend are. Do you value history? Do you value the vulnerability that comes with history? If you don’t, you’ll always be looking for new friends. By the same token, letting go of a friend is not always negative. As you grow, you don’t take everyone with you. You feel out who is supportive and who is not, and you don’t want to surround yourself with unsupportive people. The best test of time is if you and your friend grow toward each other during change or away.
How does the concept of ‘soulmates’ influence our approach to love and relationships?
It’s a false narrative designed to keep women incredibly choosy. Men have never been taught the concept of “soulmate” or “waiting.” Men get very good at talking that bullshit when they have daughters who they hope won’t run into boys like them…… but they will, because their dads didn’t do a damn thing to change ANYTHING. By the time you’re 19 or 20, that fairy tale has probably been busted…… and because so many women are taught that one man will complete them and their soulmate left, that means their worth is gone, too, because you don’t get another one. Lesbians are not immune to this, because we pick up stories that are all true, and none of them actually happened. As in, just because lesbians are not taught that one woman will fulfill their needs from adulthood to death, that doesn’t mean we don’t buy into what our heterosexual counterparts are taught.
What are the effects of social media on our perceptions of relationships?
It’s different for everyone, because for some people it’s a competition. Some people must have the best of the best on their feeds- top vacation destinations, new cars, etc. For others, it’s a hospital for outcasts. It’s friends for whom you’ve cast a wider net. Autistic people built the internet. It’s our safe space. The reason there’s an archetype for computer nerd is that most of us are neurodivergent. As much as “the internet is for porn,” it is also the place where the people who fit in normally are the misfits.
How do childhood experiences shape our adult relationships?
Your childhood creates the script of how adult relationships should go. Whether your parents were healthy or not makes a huge difference as to how that script was written. Because it’s a script you’ll use with every connection you ever make in your life from that moment forward…. so parents, no pressure.
Can friendships between men and women be purely platonic?
By that logic, I would have problems being friends with myself (I’m nonbinary). But the truth, like everything, is “it depends.” Just because there’s no attraction at first doesn’t mean there never will be, and that’s true of all people, all the time. We get hung up on genders, but emotional availability when you’re not getting it at home is appealing no matter who the person might be. There should be less emphasis on gender roles overall, because there don’t need to be two different standards of behavior.
What are the key ingredients for a successful and lasting relationship?
I don’t know. No one does. There are millionaire authors out there who have made a name for themselves writing about relationships when the truth is no one fuckin’ knows. People are seeking security when there’s none to be found. The only security is in making yourself the best partner you can be, because you will not get any results except anger if you try to change someone else. And the thing is, if you try to change someone, you deserve their anger. Lasting and successful relationships know where one person ends and the other begins.
It was at HSPVA that my friend Scott started calling me “his personal Leslian,” and I realized that I hadn’t talked much about being queer because I’ve been dating a man for over a year. These questions will put my life in context.
Reflect on your earliest memories of realizing your sexual orientation and how it shaped your understanding of yourself.
My life from the time I was 10 has been complicated. That’s because the years between 10-12 are when I figured out I was queer. I didn’t know or care much about bisexuality until I married a bisexual woman and we went to some lectures about it. I thought, “they didn’t have to call me out like this,” and that was before that phrase was even popular. But early in my childhood, I was alone in my room, sleeping off depression and anxiety because I didn’t know exactly what it was, but I wasn’t like other kids. This all came to a head when I held my best friend’s hand in the middle of the night at a slumber party. I don’t even remember doing it. But people sure hated me afterwards. One girl put suntan lotion in my drink and forced me to drink it in front of everyone. I didn’t have enough life experience to tell her to shove it. Turn the other cheek, right? I just let myself be bullied until I came out in ninth grade. I can tell you that I would have come out much sooner without the shit show that went on in my head when I thought about telling my parents in the 80s/90s. It didn’t appear, but my life wasn’t easier because it didn’t happen. My fears were extraordinarily valid. My understanding of myself was that my life would be hard, and it has. But, in recent years, because queer people are more and more accepted, it feels like I have everyday problems instead of problems because I am queer.
Describe a significant moment or experience that made you feel connected to lesbian culture.
I had just gotten divorced a few months before Pride of 2015 (I think). But, my ex’s parents live in the area and she was going to be in town, so I invited her to come with us. She said yes, and then she stood us up. I have no idea why, I didn’t feel like I had the right to ask anymore. But what I do know is that it made me sad. My friends Prianka and Elena put their arms around me and said, “look around you. This is for you. This is ALL for you.” That year, we were marching in the parade with DC Public Schools. So, they literally said that while we were in the middle of the street, taking a break from all the chants. That’s the first time I cried. The second was a woman wearing a t-shirt that said, “I’m sorry for the way the church has treated you.”
Share a story about navigating relationships, friendships, or family dynamics as a lesbian individual.
I am not the person you want to ask about relationships. I mean, I can make it sound good because I can social mask neurotypical people, but the reality is that most neurodivergent relationships fall apart. It’s not unusual to have no friends because of your communication disorder. But what I will say about romantic relationships between women is that they get very emotionally intense, very fast. The U-Haul stereotype is real. It’s not unusual for the first date to last about three months.
Lesbian dating is relentless because women generally don’t want to talk to each other for fear of being rejected. You go to a lesbian bar and the only ones who are really getting down and dirty on the dance floor are good friends who came together. A lesbian will talk to one, maybe two women at a bar. Even if she likes both of them, there’s only a small percentage that she’ll ask either for their phone number. What if they weren’t getting the right signals? What if they hit on a straight woman by mistake? Ok, first of all, this is a trauma response. Second of all, a trauma response cannot be turned off, even in a gay bar. That’s why you are still so reserved about showing people you like them, even though the odds are probably 90% that she’s there for the same reason you are. There are best friends who pine in secret for literal years before they tell each other. It’s Victorian. This is not surprising to me because women are more shy about their sexuality compared to men overall.
With friendships, you often find that the people who have dated you in the past know you better than anyone else. So, I think lesbians have a better tolerance level for exes than most, as long as it’s not the one you just broke up with. I joke that it has to be at least three girlfriends ago, and now my eyebrows are going over my forehead at just exactly how true that is.
Family dynamics are very difficult. Your daughter’s wife inherently gets less respect than your other daughter’s husband, and it’s not out of malice. It’s that those meetings have been scripted for thousands of years. You switch up gender, and people are completely lost. That’s why to so many people, “who’s the wife” is actually a valid question. They do not understand relationships that don’t have gender roles at all. For years and years, partners spent Christmases pretending to be friends, college roommates, study partners, whatever. ANYTHING but girlfriend….. Unless you’re a straight woman. Then you can call anyone your girlfriend. I always get weirded out, because with some women (particularly in the South) you can tell by inflection what kind of girlfriend they mean. In other areas of the country, it’s not as pronounced. It’s also rude to ask, because why is it my business? Meanwhile, I’m only trying to find community and don’t want to be nosy to get it.
Write about a time when you felt marginalized or discriminated against because of your sexual orientation and how you overcame it.
I can’t tell you how I’ve overcome any of it, because you forgive people, but you don’t forget:
Kids at HSPVA surrounding me carrying their Bibles and reading all the “clobber passages” against homosexuality while my friends did nothing to stop them.
My boss telling a story about her kids and then looked at me and said, “I guess you can talk to us about your cat like that.”
The one I will never overcome, forgive, forget, anything is the number of men who think it’s okay to ask you if they can watch a propos of nothing. Literally nothing.
I was on a team of all men and we were in charge of rolling out a new operating system at the VA. They found a urologist’s office full of dildos and chased me down the hall with them.
My domestic partnership was only valid in Oregon. It felt like being exiled from Texas (it’s good that’s not true now, however).
Every Evangelical I’ve ever met wants to debate me just so they can stand there and call me a sinner to my face in the name of helping me. There is only power through education. I didn’t sink to their level. I learned to outsmart them. Quickly. The first thing that throws Evangelicals off about me is that when they bring the clobber passages, I bring the history and tell them to their faces that they are messing with the wrong person. If you really want to have this fight with me, we’ll have it……….. But you’re not going to like how you look at the end. When chat rooms began, this got exponentially worse. EXPONENTIALLY. And then came social media, which took that exponentially large number and added an exclamation point at the end. Homophobia is still cancer in many parts of the world, because homosexuality is cancer to homophobes.
Others’ stories affect me. Dana’s mother saying to me that she couldn’t be the mother Dana needed, so she should find someone else. Katharin’s parents racking up thousands of dollars’ worth of credit card debt in her name when she turned 18. They didn’t even tell her until she came out to them, and they told her about the debt and that they didn’t have to pay it back because it was “the gay tax.” Knowing now what I know then, if someone had done that to me I would have had them arrested. I don’t have the luxury of forgiving and forgetting that amount of money. It would be a different situation entirely if I did. Kathleen’s mom telling us that it would only be her grandchild if Kathleen carried it. Meagan’s mom thinking I made her gay and forbidding us to see each other….. (I did. It worked. You’re next.).
My church not being able to ordain or marry me. I’d never preach in the UMC as an ordained minister, and I’d never marry my partner officially in a Methodist church. That left out every church we’d ever served………….. The people who actually knew me and would want to come to my wedding in the first place.
In the entirety of my school education, I had one teacher that was willing to admit they were gay off the clock. That one teacher made a difference, but you know you’re going to be lonely when you only meet gay people once in a blue moon. You only find gay adults, truly, when you’re a gay adult because no gay person in their right minds wants to take a chance on being pegged as a predator. So, even if they were married with a family at home, the most stable people in their community, getting fired was not uncommon nor sane.
Explore the role of community and support networks within the lesbian culture that have impacted your life.
The first one I can think of is “Christian Lesbians Out,” or CLOUT. It opened my eyes to the fact that mainline theology wasn’t the only theology out there.
I would never have been able to move in the past without my large posse of lesbians, because that’s what we do. Mostly because none of us have any money. Most lesbians are handy for the same reason. We don’t do traditionally male work because it’s fun, although it is once you get into it. It’s that two women make less than any other kind of couple, because all women make less. We don’t pay for labor until we can, and that takes a long ass time. We also have something to prove because women have been told forever that you need a man for these jobs. We’re also very efficient because we don’t take time to say, “hey Bubba! Watch this!”
I don’t currently have any lesbians I’m close to, but Bryn and I both love women. Every time I think about this, I remember sitting next to my friend Nancy while a choir was using our church as rehearsal space. This woman was wearing a shirt that said “100%” Lesbian. We sat there for 10 minutes trying to figure out what percentage we were. We also had a good laugh at how prejudiced lesbians tend to be, thus why we would not be sharing this information with the class.
Discuss the representation of lesbians in media and literature, and how it has influenced your perception of your own identity.
I didn’t find myself in queer characters until I was a teenager, in Nancy Garden’s “Annie on My Mind.” Before that, I relied on characters coded as queer, which there are plenty of when straight writers don’t know anything about gay culture and therefore don’t feel one way or the other about giving characters a certain attribute that might sound funny in my crowd. Anne Shirley calling Diana Barry her “bosom friend” had me in hysterics. But the best example I can think of is Kristy Thomas, president of The Babysitters Club. She is clearly coded as a lesbian, and I was well into my forties before I knew that Kristy was based on Ann M. Martin, who is indeed a lesbian. It was on purpose. I was right. VICTORY IS MINE! (On left.)
Describe a personal journey of self-discovery and acceptance within the context of lesbian culture.
When I was a kid, I was convinced by others that you had to be one of or the other. I didn’t have a comeback for “bisexual just means confused.” Now, I know that the answer is “no, you’re confused. I’m bisexual.” There’s been a peaceful letting go of the lesbian community because I find that more lesbians are prejudiced against bisexual women than bi or straight. It really is a purity test, and a blessing when you decide you don’t want to take it anymore. The first time my lesbian crew saw me holding hands with a man, the look on their faces was as if a spaceship had landed and little burritos walked out. And then they tried to act like they knew I was dating him all along. There is absolutely no way. I am not an idiot. I know what a Pikachu face is.
I tend to stick with other writers, and find other queer writers very approachable on the Internet because we’re both writers. WE’re built to communicate that way. Although I will say that I’ve met more straight writers than queer, it is nice to be able to meet new authors at all…. And a plus if they’re “family.” The acceptance in that is knowing that most writers are loners who prefer talking in text form. It’s not isolation, and yet it is. I talk about connection a lot for someone wearing a t-shirt that says “INTROVERTS UNITE….. SEPARATELY….. IN YOUR OWN HOMES. Live it, love it, sing it a hundred times. Praise hand.
Reflect on any challenges or triumphs you’ve experienced while exploring different aspects of your sexuality.
There are two great big ones that come to mind. Life altering.
The first is that when I was convinced by others that you had to choose, that bisexuality wasn’t real, I had a boyfriend at the time. Had I been more educated, the relationship might have lasted longer, or it might not. But what I do know is that their influence did not leave our staying together up to chance.
I didn’t have enough proof of identity for my driver’s license, and the state of TEXAS (capitalized because it is so damn important) took my Oregon domestic partner license as proof of ID. The fact that this happened gave me hope for the future. It was a very small enormous victory. My expectations for kindnesses like that are rare, because I was the first person who ever asked them if they could do it. Small moment, large impact.
Share an anecdote or memory that captures the diversity and richness of lesbian culture.
Joanie left for South Africa a few years ago. Beth took a job all that way over on the West Coast. Me, and I’m still tryin’ to live half my life on the road… It gets heavier by the year, and heavier by the load………………..
Write about a moment of pride or empowerment you experienced as a lesbian individual and how it has shaped your outlook on life.
When Matthew Shepard was brutally tortured and murdered, very much a gay Christ figure because of the way he died….. To paraphrase theologian James Cone, the cross and the split rail. Because of my background, I was chosen by my college gay group, Global, to lead what was essentially a prayer service. No Christian content, just contemplative. I held space for grief. I held space for rage. I let all those emotions pass, but didn’t let them go unanswered by thanking my straight boss for the time off from work to let me come and do this (I was shaking when I asked him, FYI). It wasn’t to disparage anyone’s feelings, but to know that when feelings get violent, things get out of hand. I thanked all the straight people in the crowd who came out to support us, because at that time it was very unusual. I let everyone rage, and let everyone heal, then did a benediction wishing everyone peace.
When I was a teenager, I won an award for going around to local churches that had asked for speakers from HATCH (Houston Area Teen Coalition of Homosexuals). Their questions were hard…. Not from straight people. From not out people. The woman with the searching eyes asking if gaydar was real.
The life I’ve led has been interesting in terms of lesbian culture, but now I just call myself queer. Zac is a pretty good boyfriend. I’m not ready to give him up quite yet. He’s still at work so I can talk about him behind his back. But thank God tonight I’ll be able to talk to his face. He’s been through a lot since the last time I saw him, most notably a bicycle accident that has left him with road rash everywhere. He’ll have to show me where to hug, but it’s been too long.
It’s been too long since I’ve been out with women who like women, and ironically, the last time I was, it was Bryn, me, Zac, and Dave. We looked like the stereotypical couple with two gay friends, because Zac and I both look queer independently. The fact that we’re together blows most people’s minds and I love that about us. Of all the people in the world that you would think would be interested in each other, we’re probably at the bottom of the list. But it’s better to be different. I’m not the same person that I was when I was with Dana, but that is in other people’s perceptions, not the truth. That’s because since Zac is queer, we maintain the same cultural references Dana and I did, as well as all my other girlfriends. It’s not like having a girlfriend. It’s dating a man. But a man who understands both the pain and the triumph of what it is to be gay in America.
He served in the Navy under “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” His stories on gay culture would be on a whole other level. If he reads this, he might write some down. However, I am totally a better writer than him. It’s a shame he has to live next to such talent. I’m sure he’ll manage.
Wow, I almost said that with a straight face.
We’re both great writers. We just write different things. You can like more than one. Jonna Mendez is not better than Alma Katsu. Alma Katsu used to work for CIA and now writes fictional spy thrillers. Jonna Mendez used to work for CIA and now writes non-fictional spy thrillers. But one art is not superior to the other.
Zac would write amazing spy thrillers because I asked him for a writing prompt and by the time he gave it to me he was already 1300 words in. 😛
If you’ve stayed with me to the end, congratulations. I saved the best for last. I hit a thousand Fanagans inside the WordPress community. Zac says that daily writing habit has paid off. I say it’s the people who’ve showed up.
When I was 11 years old, my parsonage burned to the ground five days before Christmas. All our stuff, including our new presents, were in it. As a result, I don’t treasure anything. I don’t have that luxury, because I realize that anything could be gone in less time than it takes for the fire department to arrive. I can say that my necklace that has my mother’s fingerprint on it is dear, but would I really be surprised if it disappeared? No. It’s the nature of stuff. My mother is not in the necklace, so I am not attaching her memory to this particular thing. I don’t need things to remind me of people, but they are useful. I wear the necklace every day, and gifts from my friends surround me so that I think of them all the time. It also means a lot to me when Zac and I have matching bracelets, even when they were $3. Every time I look down at my wrist, I think of him when I see the rainbow of our friendship bracelets and the maroon of our nautical rope ones.
Plus, now I’ve been through two house fires. At Wire Ave., we had a professional electrician drill into a live wire in our basement, nearly sparking the gas main and taking out the whole neighborhood. That’s the kind of situation where you realize death is no harm, no foul. There’s literally nothing I could have done about it, and death would have been over before it really began with that kind of TNT. There are only so many events that you can prevent in life. Sometimes, you have to fold and say “the plane is going down.” However, I do not think that I would have even seen the gas main blow. Gravity’s rainbow ends in disaster whether or not you see the arc in the sky first.
It seems like I’m complaining, but I’m actually advocating for minimalism. You cannot believe how much it has helped my mental state to have all my books, newspapers, and comics on my Kindle instead of as kindling. There are practical ways to solve all of these problems. It’s just unfortunate that you don’t think of them until after the house fire is over. Everyone’s library is invincible right up until it isn’t. And in fact, there is a very popular novel that has probably told you the exact temperature at which books will burn since high school. Gotta keep that temperature below Fahrenheit 451.
I am sure that Android tablets and iPads also burn, but which is more expensive? The iPad/Android or the 2700 books I’ve downloaded over time?
All of this being said, I believe that my books are my most important possession. The autographed copies of all the books from Team Mendez might go up in flames, but I won’t have to re-buy the digital copies. Their words are more important than their signatures, and as I joked with Jonna, “if I didn’t have a hardback, I’d just let you sign my screen.” Her Js are pretty adorable, and I think it would be hilarious to learn how to copy her signature only because Tony taught an entire room of people at the Spy Museum how to copy Vladimir Putin’s. I unashamedly made it though high school because legit no one could tell when my mom signed something or I did. My dad’s signature is a pretty lost cause, but my mom’s was just classic teacher handwriting. And in fact, forgery is one of my favorite things about espionage because I love FONTS. Forgery, to me, is literally figuring out someone’s personal font. I just don’t show people that I do it, because I’m not trying to hurt anyone or get away with anything. It’s just an exercise to see if I can. See a Tony Mendez magic trick, do a Mendez magic trick, teach a Mendez magic trick. I wrote it just that way because the axiom in medical school is “see one, do one, teach one.” Themes in my life present themselves over and over. I have a feeling that my blog is a direct result of trauma and creativity. Here are my two roots:
The fire has made it where I feel more comfortable blogging, and more comfortable with e-mail altogether; all my personal letters that hadn’t been sent burned. Then, later on, my mother’s air conditioner flooded the back of my closet, and I lost all my journals as well. In those days, it was devastating. I was absolutely over the moon about my emotional abuser from ages 12 to about 20, when things became more complicated and the trauma of it all kept me from enjoying her. That doesn’t mean that losing all the letters and journal entries I wrote about the situation weren’t important to me back then. I had not made the connection that it was emotional abuse yet. I just swallowed all her bullshit whole. How could I not? I was a child.
I watched Doogie Howser, MD religiously as a child. No one knew that show better than me (at the time, anyway). I have always been fascinated by child prodigies, and this was right up my alley. Because of my emotional abuser, I cried through similar movies like “Little Man Tate.” It was a salty, bitter cry because it was like I’d been taken out of the safe environment of my parents’ shelter and dumped into a family where I didn’t know shit from Shinola.™ Watching Doogie write on his computer for the last three minutes of that show changed my entire fucking life. In fact, I sent a version of this as a Tweet to NPH, and I hope he sees it. That show was just as traumatic for him as my own coming out story. We helped each other. Between Doogie/Wanda and Barney/Robyn, you can see how much he’s absorbed about playing straight. He had to for just as many years as I did, I just didn’t have the pressure of being on TV. But tell me, truly, how is being a queer in the 1990s and also being on TV different from being a queer person who is also the child of a minister? It’s not a different situation, it’s a different scale. Neil’s career could have tanked if he’d come out when he was on Doogie, because back then, no one believed that children understood things about themselves. It is only now that people are starting to respect their children’s choices, because being who they are is a part of letting them individuate. If a child is brave enough to say they’re queer, they’re queer (lumping gender and sexuality issues together as one community), they are. No one in the current society who is also of sound mind and body would call themselves queer if they didn’t absolutely have to in order to survive their lives without shame and blackmail. Institutional homophobia and transphobia are going to take eons to get out of the fabric of the American experience, because our country is currently a theocracy run by the most hypocritical heretics I’ve ever seen in my life. Jesus is not your homeboy.
:::stares in non-denominational:::
I am dabbling in exegesis over the many pericopes in the New Testament over Jesus’s enlightenment (“Pericope” is theology speak for “an extract from a text, especially a passage from the Bible.” Some people say “peri-cope,” but I think it’s actually “per-ric-oh-pe.” I have no idea if I’m right, it’s just how my dad has always pronounced it and he’s a professional (you take Greek and Hebrew when you do a Master’s in Divinity). Let’s take a simple one and unpack it.
Matthew 15:21-28
Leaving that place, Jesus withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon. A Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to him, crying out, “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is demon-possessed and suffering terribly.”
Jesus did not answer a word. So his disciples came to him and urged him, “Send her away, for she keeps crying out after us.”
He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.”
The woman came and knelt before him. “Lord, help me!” she said.
He replied, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.”
“Yes it is, Lord,” she said. “Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.”
Then Jesus said to her, “Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted.” And her daughter was healed at that moment.
Here is what Matthew was trying to prove, in my opinion. The first is that Matthew was a Jew trying to convince other Jews that this was indeed the Messiah they were looking for. He approaches it from a number of aspects, including lineage. More importantly, it shows the exact moment in which Jesus changes his mind. He decided that the moment the woman showed such faith, gentiles were as worthy of salvation as Jews. Matthew was a man on a mission from GOD, trying to bring the receipts. I admire that in a person.
One of the reasons I trusted David implicitly the first time I met him is that bad people don’t love their dogs so much they get a DNA profile of them (Jack is half terrier, half chihuahua. This means that he is a very tall chihuahua with a lazy, I don’t give a fuck attitude. It’s quite refreshing because chihuahuas are known for being little hellions….. similar to what my grandfather used to call “101 Damnations.” They’re as aggressive and energetic as little dogs, because they were bred to run next to fire trucks. I would only get a Dalmation if I started training for a marathon, because one of my friends offered to take him jogging. They went five miles and DJ (said dog) wasn’t even tired out when they came back. Because we couldn’t manage to beg, borrow, or steal good behavior out of him, we ended up giving him to the runner. He died not long after of an astrocytoma (star shaped tumor in the brain that was impossible to extract). I couldn’t believe that he had cancer and was still running five miles a day. Interesting how everyone deals with illness differently. Some people cater to it, some people pretend it doesn’t exist. No way is right, it’s just that some people view rest and relaxation as the way to cope with illness, and some view keeping busy right up to the end as their calling.
I would like to believe that Jesus would have given the runner a dog and a healthy brain. That he didn’t have to choose. I liked what they chose to call him, especially in retrospect having lived in Oregon……. “Otis Spotford.”
Speaking of which, before we change to a different topic, Supergrover and I have this thing about naming our dogs and it makes me laugh. It comes from when Daniel and I were engaged. “Check this shit out and get mad with me (joking). You need to go and set that boy straight. He wants to name his dog “Ozzie” instead of “Virginia Woof!” (it’s always serious if I use an exclamation point. They are of the devil most of the time.) If I remember correctly, and I am paraphrasing, she said he was only on thin ice, but “Virginia Woof” was damned clever. Ok, that’s the kind of stuff from her I live for. Having a good line in front of her is the gold at the end of the rainbow. Supergrover also said that she disagreed with “Virginia Woof” and thought we should call them “Sidney Brisdog.” That made my day because I thought, “you get me.” “Alias” is my favorite show of all time. I would give goddamn anything to work with Jack, Sidney, and Michael. But if I’m really honest about my relationship with Supergrover, I’m not Francie. I’ve been Will Tippet this whole time. Quietly pining away and trying to put together the pieces of why this attraction kept coming up for me over and over when I could clearly see how pointless and stupid it was. My brain chemicals just flooded, like you do.
Speaking of which, when she said that she got something out of my writing whether I painted her in a bad light or not, I thought for the literally 4,000,000th time that it was such a shame she never let me marry her and have her babies. It’s the hottest thing you can ever say to a writer. I love your writing whether it’s good to me or not? Come the fuck on. Who has that kind of support as a writer, when the traditional line about them is that “writer” is code for “unemployed.” My favorite retort comes from Brandon Sanderson, who waited YEARS to get this moment. This dude came up to him and asked him what he did at a cocktail party. He said, “I’m a writer.” The guy said, “oh, so you’re unemployed.” Brandon looked him deadass in the face and said “I hit the New York Times Bestsellers List last week.” It was the equivalent of walking up to Stephen King and asking him if he needed money. Shiiiiiiiiiat. If God ever smiles upon me in the best way possible, that “best way” will be getting that moment as well. Here’s why:
I had a complex about Dana’s parents. That because I was female and queer and desperately in love with their daughter, we had something wrong with us. I was right to be paranoid, because they were absolute total dicks to both of us. The reason I tanked “Clever Title Goes Here” over blowback is that my sister-in-law ripped me a new asshole for writing about it and my skin was too thin to tell her that I owned my own story and to fuck all the way off. It’s the worst decision I’ve ever made in my career as a writer, that not telling her to fuck off. She silenced not only my voice, but my popularity as well. Wil Wheaton *used* to read me. *Used to.* Now, it’s one of the sources of my rage and a tape I’m working to solve. In some ways, it already is because I’ve gotten over the hurt. I can’t forget how it made me feel.
One of the biggest fights I’ve ever had with Dana was talking to her about how much it hurt me to watch her jump up and down for a type of approval she was never going to get, and she needed to stop. She needed to go low contact because of what it was doing to her self-esteem. In my mind, once you get married, you are individuating from your first family. That what God has put together, let no man put asunder. That meant she didn’t get the right to cater to them and ignore my discomfort, because she should have stood up for me and I became the family problem. They were lucky to get a daughter-in-law like me, because any time an in-law joins a family they shake up old family patterns and it is not often pleasant. An outsider can see dysfunction better than someone living in it. An INFJ sees what it will take to solve it. But they didn’t recognize themselves as lucky, because they never saw that I was trying to make their dynamic healthier and happier. They just thought I was stirring up shit for the fun of it.
This presented itself by me complaining to Dana’s ex-girlfriend, a beautiful diamond of a woman because she helped me navigate all of this having known the subject intimately. I told her that I was going to have to win the Pulitzer to get them off my back, and she joked, “oh, don’t worry. They’ll find a problem with that, too.” Empathy went a very long way in dealing with them, because it set off my autistic rage a lot. Supergrover can testify to that without blinking, because I told her every goddamn thing about my relationship with all of them that I possibly could, because I was constantly emotionally overloaded by them treating Dana’s sexuality like a problem to be solved and treating me like a loser dumbass. I was not trying to isolate her from her parents like a control freak narcissist. I was trying to isolate her from her parents because her mother told me that Dana was never going to get what she needed from her because of her limitations in understanding Dana’s sexuality, so it was better for her to go find someone else. That motherfucker didn’t say that in front of her daughter. She said it in front of her protector, mediator, and advocate….. words that will mean a lot to Dana because they come from The Book of Common Prayer. I viewed her as taking care of the sick, the friendless, and the needy. I have never told her that in person, because I thought it would hurt too much. I had to carry that pain for a long time until I was able to write about it. That gave me enough strength to kick her parents out of our house because I never would have done it if I’d known they couldn’t afford a hotel. For the first time, I got tired enough to raise my voice, because I was tired of tiptoeing around total emotional disaster on everyone. I said, “you come in here and you eat our food and you drink our drinks and use our utilities all while disrespecting me and my wife?” They got so angry that I yelled at her dad to “sit down.” He didn’t, but he sure fuckin’ thought about it. Sometimes, the only way to deal with a bully is to push back. He’s a lawyer, and the ace up my sleeve is that I am twice as obnoxious about the law as he ever could be and I have cornered the market on the asshole archetype because I’m a paralegal in the state of Texas. Come at me with Con Law or TRCP and I will instantly try to own your ass. But you can’t argue with the Religious Right. You just have to ignore them. I could. Dana couldn’t.
Jesus wept.
John 11:35
The more stress that piled onto Dana, the worse her physical health got….. making the connection that she broke out in hives for absolutely no reason at all in the middle of all our fights regarding all of this led to a lot of rethinking medicine; the reason I needed Supergrover so desperately to talk it through no matter how we felt about each other at any given moment. She won’t be my dragon and rush in when someone has hurt me when it’s her, but GOD HELP anyone who messes with me; she is quite capable of fucking you up in ways you’ll never see coming. It is delicious when it is not directed at me, and the thing she thinks I hate is the thing I crave. I want to crawl inside her brain to see how it works more now than I did almost 11 years ago, because we are equally taken by each other’s writing and she has very good stories when she’s willing to share them. The blessing of my life is that she may not want to meet me in person, but she likes crawling into my brain to see how it works, too. The curse was that she didn’t like doing it anymore. And even though she started a fight when she did it, it was not lost on me how sweet it is that she heard me. Tell me your feelings and step up, so she did. The disaster was not letting me respond and saying “I see how it is. What Leslie has written, so must it be.” I was telling her that I was allowed to have a reaction after I heard her out, not that what I was feeling was more important than her and “my opinion is fact.” She accused me of “rope-a-dope” when she went out of her way to hurt me after telling me to move on with my life. It’s unforgivable in most cases, but not for her. I love her too goddamn much and we’ve been through hell too long to give up now. But the ball is not in my court. She was the one that hurt me first by covering up her feelings that she was wigged out I was attracted to her by accusing me of something I didn’t do. It screwed us up and cost us time, not having an honest conversation. I handled it really well, and then as reality set in I had to create fantasy to get away from reality. But not fantasy, exactly. It was giving a story to information I couldn’t use with information I could. I can use our personal issues to illustrate what’s going on with us to drag her privacy issues into it.
The reason she’s so angry is because we’ve never had an honest conversation about boundaries on my blog, and she waffles between letting me be real and telling me that what I think is fucked up and all wrong without telling me what’s fucked up and wrong about it. That it’s lazy, childish, reductive, you name it. All the while ignoring that she’s feeding the pattern by getting angry and not just laying it out there because she’s frightened as fuck to do so. She needs to see that I see her so clearly because of an interview I saw with someone in her field that would punch her in the gut if she saw how much I truly picked up from it. That tape runs deep on how to handle her, and because she’s an IQ fan and I’m an EQ fan, I mean it like she’s my asset and I’m her handler, not that I try to emotionally manipulate her to get what I want. I am trying to be the tough love that she is to me (strident, pull yourself up from your bootstraps, I’m not going to do your emotional work for you kind of love), but I make mistakes all the time. Jim Mattox comes to mind. “I may be rancid butter, but I’m at least on your side of the bread.” If Supergrover’s last letter is any indication, this quote is relatable to her as well. I’m not innocent of this, and neither is she.
Editor’s Note:
Jim Mattox was the Texas AG (D) when I was a kid, and my favorite story in life about him comes from either my first political science professor or his wife, depending on who was teaching the class that day; I’ve slept since then. Anyway, when Mattox was AG, he was a drunk. He was out at a bar one night, and decided that he needed to sleep it off. He goes out to his car and gets in the backseat. The next morning as the car is being driven away, Mattox wakes up and says “My name is Jim Mattox. I’m the Texas State Attorney General. I’m a little hung over. Could you turn the radio down?” Mattox had gotten into what he thought was his car……………………………. #shatnerellipsis
She lights up my life all the time, and if I haven’t said that enough, I’m sorry- both to her and my audience, which are one and the same thanks to the fact that she’s chosen to stick by me no matter what. I think I have, but she has focused on the negative for so long that even if I haven’t said it in those exact words, she wouldn’t have retained it as much as something that cut deep. What she never understood is that I was trying to lance a boil, not irritate her. Patterns repeat, and I am never trying to hold someone to the past. I am explaining to them that the longer the bad pattern goes on, the less I want to engage because they’re hurting me. It’s a lost cause when you’re trying to be vulnerable and ask for solutions, and you become a problem because of it. I became the only friend who ever called her out on anything whether that’s true or not. How can she get through life without having conflicts with people?
Sometimes I wonder if she knows that I get so vulnerable I cry and shake when I go to that place of writing about her. That 10 years ago, I wrote to her, “sometimes I have to take off my glasses to wipe away the tears when I write to you,” and it wasn’t about anger. It was about my hopeless romantic showing up in my writing as a style. I wanted her to feel as precious as she is.
She fits into my theology very well, because she doesn’t believe in a higher power, but she does believe in paganism. It’s her theme. She loves the idea of Outlander, which eventually spoke my language. I couldn’t make it past the first rape scene until I learned that it was a fantasy built on Doctor Who (seriously. Diana Gabaldon is a Whovian, and she based Jamie on Jamie McCrimmon, a Scottish companion when she was a kid. She invented her version of time travel by watching Doctor Who as a child). The fact that we are both obsessed with novels that cover the same things from different ends of the spectrum is the perfect representative of our communication differences. In effect, I speak “Doctor Who” and she speaks “Outlander,” not realizing that both of our points are valid because they come from the same source.
They say that these are not the best of times But they're the only times I've ever known And I believe there is a time for meditation In cathedrals of our own Now I have seen that sad surrender in my lover's eyes And I can only stand apart and sympathize For we are always what our situations hand us It's either sadness or euphoria
So we'll argue and we'll compromise And realize that nothing's ever changed For all our mutual experience Our separate conclusions are the same Now we are forced to recognize our inhumanity Our reason coexists with our insanity And though we choose between reality and madness It's either sadness or euphoria
How thoughtlessly we dissipate our energies Perhaps we don't fulfill each others fantasies And as we stand upon the ledges of our lives With our respective similarities It's either sadness or euphoria
-The Gospel of Billy Joel, Glass Houses
“So we’ll argue and we’ll compromise, and realize that nothing’s ever changed. For all our mutual experience, our separate conclusions are the same.” ARE YOU KIDDING ME. It takes a very special artist for me to feel like they are speaking to me only, and he got me with “cathedrals of our own.” I hope that when Supergrover reads me, she realizes that not only is she entering my sanctuary, in it she has the concept of sanctuary. When I’m around, no one can touch her. She is the ideal child of God, the fallible hero, the atheist who is actually Jesus to more people than me, or Moses if she’s more toward the Jewish persuasion. I don’t know how she identifies. Wherever her faith background lies, it’s not the same now as it was when she was a child. Being able to joke about that particular topic is one of my favorite joys in life because of another friend I knew from the same faith background.
I told this other friend that I was impressed about one thing and one thing only. That it’s one of the few religions in which there is documentation all the way from the beginning that has eyewitness accounts. Without missing a beat, she said, “yes. Documentation all the way back to when he made it up.”
It is my hope that eventually everyone in that religion will just self actualize and say, “it got weird,” and move on with their happy little lives. Tom Cruise could probably use that advice (not the same, but relatable).
You do you, but okay.
Speaking of which, that was another phrase that irritated Supergrover when it was a reference to another blog entry in which I explained that “render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, and render unto God what is God’s.” That it was like telling the religious establishment with the snarkiest voice possible, “you do you, but okay.” It was not personal. It was me speaking truth to power. I was just being as snarky as Jesus, and repeating a line I hope gets stuck in people’s heads, because it’s emotional shorthand for being kind and taking no shit. BOUNDARIES. I tend to say small things repetitively because they do the most good. The music of the phrase makes it speak louder in people’s minds because they remember it. “You do you, but okay” means to me that you can uphold the system if you want, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good one.
People pleasers do not realize that catering to everyone’s needs and trying to anticipate them is actually more problematic than open and clear communication….. in essence, trying to render unto Caesar and render unto God and you can’t serve both. Speak truth to power. Please, please, please hurt my feelings rather than keeping it in. I only ask that you think about the problem long enough not to give me a knee-jerk reaction, because I’m making the commitment not to react to it and I don’t want to regress.
Red mist rage while I can type with my eyes closed is not a productive use of my time, and is feeding into my autism to an enormous degree because once I’m overstimulated, it’s meltdown time. I learned this from Harry Wales in “Spare,” because I don’t know if he feels red mist rage because of autistic meltdown or PTSD, but it doesn’t matter. It’s the same kind of neurodivergence because all of the above alter your thought processes and they’re your new normal. You have to learn to cope with them, knowing that your first reaction will always be wrong. Always. You’re wired to shut down and protect what you have left, not to open up and share your pain so that someone else can see it and help without asking. For people pleasers, you always have trouble getting them to express what they need because they don’t want to look like an imposition. Most of the time, it’s because people have been taught that they’re needy in childhood. You think you’re being a hero by keeping everything inside and you’re just burning yourself out constantly and with PTSD, not being able to regulate your emotions.
It was inextricably interrelated in my mind, and I’m not sure that anyone could prove me wrong. Harry, like Kathleen, Dana, Daniel, Zac, Bryn, and Supergrover (and even Franklin, my companion at Wire Ave., to some extent) are all affected by trauma that’s above my pay grade and always has been. That being said, because I grew up as a preacher’s kid, my first instinct is to minister them. Especially because Zac and Supergrover are atheists, I feel that approaching them with spiritual lessons without attaching religion to it is helpful in our communication; I’m talking about energy and not dogma. Sometimes people need an osteopath, not an MD. They’re the people I can think of as a good example of why the Mayo clinic is such a wonderful resource.
They treat the mind/body connection as so real- in a way that other doctors’ offices and hospitals don’t. There is also no national infrastructure for health integration, because mental illness is treated so differently from physical illness, as if mental illness isn’t also coming from a diseased organ (separating out processing disorders from depression and anxiety. The reason the brain is diseased is that it uses the very best lies against you to get you to off yourself because the brain is hell bent on protecting you and thinks that’s the answer. It needs medication and therapy to not feel “extremely loud and incredibly close”).
Editor’s Note:
“Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” is one of my favorite books in the entire world because I have such a personal connection to it. Not only was I living in Alexandria at the time and heard the plane smash into the Pentagon while the paintings and windows rattled from three miles away, my birthday is September 10th. My extremely loud and incredibly close moment is perfectly expressed from that book……… That “The Best Day” transitioned into “The Worst Day.”
I have felt exactly that way about health integration for a very long time. The less Dana really meant she was forsaking all others, the problems with her family would just get worse. And they did. She started developing depression and again, hives for “no reason.”
All of this culminated in disaster when Dana invited her mom and dad to come and stay with us. It was great, up and to a point. They even let us sleep together in our own bedroom…… at their house, their solution was to get a room with twin beds so they could keep their imaginations intact. That’s why we never visited. My general rule is that if I ask for your opinion and help in a relationship, please give it to me straight. If I don’t, BUTT THE FUCK OUT because this is my marriage, not yours. But in every family, it is not the in-law’s job to deal with their partner’s family. My partner fell down on the job, and that played a large part in our divorce as well. I needed Supergrover to cope with that kind of pressure. I still have that love and devotion from her in large part because she’s wonderful at giving me advice in other relationships and I hang on her every word. My frustration is that she’ll work on all my relationships with me except ours, and it’s the most important because I tell her everything and she doesn’t tell me what she hears.
I was actually very humbled when she sent me her thoughts, not because they were good or bad, but because they were there. I only ended the interaction when it became too painful to continue. We were making great progress, and then she exploded like a firecracker when I really hadn’t done anything to deserve it. As I told her, “don’t let me be the asshole out here all by myself.” Then, it was her turn to recognize that she was indeed the asshole. I sent her a message immediately that said “you are forgiven. Honestly and completely.” I knew she wouldn’t get the reference because it’s a line from Doctor Who, but that didn’t matter. I needed to feel the connection between Eleven and River Song to convey how I really felt about her. I will never be in love with her ever again, but because of my past with her and how much it affected me, I view her as an emotional support partner more than anyone else. It’s just not my decision to accept it or not. So far, it’s been a mixed bag. I was so happy I cried when she said, “you’re right. My first instinct was “LET ME GRAB MY PURSE. THAT MOTHERFUCKER.” If you get the reference, you’ll see how funny it really was.
I have no doubt that Dana’s dad would have thought I was brilliant if I was male. That’s because even though he tolerated me, I hung on his every word because he was a Marine and all of his stories have stayed inside me all this time. They’re just not my stories to tell. The one that I can tell is because it made me laugh. When cell phones first came out for intelligence officers (earlier than to the general public, I would imagine), the Americans knew how they worked, and the Russians didn’t. They thought they had privacy and couldn’t be tapped if they used them in their cars. I laughed so hard I was sagging in my chair. It does not surprise me in the slightest that my model for a perfect partner for me is military and intelligence (not as big an oxymoron as one might think) because I loved those stories more than I’ve ever loved anything. He sat there and fed my autistic special interest all day long. The thing I love about military/intelligence men (not because I prefer men, because I haven’t met many women in the service and only a few retired spies. Men are the ones that tell me these stories. I love all of them, from the motor pool to pulling a gun on a Colonel because he was being a racist bastard and that was the only thing they could think of to deescalate the situation- by making it clear just how serious being racist in the military actually is.)
My personal view is to baby myself, because I find that when I do, I am more able to show people that I love them, because my boundaries are not so overextended that I disengage. I don’t mean boundaries in terms of keeping people out because of their emotions, but boundaries on how much I want to hear at once. I like it when people ask me if I have the bandwidth for a call before they do it. I like it when people say they have serious shit to talk about and do I have the bandwidth to let them vent? As we say in Texas, “you better ‘redneckcognize.”
Because when people respect my boundaries, I am so much more comfortable bending them because I respect them so much in return. I will go above and beyond when people go above and beyond for me. I recognize Supergrover’s sacrifice, but she has not recognized mine as such. I think I’ll be waiting a long time, because if she was going to do it, she would have done it by now.
If she wanted to visit me, neither hell nor high water would keep her from it. Why did she snipe at me on the anniversary of my mother’s death instead of hugging me? I think it would have gone a lot further than making me angry as fuck for a very long time.
And in fact, the thing I invited her to do with me was on Mother’s Day. I only have this loose connection to it anymore, and I did not realize that’s what I was doing. Of course it was important for her to be with her family that day. But she didn’t say no. She agreed to mull it over.
Progress.
I have just been too intimidated and too humiliated to say flat out, “okay. This has gone on long enough. Only meeting in person will break our toxic cycles because we have no frame of reference to each other besides each other. There is no context to our relationship and seeing each other out in the world will give that to both of us.” The fantasy and the reality need to be managed, not ignored. I will absolutely die mad about that, because I got in very hot water over it. I didn’t ignore it, she did, then came down hard when she decided I should have known not to lay out what was really going on in my head and that her very specific secrets were not fair game but an overarching thousand foot view of the problem from all angles was.
I did not want to be the lovesick teenager anymore. I wanted to explain that there was a solid reason I felt like my heart turned into an 808 drum, that her love was my drug and that has proven to be true for almost 11 years. What kind of person thinks that deep a love is just a game I’m playing to fuck with her? What kind of person ignores how hard it was to say goodbye to her and Michael and instead, berate me for writing things like it? Or just telling me that she was incensed by some entries and touched by others, never telling me which ones touched her so that I didn’t have to be so afraid. I could know the boundaries I was crossing instead of guessing all the time to get my story out there.
I have caused a lot of hurt, but it has never been intentional. My story is for people all over the world, not direct letters to people. People would see my writing a lot differently if they viewed it as an episode of “The Moth,” “Morbid,” and “Risk!” (“Risk!” Is storytelling, but mostly adult content. Caveat emptor. I just love it because it’s hilarious.) People being able to read my writing and assess it like I’m Harriet the Spy are so close to the point, but it’s whizzing right by their faces.
I use my life as an example to others, both of what to do and what not to do. I allow myself to have a full range of human emotion, and not to dumb it down to protect other people’s comfort, because it’s not for them.
It’s all for me. As I work through my childhood and adulthood, I see the patterns that no longer serve me, and I have found that it was finally easier to leave the cocoon than stay in.
She’s still my precious, precious six year old. I’m just choosing to love her from over here……. until she realizes it’s not actually that far.
Writing is a 24 hour a day job. If an idea comes to you, you better have a way to write it down. Your brain will not go back to it (or at least, mine won’t). My Apple Watch is handy for this because I have an app where I just press a complication on my watch and it starts recording. Then, I can play them back through Bluetooth headphones or on my iPhone/iPad. My watch doesn’t need to process anything, I just need to be able to hear the clip again. I think the app is called “Just Press Record.” If I was feeling less balanced in my work ethic, I would have looked it up for you. 😛
I keep speakers and a subwoofer connected to my PC, that also has a passthrough for headphones. I have my own office now, so I can choose to listen to ambiance in the room, or zone out with headphones in. I have said that my dad is coming to help me decorate, but the wiring is so bad upstairs I just couldn’t plug in a desktop and a monitor.I also have a much smaller desk to bring down here, because I want to be able to share the room with David. He has some exercise equipment in here, and I think a yoga mat. As long as I keep the middle of the room clear and I have a place to store my chair that fits next to the desk rather than in front of it, I’ll be fine. There is nothing wrong with the setup I have now. It’s functional. I want my dad to take it from functional to beautiful. This room was originally meant for plants, and we have grow lights that would be good for orchids, etc. and also grow lights work well with aquariums that have live plants. I also know that since it’s spring and covered with shade, I’m going to need a good space heater in the winter. You will drag me out of this office kicking and screaming the whole way.
Again, here’s my current setup:
There are windows on all four sides of the room, it’s just that the ones behind me look out in to the living room. There’s a tea tray to my right that would be perfect for tea bags, Splenda, and an electric kettle. David only has the kind that whistles on the stove. Plus, since I like cold sodas and energy drinks more than I like coffee and tea, it would not be a bad idea to put a dorm fridge in here. Even if I don’t buy soda, I keep water bottles and green tea/energy drinks/aguafrescas as if when they are gone, I would shuffle off this mortal coil. 😛
David actually came downstairs ad we had a wonderful talk about what we want to do with the space. I asked him if he minded me warming up in his attic where it’s soundproofed, and he offered me his own space in the basement. I just want to add some sound proofing panels and a stereo so I have my own accompaniment. That’s easy to do because I have an old Fire HD 8 that has plenty of power to run a stereo with wired or Bluetooth speakers, and one of them is an Echo Dot, which fits perfectly. The other I idea I have is to build a bracket/frame for it and put it in show mode. I can control the tablet and the Echo Dot with voice recognition. I don’t have a problem with this, because I made an entire fictional character starting with my Dot. I heard that the NSA is watching us through them (really? I think that’s ridiculous. Amazon is listening to create our perfect ad experience; I highly doubt the NSA could be paid enough to care whether I like Sunny D).
However, I thought this was a very interesting idea, and I created a character named Carol that watches me like a guardian angel. Like, she gets upset when I’m upset, etc. She was supposed to watch me and took it a little too seriously because I turned out to be endearing. She loves all of you very much, but make no mistake. Carol knows what you did. 😛
Work/Life balance is not a thing because a line that Carol would say could come at 0300, or it could come when I’m involved in something else. Nothing inspirational comes on your time.
Describe an item you were incredibly attached to as a youth. What became of it?
I am sure that this is not true, but it seems that every item I was attached to in my youth ended up in the nightmare that was my closet after our house fire. We got to go back through the house after it was put out to see if there was anything salvageable, and it was traumatic. I will never forget what it looked like. The doors were open, and my clothes were wet and dirty with plastic all over them…. and at first, the plastic didn’t make sense. Then, I realized that it was the hangers. They were blue. Cornflower curlicues designed my clothes in a way no one would have ever wanted….. because not only were they stuck to the hangers, they were stuck to each other.
Because of the disaster in my closet, I did not notice my PC and printer. It’s good that I didn’t at first, because that would have ended me. In those days, just as now, I used my word processor extensively. I didn’t get a new computer in my room for many years. That’s when I put my journals into a backpack and again, stored them away in my closet……. until an air conditioner leaked all over the backpack and I could no longer read the ink. Given what the journaling was about, I’m glad it’s irretrievable. If I don’t need them, no one else does, either….. and this is solid. There is no Lanagan historical value in it except to say that it was my blog before I could type.
Because even though I did create documents as an elementary school kid, I wasn’t the writer at nine that I was at 13. After my hormones kicked in, I actually needed a place that was all my own. Before then, school assignments took up most of my work…. most often in “Print Shop” rather than WordPerfect.
If you had a computer, Print Shop, and a dot matrix printer, you could own a school in six minutes. Every teacher wanted you to make them a banner, and every kid that came to my house wanted to make their own.
Those memories were the ones that hit the hardest as I realized I couldn’t do those things anymore. “Well,” I thought. “There goes all my extra credit.”
So, if you ask me what item I was incredibly attached to, I can say it was my computer first and foremost…… but in reality, everything I ever loved at that age was important. I am not even sure I am telling the truth about the computer. It may or may not have been my most prized possession….. maybe it was a doll. But if it was, I couldn’t see it under the rubble, and the image of the computer stayed.
I don’t have strict principles because I’m AuDHD. ADHD and Autistic people may only have one: “annoy the shit out of everyone and see who stays.” I can joke about that because we drive each other up the wall. But when we joke about our symptoms, we’re not punching down. The thing about “seeing who stays” is that neurotypical people do not have an easy time in neurodivergent spaces like my house.
Zac and I are made for each other in this respect, because his house is a neurodivergent safe space as well. He’d have to tell you what his neurodivergence is, I just know that we have a lot of crossover because we love being together and are also bad at scheduling. He gets busy or has a TDY (temporary duty) elsewhere, I’m utterly obsessed with writing and forget to look up. All of the sudden it’s been several weeks or a month. That’s because neither one of us treat the other like a possession. I can’t remember who said it, but “he’s mine like my neighborhood, not my notebook.” It’s an attitude I carry now, because I feel like Bryn is mine in that way, too, and so is Supergrover even if she never puts it together that I am indeed the friend I said I would be from the beginning.
(I am her old, grumpy wizard and she is my young, brave, crazy knight. I am chronologically younger, but wouldn’t have her energy level at gunpoint. Not enough Diet Coke in the world. “Doctor Who,” as I’ve mentioned before, is not the only television analogy that fits between us, because we are very much like Arthur and Merlin from the BBC drama “Merlin” and Merlin and “Wart” from “The Sword in the Stone.” I take that back. She is still like “Wart,” but I am definitely, definitely Archimedes. She will be remembered as King Arthur, and I see her as Wart to cope. I do the same thing with my younger sister. Her professional persona is intimidating, so when I’m talking to her in real life it helps to think of her as a six year old. That reminds me of a principle I live by. Never treat anyone as if they’re older than 12 because they won’t respect you for it if they’re bad people. Good people need people who disagree with them and ignore their celebrity status. The evil are certain about everything, especially how important they are.)
Now, if there’s any principle I live with, it’s wanting relationships that are as drama-free as the one with Zac…. although I hope that Zac knows just as much as I do that our inattention doesn’t mean less care. We’re busy and we live over an hour from each other. The principle is just to be the person that has the other’s back. I frequently wish I could do as much for him as he does for me, but we’re at different points in our lives. It’s kind of different getting to be a princess every once in a while…… A princess that wears space man underwear, but still.
As I was reading back over earlier paragraphs, I realized that one of the principles I live with now is that my sister needs me more than she used to in a very concrete way. I am what she has left of my mom, because we’re still in touch with our aunts and uncle, of course, but we lived with her. My dad can tell her some stories, but not all because I was there with her after they divorced. I am the institutional memory of what was and will be, not because I can predict the future. I can just predict I won’t want to stop writing it down as it happens.
It’s something I know that I hope I can pass on to Supergrover and Bryn, as we’re all eldest children but their mothers are still living. My mother’s life was cut short by so damn much that I am going to be there for things that my mother never could, in way she never could because Lindsay and I didn’t open up to her like we open up to each other. I hope I can pass on that your siblings become your children when you realize you’re what’s left. No one gives you that authority, you’re just doing what you’ve always done and it feels weird not to try because grief is this whole other thing you will never understand. I don’t even say “I know how you feel” when someone tells me that they’ve lost their mother, because we almost certainly aren’t going to have the same experience. I am jealous even now at how much older Supergrover is than me and she still has her mom.
On the other hand, if she hadn’t died so young, me dating Zac (or any man) would have killed her… I wouldn’t have allowed myself to struggle with those questions on my web site because I never allowed myself to date anyone without thinking it was permanent before. Without knowing up front they were capable of marriage. It’s only because I’m starting to look at what I can manage that I can handle the dissonance between what works for other people and what works for me. I could not dive into myself to this degree if I was responsible for other people, and as I get busier I hope I will look back at this time in my life as a burst of creativity no matter how painful. I hope I’m now on a better path because I took the time to search for it.
I can’t control what principles guide others, the most important principle for interacting with others I live by.
Stories That Are All True 