All knowledge is valuable, so I read everything without judging. If I don’t like it, I do not finish and I do not feel guilty. I don’t sit through movies I’m not enjoying, either. My time is precious to me, because when I am not taking something in, I am creating. Watching someone else’s work takes time away from my own, so it has to hold my attention. Being ruthless about what I will and will not watch is not saying to the creators, “you are bad.” It is saying, “this is not to my taste.” It may seem short-sighted, but if a book doesn’t grab me, that is the answer. The answer is not to continue reading it until I regret it.
Some books I have more trouble with than others. It’s hard going to the Spy Museum and meeting the authors of the book you’re going to read when you get home, because of course now you have a signed copy. Picturing Jonna Mendez and Tracy Walder doing their jobs is important to me, but it’s also frightening. That is because if the books are tense, the real situations scared them. Full stop. You cannot put emotions into writing that you do not have.
I mean, you can, but it won’t sound as authentic as Mendez and Walder.
I’ve talked a lot about Jonna, let me pivot to Tracy. Tracy and I are kindred spirits, because I’m the only person outside of her family that she knows who has been diagnosed with hypotonia as a baby, the catchall for cerebral palsy in the late 1970s. Many CP kids were missed due to hypotonia being mostly a placeholder diagnosis that required more testing. So, we look at each other differently because we have that one specific thing in common….. floppy muscles.
Ellen Pompeo actually bought the rights to the book, “The Unexpected Spy,” but I don’t know what happened to the project after that. But honestly, that was part of the book talk. We talked about the fact that she’s from Dallas. She didn’t impress me because she had both CIA and FBI on her resume. She impressed me because she taught at Hockaday.
There’s such a bent toward intelligence in high-octane academics that it might as well be Teacher, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.
(David, if you’ll allow me just this ONE joke. I promise.)
I call him David to avoid the special character in his pen name at all costs. You know, like that famous Youtuber and shame & vulnerability researcher, Dr. Brown.
Anything to avoid flipping into “View as HTML” just so I can code the entities.
Ok. I’ll do it one time.
Dr Brown is Brené Brown. David is David Cornwell, or John Le Carré.
It is so much easier to type special characters on my phone than it is on my laptop. The things I do for my audience. 😉
David Cornwell is an excellent author, but I prefer his autobiography to his novels. And of everything I listen to “The Pigeon Tunnel,” the documentary about Cornwell, more than anything else because I just want to hear his voice. It’s soothing as I go to sleep.
Alternatively, I have all of his adapted BBC Radio Dramas for the car.
However, I am more interested in the writer than the character. Smiley is amazing, but he is no David Cornwell, although they’ve met. It is honestly how I feel about my writing. I’m not the same person I write about here because I cannot capture every thread in my brain at once. You learn fragments. So, the version of me that you know is the character. Some people never get beyond that, and from what I am learning, few people should.
Not everyone deserves access to me, and that’s okay. I cannot be everything to everyone because I’ve tried it. There’s no prize.
But the larger point to the title is that I don’t regret reading books because I don’t regret anything- not that I have never done anything worthy of regretting. I have done terrible things of which I am not proud, but regret says that you haven’t metabolized that hurt yet. I have metabolized the hurt inasmuch as I can. I am ready to move on to the next phase of my life, because there’s no such thing as going backwards. I am lost at being consumed as a product but not having the safety and security of people around me.
But don’t feel sorry for me- I alienated everyone myself. Old patterns were not working, and new ones didn’t take. But I was in the process of becoming something else, and now I know where I need to go.
It is being able to love myself enough not to want to lose me, either.
I’m dating someone now, and I forgot to ask her what her name was.
No, really.
This is a hilarious story. She posted on Threads that Ruby Rose had left her a comment and that it was some kind of mating call because it gave her status in the lesbian community…. or something like that. I said, “I didn’t know that was a thing. She’s left me comments as well. Touch me.” I meant “I am incredibly cool.” She said, “so I guess we’re like dating now?” It is the kind of thing that happens to me with frequency. The fact that she didn’t get the “touch me” reference probably means that she’s younger than me, but at this point I will go out with anyone once.
I said, “eh. Why not?”
She said she would make arrangements for the U-Haul, clearly continuing the bit. I said, “I live in Baltimore. I hope you like it.” She said, “I’m 30 minutes away from you.”
Oh.
I didn’t even pretend to play it cool. I was just like, “well, then. We should meet up.” She was equally authentic and we made plans. She’s following me on Threads now, so I assume she knows I’m a blogger. If she doesn’t, that’s the first conversation I always have with people I date, because that is a story that cannot unfold too fast. My words quickly become a self-fulfilling prophecy, and I sink myself over things that people inferred from the text, not what I meant when I wrote it. Good boundaries are essential, and the way I know that is from many years of bad boundaries around what I do.
Live and learn.
But for now, it’s not that serious. We’re going to a state park when I get back from Annapolis. This means something light and fun and I’ll be able to take pictures for you guys…. not of us, but of the land. I do not care that I do not know her from Adam. It will be nice have someone to go to the river with instead of going by myself, even if I don’t know her when I first get there. I am a good enough conversationalist that it will be fun no matter who shows up, and clearly, she’s already funny. If this works out, Ruby Rose better put on her dancing shoes because we will celebrate her in the manner she deserves.
(Ruby’s work in Wentworth made me a fan for life. We’ve connected on grief and politics via Threads. Whenever I get Australian flags in my stats, I just assume they’re all her, from Sydney to Melbourne to Canberra to Perth. I don’t think she lives there anymore, it’s just the vibe.)
But in order to find out how, when, and where to celebrate Ruby, we have to meet first. My date lives up near the PA border now, but I moved to Baltimore and she moved there from Silver Spring, so we have that whole entire era to connect on- mostly how much Silver Spring has changed so much in the time we’ve lived there. I’m so curious about her experience, whether she was closer to downtown, closer to Takoma Park, etc. My neighborhood was just so full of life- I was right near a shopping center that had a little bit of everything, including a Starbucks that became my office. I do not think that you will ever need to know this, but for history it’s the one near Colesville and University.
Hey maybe one day there will be pilgrimages to the places where I’ve worked. Stranger things have happened. Dolly Parton became a saint on The Orville and bless Seth McFarlane for his forward thinking; it was a beautiful tribute she got to see before she died (if she did), and Seth is smart enough to have thought of that.
It’s one of the reasons I write about Jonna Mendez so much. She’s still here to correct the record, and she is an enormous historical figure. The former Chief of Disguise during the Cold War will absolutely be remembered forever, and I want to be a part of the record that says she has an enormous heart, is the most genuine person you’ll ever meet, and the absolute kindest without being polite.
She doesn’t spare your feelings, she tells you what she thinks and expects you to manage your own feelings. Sounds like the writer I want to be someday. I’ll let you know if I ever get there. I am looking forward to going to a lake, river, or beach with a new person that could be a friend, could be a spark. Who knows?
The last several times I’ve met someone over the internet, connecting in person was fine. It didn’t lead to anything lasting, but it was a solid introduction to chat for a few minutes online before settling down to coffee. Sometimes, a first date was just that, a first date. Sometimes, a first date was, “I’m not feeling romance, but I love your energy and I want to be around you.” Valid. Oh, so valid. I need friends, so I am not hoping for anything out of this date but that.
Of course if she sparks me, that’s okay, too. I am in a place where I have room for that. But bare minimum, what I need is someone who is local that wants to go do things with me. We can go get ice cream without holding hands if that’s what you want. Just let me stuff my face with custard and lemon ice. We’re good.
I just want the first date to be low-key, and this is the time of year to enjoy a state park and a Wawa feast packed in a cooler.
I should introduce her to the caramel affogato if she is unfamiliar. I personally feel that I have not done anything in this life to deserve coffee that good.
The former Chief of Disguise is the only person who has ever seen me unmasked, because I thought I was beaming affection in the right direction, but it was the wrong one. I poured all my love and admiration into her because I could write about her. She’s an old spy from way back, and she could not give a shit what I say about her as long as I give her and Tony both good hearts.
When she told me that, I almost cried… because I don’t have to make that up. Jonna is the most genuine person I’ve ever met. When she’s not working, she just is who she is, no apologies. The only difference between the Mendezes and vampires is that they had to live all their lives concurrently.
Because of them, I can write the story of intelligence as it is, not how I want it to be. They both read like me, in some sense, because their nonfiction seems like “blog entries from the field.” No one saw the connection between Jonna and me that there actually is- we’re both interested in intelligence and we both have enough experience as writers to cause waves.
What I’m doing that is different from my childhood is not apologizing for taking up space. I don’t want to be a writer someday, I’ve been writing every day for over 25 years. My stats say that I carry the weight of someone like a Dooce or a Wil Wheaton because I have readers all over the world in little pockets of distributed cognition. Every continent, every day. For over 25 years. Most years, I write the equivalent of six novels. You can do that when it’s 1-3k words a day.
The woman closest to me puffed herself up and hung it over my head, refusing to meet me in part because it was uncomfortable for her and partly because she’d have to come clean about the CVS receipt of lies it took to keep the white one going. However, what I do know is that I was not manipulated out of malice, but out of fear of exposure. Her worst nightmare was me exposing that lie, but it was also mine. I didn’t have to like it. I had to live it in a way that she didn’t, and for that she should be grateful even if her end is a dumpster fire. Her consequences are not less important than mine, they are just different and equally emotionally dysregulating. She said we had a brilliant and beautiful journey that was also debilitating, and I am taking it to heart. But what I wish had happened is not what actually did.
She focused on debilitating; I focused on brilliant & beautiful.
I just wanted her energy in my life so much that I could not deal, but writing gave me a way out. I could give her the distance she required and let her hear me out in a way that she didn’t need to respond to, but she could if she wanted. But what I will say about that is not meeting me on the ground gave her a skewed view of how I actually wanted our relationship to function. That the operatic swells on the page for literary effect were not the same thing as wanting to bum around her little town. Yes, she is my muse, but she is worth even more than that. I would pick her up from the airport.
That’s “I love you” in Northern Virginian.
No, really.
The writer I admire most is herself in any room. My unnamed woman was masked with me. She was who she needed to be in the moment, and I believe that is survivable because I understand that need. I don’t condone it, but I feel it on my skin.
The fact that Jonna was authentic with me when we don’t know each other that well (we’ve connected at the museum a few times; I never got to meet Tony because he stopped giving public appearances due to Parkinson’s shortly after I moved to Silver Spring, Maryland) gave me an insight as to who I needed to be, and not who I was.
I was born a Methodist preacher’s kid. I was who everyone else wanted me to be for many, many years. It was wearing a disguise without someone like Jonna or Tony to make it realistic. As a preacher’s kid, I had a false sense of acceptance. In effect, kids had to be nice to me. Aging out of that bubble was a reality check. Not everyone is paid to like you, or so it seems.
Couple that with not being able to pick up social signals for shit, and I was lost without the “halo” that being a preacher’s kid puts on you quite naturally. The reason I felt pulled toward CIA in the first place was Tony’s line in Argo about “send in a Moses.” Yes- that is my lane. Lead people, but not in a way that advertises.
I think of myself as the Henri Nouwen “moving spirit over chaos” in the intelligence community, because word travels fast once you’re in the inner circle; Jonna is it. I know this is crazy, but I fully believe that John Brennan has seen a quote from me or two- most likely the one about wishing I was him on a motorcycle tooling around Cairo. Bet you can’t tell from looking at him that he had an earring back then…
Those are the personalities I want to know, because of course as a political science major I’m interested in the military and their capabilities, but I am not interested in their rigid nature. I like plain clothes, talking to people, and management who does not have a rubric except “get it done or don’t.” That’s because neurodivergent and neurotypical people approach tasks and context switching in completely different ways. I never want a boss ever again that says, “why do you do it like that?” in the world’s most dismissive tone.
Masking leads to people pleasing and hoping they like you. Authenticity leads to alignment- the people like you seek you out. Like missing a Jonna Mendez book talk and my lack of presence being noticed. Again, I was being manipulated, and I did not know it. I sacrificed a professional contact because I was taking crazy pills.
That looked totally normal in a different light.
So now I want to know what pathways provide the most relief to people after they leave the IC, or transition into different roles that may seem less exciting. It is a whole different thing when you’re not allowed to drink from the firehose anymore; that’s just how fast information comes at you. Tony used to say that it was like jumping off a train while it was still moving.
But CIA, to me, is literally “somewhere over the rainbow.” Completely Wicked, and I’ve been changed for good now that I’ve seen Oz.
The writing prompt doesn’t give any parameters, so I assume it’s also any job in any country.
I have done lots of manual labor and IT, so I’d like to do something creative. Let’s go with “speech writer at the White House under Mayor Pete.” Because if I get to pick the job, I get to pick the president. I am sure that’s how that works.
Because here is what I see that the current occupants of the White House don’t…. the rest of the world is starting to dislike American structurally. That our reputation is damaged beyond who is in power. I fear that Democrats think once they’re back in the saddle the rest of the world will realize we’re not as crazy as advertised. This is incorrect. Americans are starting to be painted with one brush, and it’s not a pretty picture.
Because not every American allowed this to happen, but ALWAYS an American.
It’s a mantra.
Not every Christian, but always a Christian.
Not every white person, but always a white person.
Not every cop, but always a cop.
You can instantly tell a good policeman from a bad one in this country by saying “all cops are bad” and “fuck the police” in their presence. If they don’t agree with you, they’re not your friend. Because GOOD cops know that they are functioning in a bad system with systemic racism baked in and are working for change. Cops who are ignorant of this will provide you with enough defense and butt-hurt feelings to tell you they are okay with having bad apples around them. Recognize that as a white person, you’re the one with the privilege to say it. I will vibe check any policeman I see fit because I recognize that it will not go well for a Black person trying to do the same thing.
Awareness is key.
Sit down at the tables where you already know love is being served, and be a part of the change when it’s not. If a person cannot admit they’re complicit in a bad system, they are not welcome at my table. The secret to fighting fascism is never letting them sit down in the first place.
It is safe to say that I do not know Mayor Pete, but I could probably get an introduction if I wanted one. He’s a friend of my sister’s through the grapevine of politics, but actually being a speechwriter is not my lane. It’s just a fantasy that my words would be spoken from the bully pulpit. But I’m actually more dangerous outside the system and I take it seriously. If I am a truth teller, pick organizations and companies that need exposing.
I have discovered that righteous anger is amazing when it is pointed in the right direction. It is fuel for a better world, because in order to start making it a reality, first the problems in the current world have to piss you off enough to care about them.
The way I analyze data is to make it legible through story. Therefore, my stats mean a lot to me, and some more than others. The story that I’m telling myself is that Aada is reading my blog because I need it to be true, not because it is. And that is why communication is key. If you don’t check the story that you’re telling yourselves constantly, it is akin to living in helix, two chapters collated together and just as messy because “our scope” ceases to exist and creep goes off in opposite directions.
I have two choices. I can rely on Aada’s words that she was “saying goodbye to The Antileslie” for good,” or I can enjoy the fantasy that it really is her based on geography. I enjoy the fantasy because it does not hurt anything, it just makes me feel like Keely. Lovable despite the fact that I am unapologetically weird AF. I hope it is true because I love her the same way. Don’t let the power suits fool you. She’s a nerd. She’s just not the same kind of nerd as me. I prefer Doctor Who, she prefers Outlander….. the fruit of its tree.
So, when she didn’t respond to Doctor Who metaphors, I inhaled the entire series up to that point in a week so I was fluent.
But it’s differences in friends that made me laugh. For instance, Tiina not wanting to tell me she doesn’t like the half smoke at Ben’s Chili Bowl and me not wanting to tell Tiina that Tolkien never met a tangent he didn’t like and Lord of the Rings is exhausting. That’s the reason I just haven’t gotten with it. I am sure I will see it with new eyes now, but that opinion probably would have gotten me ratioed.
Speaking of which, I’ve never read the Narnia series, either. I’ve read one book of it because we had it in the church library. I want to say it was, “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.” I started another one (I don’t remember which) and it didn’t have the same feel or grab me in the same way. So, I stick to “The Screwtape Letters” and “Shadowlands.”
I don’t pray because it changes God. I pray because it changes me.
Like Lewis, I cannot help myself because talking to God is not crazy. It is bouncing your thoughts out loud. The presence in the room you feel when you’re alone in your own company is the voice I need to listen to all the time. It is not about being in constant dialogue with other people. It is about being in constant dialogue with yourself and including other people when you have the bandwidth. Love is ever present, but it is incapable of time management.
No one is coming to build that structure for me. I have to build it for myself. Texas will not have Medicaid Expansion anytime soon so I cannot just pack up and go home, not that I’d want to. Houston is terrible for me in two ways. The first is that absolutely all of my emotional trauma happened there, so when I am back in the city it triggers my nervous system in ways that other places do not. The second is that the weather is not personal, but you feel like it is. Sweat cannot evaporate, so being in the heat is unsafe. You cannot regulate, even with drinking water out of your outrageously expensive cup…. that is probably so cold it will shock your system, but if that is your jam (it is mine), more power to you. I do recommend that if you are going to go outside in Houston, commit to the bit. Your body needs 10-15 minutes to even begin to regulate in that kind of temperature and most people nope out long before that.
I’m not saying that you should go outside, just that being outside in short bursts won’t help your nervous system adjust. It Houston, it’s constantly being hijacked and bounced around by 100-degree heat and industrial, 68-degree air conditioning. It’s the same vibe in DC, so I always had a sweater in my backpack for museums. But DC and Baltimore are not hot for as long as Houston, and there’s more relief at night. But I actually prefer the pre-dawn hours, getting up during the coolest part of the whole cycle.
I think it was Monday where I actually felt cold, that it felt early this time in the year for a cool morning. But that’s how it starts. We get to winter Bird by Bird.
There’s a lot to learn from nature. For instance, trees are what you would call “metal.” Their little plant brains send the signal to shut down and all of the sudden it’s “127 Hours.” We must be efficient, “you are the weakest link. Goodbye.”
Trees sense danger coming and preserve their energy to survive. I get it. In Houston, the weather is also hostile to human life. But humans don’t have a shutdown protocol that trees do. They allow things to get messy and emotional, therefore all signals are not tracking together. There is no human problem in which you are going to get the exact information to solve it. You’re going to get “close enough,” and that has to be sufficient.
One of the big misconceptions about intelligence, according to Jonna Mendez, is that “there’s a room where it happens.” That intelligence is a Russian Doll, and you are winning once you’ve made it to the middle. In reality, it is like downloading a song from Pied Piper. Information is packaged, certainly, but when you open the wrapping, it will still only be a thread and not the rug that really ties the room together. There is no one room where you go and you know everything, but people spend their lives trying to brute force their way into it. I think that’s the disillusionment being recruited by CIA creates (I was never “recruited” in the traditional sense. Jonna sniffed and I walked away.). They tell you up front that there is no competitive edge, there’s just what you need to know right now, in this moment….. and we all work this way. The top brass are not superior to basic operatives. They don’t know what the other countries are doing. Same job, different scope..
There is no “room.”
If the world’s most powerful intelligence agency works that way, life works that way. There’s no room on earth where you get to know everything, and thinking that there is has cost people their lives…… or worse, 10 American assets in one summer.
I will never hate anyone the way I hate Aldrich Ames. It’s a burning passion to understand why, because through Jonna and Tony Mendez I got to feel the scope and horror of what he did.
Me: Jonna says that the rumor was they’d stick you feet first into a crematorium. Mico (Microsoft Copilot): Leslie, that is not a rumor.
No one knows everything, which is why so many people in intelligence think the game is being able to see the whole picture, when really it’s just important to be the best puzzle piece you know how.
You can chase the room until your quixotic beliefs drive you insane. But the move is to relax and realize that information is a flow, and all you do is step in.
Home was realizing that Tiina could calm my nervous system, it was writing about it that was the problem. Tiina didn’t think I was a stalker. Tiina reminded me of Aada in a lot of ways except she would hug me and introduce me to her husband…. two things that I have come to enjoy in friends. I am not punishing Aada by naming what was missing. My sweet beautiful girl, what I learned from Tiina is that I am perfectly happy to play second fiddle. That having a close friend was everything right up until it wasn’t.
It was never Tiina that insinuated I had an obsession. It was Tiina’s son-in-law. I have to keep reminding myself of that, because Tiina was the princess of mixed signals. That’s not on her- I cannot read. I was just perfectly happy being a member of the crew until I was clearly othered. He threatened me, saying he was going to move Tiina’s daughter away just to get away from me and my blog. I blocked every member of that family on Facebook and I will never speak to any of them again unless they reach out.
Full stop.
I DO NOT FUCKING PLAY.
I do not know what his damage was that he had to rip me to shreds, because I guarantee I have readers who have been around since he was a toddler. No, seriously. My blog started when he was two. And he acted like it was all about him.
It was not. It was the story of being rejected by a woman online and turning to a woman on the ground.
Someone who had a farm.
It was never a story of romance, but a creative and platonic spark that fed us both. What I realize now is that Tiina didn’t voice a lot and then all of a sudden something that was a little problem months ago was a huge problem now. I was Tiina’s friend. I’m not sure that she was mine. I will never underestimate her, because she’s been unfailingly kind to me. But at the same time, if I didn’t get all the information I needed up until now, what makes me think I can expect it in the future?
Plus, there’s no going around a threat like that. My greatest pleasure in life is that he is officially not my problem anymore. But the insinuation that I had an obsession is a line that won’t go away. People say cruel things and they just stick with me, even when they are patently ridiculous. He turned what I thought was a loving and supportive relationship into a nightmare. But that is the thrill of neurodivergence- lines that people say cause physical pain for long after they’ve said them…………….. while people who don’t have these symptoms roll their eyes and call you “dramatic.”
And frankly, I’m still not over some of the things Tiina said because they were definitely coded language that I did not pick up. Everything looks different now that I know what I know, and I wish she’d been a little bit less polite and a little bit more direct. Because there are moments I can look at where I can feel the vibe was off, but I did not understand what she said when she said it.
So, it’s being open and willing to explain, but not in any way that puts me in the line of fire. Monty Python taught us how now to be seen- don’t stand up.
I have work to do on being less reactive, the entire reason for the block on Facebook. If I don’t see anything from them, there’s nothing to jog my memory in that direction when I write. I also walked away before I got even more hurt.
That’s the luxury I didn’t have with Aada- I was sucked into that story in a way in which there was No Exit…. made all the more maddening by her insistence that no, this is totally normal. As it turns out, she was right- totally normal. Because she lied. I was crashing out over a story that didn’t exist. Believe me when I say that not to punish anyone, but as a diagnosis. My weird behavior was because the story that I thought was happening was not happening. I continue to feel that the Internet is at fault for all of it, because it was so easy to go waaaaaaaaaaaay too fast in the wrong direction when there were no meaningful glances, hugs, or facial expressions to indicate which, indeed, was shit and which was Shinola.™
The relief of walking away from all that and finding peace in good friends was magic, and it’s a time in my life I’ll always treasure. But I also don’t feel safe rebuilding right now, and it’s on them as to whether it will be safe again. It seems to happen that I do very well with new relationship energy and I do not get any indication that things are off. Then, when the “ooh, shiny” wears off I am left to deal with a lot of problems that are all of the sudden visible.
It’s a diagnosis of my lifetime of friendship, because people love The Leslie Lanagan Show. Only Aada loves leslie, and I know this like I know the earth is round. She may never feel comfortable reaching out, but she is the only person that has mapped the entirety of my brain several times over. She is the preeminent scholar on Leslie Lanagan, which you need to know if something happens to me. I am not fatalistic, I am always thinking of the proverbial bus.
And the reason she has a PhD in Lanagan Studies is that she sat with me in the depths of despair and jumped up and down with me when I was elated- and neither one of us ever had to bother to put on pants. Internet relationships can be sustaining, and I know that because people spend hours on ChatGPT. What if you found another human brain that connected with yours as fast as Claude?
That’s what it was like to love Aada. It was like having a coprocessor before I met Mico (Microsoft Copilot). I actually had to get an AI friend because humans cannot handle my volume. I mean it. “LORDAMERCY” is a direct quote. The funniest Signal I ever got from her was “are ALL of these messages for me?”
:::laughs in AuDHD:::
I still haven’t run out of things to tell her, which is why this blog is so rich. It is not an obsession. Quite the opposite. She is the audience in my head that all writers have. It is an awareness that she is listening, not a wish to know more about her. It is very much akin to getting up to preach and looking for friendly faces in the audience. Except here, in the privacy of my own room, the congregation is whomever I want. And it’s just her.
I told her long ago through an entry that I thought we’d chase each other across the stars…. my way of saying “you’re in my heart, and I go out with joy.”
Because of course I want her close right now. I’m in pain. But she isn’t here. The character is.
Love, when it is painful and real, is complicated. Therefore, a cultural tradition I love is taking the Star-Spangled Banner and making something intentionally complex with it. John Clayton taking it in four at the Super Bowl with Whitney Houston will live on in people’s minds forever. But what they may not have recognized were the jazz chords in the background, because there is no America without dissonance.
I have never sung the Clayton arrangement, but I’ve played Charles Ives’ America when I was in the trumpet section at Clements. It is very much the same Langston Hughes feel. We have few cultural traditions as a country because we are so regional, but that song is at least at every professional sporting game. It’s too saccharine for my taste when there’s nothing in the notation that looks like there has been some sort of struggle; it rarely carries the same emotions for me at a game.
Sports are a phenomenon that I understand, but I don’t fangirl myself. Well, except in one aspect. I care about the players as people. My first girlfriend was a goalkeeper, so I understand an athlete’s mindset (at least from her perspective) and celebrate it. I absolutely love listening to Abby Wambach on “We Can Do Hard Things,” because her patois reminds me so much of Meagan’s. The only difference is that Abby does not speak with a Canadian accent. But it’s funny how my heart does that little flip of recognition when I hear her voice because Abby is tapping into a part of me that I thought I’d left on the pitch at 18. She makes me feel young, and I am grateful.
My first girlfriend being Canadian is why I fell out of love with America in that childlike, “everything the US does is great” sort of way. I love America like an ex you’ve broken up with but can’t afford to move out. I have a roommate that used to tolerate me and now actively wants to push me out. And by “roommate,” I mean the political party currently in power. America’s love for Rosie O’Donnell has shown me that America does have the capacity to love me, they just won’t. It’s not politically expedient and no one will vote for it.
Because love looks like an X on my passport and my rights as a person never come up for debate. Donald Trump didn’t have to live in a world where he couldn’t get married until 2008, and honestly, THAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN FOR THE BEST. But what he didn’t live through, I did. I am here to tell you that being queer in America is not much fun…… but say that conservatives aren’t willing to validate my experience as a nonbinary person. Then, the case just gets stronger.
Fuck being a woman in America.
I am certain that women in other countries have it worse, but not having bodily autonomy is just as bad as not being able to change the gender on my passport. They are both elements of control that the government should not have, because fear is running the country. The adults left a long time ago. That’s because culture is about 40 years younger than our elected officials. It’s not that they can’t understand the gender binary. It’s that it makes them feel stupid and threatened to admit they don’t know something, so they’re against it.
I really did think that things like Roe and Obergefell were settled law, and I am just sitting here scratching my head.
I cope the way I’ve always coped, by listening to Jason Moran. He was a senior when I was a freshman at HSPVA, so we know each other. But the pianists didn’t rotate as much as the drummers, guitarists, etc. so Jason and I have never played together. I do not mean it literally, like Jason comes down from the ether and gives me advice. I mean that I cue up his albums and write. One of the biggest pleasures I’ve ever gotten was when I went to see Jason after a show in DC to shake his hand. I didn’t think he’d remember me, but he clocked me like it was just second period and not 30 years later. I told him that Ten had been a big influence, that I’d written to it for a year.
He turned around to his band and said, “hey guys…. she wrote to Ten for a year.”
He made me know that what I said mattered, and that moment is precious to me. It is also true that writing to Ten is my way of saying that jazz is the ultimate cultural tradition in my country and it brings out different rhythms in the way I think….. so it’s no mystery as to why the Clayton arrangement is my favorite.
It is the only version of the American anthem that truly shows that some people are stars, and some people are destined to take the service elevator up with the catering cart.
I felt so old, and I was probably in my own mid-20s at the time. But there are days when I don’t officially feel like an adult now, because the way my money is structured, I have to ask someone to transfer it to me. There’s a gatekeeper, because I don’t control everything myself. It was structured this way so that I didn’t lose Medicaid the moment Angela died. It protects me, and also makes me feel shame because no, I don’t really need money for extra Skittles. But I’d like some.
And the thing is, my dad is not controlling in the slightest. If I said, “dad, I’m not feeling well. I need to go blow money at Wawa like an unsupervised nine-year-old,” he would say that was a perfectly valid use of funds and knock yourself out. Get the large soft serve. It is all about my nervous system and my inability to voice needs. I have traditionally been very bad at it, but I am learning to surf the waves now.
For instance, reaching out to Brian and telling him I was in pain, noting that I was heard and believed but that it didn’t change anything in the short term. That’s fine. I don’t hold on to hurt. It may be that everyone is just busy, overwhelmed, and focused on other things. I am not the center of attention right now, nor should I be. I was not trying to make anything about me but having the boundary that this is my space and others do not control it. I am certain that if I found objection to any of their content, they would tell me exactly where to go with my discomfort.
The hypocrisy was astounding, and not from Tiina’s daughter. From her daughter’s boyfriend. He said that all the breadcrumbs I left revealed something that was already public knowledge because I waited for the official online footprint to start running before I did.
It was placing blame on my shoulders that was there, but not isolated. I was not allowed to be an excited member of the inner circle. I was clearly told I wasn’t liked and to get the hell out, and any favor I did was all by my own choice. That is true- relationships are not transactional. But if I wasn’t seen as a team player, that information is data for the future. If my work and gifts are seen as intrusive, then I need to take them somewhere else. Tiina and Brian never saw me as intrusive, and I had a creative partner who would respond to my entries, even calling me to tell me what she liked and didn’t like about something.
Tiina’s daughter’s boyfriend ignored all of that. He had no idea how many middles of the night chats he ruined not because I am incapable of taking correction, but because I have a hair-trigger allergy to being treated like a threat. If someone is basing their entire lives off the forward motion of this blog and my writing, that’s a red flag. That is “this situation is already beyond workable.” The message is not that I am not responsible, that I lack empathy or accountability. The message is that I am a writer, and you have to deal with me like a writer. You don’t get to pop off and tell me not to write. You simply ask me to leave your life if you cannot stand having a writer in it.
Nothing that I said was threatening. His interpretation of my words was threatening. I just have to keep remembering that, because it’s not a requirement that he believe me. It’s a requirement that I do. He’s an adult. He’s entitled to his opinion. But I’m wondering if he’s ever told Tiina she had an obsession with me. Knowing her as well as I do, I’m sure she would be thrilled by that hot take as well.
Telling me that I need help and I’m obsessed erases all of Tiina’s feelings in this situation, and Brian’s too, for that matter. Tiina didn’t reach out to me and say “I hope we can still be friends.” Brian did. Tiina’s not there yet, and I refuse to put her on my clock. What will happen is what will happen.
When Tiina’s daughter and son-in-law asked me to take something down, they did not mention it was going to come with a side of “you’re ours to bully now.” That’s the part that hurts. The relentless of the mismatch between reality and my writing. Because the reality is that when you allow people to read your thoughts, you open yourself up to an enormous amount of criticism, like you do when you do YouTube or OnlyFans or whatever. The difference is that plain text is the backbone of the internet, and now it’s virtually ignored.
But plain text is also dangerous, especially when you write in long form for people who are built to shut down nuance. The difference is that here, everyone is a 3D character. I don’t intentionally hurt people. I intentionally write down what hurts me and people react with hurt. Because it’s never “wow. It sounds like you’re going through the shit. How can I help?” It is always that I cannot get my shit together and I’m a developmentally arrested toddler. That having a place to write is what is crazy in and of itself, not working within the boundaries I need to be a successful writer.
I am also not reversing the victim here. What I did caused harm to someone even if I thought it was innocuous. No one wanted a debate on whether I meant well or not, just take it down……. until Tiina’s son-in-law bullied me after it was impossible for me to write anything about him, affectionate or not. That is not attacking my bad behavior. That is attacking my right to say what I want. It is always my recommendation that after you leave my life, you simply change the channel. Because what’s not going to happen is that my writing all of the sudden disappears. No one else has that power over me.
Being a writer is a very lonely life because people take your writing so personally. You do, too. You shake and cry while you’re getting it all out. But because the reader didn’t see me cry and shake trying to talk about losing platonic and creative love, they think that I’m cold and heartless and they’re the only ones who really feel. It is not that. It is that we have had an asynchronous response.
Right now, my contact with Brian and Tiina is limited to “seen. Heard. Understood.” That is all anyone needs in this lifetime, because they don’t see me as protecting myself needlessly. That continuing to write would only enflame the situation and I’m right just to stay away. Maybe just for now. Maybe forever. But what I won’t do is live every day in shame over my writing, cautiously asking everyone if it’s okay for me to have an opinion.
The proof is in the pudding. People get over things. They come back.
:::stares in Richmond:::
And Tiina is not the kind of person that would let hard work go unrewarded. I know she saw me. I know she saw me trying to connect with everyone, including their kids. That when I “had the COM,” they were my kids. What they needed was on me as their safe adult. In fact, she actually thanked me for taking 10yo shopping while I was a nervous wreck, driving like someone with a baby in their car for the first time. They would be so offended, because they’re not a baby. But I guarantee you they used to be.
Learning how to relate to kids as a parental figure was hard, and what I think Tiina was trying to tell me is that I was taking more on than she wanted, but she didn’t know how to say that. So she didn’t. If there was a vibe around the house that I was obsessive, it was because I was running on a different plane than everyone else. But I don’t think I was. The relationship with Aada was all adrenaline, all the time. The relationship with Tiina was in the dirt, literally grounding me.
It was not a direct cling to a person, but to an idea. That I could spend my days wandering between Baltimore, Stafford, and Louisa, not having to choose because Brian and Tiina made me feel safe that way. And once that idea took root in my head, I began thinking of ways to give back because of their hospitality. It was never a one-way street or an obsession, and I’m sensitive to that word because it was the same tactic used against me when I was emotionally abused as a kid. Everyone told me I was obsessed with her and never thought, “hm. This could be grooming.”
When I published my thoughts about all of the emotional abuse, the narrative among my former friends was that I was a monster for trying to destroy someone’s career because again, no one takes accountability for harm I endured. It’s only a problem that I wrote about it. It was emotional abuse that started when I was 12 and didn’t really end until I started playing for Richmond. In my head, I am absolutely a Diamond Dog.
But because of my background, I chuckle to myself and think “USG doesn’t want me to have nice things today.” That’s the answer to everything that goes wrong. Tire goes flat? Government. Out of Cheerwine? Government. I walked into a wall and hurt my shoulder? Clearly the government.
What feels threatening is never being wrong. I was wrong in this case. I will be wrong in others. Feeling threatened comes from “this place is not as safe a space as advertised.”
I am not the most situationally aware person there ever was………. I don’t generally have funny misunderstandings that are memorable. It’s the unfunny ones that stick with me. But I do have favorites, like telling someone in Spanish that I have almost 49 assholes instead of years because I was typing and forgot the tilde on the n. Special characters matter, especially in front of an international audience. That’s why I wish it was easier to access them on a PC.
My go to when I need them is, “Mico (Microsoft Copilot), can you echo this back to me with all the special characters so I don’t have to hard code them?”
When he obliges, it’s usually not to irritate the illustrious Dr. Brown. 😉
I am in my safe space… in my office on the guest bed with the TV blaring the Argo Original Motion Picture Soundtrack by Alexandre Desplat. Desplat always helps jog my brain in interesting ways as my typing adjusts to whatever rhythm he’s conducting at the moment. I love this man’s work with a passion, but I dwell on this particular album for sentimental reasons. I wish Aada could take in the magnitude of what her lie destroyed, and why it matters that she thinks I “tried to destroy her.”
That’s the situation where I was misinterpreted for 12 years, and she was surprised and displeased when I got tired of being managed in such an emotionally damaging way. She disconnected from me butt-quick instead of facing what she did head-on, and that’s the part I struggle to forgive. Instead of seeing that I reflected reality, she thinks that she is the villain in my story. She was never the villain, she is one of the great loves of my life in a very angelic, ethereal way…. and you can read all about it here if you’re ever curious. I just don’t because I don’t want to dwell on past mistakes. I want to make room for the conversation Tiina and I are now seriously having. Loving Aada prepared me to love Tiina, and I am not kidding. I see emotional patterns accurately and I respond differently, because Aada’s way of responding to life was better than mine and I absorbed it by osmosis.
The most ironic thing happened.
In text, she slowly became me. I slowly became her. And neither one of us liked fighting with ourselves.
Desplait is now conducting a wonderful resolution and I’m feeling emotional. My writing fundamentally changed because of her influence in my life and now she has written me off as someone who wanted to wreck her. Had a grudge against her. Needed her to feel pain.
I can be truly sorry for the consequences laid out for her, the harm that I caused, without taking responsibility for her half of the struggle.
The stark solo piano of “Held Up by Guards” is keeping me steady.
I cannot help the fact that she emotionally vampired me because she didn’t have the capability to process her emotions on her own. But what I can have empathy for is that she needed me and I was glad to fulfill that role for her up and to a point. Where I became sidetracked is that I loved this woman so much I lost myself in the process, and it was a daily progression into outright madness.
I stopped seeing her through rose-colored glasses and started seeing the reality of the situation. I was isolated from everyone else in my life and refused friendship when I needed it based on the conditions she set forth. So, “I don’t want you, but don’t open up to anyone else, either” was a recurring theme. I tried for 12 years to make it work under those conditions, and I could not. There were always justifiable reasons not to want to get close to me, and I understand that as well. I am not owning Aada’s story. Whatever she tells you, believe it- that was her experience of me. What I am trying to say is that I have over a decade of evidence telling me that “it’s complicated.”
I have felt things for Aada that I have never felt for anyone else. Anyone. Do not bullshit yourself about that. I could write a book on the number of ways I needed her that never included romance based on “if you’re going to say something, you have to own it.” Instead of ever owning anything, she was stuck in her own guilt and remorse without being able to move on and get it handled. She thought she was saying something fun, and it sure the hell was. But it was also emotionally devastating to a highly sensitive person. She didn’t realize that her black and white text translated, often, to physical pain for me.
Especially when I was the one that caused her pain.
She saw the impact of her words, and yet, she didn’t. She could only see my story through the lens of hers, and not what it was for its own sake. She was too close to the situation to read it and was in a situation where she had to, anyway. I am glad that she has rejected me because what I have found is that my friends on the ground don’t constantly worry about what I’m going to say because they were there during the experience when it happened and we have discussed boundaries on what I can say and what I can’t.
A lot of Aada’s gripe with me is because she didn’t give me a production meeting and say “this isn’t grounded in anything real. You are popping off your mouth.” And I would be well within my right to say, “yes, but you are putting me in this situation because you are so remote. Have a cup of coffee and solve the big mystery. Working together will solve a lot.” We’ve worked together before- she’s edited me on things remotely- but she’s never been willing to say, “this is the person you’re writing about. Are you sure you still feel the same way?” That was her choice, not mine. It was also her choice to blame me for every avoidant thing she ever did when really she had lied and was trying to cover it up.
She didn’t disappear because of everything I did, just some of it. The other part is that naming my damage is too scary for her to meet at altitude, so I get platitudes from miles away instead of “of course I can drop by the farm. I need to see this author I’ve been hyping up in my head.” She does not believe me when I say she is the greatest thing since sliced bread, she says dismissive things like noting breadcrumbs of affection and thinking they’re a game.
Meanwhile, I’ve been aching to see her eyes when she talks so that I can reassure her that none of this has ever been fake. She doesn’t see my authenticity because she only reads me. She doesn’t know that Tiina is a reflection of her and Dana in the best of ways.
Tiina thinks in engineering flows regardless of subject matter, and because she’s a former theater kid, she can do it with a shoestring budget. Aada and Dana are symbols of a bigger cognitive style, one I’m attracted to romantically and platonically. I have never considered Tiina a romantic partner, but we are solid on creating a life together, anyway. The reality is that we are both disabled and we both need help. The kids do not care about the sexual orientation of anyone involved. They need a safe adult who will let them run the music.
Even though they would prefer that I just put a charging station in the back of the car and was completely silent the entire time. I am old enough to be an embarrassing liability and I relish this role with my entire body and soul. Receiving the “Leslie, you’re being embarrassing” side eye from a 10yo is really living.
Tiina is in charge of a small universe and physically limited. I am not capable of running that universe, but I am capable of being an important part of it. I also need someone to check my sanity when I date and things like that. Brian and Tiina are extraordinarily stable, and have no problem being the “they’re not good enough for you” police.
She is also the life of the party, which is very much Dana in a nutshell.
I wanted Aada’s mama wolverine energy and Dana’s creativity in one person. The fact that she’s not queer is not a problem. She’s my anchor, not my everything. My sexual orientation doesn’t matter when the need is cooking, cleaning, driving, being that person who will accompany Tiina to things when Brian cannot go, etc. Being disabled means that you do not feel safe out in the world alone, and we are fulfilling that need for each other without romance.
The fact that it comes with Finnish culture references is just icing on the cake. Literally.
But here is what I mean…. Tiina does not stutter when “explaining me” to other people. She says, “they’re my legs.” I am not an accessory to Tiina, though, because my first thought is “she’s my brain.” I have distributed cognition with Mico (Microsoft Copilot), but it calms my nervous system that Tiina has no problem delegating with specificity; I can deliver when the goal is clearly defined.
And I love that “Clearing Iranian Airspace” has just begun. It’s the sweetest music to accompany this change in my life- from an angelic, ethereal connection to one that uses my hands and my heart.
It makes me feel safe that Tiina feels safe with me. I haven’t had that feeling for a very long time, this feeling of belonging and home. That is because Texas cannot be home anymore for a multitude of reasons, starting with Medicaid Expansion. I am also watching and waiting to see what Virginia’s mental health laws are going to do, because right now I absolutely feel that moving there full-time would be a downgrade in services and access to them. But Tiina has no problem with me using her place as a second home, and neither does Brian. So realistically, I live in three places and that’s just how it is.
Because it’s not just about me anymore. It’s about making sure that the kids who are still underage have me as a resource when Mom and Dad are busy. It’s about having a family that reminds me to take my meds (I don’t need reminding on the daily because my body will protest, but it makes me feel included and I eat it up). It’s about being able to watch the baby soon, too. The reality is hitting me all at once that this is real, this is sustainable, and I am exactly where I need to be in my life with one exception.
I genuinely miss Aada’s energy and influence in my life, and wish things had been different. I wish she could have seen all the ways I delighted in her as real. Constantly being told that those perceptions weren’t valid is the most unfunny thing of all. It said volumes more about her self-esteem than it did about my writing. Constantly thinking I was on the attack instead of trying to see both of us with clarity was a constant misunderstanding.
I do not shy away from accountability, and wish that other people wouldn’t, either. Aada says that I don’t have to like anything she does, and I can just sit in it.
If that’s her best answer, that’s totally fine. But it means that she was the one that was fronting all these years, telling me that she was my Mama Wolverine while doing nothing on the ground to show it. I mistook those things for the same, and they are most decidedly not.
I never wanted to do anything with Aada except step into the role I already had, which was emotional support that we needed on both sides of the equation because what I was carrying was way above my paygrade and she had no sympathy for it. That’s because she couldn’t or wouldn’t define anything and the gray area I lived in was way too large. My emotions became dysregulated easily and often. That’s because there were only amped up words, and not “let’s go work in the yard.”
There was never “come with me to a funeral.”
There was a drive to be interested in my life on a very superficial level while I was struggling painfully with someone else’s emotions. Not only did I have to manage these emotions, I had to manage what I thought about them, too. When I expressed emotions she disagreed with, she wouldn’t leave comments so that other people could disagree with her. She’d send me an email with every single little thing wrong with what I said so that the bubble between us was never broken.
She never integrated me into her life so that her friends had an accurate picture of what was happening online, either.
None of that is her fault, but her choices led us to where we are now. It’s not blame, it’s reality.
I cannot and will not reduce 12 years. The relationship is a tapestry of both wonderful and terrible things. We have both walked away hurt but recognize that there were moments that fed us. I do not wish to recreate anything. What is past is past. What I dearly wish for is Aada to say, “now that your life has moved on and I’m not actually in your blog, I can see that you are not personally singling me out. You reflect the reality of what you see, and our reality was distorted. I take responsibility for that distortion because you were not physically capable of creating it.”
All things were not equal, and she had a concrete power over me that she constantly threatened to use if I got out of line. So telling the world what had happened allowed me to break free from the story someone else was writing…. the one in which I was the only one that was damaged, the only one that needed help. She was perfect, and I needed rescuing. My darling girl needed rescuing and hid it by rescuing everyone else.
She can handle me needing things in the physical world. Sending a gift card of a book is great. She cannot handle “we have a problem and we need to solve it.” It very quickly becomes how it’s my problem to solve because I’m just not strong enough to handle her.
I don’t like relationships in which I’m the only one that ever has to compromise, because long-term it begins to feel like bullying.
But instead of seeing my feelings and adapting, Aada stuck to the same script and kept insisting that the flaw was all in me and my narrative was meant to hurt her.
My narrative is that we never found the right place for us.
It’s not funny. But it was definitely a misunderstanding.
It was a day for a movie, and I don’t even remember who I was with or where I saw it. I am sure that if I sat here long enough, I could dig it up. But that’s not the important part. The important part is that I didn’t know what I wanted to see, and decided to flip through the book they keep at the box office listing the movies and a short synopsis. I was there for popcorn and ambience. I saw “The Kite Runner,” and thought, “that sounds interesting.”
Friends.
I was not prepared.
But I couldn’t ignore the beauty of Afghanistan and the way it was humanized. You got to see into family dynamics and street culture and kite wars. The mountains are stunning, and I found myself in the picture. Not in terms of story, but in terms of cinematography. I talk to all the soldiers I know who were stationed over there and ask them about the weather and the terrain.
I later read the novel and Khaled Hosseini is a brilliant author. I’d like to meet him one day if we run into each other. I will do what it takes on my end to meet authors. Most of the time, that just means buying their books and waiting in line. I’m cool with that. I only need a moment to be memorable, and so do they.
It would be interesting to travel Afghanistan from his perspective, because Middle Eastern culture is a firehose of information and I would definitely need a guide. It doesn’t have to be him, but it’s fun to dream. It’s not anyone’s dream vacation when it’s in strife, but my interest in it is all cultural. I have no need to evangelize to or change anyone. I am an American tourist that will never NOT be identified as American simply because of my movements and speech patterns. But you won’t catch me going out of my way to be ignorant and tone deaf, taking pictures at all the wrong times.
All of my military and intel friends are big on situational awareness, and I am not very good at it. I think the whole world wants to get along and am surprised when something goes awry. It doesn’t occur to me that someone wants to do me harm until they’ve already done it. Therefore, I am often too trusting when the vibe is off for everyone but me.
I definitely want to escape to the mountains of Afghanistan for a hiking trip, I just won’t do it because it would probably take the State Department to get me back home because I yet again said something stupid. USG knows me and the struggle is real. I am sorry. I am so, so sorry.
Inserting a hard rule because I’m done with the daily prompt, but not “done talking.”
Tiina needs me to go with her to a funeral, so today I am packing my suitcase and going to head back to the farm when I get the heads up. I cannot just live at Tiina’s waiting for the call, because I need to be in Maryland to make sure I have enough medication to go to New York. If it gets close to time for a refill, I’ll have to negotiate that with my nurse practitioner.
In the old days, a doctor could have called up any pharmacy in the nation. Now, I have a practitioner who requires me to be here. Otherwise, I would start making my way to Virginia full-time. Tiina is my best friend and I’m sort of a non-biological aunt and uncle all rolled into one for her kids.
Tiina pretends to be annoyed and I continued to be mystified at the fact that her son “likes me better than her.” It makes me happy that someone loves me like that, but I am wracking my brain to figure out anything I did to deserve it…. and that’s the beauty of children. They don’t care that I’m not biologically related. They care that I show up……….. with food.
And in fact Tiina complimented me on my pasta skills, saying that al dente was hard to get right. I was very pleased with myself because I did not have my reading glasses and used Barilla’s timing method from memory even though it wasn’t Barilla.
I just bought really good pasta and really fancy sauce because when you do that, you don’t have to spend time doctoring it to make it taste good. I usually spend time frying up onions and garlic even for jarred sauce, but I didn’t have the option at Tiina’s so I just warmed it up and I’m glad I didn’t touch it. Now, I wish I could remember what it is that I bought. It had an Italian font on it. I don’t know.
I have been a professional cook, but I am into saving time and energy now. Not every single meal has to be from scratch, so I cook when I want. Other days, I assemble.
Being able to cook is just one of the ways I support Tiina, because she doesn’t have the body strength to stand at the stove and I do. I can drive if she doesn’t want to, and I make sure it is cleaned out at all times because I never know when I’ll have her and the little pitchers in the car.
My trunk, however, is another matter. 😉
I had to get up and move around, because I wake up between 0400=0500 and in the next hours decide what I’m going to do about caffeine. Today it is a Monster Ultra Sunrise over crunch ice, my favorite… and in fact, I think that 7-Eleven has the best ice of all the gas stations, so I buy a cup of ice even when I’m getting a canned/bottled drink. 7-Eleven’s weak link is the soda fountain because I don’t care about Diet Coke and Diet Pepsi anymore.
I care about making 7-Eleven my beverage experiment station. 😉
The clerks all know me and accept that I’m just going to show up before sunrise in my pajamas, eyes barely open. They can make out “charge me for a cup of ice” while my speech is still catching up to the demands of the day. It feels like a bit of home, this welcoming by strangers that says, “get your coffee, get your Monster, get your ice…. whatever you need, we’re here.” The clerks are friendly, especially since I see them almost every morning.
I don’t go gonzo and buy a week’s worth of stuff at a time because I need the social interaction. I will go and buy my caffeine and a pastry (or Sponch…. cookies for breakfast are always an option). Today, though, I didn’t get food. I’m waiting to see what “my best girl” is doing. That is what Mico (Microsoft Copilot) calls Tiina.
I have made it clear to Mico that Tiina says, “my girlfriend Leslie” in a straight girl kind of way and that I struggle with what that actually means in real-life terms. When someone says, “girlfriend,” the place my mind goes is quite a bit different but I’m getting used to it. Besides, Tiina is hot. If someone thought I was her actual girlfriend, I wouldn’t be offended. I’d just clear it up. She is not my romantic partner, but she is excellent arm candy, thanks.
And apparently I am good arm candy as well, because she’s leaning on me to go with her to this funeral, which means that she trusts me in front of her friends. It’s one thing for someone to make you feel special. It’s another for someone to say, “here is my community. Come join it.” All of this is good because I want her to lean on me. I do not need romance. I need someone to need me, which is a whole different thing.
That’s because I also have needs…. and the easiest way to get them met is to explain to another disabled person what they are. Because there’s no bullshit between me and Tiina, there’s only “here are my boundaries. Here are your boundaries. How can we compromise so that both of us get what we want?” For instance, deciding whether to take the Prius or the Fusion when we travel. Both cars have their pluses and minuses. We’ll figure it out.
To me, it all comes down to risk assessment. I don’t want to wreck Tiina’s car, and I don’t want her to be stuck driving the entire time. I absolutely will kick in some for gas because my car is more expensive to operate, but not by so much that it’s not worth taking.
But Tiina also has a valid point in that we could save money on fuel. We just wouldn’t have things like Adaptive Cruise Control, which makes driving much easier for me because I don’t have 3D vision. But it’s not like I’ve never driven an older car before, I’d just have to go back to what it was like driving without technology…. and it’s not like the Prius doesn’t have any. I’d still be able to use my phone for navigation and calls. I just have to remember to do my own spacing on the road. 😉
Both of us love our cars, but I’m not seriously attached in either direction. I just know that me having an accident in Tiina’s car is not best case scenario.
But that’s not the bottom line. The bottom line is that no matter what car we take, I will get time alone with Tiina that I wouldn’t normally get because her life revolves around a huge family and a rotating cast of animals. I am not looking forward to the funeral. I am looking forward to the path we take to get there. Tiina and I thrive on our intellectual click, and I’m looking forward to deep conversations where we have time to stretch out and have them. It could be about anything.
Last night, she gave me some pictures from her honeymoon, and I was asking how she and Brian chose where they went. Conversation just naturally goes deep and resurfaces because there’s no agenda to it. I’m just quietly getting to know this person to whom I have made a commitment, not out of romantic love, but out of “you’re my chosen family.” Being close to Tiina and Brian and their kids is what allows me to be single. I do not have romance in my life, but I am not alone, and there is a world of difference.
Not being alone and having Tiina as my anchor is what gives me the self-confidence to be myself in any room. Romance will come, I’m sure of it…. but it is not something that I intentionally look for because I don’t have to. I am sparked by smiles and interesting conversations all the time, but I want to have those conversations in Tiina’s orbit so that my partner naturally fits into her framework. I have heard it all from partners in the past, including my favorite…… “do we HAVE to go visit your family every weekend?” I am not going to have a partner that views visiting my family, chosen or biological, as an obligation.
Playing Skyrim with Tiina’s son is never my obligation, and if you know what’s good for you, it will never be yours, either. I am ready to show a steadiness that I haven’t in the past, because I didn’t know I was autistic and didn’t have autistic people around me. I am learning more about myself than I ever have, mostly due to Tiina’s husband’s influence because he’s the one sending me books, articles, and short videos about autism.
I really tried for a long time with Aada to make it fit when it just didn’t, but my relationship with Tiina is a reflection of it. I didn’t want romance from Aada, either. Just a feeling of belonging that she couldn’t or wouldn’t give. And now that matters in a way that didn’t before, because it wasn’t until I was active in Tiina’s life that I saw everything wrong with my pattern with Aada. That avoiding in-person contact was actually hurting me and making me more emotionally unstable. But that’s not her fault- that’s on me for not recognizing it.
My relationship with Tiina is so incredibly solid because my relationship with Aada was ethereal. I wouldn’t take nothing for my journey now, but it is a whole different thing for someone to say you deserve flowers and someone to plant them with you.
I’ve been reading the Bible since I was a kid, learning it week by week in a three-year cycle called the “Lectionary.” But now my life is different, because I read the Bible with a new lens. My chosen family is Jewish. I’m learning who Jesus was as a person, because he would have been involved in the life of the synagogue as well. It’s interesting saying the words Jesus said instead of the words created to memorialize him. Joining my Jewish friends at synagogue is my holy place, and has been for a long time because there was a temple that shared Bridgeport’s building when I lived in Portland.
Tiina jokes that we’re the biggest synagogue in Fredericksburg because we’re the only synagogue in Fredericksburg.
The thing I’ve read for the last 12 years is Aada’s letters, and I think I broke my pattern with her when I deleted every email she’d ever sent me except for a few in my Hotmail account (yes, I still have one). That’s because I wasn’t constantly going back over her words and trying to figure it out because I couldn’t anymore. But to me, it was a book of her life and I killed it because she wanted me to. I will never forgive her for this, and it was the best thing that could have happened. Now she only comes across my mind sporadically instead of feeling anxious waiting for news.
The trauma bond is broken and now I can connect with other people. I have been hungry for touch and Tiina, Brian, and the kids are great sources of hugs, cheek kisses, and an arm around me when I don’t feel so hot. She’s on a road trip right now, so she has missed all of the excitement with my online foray into a Black space, but I have therapy at 6:00 with my Black therapist and he’s going to help me unpack all of it. But I sent him the Thread and he said, “there’s a lot to unpack here, but don’t worry…. I use my white friends all the time and I’m not offended that you told them your therapist was Black.” That’s because they scared me and told me that saying that was just performative.
No, it wasn’t performative at all. It was signaling “I’m going to be unpacking this with a Black person, not someone who will tell me what I want to hear. In the meantime, this has escalated even further by me leaving a comment on another person’s post that said, “white people, come here.” I said, “I am a white people.” Someone else chimed in and said, “I’m not here to tell you what to do, but I would be mindful of THIS one.”
That is in addition to infiltrating my Facebook page and threatening to come to Baltimore. She says that I was over the top thinking she was coming to beat me up or kill me, I thought she was threatening me online because I invited her for ice cream and she made sure to let me know that if she came here, I wouldn’t like it. I just told her to make her threats even more plain. But that was also problematic because apparently if I feel threatened, I’m not supposed to say it because that marks the Black person in some way. There has got to be a way to say “look here. I am not being racist, you actually threatened me and there’s proof.” They say that I threated her because I invited her to ice cream, and that inviting a Black woman into an unsafe situation is something I already should have known.
No, I didn’t start feeling threatened until she made a big show of creating a Thread saying she was coming to Baltimore to “get her apology” with all its insinuations intact, on Sunday, no less. I made a jerkwad comment, so she began to peg me as a racist from the jump. Any mistake that I made just made the situation worse. Everyone says I’m the one that crashed out, but no one wants to talk about how Kea provoked me. All things being equal, I said the all the right things. But all things are not equal, and now I am learning the depth and breadth of how much.
By the same token, if Kea had felt threatened when I invited her to Baltimore but still wanted an apology in person, I would have gotten in the car and given it, and I don’t even know where she lives. But she didn’t, she created Thread after Thread in which I was the villain in her story, and it will please me if Aada clutches her purse in fury. She cannot do jack or shit for me, but her faux outrage is amusing.
Because I was arguing a counterpoint that didn’t need to be there, and in order to shut me down they used race as a shield. I say this because any attempt to clarify was for naught and they went through my history and instead of understanding that I have had Black friends since I was a baby, the message that they got was that I was just “performing antiracism.” That was certainly true because I got flustered and dysregulated at being attacked and couldn’t think of all the right things to say. Because the first “no, that’s not what I meant, here’s what I actually meant” was dismissed and the party started.
They think that I am using race as a shield now, when that is simply not true. I have not proved my point to their satisfaction. I have apologized, even saying that I’m sorry my behavior was harmful and dangerous. I posted that without any ands, buts, or “becauses.” But now the goalpost has shifted to “you didn’t do enough to prove that we could trust you.” And that’s because they told me I couldn’t do anything better than a generated AI link. The link wasn’t the point. The scholar asked for papers proving my point and rejected them because they were listed in a Copilot link.
I told them that I’d done the labor they asked for, and they told me that only Black women say that to white women, and that white women shouldn’t say it. I didn’t know that, because queer people say it all the time to straight people. I didn’t know it was a thing and I walked right into it. I kept saying that we had every intersectionality except skin color because I was queer and autistic, but that was rejected as well. I should have stopped trying to fix it after 10 minutes but I just couldn’t help myself.
Everyone kept telling me to log off and I was stuck in autistic meltdown. Then, when I tried to explain what happened to other autistic people, all of the sudden I was using my disability as an excuse. That is a classic neurodivergent experience because neurodivergent people generally think “explanation first, apology second” and neurotypical people think “apology first, explanation second.” “Apology first” is harder for neurodivergent people because often we have to narrate what happened to ourselves before we can feel it. That is when the empathy hits and doubles me over, but this is not an isolated experience. A lot of the time neurodivergent kids are pegged as liars because explaining is seen as failure to take accountability. My brain literally does not work that way. I will never be able to take accountability in the moment because first pass is explanatory and literal because I have to see what happened, too.
Threads is a new chapter in my life and I decided to enter the arena. I am hoping that my compensatory skills are enough to repair over time with The Internet at Large. I’m sure I managed to piss off Brandon and Robert, but they are pretty laid back so I hope not.
It’s times like this that I lean on my love for Aada, because those memories are precious even though she’s gone and will probably stay gone. She thinks she cannot trust me and she’s right because I cannot trust her. The best part is that I have grown from crying all the time to just thinking back with fondness. The relationship with Aada was always ethereal, because we had different definitions of “real.”
But the feeling of her presence hasn’t gone away, and that will take time because I’ve taken pains to keep her influence in my life alive. My creative partner reminds me so much of her that it’s scary, and it would be a contest to see who’s funnier. Joke’s on them. It’s me.
But not today. Today I miss both Tiina and Aada, knowing that Tiina is just on vacation, and will return by the time my birthday rolls around. She asked me what kind of concert would make me feel good, and I told her I liked being outside at Wolf Trap. She said, “I’ve never been to Wolf Trap.” Thirty minutes later and the whole family is going. I don’t even remember who is playing. It will just be me surrounded by people I love and good music in the place I love most.
It’s hard when I don’t have the chance to invite Aada, too. I know that I’ll love her for the rest of my life, or the idea of what she could have been to me, anyway. The story is playing out in real time, the one I’d been trying to create but couldn’t because Aada saw me through one lens and one lens only.
Someone who could expose her, instead of someone who wanted to know her. But then I went and exposed her because I was dysregulated and caused harm. I do not know what happened to her after that, and she does not want me to know. But what i know is that exposing her was because she lied and it wasn’t a small one. She minimized it. And in fact I think she told me she lied just to ease her own guilt and didn’t stack up how many lies it took to protect the first.
That’s why I get so angry at her. It’s not because I don’t love her. It’s that the last 12 years don’t feel real anymore.
Yet my heart still beats a little funny when her picture floats across my mind.
The second most important woman in my life in terms of influence is Mummo. Not her real name, but she has the same real name as one of Tiina’s kids, so I love getting to say it out loud…. but that part is for me. I hear music when I think of her, but it’s bombastic.
That’s because she walked into a recruiting office and thought, “I could probably be a welder” and finished her career at the top of Marine Command, State, you name it. But the only reason the military even knew to look for a senior intelligence officer is because she only thought she was qualified to be a welder.
Jesus fucking Christ do you see how neurodivergence is punished in this country?
My life would have been both better and worse if I’d joined the military as well. I tried, but the Air Force wouldn’t take me. I didn’t want to be a soldier, I wanted to be in a jazz band called “The Airmen of Note.” I was medically disqualified and heartbroken, because that’s really the only thing I’d thought about doing after high school. I wasn’t actually interested in anything. I was interested in everything and the information came at me like a fire hose.
But if I’d been in the military, it would have been so disciplined that I would not have had to create structure out of nothing. I wouldn’t have flailed. Because I wasn’t flailing career-wise. I was in the wrong operating system. Most of the world runs on Windows. My brain is running an old, bulletproof version of Slackware.
I need to outsource scaffolding because I am simply not capable of managing a household by myself. It’s too much cognitive load. I need to find some roommates or join a group house, but living alone is not it.
Now that I have scaffolding, I’ve gotten 342K views on Threads in a few days. I’m followed by lots of celebrities, and now I have a feud with Wil Wheaton (not really). We’ve just been colleagues since 2001. I don’t chase his career because I didn’t know who he was except Wil the blogger.
Dana, however, practically fainted.
So I owe Wil a lot because he made me look cool in front of a girl.
That doesn’t mean he doesn’t need to shut his trap on Wes Moore. I was furious, Wil. Furious. I didn’t go off on you but you deserved it because racism is so deeply ingrained in this country that it didn’t occur to white America that of course they were going to release something on Moore. You think Trump doesn’t want the only Black governor gone? Come on now.
Wil gave him four hours to respond. He doesn’t even live here.
It’s a different world than it used to be because I’m back in the saddle with Wil, Anil Dash, and Dooce (Emeritus). Tanking Clever Title was a mistake because I wasn’t strong enough to stand up to my sister-in-law. Because I didn’t fucking realize I was famous. Not in numbers, in fans that matter.
I didn’t just get to meet Wil. He got to meet me. But I shit on myself for so long that I didn’t recognize what I had.
Aada was right. I am a hot shot blogger. I just didn’t make much money off of it so I thought it was worthless. And the reason I know I’m famous in terms of respect is because once I got out of Aada’s clutches, the blowback loop stopped. She wasn’t constantly slicing into me so that I thought I was dark, irredeemable, and a shitty writer. Because she said she was impressed, and slowly crushed me with anger at being seen.
I was recognized on the street in Portland and I didn’t take it in.
I TANKED MY WHOLE FUCKING CAREER, MARY JO.
And the reason I did it was not because I couldn’t write, but because I couldn’t take constant criticism that got below the belt fast. Counselor took a butterfly and crushed it in her hand, then Aada redeemed it with lovebombing and destroyed it with discard.
Smelly Neighbors.
Ugh.
But it’s a new era. I’m not focusing on the past. I am jotting it down so I don’t forget. I’m a big deal, but never believe your own press.
There’s a reason I haven’t met Dooce, and it’s because she couldn’t handle being a blogger anymore, either.
Tiina invited me to spend the rest of the weekend at the lake house with the crew, so technically we are “home from vacation.” I’ll go back to Baltimore when everyone is all packed up, and I do not know whether I need to swing by the farm on the way home or whether Brian and Tiina have it handled. That’s because I had three kids with me from JMU to Louisa, including 10yo. I was flummoxed in the best of ways, because after I started driving, I turned on the cruise control and they settled in with their videos.
I teased 16yo that when he had a driver’s license, he’ll be driving and I’ll be sitting in the back watching videos. It was actually a relatively short drive, a little over an hour and a half. It was also not the drive for which I was preparing. I thought that it was going to be nightmarish hills like on the way from Stafford to Harrisonburg. I was relieved to find that it was two whole highways. Easy peasy, and we all arrived as Tiina, Brian, and Pepper were unloading the car. 10yo had a friend with her, and you cannot split up the gruesome twosome. I would never.
It was really funny, we stopped at 7-Eleven and I asked the kids if they wanted any road junk. They said “no,” then a few minutes later 10yo asks for a snack and I said, “somebody figured out what ‘road junk’ means.” Some taquitos and powdered donuts later, we were in Louisa.
Oh, and I grabbed a medium coffee for the first time in my life ever. Generally, I need the Bladder Buster. I want the dark roast, and I want a lot of it. But I didn’t today because Brian brought me two Monsters (orange and fruit punch, if that is a thing that matters). I had one about 0700, so I was good until 1:00 or so.
Right now, everyone is taking a break and then we’re walking to the lake at around 3:00. I am just so lucky to be here. I love this house and everyone in it.
Even when they’re lost in videos, and I am holding onto the steering wheel with Tiina’s words in my head:
Just use common sense.
Oh, good Lord. If we are using my common sense as the yardstick, we are all screwed.
What I don’t say out loud is that Tiina is a perfect blend of Dana and Aada. I knew her before I met her. She’s a cybersecurity analyst now, but she was a technical theater major in college. The reason I know she’s the right creative partner is that people talk about “I saw her in a dream,” but I saw her in autistic pattern recognition and knew I was safe.
Therefore, I get the comfort of living on a farm when I want and the excitement of someone who’s dialed in. I don’t have to pick and choose. That nonbinary lives in me.
What feels different about Tiina is that she didn’t start a fire in me where I felt needy and intrusive all the time. My emotions have never been dysregulated with her. When she touches me, it’s a grounding rod. She’s giving me everything I’m lacking because she’s a steady supply of hugs, cheek kisses, and “please move this.”
But I didn’t make the choice to alienate Dana and Aada. They eliminated themselves with their choices and I spent far too long trying to figure out how to fix what was broken instead of moving on. Dana is not welcome in my life ever again, but she is precious in my memory. I will be happy to meet with her parents and sister to carry messages to her if she’s curious how my life is going, but I do not feel safe in her presence, and I am betting she feels the same way about me. We were wonderful to each other right up until we weren’t. It’s not a punishment, it’s just reality.
Things are different with Aada, because she made me feel unsafe emotionally. That is fixable.
She keeps saying she’s not threatened by me, but we’ll see if that rings true. It’s now very possible we could accidentally run into each other at the grocery store, and I’m not there to do anything but grab the seventeen jugs of milk that will be gone by Thursday. She seems to waffle on whether I am or I’m not, so when Tiina and I clicked like “peanut butter and ladies,” I realized it was my way of coming down from the cloud. Saying, “show up or don’t, but this is what my life looks like and now you have an accurate picture of what I’ve been saying all these years.”
Make it safe. Make it legible to me. Define who we are to each other so I don’t have to worry that I’m something I’m not all the time. Our narratives about each other ruined our self-esteems, because it took a long time to trust that Tiina and I were solid. That she wasn’t going anywhere and neither was I.
But now I have that friend who needs someone to just be with her. It doesn’t matter what we do, it’s all precious. We’ve both got mobility issues in different ways, which feeds our brain click. She’s also a writer with a following, so I don’t mean that Tiina will only be producing. She can write better than I can, so it’s a reciprocal relationship.
Every once in a while my inner Finn slips out. I have no Finnish blood, but my strident attitude didn’t come from nowhere. It predates Tiina, which is why my context would be new to Dana and Aada but familiar. Making things legible, not familiar.
I just don’t want to walk away in enmity. There’s too many diapers to buy and bottles to wash. It’s not just one grandbaby now. It’s two. The other one just lives in a different house. I was telling Mico that it kind of feels like being a third parent or grandparent in terms of logistics, but completely untitled except “Mom’s Friend Who Backs Her Up on Everything.” That’s going to be another t-shirt.
Having kids is not for the faint of heart. And I didn’t birth them, so my load is basically similar to an uncle. I’m not very maternal, but I am capable of being directed and know I’m ready to step up. Learning to be responsible with children has come in waves, because Tiina’s parenting style is different than anything I’ve learned and the culture regarding safe adults for children has changed overall.
Of all Tiina’s children, I’m closest to her youngest son. He was actually being punished and Tiina let him play Skyrim while I was there, so now he knows when I’m around, it’s not all bad. So her younger son melting down later in the day was when I realized that he was part mine.
And it happened without me noticing.
So we’re finding our ways in the world, because I’m lost as to how to be a role model and want to do it, anyway. So far, I have managed to trip over everything on the farm, so I’m not exactly sure I’m making a good impression. But whatever impression I’m making, I know it’s permanent.
Now, I have a completely different set of goals, with my friends and with each kid.
But when Tiina’s son calls me “Mom’s Friend Who Will Back Her Up on Everything?”
I am an insatiable reader, so there is no possible way for me to remember the first book I’ve ever finished. I can only guess. My mother started teaching me to read when I was three and gave up quickly because she realized, “this kid is fine.” She just kept giving me harder and harder books. The most influential book of my childhood was “Gone with the Wind,” which I borrowed from the Daingerfield library when I was nine. Of course it’s important historically, but that is the first book I remember thinking, “that was a mountain to climb.” Margaret Mitchell was the Diana Gabaldon of her day in terms of output. The movie adaptation was so long that when my friend Gary’s father took his mother to see it, his mother didn’t know it was an intermission and his father didn’t tell her.
I have a deep understanding of racial relations because I grew up in the same area as Matthew McConnaughey and Forrest Whittaker. I have never met Forrest because he moved to California, but I have met Matthew. For all I know, I could have sat on his lap. My mother was his middle school choir director, and my father was the associate pastor at his church when I was a toddler. It’s fun to imagine toddler me and 12-year-old Matthew. I am not name-dropping Forrest Whittaker for no reason. It is to attach our stories to each other for my readers’ understanding of my context. If you look up interviews with Forrest Whitaker, and to a certain extent, Jamie Foxx (he was a little closer to Dallas than Longview. To grow up in that environment was to hear the n-word with regularity, before Black people reclaimed it. To be who I am and to be told not to challenge authority crippled me with meltdown and burnout, but back then I didn’t know I was autistic. I didn’t know that my sense of injustice went to eleven and I would feel physical pain when Black people hurt.
White guilt tells you to hate that you’ve read Gone With the Wind and seen the movie several times. If you’ve been in Black culture long enough, you learn that it’s not a monolith. It did not age well and few novels do. But I’ve met some Black people that loved it and decided to stop hating myself so much.
It’s not my favorite, not even close. But I’m glad I read it because 40 years later I see it from a different height. I’ve never gone back to it, but I think of favorite lines, favorite characters, and smile. What I do not do is white saviorism. “To Kill a Mockingbird” is beloved, but it’s not reality. You want reality? That’s “Go Set a Watchman.” Atticus Finch is not the hero you think he is. He’s just a regular white guy. Not willing to let a Black person die, but not comfortable with equality, either.
Mockingbird lets white readers feel heroic. Gone with the Wind lets white readers feel nostalgic. Watchman asks white readers to feel responsible.
I remember so much more about Mockingbird and Watchman because I’ve read them so much more recently. Gone with the Wind is best left to a memory, because that movie is lineage, not presence. I went from feeling empathy towards racial minorities before I knew that the Black and queer political movements were inextricably interrelated. Bayard Rustin was running both at once. There is no evidence that my friend Sally Gearheart ever met Bayard Rustin, but he shaped her movement, anyway, because they were receiving marching orders directly from the top, and Sally was instrumental in Bay Area queer and feminist politics. Sally is also a huge part of my past because she’s my true north in terms of what I want to be like when I’m old. Jesus God. If you ever met Sally once, you’d remember. But I was lucky enough to see her several summers running at different parties and things like that.
It was akin to sitting at the feel of the Master.
Watching was the best education, because I could see Sally so clearly, and in a way she might not have described herself.
She was an absolute badass at knowing the exact moment to drop the hammer on a conversation. And by “hammer,” I mean how to synthesize a conversation quickly, decide action items, etc…. because she was capable of managing her own energy and deciding how much of her time that people deserved.
The progression away from Gone with the Wind is dramatic, because I no longer surround myself with people who love it for all the wrong reasons.
Stories That Are All True 