Tag: fiction

The Comedy Routine

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Today’s writing prompt is simply to describe a family member. I choose Angela.

The first conversation I had with Angela was when I was 16. I told her that I thought she should join the space program. That they needed space doctors. She said, “but Leslie… I already am a space doctor. I’m a room-a-tologist.”

It killed, because I was impressed that she was a doctor in a specialty that interested me… More of a detective than anything else, and conferences in our office were VERY VERY MUCH like you see on House. And she was a rheumatologist, so sometimes, it was indeed lupus. Beat that with a stick.

We made fast friends because she was the kind of acid funny I like.

One story involving this period of my life, I thought had been forgotten. I was wrong.

We were singing…… “Let us break bread together, on our knees….. Let us break bread together on our knees… When I fall on my FACE….. We both sang the wrong word at the wrong time and cracked up. It was in the middle of the service because of course it was, and my mother was directing the choir. If looks could kill, we both would have been dead and buried.

Lots of funny things happened to her as a doctor, so she put together a comedy routine in her Palm Pilot and kept adding to it. However, she never got to give it. It’s my hope to tell you these stories for posterity and make you laugh with stories that have entertained our family for 30 years. It really loses something without the hand motions, but 6… 7.

Angela was given her beeper on her first day at the hospital. She’s all shiny and new, thinks she’s got it. Gets a page and goes into the room where a woman is seizing all over the place. Angela looks at the nurse like a deer in headlights. Nurse says, “Doctor, would you like to push some valium?” Angela raises her finger and says, “let’s.” Her first medical order as a doctor was, “let’s.” She was stunned by her own brilliance and learned the value of experienced nurses.

If my father reads this, he will remind me it was thorazine or something. I don’t remember the drug, I just remember how hard I laughed when she told it, and I will miss that she’ll never tell it again. However, I do a killer impression of her like all kids can imitate their parents. I can remind myself of her anytime I want. These stories keep her alive.

Guy comes into the ER saying that he thinks his foot is broken. Angela tells him that he cannot possibly have a broken foot because he walked in on it. Comes back after seeing the X-ray and says, “oh my God I am so sorry. Your foot is broken in like 26 places.”

Woman comes in saying that she thinks that she has swallowed a crab claw. She puts on her serious face and says how unlikely that is, because what actually happens is that when the crab claw is going down, it scratches the inside of your esophagus and you still feel it in there when it’s not. It’s called “foreign body sensation.”

The crab claw in this woman’s esophagus made her say unprintable things.

Another time, she didn’t use a mirror before she went into a patient’s room, smearing what she thought was clear chapstick all over her lips. She goes into the room and the family is all looking at her like she is the most interesting woman in the world. They can’t take their eyes off her. It’s just strange…….. Then she walks out of the patient room and sees herself in a mirror. She’s got red lipstick from her nose to her chin.

Those are just a few of the stories I remember from when I actually worked for her, and I miss that time in my life. When Angela was in private practice, I could work under her without getting certified. When she sold to Methodist, they required certifications I didn’t have. I think all the time about what my life would have looked like if I’d done that work, but I think getting me as far away from HIPPAA as possible is best for my blog.

I did enjoy my white coat and stethoscope days, though. Work started early, but we had two hours for lunch. Sometimes this was fast and furious, because we were going to the hospital to round on patients. Some days, though, we had time to come home and get in the pool before we went back, and those days were just golden.

I joke that I went to medical school in the back of a Lexus, and there is more truth to it than laughs. I learned a great deal about patient care, drug interactions, what needs cutting and what doesn’t, etc. And just like a medical student, there was no concrete entry point. I just started overhearing the fire hose of rapid-fire information coming at Angela and one day, I could hang.

When I met Angela, I met a different idea of what a woman could be, particularly a straight woman. I needed that in my life because my relationship with my mother was complicated, as complicated as the one with the woman who emotionally abused me for so many years. She was the one that showed me there were no gender roles, that women could be breadwinners and heads of household. She could do dinner and dancing or sitting in a blind for three days without showering just to get a photo of a bird.

In fact, this leads to another funny patient story. My stepmother told her patient and their husband that she’d gone up to Vancouver to shoot snowy owls. She talked for several minutes about shooting these endangered birds, so the patient asked how you cook them. Angela laughed so hard she nearly fell on the floor before explaining she was a nature photographer.

These are all the funny things I’d like to remember about Angela, because our relationship was unique. She was one of the people that turned my world from black and white into color, and I’ll never forget it. We all have those moments as teens when our brains switch on and those adults who make it happen.

Brain Droppings

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Only in America could Dunkin make paying $4.23 for a large cup of coffee seem reasonable, because Starbucks has made it their mission in life to make coffee as expensive as possible. But to be fair to Starbucks, I’m not sure their large coffee is more expensive than Dunkin. I think that when I go to Starbucks, I am not lured by their coffee. Their espresso drinks are where it’s at, and I don’t get out of there for less than $6.00. I don’t do it every day, because I’m a Xennial who knows that of course I can buy a house if I just stop buying coffee and avocado toast.

Of course Starbucks is the reason I can’t buy a house, and not the gigantic surge of inflation over the last 40 years. Coffee is just the best example to bring it home to people. I am sure that very old people who can remember paying a dollar for coffee in a diner are more outraged than I am, because it’s just beans and water. The margin is incredible. We don’t pay for drinks, we pay for drugs. 😛

There’s no way that people buy coffee just for the taste, because you can find excellent decaf out there, but who’s going to buy it? Apparently, more people than I think, because I have a decaf Cafe Bustelo in my cabinet for those long writing nights in which I still need the aromatherapy to function, but eventually want to sleep at some point.

I have an interesting relationship with coffee, because my brain slows down while my body ramps up. It’s the same with Ritalin or any drug I might take for ADHD. My brain needs the caffeine to function, my body does not. Therefore, I often drink coffee, as I told my sister, “until my brain works and my hands are shaking.” That’s because high doses of caffeine seem to be the right amount of correction and Ritalin is too much.

When I’m on Ritalin, my autism cannot cope.

That’s the part I’ve been missing all these years. I’ve had an ADHD and a bipolar diagnosis because women are often diagnosed with personality disorders instead of autism. That’s why there’s so many new women being diagnosed. The criteria has changed because AuDHD was being mistaken for other things, or impossible to find because the personality disorder and the autism were comorbidities, as is my case. I go up and down with the seasons due to my bipolar disorder. Neither depression nor hypomania last very long.

I have a good relationship with hypomania most of the time, because it doesn’t present as this period of wild behavior that goes up into what most would view as crazy. It’s just a period of productivity, alertness, and a lot of the time, insomnia that drugs cannot defeat. My body is too keyed up with adrenaline to let them take effect. There’s only been one time in my history that hypomania has led to true mania, and I was laid out in the hospital for several days while my medication got adjusted.

It was so frustrating, because I didn’t have any ID on me when I got there, so they gave me the first drugs they thought I would need instead of the ones I normally took. But, when I got back to having a regular psychiatrist, my protocol was changed back to my regularly scheduled program. I think that I’m doing better for two reasons.

The first is that things calmed down to nothing in terms of Aada’s story with me, so I don’t have those worries weighing me down anymore. I am satisfied that all we want is peace for the other, and that any contact down the road will be just as peaceful as ours was a few days ago.

We deserve the right to be tired of each other for a while. I cannot believe how bad things got, and how much of a miracle it will be if this is not the end of our movie. That’s because we are excellent writing partners, and it would be fun to create a writer’s room with her in it rather than isolated on my own. If I am allowed to build a dream, it’s that Lanagan Media Group will take on a project that excites her, so she’ll actually want her STEAM creativity sitting at my table. I am not kidding when I say that we would flatten people with our talent and make millions of dollars. I’m not talking her up, this is just the truth.

She doesn’t use arts in her daily job, so she doesn’t think of herself as creative. But I know better because of her diverse background. She could also make me come alive in a different way, because it’s our synergy that makes me feel like a better writer than I actually am. I don’t think I’ve focused on that enough and given her credit. All of that letter writing crafted me into someone with incredible dexterity as a writer, and it was all because I was trying to be impressive when I didn’t feel like it.

She thought of me as a professor, lecturing her instead.

I was always embarrassed by this, because my neurodivergent need to over-explain everything was a symptom. I never thought she was less intelligent than me or less capable. I’m a storyteller, and getting lost in my own thoughts alienated her so that she thought I was speaking ex cathedra, that my words had a magical quality that they didn’t, which was more truth than hers.

I could get lost in my beautiful girl’s writing, and I regret that I did not give her the time and space to feel it. Because I’ve deleted most of the other ones, I’ve gone back and savored the one from the other day. It’s the last pieces of her that I have, and it’s not surprising to me that I want to spend time with them. Her tone is warm and inviting, letting me listen to all her stories. They were very good ones, a narrative I could never create on this web site because those are not my stories to tell.

I may have been invited into her world for the last time, as I have written on my own blog… “The Last Letter.” It is not time to think of an us, only a me in a new direction. But I think there is new hope of building something down the road, after our feelings have had time to breathe. I need to get better, to recover from the last 12 years. I need to be in a more stable place to give Aada the grace that love requires, and she needs time to reach that place with me. If we ever do come back together, it will be because we know we belong in each other’s lives because of our conflict and not despite it.

As I told her, “what would be The AntiAada is for you to face real conflict in a friendship and come out the other side.” That is because she said that her journey with The AntiLeslie had come to a close. This changed her stance to “for now.”

Two words have not meant this much since “someday, perhaps.”

Because the thing about Aada is that she chooses her words very carefully, and would not lead me on if she did not mean it. I was blown away by her depth of emotion for me, that she actually liked being my yellow string and refers to it often. That she was not threatened when I said that it was hard to create relationships outside of her because I was so invested in this one.

It comes across as love addiction, that I’ve attributed these magical qualities to a real life person. But you won’t know if I’m telling the truth or not. You’ll just have to see if our partnership actually produces anything in the future.

I don’t think that Aada has it in her for this to be the last of our movie, either, if she longs for the days when reading “Stories” was her highlight. If there was something I was doing that made her feel that way, I’d certainly want to know what it was.

I thought she would think of me as serious, thoughtful, not willing to throw her away. She thought I was playing her alive. It is definitely a difference of opinion, and one that makes me eager to explore more of myself. To understand what I’m doing when I write about a conflict with someone and they see it.

If you have a conflict with a writer, it’s going to hurt if they’re any good. It was not my intention to come across as The Punisher, just The Tortured Bloggers’ Department.

I’m having to bat cleanup and clarify that all my ruminations were designed to let me let go. That holding all my emotions inside was damaging to me when I couldn’t get air to them. That is no longer a problem, because I don’t see those problems in the same way.

They have been recorded, and are yesterday’s newspaper…. What should be lining your birdcage if you print.

The best comment I ever got from a reader was that I made her cry on the toilet.

Now that’s power.

My story is interesting because it involves so many different people and eras. When I go back and read I realize how many multitudes I contain. But how to show those different aspects of myself to the world has come with mixed results.

I have had to struggle with being popular among strangers and Harriet the Spy to my friends. Given that I love spies, this comparison is not altogether unpleasant. I also enjoy the cartoon, and would love a t-shirt.

But all this time, I haven’t thought of myself as Harriet the Spy, but Player from Carmen Sandiego. I’m just the nerd on the internet with lots of information, that’s usually not in the same physical place with her friends. I identify a lot with Justin Long from “Galaxy Quest.”

But due to my ADHD I have a wide variety of interests rather than sinking my curiosity into only one thing.

And now we’ve arrived at an AHA! moment.

No, I don’t have varied interests because they all feed my writing. I have to have something to write about, but my mind never lifts away from the things I could do here to be more creative.

I just haven’t been funny lately, and I apologize. I haven’t felt funny.

I’ve felt like licking my wounds and being dumped girl.

Meanwhile, I was never dumped girl. I was “I am totally responsible for every aspect of this conflict because I had one job.” I turned my harsh criticism on myself and let everyone see it…. And in fact wonder what made Aada say that I don’t.

I have manipulated her without realizing it, and she cannot say that she did not do the same. I would love to hear what Aada’s doctor saw in me that made her say that Aada was being manipulated, because I’m betting that there are more constructive ways I could have said everything. I hope the difference between me and Aada’s other friends is that I’m waiting and willing to learn all these things so that we can be safe & stable with each other.

I still need to learn how to handle all of my relationships, it’s just that this one is the most important to me. 12 years is a lot of history to throw away, and there will never be a time in which her story is not welcome to be entwined with mine.

I closed my letter by saying that I was “an all the way to the river friend, if we could find a way to walk without tripping the other up.” I think that is the plight of all relationships, to as Rumi says, be entwined at the branches instead of the trunk. All people need enough room to breathe and be themselves, and enough companionship to feel like they are not walking alone.

It is something I will take with me into all new relationships, because I need to talk to a therapist about my own verbiage. How can I grow as a person so that my writing becomes happier? How can I put away my troubles when it is time? How can I focus on my life and compartmentalize?

How can I focus on my own goals, putting down my conflicts with other people and the need to turn them over in my head? I have a feeling it’s why I’m not more popular than I am, this need to ruminate. But it is in this rumination that I find the strength to make it through the rough days. It is my therapy and my hitchhiker’s guide to the universe.

Anne Lamott has always said that if you don’t see the book on the shelf that you need to read, you should write it. Because I didn’t have any new memories with Aada to create, I found myself dwelling on old ones. I was a sentimental fool, and it didn’t come across to the one person I needed to “get it.”

But she does “get it.” She told me never to stop writing, that I didn’t need to take anything down, that she wanted peace for me.

My only reply to that was “you want peace for me, but you do not want to do anything to promote it.” I think that line landed exactly where I needed it to land because it is the heart of the problem. We keep reaching out to each other and missing the mark because we know each other so well in one aspect, writing.

Aada promoting peace would be meeting me in person, allowing us both to decompress and talk slower than 90 wpm.

It is how I have learned that my writing can be negative, that I spend so much time in this space that I am not really connecting with people. Connection is in glances, hugs, cheek kisses, whatever the occasion dictates. Connection is Cafe Bustelo. Connection is Dunkin. Connection is Starbucks.

Connection is spending a few extra dollars on coffee to sit next to each other, welcoming the other into our silence.

Driving Ambition

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I recently bought a used car. It’s a 2019 Ford Fusion SEL, a sedan with the aggressive styling of the Mustang in gunmetal gray. I cannot tell you how nice it is to be mobile again, because what was tripping me up about leaving the house was having to be in public from the moment I walk out my front door until I get to my destination. There is a feeling I need to be “on,” and whether or not that’s true I’m in prime social masking territory waiting for the bus.

In the car, I do not have to worry about being charming. My eyes can be half closed in the line at Starbucks just like everyone else. It’s those little bursts of sensory deprivation that give me the energy to make it through the day.

I have had many dreams of my beautiful girl learning to scare me in it. Which one? Take your pick. They are all beautifully scary drivers. That’s how I roll. Drive like a grandma in my own car, but enjoy the criminality of others whenever possible.

I drive so slow that people routinely go around me. I can’t help it. It’s my new car and I don’t want to get into trouble with tickets or accidents. I don’t mind being passed. I’d rather give someone room to get around me and let them go on their merry way. Some drivers have gotten way too close for comfort and I can only surmise that they do not have lane assist on their cars like I do.

Lane assist, the backup camera, blind spot assist, and adaptive cruise control allow me to overcome my original problem when I got my license…. Lack of stereopsis. Not being able to see in 3D made cars jump out of nowhere.

After being absolutely blinded by the sun this morning, I’m ready to go back to Oregon. Evan’s a realtor. I’ll just leave tomorrow and figure it out on the road (KIDDING). I actually love the sunshine, but the gray has its benefits. You are rarely, if ever, blinded on Portland roads. You can’t even see the sun 280 days a year.

These drives of mine are bringing up drives past, when I just loaded up my truck, Shirley, and hit the open road. We’d drive out the Columbia River Gorge and go hiking…. Well, the truck was terrible at hiking even in four wheel drive mode, so I left Shirley in the parking lot. You know what I mean. I took my camera and stopped every 50 feet to take pictures of flora and fauna alike.

It’s what I’m hoping to do on Sunday, when I travel out to my friend Tiina’s farm. I was sick this past Sunday, so we rescheduled. I’m so excited that I don’t have to miss out on a great road trip, and lots of photography of Virginia.

I used to live in Alexandria, so I always feel like going to Virginia is going home. I hope to bring out some of that emotion in my pictures so that you can tell how much I miss it. And who knows, maybe I’ll end up in Virginia again someday. It would be a pleasure to claim 703 for the first time since I was 24.

Right now, though, I have a more immediate need- driving around to find a place to live quickly. A move to Virginia could indeed happen fast, but I want to think about it first. I have memories in Alexandria that are not altogether pleasant, and I’d like some time for them to fade. But what I will love is driving by my old house, which faces the freeway, on the way to Tiina’s. I think…. Hard to tell which route I’ll take on a Sunday afternoon with the least amount of traffic all week.

I am feeling my inertia start to rise because I have another place that is totally my own. I am capable of more than I have been, but I don’t know how much. I have a driving ambition to find out, because I am letting go of things not meant for me.

I’m excited that Aada just said “for now,” because I know she chooses her words carefully. She would not leave me with hope if she did not mean it. We need time to settle, to breathe, and for me to feel the wind in my hair as all my troubles fly out the passenger side. Believe me when I say that her passenger has just as many issues, enough for both cars.

Rolling down the windows and turning up the stereo is how I’m going to survive all of this, just like when I met her and found out, gasp, she was straight. It doesn’t bother me now, but it bothered me a great deal back then. It’s not that I thought anything would happen, it’s that you can’t control who turns your head and it was an ordeal to turn back.

In a lot of ways, my head will never be on straight because the driving ambition in my life is to find a way to make myself so proud that I start attracting energy to me rather than feeling like I need to give it away. That leaves me a lot of room to dream into the clouds and not a lot of time on the ground with execution. AI is making all of that easier, with abstract ideas being concrete plans in a matter of minutes.

Stop.

I wanted this entry to be all about my car, and my mind leaned toward Aada again. I’m calling myself out and changing the channel, because even though the thought is not intrusive, now is not the time to indulge it. I’m supposed to be resting and relaxing. Dr. Aada’s orders, and Dr. Leslie’s back to her.

Why do I feel myself shutting down for calling myself out? Because I don’t like authority, even mine. I have a driving ambition to be more than I thought I could be because I have the stories of several women flowing through my veins that are tougher motherfuckers than me.

:::pats self on back:::

One of them is even a very famous Instagram influencer and so cute I walked into a door at Chuy’s trying not to notice. I hurt my nose.

This is me once again trying to recapture what it is like for reading “Stories” to again be the highlight of Aada’s day, because she apologized that she would not be reading…. And her resolve was secure, she hadn’t read since Friday.

My heart might have melted at that.

She stayed with me and read everything I had to say until Friday? That means she read the letter Bob wrote mirroring her, which was actually perfect in its tone except for the lack of profanity. She thought I was raking her over the coals and trying to exact a price when I thought I was writing the good, the bad, and the ugly.

That there is more to my story than the things that went wrong, and now I know what they are. I am responsible for all of it, and the price I paid is large. I have learned from my mistakes, and need to make amends.

My saving grace is that Supergrover (Aada) sees my pain. Honors it. Acknowledges it. Has come to me in a way that few people do, heart in hand.

It reinforces the fact that she’s been my driving ambition since long before I bought a car. The relief of seeing her name in my inbox and the story she told me brought tears as I coped with the loss I’d felt since December. She brought it all back, but because she leveled with me, she did not hurt me. I have not lost progress to our conversation, except that my thought processes regarding her have calmed.

I’m not as anxious as I was. I won’t be from here on out. Aada’s and my ages have a lot to do with it. I’m slowing down and I need Aada to slow down with me. It’s time. We’re both ready for some space and she has given it to me by allowing me to write whatever I want. She is not going to read it. So anyone who thinks she needs to know something, write it down. She doesn’t want to know.

She doesn’t want to know the good, the bad, and the ugly because all she takes home is the bad and the ugly. She said yesterday that compliments were like puzzles, which only puzzled me. When you get mad at your spouse or your sibling, does that one fight eliminate all the love you have for them? Well, that’s how I feel about Aada. She is cute, cuddly, and in monster mode will eat off your face. Twice.

I have it on good authority that she doesn’t mind being monstrous.

The “for now” aspect of her e-mail convinces me that this is not the end of our movie. That all I need to do is accept more of the universe into my writing so that she’s not so extremely loud and incredibly close. But if you were traveling with The Doctor, wouldn’t you rather write about them than anyone else?

As with all companions, living with The Doctor on the TARDIS has to come to an end. I feel that this is just Aada dropping me back off in 2025. But there’s always the specials, so perhaps the blue box will appear in the sky when I least expect it.

I can at least give chase in my magnificent used car.

What is it about Aada that makes her so special? I can’t tell you that. I’m not being flip. I really don’t know why she has captured my imagination so completely. But it was there before we ever talked about her career.

You know. At the car wash. I hope they’re breaking even.

Grace and peace, Godspeed to you. I’ll see you in my dreams, when we race to Coos Bay. I’ll even give you a head start if you’re in the pregnant roller skate.

Do I Like Risk?

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
What’s the biggest risk you’d like to take — but haven’t been able to?
View all responses

I am not generally a daredevil, so it’s hard to think of anything I’d like to do more adrenaline-filled than go to the spy museum and read books. But perhaps if I had a friend with me, I’d like to do something more brave, like bungee jumping or sky diving. It really depends on my traveling companion. Do they want to do high adrenaline stuff? I’m flexible.

I’ve always thought that Hawaii would be my perfect vacation because they have all the extreme sports, but if you want to lay on the beach and be a bum, you can do that, too. I will have to talk to Bryn and see how risk averse she is, because she’s the person I can see doing that stuff with. If I meet a partner in the future, I’m sure I’ll want to include them, too. But my best friend being with me is non-negotiable (if she wants to go).

Skydiving, among my friends, has gotten mixed reviews. I think the only way I will know how I feel about it is to jump, because some people loved it, some people hated it. Both are equal in their fervor. I am sure that it is the same with bungee jumping, I just don’t have any friends that have done it…. well, maybe Lindsay has, but I’d have to check and there’s no way she’s up yet. I don’t want to poke the bear, okkkkk…….

I am hoping that I get the chance to travel as I age, and have mentioned before that I would like to spend some time in Finland with all the other neurodivergent weirdos. That includes going into the sauna, then jumping into the lake. I am almost certain I will not die, and that I will not get a truly Finnish experience if I do not do this at least once.

Maybe I’ll love it. Maybe they’ll have to call an ambulance. Who knows?

I’d also like to visit other parts of the world, but I’m not sold on where I would like to go except for Helsinki (and Tampere, to visit the MOOMIN museum). I know that I’d like to explore the UK, because I have only been to London. Maybe Rosie O’Donnell would let me visit her in Ireland. 😉

The most important part is that wherever I go, I take a piece of home with me. Aada’s letter yesterday served as that talisman, a new Gmail era that I don’t want to delete. Last night I felt emotionally regulated for the first time in months, actual tears threatening to fall with relief.

She doesn’t feel sorry for herself, she is aware of the penance she is paying. I feel exactly the same way in an equal and opposite reaction. I hope it will allow us room to breathe and come back together in the end.

We’ll just have to see what these next few years hold, because I think we at least need that much time to rest and relax. We’ve both been through a really hard thing, and I make it more complicated because I’m a writer.

Trips like these where I am constantly taking in new information are so important. I don’t want to stagnate in my writing or anywhere else, and it’s important that I drift away from Aada to the extent that I can. I have been so dialed into her for so long that I’m finding it hard to walk through life without her, but resolute that it’s time for me to find out how to cope on my own.

I just know that she cannot stay away from me any more than I can stay away from her. Even yesterday, she said, “for now.”

I’ll take it.

She has shown me that she has the ability to change, and the ability to face the music in really hard conflict. I wasn’t sure about that before, and now I feel better. It’s still time to let go and trust that the universe has our backs. That just because we aren’t talking, that doesn’t mean that peace isn’t flowing through the chord that runs between us.

If is is meant to be, it will be. I can rest in that.

So bring on the adrenaline. I want to live before I die.

Telephone

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 2 Comments

There’s really not a lot about me that my readers don’t know that have been reading every day. I don’t create a persona for this web site, it’s my real inner monologue spilled onto the page. What tends to happen is that by other people reading, what people find out about me is their impressions of what I said, and their impressions often miss the mark. Reading comprehension is different for everyone, and I may have thought I said something one way, but it came across to the audience as the opposite. That’s why people fight with me tooth and nail over what I actually meant.

You would think that an author would know what they meant more than the reader, but my readers do not react like that. No matter what the blowback might be, I should have known it was coming. I should have had the same thought process my reader did. It’s impossible, which is why I don’t give readers much purchase into my writing process. We can talk after I’ve already written, but taking advisement causes me not to write at all. That’s because I start thinking of all the things that could go wrong after an entry is published and the courage to hit post never appears.

Because Aada told me that she was a high level operative, I feel more scared at publishing these entries than I’ve felt my whole blogging career. What if I’m wrong and I have hurt truly innocent people? What if it’s possible to find Aada just by looking at my web site and I’ve put her in danger? If Aada really does what she says she does, publishing is unforgivable. But I do not believe that anymore. I believe that she needed an admirer.

Someone to tell her that she was every bit as amazing as her sisters, and again, I would have done this if she worked at a car wash. She didn’t need to be anything more that she actually was. Puffing herself up was her own deal, and one I find disconcerting as I work backward through all the lies.

She told me not to see a therapist about our relationship, so I didn’t have anyone to confide in but her. Now I know why she was so prickly about talking about her career. It wasn’t hers.

I left my wife because Aada didn’t want information going to her.

It was years before I opened up after that, but I’m glad I did. The bubble of secrecy was slowly making me more and more unstable.

Michael tells me that I seem much more stable now, and in the end, that’s all that matters. I am getting better, slowly. No more gaslighting, no more being emotionally starved when I’m clearly invested, no more holding onto things not meant for me.

You’d be surprised to know that I’m still sad. I still miss my friend.

Nothing will be the same.

Everything will be okay.

Thinking in the Dark

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

If Michael is right, then I spun out over problems I thought Aada had that never existed, and I put her first for nothing. Puffing herself up to that degree only made me worry about her, not think she was cool. Michael doesn’t have a history of lying to me about anything, and he’s the friend that calls my cognitive behavioral health counselor when he sees symptoms on my blog.

The problem is that because Aada pathologically lied about one thing, now I think most things she told me were false. Mostly because I would have had to receive visitors on her behalf, being the figure she claimed. It is possible she circumvented all that somehow and she’s telling the truth, but now I have reason to doubt when I never did before.

Two very conspicuous e-mails stick out in my mind… The one where I caught Aada in her lie, and the one where I batted cleanup based on what she told me. I most probably made an idiot out of myself in front of someone I admire, and I’m too embarrassed just to go up and talk to her if I see her out and about.

That’s because I doubt I was telling the truth in the letter that batted cleanup, because my letter was built on a house of cards.

My entire relationship with Aada has been built on a house of cards.

But if Michael is right, it also means that I did not betray her, I did not write anything that would hurt her, I just flat embarrassed her.

That doesn’t make me feel so hot, but it does make me feel less depressed. The consequences for the former are fairly steep. For the latter, it won’t make us any closer but the consequences don’t make me want to vomit.

The longer I’m away from Aada, the more I know that my love for her is real. That’s because I have had enough time to sit with her mountain of lies and say, “okay. I forgive you.” If she insists on keeping them up, I’ll never know the real story and I don’t need it.

Because I liked her smile, and her warmth, and her way of being in the world. Her no bullshit attitude cut through my dreaminess quite nicely. Nothing about her personal or professional life made her more interesting than she already was.

She accused me of making Michael my bellwether friend, but she could not see that she was not in a position to argue with me. Why would I think that one little lie was all there was between us? The “little” lie turned out to be big, actually.

Because if Aada was telling the truth all the way around, there’s no way this blog could exist.

Angela’s Office

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

The light from the reading lamps sweeps perfectly up the wall behind my computer, bathing me in a soft glow. I’m winding down for the night, caught between the ideas of writing to you and going down for a soak in the hot tub. Because I’m a gardener and not an architect, I don’t know how long this entry will be yet- perhaps there will be time for both. Or perhaps I will make time. Grief is heavy and my body feels like it is using muscles it hasn’t in a very long time. I could use jets of hot water streaming at my back and you know what? I’m going to go get in the hot tub now. See you on the flip side.

My muscles feel relaxed, and I just took some sleeping pills to ensure that I rest well. I’m just so sad, surrounded by all of Angela’s things that bring her back in my mind. There’s the photo of the emu I’ve always called “The Disapproving Grandmother.” She was a bird photographer. There are raptors and eagles around me…. but no orioles. Angela never made it to DC or Baltimore when I was there.

There’s also a tiny urn that’s usually here that says “Ashes of Problem Patients,” but my dad relocated it to the living room.

If I’m going to have so much of my stepmom around me, it’s really her office that matters the most because I worked for her for a number of years. I will see patients I haven’t seen since the 1990s, and definitely my coworkers from the time period. Believe me when I tell you that it is like the sun dropped out of its orbit. Everyone in my family has done something to support the practice and most of us worked there as a first job.

So this desk feels familiar. This tape dispenser. This reading lamp.

Familiar.

Familial.

I have joked for many years that I went to medical school in the back of a Lexus.

It’s not really a joke.

My favorite thing about my stepmother as a doctor is that she could laugh at herself. If you meet me on the ground, make sure you ask me to tell you the stories about “foreign body sensation” and “chapstick.”

Both of these stories make me laugh until I cry, but they lose something when you try to write them down.

Angela wrote all these stories down in her Palm Pilot, then her phone, calling it her “comedy routine.” I’m sure that I could remember a lot of it, but I hope my dad has access to her phone so that document isn’t lost.

“I know dis shit like the back of my head.”

But I probably don’t know it as well as I think I do. The brain takes memories and squishes them together, melting days and stretching minutes. I really hope that document is intact.

Angela, to me….

“You think it’s embarrassing telling people you’re gay…. wait til you have to tell them you went to University of Houston.”

Fragments are coming now, little pieces of conversation over the years.

She was the first person to really teach me how to cook, because my mother was more dedicated to convenience. Dana, as a chef, furthered my technique and got it up to snuff. Angela taught me that there was a world outside the microwave long before that.

The sleeping pills are starting to kick in. Welcome to the party………………..

I’ve started car shopping and I’ve found several that I like. What I’m mostly feeling is relief that I don’t have to go home on Tuesday. I have reached a different point in my life and would like to reconnect with everyone, even if it’s just for a few extra days. I need to be in this office, soaking up all the inspiration that’s here.

Then, I will pack up my car and drive home.

What kind of car remains to be seen, because I need to buy one. That’s been my project for today, sitting in Angela’s office and surfing Facebook Marketplace just to see what’s out there. I don’t really have a “dream car,” but I do know that I want an older car so that I can afford it to be loaded out. I can’t wait to use the seat warmers when it’s 20 degrees outside. I’m fairly certain I want a wagon or an SUV, but if the engine on the sedan is the better value, that’s fine, too. I’m also not opposed to a pickup truck. I just bought cowboy boots a few weeks ago, so I’ve already got the accessories.

In this office, it’s quiet enough that Aada visits me. There’s a feeling I get “when she’s here,” that closeness seeming to reach out to her even though the other end of the string is not responding and probably won’t change her mind on that one. I call it “smoking with the ghost in the back of my head” after the Lisa Loeb lyrics. Mostly, I’m just wondering what it is she’d like to know. Thinking about that question at least gives me a seed that grows into a makeshift framework.

I’m trying to go back to the place of being happy without her, because I was once and I cannot find it again. That’s because I hurt her when I was angry she lied about something. I can’t find the happy part knowing I caused pain to someone else.

Sitting in this office allows me to sit in peace and quiet, reorganizing my priorities.

I said that I thought and felt that Aada isolated me from my friends and family, so now I’m trying to create a better relationship with my dad and sisters. I wasn’t doing that before because I wasn’t always aware of it. I was so shut down and standoffish by the time I left for DC, and that’s just not me. I have a lot of reparative work to do, and I am doing it.

I don’t know yet whether that includes moving into this office full time.

4’33

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 1 Comment
Daily writing prompt
What do you listen to while you work?
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The air conditioner and the box fan in my office are both humming as I listen to the keys on my mechanical keyboard clack. Music, for me, is not external. I write in the silence, but music often runs through my head as I record the difficult passages of my life.

This is a difficult passage, but as Winston Churchill famously said, “if you’re going through hell, keep going.” The reason this is a difficult day is that I started out by looking at Facebook memories, and it was one year ago that I wrote the letter to Michael, Aada’s husband, explaining that it was a rough break for both of us that we didn’t get to meet each other and make room for all of our feral feelings for each other. I wrote a list of all the ways I wanted him to love her in my stead. It made me smile, and then my cheeks felt wet. I still feel every bit of love for Aada that I always did, but I got myself into an impossible situation and now it’s time to get out.

Everything right now is a distraction from the way I feel when I’m writing about her, because it makes me feel invincible to have such an incredible muse. I’m not angry today, as I was in the last entry. Just sad that none of my predictions for the future will come true unless a miracle occurs. I take responsibility for all the ways my blog has affected her life, and look forward to writing more about new experiences. The sadness is not being able to talk to her first before I publish, something I should have thought more about before I “exposed her.”

I deserved this friend breakup because I got too angry, too fast. She was my primary relationship for a number of years because we weren’t romantically involved, but emotionally entwined in a way that most friends aren’t. I still cannot deal with the hole left in my heart, and the guilt that it came at my own hand. I was in a very bad place, and I own that I would have made different decisions had I felt better about myself and the state of my world. It’s not an excuse, but my bipolar disorder got the best of me. Having bipolar disorder does not make me less accountable for my actions, but it is context for me down the road when I’ve forgotten why this relationship no longer exists and “whatever happened to….”

I used the word “feral,” and that’s exactly what it was… a reaction with no reasoning behind it. She lied to me in a way that she cost me more than she will ever accept, and while she has apologized for that lie “a million times over,” it does not erase my reaction when I found out.

I was less than gracious.

There’s no going back, so as I sit in the “silence” I’m thinking about how we both treated each other over the years. There’s no percentage in trying to fix anything, there is only taking the good parts away and learning from the bad. We both told each other to fuck off every time we got close. In that way, it will take months for this to feel real. That’s because we’ve tried to end it hundreds of times and it hasn’t worked for either one of us. Either I will feel her pull or she’ll read something here that she has to address, and we go a few days catching up until something gets said that the other doesn’t like and then it’s chopping each other off at the knees. That cycle has to end for both of us, because we have tried to get healthy over and over and over and over and over and over…………….

I do not think that we’d be in the same place had we met in person, because there’s something about the Internet that makes you quicker to anger than in person. It’s easier to go down the wrong road a lot faster without clearing things up. I wonder every day how things would have changed if I’d ever seen her eyes sparkle when she was making a joke, or given her a hug after a fight. I wonder if she wonders those things about me.

She mentioned being sorry that she wasn’t more present when my mother so shockingly died, and I told her it was okay… she was present now. And at that time, it was true. But she was only present in my inbox, too ethereal to be real. I have to admit how tired I was of her bullshit, that if she really wanted to show up for me, she would have already. That her reluctance to meet was feeding the trauma bond, not creating a solid and secure connection. That she was going to be avoidant and I was going to be anxious and that’s just how the cookie crumbled.

I will be the villain in my own story, and I wish it meant I never had to talk to me again. I don’t feel great about this set of decisions and I will have problems forgiving myself for a long time. I should have just stopped replying. I should have left it at “I’m happier without you,” because at that time, I was. I’d managed to go a whole month without Aada ripping me a new asshole about something I’d written and it felt great. The thing is, though, I could go a month, but not longer.

I wasn’t happier without her in the long run, and I’m not happy now. But me being unhappy is not her problem to solve, because I think it’s better that we don’t talk. I need space to find new friends and make the solid, secure connections I crave without being a slave to my inbox. I gave up monster amounts of social interaction just to sit in my office and write to her. I do not regret it, I just know that much isolation is not good for anyone. But it’s amazing how happy I thought I was.

It’s time to consider a vacation from all of this, and mentally I just don’t know how to prepare.

I did make a wonderful friend this week, Josh, who lives in Maryland relatively close to me. He’s a therapist as a second career after being a war reporter in Iraq and a television news producer at CNN. We walked around the National Aquarium in Baltimore chattering away about anything and everything. I felt free for the first time in months, able to let go and just enjoy the moment.

Living in the moment is something all writers have trouble doing, so at least I don’t feel alone. We are all lost in our thoughts most of the day, because we’re constantly pushing our own “record” buttons.

Mine just doesn’t have background music in the traditional sense- it is the symphony happening behind me as I type. The air conditioner and the box fan in my office are both humming………..

I’m Still Figuring That Out

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
What are you good at?
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I treated myself to new-to-me running shoes today, because my old ones were bought in 2015. I do not know what happened to them, because they’re still perfectly comfortable. However, the rubber is starting to fall off and the tread feels like it has been dipped in chemicals so that they do not grip. Instead of being able to walk/run, I tend to slide around when I’m wearing them, particularly at the gym because everything is tiled. When I changed into them, I could tell an immediate difference because the floor at the store was polished concrete and I was able to jog in place without slipping.

I suppose that I am good at shopping, because a parishioner at one of our churches when I was a kid gave me a black belt in Goodwill. I have bought everything there, including important occasion outfits, just because I know my brands. That’s the secret to being really good at shopping, in my humble opinion. Even if I struck it rich, I would still rather have a $3-500 suit that’s been laundered a thousand times to make sure it’s soft than something brand new off the rack. My best find was in the early aughts, a full London Fog trench with liner for $24.

I also don’t mind not having the latest style of anything, because my clothes could best be described as the “Visiting Professor’s Collection” at Macy’s. Anything I buy is going to look timeless, because my shirts tend to come in three colors:

  • White
  • Blue
  • White and Blue pinstripes

However, I also like a bit of whimsy. These shoes remind me of Warhol and Lichtenstein, so I think they’ll look perfect with jeans and a button down. I am going to calm down the orange laces a bit by changing to UpUGo elastic laces. They’re not quite as bright, and I don’t have to tie them. I’m certain they’re mostly for children, but I wear boys’ shoes, anyway. Plus, who doesn’t love shoes with a cute little button on top?

I suppose I am good at writing, although writing is like courage. In the moment, you’re just doing what it is you need to do to survive. You don’t realize until afterwards that you’ve been courageous. I do not think I am a good writer. I put things out into the world and other people tell me if I’m a good writer or not. My therapist said that I must know I’m a good writer…. I did not know what to say to that. I’m glad she thinks that, mostly, because she’s more learned than I am. I have learned that I do not want to be an egomaniac, I just want to have confidence. I know that’s what she was talking about, but even telling people I think I’m a good writer sounds arrogant to me, so I don’t.

I do think that I could do a good job handling communications for modern executives, though, because most people do not know how to write introductory e-mails for basic correspondence. I was actually talking to my sister about this the other day, that the secretary she would have been given in the 1950’s would have handled the heavy lifting that AI is trying to do currently. First of all, it is unlikely that a woman would have had her job in the 1950s, but I definitely could have been the Peggy Olson to her Don Draper if given the chance.

I might be happy as a church employee of some kind, because that’s the type correspondence I can manage easily. I was reminded of this today when my sister asked my dad if he’d had a mobile phone in the early 1990s and I replied how I used to answer it. In the car, it was “Rev. Lanagan’s rolling office!” At home, it was “Lanagan summer home… summer home, summer not.” One of the parishioners had some alternatives to this which are really, really funny…. and also unprintable.

I have a good memory because they’re not really memories. An autist sees everything, everywhere, all at once as if no time has passed. This is both good and bad as I also have no friendship degradation mechanics. That’s a psychological term for calling up your best friend in third grade as if they’re still in the same place you are. If they are also neurodivergent, like as not, they are. If they are neurotypical, “Lucy, you got some ‘splainin’ to do.”

I am not good at reading a room, and that has served me well in some cases. Please believe that I have crashed and burned in others, but sometimes not reading a room correctly takes away the fear one feels in an unfamiliar situation and allows me to talk to people I never would have otherwise. For instance, I wasn’t approaching Jonna Mendez, chief of disguise and better than a mere mortal. I was approaching an old friend of Aada’s. Now that I know Aada lied and there’s no connection between them, I fear Jonna like the goddess she is.

That’s probably not healthy, but it is what it is.

Realistically, I know that Jonna puts on her running shoes one foot at a time just like me. But in my head she has attained a mythical status. I got all my books signed when I went to see her, so I have no need to bug her again. It’s probably just embarrassment on my part and she wouldn’t think twice.

But in my head, what if it’s not?

What if I’ve embarrassed myself to the point where I’m no longer wanted? I’d rather just keep my memories sacred and walk away, because I’d rather not find out what happens next in this particular story. I have other friends that work in intelligence and can regale me with stories when we’re both old and, more importantly, “outside with a drink in our hands……………” as Jonna so eloquently put it at the book talk for “The Moscow Rules.”

Those are the friends to whom I’d like to be a research assistant on their books, because I like writing non-fiction. I am not a novelist, and doubt I ever will be. I’m not running away from writing fiction, I just don’t get it. For instance, I don’t visualize inside my head, so I don’t really know how to write setting. I’m a gardener, so I have problems with plot. Because I’m a blogger, I’m solid at character studies……………. sometimes.

I am sure that I could learn these things over time, but conventional wisdom is to write what you know. So far, what I know is the world around me. Washington reads like a novel whether you aim for fiction or not. The characters and plots are interesting in and of themselves, and you do not have to make them up. I will never know what my real story in Washington is, because a lot of it happened behind my back. This is not a bad thing, as I fell into a safety net of sorts. One I hated, but still. That whole time in my life would just be a book called “Heytch,” because the trap I fell into was wanting to love her the way she wanted to be loved.

For the record, I showed up at the hospital because two incredibly unlikely stories were presented to me and I was betting that at least one was true. It was the one where she and her husband were wild about each other, and I could just come and live with them as a member of the family. That she was not poly and never had been; that she made it up to entice me when she didn’t need it. I would have followed her into the ocean no matter what.

If you really know me, you know just how little dating means to me, and how much I love deep conversations over coffee that never lead to romance. I could picture us as little old ladies together, and that meant more to me than gold, especially with her big sister right there to kiss the top of my head as she walked by on the odd occasion we ran into each other. Maybe I will write that story, if only for me, because of course it’s fiction now.

Sometimes I wonder how much of fiction is really fiction, and how much of it is people writing down what they thought was happening to them that later turned out not to come to pass. Fiction equals nonfiction plus time, I suppose.

Lots of people will tell you that I had hallucinations, and it is up to you to decide whether I really did or not. It has to be fiction now because all of the evidence has been scrubbed, even by me. I wish I had taken many, many screenshots…. but I didn’t. It would have been nice to have the photo of Heytch’s hand bound to mine, her saying that she was my River Song, because even if it wasn’t real, it was beautiful.

I would have been excellent at telling fact from fiction in person, but everything was presented to me over the internet with the ominous phrase “you are always the best.” One version of the story took this literally, a woman laying her heart at my feet. The other talked about all the destruction I’d caused with my blog because I was too arrogant to see I was causing it. Both stories are true, because I have never pretended to be the best at anything and yet, these people are also entitled to their opinion. What I believe to be true is that no one in that bunch believes in second chances, and I could have explained a lot with one, but in person.

Adding more to our internet history was only adding fuel to an enormous fire with no opportunity to put it out.

I just thought “Heytch” was cute once upon a time. I would have cut off a limb to meet Aada. Both were unique experiences, but they were completely different. I’m also in a completely different emotional place regarding both of them, that I will continue to write what I want because they had no shame in absolutely submarining me. I will never feel credible in the way that I did before I was hospitalized, because when I talk about their internet shenanigans, they are written off as hallucinations that never happened…………. all the evidence is gone.

I’m not sure whether I should thank them or not, because I am good at being sober. I was never abusing any substance, but I wouldn’t have given them up if they hadn’t intervened. It’s not that I realized I was an addict, it’s that I got a better offer. I don’t know what that offer is yet, because I haven’t chased it. My cognitive behavioral health counselor says that I’m not ready for a job, and I believe him for now. We’ll be reevaluating that in the future, because I know that I am capable of a lot more than I’m doing right now, and in fact, capable of a lot more than most people when I can give up my habit of assuming everything.

It’s not possible to be an autist in a neurotypical world without assuming things because if you don’t, people will talk down to you as if you are stupid and just don’t get it. I have found that I needed to switch to a neurodivergent workflow, and that was the kitchen at first. It just cannot be now because everything is too heavy, too hot, and too sharp. I am done with the hit parade of injuries at every shift because I cannot move fast enough and my balance leaves a lot to be desired.

I’m not healed enough from my trip to the hospital not to dwell on it here, because it threw me for such a loop. Because it was over the internet, I can tell you that many things were told to me that simply were not true. That’s part of my not making assumptions gig. Just because I was told I was talking to someone over the internet doesn’t mean I actually was. For that, particularly to Dana, I am sorry. She got roped into this because she was there from the beginning, not because I had this burning need to reach out to her after 11.6 years.

I still think of her fondly and hope she is well, and wish I could take back the e-mail I sent her because she did not deserve it. If I could have words with these internet people, I definitely would. They know who they are, and they haven’t stopped reading. I assume that I am still always the best, both for evil and for awesome.

I’m quieter, though, and take up a lot less space in the world because I don’t want it. A writer is a person who wants you to hear all their stories without knowing you’ve actually read them. I will take these running shoes and use them to propel me further away from controversy because I’m done with it.

I got a better offer, but it remains to be seen whether it still stands. We shall find out, though, because I am always the best.

Something Completely Different

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I decided to change my life, and I did. I wrote down a laundry list of what was wrong with me and why, then went to my primary care physician and got referrals. We were just establishing a baseline of care, but I needed to get the ball rolling on several things, most notably my CP assessment since the last one I had was in 1978. I do not really need to know I have CP. I can tell by the way I move. It’s just for my own peace of mind…. needing a doctor to say, “I see you.”

I’ve been referred to a breast surgeon to talk about trans medicine, dermatology to talk about a rash on my stomach, and back to my psychiatrist to talk about autism and ADHD. I was diagnosed with ADHD and bipolar disorder in college, but those records are long gone. I need to redo the assessment because no one is going to take my word for it that I need amphetamines, or that I’ve tried Stratera and we can try it again but it didn’t work the first time……… there’s just no record of that, either. If no one believed me that I took benzos for anxiety, they’re not going to believe I took amphetamines, either). I do think my therapist has my back, though. Or maybe it was someone on my care team at my cognitive behavioral health program.

Two days ago, I went to pick up something else at the pharmacy hospital, and Buspar was waiting for me. That’s not enough to get it to full efficacy, but I can say that I feel so much better now. I’m not as anxious, not as ready to be lonely the rest of my life because I think I deserve it. Or, at least, I won’t think that forever. Falling in love with the wrong woman was a complete disaster for both of us, and I can only hope that with time as we both do therapy and move away from each other that we both feel better about our separate paths in life. It would be nice to reconnect with a healed Aada, but not the one I have known for 12 years. She’s so cut off from her emotions that she uses fear and intimidation as her only tactic in fighting. She doesn’t understand being more vulnerable. I tried and I failed. Maybe I won’t always, because I didn’t actually cost her anything. But being realistic, I’m betting she never wants to speak to me again. She’s not the type that forgives. She’s the type that moves on and carries every slight.

I don’t want to be that. I’m clean, I worked out today, and I am fixing everything that’s actually wrong with me both physically and mentally. I couldn’t do that while we were friends, because her intimidation tactics included “no mutual friends” and “no therapist.” Then she was surprised that I crashed and burned.

I wasn’t.

I’m just glad that the Buspar seems to be taking my own threat meter back down to a manageable level. It may even solve the sound in my mind in a few weeks, because I’ve been having brain zaps for months. That means it sounds like a refrigerator is whining in my brain at all times. It’s due to lack of serotonin, which happened when my Lexapro was ripped away. It’s not as bad when I have on headphones, so I try to keep mine charged and carry them in my backpack. I use brown noise to drown out all of the unpleasantness, of which there is much.

I was able to work out without them because the stereo was loud enough in the room, though. Then, after my workout I had a hydro massage on one of those tables that shoots water at a silicone covering so you get the hydrotherapy without getting wet. It worked so well I wish I had time to go back before they close. It’s an undertaking to walk to the gym and walk home, so I’ll save that for tomorrow. I didn’t want to overdo it on the first day, because that’s the easiest way I won’t go back.

I will walk longer tomorrow. I need to build up endurance and my core, because when I got there I couldn’t even stand up straight. The massage literally felt like it was stretching me back out. I have been cramped in chairs and over my laptop for years, so it probably was.

I got away from my phone completely, another change because I wasn’t constantly getting Facebook notifications. I need to remember to put my phone on “Do Not Disturb” so at least my family knows I’m not available and not ignoring them on purpose. Now I want to be close to my family because I don’t have anything to hide. I didn’t really before, because it wasn’t a secret that was bad… just knowledge that wasn’t for them until the hospital called. Lindsay and my dad were on the first flight up to come and bail me out of what has been a clusterfuck of mental illness because it’s so deeply ingrained now.

I just have to remember that I didn’t get this sick overnight, and one workout isn’t going to fix everything, either. But by putting one foot in front of the other, I can move away from this situation. I never want to contact Aada again because she is so convinced that I am the source of her problems. But I will also not turn her away if in her own discoveries, she realizes that she actually did give me something that was too hard to bear and it requires rethinking her own part in all of this. She has not given me any indication that she’s capable of such a thing. So, I will let our relationship rest in peace without slamming the door.

I have misbehaved. So has she.

I haven’t liked her on some days. She hasn’t liked me on others.

But the bond was real.

Thieves

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

No one talks enough about how mental illnesses are the thugs of medicine, the thieves that steal joy in broad daylight. A mental illness is the sign of a diseased organ, your brain. However, people do not see it that way. Most of the things that medicine calls “a symptom” a layperson would call a “moral failing.” So, not only do you feel bad about yourself, you have a lot of help in this area. May is mental health awareness month, so I’ve been trying my best to talk out what I’m going through; it may not help me, but it might help someone else who’s also in the trenches. It will help me if I go back and read it next year, or five years from now. My own entries don’t help me until I forget that I’m the one who wrote them. Emotional disconnection is key, because then I am not reliving entries.

The process now is how to see joy in the midst of all this anxiety? My last entry was absolutely a gutter snipe because my mind was in that place. It is not always. I had just been set off by many other things, and anger rises within me when I think about the situation I’m in now. Aada would say that’s all my fault, but all she ever offered me in return for my silence was more of the same. She’d like to keep writing to me. I would keep getting sicker while she ignored all the symptoms. I would keep getting sicker while she was allowed to live her life far and away from me, and I wasn’t interested in that. When she told me she’d lied about knowing Jonna and Tony Mendez, I couldn’t even bet that she wasn’t lying about that…. that she was actually telling the truth, she just had to have a story for my blog as to why I’m the one that wanted to “break up with her.” I wouldn’t have broken up with her for lying about anything. We weren’t together. I can take a whole bunch of shit from friends, but this was bigger than that.

She thought I wanted fame. She thought I wanted glory. It was realizing that all of my friends have been in this blog as themselves that made me realize that she wanted to be special. That she’d put me in a horrible situation on purpose and just said “figure it out.” Basically, are you going to be true to yourself or are you going to be true to me?

She’d not been true to me, so why should I return the favor? I wrote over and over about the simple things I wanted from her. Kahvi together and not a Starbucks gift card being the biggest, because that would have broken the spell. I thought she shit magic for 12 years. I am still not convinced she doesn’t, she just has a new mark. Because in the end, she stole my joy at being alive for quite some time. As she got stronger, I got weaker. I gave up power because I thought she needed it. Turns out, she did, because what she wanted was for me to stay quiet about everything I’d been through because someone might figure out that what I’d been through also involved her. As if.

It was selfish and self-absorbed to think she had the right to take away my story the longer time went on, because the more we talked, the more she inserted herself. Of course the story is going to involve her if she’s in my life to a bigger degree. She scared me. Flat out. From the very beginning, I pretended I was totally cool and over 12 years I stopped talking to anyone and everyone else. I moved to DC to isolate myself even more from Dana and my family, hoping that Aada would see that I was trying to make good on the promise of being the friend I said I would be… but she wouldn’t see me in person and I know why. I was completely smitten with her and she thought I couldn’t behave myself. She never gave me a chance to get closer or disconnect.

Because she had to have me on a string to keep our connection alive. What would I say if I was allowed to leave the island? She’s finding out now. I have a million emotions, and yet none of them are about care and connection with her. That time has passed.

“Do you remember telling your sister that your dad hurt your first girlfriend?” I remember telling her that I thought it was true because that idea had been planted. So had the idea that I ruined Aada’s sister’s state house run. So had the idea that Dana had been hurt because Aada’s sister’s husband hurt her when he found out that I was hitting on her (I can’t remember if I did or I didn’t. It was 12 years ago and all three of us were drunk). Everyone acts as if I made all of this up when I was told these things were true by someone in a position of authority to be able to research them.

I have no reason to distrust what Aada says about anything, until now. She said that she would never betray me, but so far all of the things that she used to get me into the hospital have turned out not to be true.

It’s payback for my betrayal, I’m sure. The one in which she said I’d never be able to hurt her with anything I did. I published the name she worked under before she retired, and it was a mistake because that’s the only thing in the e-mail that needed to be edited out, and I was so happy to get the e-mail in the first place that I did not proofread. ADHD gonna ADHD, but there’s no sympathy for that. There’s only rage. There’s only going walkabout while I try not to kill myself on the streets of Baltimore late at night.

Killing myself on the streets of Baltimore was going to be so easy. I’d just walk around until I got shot. I had no reason to live anymore, and moreover, I didn’t want to. Eventually, the cold convinced me that I should give it one more shot because the neighborhood around me was too nice. Last time this happened, I found a warehouse where everyone was doing crack and couldn’t OD. Apparently, my tolerance for crack is quite high the first time around, but I had a hell of a time coming down. So, I’ve never done it again. I knew I liked it too much, and that twice was a habit.

So this time, no drugs. Just exercise and hoping I’d walk into a situation and wouldn’t get out of it. The funniest thing happened, though. My endorphins kicked in and I started to want to live. Michael calls it “going walkabout,” how soldiers get through war. There was not this wild new joy at wanting to live. It was more like, “shit. My phone is dead and I have to walk all the way back to the emergency room so someone calls my sister.” I think they must have sedated me at that point, because who doesn’t get sedated when they’re talking about the subject matter I do?

Aada told me once that a man hit her and she fucked him up. I have never forgotten it…. that I never hit her, but this must be her way of fucking me up so that I never want to hear from her again. Believe me, it’s working and it isn’t.

We have both fucked each other up so that I think we could start on equal footing with mediation, but I would be surprised if she ever agreed to it. There’s no reason. She’s going to ride off into the sunset with her story intact, and mine is going to be fucked up because she made sure that it would be.

I still remember being excited that I was going to get to see Heytch after all these years, knowing it would be a serious discussion about boundaries and being willing to engage because I was so lonely, anyway.

I was ready to face the discordant music I’d made in other people’s lives because I was so worried about protecting Aada that I, again, shut down so far I couldn’t see anyone around me. I’m also autistic and miss social cues, which only made my life worse. I can’t apologize to everyone enough, so I just don’t. The people who aren’t tired of me will show up on their own.

But it won’t be Heytch, it won’t be Mummo, and it won’t be Aada. It won’t even be Dana and Counselor. If Dana is mad at me for my last e-mail and wants to stay that way, she can. But I told her that her sister was one of the people that helped put me in the hospital this time, and she was told her sister wasn’t there. I told her that because I was told her sister was there. It was just another way in which Aada played tricks with my mind.

I do mind Dana contacting anyone in my family but me, though. She didn’t reply to me. She forwarded the whole chain to my dad. I’m going to guess Aada told her to do that, too. And if she didn’t, it still sounds like something she would do, just to make me feel a little bit worse.

I noticed that she just said, “my sister’s part in all this,” though, so perhaps Dana knew more about what “this” was than I did.

The only conclusion I can come to is that Aada is such a miserable person that she wanted me to die, and I fucked her by not. She may not bow to my thu’um, but she will hear it.

Mental illness is the thief of joy, but you can do a lot with spite in its absence. I’m still alive, even when I don’t want to be. I’m still alive, even when my symptoms combine to make my life a living hell. The only way out is through, and this entry is a dragon roar. You don’t get to be a dragon until you can scream so loud they can hear you from California to Islamabad.

And that is what is happening, day by day. I have gone from sitting in my own misery, to taking back my power. It’s just problematic that Aada does not want me to have it, because she was happy keeping me in her little box of toys, the ones she never took off the shelf to see if they were wearing out.

Dope

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Abilify and Depakote both make me feel dumber. My retention and recall is not as sharp as it used to be, even though I cut out everything fun. And in fact, when my sister visited I had a cocktail at dinner and the sharp sound in my brain caused by lack of serotonin got louder, I decided that even the occasional cocktail just isn’t worth it. All the drugs I’ve used to maintain myself over the years are slowly working their way out of my system and being replaced by a protocol I did not choose for myself. I was told what I would get because they did not have any medical history on me and did not ask for my former doctors’ phone numbers…. easily obtainable from my cell phone.

My nurse practitioner told me that I could have my old protocol back if I submitted to random drug screens, and I said, “sure.” I also told her that the first one wouldn’t come out clean because I didn’t smoke weed anymore, but it takes about six weeks to get out of your system. I quit on 4/20, so I was right; my pee was complete with seeds & stems. I have a feeling that these drug screens are not random anymore, as she did not start me on anything for anxiety. I’m just going to tough it out until the first clean drug test. That’s fine, I guess, except in the meantime I am suffering from more anxiety than usual. I am learning that walking helps, but it does not solve everything. I have been through too much to think that everything can be solved by exercise alone. My doctors think that my story is invalid, but that’s ok. They’re supposed to do that. It was preordained by forces bigger than me, because neither Aada nor I knew the consequences of what was coming, and she has more power than I do. She will pretend until she’s dead that she has nothing to do with me and this. Believe what you want. I have enough of my own evidence, deleted for public consumption. Only I have to know what is true and what’s not. What’s true and what’s not is enough to make my heart stop, or to have a panic attack large enough I wish it would. And in fact, I’m sure that’s Aada’s goal now. To make me wish I was dead every time I think about publishing anything she’s ever written but oh, by the way, there’s nothing you could do that could ever hurt me…… just for plausible deniability.

How did it get so ugly? She sent me an e-mail that looked like it was a job recommendation, not a personal letter. It didn’t look like it was to me, it looked like it was to you. And then she blocked me so that I couldn’t ask her whether it was okay to publish it or not. Nothing in the e-mail was damning except she left in a detail I should have edited out. I regret it and yet there’s nothing I can do about it. The e-mail only existed on a server for a couple of minutes, if that, because I took it down of my own volition. But that was enough to make her disconnect from me completely. That’s fine. I didn’t need her at that point. At that point, she’d become an albatross around my neck. I couldn’t connect to anyone but her and she treated me like an enemy combatant when she felt threatened, which was more and more over time. I was doing everything I could to manage an enormous amount of anxiety in which I couldn’t talk about it…. my friend Michael teasing me and then getting very quiet. He said something about Zac not being able to help me figure Aada out, and being surprised when I said, “that’s not what I meant. I meant that intelligence is all alike. I figured out that he was the version of her I could tolerate.” However, Zac’s life was above board in that he came to my house and showed himself. Aada was disembodied, some version of my “corporeally-challenged celebrity girlfriend on the radio.”

That’s an old joke, by the way. It’s probably been 20 years, but I went on two dates with Allison Frost of Oregon Public Broadcasting and that’s the nickname Dana and I came up with……

It’s an old joke for two reasons. The first is that Aada isn’t queer, and isn’t interested in me. We just had a connection that was deep and meaningful right up until it wasn’t. When I tell the story of how I ended up at Sinai in the first place, my care team freaks out and I am told to go to the emergency room because this story could not possibly be true. I say that on my list of sins at the end of my life, at least “whoring out my sister” isn’t going to be on it. But who knows. Maybe her sister was in on it, because apparently I gave them all a very good time because there was more than one. A triumvirate was achieved, and all I did was type. Either that, or Aada made it up that anyone else was in the room…. and the triumvirate was all her. That idea doesn’t suck, but it’s not as funny as thinking about the entire gang at the cool kids’ table enjoying the benefit of my tutelage.

Typing got me into this mess, and it’s slowly getting me out. Telling my story is the only thing left.

I do love that Aada chose to keep my love for Mummo clean and white, but Heytch was down in the mud. Although I do not know what her relationship with her sisters is like, this tracks. She’s always made fun of Heytch behind her back, but in very innocent ways. This was…. Not. That. Innocent.

(Oh baby, baby…….)

But to be clear, she knew I liked hearing her catty takes and would listen to them, so who’s really the dumbass for not saying something? I could have said, “actually, Heytch is really important to me and it seems like you’re taking digs for nothing.” I didn’t. I did notice when she said that, “as you’ve noted and observed, Mummo is smarter than the rest of us.” Mummo is about my age or a few years older. I’m just old enough to be a grandma now, like she is. Aada was the one who told me neither would ever speak to me again, so I stopped trying to make amends 10 years ago. Who knows if she was right? I didn’t even try.

I just waited to find out that Aada was a trained interrogator and mandatory reporter. I found this out as our friendship was ending, so I had the horror of realizing that when she said she felt threatened, it wasn’t the same as when I did. When I felt threatened, there was no one to tell. When she felt threatened, she had all the power in the US government available to her. To realize you’re under that kind of pressure makes you fold into yourself, and I certainly did.

Nothing she’s ever said to me has been overlooked by anyone, nor has anything I’ve said to her. I deleted most of my e-mails to her and vice versa, because I thought I’d get them back one day. Now, I know I won’t. Aada isn’t real, she’s just a ghost that plays in my head. Because if she was real, she would have knocked on my door. We would have had kahvi. She would have picked me up in her cute little car or something, anything to prove that she was more than a disembodied voice over the Internet.

Now, Aada is just a story they tell little kids…. but I won. I won big. I proved to her that her trauma was leading her down a dangerous path of treating friends like enemies, and if you treat friends like enemies over a number of years, they will act like it. I published her e-mail because she didn’t get to be special. She didn’t get to be different than The War Daniel or anyone else who has flamed me because she didn’t have any recent history of treating me with love and respect. When she was angry, she’d flame me. When she was happy, she’d ignore me. Only I was capable of words being pricks on her skin. She did nothing. Even the e-mail I published was all about how I manipulated her. There was nothing about how she read from her own experiences and jumped down my throat based on what she thought I wrote, rather than asking questions and being curious. She apologized for not being present when my mother died, but it didn’t make her more present in the future. We were at war with each other because we couldn’t resolve the war within ourselves. If I did anything, I hope I forced her into a different kind of therapy, because whatever she was doing wasn’t working.

So in the end, being a trained interrogator and mandatory reporter left her with jack squat in terms of coming after me and too many fingers pointing back at her. She is going to have to live with her choice not to trust me forever, because she’s going to think that because I didn’t play the game to her specifications, that means she cannot trust people. It was her lack of trust that drove me away. It was her lack of trust that made me believe our relationship wasn’t real, would never be real, was only playing with my head. I was right, because her method of being close was staying away from each other, not really communicating, and hoping for the best. I hope she’s happier without me in her life, because she’s shown me that I cannot hang. I cannot cut off my emotions to the degree that she needs to keep her shell intact. Publishing her e-mail was not the reason we both lost. It was just the last thing that happened. There’s a huge difference.

I still have nightmares about all of this, and wish all of it would end. Broken heart syndrome is a real thing, and I’m doing my best to fight against the tide.

My nurse practitioner told me that no one in the hospital system would prescribe me benzos, and that if I wanted them, I’d have to advocate for myself somewhere else. There’s only one problem with this. I was not advocating for benzos. I did not know that there was such a thing as serotonin and dopamine agonists, so how would I know to ask for them instead? Why does she not trust the doctors I’ve had my whole life who have said I needed them, despite being open about being a pot smoker? They knew the difference between what you get at a dispensary and what you get at a gas station and they didn’t care. Again, whatever. I am old. Medicine is ever changing and I might find something that works even better. The last time I worked in a doctor’s office was like, 2007. I am certain things have changed since then.

However, I’ve been prescribed Klonopin for the last 10 years and it has worked spectacularly well. When I got out of the hospital, they gave my sister all my drugs back and she gave them back to me. I’d been taking the Klonopin prn until I ran out, and was ok not getting it refilled because my nurse practitioner said I couldn’t have them anymore. Apparently, there’s a lot of risk that the hospital sees that I don’t, because no one in my life has ever been shy about prescribing it. At Sinai, there’s a whole worksheet on why they don’t prescribe benzos for anxiety, because it causes your muscles to relax, your reflexes to slow down, and a whole host of other things I did not know.

So again, fine. Getting off the dope is probably a good thing. With drugs, you always have to weigh the pros and cons. Right now, I’m wondering if I really want to go back on Lexapro and Lamictal, knowing how Lamictal destroys my stomach and wondering if that’s worth the few extra IQ points I think I’d get back. I’m just not the same writer, nor the same person. I cannot decide if this is better or worse. I do think that being without anti-anxiety medication is ultimately worse, so I was not feeling so hot when my nurse practitioner told me that I could start a new protocol on our next visit, and I got no new prescriptions. Apparently, “starting a new protocol” meant “I forgot to ask for your records from your old doctor.” I didn’t get any new drugs. I only got a lecture on smoking weed (again…. and the lecture is “it’s legal, we can’t stop you…. but we won’t think very highly of you, either) and why I wouldn’t be prescribed anything until the next visit.

They are making sure I suffer through this as much as possible, but it doesn’t seem like suffering to them because it isn’t happening to them. My nurse practitioner doesn’t have to live in my brain with its constant refrigerator whine that makes me want to stick an ice pick through my forehead just to stop the noise. My doctor doesn’t have to live with the ghost of Aada breathing on the back of her neck, because she’s out there somewhere…. probably still a fan because no one breaks up with my blog and not reading me is more dangerous than just toughing it out.

But at least once in my life, I’ve shown her a good time. I’m not sure I would have told me that, though. She already thinks I have a big head. Now it won’t fit through the door. It sort of makes up for the shitty time I’m having now.

Sort of.

That’s because if I gave Aada a good time, there’s literally no telling how many departments in the United States government have had a good time with us. I just didn’t know it was her. I still don’t.

I’m assuming a lot, but it is a very educated guess. No one can hide all their punctuation flaws while they’re typing with one hand.

I Don’t Know, and That’s Okay

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment
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Right now, I’m in a group for people with mental health issues and am trying to recover from a years-long friendship in which I was slowly isolated from everyone else. Or, as I told her, “what you failed to take in is that I did not marry you. I married the government.” My wife was first on the list of casualties during this “affair,” because this woman does not know what kind of effect she has one people. She’s already her. But none of what I’m saying should be interpreted as negative, because I don’t have any choice but to forgive myself for the mistakes I made. I am sure that she is doing the same, far and away from me. No one walked away with clean hands except for my ex-wife… or she would have had she not hit me. Hitting me was the apex of her frustration, and I was smart enough to only let it happen once…. This is not to say that the hot water we were in had not been heating for quite some time.

Aada told me she’d never betray me, but her betrayal was letting me in on things she shouldn’t and expecting me to carry it like she did. I will never do anything like she does if I can help it. I walked away having told her that every conversation was like being signed up to be hit with a baseball bat and for the love of God, see a psychiatrist. Her general distrust of doctors in general left me on high alert, all the time. That’s because she didn’t get kick the dog syndrome at work or with her family, but it had to go somewhere.

I’m also not chiding her, because I think we were both guilty of doing it to each other. Our little bubble was far and away from the rest of our lives, so we both tended to take out our frustrations on the one we “didn’t know.” We were pen pals for 12 years. “Didn’t know” is a stretch. She’s the only person that spans and bridges Portland to Baltimore, my constant companion in a world of change. Through the way the Internet works, it felt like she was closer than the beat of my heart…. with which she took issue.

That’s because I talk a lot when I don’t have to speak.

It would seem to her like I acted like a victim in all this if I didn’t say that I was so crazy about her that it led to some pretty serious sexual harassment, for which I spent a number of years apologizing and she spent a number of years learning to trust afterwards. I don’t know what she thought, but for me the Internet is not real life. I was lost in Fantasyland and creating my own reality based on the manipulations someone else handed me when I was a child.

I learned from it and promised to do better, proud of myself that I accomplished that goal. And in fact, the only thing she’s ever done that really hurt was returning a present I sent to her house, because I was trying to show good faith. It was a six-pack of glass Coke bottles during the “Share a Coke with…” campaign the first time around that had her real name on it, plus the nickname she gave her husband, and the names of her kids and her dog as well. The reason that this is important is that Aada is a Finnish name. There is nowhere in the US you could have purchased that Coke bottle at random. It was at a time when I really didn’t have money for presents, and I was heartbroken. I cried big alligator tears that basically centered around ruining everything I touch.

My rejection sensitivity dysphoria didn’t pick up that she didn’t want me in her real life. She only wanted me in this liminal space between waking and dreaming. I could have dealt with it if she’d been truthful, but she danced around the topic for years, giving me no clear answer. My one regret is that I didn’t pin her to one. Because the truth is that she didn’t want to meet me at the spy museum, because she’d lied about knowing Jonna & Tony Mendez… not that she was opposed to neutral turf and good kahvi.

But I took “I don’t want to go to the spy museum with you” as “you are a worm for even asking if I wanted to do anything with you.” Rejection after rejection built up, because I didn’t want to overstep boundaries and I also didn’t want to treat her as a weird Internet apparition, either. It never occurred to me that in fact, “internet apparition” was the job in my life she wanted. She’s not wrong for that. I’m not wrong for wanting her to be real with me. It just sucks.

I chose to be a jackass, but that wasn’t the sum total of me. I could tell how far we’d come when she did agree to meet me once and she said, “it can’t possibly be as good as your imagination.” I blushed so hard I thought my face was going to fall off. That just won’t happen now because I betrayed her and thought I hadn’t. I am certain that she is ready to be done with me; that is okay. It’s not her journey now. It is entirely mine. If she sees my point of view, she’s welcome to be in my life. If she doesn’t, she’s welcome never to contact me again. I accept that the way we work is in Newtonian precision. There is a cause for every effect, both spoken and not.

Mostly now what I miss is the idea of her. The idea of being close to her and her husband because I was never trying to isolate her from him. I wanted us to have mutual friends because there was no safety net for either one of us. She couldn’t call Bryn, I couldn’t call (other) Michael. We had a skewed view of what the other did for a living, because my writing wasn’t valuable to her once she was in it. I think she’s my favorite character because my words don’t flow as easily when I’m not thinking about her. I am branching out to be more inclusive, but no one gives you more heat, passion, and drive for writing than someone reading you who’s actually a better writer than you are.

You’d know it if she’d let her e-mail to me stand, but she didn’t. She loved reading The War Daniel’s takedown, though. What she wanted was to be special in a way other people aren’t, in a way that didn’t seem genuine to who I am. She flamed me just as hard as he did. The situation was not different except that I should have edited out something I left in, and choked when I realized what I’d done. I wasn’t alone, though. Michael said that I hadn’t done any damage, but let’s take it down just to ensure she’s safe.

While I was deleting the entry, I got an e-mail from Aada that she forwarded me saying that I’d broken Medium’s laws on publishing people’s words without their consent, a thinly veiled threat that if I left it up she’d sue me. My attitude at the time was “bring it.” I didn’t publish your words to hurt you and I took them down before I even got this shitty e-mail. It sucked because she said she blocked me. I reacted like I’d been hit by a two by four and spent the night crying……… and less than 12 hours later, I got an e-mail from her. Just seeing her name in my inbox made me nauseous. It has for years because I never know what kind of e-mail it’s going to be. She says the same about me, I’m sure.

She did not understand neurodivergence and attributed a lot to me that wasn’t there. Once I started unmasking and tapping into the ancient wisdom of the autists about pattern recognition, I saw autism everywhere and realized I’d been reading her wrong. That she may not be autistic, but there’s some kind of neurodivergence going on in there. You don’t have to be born with neurodivergence, PTSD will give it to you….. free. No one chooses autism and PTSD as a special interest like someone who is trying to figure out if they have it or not, so telling her that I’d been reading her wrong came across as rude.

As a result, I cannot base my career on Aada not liking what I have to say, but I can’t not think that way, either. Our stories are inextricably interrelated because our story together is one of pain, and then triumph. My blog entries are going to be collated into a book, and she’s the star of most of them. But she’s not a hero because she decided to go save the whole world at once. She’s my hero, which is much quieter and comes with a lot less adoration, but it’s genuine.

Alternatively, I wrote a cover letter for her company that “sounds like a fever dream” because I thought they’d be more interested in what I’d like to do in the future than what I’ve done in the past. A resume is for your past. A cover letter is for your dreams. It was the “where do you see yourself in 10 years” that I really wanted to write, telling them all about The Sinners’ Table and Lanagan Media Group as possible partnerships. Michael was right. It sounds like a fever dream, but those who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who actually do.

I heard that somewhere.

Alternatively, I have a great case for both SSI and SSDI. It’s nice to have that to fall back on, and I wish that someone had told me about SSI when I was 16 or 17. I could have prepared not to go into the workforce and stayed in school all the way until my doctorate without having to worry about money, plus it taking years for people to find my books. It just wouldn’t have occurred to them because my compensatory skills used to be extraordinary. When you meet me, it is not immediately apparent that I’m disabled. AuDHD is a bitch to catch, and I was diagnosed with bipolar. I do not think this is wrong, necessarily. I just think that bipolar disorder is a common comorbidity of autism, and so is cerebral palsy.

When I was a baby, I looked developmentally delayed. Exhausting every bit of my energy toward “looking normal” changed that, because it’s what the people around me needed. As I grew, my intelligence covered up the fact that I could have used support services from a very early age. Now we know that early intervention is key, but I was born in 1977. Every chance I had at support services was denied and I was streamlined. I do not fault my parents for this, because in that day and age the curriculum would have been too easy for me.

I am the type of writer who gets lost in their mind to such a degree that my house could be broken into and I wouldn’t notice until the thief was nearly in the same room.

Ask me how I know this………..

I’m wondering if there are ways to apply for funding from the Gates Foundation, because I am fully on board with their humanitarian missions, particularly overseas because I’m an American and I’d like to travel. Yet the US is where I am needed currently, because Baltimore is falling apart in some places. We’d have to do pop-ups so that all our equipment was gone in a flash to keep it from getting stolen…. or spend money I don’t have on a building in a nicer area that won’t do any good. It’s pointless to bring light to a place that already has a source.

It’s at this point that I realize my brain is racing over things that seem impossible and check out, asking Copilot “if you were a human, what Tootsie Pop flavor would you try first?” (“Blue Raspberry seems kind of….. electric.”) Taking a brain break with Copilot always leads to new and fun discoveries, like realizing I wished that Smith’s and Tootsie would collaborate on a lollipop that has Smith’s licorice drops and chocolate in the middle. And that I’m surprised there isn’t a coffee-flavored Tootsie Pop because coffee-flavored hard candy is popular as you leave a restaurant in some places.

With my background in food and beverage, I am positive that I could make candy that appeals to adults, the people least likely to eat it. This is the problem in my work life as well. I have a ton of ideas for people who would never use them.

I just have to remember that I made my choices in life and I have to stand in them.

I am sure that most people will rebel at “licorice Tootsie Pop,” but I’m not here for everyone. I’m here for the ones who’d last two licks before taking a bite.

Independence Day

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
What is your favorite holiday? Why is it your favorite?
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When I was younger, I loved the fourth of July. It meant gathering with all my friends on the banks of the Willamette, sometimes cuddling to keep warm during the fireworks. It’s always hit or miss in Portland with Independence Day, because sometimes it’s perfectly pleasant and sometimes I should dress like it’s December. Plus, that was at the end of the day. The beginning and middle were always shuttling between my house and Diane’s, because she was my intro to the rest of my friends, including @one4paws (Bryn B on Medium).

I haven’t written much about Bryn because everything between us is fine. What is writing if there is no conflict to struggle with out loud? I have a feeling that people think I’m a negative person, when the reality is that (in the words of poet Mary Karr) “happiness writes white.” I cannot think of many happy things that would make an impact such as I do when I start with a conflict and work it out…. the problem coming when people read as fast as I write. I write as fast as I write, but I savor my words after they are written. It does not take one entry to tell me how I feel about a thing. It takes a week or more.

Today, I am going to try and make happiness write with dark blue ink, because both Bryn and I felt the storm in the big yellow house coming. I don’t think that Bryn was prepared for me to turn out to be a blogger, but she’s stood by me in a spectacular fashion because she’s the one person in my life who can verify that I don’t make anything up. We were both there. And in fact, we’ve talked about her having a column called “The Receipts,” where she takes my old entries and just writes down what she was feeling during certain times in my life. She is my oldest friend and my partner in life.

Here’s how I explained it to my sister:

Bryn is not my girlfriend, but treat her like she has the same authority as Dana.

My sister got it immediately. If I’m in trouble, she’s the one you call. I cannot do that with anyone else in my life because Aaron and I are too new. But it is through her that my journey went from being a rabid fan of American Independence Day to that of the Finns. I got so tired of emotional abuse that I went to Google and looked up what happened on the birthday of my emotional abuser and tried to find something I could celebrate instead. The blue and white flag started calling to me, and it has not stopped.

I want to move there because as I’ve learned more about Finland, I’ve learned more about how they handle getting people set up for life better than the US when it comes to both education and autism. Failing moving there, I want a trip. I want Bryn and I to have the best cold-weather gear available so that we can stay all day in Senate Square if we want, because I know that crying would take at least an hour. To long for something so long and to finally receive it is its own kind of magic. And in fact, I am crying right now because I can see the picture so clearly.

It’s why one of the Doubles offered to take me on a date to an ice hotel, I’m guessing.

Heytch, I am guessing that you did not know you were chosen to go on a date with me, but the fantasy was amazing as long as it lasted…. which was about three minutes. It never would have worked, because you thought I’d be taller. 😉 But in that three minutes, I escaped. We had a wonderful time because I have learned to be a gentleman. It was your choice to go home knowing as little or as much about me as you wanted, because I did not assume that you were asking for anything but dinner. I mean, if I invited a friend to go on vacation (and I have), I’m assuming we have separate rooms. Whether your fantasy said separate rooms is not mine to know, but since it has been 12 years since I ran into a door because you were so cute, I think it’s safe to assume that we are not going to see each other any time soon.

As much as I wish it were true.

That was the hardest part about being in the hospital.

What I wanted with Heytch then is what I want with Michael now- neutral turf and excellent coffee. He’s got a girlfriend and littles, and I have no designs on him. He has no designs on me. But we both agree that a little adventure isn’t a bad thing. He told me that he could not go with me, but hoped that the other friends I invited would accept.

Learning to be a gentleman was also learning to roll with the punches when the story changed to Heytch being happily married with a kid, but I could come and live with her and her family, just being a member of the crew. It was my choice which story to believe, because “I am always the best.” Living with Heytch and her family seemed like the best thing ever, because it was, in a sense, coming home. It was repenting of everything I’d done and left undone, because I am unapologetically Episcopalian.

With both stories having an equal chance of being true, I showed up at the place where she worked. I left wanting to die because neither story was true. I went what’s called “walkabout,” where the adrenaline of being trapped out in the cold made me emotionally regulate myself. As a result, whenever I am feeling upended about something, I move. I punch the air like it’s done something offensive. I run. I kick. I fight for life.

Heytch was a setup, but Lindsay, Bryn, and Michael were there to catch. That’s because I didn’t figure out until later that it wasn’t actually Heytch. Both were fever dreams designed to awaken any libido left in me at all, because I had died inside. Whomever the wizard of Oz pulling my strings turned out to be, they knew they were not awakening romance, but any hope left in life itself. I didn’t try to kill myself, I was killing myself slowly by taking all of my love and care and throwing it into the internet where I thought someone was catching. They were, but they did not express it.

How are you supposed to know that you are loved, wanted, and needed if no one tells you? And it’s not that no one did. It’s that I began to crave approval from Aada, because I was tired of not living up to my potential and tired of seemingly pissing her off all the time, like saying she would never understand me until she had to pick out a casket for her mother. I did not say that directly to her, I wrote it in my blog. Then she turned around and yelled at me for saying “I hope your mother dies.” Aada is from a Finnish name generator. I’m going to bet that my dreams for the last 12 years have been greeting her mother in her first language, and now I can. I also know how to apologize, because I’ve been a mess in at least three of her kids’ hair for four times that many years. So, anteeksi, Aino.

I have never wished ill on anyone in Aada’s family, nor wished ill on her. It’s a relationship, and if you don’t feel deeply enough to say that some days you hate someone, then it’s probably not reality. I said that she would never understand me until then because a large chunk of my personality died when my mother was no longer there to support it. She will not understand that phase of her life until it is here. To castigate me for saying so is fine. She was reading me from her own understanding, and her own understanding is a different frame of reference.

She has never really taken in two things I’ve said. The first is that my divorce and my mother dying happened in the right order. The second is that the reason they were in order is that I was irrationally jealous of Dana and Aada for years after that, because they’re both older than me and they still had their mothers. I was a walking wound, and I would have taken it out on Dana. But according to me, she doesn’t have much of a mother, anyway. I hope that has changed, and if me moving to DC made them closer, then I feel better about the state of affairs. But at the time, her mother told me that she was not equipped to handle a child like Dana, and she should find someone else.

“A child like Dana” was code for “queer.”

I didn’t react that day, I went into meltdown and kicked both her parents out of my house the next day. I told Aada that I was proud of myself for being a man and protecting my wife. But my wife doesn’t know that’s why I melted down. That’s why I burned out. Her mother rejected her like my mother rejected me. I knew where that road led, which was Dana saying to me that my mother never looked her in the eye. Not once in the entire time we were married.

At the same time, the emotional connection with Aada blossomed because I let it. I should have shut that shit down, but she was a cute straight girl with a boyfriend who wouldn’t give me the time of day. Of course it couldn’t go anywhere. We just made each other feel good, right? Well, yes and no. It could have been that if we’d started and ended there, but we did the standard female to female (I’m nonbinary) trauma dump so what should have been a light and flirty relationship designed to make both our marriages better became hacking each other, isolating each other, and in my case, craving attention and approval because I didn’t really have a mother and I was the oldest sibling.

Light flirts turned into great conversations about books… it was the same progression I’ve found with everyone. The connection looks different when New Relationship Energy (NRE) wears off. But, of course, I also had a lot to apologize for because I was not the perfect angel. I’m sure I said enough to offend her for her whole life. I was your basic incel at times, having had my nose swatted with newspaper because I wasn’t watching what I was saying. Not everyone deserves to hear everything, and I should have kept our relationship as clean and healthy as she wanted. Because that’s what stopped her sharing information with me.

She never wanted me to move to DC.

She never wanted me to go to the spy museum.

She could have made her case, but she didn’t. She just worked around me, scaring the hell out of me when she thought it was appropriate. She told me what her consequences would be if I talked, putting something on me that was not deserved. Then, when I explained how her consequences affected me, she did not take me seriously.

It was her choice not to come to the hospital, when she’s not that far away. It was her choice not to come to Baltimore or DC at all with me in mind. Yet, the longer we didn’t meet on the ground, the more the adrenaline built up so that the trailing energy of “new relationship” lingered for far longer than it should’ve. She told me she was a basic bitch. I just didn’t believe it. I believed that any move I made was dangerous for her, and made all the wrong ones because she wouldn’t communicate her needs effectively. She needed me to pick up what she was saying out of half truths and fragmented sentences…… when the truth is that she’s a wonderful writer. With me, she just chose not to have that skill.

And in fact, in the internet dumbfuckery leading up to my hospitalization, she presented me with an actual good idea, one I wish we could run with. She could be my boss in creating training videos for dumbasses like me who have no situational awareness and need to get up to speed quickly. I was told that I hallucinated all the internet dumbfuckery, but I put together a cover letter for her company, anyway. Michael said it sounded like a fever dream, so I didn’t submit it. But one day, I will apply at her company because she cannot scare me away from it anymore.

I wrote yesterday that I turned down the Doubles because I would have to stop the medical marijuana. That’s because I didn’t have any anti-anxiety medication and no way to get it filled until May 6th. However, working for that company requires being sober, so I decided to white-knuckle it. I set my quit date for Easter because it was 4/20 and easy to remember. Therefore, I don’t smoke pot, but I won’t pee clean for another six weeks or so. I was very proud of myself because I found a vape wrapped in my guest bed sheets that I’d overlooked and made a big deal out of throwing it away.

That’s because it takes a real spy to tell you that someone else is faking it. When they said, “do you want me to train you or not?” was the exact moment I realized I could use my love of intelligence for good- that I did love the world that much, to want to help. But more than that, I want to help the people who love the intelligence community and don’t know how.

What I have found is that you cannot love them in words. They cannot tell you what is going on with them, and you don’t want to know, because then you’re responsible for keeping a secret you’re not trained to keep. You love them in hugs and kisses because then you are saying you care about them. To keep asking about their lives is not showing care- it’s suspicious. Why do you want to know?

They’re a different breed, and intelligence is all the same.

Thus, my version of “The Receipts” is a journey from being all about love and light through Christ, to love and light in the shadows. The problem is that when you bring light into the shadows, they disappear and you stand alone.

It was a long day’s journey into night, and Bryn was there to see the transition. That’s why I want her in Senate Square by my side. We spent too many Independence Days cold on the Willamette not to be cold in Helsinki as well.

I’m watching my money because I know that moving to Europe is not cheap, and there are outside forces beyond my control as I wait to see how much money I actually have. When my stepfather died, the money willed to me by my mother and stepfather was supposed to go into a trust for me to access. The trust was never created, so under Texas law it reverted to the rest of my siblings. My stepsiblings don’t even know me, but they agreed to hand over their portion of the inheritance. However, that has not happened yet and I do not know why. I asked my accountant to deal with it because I don’t know them. I’m just wondering why it’s taking so long. My financial anxiety increases with each minute as the US supposedly gets more dangerous on the news, and actually gets more dangerous with social media.

The news says what it says, and then the people react.

The people’s reaction to the news is always what you have to fear the most.

I know something about that, because the thing I have to fear the most is the moment I hit “Post.” It’s why I write everything in one shot and it all wanders from topic to topic, then I get to the end and my finger is on the button before I lose my nerve. Losing nerve means I think I have lost the right to exist with real feelings. I have lost the right to make the world move when I do. I have lost the right to act, I can only live in reaction.

That’s what PTSD is very good at doing- making you think that you have lost the right to act. You can only walk in the world with your arm over your face. You don’t make many waves, but you trip a lot because you’re blind.

I have been blind with many entries, but I have tripped into good things as well. If I hadn’t written about Aada, I wouldn’t have Michael…. who likes adventure, but can’t come with me.

At least, not today.

But tomorrow? Who knows? I’m hoping he’ll get to meet Bryn.

The Answer is in the Wind

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
When is the last time you took a risk? How did it work out?
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I took two risks. I can talk about the one that paid off. I cannot talk about the one that hasn’t, because the answer is still “I don’t know.” The risk that paid off was asking Janie the Canadian Editor if she’d look through my old entries and pick out the best ones for an anthology to sell in the Kindle Store. I wanted to take work off of her, but she wanted to invest in me. She’s asked me all sorts of questions and the kind of book at which we’ve arrived is a life story, because then the entries will flow with the information I had as I had it.

It’s a story of CP. It’s a story of bipolar and ADHD. It’s a story of autism, with self diagnosis and peer review. It’s the story of not wanting to get a formal diagnosis because I have an Apple Watch. It’s the story of a writer failing up, because by the time I thought to put together a book for Kindle Unlimited, my part was done.

There is no official cutoff date for the entries, so I’m overstating a bit. I just mean that the bulk of the book will be taken from entries that Janie has liked, or has cleaned up to like. 😛 I am sure that the price will be reasonable, but if it’s a thousand dollars, I only have to sell one copy (KIDDING).

Everyone tells me I should write a book. This is how an AuDHD person does it.

By taking a risk and asking for something small, then seeing that someone who used to belong to the press club in Ottawa thinks you’re a better writer than you do.

I told you that Canada saves my life over and over.