Tag: forgiveness

I’m Not Sure I Don’t Pay Attention to All of Them

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

What details of your life could you pay more attention to?

By writing to and for myself, I pay attention to my life in minute detail. It is literally my job if I want to sell books later. Brene Brown has nothing on me, I swear to Christ. I am betting that we process much the same way in terms of throwing everything out on the table and seeing what it looks like. I don’t know if she’s a natural INFJ, but I do know she’s a professor in a profession to which INFJs naturally gravitate, so even if my letters aren’t hers, we’d be simpatico. I know that, because we’ve spent some time together informally.

Editor’s Note: If I sound like an ass because I keep mentioning it, it’s not because I’m trying to name drop. The answer is twofold. My audience is growing every day. Every single day. That means if you read every day, you’re in the know. Other people aren’t. Secondly, the more times I say Brene Brown, the higher I’ll be in Google rankings for searching her because it has indexed how many times I’ve said it and how many people have clicked on my link because of it. It’s not personal. It’s trying to use her platform to introduce myself to new readers, and not only is a good way to find my target audience, I know for a fact that this is not something she’d care about in the slightest.

I just taught her how to use Microsoft Word, but now that it’s so essential I know I did ACTUALLY help her in her career.

She taught me that it’s okay to throw emotional bombs on the table and look at them, because if you don’t stay silent, there’s a 50/50 chance that you’ll resolve the conflict. If you keep silent about your needs, those odds fade to zero either way.

The hardest part is developing the strength to say what you need out loud, because I call them emotional bombs for a reason. If you express a need, people who have low self-esteem will see it as an attack. You’re screwed either way, because either that person’s going to get mad at you and walk away, or they won’t. If you are in any way an anxious person, you’ll put off that conversation for eons. You don’t want to chance it. If you say you need something and they get angry, it might lead to the relationship ending. You have to learn to care nothing about that. This is because stating your needs clearly and walking away when they’re not being met is your only choice. People don’t change because they’re not willing to do the work. You are mostly the age you got married, because that’s when you set up your new family patterns and they repeat. In a lot of ways, people divorce to grow up….. particularly couples who get married at 20 and stay together until they’re 40.

This is why I’m not married and just dating. I do not want to stagnate. If it happens that I find a partner, I still want someone that wants their own space, even if we live together. I want to normalize it not being weird if I’m holed up in my office and they’re not holed up with me. I’m dating one of the biggest extroverts I’ve ever met, and I love it because I can pay complete attention to my own life while he’s off doing his thing, because he knows that partying is his jam and not mine and that’s perfectly okay. I don’t need him as a possession.

Supergrover, Cora, and Bryn are the one I treat like possessions in terms of being a seriously pissed off mama bear. Come after my girls and I will end you, if combat is limited a really mean letter.

I write differently when I want to work things out, I will only say that.

Healing an anxious attachment style is built on learning to believe someone the first time. It is also learning to believe when they’re lying to themselves. Learning to tell when actions and words don’t match, correcting the story that you’re telling yourself. If someone is unwilling to help you correct that story, they should be uninvited to participate. You also can’t hold anything over their heads. You just have to wait it out. Life is long.

If you are thinking of someone else’s needs all the time, you are doing immense harm to yourself if you have low self esteem . You’re making decisions based on your own echo chamber and trying to read someone else’s mind. Those two things will put you in an asylum if you let them.

The hardest part about throwing an emotional bomb over your shoulder is that you have to walk away and see if they come back.

You have to pick yourself up out of rejection sensitivity dysphoria to be able to even trust that they will. So you wait. And you get more unhappy. By the time you do express needs, you’re mad as a wet cat backed into a corner claws extended.

Your conversations will be a mix of “well, that probably sounded better in my head” and “well, that escalated quickly.”

I realized that I had to stop interacting with Supergrover because it was killing me. She was the person that when she talked, my self esteem went up and down. It wasn’t the message, it was the medium. She has lived inside me for 10 years. Her signal is the purest, because her voice is the only one that is always in my echo chamber because our e-mails are all mixed together in my head. Who knows who said what after a while? It’s one story. It just got to where we were alternating between tennis and fencing. We take turns having the high ground, but I can be angry and still think “as you wish” all day. (I like The Princess Bride, despite the fact that it has kissing in it.) That’s because it’s not her worth going up and down.

I threw that bomb knowing she was emotionally incapable according to past behavior, but she can do something about the present.

One of the things that will stick with me is that she said she could do nothing about the past. But she could do something about the present. She didn’t realize that I was saying it as well, in heels and backwards.

It’s the reason we complete each other when everything is going well. Her IQ is higher than mine. My EQ is the highest of anyone I’ve ever met considering how much people tell me how frightening and intense I am.

Dave Chappelle (incidentally also from Silver Spring) once wrote a skit for Chappelle Show called “The Ni**er Family.” It was absolutely hysterical and I laughed until I cried. But Dave said it was a mistake, and the why stopped me in my tracks.

He said:

Everyone was just cracking up in the audience….. but then I noticed this one guy. And the way he laughed, I knew he was not laughing in the way I intended.

It changed his entire career because he left the show and really did the homework on himself. We do not agree on trans issues and never will, but I’m not going to take away from his success or be less proud that he rose from the ash of what he burned down. But the only reason he could do that is that he, Jesus, and I all know the same thing.

The resurrection didn’t happen on the cross.

Jesus went into the garden of Gethsemene the same way The War Doctor wrestled with The Moment on Doctor Who, the bomb that developed a consciousness you had to argue with to get it to go off. There are no records of his prayers there, but here’s what Dave, Jesus, and I know beyond a shadow of a doubt: Jesus did not forgive everyone else for their indiscretions without first forgiving himself.

EEAAO

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

What makes you nervous?

Before we go any further, I need to correct myself on yesterday’s entry. I wrote “rejection sensitivity disorder,” and I meant “rejection sensitivity dysphoria.” This means that if I feel a tiny bit of rejection, my echo chamber turns it into “the sky is falling…. all is lost…. all is lost.” It’s like weighing 400 lbs, losing 250, and *insisting* you need to keep buying your old size. It is why I struggle with office politics. Everything I do wrong, no matter how tiny or insignificant, means automatic termination. The bosses I’ve had haven’t worked with people who aren’t neurotypical, or if they have, they’ve treated me with the same heavy hand. There is no reason at all I should know the logic behind anything. Do what I say and don’t talk back, even if I have more experience than you. People with ADHD and Autism are naturally curious about the whole world, and just because we want to know why something is the way it is doesn’t translate into behavior issues. Nine times out of ten, we just want to know the purpose of what we’re doing so that we can feel like we have one, too. We spend most of our lives feeling unneeded and unwanted because the system isn’t built for us, go sit in the corner.

We also get that we’re irritating as fuck because if there’s a time crunch, none of that matters and we don’t realize it. The only reason I had to cure myself of this is cooking. But with my friends, I have as much curiosity as I can. Also, I like to post-mortem things and only some people like to do that because it makes you closer. Others are so focused on being fast that they aren’t thorough. They don’t completely clean up their messes and realize that the argument won’t go away if they don’t, because self confidences thrives with people being truly forgiven. There are no callbacks because they understand each other and can completely move on. Rejection sensitivity dysphoria makes me freak out at the slightest indication of unhappiness, especially in long term relationships because I’m angry that I’ve taught you all my quirks and they’re not important enough to remember. You’d rather set me on fire, where passive annoyance becomes rage. For me, the last straw with my beautiful girl was making a joke about our past history and using a trigger word as a response. She said, “gross.” Which in any other circumstance would have been fine. I knew that she was correcting me on my behavior and not my queerness, but every time I’ve ever been called that was ringing in my ears despite it. When I told her it was a trigger word, she dismissed me entirely. Fuck that noise. By nine years and some odd months, I feel like I should be able to say what I mean and mean what I say.

She had the right to be grossed out if she wanted, but she didn’t have the right to go nuclear on me when I told her why I was telling her what was going on in my head. She automatically hates anything I write when it comes to our friendship, as if having a friend that’s bipolar is so much worse than actually being sick with it. It’s like being angry with a dialysis patient. Yes, I’m still sick. I’m so sorry it sucks, but I can’t help it and it makes me angry at my body. So please don’t do anything to irritate my mental health, and if you do because you don’t know, start asking questions. No one has any idea how they’re coming across to me, and when I say something hurts, most people aren’t bothered enough by my words to do anything about it. This is because those conversations are deep and exhausting for me, so they must be impossible for who doesn’t live on my Island of Misfit Toys. Here’s the kicker. Because they don’t want to go that deep, they miss out on the best part of what I can do for them. I can make them mentally healthy again. I can’t prescribe medication, but I can use my words to make you believe that you’re the most important person in the world, no matter how small our interaction. I try to recruit assets, but they have criteria because I don’t want to live a lifetime of frustration. I had to stop thinking that the whole world should have access to me because it doesn’t leave me enough energy to take care of myself. It also takes up too many threads because my chip only has so many cores…. and my graphics card is also fucked up. I’m a 720 in a 4K world.

I desperately want to be a different person, because even I can’t handle it. This is the only way I know how to get there, and it is pissing people off left and right, because their previous impressions of me allowed them to get everything they wanted because it was true. I wasn’t setting boundaries and allowing them to use me up because I needed to feel needed so bad. I flounder without purpose, and it leads nowhere good if someone becomes your focus and doesn’t want it. Too much energy coming at them, especially if they’re not emotionally intelligent and self-aware. The more you understand yourself, the more you can keep from doing damage to other people. I have done damage to people both by giving everything and being too angry to discuss the issue calmly. I feel like it’s a tradeoff, and miserable when it’s not….. to varying degrees, of course. Forgetting my birthday? No big deal, because I notice but don’t say anything so you’ll have more compassion for something else. What I’m trying to change is feeling like I don’t deserve you (plural) because in the end, I’m not worth it. I’m too much for everyone, and I’m afraid someday it will work.

So I do everything to fight that instinct because I’m not finished with life yet. I have books to get rejected. I need to stay alive at least long enough to see what would happen. I won’t be able to live with myself if I had a chance to anonymously pay off some houses. There are several people out there who think I’m really negative toward them because they don’t understand me. They don’t like it that I’m curious about everything, including them, because asking them deep questions is intrusive. I just think that in time, people should be able to talk to each other open and honestly. Getting your emotional needs met is the most important thing on earth, and people without mental health issues don’t know what it is to relate and don’t look it up.

Over time, it gets old fast. And that’s what makes me nervous. That I won’t find someone willing to put up with my quirks if I’m willing to put up with theirs. I often end up in bad situations because of it. I take their issues very seriously, and don’t even tell people what I need so that their energy sucks up everything in the room. Yes, we’re communicating, but it’s all about taking care of you. I haven’t given you a problem to work out with me because I don’t think you’ll do it. I’m not worth it. It would be so much more about the dysphoria if it hadn’t already happened my whole life. I get angry because you have an emotional maid and I don’t.

Most people can’t sit in conflict long enough when it’s the only thing that will help.

I Forgive You

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

This is a writing prompt from Bryn, to write a letter forgiving myself for a mistake. I started it a week or so ago, and am just now finishing it.

https://on.soundcloud.com/8XPgG

Dear Leslie,

You are forgiven. Honestly and completely.

You read that in Matt Smith’s voice, didn’t you? Of course you did. Watching The Doctor forgive River reminded you of something important. Apologies and forgiveness stand alone. I would even end the letter forgiving myself here if I wasn’t trying to garden my way into a new thought process, because there is nothing more irritating than a comma after I’m sorry or I forgive you. It reeks of “I feel your pain, but I didn’t cause it. It’s not my fault.”

I suppose it’s different in this case, because I already know I’m at fault.

I forgive you for trusting your abuser above all others. I forgive you for writing those letters, making those phone calls, visiting Portland. I forgive you for being old enough to have broken that relationship early, yet not having the wisdom. She told you she needed you at a time when few people did. She said that she was often older and not wiser. I forgive you for your abuser admitting to you that there were times when you were smarter than she was, and not even that gave you enough strength to cut the connection. I forgive the road not taken, where I was the sort of person where out of sight could become out of mind.

I forgive you for loving someone so hard that didn’t deserve it. I forgive you for wasting our precious energy. I forgive you because you were pliable enough to find diamonds in the rough, always. Out of great chaos came a calm that hasn’t been here before.

I can look back on those years with a little more light because the diamonds I’ve found continue to shine while the rest of the landscape has smoothed itself out.

I would not have wanted to miss meeting Dana and I realize that the connection never would have happened any other way. I would not have wanted to miss meeting anyone I met in Portland, and I never would have considered the Pacific Northwest at all otherwise. It was so far from Houston. Just impossible to get away for a weekend. It was a long haul for anyone in my biological family and that’s why I’ll never move back. I forgive myself for unintentionally isolating from my biological family, but it had been happening since I was 12. I don’t know another way of life because every time I move back to Texas, I am triggered by one of a thousand different things and I feel like I can’t breathe. I genuinely thought that having Dana with me in Houston would change the city for me, but it didn’t.

I moved to DC because I knew it was the one place that I knew I could run that wouldn’t damage my chances of getting back together with her, because at the time, I thought we needed therapy jointly and severally. I didn’t realize until later what a scary thought I’d had- running back to someone who had physically injured me was not smart. I prefer not knowing what would have happened had we’d both thought we’d find our way back to the other. I believed, six months later, that the advice not to go back to people who’ve hurt you was sound because the swings only get worse.

Though I’m devastated that the relationship ended, I am not sad that it happened or wish it had never begun. We had a terrible problem, and it’s something I’ve thought of over the years but was reminded of today. I was listening to “Don’t Ask Tig,” and Tig said that she and her wife realized that they couldn’t laugh all the time. That they had to go back and talk about an issue once it was less charged… that they’d laugh and sweep things under the rug. Tig acknowledged something important, though, which was that she and her wife were pretty good about getting out of heated situations because they were both hilarious.

Leslie, I forgive you for being subjectively hilarious. It was a great coping mechanism, it just went wrong because we didn’t get out our calendars and say that this or that issue was important and we were tabling it until X date… or sometimes we were, just not consistently enough.

I forgive you for creating another relationship that wasn’t in the room because you didn’t know how to live without one. I celebrate that you recognized the pattern.

It is a different relationship we are creating, you (plural) and me. Now you’re the only relationship I have that’s not in the room, and it’s not a secret. The only part that’s ever a secret is the time it takes to craft. Meaning that if I’m ever married again, it’s not like my partner won’t be able to read every word. They just don’t get to be with me while I’m writing. They get the same information you all do, mostly because it’s a big conversation to have with a partner. I forgive myself for the ways in which it affects others’ lives, both seen and unseen, because to constantly worry and predict makes me run away from writing at all.

And then the people who are mad generally forget why over time… that they came in my yard and made sure I knew what a terrible person I was for saying x or y, then have the audacity to ask why I don’t write anymore. It’s such a fine line in terms of revealing enough to be vulnerable and real in front of an international audience while at the same time, not making the people you love on the ground upset with your silly ramblings.

Zac reminded me of this the last time I saw him, but in a good way. He said, “I feel so much better after talking to you in person, because I’ve only read your blog.” I need to be better about making dates with people because sitting in front of them is so different than them reading about my life. I have a third dimension. There’s a lot in it that you miss, because I can only write one thought at a time, but I’m having 12.

I forgive myself for leaning too hard on the first two dimensions and not making as much of an effort as I should with the third. My goal in the new year is to get out more, even if it’s just going over to someone else’s house instead of mine.

All of this forgiveness has come with changed behavior, which is how I know it’s genuine.

Being genuinely yourself is all you ever need to be. I forgive you for overfocusing on people who think you’re too much and not enough on the people who know you’re just right. I forgive you for your constant need to be a fixer/pleaser even when the odds are stacked against you and you know you’re about to dual a windmill.

I forgive you for your crazy, quixotic life, because it doesn’t need forgiving.

I know you’re in such a vulnerable place, probably more open, hurt, and raw than you’ve been in years. Do not surrender your loneliness so quickly. Let it season you. Hafiz has whispered that into your ear since the 90s. Don’t give up on it now. There is a difference between being alone and being lonely. But Hafiz did not specify “me time.” It’s time to forgive yourself for thinking that there’s always a combination of words that will unlock someone.

That surely you can apologize enough, make enough amends, and if it hasn’t happened, it just hasn’t happened yet.

It’s an indomitable spirit and deeply troubling all at once, because there’s nothing in your heart that says “this situation is untenable.” I forgive you for not getting up from the table when love was no longer being served… and recognize that your feelings are valid. You wanted to try. You did… for way too long and with way too much energy, but it wasn’t all bad. Never mistake the part for the whole, and I forgive you for the moments you were so angry you couldn’t see anything but red.

The anger had a purpose. You can’t walk away from people unless you’re angry. You had to get angry enough to leave, and it took so many more years than it needed to simmer.

I forgive you for hurting the one you love the most, because even though it’s not the same for her, you still hurt her.

Now go, and forgive everyone else as I have forgiven you.

How to Even Tag This One…..

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I haven’t heard anything from Blackboard, and I’m starting to get very frustrated, because of all the companies I could work for in all the world, this is where I straight up belong. Helping Scott and Andrew set up the Academic Technology Support Center at University of Houston was one of the greatest years of my life. Scott even sent me to University of Minnesota for a WebCT conference, complete with nine inches of fresh snow on the ground, and I learned more in that one weekend than I did in five weeks of trying to teach myself. At first I thought I’d end up becoming an instructional designer myself, and got to do a little bit of that with Evangelinux and again going out on my own with Udemy.

I haven’t posted anything to Udemy yet, and will let you know when it’s available, because I have an issue I need to clear up first. I have to figure out how to evade online pirates, who will download your videos and take your course for free, offering it to others through direct download and torrenting.

If I can’t figure out how to do it on their server, I might be interested in offering it on my own. To do that, though, I’d have to move to a real server space rather than WordPress.com, because apart from a small donation button, they will not allow you to make money. I understand- they’re giving you server space for free. If I moved to another server, I’d be able to have more control with scripting, etc., plus be able to use things like Google AdWords. Now, you don’t make much with Google AdWords, but at the same time, you make more than if you can’t use it at all.

The idea of the course is Linux for beginners, using desktop recording software and voice overs. I have more than one idea, because I think people need to know how to use the command line, because typing is so much faster than searching through menus to get simple things done. The second idea is talking about replacements for all the software you really need. For instance, it is just not worth the cost to spend money on Windows, Office, PhotoShop, etc. when similar tools are available for free, and often open source, so that if you’re a programmer, you can customize everything to what you need with no legal penalty… even with Linux itself. Microsoft is just beginning to get on the open source bandwagon, and there is no way they’ll ever release the entire source code for any of their flagship products.

Quick tip for PhotoShop users… there’s an open source image software called GIMPShop (a mashup of Gnu Image Manipulation Program and PhotoShop) that changes all your keyboard shortcuts to the same ones you’d use in PhotoShop, therefore cutting the learning curve in half. Maybe I should have saved that for my own tutorial, but there you have it. The first one’s free.

I only lasted a year at the ATSC because I was promoted again to Internet/Intranet Developer II. Back then, it was so much easier to be a web developer because we were writing all our own code from scratch rather than having to make our web pages talk to databases, one of the major changes in web development over the years. Cascading Style Sheets were about as sophistocated as we got. For those who have no idea what I’m talking about, it’s a file that you reference that is similar to creating styles in Microsoft Word. Basically, you separate out all the content from the formatting and put the formatting in this one file that works across all the pages in a particular site. That way, if you want all your headings to be in a larger/different font, you change one file rather than manually having to change every heading on every page… which, back in the day, was as excruciating as it sounds.

This is another reason to change to my own server space, because on WordPress.com, all the fonts and everything are controlled by the theme. If I upgraded to WordPress premium or whatever, I’d have complete control of ALL THE THINGS. But I still wouldn’t be able to do everything that needs to be done in terms of protecting myself from illegal downloads…. or as much as I can, anyway. Surely there’s got to be some kind of Digital Rights Management for personal web sites… which wouldn’t stop a hacker if they were really dedicated, but would definitely stop the lazy ones.

But for most of you, this post is probably unbearably boring, because you don’t want to hear about WebDev and all that computer crap. You come hear to learn about what I’m doing and how I’m feeling and how I’m interacting with others, along with how I’m dealing with soul-sucking grief.

The short answer is that I’m not.

I’m burying myself in trying to find a job, trying to push myself to create my own courses to have income I don’t have to watch, anything to get away from having to think or feel anything that doesn’t have to do with business. I have done so much feeling and thinking about everything that I’m getting tired of it. I’m tired of feeling down ALL THE FUCKING TIME. I’m tired of feeling that I don’t deserve joy because I am enmeshed in grief. I am tired of feeling guilty when I receive said joy because I am “supposed to be” in mourning.

I am tired of worrying about what Dana & Argo and anyone else I’ve pissed off thinks and turning my attention to those who do show up. Because honestly, what good is it doing me? They’re never coming back and it is wasted energy all the way around. I’ll never be able to say enough, do enough, be enough to erase the hardship I’ve caused both of them. “You’ll never amount to anything” and “we’ll never be normal” are beginning to be it for me. I say “beginning” because it’s just my personality to overthink and overworry and carry that shit around for years on end… because not only do I owe them a hell of a lot more from me than they got, they’ve stopped listening and they did a long time ago. Even when I am being dead-level honest, they don’t believe it, anyway. It’s not my job to judge whether they should believe me or not. That’s their decision, one in which I’ll never have control (and shouldn’t). But what I can do is try to stop thinking about it, try to stop caring so damn much, try to love them in a loopback that feeds me and keeps me going rather than expending energy trying to “win” them back. I can’t undo or redo the past, but I can take the lessons I learned and turn them into something beautiful in their names… because I cannot and will not forget the gifts they gave me along the way. It was a long road to stop thinking about all the negativity and toxicity and just breathe, taking in the wonder of their prayers and presence while I had it.

Just because I erupted and crazy spatter and emotional vomit rained all over them due to forces I thought were literally beyond my control doesn’t mean that I don’t take full responsibility for it. Notice that I said “forces I thought were beyond my control.” They weren’t. I just didn’t have any coping mechanisms and everything I was feeling made me go off like a loose cannon, saying and doing things completely contrary to who I am, because my emotional abuse lasted so long that when I finally accepted it and started moving on, there were….. casualties. I said things I’ll never be able to take back, acted in ways I never thought I’d be capable.

Because I had no way to stop it at the time, everything that was heaped upon me was heaped upon them… mostly because I couldn’t confront the person with whom I was really angry…. and it isn’t as if I didn’t try. I tried with a passion I’ve never felt before or since. It left me full of despair and rage for which I had no safe outlet, and chose the most unsafe of all…. two people who loved me beyond all reasonable measure… or at least it seemed that way to me, because I didn’t think I was worthy of that kind of love. It surpassed all my understanding…. and because I was not healthy, of course I chose to go after this dysfunctional, unstable, disaster of a relationship rather than relying on the healthy patterns I’d developed with Dana, and later with Argo. And, as all emotionally abusive relationships inevitably end, I blew up like a firecracker because it was SO UNFAIR.

It had never been fair, but I didn’t know any different. I wandered further and further from myself, my values, my personal compass as I tried to release the thunderstorm that had been raining on my head since 1990.

In the words of Dooce, it sucked and then I cried.

It sucks that I’ll never go back to that time in my life, because both relationships ended with our bridges burning in effigy. How could they not? At this point, it doesn’t and shouldn’t matter what I want, and they are two completely separate things in each relationship.

With Dana, it would be the ability to have stayed married through the storm, knowing it would pass once I returned to my old self. But you never go back to someone with whom you’ve had a physical fight. She started it and by God she was going to end it. I’ve never been hit harder in my life. I do blame myself for escalating things emotionally and not running away before it got physical… but I don’t blame myself for getting hit, trying to defend myself, and it ending….. poorly.

With Argo, it would be to erase the words that cut me like a knife, that “we’d never be normal.” It would be her contacting me as if everything was okay and yet, it was CLEARLY not. It would also be the chance to thank her in person for emotionally whipping my ass, because it got me back on the road to wholeness. It would be the chance to give and receive hugs that last a second longer, because it might do more good than an apology in black and white. It would be a chance to know the whole package rather than the people we presented to each other- only the sides of each other that we wanted the other to know. It could never be a do-over, but a begin-again. It would be to know forgiveness rather than remission.

For the non-Episcopalians, remission of sin is erasing it like it never happened. Forgiveness is recognizing the wrong and reconciling it.

I’m at a point in my life where I don’t want to cover anything up. I want my friends to love me even though I am hugely flawed, because I’d do the same for them.

I am starting to find those friends, or rekindle friendships that have been idle a long time. It is an important step in finding the next great love of my life, because if I can’t be a good friend, I can’t be a good partner.

As I rest and recover, though, there’s no place like localhost.