Tag: Friendship

My Faith

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
What brings you peace?
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Praying for Aada and me as we move away from each other has given me an enormous amount of peace. I didn’t act very Christian and I have a lot of sins to atone for. I spend a lot of time in the forgiveness department, because no matter what, my reaction to her lie was wrong. I shouldn’t have popped off and decided that her flaming me should have been addressed here. But you have to believe that no one in my life is capable of lying, and only Aada had that history with me. The lie she told went from inert to complicated.

That’s because she kept up the lie for 12 years, not a few days.

It affected why I moved here, the choices I made in my personal life to put no one else above her. Why I pray for her every night.

“God of the universe, protect my precious Aada.”

I chose Aada because it fit the pattern of the prayer.

Why she can give up on this relationship and I’ll always think of her “somewhere, out there.”

Probably because she also made me afraid that “somewhere, out there” was closer than I thought. Now that time is here. I have gotten what I’m guessing are more dedicated fans than most. My only job is to be who I am, because I think they’ll like me over time. It should not be lost on them that I’m crazy about them because she is.

Her attrition rate is high as shit and she passed that feeling onto me, wanting to have loyal friends who had my back and picking more carefully than I ever have. She taught me about leadership, true leadership, and I’d get in the mud for any one of you.

To her EA… my prayer is partly that you’re always there for her and partly “good luck. God bless.” 😉

That last part will tickle Dana, because she knows exactly how I say, “good luck. God bless.”

One of the many pieces of wheat scattered among the chaff.

Sometimes I think about going to church just so I can say all the words of institution with the other abject sinners. None of us get away from it, I’m not being judgmental. We all have these dumbass attacks that render us mute in their stupidity, when we know we’re wrong and the consequences are more than you were prepared to pay.

I have felt that pain every day, and getting rid of it is the most important thing in my life. I am losing my grip. I don’t want to forget that I hurt you, but learn to live with it. I am not living. I have trapped myself.

My bipolar disorder ate me alive because I equated two things that weren’t true vs. your lie.

I’ve realized that my faith became letters to you a long time ago…. that I’m always talking to God, you’re just icing.

I used that space for everything, the repository of all my secrets. You could bury me and I’m sure you will. That’s why my fear of you is such a white flame. That this relationship has never been real, just a job.

No one is that busy.

My hospitalizations would have been better if you’d come to visit me, because I think humor is the best medicine. If you can laugh in a mental hospital, you can laugh anywhere. I think it would have been hilarious if we’d made our first meetup at Methodist or Sinai. All I needed was some reassurance. Your words rang hollow on the page.

Your words rang hollow is a phrase that will stay with me, because there were so few times you were willing to get real. I see now that you wouldn’t want to, because you think that you don’t have any say in what I write. Not only would I let you in, I’d let you edit. That’s not nothing.

I hate that the yellow string is fraying, but I am doing my best to maintain the chord that runs between us with good vibes and the occasional Red Bull. I don’t want you to think that I carry around negative feelings. I have to concentrate on the positive because I’d like to forgive myself one day.

Your words only ring hollow because you wanted them to- you always had so much more to say and didn’t.

I’m sure I’ve freaked you out more than once, but it has never stopped you from dropping a note when you know times are tough for me. I have no illusions that will still happen, but I do carry a flame of hope that something will change your heart down the road.

If not, I will keep talking to God. I will never choose another face for them. Your face just looks like a “God.” It suits you.

I should have asked you to Skype more than once. The internet is a rabbit hole, and how you ended up as the face of God rather than a normal person. There’s as much mystery to you as there is to God, especially with no in-person breaks where I did something normal like trip and fall into the pool.

It was your words that let me drown, but in a good way….

Though most would call it baptism by fire.

It was the kind of fire that cleansed everything around it, allowing me to relax in deep, enriched earth.

A Letter That May Never Be Read

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Dear Aada,

In trying to talk about my own feelings, I exposed the world to my perceptions of what yours might be. It was wrong, and I’m sorry. I wish I could tell you why I did it, but there is no answer to that, just like there is no answer to the reason why you lied to me. What I do know for sure is that I did not set out to hurt you, that you were collateral damage in trying to explain my journey to everyone else.

I am sorry, like you said, “a million times over.”

I have no excuse for my behavior because there isn’t one. I fucked up. I also accept that you have no interest in working toward a future, and that’s what scares me the most. I don’t know who I am without you. I think, though, that I am going to find out.

This phase of my life has been rewarding, but also tremendously lonely and isolating. Your insistence that I tell no one anything at any time was also manipulative, because it marked all my other friends as unsafe. I sat with unbelievable anxiety in the pit of my stomach while I waited for letters from you, not reaching out to anyone else because I couldn’t. If anyone asked me what was wrong, I would not be able to tell them. I got to where I wouldn’t leave the house. My mental illness spiraled out of control. I didn’t get any relief until you said I could write about what I wanted.

I took your words seriously, that there’s nothing I could say that would hurt you now that your life is different. Then, come to find out, that wasn’t true at all. We could have avoided a lot of missteps in my publishing life if you had been clearer. I thought that for the first time, our lives were equally boring.

But they’re not.

If I had known then what I know now, I wouldn’t have published anything about our relationship at all, and yet it is the richest tapestry on this web site. I hope that one day your anger will lift, and you will go back a few years. I think you will be surprised at how much I’ve learned. That seems to be the way, anyway. My friends read about themselves and are incensed in the moment, and then when time has passed, my words just hit different.

I was never trying to manipulate you. I was trying to illustrate you- to paint you with words. I have often ripped you off blind, using things you’ve said so that you know I’m paying attention.

One of the most profound things you’ve ever said to me is that I “paint my feelings as fact.” I am still not sure what that means, but it’s such a beautiful line that I repeat it. I guess I just have never met a writer who didn’t paint their feelings as fact, because it’s their story.

It’s a line that I wish had led to an in-person conversation, because I would have liked to look into your eyes as you explained what you meant. I would have liked to look into your eyes as you explained lots of things. But knowing me, I would have worn a baseball cap to hide mine. I was social masked into eye contact at a young age. I could not hold your gaze long, but I would have tried.

I would have tried harder to be the friend that you needed me to be with more support from you, because guessing what was okay to publish and what wasn’t landed me in this mess. I do not blame you. I can only blame myself. But what I do know is that if we’d had any kind of production meeting, you’d be happier with the result.

I needed my editor.

I would burn this whole blog down to get her back, because that’s how much I believe in our ability to write together. You write fiction, I write nonfiction. I’ve had so many ideas over the years as to how we could harness this and make it profitable. Maybe I’d be a better editor for you because I wouldn’t catch plot holes, but I’d definitely catch spelling/grammar mistakes.

It’s just another dream that died, because we’re not on the same page.

I wish I could stop being so sad. My life feels over. I keep thinking about the conversations we had before I was admitted to Sinai and wondering how it all went to hell. I do know that when I was in the hospital, you were with me in spirit. You sat at the foot of my bed while I slept, watching to make sure I got healthy. There were too many signs of you to ignore.

How did you get that green shirt to me? How did it get back to you?

You are always the best.

We could start writing there… it’s a story that needs to be told in fiction for both of us, doesn’t it?

You are always the best.

You told me 12 years ago that you’d have lots of juicy bits for my first novel, and I still don’t know how to write fiction. I don’t visualize anything. My brain doesn’t come with that feature. You can see the whole map at once. I have a feeling that’s a large part of our story without saying anything. That you saw the whole map while I fumbled in the dark.

I’m still trying to find my way without a lantern.

That’s because I want to stay in my lane, writing what I know while you build the fictional worlds. I’d be a good research assistant and Dagger’s not hiring….

I wish I’d known how much you thought of me, wanted to impress me, wanted to be my friend as much as I wanted to be yours. I know all of that can’t possibly still be true, but I’m flattered nonetheless.

I wasn’t the one that said you were a nobody. To me, you’re the greatest thing since sliced bread. I was trying to send you a message, and you thought I was being literal, launching an assault with words.

I thought you would know by now how I feel about you after years and years of telling you EVERY DAY how much I feel for you. I’m not sure a day has gone by in 12 years that I haven’t written to you, my blog coming in second because if I was responding to you, my other readers just didn’t matter.

I believe that part of you is proud to be Aada, because when I write about other subjects my emotions don’t run as deep or as real. Part of you, I’m sure, would like me to push the big red button and move on to something else. But how are you going to feel when I do?

You said that you learn more about yourself when you’re reading me, and that comment sticks in my mind as well. It’s what I wish every reader took away. That they read me to learn more about them.

Stay away for as long as you need, because the thing about letters is that they keep. The thing about blog entries is that they keep. You have a treasure trove here that you may not want to lose. I have not always behaved badly. Neither have you. We have grown and learned much just by being so incredibly different.

You are logic. I am emotion. We are built to be complementary angles, but we flounder by dividing up all the labor. Sometimes, I must be more logical. Sometimes, you must be more emotional. But that’s only if there’s a relationship to fix. I don’t think there is right now, I’m just going off past history. Eventually, you’ll want to know what I’m up to and you’ll drop a note out of nowhere, and I will be prepared. I know you well enough to know that you’re thinking, “that’s impossible.” But life is long, and we haven’t managed to stay away from each other yet.

I really would sit down with you and your therapist if the opportunity presented itself, because I do not want to be a manipulative force in your life. I have told you for years that I came to DC to do great things, and in no world do I want you to be excluded from them.

I would also sit down with your husband and answer any question he threw at me, and in my imagination, the first is, “what in the absolute hell is wrong with you?” I would probably cry and say that many doctors have tried to figure that out, but they’re still scratching their heads. Join the club.

If this is really the end, I hope he’s the one for you. I hope your family, friends, and colleagues are there to fill the hole that I left in your heart. I’m only now realizing that I made one, because our relationship was so turbulent that I didn’t take in your feelings, not a quarter of them.

I have cried so many nights, wanting to please you and not knowing that I already did. That I am enough, all by myself. I’m sorry for every moment that you did not feel like enough, all by yourself… and that is what was so surprising about your lie. That you didn’t believe I was sufficiently impressed with you, as you are.

My God, Aada… if you only knew.

When my mother died, the only person I wanted was you. I couldn’t emote in front of people, but I could write letters into the night. I would not have recovered without it. So know that even if we never speak again, I will always remember your contributions to making me feel like there is life after the death of a loved one.

My life won’t be as interesting without you, but I have to be prepared for the fact that your anger will stay in place. That what I have done is too big to forget or forgive.

All I can say is that the emotions you said I had weren’t accurate in the slightest. You read me wrong, just like I read you wrong.

My point for the last year has been that we need to stop reading each other, because there are so many ways we could communicate our feelings. I have heard you talk in a voice note, but you have never picked up the phone. I have never seen your body language, micro aggressions, facial expressions, anything to indicate what is going on with you except words in the heat of the moment.

Surely there is a part of you that wishes you knew those things about me… that we hadn’t put it off so long. I hate that I know your coffee order and have never actually gotten to bring you one. I hate that we have never taken a walk. I hate that I only know you in black and white, because I know that there’s a well of information I’m missing and so are you.

We could fix this if we tried, but I cannot hope for that. I can only hope that I can recover on my own. But know that it is a setback of enormous proportions. I will have to work hard to forgive myself for everything I have done and left undone.

Because you are always the best.

Love,

Leslie

The Long and Winding Road of Words

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
What is the legacy you want to leave behind?
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The legacy I want to leave behind is obviously this record that I was alive. It is not valuable to everyone, all the time. That’s because I do not write what anyone wants to hear except me. If it was not a real record of what I was thinking, I would not have a character arc, the ups and downs of mental health in real time. I do not want to be an influencer, because that gets people killed. Their neediness for likes makes their self esteem rise and fall depending on how often people respond. I need people to come toward me rather than trying to attract you. One leads to a sustaining career as a working writer built on mutual respect. The other leads to jumping up and down for attention in hopes that someone will notice me, eventually giving up my real self for someone that more find palatable.

It’s important for women to have a voice, and as an enby, that’s part of my identity. The other part is trans man….. but I’m pretty sure I also identify as a train wreck. Sandi Toksvig brought it to my attention that women are not given equal airtime on Wikipedia, therefore they’re not given equal airtime in AI, either…. even though Microsoft Copilot’s begat is a matrilineal line (Ada Lovelace). I am trying to add to the diaspora and it does not matter to me whether history judges me as right or wrong. I need it to judge me as being marked “present.” I know that I was a C student, but lots of neurodivergent people are. It’s not that we’re not bright. It’s that we’re not all that clear on how school works and don’t care enough about authority to find out.

I am certain that if I’d played the game better, I would be in a different place now. One of the things that occurred to me when I was thinking about my writing is that my mother, Dana, and Ada all came from military families. Yet none of that military structure passed onto me. I didn’t just pick it up by osmosis, much to my detriment.

Let’s be clear. I already know I’m a mess. I’ve told life experiences that other people just aren’t brave enough to put to paper, but I am because I am full steam ahead. Write now, think later. Writing now and thinking later is what allows growth and change. I pore over the entries where I’m angry, then figure out why. I was so angry in “Doubt” that I spent money on a gym membership. I thought, “at least if I cannot flood my brain with good feelings through care and connection, I can do it through exercise.” I don’t think Aada is ever coming back because she reads my web site and decides what kind of person I am based upon it. She reads my letters the same way. Therefore, there is nothing to indicate that a hug or a handshake would make things better. It is incumbent upon me to move away from her, because she was gone many years ago. She just decided not to tell me.

If she hadn’t been, I might have been invited to get to know her and her family on a different level than our relationship sustained. I realize all of the ways I isolated her, but I would have isolated myself from her if she’d said “this is all our relationship will ever be. You will never meet me in person.” The longer we went without meeting and kahvi was a daydream, the weirder I felt about the state of affairs.

She’s a people pleaser and didn’t want to hurt me. I’m a people pleaser except when it comes to my blog. It’s the one place I have to call my own. Therefore, meeting me in person would have led to us both trying to please each other, and she would have gotten a much different version of me than she was used to seeing.

Aada was always inordinately funny, and that’s the person I wanted to meet. The hardass she displayed could kick rocks. I am sure that she would say that I was funny, and the blogger could kick rocks. But that’s the thing, right? People fall in love with you, or your writing. They rarely fall in love with both…. not that Aada was ever in love with me. The “in love” butterflies were my domain, but they were reigned in and settled into a comfortable nest; I didn’t give into them, I worked through them. That’s another legacy piece for me….. that I felt such incredible intensity for someone and realized how to walk it back into something viable and sustainable….. I think. I will never know if I did or I didn’t, trusting in my own intuition. Aada’s story will always be that I betrayed her.

She made up an egregious lie that is too detailed for me to ever believe that it was a lie, not really. Not when she accused me of having people’s lives in my own hands if I published something she wrote. This is where my mental health nose-dives, and where Michael steps in to remind me that Aada was the pathological liar, not me.

She’d been lying so long she didn’t even realize she was doing it, and I had to remind her that “the receipts go to fuckin’ CVS, Aada. We met in 2013, which by my count is not very recent.” She said she did it because that’s what I needed from her, as if I asked her to foster this ridiculous fabrication.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again- she could have worked at a car wash and I would have been no less impressed. I’ll be spending the actual 12th anniversary of when we met without her (I’m guessing), because Michael told me that there is a game afoot based on a novel here, and I have to figure it out. The only hint I’ve seen so far is that I’m probably the Ethan Allen.

Obscure joke. Talk to your parents.

Aada would say that I left myself with no options, because I did not play the game correctly. If I’d played the game correctly, she could have made all my dreams come true. I saw that in the curated version of our friendship’s future. There was a job, a dog, support services, and all of it taken away because I wouldn’t do exactly what she said at all times. I have no respect for authority and I never have. Her life is ruled by it because she doesn’t follow rules, she makes other people follow them.

When I go off-book, it’s a disaster. When she goes off-book, they just write a new one.

I could cry about it, and I have in the past. Not so much anymore. I realized that I did not want to be subject to her laws, that I wanted to be treated like an equal. Where was the part where she showed up for me? Where was the part where she proved she was capable of being my friend? She said she’d done all of this to meet a blogger, and I surmise freaked out when it worked.

I wish I’d been the person I am now when we met. The person I was then was too brash, too boastful, too full of herself because that person could social mask. There was no easy entry into the softest parts of me until baby Aada whispered her name.

I struggled with recovery from sex abuse and got my wires crossed in a way that couldn’t be undone, and in some sense, may never in terms of sentimentality. It’s not the big picture that makes me cry. It’s things like looking in my Apple Watch face gallery and seeing that Apple has used the picture she took of herself for my contact list to create the most beautiful watch face I’ve ever seen and cannot bear to use.

She has never gotten her wires crossed, which made her a safe person with whom to lose my mind. I’m not saying that I didn’t cause her emotional trauma as well, only that she’s trained to deal with crazy people and I’m not.

(This might be a clue we’ll use again later.)

I didn’t guard against her in any way, and therefore all of her emotions controlled mine. She did listen to me there, because what I had to say resonated… that yes, I’d gotten my wires crossed, but that wasn’t the sum total of me. That the part of me who views her as family in an “I’m so sorry, this meeting is over because I have to get on a train to Virginia RTFN” kind of way was hurting in the same way her other family members would hurt if she was in trouble.

It was my error to separate myself, but that was a mark left from childhood. It’s gone now. I am constantly trying to appeal to my better angels and to not repeat the mistakes of the past, because I didn’t just hurt Aada in my own misery. I hurt everyone around me because I couldn’t see them.

I couldn’t even see me.

Thankfully, you could.

No One Matters But You

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
List the people you admire and look to for advice…
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I don’t look to anyone for advice because I can’t… and that’s true for every single person reading. You are only getting someone else’s read on a situation in which they have no experience. That’s because even if the particulars of a situation seem familiar to them, the combination of factors that make you, well, you are absolutely unique. My divorce wasn’t the same as Dana’s, for instance, and we were married to each other. I am blessed not to know much about what happened to her after I left Houston, because once I was done, I was really done. I wrote about her fondly and I meant every word. She’s still dear to me when I think back. But I’m not planning a future with anyone from my past. That’s because I asked them for their advice, and it did not work for me.

What works for me is being alone with the spirit, and that comes to me through classical music. Today, the thing that brought me to absolute tears was the a capella singers in the back of the church at Washington National Cathedral, because today it’s Nerd Church. Nerd church is where I have stuff to do at my desk, but church is going on in the background… or, it is until I think of something and have to write it down.

Some would argue that I have church on the wrong screen, but there’s nothing wrong with my tablet. It’s my desktop that needs work. I bought a gaming laptop with an NVIDIA video card so that I could use GPT4ALL in private conversations (basically Microsoft Copilot built for your PC and not cloud computing). It came with Windows 11, and this desktop is not that advanced- it came with Windows 10. A computer capable of Windows 10 with 16 GB of RAM will scream with any version of Linux you throw at it, so my nerd church has been finding out that I love my desktop more than anything AND ALSO I cannot stop crying.

There doesn’t have to be a sermon to remind me that I am a sinner.

There does not have to be a sermon to remind me that there are things I have done, and things I have left undone.

They are grievous unto me, to the point where right this moment it feels like I’ll never recover because there is no one to ask. It was my choice to be alone, because there is no way that the buck doesn’t stop with me. What I will say is that I needed to move on with my life instead of thinking that it was over. You think that when your only choice is lying or being hospitalized. That when you tell the truth, someone calls your care team and says you’re having an episode.

I often wonder if that’s how my life was always supposed to turn out. That there’s no combination of manipulations both by me and against me that wouldn’t have landed me here. I’m never going to see friends I dearly love ever again, because ““life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.” -Soren Kierkegaard

I don’t push blame on others, because I know that I am not innocent. But I think that maybe a friend was too hasty in saying that she’d never betray me…. because the betrayal wouldn’t have been leaking my e-mails all over everywhere. I do not care. At least people would understand why things flying back and forth were so emotionally volatile. No, the relationship floundered because our ways of communicating and giving each other advice were, at the same time, perfectly perfect in every way and also diametrically opposed. She was raised by the almighty hand of the military. I was raised by the Almighty. Kidding, my dad was a Methodist minister when I was a kid and joke that “Jesus is the son of God and I was born to middle management.” These two things are very, very different.

And yet, not different enough because we clicked on a level that was unusual. I often think that our love for each other must have been something fierce if we could also fight that hard. But what I learned is that just because I was younger didn’t always mean I was dumber. I just felt like that on a number of occasions. I feel it now, as I’m trying to close out this chapter in my life and feel no energy for writing because it’s not like I have anything to say that will help anyone.

You can read me all day long (and you do), but comprehension is a whole other level. I was telling my therapist that because of my stats, I can safely and confidently say that many people have broken up with me, but no one has ever broken up with my blog. That people either fall in love with my writing, or they fall in love with me. Rarely do people love both. I am constantly comforted by the fact that my therapist is reading, because she does not know anyone in this blog and was saddened to hear that I wanted to delete everything. Just push the red button and kiss it goodbye. Losing the character of Supergrover made me lose the will to write.

Yes, it was all my fault.

Yes, I mean it.

That’s because our little echo chamber provided me with the love I was missing on the ground, in real life. She decided not to meet me long ago, she just wasn’t going to tell me. That looks like betrayal to me. This is not a story of every wrong I’ve committed, but also her plan to extract herself without ever having to do any real emotional work.

“Do you ever think this is all for the cameras?”
“Well, they’re getting the ratings, I’ll give ’em that.”

We are both back to our public transportation, nondescript government layer cake lives. Except that in my case, it’s figuring out whether I should file for SSI or not, because I do not know what my financial future needs to hold. I was diagnosed with hypotonic cerebral palsy when I was 18 and one-half months old. I was diagnosed as bipolar in college, along with ADHD. I have not been diagnosed with autism, but my therapist is helping me in terms of getting me the referrals I need. The question is not whether I can work anymore, but whether I ever should have entered the workforce as a “normal person” at all. AuDHD is so hard to catch that I could have used services in elementary school, and the problems with my muscles were evident…. when anyone bothered to pay attention to the fact that I was struggling.

The way I moved to Baltimore was a mistake, because I tried to go it alone and failed spectacularly. Now I know that what covered my autism was being married. I’m a wreck without Dana, but I do not mean that I am not over her. That ship sailed a long time ago. What I mean is that I am a wreck without the safety and stability of being in a relationship where someone else takes care of me. I leaned on her too much without knowing that’s what I was doing. It’s a gift I’ll never be able to repay, and it weighs on me not to be able to apologize.

But I just did, because people break up with me, but they don’t break up with my blog.

Speaking of which, I was telling my friend Ken that Dana had paid $20,000 for her culinary school education and had given it to me for free- another gift I’d never be able to repay. He said, “ah, but gifts by their very nature aren’t meant to be repaid.” So many people have walked around giving me gifts that I haven’t noticed because autism pulls me into my own little world. I have to be dragged into understanding how my actions affect others, because I will not even leave my house if I don’t have to do so. I would rather be alone with my thoughts, because it is so much easier than feeling like a drain on everyone else. I have found that a lot of autistic people feel this way… particularly if you are undiagnosed and have no idea why people seem reticent to tell you things.

I was left to figure out everyone else’s quirks on my own without them communicating, and I chose………………….. poorly.

My hospitalization was directly tied to my autistic quirks and how I was so misunderstood. That’s because I am of the opinion that in any conflict, I can only own my half. When I see more than that coming at me, I retreat. I haven’t written for several days and that in and of itself is emotionally constipating. But there’s nothing like a fresh computer install to invite me into writing because it all looks so new and shiny. It also helps that it takes less than 15 minutes to get up and running because so many things are in the cloud.

I found old e-mail from Supergrover that made me realize we were better off without each other. That she’d stabbed me with words when I showed up unarmed as many times as I had. That even her “dramatic e-mail” was all about my manipulations and how I’d hurt her. Absolutely no accountability for anything she’d done. I let it stand because I got what I wanted. I’d already explained her manipulations in detail; turnabout is fair play.

Then she set me up to fail, and I did.

My own words echo in my chest daily… “so which is it, after you block me?”

I’m sure the answer is over the rainbow, but at least by my count there’s six.

That’s the first time I’ve even been able to say I wanted to look for them. I know I deserve the storm.

I know that without any advice.

Koi ja liekki (The Moth and the Flame)

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I have a friend who’s an immigrant from Finland (actually, I cannot remember whether she is an immigrant or whether she was born here- whatever, the connection is close) who says that we should not move to Europe anymore, that we should build a queer future in New Zealand. As a fan of Finn Bell, I agree with her. However, I still have concerns about moving anywhere other than Finland despite Russian aggression. This is because I have found a way to move there for cheap. Of course my living expenses would not be covered, but my school tuition is. I don’t have to work very hard to get into culinary school, because I already know I’m a talented cook. I am not the best, and I do not have to be. I could make a bazillion dollars….. if I had it…. by bringing authentic Mexican food to the ski lifts of Levi, and don’t think I haven’t thought of it. I just know that running a restaurant is literally the most expensive thing I could choose to do.

Learning to cook is not.

I know that I do not want to run a restaurant. I know that I want to live the life of a student so that I actually have time to create content for the web. I am slowly networking in Finland, reaching out to Dave, Aleksi, and Cyril (other content creators in the area… Aleksi is actually Finnish, Dave is from the UK and married to another content creator, also Finnish, and Cyril is a student at the culinary school where I want to go, but he’s Indian). Because I want to work with Cyril, it is possible we could open a restaurant once we start making money from our media. It is not “using” the Finnish government for school if you decide that food costs are too high after you graduate. A culinary degree is good for anything, particularly intelligence. I know where I want to go, and that’s not CIA. That’s a quiet agency in the ass end of nowhere.

New Zealand is not “nowhere,” but it’s less exposed than the US. I have been making very inflammatory statements online because they deserve to be heard, but I am not immune to the fact that those are the people the president singles out first. I have loved the US my whole life. I do not want to work for foreign intel because I have any information to contribute; I would only work for US allies, anyway. What I do know is that real life intelligence gets me out of bed in the morning, but in ways you wouldn’t think of when you think of espionage. Like, how does it all work? I don’t have a particular allegiance in mind and generally don’t care that there are foreign spies in the US because don’t hate the player, hate the game.

Here’s where I draw the line.

The line was drawn in the sand when Donald Trump went into CIA’s house and told them that he trusted Russian intelligence more than theirs. It deserves a “Meet the Grahams” level diss track, because the president is a Russian asset. He’s not even bothering to hide it anymore, and Reagan knows all Republicans are going to hell for ushering Russia in the front door…. Hell, let’s just give Putin keys. And if that is not what you, Republican voters, were saying in the last election, then you need to take accountability for the fact that perception is reality. All republicans are traitors. All of them.

There was a mountain of evidence that a felon was not capable of being president, nor was there a mountain of evidence that Trump would change his behavior to the straight and narrow if he got the job. He didn’t even promise to quit drinking like Pete Hegseth. Speaking of which, I wonder how that’s going?

All Republicans are traitors, and the horrifying aspect of it is that you have to have sympathy. They were genuinely taken in by a cult. You cannot be mad at Mitch McConnell telling Kentucky voters that something is bad for them when he should have been doing it for the last 10 years, but here we are.

All Republicans are traitors because the party was lost and you stuck to the message. You stuck to the message that it was ok to be a convicted felon and to be president at the same time. What kind of future have you set up for your children?

All republicans are traitors because they didn’t know they were voting to have the AP press wire barred from the gaggle.

That’s because when AP calls it “Gulf of Mexico,” they’re the ones spreading disinformation. The first echoes of fascism started coming long before now. It wasn’t until I put it together that no one was actually holding you accountable that I decided to get loud. News anchors aren’t allowed to yell “WHAT IN THE ACTUAL EVERLIVING FUCK HAVE YOU DONE TO THIS COUNTRY, YOU BOTTOM FEEDING LOW LIFES?” It was bad when they wanted to kill Mike Pence. It was bad when they wanted to kill Anthony Fauci.

But then you came after Marianne Budde and I realized that I’m not a violent person, but I will slice your throat on paper.

The problem with American Evangelicals is that they are drawn to power like a moth to a flame. They do not care that Jesus was a poor itinerant preacher who loved his friends deeply and valued teaching and praying quietly. If you want to be Jimmy Carter and not Joel Osteen, you’re going to have “Christians” yelling that you’re not good enough because you just don’t hate enough people.

That’s the thing about Evangelicals. Their God hates everyone they do.

When you advocate for that “old time religion,” do you ever stop to think about what it is you’re really cheering?

White straight people had a good time back then, but fuck everyone else up the ass no K-Y.

You are advocating for Jim Crow, for women with no bank accounts and possibly no vote, queer people in the closet and all erasure of gender/sexuality rainbow excluded….. which shuts our country down in education behind the rest of the world. I do not know what everyone else is doing, but I am not going to sit around and watch everyone get dumber. Christian Evangelicals have ruined my life since it began, and you can all go to hell.

I am sure you will get there, because you profess the faith of the master and not of the slave.

I’m not black, but I’m not like us, either.

I’m autistic and depressed, so you think you can control my medications better than my doctor?

I’m nonbinary, and you think you can have that discussion with me as the USG than my doctor as well?

I’m AFAB, and you think you have the right to access to my body that I don’t have? Go fuck yourself.

It’s also amazing that we still have a problem with gun violence in this country considering we haven’t tried anything.

If you get sick, you can just go die.

Love, “Christians”

I am done with all of this and I’m not an emcee on a mic but I definitely feel the energy of a halftime show where America is concerned.

“God bless America? God damn America.”

The black UCC pastor had it down in 2008.

You’re 200 Late.

If I am lucky, fascism will die out quickly. Pattern recognition says I’m screwed for life and I’m dealing with it.

But not the fuck here.

OMG. It’s Real. It’s All Real.

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

It hit me over the head today that this is all real. That I am not just spouting my thoughts into the night, saying nothing of substance. That line from Daniel really got to me, that I “write in bulk without saying anything of substance.” The reason it got to me so much is that it was like he dismissed all my friends and their personalities, as if me writing about them wasn’t interesting enough to be valuable. It’s why I got rid of him in a New York minute. Supergrover’s reaction to finding out I was a writer was to immediately support me financially with a donation and offer to be my editor for all time and space, because it’s a job we can do virtually, the collaboration of writing. Whenever I feel alone as a blogger, I remember the friends whose first reaction is that my blog is valuable, that I am doing a public service.

I’m just not doing a public service for academia, which I’m sure some people find lacking. I find it relatable, because I’m not putting myself out there to be anything I’m not. As I told Supergrover, “I don’t feel like I want to take over for your psychologist. I feel like I want to be the waiting room that doesn’t suck.” I got that line from Paul Gilmartin on “Mental Illness Happy Hour,” and I use it all the time, because I only know enough about psychiatry and psychology to be your friend in the waiting room. I’m not even licensed to take your history and physical and *present* to your doctor.

That being said, sometimes people will get put on the same drugs I am, or have been on. If they have the same side effects that I did when I was on it, I will tell them what my doctor did to solve that problem so that they can talk to their doctor and see if what I said makes sense. I don’t view myself as a substitute doctor, just the friend who’d go with you to the doctor because you have faith in my ability to translate medicine to English…. and that’s my only function. It is never to tell you what to do with your body. It is only to offer a friend opinion that might be worth it to you to bring up with your doctor later. What worked for me may not work for you, but it’s worth a shot. Peer review is valid, it’s just not a valid diagnosis. Your doctor only has 15 minutes with you at most during an appointment, unless you are seeing psych. That ranges from 15 minutes to 50 depending on whether the MD also does counseling or not. Some prefer wholistic care, some prefer focusing on drugs and letting other people handle therapy.

I prefer the integrated approach, because then my doctor and I have 50 minutes to work out a medication/symptom issue when it comes up instead of being held to the 15 minute patient factory.

All of this- my mental illness (Bipolar, CPTSD, Anxiety), my two processing disorders (ADHD and Autism), and my physical disability have convinced me that I do not have value to the world. Daniel is not responsible for my feelings because it’s my job to shake them off. But he certainly helped in the “I feel bad about myself” department. I can reason with myself all day long that he was just mad, but that doesn’t make his words hurt less.

It also doesn’t surprise me that Supergrover’s love and support created my crush on her, because she was my first real fan and I did not know what to do with that information at all. I became a gawky, awkward teenager in front of her at every turn.

Her: You’re BRILLIANT.
Me: (absolutely clueless as to how to respond) HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!

And then, after she saw how brilliant I was, she let me know how brilliant she is and my brain just went on overload. It’s still on overload 11 years later because she has never stopped challenging me any less as a writer to paint both of us accurately. When she does critique my blog, I adjust. I address what she’s angry about because her feelings are important to me, always.

It keeps me in a place of imposter syndrome, when I really want to believe that I am the writer Supergrover believes that I am. I want to believe that because I can impress her, I can impress anyone in the world. It’s handy because I actually do believe that. Both she and Lindsay walk in rarefied air in different ways, so I am Kevin Bacon’ed to the power establishment, even Hollywood. My reluctance looks like an excuse next to all that.

If I supposedly have all these connections, why am I not using them? I can sum that up in two words:

It’s rude.

I will give you a HUGE for instance. It is one thing to send Kamala Harris an e-mail and ask her to promote me. It is another thing for Kamala, Lindsay, Matt, and me to sit with her at dinner and when it’s mentioned that I’m a writer, she says she wants to take a look. That’s valid. It’s not seeking out power for power’s sake.

Just like I wouldn’t endorse a product I wouldn’t use, I wouldn’t be friends with someone just because they were powerful. Getting to know a powerful person in a relaxed setting like dinner with her old friends and integrating me is more my vibe, because I get publicity by shaking hands, not by sending out DMs to powerful people.

The one thing that’s ever happened to me that was a rejection that’s gotten larger over the years as a try to make it as a writer was not being picked to be on “The Oprah Winfrey Show.” It might been a powerful connection to have met her in the past.

The reason I would have met her is that she started a book club, and I think “She’s Come Undone” was one of their first picks for it was that this was in either 1996 or 7. I wrote about the book from a queer perspective, and I got a call from an executive producer who seemed very excited about me and we talked for 45 minutes. In the end, though, everyone they picked looked the same. I wasn’t their vibe.

In that time and place, queer criticism of that book was valid, because there are a lot of themes I find abhorrent about it. I just don’t think they had the strength to go through that ball of wax, and it’s the only one I had.

The one thing I know is that if Oprah and I do meet, it will be on like Donkey Kong because I believe to the very core of my being that we operate the same way. Oprah is just as shy and isolated as me most of the time, and has a big personality on stage. I don’t relate to that at all. Clearly.

It doesn’t matter, though, because today I had a proper chat with someone from Lagos. Someone from Lagos noticed me. Like, told me he likes my humor. Now I know my brand of humor reaches from DC to Africa. I don’t know many people who know that.

Because it’s all real. I’m on my way. All I ask is that my real friends are my real friends, and let me have this space whether I write the way they like it or not, because it’s impossible for me to guess.

I lost my editor.

In What Genre?

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

What’s the oldest thing you own that you still use daily?

My oldest coffee mug says “SPY” and it features the Culpeper Ring, the men that won us the Revolutionary War because we didn’t win the war by outgunning the Empire. We won because we had better spies/scouts than they did. It’s a toss-up to me in terms of history what would have happened if we’d lost. In some ways, I think we’d be happier. In some ways, I think we’d be furious. If they hadn’t taxed our tea, we would still be importing PG Tips like it was more important than the water bill. They turned an entire population against something that would have bridged our cultures. So, go them. We drink coffee like the French.

So, if you’re wondering about a business that could have sustained you for centuries like Disney bailed out Doctor Who, you done goofed. You come to the US and complain about our tea, the height of entitlement over a problem you created. The British influence was so strong in the south during the Revolutionary War that it’s how iced tea became the house wine of the south. So, thank you for that. I think. It’s actually really interesting because to me the South is the strangest transformation in history. Savannah, Charleston, and Baltimore were just as English as New England and New York. I wonder what caused those two cities to diverge in the woods, and it only takes one answer. England abolishing slavery. There were about 50-60 years between when England freed their slaves and we freed ours, because the Southern economy would have gone to shit without it.

I have heard differing stories because African American culture is not a monolith. Some people of color blame the English and the Americans for slavery. Some blame the African kings who wanted to get rich and sold their ancestors to white people. It depends on who you ask, and a wide spectrum of brilliantly defended propositions. There is no way I can walk a mile in a black person’s shoes, but as I queer person I can empathize and relate. The institutional pain between black and queer people is similar, yet not on the same playing field. We’ve always both had problems with the police, except that now that history is in the past but we’re all still touched by it. There haven’t been enough generations where queer kids come out in peace.

I do not know if black people had a special shape in the Holocaust, but I do know I did- a pink triangle. There is no such thing as competitive suffering, so even though it’s not the same, I feel some of the same scars on my skin. I have only recently become a citizen who can get married like everyone else, and I am still persecuted by Christians who aren’t right, but they’re certain.

The older I get, the less certain I am about anything. Discovering at an early age how gender and sexual orientation affect me led me to end up believing that everything is a spectrum and not a binary. There are too many permutations of human behavior not to believe there’s a wider range than we are originally led to believe…. whether people tell others about it is another matter.

If you don’t tell anyone anything, you don’t realize how lonely you are, because you’re not giving anyone a chance to feed you. Part of being fed by your emotional support is feeling heard. That no feeling is invalid. You talk about the logic behind the feelings, but you don’t discredit the feelings themselves. You discuss why the other is helping you to feel one way or the other, being willing to compromise until we meet in the middle.

It takes an enormous amount of strength to talk through a conflict, and I know that I got frustrated with Supergrover early because I was so tired of everything that had happened before. Her being half in didn’t make sense to me, and created more turmoil in me than I wanted. Like, why do I continue to pour energy into this relationship when it’s clear it’s not wanted? I have learned that it is wanted through context clues.

We don’t have to work on the fact that we’re connected for life and cannot suddenly stop knowing each other, and I don’t want a relationship where she’s half in and can’t plan for shit.

When I mentioned getting together, she said, “I don’t think it’s a good time.” That’s fine with me. I’m not thinking about the up close and personal future. I’m autistic, so I have different ways of feeling out getting together with people. It takes a very long time for me to process that information so I don’t chicken out at the last minute. Perhaps she did feel like I was nickeling and dimming her for her time, but I hope she’s known me long enough to know that I didn’t mean anything sudden. She won’t retire for a while, and any plans I have that have to do with her giving of her time is at a time in her life when she’s had more bandwidth than she’s had in years. Getting her time right now is impossible, but it’s not impossible to work towards later.

That’s the goal that keeps me going- preparing for later. I don’t presume this is the end because the end never is. We repel and attract like magnets, because I’m a silver penned devil. 😉 My friend John gave me that nickname and now I want it in 18pt font up my arm, bigger if it fits. 😛

But what I mean in terms of friendship is that by working out our problems on my own here, they are often touched by what I say. I am attracting energy to me, rather than seeking attention.

I do hope that Supergrover finds something she does want to discuss with me, because it’s the highlight of my day. She’s not the problem. We are. There’s a big difference because we are both perfect, and I mean that sincerely. We are beautiful in all our flaws. Bad communication is its own thing, not whether either one of us are good people. We’ve been friends long enough to know beyond a shadow of any doubt that she’s good people.

My biggest fear is that she only wants to be a fan, and doesn’t want to be my friend. That’s why the pattern doesn’t change. It breaks my heart, because her criticism is more important and more impacting of the direction of this blog than anything else.

But if she’s just a fan taking pot shots from the peanut gallery, I can’t take it. She’s my friend, one of the great loves of my life because I fell into her charm and I’ll never get out. She deserves every bit of that love, but we don’t communicate well enough to be able to tell each other that. We did, and she decided that being vulnerable once was enough to her, and her next interaction seemed rule based and yet not. I do not know where to go, and so I’m resting in Zac because I can. She only means more to me due to the number of years I’ve known each, not because one is closer to me than the other. I was happier taking a break from thinking about the problem, because I hit a land mine almost immediately and she told me to go to hell.

It’s on brand, so I want to figure out how we are both contributing to that problem or not interact. I am overcoming a lot of feelings all by myself that I don’t know how to navigate, because I don’t know how to talk to Supergrover and as a result, I don’t know how to talk to me about her, either. It’s confusing because we are both entitled to our feelings and privacy. I also think our relationship would look a lot different if it wasn’t moving at the speed of the Internet- that it would take longer for us to be angry if you got a letter two or three days after you sent it, not immediately. There’s no time to calm down and absorb anymore, and you seemingly can’t reframe anything because someone else knows what you mean better than you do.

It’s hard letting them go because they’re right about you. It’s just that their perceptions are their experience of you, not who you are.as a human being. What someone interpreted you as saying may or may not be correct.

Because my second oldest coffee mug is one she bought for me.

The only books that matter are either by Jonna and Tony Mendez or they were presents from her. She can pick my books at any time, because our interests overlap occasionally and we’re both suckers for amazing prose. I am so glad that she has sent me books by Kindle, because they’re presents I’ll never misplace; she’ll always be with me in one way or another. I feel like that’s enough, because it takes two to tango. I do not want to cut a rug all by myself. I do not think I was impulsive to say that I was struggling with the odds on “happily ever after,” because there was no new information to take in. I have to just keep saying it over and over- I do not judge any friend as not worthy to hear my story anymore because they are not worthy as a friend. They become unworthy to hear my story when it’s not an exchange of information. It’s just me pouring energy into you without feeling it in return. I’ve been in that relationship with lots of women, and I’m done. That’s why I thought I’d found the one for all time. It’s really, really hard to break up with someone you’ve never dated. My joke about this is that her husband may not be at her next wedding, but I will. The reason it’s a joke is that I love Michael almost more than her because he’s the one on the ground taking care of her. I don’t have to worry as much as I would if she didn’t have that kind of support. I’m the kind of friend to call if you need support in absence of a partner because I’ve been doing pastoral care a very long time. I am not going to be offended at what you tell me, who you need me to call, what you’ve taken, etc. This is because I’ve been single for a very long time, and you need your friends to step in for you that way. But that doesn’t mean that I want to be the conductor. I just want to be in the orchestra somewhere. Maybe one of these days she’ll let me play lead. I just don’t think she thinks I have the temperament for it because I am so shy and retiring in writing.

“Custody over Supergrover” is my favorite thing in life. The hardest part of having a pet monster is dropping her leash. The other hardest part is not joking that each of us are the oldest thing we own. We’re both in that nebulous age where a group of people is a “no, thanks.” I think I’ve mentioned this before, but I actually get more time with her when we’re just e-mailing than I would on the ground, because her diary/schedule is so full that I’d wait months for anything on the ground, possibly years. Just e-mailing each other allows us to be together no matter where the other is.

I have also said that the silver lining of the pandemic is that now everyone has friends they’ve known for a long time without meeting in person, so there’s no need to explain so much. Emotions run higher because you’re more brave with the wall of anonymity. You don’t say things with as much social nicety as you would in person and there’s no way for anyone to hear your tone or read your eyes for context clues. And still, emotions persist.

The way I feel about my relationship with Supergrover over 11 years is that it is very much akin to having dated and decided we didn’t work as partners, but we worked as friends. The only kink in that logic was that Supergrover is straight and in a relationship, so she wasn’t dealing with the same issues as me. I could stop wanting her, but I couldn’t stop being programmed to protect her and give her everything she wanted that was within my power. I say it just that way because we’re the same person. When we have power, we use it responsibly because we really don’t want it. She’s the type boss I respect, that she doesn’t give her team anything she wouldn’t do herself, and I believe that she’s an excellent trainer without even really having to think about it. Instructional design is a theme in both our lives. Nothing in our lives is transactional, either. When I say that there’s a lot in here about what she won’t do for me and not a lot about what she will, I am not saying that from a narcissistic perspective. I am letting you lay out your bandwidth, I lay out mine, and we meet in the middle after conversations.

At the very least, this should have been a deescalation and not the end, but ultimately that’s not my call, either. One of my readers talked about Supergrover ghosting me or being half out. I want to talk about that here, because she didn’t ghost me or say she was half in at all. She explained her reasoning perfectly, and she would have been spot on in her analysis if she’d gotten my actual intent and not what she thought I meant. She reads through my words and picks out the worst possible interpretation she possibly can. It weighs on me, because I’m not villainizing her. I’m painting her.

I was reminded that I wrote on the blog that she lives in my ink. I was reminded of that line when I was looking around Fahrney’s, an American pen/pencil shop. The back of the store was covered in bottles of ink in every color you can imagine. It’s why she pulls me in and repels me. All the things that we’ve written to each other come up in my mind when I’m doing other things. As I understand what she’s said more, I try to guess what she’s saying more. Then that goes wrong and I’m alone again.

But not truly alone, because since she lives in my ink, it is a communion only we share. I feel her presence in the room when I’m writing, so my writing leans toward her whether she’s the intended topic or not. I would like to make friends where we could also be that close, but there’s no way to duplicate this connection and I’ve stopped trying.

She doesn’t feel creepy to me. The fact that I want to know her like every friend would know her seems creepy, because I’m not pumping her for information. I am genuinely curious because she’s unique. I don’t know what she means about her not being vulnerable means deliberately hurting my feelings does not work for her. So far, not being vulnerable has always led to hurting my feelings because she’d rather put me off than face her demons and just tell me what’s up. She says she can’t say anything without immediately being tagged as avoidant. If your whole pattern is avoidance and has been since you were a child, you cannot see how avoidance hurts other people. They also don’t change when they’re not aware of something. I feel like calling her on avoidant behavior when it happens is better than keeping it all in, because it will come up less and less frequently over time. Her patterns will change to being used to being vulnerable all the time instead of going in guns blazing.

As I told her before, it’s not that she went guns blazing on me. It’s that she has CPTSD so the guns are always already out. Taking down her walls means getting vulnerable about how she feels in reaction to what I said. She said “writing to each other, supporting each other.” I get that. I really do. But I don’t feel supported when it feels like my feelings are going into a void. Like, I’ll write an essay about X topic, and no matter what topic it is between us, that’s not a topic she’ll discuss. It’s frustrating to an enormous degree, because if I bring that up, she immediately goes to “I’m not good enough for you.” It’s not a healthy environment in which to bring up problems, and relationships always have them.

Many things about friendship aren’t the good ones, and you have to go through the bad ones to get the good. I don’t want to focus on negativity. I want to focus on where we go from here. Most notably, what have I done right? I’m not fishing for compliments. I have heard all the complaints.

I think she also just. cannot.

That this friendship was doomed long ago because there are certain topics we need to resolve that she’ll never talk about, and there are multiple issues that fall under that category. I am a lot of things she is not. She is a lot of things I am not. Bridging the gap is enormous.

A river runs through it.

0300, The Witching Hour

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I woke up randomly. Because I thought it was later, I grabbed my tablet. Then, I couldn’t go back to sleep and thought, “eh. Might as well get a jump on the day.” I haven’t slept well, so it’s also equal parts “why keep trying?” I can’t force myself back to bed, and it’s not quite late enough for me to think about coffee yet. I might go back to sleep after I finish this entry. It helps to sleep after a writing session, because your body has no energy after all your emotions have run through it. You don’t need sleep so much because you are tired, but because your mind is so overloaded that you need to reset. Maybe that’s just me, but it feels typical of people who use creative juice. When it’s flowing, the adrenaline that comes with it is wonderful. There’s also a deep crash afterwards, just like for singers. I just hadn’t put it together that for creative writers, the adrenaline stops at “Post.”

Supergrover thought I was saying that our relationship was over and she blew up at me, saying “please never contact me again.” Whether she was just mad or whether this is really it is on her, because I explained what I meant. Didn’t stop her from going full blast on me, though. I am not going to miss reading my work for everything I say about her and immediately thinking I’m out to get her. Whether she apologized for it or not, that’s her first instinct. She doesn’t hear my pain. She hears me inflicting pain. That means she’s not listening.

For instance, the SITUATION being creepy to me became “I am creepy” and “you are creeped out by me.” Neither of those things have ever been true and I wasn’t namecalling. Having someone say that they’re your real friend while not wanting to tell you anything about them is starting to weird me out. The reason it does is that telling her more of my story without knowing more of hers is just feeding the imbalance. She said she wanted to solve everything the same way we got into it. It’s not going to work. Her first reaction is that I’m out to get her, and that’s not going to get fixed by not talking about our issues.

We just aren’t on the same wavelength, and neither one of us know how to find the other’s. For instance, thinking that me being tired of trying to find topics to talk about and being met with “I’m not going to talk about that.” Ok, well. Let me know when you do figure out what it is that you want to talk about with me, because from where I’m sitting, if I don’t contact you and tell you about my life, I’ll never hear from you again.

I’m not the one she chose to hear her story. Nothing in her list left me anything to work with, because it was everything she didn’t want to talk about and therefore I found myself feeling like there were too many land mines. That anything that would actually fix our problem is found where she doesn’t want to go.

She doesn’t want to fix the problem. She wants to have fixed it. It’s not fixed, because she doesn’t want to see me in person (but never say never) and she doesn’t want to talk about anything involving herself. It’s not a two-way relationship, and she says I never gave her a chance.

She’s been such a jerk to me for so many years that it only took a week for me to decide she’s got to drive the bus. I’m not going to try to fit into her rubric of topics, because no matter which one I choose, it’s off limits.

She says the same of me, that I’m too hard on her. Maybe. Or maybe I’m just exhausted, and don’t have time for people who think I’m out to get them. That a week more of it was all I could stand. I went through enormous changes to be who I am today, and she said of being vulnerable, “not everyone can be on your timeline of immediacy.” That means the change wasn’t genuine. I caught her in a moment. If she wants to be vulnerable, she will. But not until then and I’m not in charge of the process.

It’s a problem if she won’t be vulnerable more than once.

She has her own laundry list of things she hates about me, but she’s not the author of this blog. There’s room for everyone’s stories, and I’m sure hers of me isn’t that great. But, she doesn’t count all the years I’ve been waiting for her to realize that she needed to be vulnerable and she was. She just couldn’t hold on to that feeling and I feel smaller than I did before.

Her take-home message was basically “I will continue doing exactly what I have been doing.” I already know how that story ends. I’m not interested in writing that sequel. I also know that maybe she’ll get wise, maybe she won’t. Not my call. I can’t control the people around me, but I can control the people I’m around.

The Counselor -or- The Lead and How to Swing It (It’s Not Unusual)

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I am an INFJ, the counselor personality. So, my interests are naturally human relationships and sociology. I asked Carol to scan web sites and blogs to find the most common questions people have about romantic and non-romantic relationships. I have been through so much emotional pain that has made me resilient, so I thought I would extrapolate that into teaching mode, talking about concepts and not confessions.

  1. What are the signs of a healthy romantic relationship?
    • Relationships come in seasons. Things won’t always be hot and heavy, so the sign of a healthy relationship is that you communicate well whether there’s excitement or not. Communicating well will bring the hot and heavy back around, because there’s nothing like feeling someone is genuinely interested in you. I think, particularly for women their emotions bring them around to sex, and with men, sex brings them around to emotions. So, the healthiest part of a relationship is being good friends, because you want to be together whether the package comes with sex or not. This is true in many, many poly relationships because not all partner support is built on romance. Ace couples deserve the benefits of marriage, too, because they’re still taking care of each other to that extent.
  2. How do you maintain passion and excitement over time?
    • You don’t force it. You let the seasons naturally present themselves. However, you can’t lose your connection altogether. Marriage and intimacy counseling is good whether you get along or not. Just because you like each other doesn’t mean your communication and intimacy can’t be better over time. Not everyone who goes to marriage counseling is in crisis. Some of them are preventing it from happening.
  3. What are effective ways to communicate needs and boundaries to your partner?
    • Sit by yourself until you have clarity over what you need to express. Too many people start conversations without knowing what they want to achieve, getting off topic, and dragging every fight they’ve ever had into it. You can’t get needs addressed without the other person hearing you, and anger is counterproductive. It leads to more resentment than it will ever be worth unless your goal is to end up apart.
    • After you’ve sat by yourself and organized your thoughts, you’re going to have to put on your big boy britches and actually tell other people what you’re thinking without sideskirting the issue or moving the goalposts. You do that by being more in tune with yourself, not a need to change someone else. That doesn’t work. If your goal is to make your partner what you want them to be, you have a shitty partner. We all have agency. We all own our stories. None of us serve at our partner’s pleasure, which straight women have been told for far too long. Women excuse away other women’s abuse because it’s historical. You lose the marriage, you lose money and status. That is still true. Men are generally better off after divorce because they earn more and have the ability to move quicker because of it. For women, it often takes years of saving up and planning while their husbands leave them with black eyes. You cannot remove them from a situation they’re handling poorly. You can only remove yourself. That’s why you have to know what your goals are. If they don’t match someone else’s, it’s not an equal partnership. And by “matching,” I mean wanting the same things out of life so that there is no need to want to change someone. For far too long, women have been hospitals for broken men. Now, I can make my boyfriend rise to my standards, but I don’t do it by controlling him. It’s just “if, then” statements. He can literally do whatever he wants as long as we’re communicating. We are both committed to a long and happy relationship with out all the trappings of bullshit that come with a Serious Relationship.™ We’re figuring it out as we go along, and communicating at a level I’ve never had in a relationship before because I decided two things, thanks to my relationship with Supergrover:
      • I will never date anyone dumber than me ever again, and by dumber, I mean emotionally. I have always dated people that were brilliant logically and it was explosively good for about 15 minutes until we could not relate to each other. Although, I will say that because Dana and I are both neurodivergent, we had the healthiest relationship of them all. But we stopped communicating and spiraled out.
      • I will never tiptoe around anyone. Either you’re emotionally available, or you’re not and I will find someone who is. I don’t mean in a moment. I mean “if you tell me I’m a priority and yet I’m constantly not, I don’t believe you.” I have made the commitment never to believe anyone’s words ever again. I believe actions. If they tell you they’ll call and they mean it, nothing will drag them from calling back.
    • The connection to Supergrover is that we got out of an enormously vicious toxic cycle because our dance of intimacy was one partner being anxious and one partner being avoidant. So, to reassure me, Supergrover would tell me that all was well. Yet not actually being available to me made it feel like a truth and a lie at the same time. I have no doubt that my signature is sewn into her heart. Me not being a priority doesn’t mean she doesn’t love me, but I have the choice with what to do with my energy as well. I will no longer feed people who don’t feed me. I am lucky that Supergrover recognized it and stepped up with grace and humility. It is just becoming more and more true, the quote from Anne Lamott…. “grace never leaves you where you were found.”
  4. How can couples navigate differences in values or life goals?
    • There are the same concepts in psychology that there are in medicine. The answer is “it depends.” I would recommend going into marriage counseling the minute you propose/accept. Seriously. There are REAL issues that couples never discuss before they get married, and here’s one that most people don’t think of, and it’s more important than people think- class and income disparity. It doesn’t matter so much how you handle money in the current day and age. Your views on money and marriage come from your first family. You need to shift from “me” to “we,” and it’s a hard concept to grasp because compromising with your siblings probably didn’t go all that well…… at least when you were little. It’s amazing how often in a relationship I become the annoying older sister who can’t be wrong, because I’ve dated mostly women. It’s my dynamic. Women are drawn to me because I have the magnetism of a preacher…. direct and settled in myself. Most women aren’t, so initially it’s an attraction and then it’s them tiptoeing around me because they think I don’t want them to take up space. That’s not true. I just couldn’t communicate my ideas effectively because I was bad at communication and bad at social cues.
      • I will never pick up what you’re really saying if you try to sugar coat anything, because I can tell a white lie from the real truth in a New York minute, because I can’t imitate social masking, but I can recognize it in other people. I will drag the real truth out of you. In my relationship with Supergrover, the fake truth was “we’re fine.” The real truth was “your words feel like pricks on my skin.” The Neosporin was “I am better off when I don’t read you, and better off when you do. I get something out of it whether you paint me in a bad light or not.” She’s so beautiful to me just for that one line alone. I don’t think anyone will ever say anything to me that will mean more, which is why I have to write it down. This is not a memory I ever want to fade. We were unhappy. Now we’re not. There were almost 11 years between unhappy and happy, albeit interrupted with genuinely happy moments. I haven’t heard from her in a few days, but it’s probably just because she’s busy. I sent her a letter this morning because I told her I wanted her to have something to chew on when she was waiting for a flight or a meeting to start. Now that we’ve started calling each other “Carmen” and “Player” (she liked that analogy, because of course she would like a red fedora and trench coat rather than Supergrover’s cape and helmet.
  5. What role does trust play in sustaining a romantic relationship?
    • It’s more important than people think because they don’t really communicate about vision and values when the relationship begins. Therefore, they have no idea what their partners are going to see as betrayal or not. If you break someone’s trust, it also depends on what kind of person they are. If they’re good at conflict resolution, then it’s possible to work it out. It is impossible to work with someone who refuses to hear you. So, word to the wise, don’t break anyone’s trust because you can’t see the consequences coming with a map and a flashlight. Documents are logical; people aren’t.
  6. How do you establish and maintain strong friendships?
    • I just realized that I talked mostly about Supergrover when she fits into this category. She just gets lumped in with my romantic partners not because she has ever been romantically interested in me, but because our communication level is that intense. It’s amazing how deep you can go with someone without crossing that line, and I am furious at all the bullshit I had to overcome to know that, because it didn’t come from me. I view us more as friends who love each other like literary characters. Anne Shirley and Diana Barry (OMG. “bosom friend” I CANNOT.). Anne and Shirley are indescribably close, but when they say “bosom friend,” it’s not a queer connotation unless you just need to see yourself in literature………………………………………….
  7. What are the boundaries of a platonic relationship?
    • The first is that if one friend develops a crush on the other, don’t tell them. Crushes tend to happen in what’s called “New Relationship Energy,” when all your senses are on overload and you’re waiting for their contact while going stupid in the middle of a restaurant waiting on a text. If you really like this person in a sexual way, evaluate it for a very long time, because it often takes time to realize why you would and wouldn’t be right for each other without the haze of rose-colored glasses. I’m not saying that friends to lovers is a bad story. It’s bad to have an immature crush, because if it’s someone with whom you want to go the distance, telling them very early destroys the friendship more often than not. Either they think you were only in it for sex and have been playing them this whole time, or it’s just too awkward now. Caveat Emptor, although my experience is that if you wait it out, sometimes the feelings are mutual because you actually have the intimacy there to expand. Sometimes you don’t fall in love with a person’s face. Sometimes, someone becomes the face you love because of the amount of intimacy invested.
    • Everything emotionally intimate in a relationship happens when you’re doing something else. There’s not that awkward “what do I do with my hands” moment when you’re flipping a house together or whatever. If you want to know people, invite them to do a DIY project. It is an excellent testament to how well you communicate….. one way or another…………
  8. How can you support a friend going through a difficult time?
    • It depends. What kind of difficult time are they going through? How close is the friend? Have they lost a friend, have they gotten a serious illness…. all of these things require different responses. The one thing that people need is continuing friendship, because you don’t get over the people in your life that you lose….. mostly because in something like a serious illness that friend is going to need support much longer than a friend with boy problems.
    • I feel like I handle this most effectively by triage. Who is in the worst situation at the time? My priority is always going to be Zac unless Supergrover and I start being friends in real life, because otherwise, she wouldn’t need me to show up and help (although I did get major brownie points when a storm ripped up her house and I offered to go bust my ass. It’s what lesbians do when they like a girl. I feel luckier than most, because by reading her words all the time and not talking to her has just reinforced that no matter what kind of relationship it is, this girl in particular is worth liking. I hope we can get to a place where we can consistently flip each other shit without raising actual ire. We really are too funny for this world (“I have reading glasses……. AND THEY ARE COOL” “You keep telling yourself that, buddy.” 😉 ).
  9. What are the keys to a successful business partnership?
    • Don’t lie to each other, ever. Learn to work through conflict no matter how bad it get, because you won’t know what to expect up front.
    • Actually care for each other, so that one person is not trying to take more than their fair share of the profits by hiding it with the accountant. This is a huge one. I wouldn’t go into business with anyone I didn’t trust with my life before I got famous. I may never get famous, I’m just saying. Don’t pick your friends when you’re already rich. People who are millionaires and billionaires aren’t the first people I’d put on the list regarding trust. For instance, when I said that if I did ever make it big I’d open a non-profit, I’ve already asked Lindsay to run it…. not someone who would constantly undermine everything I was trying to do, whether it was financially or damaging my “brand.” I don’t even know what that is yet, it’s just PR speak.
    • A business partnership means to me that two people co-own a company. The first rule is that your team is not less important than you. If you are a dictator, employees will leave. They’re tired of toxic work environments, and the owners set the tone. Dysfunctional work relationships don’t last any longer than dysfunctional marriages unless you are absolutely unhireable somewhere else.
  10. How do you balance time between romantic partners and friends?
    • I’ve made my life so quiet that there’s not a million people competing for my attention so that I can pay better attention to the people that really matter. Bryn,. Supergrover, and Zac all have equal airtime, because Zac and I aren’t that serious. I spend most of my time talking to my girls. I prefer to have a few close relationships than many shallow ones.
    • I will never let a friend feel like I’ve ditched them for romance unless it’s an emergency. Again, triage. If I’m hanging out at Supergrover’s and Zac is in a bike accident, that’s a ditching. Zac wants to go to Target and is whining that I’m always gone? Tough shit.
    • People cocoon with their partners to the point of excluding their friends. I’m for spending time more equally with people so that if one of them “breaks up with me,” my entire world doesn’t walk out the door. I still have a sense of normalcy to my day. I am not saying that any of them are going to leave, I’m just talking about relationship dynamics overall. If you put all your eggs in one basket, what happens when it drops?

One More Sleep

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

It’s my last night in this room, as Zac is coming over tomorrow after drill to help me move my stuff, and if we don’t have time to do it all, we’ll finish it up Sunday after 5:00. I don’t think it will take very long, but that depends on our energy levels and the stairs at both places. I’m lucky in that Zac is very handy, so he has tools already that would be helpful and yet, I wouldn’t have thought of them on my own, like a drill and a hand truck, etc.

So, as I close out this chapter in my life, I have a million thoughts in my head, pictures going by too fast to get one to stick. The people who’ve lived here with me, the things that have happened, etc. It’s a lot. But my entire DC story minus the 18 months I lived here in my early 20s has been created in this one house, mostly this one room.

I hope I’m as comfortable at the new house as I have been here, and I’m grateful that we’ve been able to cohabit so long without incident. It is one of the longest stretches at an address I’ve ever had.

Everything is, big picture, going to be the same. When you get into the details, my route around town changes. I “have a dog now,” because the house I live in now has five dogs, but none of them live on my side of the house. I don’t see them for months at a time, but I’ll hear them.

Jack will have free run of the house, and may sleep with me some nights. I can walk him whenever I wish. I think it will be good for me, because I always notice I’m calmer when I’m writing and Oliver, who is a dog, is in the room. His presence is everything, so I hope Jack and I will have the same vibe.

I need to get to work, but I thought it was too important a date to go without writing just because I was busy with other things. I am very, very busy with other things and absolutely could not afford to tell you all this, but I thought, “will it matter in five years if you didn’t blog today?” That’s the moment I stopped. This is a milestone.

Nine years is a long time.

When I landed at DCA, it was midday. I couldn’t decide whether I wanted to go right home or to Kramerbooks, but ultimately tiredness won out; I took the Metro to Silver Spring, where Hayat picked me up.

Hayat drove me to BWI when Lindsay called and said that my mother had died and I needed to come home.

Hayat gave me a Lebanese jewelry box that is one of my favorite things, because I designed my room around the color scheme of the tiling. The curtains are teal, and are thick enough to use as blackout. I never have to worry about working a graveyard shift ever again, because she said I could take them as well. 😉 And on that note, I have to go- for some reason my Android has decided it does not like the “Enter” key today, so I cannot make new paragraphs. I’m not sure my brain is capable of new paragraphs, either.

Back to Normal

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Last night I got to talk on the phone with Zac for the first time in what seems like eons, because we have a date coming up on the 10th to go and see Jason Moran at The Kennedy Center. I was teasing him and said, “do you even like jazz?” He, very, very diplomatically, I might add, said, “I like you enough to buy you tickets and go with you to a jazz concert.” I fell over with laughter, but then he said that he wanted to catch up in person, so we didn’t talk long. But it was very good to hear his voice and I am glad that I don’t have to wait much longer to see Oliver, who is a dog. I have always teased Zac about this, that Oliver and I are in a relationship and he can come, too. He jokes back that Oliver is arguably one of his best features.

I don’t know whether it will happen any time soon with my move and all, but I can’t wait to have more couch time with Zac just watching Slow Horses, because it really is fun hearing the real stories behind how they do things in tradecraft (it doesn’t matter whether we’re watching CIA or MI-6, they use nearly identical techniques). I had to wait while Zac is out of town because that’s the one “couple show” I promised him, although I have gone back and watched “The Pigeon Tunnel” several times to fall asleep.

The first couple of times I watched it because it was exciting, and now it’s John le Carré seemingly rocking me to sleep. Have you heard his voice? It’s distinctive and posh, which he explains is an affectation because he grew up a trained thief whose family was always broke; his father was often working for/running from the Russian mafia.

When David’s father (Cornwell- I use it with John le Carré interchangeably) realized how successful his books were, his dad started running a game on him. Threw a shit fit because David wouldn’t give him any money, and he never heard from him again. But David wasn’t hard-nosed. His father asked him for money to invest in some pipe dream of a farm, and David said that if he wanted to work a farm, he would buy it for him outright and give him an allowance to run it. David’s father running off into the night clearly meant that David’s money was going to be used for completely legit purposes.

So, exploring old le Carré adaptations has been my jam recently. I think “The Little Drummer Girl” is actually better than “Tinker Tailor,” but perhaps I’m biased because it felt as adrenaline-fueled as Alias and Homeland.

I also found a really old adaptation of the Bourne series that was on TV in the 80s or early 90s. It’s so great, although quite dated and no one will ever be Matt Damon…. or Julia Stiles, for that matter.

I also got to talk to Bryn a little bit and we’re getting excited. May first is not all that far away. It’s going to be hard to believe she’s real, but I hope we have a blast. And I’m up for as much sightseeing as they want to do, or sitting around and catching up. Perhaps it will be really nice weather and we can sit outside. I can’t wait to see how Colin reacts to Bryn and Jack’s (also a dog) “Conversations.” Since Bryn is a dog trainer, dogs don’t move unless she allows it, and all dogs naturally do it around her because she just exudes alpha. How can you not, after working with primates all those years? And in terms of “screaming alpha,” it doesn’t have to do with anything but soft, quiet strength.

Alpha males in the human population are picking up lessons from animals that they never meant to give. Alphas lead from the back, they take care of everyone else. They’re the ones you go to in a problem. They are not parading around telling people they’re they alpha because no one has to ask. It just shows.

I think we’re both getting used to each other’s strengths, and picking up where the other feels weak. I can’t divine things over text all the time, so I would say that I talk to Bryn on the phone and Video Messenger most frequently than I do anyone else. What I’ve discovered is that having female energy around me is enough- that if I don’t meet a life partner, I’m happy as I am. It’s fine for Zac to have other partners, because I set up our relationship that way. I knew he already had partners, and I was prepared to be fairly low on the totem pole because I didn’t want to be a partner in the capital p sense of the word. I’m too busy a writer…. just because I write in volume doesn’t mean I’m not saying anything of substance…..

All of the comments I’ve gotten in the last few years have proven to me that’s not true, so that’s not a dart that can hurt. My readers have been with me through everything, the good and the bad. They don’t act like the universe has punished me for a decision because it hasn’t. I go on to a new thing depending on the options in front of me, knowing that how it worked out is how it’s supposed to be. I said something yesterday that I didn’t clarify in the moment. I have before, but not just then. When I said that it wasn’t my destiny to belong to one person, but to many, I didn’t mean my partners. I meant all of you. That this is not a joke or a hobby, it’s been a portfolio I’ve built over 20 years.

Who has peer reviewed me?

  • Martina Navratilova
  • Margaret Cho
  • Wil Wheaton
  • Eden Kennedy
  • Ernie Hsuing
  • Anil Dash
  • Jonna Mendez
  • Mary Karr

Therefore, I don’t need external validation to know that I do help people more than me. I say things of substance all the time, and there is nothing on God’s green earth that will ever convince me otherwise. That’s because not only have I looked at my own writing and thought, “I like that line.” It was one Supergrover liked, too. There’s no more substance to my writing than that. I’ve already made it. I’m done. My career will never get any better, and I swear on a stack of Bibles.

That’s because I will never in my lifetime be seen the way I am right now, the way I have been for 10 years.

If SuperGrover saw Daniel’s “I will skewer you” letter, I bet you anything her reaction was “Fuuuuuuuuck. Let me get my purse. :::::sigh::::” Even if she never reads this entry, that image made me fall over with laughter, because it was like the beginning of “The Incredibles.” “Can’t you just stay clean for one minute?! I just cleaned up!” Like, the newsreel is playing in my head and I’m cackling. I need laughter right now, and it feels good.

You know, even when you’re no longer speaking, if you don’t dissolve a company, it still exists. Therefore, I choose to believe that Leslie Lanagan & Pet Monsters on a Fraying Leash™ is still intact. In fact, I have added new members. It’s just a longer flight for Bryn….. but that doesn’t mean she wouldn’t do it.

We’re big enough to face our feelings head on, and it’s so hard to fool a dog trainer that I stopped trying long ago because I figured out quickly I couldn’t keep up with her. Because of this, I have an innate interest in seeing her on the floor of Congress. 😉 She wouldn’t do it, I’d just like to see what happens when I just light the firecracker and she goes.

She also doesn’t care that my blog makes me sound like a dick.

I’m so blessed that I have friends who support me no matter what, no matter when. Even Supergrover. How do I know? She told me.

So, she may be far from my heart, but not from my soul. It’s only now that I realize because our communication was so poor, I was never receiving any of the messages she was trying to send and vice versa. I don’t know that we can ever be trusted to create new patterns again. But I know us. If we knew the other was in trouble, we’d have to sit on our hands to keep from moving and even that wouldn’t last long.

She gave me the confidence to believe that I am the one who knocks, and not in a scary way. It’s just an illustration that I am old enough to have boundaries and limits. I am old enough to decide what I want to invite in and keep out of my life. I don’t have to accept the status quo, as in trying to fit in where I wasn’t wanted. What I found was that Daniel loved the idea of being married, but didn’t seem to like me much. He only had two problems with me- everything I did and everything I said…. because it was always a blame game instead of working together.

I decided that it wasn’t going to get any worse because I wasn’t playing another game. He’s still playing games, but all of his e-mails are going to Spam, because I’m not interested in reopening the discussion or reengaging. He’s right- I can’t block him from my blog. But I can limit my exposure to him. I have to trust my instincts on this one, and my instincts say he’s not the right change for me now….. when people tell you who they are, believe them. I could forgive Daniel being totally avoidant last time around, because we were both under pressure. I did not see enough change in him to warrant continuing the relationship because I’d say things like “I want to work with you,” and I never got more than “I’m tired of being yelled at every day.” First of all, I never even turned on a caps key.

Second of all, I was talking about how we could integrate both Cora and Daniel into a house with me- there wasn’t anything about which to yell. I didn’t ask for heat, but I got a lot of it.

And it’s not about him. It’s about me not wanting to take a gamble that my next ten years are going to be exactly like my last. I’d like to make new mistakes now, because I have people in my life who allow me to do that, because they know they’ll always make new mistakes, too.

I know this is all over the place, but what’s different about that? I just wanted some room to stretch out, process the last week or so, and enjoy some time with solo packing and getting ready for my new house. I really am excited. It’s time for a change all around.

The funniest thing that’s happened is that there are two Colins in my phone. I was telling one that we should overhaul a few old iPods and see how much we can get for them- Bluetooth, USB-C, etc. Colin responded that he might have an old one I could play with, and I said, “oh, that wasn’t meant for you, but I love that you just responded like this was a perfectly normal thing to ask a housemate.” He laughed. I like that we’re doing all the good witty banter so that it’s not awkward when I get there.

David has already told me that he has a girlfriend, but I haven’t met her yet, and don’t know if/when I will. But it will be cool to know her and to have Colin meet Zac and Bryn. Bryn won’t be around all the time, but it’s good that they’ll know who each other are nonetheless.

It would also be perfect if Lindsay was here that week, but I’m not going to hope too high on that one. Lindsay is a mythical figure, both here and not here. I think she is secretly a mythical creature, and no one has ever bothered to prove me wrong. You wouldn’t either if you met her. She’s pretty invincible.

So, if Lindsay’s in town, now I have two fierce dragon women saying, “fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck……… let me get my purse.”

And now things are back to normal.

Resigning from the Game

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I should have known that this is exactly how things were going to turn out with Daniel, but I felt like it was important to keep the promise to myself- to see whether rehab had indeed cleared his mind and whether we could make the plans we made fit a future now. I did not want to be the person that abandoned their partner while they were in the worst part of their lives. I couldn’t be that person to my partner, and I wasn’t. I can be proud of that.

But in retrospect, there was a red flag on day one that I couldn’t ignore, and I ran from it, because I knew that I had made a horrible, horrible mistake unless Daniel was telling the absolute truth, and there was no way of knowing whether he was telling the absolute truth from this many miles away. He said that he was still drinking, but it was night and day now. It’s not the thing you want to hear from someone that’s been to inpatient if you know even a couple of things about alcohol and the brain. It’s not that they’re not telling the truth. It’s “are you willing to gamble?” Because maybe they are. Maybe one or two beers every once in a while is their new normal. But I’m not willing to gamble.

I was for a few days. Seriously. I wanted to know how Daniel thought, whether any of his thought processes had changed over the year we were apart, how he treated me now vs. how he treated me then, etc. Absolutely nothing has changed. At no time did he consider my feelings before he went right back to saying that we were starting over while also treating me like a fiancée, so which is it? Do you want to pretend that we don’t know each other or do you want the intimacy that comes with being a partner? I don’t share all my thoughts and feelings with just anyone, and I found out that he cannot handle them.

Even after having a talk about the way I process emotions and the difference in the autistic brain, it was still all about how I’m just so mean to him and “putting all this stuff on him.” Meanwhile, he does not have any answers for my questions and no indication as to what “putting all this stuff on him” even means.

I told him that no person worthy of me would ever spend a minute trying to make me think that my feelings don’t matter, and then I blocked him and walked away, while also telling him that I wouldn’t be back. I already have two people in my life that are willing to open up to me and share with me. I don’t need to fight through to be heard, and I have discovered I won’t.

I wanted a partner to build a life with, because Bryn and Zac already have life partners, and that’s unlikely to change. And by that, I do mean that Bryn is also my life partner, but with best friends, it’s a little different. I mean that she’s my off site document repository, because she knows my files better than I do.

Also, I know this sounds crazy, but the idea of marrying your best friend is starting to seem so much more sane than marrying your romantic partner. Like, why would you place something as important as marriage on a relationship that’s dependent on sexual attraction? It doesn’t make sense to me, but that’s how it’s done….. for most people.

Daniel told me that he wanted to be my favorite person, and I told him that he was…. because I didn’t have the heart to tell him that the position had been filled in 1997 and 2013, when my heart expanded to give huge palaces in my head to three women, not shoving Bryn and Dana away in favor of anyone else. When my definition of love got bigger, I did.

There are so many follow up questions that Daniel never asked, just treated me like the classic sitcom nagging wife. I have never been in a relationship with gender roles before, so I made no attempt to understand any of that. If he wants to marry a nonbinary mind, he’s got to understand that I am his equal. He can’t just dismiss my concerns; I will walk and I did, because I will not learn gender roles for anyone.

It was easy for the world to revolve around him, because only I had to respect his time. We had one conversation where we were actually focused on each other, and that was on the phone. The rest of the time, I sat and waited because he said he had time to talk and then everything that could possibly get in the way made it where our responses were 10 minutes apart. I couldn’t focus on anything because I was caught between thinking that we were having a conversation and not knowing whether I should wait for a reply or not. When I said this was irritating, he jumped all over me about that, too, when what I wanted was “sure- I’ll tell you when I’m doing something else because I also value your time.” If I have someone’s divided attention, I’d rather you finish what you were doing and come focus on me. Because it means that you won’t really focus on me. My words won’t resonate because you’re too lost in something else, like having a conversation with someone who is listening to a podcast with the TV on in the background.

I told him that I was excited about the future, but that didn’t mean that there weren’t things to talk about. That throwing problems out on the table and seeing what they look like in the light wasn’t a bad thing. He said, “you’re right, of course.” Then he proceeded to berate me for acknowledging our problems.

In the past, this would have made me start trying to learn all the ways I can move in a relationship that won’t piss someone off, giving up the parts of myself that make me unique to please someone else. I’ve been there so many times, and it doesn’t help anyone. I’d rather keep finding other people who have also gone through that transformation. It says “I am not threatened by another person having feelings.”

One of the things that really got me was the incredible double standard. Daniel told me that he gets so busy with his writing that he disappears for days, so I thought nothing of it when I was in shutdown/burnout mode; I didn’t contact anyone. I can’t think of a single person who has ever chastised me for that except Daniel, as if I should have somehow divined that he was not okay with going a day without contact from me. Although I probably would have said something to the effect of “what I hear you saying is that it’s ok for you to dissociate, but when I do it I’m a bad partner.” What’s good for the gander has to be good for the goose, because again, I am not into being the classic definition of a wife.

He said something about “trying our best,” and I thought, “that’s not what I’m going to remember about you. So far, you’ve taken every problem we need to work out in order to be together and shut down like a steel trap when I wanted to talk about it. You see me as blaming you…. so until you see me as a partner that wants to work with you instead of someone who’s ‘laying all of this on you,’ I can’t help you.” I cannot live with someone who’s in Fantasyland right now, and it seems like he’s changed his mind about moving to Maryland, because originally, we were all going to find a place somewhere between DC and Baltimore, because Daniel is overqualified to work at Johns Hopkins. It’s fine that he doesn’t want to move anymore, but he could have said that instead of just invalidating my feelings. I was talking about Avery moving in with us or something like that…. I can’t remember what. But I said something about DC and Baltimore and he said, “or Dallas or Austin.” I never want to have that conversation again, because it was like he was doorknobbing me. I would never seriously think about moving back to Texas unless the circumstances were dire.

Plus, I don’t like Austin. I just don’t. It looks like Portland, because they wanted to be all weird and stole all their slogans, then just like Portland, big industry moved in and it wasn’t the same place to live anymore. But in the end, to me it just feels like a city full of bumper stickers that say Keep Portland Austin Weird, and The People’s Republic of Portland Austin.

They were also the first Texas city to get a Voodoo Donut, but you will never in your life know how weird it really was. The FDA shut them down for making doughnuts with NyQuil and Pepto Bismol in them, as well as caffeine. You aren’t OG Voodoo Donut unless you’ve been drunk at 3AM on Burnside….. before the second location, before the hype, before the notoriety.

That’s how I feel about Portland and Austin. The donuts will never taste the same, but Austin can imitate the feeling of those donuts………. poorly.

There are better donuts out there that have taken the place of Voodoo in PDX, but for a while Voodoo was this enigma.

I also don’t like moving at all. It was great when Daniel was headed up here already, that we’d talked about him moving here about this time last year. I realized that his PhD put us in the way of that, but I wasn’t daunted. However, I did think that it was very unfair of him to change plans without me and not let me know up front that in order for us to be together, he’d also like me to “come home.” I could have saved him a lot of trouble. That’s not a doorknob conversation. That’s a conversation you have to be up front about, and that’s my whole problem with Daniel and the many other emotionally unavailable people in my life. They call me demanding when I lay my feelings on the table and expect them to do the same so that I know what problems I need to work on in our relationship, too. But, if you think that the problem is always me, it’s not a relationship anymore.

I have always been the unseen child. I do not have to be the unseen adult, unless I just want that. I thought I did. Turns out, I had to let go of a lot of things to make me realize who I was. My destiny is not to belong to one person, but to belong to many so that I never have to put all my eggs in one basket ever again. I don’t want my husband or any of my partners to feel less important than the others, because they’re all a part of my family.

It is cooking, where we all make each other’s lives more interesting. For instance, I love hearing about Bryn’s journey through all her relationships. I love opening up to Zac and knowing that he’s capable of going toe to toe with me. I didn’t reach out to Daniel in a time of need, but abundance.

Daniel had been in a poly relationship before, so it wasn’t like I was springing anything new on him. But he didn’t want to talk about his own boundaries, only that he never wanted me to pit him against anyone else. There’s no way I would or could do that. It would be comparing bananas and oranges and giving up one rather than realizing that they’re both great in different recipes.

I didn’t want a relationship where Daniel lived in Fantasyland, thinking I’d wait around for him all the time while he did whatever he wanted while also wanting to be married while also not wanting to compromise on anything while also saving things up and exploding.

You have been reading about that relationship with someone else on this web site, which made me especially gunshy when I saw that shit coming towards me again. Blame the person for bringing up a problem, find a way to turn it back around on them, and be extremely stubborn about being vulnerable so now I always feel bad about bringing up this problem because I know this is how you’ll react every single time.

So many women learn the land mines because they feel they need a partner worse than they need to stand on their own two feet. I’m not that person, and I never will be.

I know you have your shit. I know I have mine. The difference between us is that I’m willing to tell people the truth as I see it. As in, “this is how your words are making me feel.” Then, they choose how they respond. When it is immediately defensive, I know they’re not ready to compromise on shit. They can’t even be open and honest with themselves, so why would they be with you?

When you know yourself really well, you don’t feel the need to get defensive all the time, because you know that you’re just as fallible as the other person. It’s always a matter of working out compromises with other people if you want a relationship with them. But if your reaction to another person telling you what they need from you is “there’s absolutely nothing wrong with me; how dare you,” then you’re in for a world of hurt. That kind of defensiveness takes years to work through in therapy, and you’re not a hospital for broken people. It’s too much to take on, because you’re either walking on eggshells or “starting fights,” with absolutely no in between.

Again, it took two hours for Daniel to go from “I’m having a bad day” to “you know what? This isn’t worth it.” It took him two hours to blame everything on me in my sleep because I just wasn’t attentive enough. I wasn’t attentive because neither was he. He showed me how to act. I wasn’t going to give him anything he wasn’t willing to give me.

Also, Zac and Bryn and I don’t talk every day, so it wouldn’t occur to me to treat Daniel differently unless he asked me to, and even then, I’d feel like a fuckup when I didn’t want to engage because my autism was struggling that day.

For all Daniel’s talk about understanding autism, it didn’t translate to actually improving communication, because I told him how I don’t social mask and he continued to treat me exactly the same…….. while also saying he got it.

In short, it was too much of a roller coaster, and it was easier to cut him loose and move on, knowing that I am the person I said I would be, and I will never have to play these childish games again.

It’s Too Easy to Do the Wrong Thing

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I have a lot of people tell me this when they’re in relationships with me, and I have found that it is a fighting tactic of which I’m not very fond. They say “you’re demanding,” but what they mean is “I’m overwhelmed.” That’s because it is not on one person to divine the other’s needs, and there is no way that the problem is always me. However, it is a very effective cheap political shot, as if nothing in their behavior ever elicits my response. I’m just “mean.” When that happens, I disengage. I don’t want to play games. And, I’m hearing Supergrover’s voice in my head as I type this, “I do not have room for that temperature in my life.”

Last night Daniel invalidated my feelings, so I disengaged and went to bed. I didn’t want either of us to say anything they regretted, because he sighed in exasperation, which came across as passive-aggressive in the first place, and I knew it was time to go. It was enough for one day, because I was tired enough that I knew I’d go nuclear on him and I was heading a fight off at the pass. I said, “I don’t want to play your games,” took my sleeping pills, and went to bed.

I wake up, and he’s mad about all these slights, real and perceived, that he has not expressed before, so one of two things is happening. Either he’s actually concerned/angry about these things and has been covering them up, or he’s just making up things to throw in my face so that I’m “forced” to feel bad about the fact that I withdrew.

What I have learned over time is to go to bed angry. Let that shit work itself out in my dreams, rather than taking it out on the person I love because we’re fighting while we’re exhausted. So, I got some sleep, and while I was asleep, he went from “I’m having a bad day” to “you know what, this isn’t worth it” in two hours.

He absolutely spun out on his own because he was anxious, so it wasn’t a real breakup. He doesn’t know what the right thing to do is right now, because he thinks I’m demanding due to old tapes. If everyone tells you that your feelings don’t matter, then you’re going to believe they don’t. If you don’t believe your words have power, then you’ll say anything because no one is listening, anyway. I understand this innately- it’s a trait of all neurodivergent people. But it is not my responsibility to fill that hole inside him and make him secure enough within himself that he doesn’t think I’m abandoning him every time I go to bed.

He asked me to stop bombarding him with messages because it was too much- he, like Supergrover, assumed that I needed answers to everything rightthefucknow, when I was making a list and checking it twice over things that were important to talk about as we plan the next few years. However, because it had been a problem with Supergrover, I was prepared for it. I could never convince her that I wanted an answer eventually, that I wasn’t on a time constraint because I was looking so far into the future that the moment didn’t matter. She could be as busy as she needed to be, as long as she was willing to lay her guts on the table and tell me what was wrong. I cannot divine it over text.

But I would if I could, and often tried.

So, I stopped writing so much to Daniel at a time and started recording my thoughts either here or in a notebook (because I doubt you care about the dull details that create dreams, you care about the dreams themselves). I want to get married to Daniel because the piece of paper has a function beyond just saying to the world that we’re in love and want to be together. We could do that in front of our friends and family without ever filing government paperwork and it would be every bit as meaningful.

But there’s a huge difference in marrying a civilian vs. marrying a veteran. Dependents are entitled to so much more if they’re married to or a child of a service member, even in Daniel’s retirement. There are perks that are thank you for your service all over the place, like not having to pay tax on things when you buy at the PX, getting to fly standby on military planes when Daniel, Cora, and I are all traveling together, and a health care system in which I’d never fall through the cracks. It’s a lot, and it’s a big decision, but Daniel has already offered. I don’t think we’re there yet, obviously, if our communication needs this much work.

But here’s why it does………. God help me. I am marrying myself, and it’s not so easy to be married to you. I do not mean that I’m a selfish bastard, I’m saying that we are so much alike that it’s akin to having a child and thinking, “I wanted you to look like me, not act like me.”

This time, it’s on Daniel to figure out why he spiraled out so fast, and learn how not to do that. Not my circus, not my monkeys. If he’s as serious about this relationship as he says he is, he’ll have to learn to own his half, because I am not here to suss it out for him.

I am in no way a psychologist. I just “speak” psychologist and this is the best way I know how to explain what’s going on without putting blame on either one of us. Medicine and how the brain works over huge population samples gives me perspective that I am not trying to analyze them, but to explain to an audience what I think is going on and how I feel, because that kind of empathy helps me move forward in a positive way. The empathy part is going out of my way to try and prove that I’m wrong. To give people the benefit of the doubt because I can analyze behavior with an omnipotent third eye, calling myself out on my own bullshit in the process.

There is just no room in my life for people who don’t want to know what part they played, because relationships don’t last that way. If one person expresses needs and one person hides, it’s a hard pattern to break……… but I have to, or Daniel, et al, will make me afraid to emote at all.

That is not what I want in a partner. We’re going to be giants together, with room for all our feelings…… no one ever has to hide in fear and spiral out alone.

Daniel seems to waffle on conversations about the future, but it’s for good reason. I’m not saying that he’s avoidant because he wants to be, only that he has to be right now…. but not forever. He’s in the middle of his disability case that could make his pension even more attractive, so he can’t predict things like cash flow and his ability to “move about the country.” At the same time, without any kind of vision, I flounder. And if me wanting some sort of working boundaries is taken as a problem because I am telling you what I want/need and feel like you need to keep everything close to the vest.

I have a huge capacity to love, but also a huge capacity to feel needed. The lovebomb/discard cycle will not happen with me, because I won’t allow it. It’s harder with an addict or a patient with mental health issues like PTSD, but not impossible. It’s not because the person is a narcissist, it’s that their first reaction is trained to be fear and protection of themselves. If you bring up a problem, their first reaction is to try and make their environment safe, and that includes the steel shutdown with the automatic locks, sometimes with the cocking of weapons to show you shouldn’t get any closer. That’s the point at which I know our conversation has come to an end, because I am not going to fight through all that. You’re going to explore why you felt you had to “suit up” and come tell me what you were really feeling that made you react that way. You are not responsible for my reactions, but I am allowed to have them.

I’m allowed to feel pissed off that Daniel once again broke up with me, but he fired himself out of anxiety and abandonment, just like I did with Supergrover. I felt abandoned even though she didn’t feel that way. I didn’t need any more safety and security than that. That way, I’m not counting on a response, but it’s welcome if I get one. I would have treated her like I treat Bryn for her whole life if she had been as honest with me in all of her e-mails as she was in her last one.

Here’s the line that got me. “I could write all night, but I won’t.” In that moment, I knew I hadn’t been lovebombed just to be discarded. That’s because the letter was already pages long, and then after she said she didn’t want to type anymore, she typed for several more paragraphs. It made it feel so much more personal and intimate, because it was like she was saying, “I could write to you all night.” The only thing I worry about with both Daniel and Supergrover is that I have done this thing:

Thankfully, Things Have Calmed Down

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I feel a sense of peace this morning that I haven’t felt in a long time. I found a great house, and I’m moving in roughly two weeks. I think Colin is okay with our first plan of me moving in on the 13th, but he needs some time on his end to get my room ready, too. The only thing I was trying to avoid was being home while my landlords show their house, but it won’t be the end of the world if I have to wait.

In the meantime, I’m on pins and needles waiting to see Zac, because it’s been a while. Nothing is wrong between us, just jacked up schedules right now for both of us. But again, we’re going to see Jason Moran on the 10th, and then that weekend is drill for him, so he’s going to help me after work both days (if needed). I told him if he wanted he could stay at my house on the Saturday, because drill weekend is at Ft. Meade, which is 20 minutes from my house and quite a bit further to his (Zac lives out in Virginia at the end of the blue line). I’m hoping we can get it all done in a few hours, and I don’t think that’s impossible as long as I have everything boxed. I only have four pieces of furniture.

Other than that, I think I have everything I need. My dad sent me some canvas moving boxes, and I think I’m just going to fold everything as opposed to trying to find a hanging box for all my button-downs. I hate packing. Anything to make it easier. Thank God I don’t have many dishes.

Speaking of dishes, I’m out of coffee and I’m a bit peeved about that. The only reason I’m not a full-on maniac is that I have Stash English Breakfast tea if I get desperate. I wonder if I could go door to door begging for someone to take pity on me. It’s 0551. Surely someone is up.

They are.

I could get coffee from Hayat, but I’m lazy and upstairs. Hayat (and the coffee) are downstairs. Don’t you see it would take ALL THAT WORK? 😉 Hayat has gotten up at 0400 since the day I arrived, and I started waking up early because of her. Originally, I was such a light sleeper that her coffee grinder would wake me up, so I just started going to bed earlier and earlier.

Now, I’m on my own schedule, which seems to be “be lazy. Sleep in until 0500.” So, if you get a message from me in what seems like “the middle of the night,” I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. I just write things when I think of them and forget about things like notifications. I’ve gotten good about asking people if they leave their notifications on at night or if my texting them is going to bother them- leaving notes rather than expecting a reply.

This gets problematic because people are programmed to respond right away. So, they’ll say that the notifications don’t bother them, but they weren’t serious. And now they don’t want to hurt my feelings. PLEASE hurt my feelings, because if you tell me that I can text you at any time, because you have your phone on “Do Not Disturb” or whatever, I’m going to believe you. If you change your mind and it is indeed annoying, then don’t let me think it’s fine when it’s not, because I will not pick up on your subtle cues to stop.

I mean, sometimes I will. But not if you only text me back and I can’t read your voice and it’s too polite to really tell anything. I have problems with polite, because I take things literally.

Well, when I’m not being sarcastic. Sarcasm I can do. One of the many services I offer (that tends to get me in trouble). I’ve thought I’ve been weird a lot of my life, but as it turns out the autistic sense of humor is often dark to deal with the pressure. I’m not weird in a crowd of autistic people, because someone is likely to make a darker joke than me, and that’s hard to do. It’s always a slow clap moment for me when someone manages to out-dark me.

I will be taking no further questions. 😉

Making things right with The War Daniel needed to happen, even if we never get further than we are right now. Our future plans don’t matter so much as being friends again, and being able to be there in lockstep for Daniel’s daughter, Cora. I think that’s been the hardest part of this whole separation from Daniel, because Cora is 25 years old. Trying to judge the parent dynamic from the friend dynamic is tough, because I didn’t want her to know how I feel about Daniel at all (she does now, I’m talking about when we weren’t speaking). It wouldn’t have been fair or sane to make her “monkey in the middle,” and I am definitely sane/brave enough not to do that. It’s basically the only piece of our relationship that does fall under parent/child dynamic, because no matter what happens between Daniel and me, Cora is already an ironclad member of my family. I’m never going to walk out on that kid, so all I ask from Daniel is that he just let me.

No matter what his relationship with me is, just let us be, because my relationship with Cora cannot be dependent on him. I know she’s my kid, not just my rainbow kid, because I don’t believe I’m going to get out of this without becoming her stepmother, even though we’re all adults, because she already sees me that way. That’s how she was introduced, and was overwhelmed that I am bisexual, because all of the sudden she had an ally in the house. Trust me that her parents are doing the best they can, but it’s one thing to be in the queer cultural zeitgeist and to be standing outside of it.

Daniel and I are already talking about getting married again, but on the delayed timeline of his doctorate. This is because we both want to travel, possibly live overseas, and the easiest way to do that is to fly standby on military bases, which Cora and I can do as long as we’re military dependents. The only time we would have to fly commercial is if Daniel wasn’t with us. You cannot fly unaccompanied using the service member’s benefits.

Last night, we were talking about places to move where we’d be able to get back easily, like Manila. We were trying to think of places it’s less expensive to live, but still has protections for Cora.

Daniel and I had the sweetest conversation last night. He was telling me how much cheaper UAE is than the US, and I said that I was great with going to UAE and seeing if we liked it enough to stay, but that I didn’t think it was safe for Cora or me. That I could pass as straight, but that’s not me and I’m not down for it.

He said, “sweetheart, why would you ever want to pass as straight?”

I was very touched, but I said, “to get by in a Middle Eastern country, no other reason.” Instantly, his tone changed into the English professor he is and he said, “I’m not moving ANYWHERE my women aren’t welcome.” He’s on board.

I love him. I really do. If the stars line up, we’re going to go back to Caldwell Zoo in Tyler to take pictures, hopefully recreating a few. I remember one that we need to do, and it just flashed into my memory (Achievement Unlocked, MASSIVE XP). I don’t know if it’s still there, but they used to have a playground. My mother took a shot that day of Daniel and me sitting under the play structure. I have no idea what we were talking about.

Probably Sartre or Proust, who knows. But we were definitely THAT KID.

I’ll get to show him where I was born- in Tyler, at Mother Frances Hospital, with “the statue of Jesus directing traffic.” I could see how things are going at my grandfather’s house.

It’s interesting, my grandfather gave his house to my cousin Jason, because his whole job is refurbishing homes. The plan is that once Jason is done overhauling the place, it will serve as a lake house for all of us. It’s out on Starlight Lake in Lone Star, where interestingly enough, my mother’s sister also has a house. So, we can go back and forth between relatives like we used to do when we were kids in NE Texas as well. My grandparents lived at most five miles from each other, if that.

I honestly stayed at one house til I got bored, then called my other grandmother to come and get me. I can say that because they’re no longer with us……. but they saw what I did. 😉

The vibes of the houses were so different, because my dad’s parents were Anglophiles and have a million video tapes I’d love to get my hands on with a video production server. They have stuff that Mike’s Movie Magic doesn’t have, and I swear it. Old PBS showings of BBC plays and TV shows that no one would ever find again. If those tapes still exist and I have room for them, I’l put them on a server and give access to my family.

At Christmas we usually watched “A Child’s Christmas in Wales” or Gene Wilder’s Willy Wonka, who was terrifying…. yet not as terrifying to me as “The Wizard of Oz.” Never again if I can help it (I do like “Wicked,” though, minus all the stage theatrics that really made me jump. However, I think the age at which I saw it is directly responsible. Three or four is too young for flying monkeys.

In this case, anyway.

I am terrified of Oz on some days, and some days it’s all Glinda, all the time.

Answered

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I’m getting tired of the daily blog prompts saying I’ve already answered them, because I often have new ideas the second time the prompt comes around. Today, though, I’m glad I got nothin,’ because there’s been a change, and I really can’t tell you why. Magda decided that she didn’t want to move with me, and told Colin she wasn’t coming. I don’t know why. So, I was very scared that all of the sudden, I didn’t have a place to go, either, because I couldn’t afford to pay for both rooms all by myself. Colin said not to worry, that I could still move in, and my body relaxed. I think he hopes Magda will change her mind, but I have never seen it happen. I feel bad, that maybe we’ve done something to alienate her? But that’s impossible because neither one of us have had conversations since the last one we had together.

So, I have to stop worrying about all of that and just be glad that when my boyfriend arrives to be the muscle in the operation, I still have an address to point him.

That struck me as funny all of the sudden…… that if you never really thought you’d ever have a boyfriend, God laughs and you wind up with two. 😉 Two that know about each other, and aren’t threatened by each other………. very much like I wasn’t threatened by the idea of Michael for Supergrover even at the height of feeling absolutely waylaid by an arrow to my Achilles’ heel. We had two completely separate roles in her life, and I was incredibly far away. He was on the ground. It’s the same now. Daniel is incredibly far away. Zac is on the ground. Neither of us should expect the other to be monks for years on end, and that’s not what poly is, anyway. It’s not being able to divide love up between more people, but to love multiple people 100%. That gets tricky in terms of time, but not feelings.

I have never told Bryn that I loved her INSTEAD OF Supergrover (nor told Dana I loved her INSTEAD of Supergrover, or vice versa), so I wouldn’t do it to anyone else. Bryn doesn’t tell me she loves me INSTEAD OF Dave, and I’m glad because again, two completely separate roles in Bryn’s life. W

e’ve been through so much together, more than I’ve been through with either guy, she’s been through more than she’s been through with Dave. I just don’t care whether it’s a yellow string or a red one, if you’re connected to me, you’re important. My time is just as sacred for my close friends, and always will be.

It helps that The War Daniel is in the Navy, because since his classes are online that does open us up to him being able to visit on standby. As long as I have a way for him to watch wrestling on Wednesday nights (God help us all).

Colin has cable, but he’s interested in cutting the cord. I wish I still had my old computer. I’d have a media center set up for him within the week, because I already know how to cut the cord effectively. You can have everything, including a DVR, for the cost of a cheap computer. Well, I suppose the DVR also depends on how good the signal is from your antenna, but the point stands. I can also install Kodi (media center software) on my FireStick with a little bit of hackage.

And yet, all of that is a story for another day because for right now, it’s about how to fit all of my stuff into my new moving boxes. I want to pack everything except for the sheets/blankets and some clothes. Boxes stacked in here will be easier to keep clean and neat should we have visitors. The visitors are by appointment only, but I’d like to mitigate my ability to be me as much as possible.

No one was here to rescue me on this one. I had to do it all by myself. I had to reach out to people and tell them I was interested in looking. I had to be brave and make phone calls, which seems ridiculous and yet Gen Z just went, “oh my GOD, are you okay?” I ended up in a wonderful situation with more space than I thought I would get (at first, I’m sure someone will move in). The other thing is that I get to stay in my neighborhood, and it turns out that’s pretty important to me, too. I’m a Marylander now.

That may not always be the case, as I love Virginia, too. I just feel that it’s easier for me to own my space up here. I will never run into anyone I don’t want to see, and that covers a hell of a lot of ground. You cannot imagine how relieved I was to learn that there’s a Waffle House on my side of the river, as poorly as that trip turned out.

It is definitely time for a change, but not one so big that I meltdown and burnout in a cycle until I relearn my surroundings. I wanted to avoid all of it, and I think I’ve managed successfully…….. because did I mention that Colin lives two major stoplights from my current house?

Wrestling, though? WHAT WAS I THINKING?