Tag: Friendship

All the Things You Never Knew

~ theantileslie ~ Leave a comment

This is the most stereotypical thing you’ll ever read from the mind of women who love women. I mean, it is brutal. I will go into the lesbian falling in love with a straight woman HALL OF FAME. I just want to correct assumptions. I don’t need anything, I want it, and there’s a huge difference now that I don’t care if anyone likes me or not. I just don’t have enough time left to worry in terms of a second act. I will also not be recording this one because I can’t sit that long in this much pain, even though there’s glory, too. Maybe in a year.

You have trauma reflexes. So do I. I was taking everything you said as yelling at me and so were you. It devolved into madness and I was trying to stabilize. Future proof for both of us so that we could move the fuck on and love each other like we should’ve in the first place, when the connection was so explosive for both of us that it woke up everything within me. I paid attention closer, and I felt that was necessary because our story is a book series because I didn’t change all at once, like a magic wand. I changed because I did the homework and you sometimes would and sometimes wouldn’t, and that’s what hurt more than it helped…. and thank God I am not literally writing a book series on this. First of all, what a terrible idea.

You never seemed to realize that I was paying attention to you because I thought you could do no wrong, ever, as long as we were doing the homework as a group project, but we were just never in sync.

I’d say things like you and anyone you want to bring can be expats wherever Daniel and I are living, and you didn’t respond to it. I was always confused, and because I’d been in love with you, it caused me so much pain that I just couldn’t take it. I didn’t know if it was a good idea or not. I was scared to throw it out there, scared to say anyone you want, and I didn’t know how you felt about it.

I’ve always told you that I was just laying out my feelings, that I was writing like I was blogging. The way you reacted was frequently to feel like I was coming down on you instead of building our relationship, it had to be dead on brick by brick for a while. So that we could forgive each other and ourselves from some really deep shit and move on without those feelings constantly coming up to bite us, and I can’t think of a single problem we’ve ever had that didn’t escalate into thermonuclear war.

I loved you every day. All day. It will never go away, and I will love you until my last breath. Just because my trauma reflexes told me otherwise doesn’t mean that it was true. It was just true in that moment, that snapshot of my day. So many times I thought you lost your camera. Lost sight of the fact that it was for life because it had to be. There has never been an instance where I hashed out our problems in front of you and waited to see if I was correct. I wanted to know if I’d said something helpful or hurtful so that I could tell you what I meant if you had questions because you thought it was an attack and it wasn’t. That’s what I meant when I said that there were moments that shit had gone down at work and I was having a panic attack and neither one of us could handle the other’s emotions. We just turned on each other again… but never did we once go back to being ourselves, the ones that loved each other until we just couldn’t because we were the only people in each other’s lives where it was okay to go that deep because we’d been doing it so long we’d forgotten why small talk exists. It was intense and beautiful and fed me in all the right ways, but I never knew how you felt about it until I’d hit a trauma reflex and in the next few minutes whether it was verbal or in writing I’d feel like everything was gone. When I told you that, I was trying to goad you provoke you make you mad, whatever the story you were telling yourself and I told you that I’d done the homework. I fucking taught Microsoft Word to Brene Brown and I joked about it with you, but how in the hell could I have gotten this interested in resolving everything without her?

You didn’t seem to be curious when I was letting my feelings out about you when they were negative. You accused me of going into combat mode and stop hearing me and start fighting.

It was never me. It was someone else in the room, and I got that from a comment on my own marriage article. When we weren’t triggered, we each tried to bring light into the darkness and it always failed. I always had empathy for everything you were going through in terms of what you might feel about me laying out all my feelings, and you being so busy that you simply didn’t have time. I understood and waited in line. I’m still there. But if you choose me, know that love makes me as serious as a heart attack in a way I don’t want to be. I see how you’re struggling and I want to help you but I can’t if you don’t let me know what the problem is. Most of the tme, when you feel annoyed and angry, I’m just gardening. There are so many follow-up questions that you haven’t ever seemed to have time for… but again, I don’t sit in judgement of you. I lay out my feelings and you call me an asshole and before I can even take a breath I’m trying to find out why and when you’re doing it so that I can figure out which trigger I’ve hit and why. That way, I know not to do it anymore. When you don’t tell me what you were thinking and feeling about that, I get anxious because the only thing I want in the world is for us to enjoy each other and it seems like it is a thing that could happen and something it couldn’t and it’s confusing as fuck no matter whether I’d ever been in love with you or not when I have no idea what in the hell I’m doing to you when I write. Because then I could adjust, make it better, make it where you can lean on me again. But because you don’t see it, you see me casing and trashing the joint.

I couldn’t talk to you in a way where you felt loved and special because I couldn’t. My trauma reflexes would hunt me down and go for blood, and so would yours. But I didn’t want to be stuck in trauma reflex mode.

I wanted to return to the spectrum we’ve always had, which is that love wins. When I was teling you how I could love you and why, you ignored all of it and waited for your moment to gut me. There was too much pain and not enough teasing me.

I was trying to be funny when I talked about trading dick for a live-in chef and how you know you fucked up, but I was just flipping you shit. Your reaction was so hard core you are going to fuck up everything or that’s how I perceived it and spiraled out.

Do you really think that was about you? No, it was a trauma reflex kicking in. There was no apology phase except from me… the part where we hug each other and all is forgotten. I didn’t really think that was all you. I thought you were just having a bad day and I wasn’t the dog you needed to kick. They weren’t even there. It was the monster in your head and the ghost out to get you. I also know that I needed to be corrected, called out in love, but your way of doing it was to absolutely incinerate me when you know abandonment is my trigger.

I am choosing to resolve all of this shit if you are, but the longer you don’t speak the more it convinces me that you don’t want to do any emotional work with me when I told you there was no shortcut back to nice on this one and you showed up with such intensity that it made me lose my head for a little bit, dreaming about later in life when we’re all ancient, sitting on the back porch because you have nowhere to be and your kids are all grown and all that shit. It could be more if you were willing to move in my direction, but I don’t think it ever will be. I wasn’t focusing on you disappointing me, I was focusing on everything I needed to tell you before we were ancient, and I know that if you want to say it, you have to say it rightthefuck now because my mother went from having to wear a cast and being dead in the blink of an eye.

The reason I got so deep into our shit is because I love you, not because I hate you. It’s not a flirting, blushing love but day in, day out hard work. You live for the highs, not the lows. I gave you a letter that contained all the things about you that I love, and it was ignored. I don’t need you to take everything and throw it all away, because that’s what you did. I don’t think it was intentional, I think it was just my own trauma reflexes talking because I constantly think you don’t care when you only respond to me saying shit that makes you feel horrible. You don’t respond to me when I’m telling you I’ve been willing to be devoted in a way that couldn’t be duplicated, and again, I think it came across as goading and provoking, because my trauma reflexes aren’t smart enough to back down. So while I have things to say that are hard to digest, that doesn’t mean that I’m trying to load you up with guilt and shame. It means I love you enough to struggle until it’s right for both of us. It’s just not right for both of us, or at least right now. You seem to me to be happy this way, and I don’t even have to be angry about it because I know it’s just you responding to trauma and not burn the whole world down. I didn’t know you didn’t know that, so when you’d accuse me of throwing emotional bombs and trashing everything, I wasn’t asking for that. I was asking you to take it away and think about it while you need to be apart from me. Recognizing that your time is worth so much. Recognizing that In the Beginning I would have done anything for a walk and talk. And you know I’d do some shady shit if you needed me. If you needed me I wouldn’t stop for red lights.

Your story is important, more important than mine right now. Mine will come later, and I want you to fucking be there. I have been singing through the pain, and you should know me well enough to know what a big fucking deal that is. It’s my trigger, and I was leaning in. To have you not even respond was excruciating.

And if that feels like me goading you, it’s not. It’s recognizing that when you emote, I feel it deeply. You’re my friend and I have been in love with you in the past, so our issues on both sides are deeply seeded, seated for maximum root system. I have never, ever been saying that you are wrong and bad. I was saying “I think you are wrong about this.”

I have so much crap in my life that it was over the moment you said “you made me.” I don’t need people who think that way. But I can’t break the connection. It feels weird, but it’s correct on both sides. The thing is a direct quote from “Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle.” “Just talk to her once and it won’t be weird anymore.” What I mean is about these topics. We only have to cover them one time and then we can move on… when our trauma reflexes aren’t constatly telling us that we’re disappointing each other. I am not you when I am with you and become you in some ways because some of your lines go through my head because you’re such an extroardinary writer that I can’t get over it.

But that doesn’t mean that I’m not allowed to have feelings about it. I would do anything for and with you if you’d just tell me how you feel. I am an INFJ. I don’t see the world as what it is, but what it could be. I wanted to build something with you, and when I told you there was a monkey wrench in that plan, you were silent.

Just like you, nothing intentional, whether it was bad or not. That’s what love does. It is a series of vulnerablilities, not all sunshine. That’s when we have to find it for ourselves, going back to a discussion when there’s not a chance we could change it, but doing something about the present. Feeling better and stronger in self esteem, being other aware and communicating, and I am not asking for you to be this way all the time. I’m asking for a tiny bit more than you can give, and that’s okay with me. I know why. We both need a step back. I also told you that you were welcome until I took my last breath, and then my trauma reflexes kicked in and it came across to me as “it’s always going to be this way. I’m always going to feel confused and lost when something big comes up, because you don’t spend your days in all that touchy feely crap.

Because if one comes out, they all do. That’s when it’s hard as fuck, but then it passes and you become more integrated. But again, only seeing through my own lens and not yours because I don’t know if I’m welcome in your life or not, because we both tell each other to fuck off at the exact moment we start getting somewhere.

But like I told you before, I’m sure you could get in touch with me if you wanted, but I have no idea whether you will or not. I’m not carrying a flame for you. I haven’t seen enough evidence that you’re willing to speak with me in my love language if I am willing to speak to you in yours. When I was telling you who I was, it was through my jokes and humor because that’s how I deal with enormous pain. Just enormous. I am totally cool with it now, But don’t think I don’t know what I lost.

Thus the jokes that make you cringe and let me blow off a little steam, just like you. We are so much alike in so many ways that it boggles my mind. Having you say that I’m painting my feelings as fact was rough, because my truth is my truth. I’ve been doing it the entire time. You only blink when our problem is about us. It is suspicious or angry. It feels like our emotions are struggling to get out.

You said “I trusted you” in many, many different contexts. Sometimes, it was because you felt like I’d screwed you over and I hadn’t. Sometimes it was because you really did trust me and it was fantastic or terrible depending on which issue we were talking about.

You thought I was trying to irk you in the most serious way possible and it didn’t calm you down that I told you I was laying out my feelings, that nothing I ever did would have anything to do with you, that my actions were my responsibility, not my obligation. That I was offering you love so profound you couldn’t even wrap your arms around it and your response was nothing.

That’s why I always knew what trigger I’d hit and when. But only after I’d done the homework and learned you enough to see you clearly. I could respond that way when I laid out my feelings, but if I hit a trigger in you, you immediately stopped seeing love and started seeing an incredible amount of negative energy. Why would I ever raise my voice? When I’m writing, it’s just stream of consciousness and I throw it out there to see what sticks, and the cycle continues because once our reflexes have calmed the fuck down, what I saw is that we loved each other with intensity, not that I was always ragging on you. That I couldn’t be counted on for anything but constantly saying we were done and not done. I know that’s not true, and I also know that you know it.

This is because I never knew if I was welcome or not. We couldn’t futureproof if our lives depended on it, and yet we need each other in a million different ways. You see it differently than I do, and it hurts so much that I’m just as miserable now as I was after my divorce and my mother died. I loved you that much that I feel that much pain. But what was coming across was that I was trying not to poke the bear, and you didn’t see that I was doing it because the lens through which you were reading was that everything was bad and this would never go away and why was I still on this?

Because we can’t move on until we fix this thing, this toxic cycle because that’s the hand we’ve been dealt and we have to manage the downward spirals, not assume that the other is trying to hurt them when it escalates. I have never tried to hurt you, ever, unless we were both in escalation mode. When that happened, our trauma reflexes made both of us scared of each other, when if we’d talked it out in person it would have taken a few minutes, but we didn’t. We chose to hash it out with seven percent of what goes into communication instead of just saying “I can’t with your writer personality. Get your ass over here.”

I don’t know where your anger is, but I feel it. Whatever we’re both fighting, it should NOT be each other. I told you that you could cry on my shoulder if you needed a place to go with your feelings, but I never knew if I was welcome to tell you that….. but we’ve been friends since Jesus was a boy.

Because you say nothing and I don’t want to live like that. I want to embrace my true authentic self, and I swear to Christ you’re always welcome in my life. If you show up BIG, and accept the love I’m offering and recognizing that we are just enough alike and just enough different and we both need to bend and sway instead of letting the tree disease.

You have no idea. None at just how much hearing your voice changed me. I got the idea that my voice was a mask long ago, and the idea to actually put it out there from you. The other thing I realized is twofold. The first is that hearing each other’s voices while we talked it out would have solved the problem nearly immediately. Secondly, not knowing you had a partner was brutal on many levels. Not knowing that you’d deleted everything led to the change you see now, but a huge fight in the moment because trauma on both sides. I tried to tell you that every day for too long and you never responded to it. I let you go because I was exhausted. I couldn’t go any longer without you being willing to engage in resolution and resurrection, and you focused on all the wrong things.

So did I, beautiful girl. I got the idea to call you that because that’s what I call Cora. It wasn’t trying to dive into history or anything like it, because I am stable enough to love you absolutely for who you are. You are a Doctor Who is a very bad patient (I can work Doctor Who into goddamn anything, just roll with it). The absolute only thing I ever asked you about that show even though it’s the biggest fandom in my life, you never told me how you felt about it, or if you even clicked the link. I thought you would do it because you love me, not the show. It was about Vincent van Gogh, and how someone didn’t save his life because he changed it, it’s that sometimes you can’t change your story.

Apt.

And you thought I was being a drama queen. It’s not that at all, it’s that your response was a trigger. When I told you that, you dismissed me. I never wanted to talk to you again in my whole life. But I made an exception with Daniel because he is important too. The reason the email telling you about Daniel was begging and pleading is because I told you that I never wanted to speak to you again and then found out that I hadn’t sent it. I didn’t want to trigger you.

I wanted you to show up, and you couldn’t or didn’t. Whether I know it or not is up for grabs, but that depends on you. Because whether I thought love was romantic or platonic, it’s been such an extraordinary experience, but you kept thinking it was terrible because our trauma reflexes constantly rubbed up against each other. When I told you that my letters were going to be received as me being an asshole whether I meant it or not, you had no idea what idea I was focusing on, and the idea has been she’s the most beautiful, most interesting, most puts my mind in hyperdrive person in my life so do anything to keep that relationship strong and healthy for the future. I am speaking with such love and trauma here:

“The longer you go without speaking, the longer I don’t think you want to do any emotional work with me.”

Your response was to show up big, and then when I emoted about you, you shot me to shit. It just feels like you can’t handle large emotions anymore, when to me that is actually the most valuable part of our relationship. That’s why I don’t wanna pay attention anymore. It’s that I feel like I am Putting everything out there , and you’re not. I am not your personal content creator. You are not my therapist. Both of those things are well established. However, you are the friend that agreed to listen. So am I. Nothing was ever a half ass threat to trigger you. I am sorry that you feel that way. How it comes across is you not taking my mental health issues seriously. When I told you that, you stepped all over my ass. I forgive you. I haven’t forgotten. This is because in that moment, you decided that your trigger was more important than mine. I even said that there are certain words that you say that send me into a blind panic, but you never asked what they were. Now you know.

I’m sure my response was sharp to you, and I was triggered.

To me, it was our love story and how it changed over the years to accomodate both of us. It was recognizing that I had my own demons where you were concerned, that I wasn’t ever being flippant or trying to hurt you, goad you, provoke you. This is what I am talking about in terms of a toxic cycle.

It was so much bigger than that to me, both including you as family and showing up big, but I would have shown up so much bigger than that. If you look at my letters through that lens, you can see it so clearly that even I’m frightened by it. I don’t know how to manage it.

And as I’ve always said, this is not about you. This is about me. I couldn’t stand that we were both in each other’s heads and hearts, and we couldn’t make it any better. Those things are both true.

I was crying when I told you that I had become the Lord John Grey you could love and not the one that you couldn’t. You couldn’t listen to “can’t you see that I am screaming for empathy and not with anger.

I’m also saying that I escalated. I hurt you. Screwed you to the wall. But we both needed to be selfish. Maybe this is a time of interim, maybe it’s not. But here’s what I can control. I can stop actively letting you into my life if you won’t tell me how I can be a better friend. You keep saying that you’re tired of letters that try to guilt you and it makes you delay writing back or putting me on the back burner.

Putting me on the back burner turned out to be a huge fucking stove. I’m frustrated that your responses are short and never about us. I know, beautiful girl, that you can’t. Both because of time and trauma.

We’re getting to the age where we need each other, but we’re not moving in the same direction.

If you want to show up big, it means taking “you made me” out of the equation, taking lecturing you out of the equation, all that. The spectrum is large. I have now had every feeling that can be described about you by now, and I’m still showing up even though it was really fucking hard. But as I told my friends, it was worth it.

It wasn’t my obligation. I could have gone on hurting about it forever and kicking myself, or I could ask you to compromise. Asking you to compromise was not the tack I should have taken, for many, many reasons.

Because my trauma literally lines up with yours. We irritate the hell out of each other, but it doesn’t mean there’s not something here. It means it’s gone until we can both fucking chill.

But to my mind, you’ll always be the one who stole my heart, and returned it stronger than it had ever been. I couldn’t have become who I am if you hadn’t been you. That’s the real story, and I felt like you lost the plot because I never knew yours. I asked you what you were doing, and it was just another emotional bomb where I wasn’t upset at all. I was genuinely asking “where are you, and where do you want to go.” I probably could have worded it better, but that’s what I meant.

In most cases, I could have worded things better because there was no context. You weren’t sitting with me, watching me write, asking questions when you didn’t know something, and me getting to tell you what I was feeling in my own tone of voice, so you know I’m not throwing emotional bombs. It’s a prayer of relief in the legal sense in that I am telling you where I am and where I’m going, and asking for resolution on the few things that still need closure. None of this is predicated on my gender or sexual orientation. It’s what having a relationship where both people are open and vulnerable means.

But again, you don’t have time for that and it is really, really okay as long as you carve out a tiny, tiny bit of tme to help me be less confused. You have the funniest bullet points in the known universe and I’m here for it.

This is the relationship where I’m willing to drop the funny with you. You have no idea what that means to me. I wore a mask through my entire childhood, trying to be funnier than I am, more polite than I want to be because sometimes I just didn’t want to engage. I never had the strength to dictate terms, and I’m not going to be that anymore.

Wanting to be liked has cost me so much, and so has not. But what’s different about not is that I chose it. It is mine.

I chose you. If you choose me, it’s on like Donkey Kong. If not, “may the forces of evil become confused on the way to your house.” I really do love you with that day in, day out kind off love. It gives me more strength than you can grasp, and I’m not sure that you ever have.

You are fuel for me, because once the fire was lit, I put it out. It may not have been the way you wanted or enough for you, but please know that I have always loved you as a complete person, not for your body. That’s shallow and inconsequential. I lit a glowing campfire. It keeps us all warm.

This has been all about consequences on both sides of the equation, where I could hear you say things like “I am furious with you right now.” Because I know you won’t be furious forever, and I will wait as long as it takes if you’re thinking that this is accurate and you want to reach out, but if you’re going to take it as more negativity than love, you might want to clean your glasses.

It’s your brain that turned me on. I think that should mean something, because I may be extraordinarily intelligent and paint my feelings as fact, but that’s because I got to it through you. That I could dictate terms, that I could stand up for myself, that I could say when there was a problem and do what needed to be done to fix it.

It’s a bigger ladder to get to me now that I’ve loved you, because I’ve learned to compartmentalize and focus on what’s happening right now. And what I’m doing right now is thinking about direction, and I always have been.

Sometimes I want you to return with something beautifully written, because I know that when I receive it, I’ve gotten a letter from the one I love the most, and no matter what it says, it’s valuable. Even the ones that drive me up the wall, because it’s a tapestry.

It has torn, but I have thread. I have stitched it up before, and I hope I will stitch it up again. I take nothing away from what I have and haven’t done. My reflexes are deeply intrinsic and have nothing to do with you.

I felt like I owed you the homework, not because it felt obligatory, but because there’s nothing more in the world that I want you to feel except Leslie loves me and we’re all good, it’s just that when issues come up, she will irritate and anger the living shit out of you because you don’t garden as a writer, and it’s a problem that I am… except that I have always been this way, a thinker in longhand. Neither one of us are the people we met, and we’ve never had a do-over.

If there is a God of the universe, I got them by writing to you. Every letter was a prayer in longhand. Every letter was how I process emotion from beginning to end. You do that with your mind, I do that with my heart. Maybe we can learn how to think and feel together. We are so different in some ways. Being empathic is a rough gig. I don’t mean that you are not empathetic, I mean feeling the whole world at once. It’s not that great. I am constantly emotionally laden. Writing is to deal with all that Because it is a comprehensive response to life.

There was never a chance that you were going to believe that I could call you out and love you for exactly who you are simultaneously, as if my feelings aren’t as crazy, wild as yours.

I never, ever want you to forget that, because even if it’s over I would do anything to prove that your sacrifices are not in vain. Just because I have to do a thing doesn’t mean I don’t get to feel about it.

We both do the things, just in different contexts. And you can see that so clearly when I lay out my relationships with other people. I seem to write beautifully about everyone but you.

When you’re the one I choose whether you ever choose me or not.

You’ll notice that I didn’t say you were ever in love with me, or that we weren’t taking in different realities. Our frames of reference were different because I had to get rid of the trigger that said I had to be with you to open up like this. I don’t. I just need to love you the way you were made. We both have different ways of being in this relationship, and that’s okay as long as we make the effort to speak in the other’s love language and not our own so that things are exactly are the way we are now, both of us butt hurt over what would be nothing if our trauma reflexes hadn’t kicked our asses. I asked you how we could move on, no response. But I swear on a six pack of Bibles it surprised the hell out of me that I got a response leaving me with a brand new asshole like two weeks later.

Do you see what I mean? Instead of asking about context, you went off. If it was a different day, it wouldn’t have been you. I have ripped you new assholes with as much dexterity as you. We are both so brilliant. I remember when I told you that you were the Hemingway of e-mail or some shit, that you write clearly and beautifully even when you’re angry and my response is “I’m not pleasing her,” but that’s not me. That’s my trauma reflex.

And if we’re really, really being dead honest, if we take sexual orientation out of the equation you could have written this about me.

And it would be better than mine.

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In Which the Sun Comes Out

~ theantileslie ~ Leave a comment

Part One in the “Stories from The Big Yellow House” Series

The yellow house is much yellower now, though in my memory it is not so bright because I’m not there. Neither is anyone else I know, but it was so precious while it existed in my world, and now in my memory. I am glad that The Big Yellow House is so entrenched in my core, because it will never fade.

Because when the Big Yellow House goes, so do my memories of a lot of other people. This entry is for them, and starts with a conversation between Bryn and me regarding our “shared childhood.” Now that we’re older, we both think of each other as children back then. I was 19, so I think that makes her 14 or 15 when we met. She would remember. I can remember everything but her age. 😛

Saying Bryn’s name out loud because she’s one of the, like, three people I would entrust with this conversation at all. Anyone who knew I was talking about it with someone and cared could easily guess all three. That’s because neither of us are the main characters. We were the ones that snuck off to be bad girls.

She wasn’t quite old enough to be bad properly, and I was a computer geek. We just sat and talked, and increasingly listened to jam sessions that were mildly interesting as background music and right now I can think of at least five people who are going to read that sentence and hate my guts. And two who will absolutely fall on the floor laughing and go, “she went there.”

I was never into the banjo. I hated it. Just for the record, but no one asked me… whereas I would say that anyone who learned to play the banjo in The Big Yellow House was clearly trying to isolate me. I am certain that was on purpose (one of the only jokes I will make about my time in The Big Yellow House, because it’s a shame that I can’t. Not right now. Even a decade later, it’s still Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.

It’s because I have love for some of the people I met there and still have on my friends list, and some others that are a memory. Still alive, certainly, but with no need or want on either side to reconnect. Actually, that is a lie. I do not know for certain about them. I know for certain about me. I am not willing to do anything to help things along in terms of getting closer. I am reaching out to the people at that house when I was there. I feel that my ramblings might give the impression that I mistook the part for the whole and was trying to say that everything was bad.

This series is a way to say thank you for the things that they gave me while I was also in hell. I haven’t forgotten it, and I don’t want to focus on darkness. I want to bring this into the light, because that’s where they brought me. I cannot regret coming to Portland, because I wouldn’t have wanted a chance to meet Dana and then blown it by not coming back.

I definitely would have met some of these people one time, but they would not have raised me the way that they did. I’m kinder because of them. I’m a better person because of them, even though they knew nothing about me.

For the record, some people believe that I am a liar and I am just crazy. I don’t believe that, but they do. I believe that I can express what I’m feeling better than at least half the world, so my faith in my sanity is fairly sound. However, in my tribe, no one is perfect. It’s just that the more of us there are, the more it’s likely that one of us is all right.

The Big Yellow House will look at my experiences in Portland through the lens of one particular backyard… with two particular young girls… and three particular puppy dogs (Bunce, then Barley, then Maisie in score order). We’ll look at history, both personal and American, interestingly enough. We’ll go to church, where I was basically the youth group (what’s new?). We’ll walk up 36th to Division, then 37th up to Hawthorne so we can go to trivia.

We’ll listen to Outpost at the Block Party. We’ll go to Le Pigeon. We’ll invade the kitchen at Tapalaya and drink at Biddy McGraw’s. But we’ll start with a prayer for ablution. Water is washing over me and my tears are stinging my face. We’ll start with 1997, just a snippet of a memory.

Alex

Alex was one of the first people I met in Oreon, predating the yellow house by quite a few years. She had my heart from day one when there was a party at The Little Gray House, and men were bothering her. She asked if she could be my girlfriend for a second to get them away from her. To know how funny this actually was, you’d have to know Alex and me. She’s a diva, the amazing kind that makes you pray to the voice gods before an audition that you don’t have to follow her.  I’m short and I don’t like many people. Enough said about that except to say that “Odd Couple” moment made me think that maybe I had more than one friend in the neighborhood. Alex and her husband have blessed me many times over just by being them. I have told their story before, and was crying so hard in the middle of a Starbucks that my mother thought we should leave so I could calm down. I think she thought I needed Xanax, when in reality it was the best sermon I’ve ever heard, and I will put it up against anyone, anywhere, because the structure ENDS ME to this day. I am sobbing right now just thinking about it.

At Bridgeport, we divided the service up in to different duties. Instead of always having the pastor du jour (our word for having rotating preachers and an alarmingly deep bench- mostly brilliant lesbian preacher’s kids and ordained pastors kicked out of other churches,tbh… theological academician crack) do what we called “the offering pitch,” different people were asked (generally five minutes before… not planned, but useful because people will rarely say no if you don’t give them a chance to think about it).

Greg, Alex’s husband

I’m sorry. This is going to take a minute to get out because I know this story and you don’t. I cannot breathe all the way down, and this happened such a very long time ago. It’s a core memory that is one of my blue orbs hoping to find yellow and avoid red. My emotions are turning inside out.

I can remember about 10 years ago losing my everloving mind with grief as I relayed this story to my mother, where I wailed and she said we should leave Starbucks.

Greg walked to the front of the church and stood in front of the baptismal font. He pointed and he said, “this is where I was baptized.”

Then, he walked to the altar rail and looked toward the windows facing north, and he said, “And this is where I got married.”

This is the part where I am crying so hard I think my heart is going to break. I haven’t been back here in so long, and it was the most traumatic thing that has ever happened in our community. We will never get over it. We had to learn to live with it, our entire church life beginning back over at the Book of Acts, or as I call it, The Gospel of “Holy Shit, What Do We Do Now?”

Greg turned so he was standing behind the Communion table and he said, “this is where I buried my children.”

It was true. Greg and Alex lost their twins, Eleanor and Quinn, to a rare genetic disorder. They were only about two weeks old. 

We’d bought the layette.

Today I learned that grief makes you cry out louder than you thought you could.

He used the resurrection of the Christ to show us how we resurrected ourselves. That the loss of his and Alex’s twins didn’t go unnoticed because it bonded us. Love poured out for them and back into us.

It was a sermon. And I remember it all. I am absolutely sobbing and it was almost 20 years ago.

The people who visited The Big Yellow House were often more important than its residents.

Over time, the color never faded. It just got brighter, especially with the telling of it. “A little brighter than it used to be” was “it BURNS” by dinner.

I assure you, the people who have also been there share this opinion. In fact, it seemed to shine more every year. As we got older, it got smarter. It remembered our secrets and our lies, told to each other in the dark summer nights filled with beer and conversation. 

I was 19 when I met the church at the opera, 20 when I met the church that used to have green carpeting (and is still known that among my crowd… I’m 45), and 21 when I knew that these people were my life.

By 24, I was driving up I-5 feeling like I’d been punked. This had nothing to do with the Big Yellow House and everything to do with the fact that I’d only visited Oregon in the *summer.*

Stay tuned.

Eleven Dollars

~ theantileslie ~ Leave a comment

When I decided that DC was my home, I packed up my car and left Texas behind. I’d secured a room in a house in Silver Spring that was already furnished, and I just took enough clothes for a week. Anything else that I needed from my parents’ house could be mailed. That’s what we did. For months on end, I received boxes that contained things I’d forgotten about. If I asked for one thing, the box still came full, because it was a waste of space not to pack it full. It was going to be $11 either way. It became a running joke between my dad and me…. “you’re moving $11 at a time.” One box would have boots in it, and then a purse I hadn’t used since 2003 and a half-tube of Chapstick (that I still have and it is still delicious, thank you…. it’s cherry.) If I wanted something, I accepted the randomness that came with it. The $11 box never changed, but the value of the contents were never the same total.

I’m in that relationship right now, a friendship that I want to grow to be as big as anything in my life. At this point, I can’t tell you what that means. I just know that Daniel has been my friend since second grade, and some of the countries I want to visit would shit a brick at me traveling alone, or see me as traveling alone anyway if I brought the woman I was dating. You can’t just walk up to someone you haven’t known since second grade and say, “I really want to go to the Middle East, Viet Nam, and Cambodia. I am a woman first of all and a lesbian second. You don’t happen to want to travel, do you?”

My friend Gabriel already lives in Cambodia and I just dropped a truth bomb on him, too. “My work in progress is set in Viet Nam. Can I come live with you for a few months? I have some work I need to do locally.” Gabriel said that he wasn’t in Viet Nam anymore, he was in Cambodia…. but I am absolutely welcome to come and live in Cambodia. I’m thinking 90 day visa because three months seems like a reasonable amount of time to do research and come home, and that way I can probably afford to do it more than once.

Where Daniel comes into the picture is always travel companion, sometimes bodyguard. I do not mean that I am hiring him to be friggin’ Liam Neeson. His Texas accent’s too strong for that. I also don’t need him to fight anyone. I just need him to stand there and look big.

For that, I will absolutely treat him like a king.

But as a single lesbian, I’m muddling through what that means. How do you treat your friends the right way so that they feel taken care of and the relationship isn’t a one-way street? I know that if I was paying Daniel for his services I couldn’t afford it. The best thing I could do is just make sure I can take care of his basic needs.

The best thing I can do is wait to start traveling until I know my situation with my inheritance. If my stepfather leaves money for me in his will, my financial situation will turn right side up in one day. There is no reason to believe that he wouldn’t. He has said as much, that I would get money that clearly only belonged to her. All I am saying is that if he is not an honest man, it is an enormous financial hit for me.

I am not worried about being rich. My mother wasn’t rich, but she invested well, and so did the insurance companies where she had policies. I do not have any pipe dreams about being rich. The only thing I have ever wanted out of money is stability. If you read the studies, there’s no percentage in acquiring more than that. I will be happy with my own house, car, and a bit of land. Nothing haughty. I’d like to build with plain 2x4s, rockwoool insulation, and triple-paned windows. I want to choose the materials I would like to use in my house, and price the house by them. I would much rather have a very small house capable of lasting a hundred years than a house where everything starts going wrong the minute the new wears off. In essence, the relationship I want to build with Daniel…. made of such strong stuff that it’s even better when the new wears off. As book lovers, we know exactly how much love it takes to keep a relationship going. We’ve read The Velveteen Rabbit. Let’s not get stupid.

For us, the process of becoming real to each other is heart-wrenching and necessary. I’m bipolar and have been hospitalized for it. He has other health issues that are different in origin and the same in behavior. We present the same, but we’re so different.

Daniel and I also have a lot in common, and have since we were children. He was my first boyfriend in elementary school because we were the nerdy English lovers. If I could give you an image from literature, he’s not a preacher’s kid, but he is very much like Norman from “A River Runs Through It.” I don’t mean that in a romantic, fly fishing sort of way. I mean that he is perfectly capable of being a novelist’s friend and told me I have free reign to say whatever I want about him here.

Whatever I want?

Daniel, it feels like after all these years, parts of me are moving back to you……….. eleven dollars at a time. If you want me, accept all the randomness that comes with it.

Forgetting an Attachment

~ theantileslie ~ Leave a comment

It’s a double entendre, that title. Earlier today, I talked about fully letting go of Sam. Then, I forgot to add all the tags I normally add so that the readers that normally read me couldn’t find me….. like forgetting to attach a picture to an e-mail when basically all you’ve said in the e-mail is “here’s a picture” and still forgot to send it. Basically, I’m writing another entry to notify my readers that there’s a new entry. The writer reader relationship in the digital age. I hope we’re in love, otherwise this web site is me being Pepe Le Pew. I am not that desperate.

I was amused when I was in Facebook Jail that I watched two women fight over my picture. They weren’t fighting over the right to ask me out. They were fighting over whether kd lang was hotter than me. I didn’t pay attention to the outcome.

Fuck yes I did, are you kidding me? I flat out won. I knew I would. People have called me a better looking kd lang since I cut my hair short back in ’95. I don’t see it, but a hell of a lot of other people do. I think it’s the brown hair and brown eyes, but mostly that’s where it ends…… except that most lesbians my age have the same resting bitch face. Maybe we look like each other in that way that when you live with someone for a long time, people think your facial expressions look alike. Therefore, it’s not even that we look like each other. It’s because we’re from the same tribe.

When I was a kid it was straight person code for “I know you’re a lesbian.” That amused me to no end, and I have gotten a lot of mileage out of it. I also can’t think of a universe in which it’s a good idea to tell you which straight people have said it, but that’s the funniest part of all. God, it sucks to be you.

Now that kd isn’t popular broadly and straight people have lost interest, I don’t get it that often. But put me in a room where everyone and their pets have listened to all her music on repeat since college and I am begging to get away from the attention. A stroke to the ego never hurt anyone, but after a while it gets embarrassing. I love attention to bits, but I microdose.

I actually think that’s why I was always so bubbly whenever Sam was around, because I was alone the rest of the time. It wasn’t that I wasn’t off doing my own thing and obsessing over her. It was that by the time she worked all day and put dinner on the table for the week, enough time had gone by that my social battery was recharged. I think it would have been a big shock for her to spend a long time with me to know that I am not bubbly in the slightest. The one thing that would never have changed, and hundreds of people will attest to this because they saw it with Dana for eight years, is the energy for me when Sam walked into a room. Time would just stop.

I had been married to Dana for four years before the accompanist at our church knew we were a couple. This is because Dana wasn’t a singer, and I drove myself to church so that I could sing and she could sleep in. When she walked into the sanctuary, all the joy rushed into my face, and it got warm. The accompanist said she just assumed that Dana and I must not be that close because I was always so happy to see her.

Quite the opposite. When we’d been best friends for three and a half years, we’d learned to talk with our eyes. She was everything I’d ever wanted and more. Neither one of us could breathe and not have the other one feel it. I didn’t tell her for a long time, because I knew I would be playing with fire. That I could destroy the most stable relationship in my life by losing myself to her, even if I was supposed to because relationships are all about compromise.

Our relationship did end, and it was traumatic. But I would go back in time and do it all over, knowing it either could or would end the same way. There are lessons I learned from Dana that she was there to teach me, because she’s the one in my life I felt was capable of doing so. Cooking was an authority I let her own. If we were in a professional kitchen, it was “yes, Chef.” Of course there were a couple of exceptions. Of course there were. But by and large, we were a dynamic team who could turn on a dime because when seconds counted, we could say things with a look. We could anticipate each other’s movements, because we had done it day in and day out for years at our house without missing a beat. It didn’t matter how a pro kitchen was laid out. Improvisation was our forte….. because Dana was loud. (I can’t wait until she sees that line and I hope it lights up her face.)

I didn’t just want any woman, I wanted Dana. It was obvious to everyone from the start, and our relationship lived on hope for quite a while in each of our minds, not knowing exactly how much platonic love had made room for romance while the other one dreamt.

I could have asked her so many times when we were alone, but I did not want to set the ball rolling on an affair, because that’s something that would have changed me and taken me away from who I was. No, if I was going to risk everything, I had to be sure.

I did and I won big. Just Kings full over Aces. To be clear, we did have an affair. We admitted our feelings to each other, and eight hours later, we told the people we were in relationships that we loved them, but that we were too close to each other to make it work with them anymore. They were unsurprised by this knowledge, and yet I apologize for the enormous amount of time it took for me to make my decision, literally and metaphorically. I’d cheated on my then girlfriend for eight hours, but I’d been leaning more on Dana for emotional support than anyone I’d dated for YEARS at that point. The clue phone was stalking me obsessively and I wasn’t picking up. Thank God I eventually did.

It took me two years to get it together, and eight hours for my life to absolutely fall apart. It was traumatic and painful for a higher purpose. We were both in relationships that were just fine. We could have been happy for a lifetime with them, but it wouldn’t be the fit we had. We weren’t breaking up with our significant others because there was anything wrong with them. Tokyo and Los Angeles are both beautiful cities but you’ll be miserable if your partner never wanted to come on the trip.

It wasn’t that they were wrong. They were wrong for us. We wanted cherry blossoms and strong matcha. They wanted Milk Bar.

Dana and I wanted an attachment we’d never forget, and that has been true. It was worth it to find the love of my life for a short time than never to have experienced a love like that at all. I reached out for fantastic, and I found it.

There’s one picture I love of Dana at my sister’s engagement celebration brunch at Brennan’s in Houston. She’s wearing a fabulous outfit, shoes, and jewelry that we spent the day shopping for, just giggling and laughing like we invented it. We’re at one end of the table smiling, and my mother is on the other….. also smiling. At the time, it was my favorite picture we took to display in our house.

Now, it is a beautiful artistic representation of what marriage looks like for me now….. my wife and I on one end of the table smiling, and my mother on the other.

It’s a shame I forgot the attachment.

Letting Go and Letting Leslie

~ theantileslie ~ Leave a comment

I know the phrase is “let go and let God.” However, I have never put myself first, and I believe the God is implied. Prayer is nothing without shoe leather. We’re a duo, not a Trinity. Jesus is the face I use the most often, but it comes as Middle Eastern. I choose Lebanese most often because the family I rent from hails from its mountains.

My landlady still has an incredibly thick accent and talks on the phone in Arabic often. When we’re in the same room, I look at her with admiring eyes. I’ve told her that I absolutely love listening in on her end of her phone calls, because I don’t know a lick of Arabic. I’m not invading her privacy, but still enjoying the lilt of the language. I’ve thought about learning Arabic many times, but haven’t started yet because it would ruin the magic.

I felt the same with my former housemate Nasim, who used to dazzle me with Farsi. Of course when she told me she was from Iran I practically jumped over two people to tell her that my favorite movie was Argo. She looked at me like, “typical American.” I wish I could tell her what has happened since then.

I could almost cry thinking about not making it to DC before Tony Mendez (spy who created the operation behind “Argo”) stopped making public appearances. He died before his last book, The Moscow Rules, came out. Two things about that, though. The first is that Tony got CIA’s approval to publish the day before he passed away, and the book was a collaboration with his wife, Jonna. Jonna was on book tour and gave a talk at the International Spy Museum, and afterwards, I looked her up and asked her to read one of my blog posts (The Spy in the Room). We’ve stayed in touch casually, and it’s been very rewarding.

Thinking about the scenario of telling Nasim all this is a schadenfreude that makes me giggle. I’ve been laughing a lot more these days.

I came to a fork in the road, and I chose light.

For nine years, I’ve dealt with the grief of losing people I still love in my memories due to being both alive and dead. Since I went to University of Houston I’ve dealt with medication that robbed me of any desire to be in a relationship unless someone broke through with enough force that I noticed. For almost a decade, I have avoided romantic relationships, because it was being willing to take a chance on upending the life I had carved for myself…. the one where I was just happy enough not to notice I wasn’t really happy. I was having good times, but not consistently enough because my dopamine receptors weren’t accepting applications.

I know this is going to sound strange, but I am now open to the idea of dating because of Queen Elizabeth II. I can hear you from here. “Say what now?” Hear me out. I’ll make it make sense.

I was watching a few short videos of Her Majesty’s funeral and for a split second, I considered my mortality. And that was all it took.

I thought to myself “this is how I’m going to tell that story for the rest of my life.” When I thought I was done, the Queen forced me to consider.the last time I had romance, making me feel old and rusty. Was I really going to die thinking I wasn’t enough?

So here I am, chatting in this Facebook group for women of my age and persuasion. My ego started getting stroked immediately, and I was dumbstruck. I am rarely speechless, but this broke me open even more. Part of the reason I’m not a joiner is that I think no one will like me. But several people told me I was cute, and it made me feel better about myself.

A few days later, many filtered down to one.

We’re getting married next week. (KIDDING. LESBIAN JOKE. KIDDING.)

I was going to end it there because it was more dramatic that way. But then I realized it had been a while since we’ve caught up and this isn’t really big news………… except for the fact that I opened my heart to her. That I was brave and she was endearing. That I could see myself having romance in my life when I couldn’t before…….. but I can’t say that we’ve met. Officially. This is because we’ve only chatted online, not in person.

She’s coming to visit in about two weeks, and then I’ll know if I actually have anything to tell you or not. The reason she’s not local and it’s still extremely early days of dating is that she’s on vacation from work and coming to DC, anyway. We met unofficially when she commented on my reply to a question from her about The District, so I’m glad this is not all about me (because Lord knows I love a staycation).

So far she’s a writer’s dream woman- unavailable most of the time. (Now I’m dying laughing picturing her reading this). However, she can leave her house in the morning and be at my house mid-afternoon/early evening, so it’s not like it’s an impossible situation. It’s just right for people who have only known each other as long as we have. We can entirely avoid that U-Haul stereotype through the cunning use of direct chat.

Actually, I take it back. I do have big news, and I’m ashamed I didn’t think of it before. I’m very excited to have someone in my life I view as a kindred spirit, so even if “it’s not there” in person, what does it matter? We write very well together, and that relationship could easily last our whole lives. I am constantly saying that friendship is underrated and this one is truly fantastic. I should have walked the walk before. If there’s anything I miss about being married or having a girlfriend the most, it’s companionship. I’m constantly looking for new ones so I don’t have to depend on the same one all the time.

We’re talking so easily and well that I’m not worried about going on a date to see if we click. The biggest part was stepping out of my comfort zone to join that group in the first place.

I have had a lot of guilt and shame over the way I treated Dana, and hurt at the way she treated me. Then, my mother died, and because one grief hadn’t ended before the next one started, they got lumped together and compounded. I shut down all of my emotions; the brain is an organ and it was doing everything it could to help us survive. My own thoughts and feelings comforted me because I had little outside contact.

I tried so hard to keep from hurting someone else that I forgot to love them, too.

Along the way, I began to take it into account that not 100% of the blame is mine (nor is it one partner’s in any relationship). After a while, I even believed it. Now, I am only talking about the part I do own.

Innately thinking I hadn’t done bad things, but that I was a bad person, I thought I was protecting women from me. That I was really doing them a favor. When the grief cleared into a fog thin enough to see, I learned that it was a lie my brain was telling me to protect me from getting hurt again. It was protecting me from another potential loss.

I’d forgotten what it was like to have a last text of the day. If that’s all it is, then I will still be extremely happy. I’ve learned to trust again, and go with the flow. Whether this is a temporary high or a daily habit is up for debate, though, and I haven’t been able to say that in sooooooo long.

It’s delicious knowing that something could be beginning, and that there is a defined date in the future in which I get to “go see about a girl.”

Here’s what I know so far. In pictures and on video chat, she’s really pretty. She’s been a social worker, and is now a chef. When she told me she was a chef, I had two reactions: “Oh, shit” and “this is fantastic!” These thoughts presented as “not another one” and “we will never shut up.” The fact that I have been married to a chef and have cooked professionally only made me wary for a half second, just because Dana was my best friend and I miss her on that level every day.

I don’t reach out because we have our peace and I’d like to keep it. Therefore, my knee-jerk reaction to umm… let’s call her Theresa (mostly because that’s her name) was that because we couldn’t shut up, this could be something. This could be more grief down the road. A chef? I could let a chef in. That wasn’t scary on its surface, but it was a red flag that this is someone I could let in enough for her to gut me. As a chef, she’d be quite good at it. Moreso because she writes plays and acts (shut up). This had the potential to be a major disaster, and my lemon of a brain almost made me miss it due to fear.

When we were chatting privately, I said, “I don’t know if you meant this to be a date or not, but I’d be open to it.” My stomach was in my mouth until she said “I didn’t know I wanted that until you asked.” Then we were off at the races planning a great and memorable first date. I excitedly told her that I was so glad she said yes, because “even if we don’t like each other or the restaurant catches fire, we’ll have good writing later. It’s a win-win situation.” I was and continue to be lucky that she laughs easily and often.

I think she has long auburn curls, she says that they’re only long compared to my hair. I see it all the time, especially in my dreams.

Like I said, it could be something. I just don’t really know yet. What I do know is that I have been unable to feel the possibility of dating open up until now. That is the real, and for now only story I’m telling. But that the story includes her real name because she said she wanted to be a real person here is telling.

Stay tuned.

Boobs! And Cupping!

~ theantileslie ~ Leave a comment

Now that I have your attention, I must tell you in advance that this entry might be a bit boring. Or not. Looking at your own writing is a mixed bag. Unfortunately, what I’m writing about is not sex, drugs, and rock & roll. I mean, it should be. I’m not that old. Ok, I’m 44, and medical advice has changed. I didn’t think I’d be getting a mammogram for at least another year or two. Conventional wisdom has changed to over 40. I was officially NOT. IMPRESSED.

This is because I’ve heard so many horror stories about how much it hurts to have your boobs squished into a machine one at a time. Either the machinery has changed, or the women telling those stories were “jeweling the elephant.” In case you’ve never heard that term before, it comes from an Armistead Maupin novel called The Night Listener.

The main character talks about a friend who went to India for a wedding. It was small and intimate, but by the time the friend came back to the United States, the groom had ridden in on a jeweled elephant. Thus, a great phrase was born (the friend was not from Texas, but I assure you that Texans are not immune to this concept…. a three inch bass that had to be thrown back is a 12-inch keeper at the ice house). So what I’m saying is that it’s a strong possibility that the memory of the mammogram was maybe worse than the test itself. On the other hand, my previous point stands. Perhaps advances in mammography have led to the test being much less painful. I’m going to bet on that.

I felt pressure, certainly, but no actual pain (from the test itself…………………..). A few weeks ago, I fell and got a horrible muscle spasm in my back, bad enough to need muscle relaxers and a trip to an orthopedist and physical therapy twice a week. The hardest and most excruciating pain was just having to stand up for 10-15 minutes in a row.

I was also in a lot of emotional pain, because the date was my mother’s birthday. I haven’t felt the overwhelming grief of my mother dying in a long time (every day it’s a dull buzz that runs constantly in my head), but it surfaced mightily when I realized she couldn’t fly up to be with me, nor could I debrief with her over the phone. It was primal, four-year-old child “I want my Mommy.” Because here’s the thing. No matter whether you have family history of breast cancer or not (I don’t), what kind of breast tissue you have (mine is extraordinarily dense and required a couple of takes to get the test right), or whether the person doing the test has one year of experience or 20, the fact that it takes at least a week for the results to come back makes you nervous. You have thoughts that range from “I hope I’m okay” to “I’m probably dying.” I got them earlier this week and they were completely normal.

I also learned that I’m not interested in changing my pronouns or coming out again, but I had a moment of clarity in which I’d never felt more non-binary in my life. I was wearing my hair short and punk, had on both earrings and a cartilage piercing, and was dressed in men’s jeans and an old Ubuntu Studio t-shirt. I’d also brought my well-worn CIA baseball cap for after the test as my emotional support item. It makes me feel braver and stronger than I actually am.

As I was standing there naked from the waist up, I felt truly disconnected from my femininity. It was if my breasts had a life of their own, separate and of me at the same time. I was also completely focused on other things. My pain level was at a seven. I was trying to cover it up with jokes, which brought the pain down to a six and a half. I was also thinking constantly about how I had no idea what was happening most of the time (shut it).

And even though it was completely platonic and professional, I hadn’t been even partially naked in front of another woman for at least seven years, so that was uncomfortable as well… but not in terms of attraction. It was akin to changing in front of other women at a gym……. in seventh grade.

I told the technician that it was my first mammogram, and she said that I had come to the right place. She had 20 years of experience and would make everything as painless and easy as possible, plus, she REALLY loves her job. I said she’d have to, because no matter what the job is, you’d have to love it to do it that long. I made her laugh. Score. Witty rapport with her and endorphins for me.

I was drawn into her bubbly personality. I was wearing this (actually kind of cool) scrub top that tied in two places. She offered to let me drop one side of it at a time, but it unwieldy and time-consuming. I said, “would it be easier for both of us if I just took it off? If you’ve been doing this for 20 years, I’m going to bet you’ve seen a breast before.” She said that was the right answer and we’d be done much quicker.

The funniest part was that she adjusted the machine before I took my top off, and she said, “I have clearly miscalculated.” I laughed so hard that my stomach hurt, and the words of an old girlfriend floated through my head….. “awwww, you got the boobs I always wanted.” That moment of levity carried me through the rest of the test with ease in terms of erasing nervousness, and I think the laughter even brought down my pain more for a minute or so. The hardest part of the test was standing still for fifteen minutes.

A couple of days after the mammogram, physical therapy started. The first session was sublime, because all they did was have me lay on my stomach and massage me for almost an hour and a half. I thought they were all going to be like that.

Nope.

The second session started with 10 minutes on a bicycle to “warm up.” I am what you would call, as Jim Gaffigan says, “indoorsy.” I haven’t exercised in years. I learned something good about myself, which is that even though it had been a long time, it didn’t feel like my calves were going to drop off until the 10 minutes were up.

After that was when my problems really began to kick in. The whole idea is that my arthritis stems from a birth defect. It’s called retrolisthesis, and it occurs when a single vertebra slips and moves back along the intervertebral disc underneath or above it. The quickest way to fix it permanently is to surgically fuse the discs, but my doctor said to try Physical Therapy first and strengthen my core.

When I started those exercises, my other birth defects kicked in. I have a mild case of cerebral palsy, which hasn’t affected my brain or speech, but completely changes my movement and balance. I fall all the time. In fact, I fall so much that I’m bruised all over the place and can never match up which fall goes with which injury. So, of course, the first exercise was trying to balance on a board that sat atop a rubber ball. I could tell that my physical therapist thought I was exaggerating when I couldn’t do it, so I clued him in. He said, “I need you to try a little harder because this exercise is really, really important. Of course it was. And, of course, I was even more terrible at it when I felt under pressure to do well. I am a perfectionist, and any time I feel like I’ve done something less than perfectly, my anxiety kicks up and I feel like a total failure….. even in times where I get 70-80% right.

But this? Grading this would be a zero.

I also told my physical therapist that I saw a treadmill, an eliptical, and a bike, and to never, ever put me on the eliptical, even if God himself came down and told him it was okay. My balance is so off that I fell off the first time I used it. Thinking I just didn’t know how to use the machine, I tried it three more times, which led to (you guessed it) three more falls.

Two weeks ago, we also tried cupping. Apparently it’s supposed to increase the blood flow around your injury, allowing it a better chance to heal itself. I would be willing to try it again, but the first time all I felt was weirdness. Like, the strangest sensation I’ve ever felt in my life. Like other things, though, perhaps it takes more than one session to feel like it helped. But we haven’t done it again. I’ve laid on my stomach and used electrostim with either heat or ice.

The most frustrating part of all this is twofold. The first is that the physical therapy is helping, but I’m not getting better very fast. The second is that the longer I’m in pain, the more my mental health suffers, because nothing in my body feels good. My psych meds and the muscle relaxers help, but like my physical pain, I’m not getting better very fast. Also, don’t tell my doctor, but I’m cheating. She said that she’d like me to take the muscle relaxers instead of NSAIDS because the NSAIDS might make my acid reflux worse. After a week of that bullshit, I bought four bottles of omeprazole and a year’s worth of Aleve. Along with my back pain, I’ve had arthritis in my hands since I was 30, and my knees have been 44 since I was 19. All of it has to do with working in a kitchen. In college, I was a waitress. When I was older, I became a cook. The repetitive strain injuries have mostly gone away, except for the times when I’m typing like a madman. The arthritis is here to stay. Pretty sure it’s osteo and not rheumatoid, because my knuckles/fingers look normal.

That being said, my stepmother is a rheumatologist and a lot of her patients are women my age…. so of course I’m a tiny, tiny bit paranoid about developing an autoimmune disease.

The upside of all this is that my friends have been amazing, checking in on me a lot and offering to rub my back with Voltaren cream or Icy Hot. It lightens my mood, because since I’m perpetually single (by choice), the one bad thing about it is that I am continually touch-starved…. just not right now.

Next week I’m getting a different massage therapist while my current one goes to visit his family in Tehran. I nearly fainted when he said that because Argo is my favorite movie of all time and space. I joked with him. I said, “could you take a picture of the bazaar for me? I don’t have one without Ben Affleck in it.”

And then we laughed so hard I almost fell over……………………..