My favorite form of self-care used to be taking a bath, but our bathroom got remodeled and now I don’t have a bathtub. It’s not an easy feat to have smooth legs, a standup shower, and cerebral palsy. Most days, pick two. In fact, I have two bags of Epsom salt (one in lavender, one in eucalyptus) that have never been used because I didn’t know we were getting a shower when I bought them.
Self care changed a bit when Zac and I started dating, because then self care started leaning toward getting out and walking with Oliver, and taking the train to his house, etc. I’m not a social butterfly unless I have to be. Most people take care of themselves by staying in. I’ve got that covered. I need to go out.
I find comfort in my bedroom/office more than anywhere else. This is because my house is very, very large and I am a small person. I tend to hole up in favor of feeling safe. I avoid most people in real life because I don’t live with my family.
I am fairly certain that my housemate thinks that because I’m queer, if she touches anything after me, that thing will turn her queer as well. I’ve gone out of my way to assure her that it TOTALLY WORKS. Don’t you dare pick up this peanut butter lest you suddenly find yourself noticing my sweatpants do fit extra tight today, you’re welcome.
Self care is learning to see others’ idiocy, otherwise it would bother me more often than it does that my housemate thinks I can King Midas her into submission (OMG. EVERYTHING SHE TOUCHES TURNS RAINBOW). First of all, ew.
I can also say with a healthy amount of confidence that she’s not smart enough for me.
Self care has been about creating boundaries, which I can’t say has gone all the right way, but has produced all the right results. Having a relationship that was all in my head changed my neural pathways, but there was almost always an air of flying too close to the sun.
The relationship ended my marriage, which I’ve said before; what I haven’t said outside it was all my fault is that we trauma dumped too much too fast and each made the other take on things that they wouldn’t have otherwise chosen. This in and of itself was a crack in my relationship with Dana, but I couldn’t and wouldn’t undo it for anything in the world.
How it worked out was how it was supposed to work out, because I can truly say that I did not choose one or the other. The situation unfolded over years and I retconned it so I could explain it to myself. It was too much to act and process at the same time, and I think that’s what’s happening now. I couldn’t act and process at the same time, so I ended the relationship when I realized what it would take to be on the same page and not having someone to work with on a shared goal, because no goal was set.
It was a roller coaster, when my idea of fun is more “sitting outside by the pool and/or fire.” But that doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy the ride while I was on it, or would turn down another trip if the situation were actually right to do so. I just don’t feel like she’s willing to hammer it out, because instead of seeing questions, she saw entitlement. It wasn’t my intention, but what my words said to her. As if I had an agenda she was constantly failing when I actually saw her as the good kind of trouble. I would do anything for her, and if the situation actually required it, I might even call her on the telephone (no, I wouldn’t. I’m not even that dedicated to me).
If it seems like I’m ragging on her a lot, I would tell you everything I ever loved about her if it wouldn’t result in identifying her. She is just too fun and funny to miss. I would be her second in command at anything just to watch her go off script.
I realized that if I meant as much to her as she meant to me, there wouldn’t be any doubt in my mind as to where we were and where we are and where we’re going because she’d actually want me to know all those things. Now I think she’s just afraid that I value me more than I value her….. that anything truly personal we shared will end up splashed all over everywhere. I doubt it, as we have no mutual friends, but it’s possible if I’ve managed to leave enough breadcrumbs without realizing it because that’s not something I’d do intentionally. I value her privacy, but it’s more than that. Talking about what we’ve shared means sharing things about me that only belong to her. It’s taking that tiny virtual meeting space and opening it up to others, when the purpose of our friendship in the first place was to be the other’s safe space. I would never intentionally violate that. I don’t want to invite anyone else into our space any more than she would want me to do it.
Self care is knowing that I need to turn my attention inward, that I need to protect my energy. So much of it went to her at times that I lost track of me. Not always, but enough. There’s one thing I won’t do, though, and that’s stop praying for her. It’s the least intrusive thing I can do, and probably all I ever will. I am certain that I have said enough, that she is done…. mostly because I told her if she was going, she couldn’t come back unless it was big. That us being so nebulous was kicking my ass. I wasn’t entitled. I was clueless.
That’s because I’d already done the clawing back up part, and it wasn’t happening again without major buy-in. What I didn’t do that I should have was cure her of all her shitty assumptions, like assuming I wasn’t getting what I thought I should out of our relationship. The truth is that she prides herself on not needing anything, so why wouldn’t she think that me being emotional was a weakness? That I’m needy?
I wasn’t needy. I was uneducated. If you don’t tell me what you need and resent the hell out of me for feeling, I’m going to rely on self care.
Truly, I think a lot of our differences can be summed up in our four ages….. ours and our inner children and how those developmental milestones rubbed up against each other. She’s chronologically older, and yet I see her as so much younger than I am. I wanted to protect her because of it, and I failed.
Caring for myself is now harder, because since I failed to protect her, I don’t care as much about myself because I don’t think I’m worth it. I’ve already proven I don’t take care of other people well, why do I think I can help me? I know they’re just intrusive thoughts; most of them don’t even have basis in fact.
I thought of something from yesterday that made me feel amazing. Years ago, I sent her a pen for Christmas. So. Who knows? Maybe I live in her ink, too. 🙂 Moments like that remind me that thoughts of her are not the intrusive ones. My giggle box turns over every time I think of that thank you letter…. that the pen (a novelty) was the first thing that had made her laugh in a while. It helps to think of these things, because I know that I am not chaotic evil 24/7.
Self care is being a little chaotic evil, though. No true regimen would leave out mass quantities of carbs and chocolate at any time, much less right the fuck now (the cramps are starting and I feel my uterus getting ready to scream).
Ohhhhhh……. the cramps are starting…… that’s why I was such a hot mess yesterday. Sounds like I could use some self care.
I waste a lot of time giving energy to problems I don’t have. For instance, I can’t just wall off my feelings about said Internet friend, so I’ve spent way too much time asking the universe to make her go away so that I don’t constantly give her rent in my head. She has a palace, and I want only a desk with a drawer that locks.
How do you get rid of a muse that has lived inside you for ten years, knowing that you’ll own a piece of them forever? How do I sort out how I feel about that? She’s not “just under my skin” anymore. She lives in my ink, bottles with many colors. Most of the time, she’s a spectrum. I see her as purple and orange, a taster in grape or citrus in which sweet and sour are inextricably interrelated. I cannot enjoy her without acknowledging it wasn’t all healthy. I’m also not saying that was ever her fault. It just is.
I feel like friends who hold you accountable love you more than the ones who just stuff things down, because they don’t care when they see you stagnating. There is worth in someone seeing you exactly for who and what you are. There is value in someone seeing all the good and bad inside you and deciding that you’re infinitely worth it no matter what lies ahead. There is a danger in love being so infinite and wild.
I think I can say it was the same way for both of us, because platonic love can go equally haywire. Every person alive knows how hard it is to make good friends, and I have read too many stories of women who are miserable because their husbands are so emotionally unavailable that their friends provide what their husbands lack. This is unsurprising to me when I look at my parents’ and grandparents’ generation. But thinking I can say it is different than knowing whether it’s actually true.
She said that I was part of her wild and crazy brain. My feelings ran just as wild, which felt like she was part of my wild and crazy soul. She’s a thinker, I’m a feeler. We are yin and yang, feeding each other when it was right. It just wasn’t the majority of the time because neither one of us ever really knew where the other was coming from. She never asked any questions, and never gave me any answers to mine.
Today, I have allowed myself the luxury of getting so angry my hair nearly caught fire. What is WRONG with me? How did I put up with that shit for so incredibly long? Why was she even interested in me in the first place? There are two answers to that question, only one of them good….. a question as important as “when silence falls, the question will be asked.”
Doctor WHO?
Everything I knew her to be blossomed and flowered and I fell headlong into the perfect trap, one I set up and decorated.
She won’t get this, but you will. I was willing to be Rory the Roman. Being him is what destroyed me, even though our relationship was The Doctor/Companion rather than The Doctor/River Song. Tell me that if Amy could have, she wouldn’t have stayed with The Doctor forever. I mean, you could, I just wouldn’t believe it. Even when they stopped traveling together, The Doctor still turned up at their house once in a while. I just don’t see that kind of break happening. And of course, now her husband (to me) is Rory and I’m little Amelia Pond……. still sitting on that fucking suitcase a decade later because she thought she’d done something that hurt me, and she did. It’s just not what she thinks it is, and she never will. That’s because she thinks my problem is with who she is, and it’s not. It’s over an action, one that is long forgiven and forgotten except when she accidentally triggered me and brought it all back, then accused me of being a little shit trying to provoke her.
I called her out on all of it, and she told me to go find new friends if I was so unhappy. I want her to choke on those words, realize she threw me away as if I was dog shit, but she won’t. She won’t even apologize for small things, why the hell should I expect better when the problem is large? That’s not her deal. That’s mine. I put up with it because I thought I deserved it. In part, I did, which is what made things so problematic. My rejection sensitivity dysphoria allowed me to accept that even after some years, I was still a piece of shit. Nothing was ever going to change and I ignored it because I wanted her in my life so bad I couldn’t see anything else. My rose colored glasses shattered, and the fragments are floating through time and space as I put together all the ways in which those lenses stopped me from seeing I was setting myself up for a lifetime of pain.
Young Amy is why I call her my Raggedy Doctor, when I should have called her Guffman and moved on. That didn’t stop me from wasting time on choreography.
I feel so stupid, and that anger that’s been buried inside me and struggling to get out is finally releasing from its mold…. a two inch pour that went REALLY badly. There’s epoxy dripping all over the floor, and I forgot to spray with mold release, so I also have a ruined mold……… and then that illustration becomes even more apt. She changed me in ways that are too unique to even write about, they’re so personal. The mold broke on her, and I could have had her for a lifetime in my gaggle of friends if I’d only been more patient and not said anything about the things she did that hurt me. Being more patient is valid. Wanting to keep a relationship even though it’s hurting you is not.
Until now, I have thought that the hurt was all my doing, and then I realized that eight years was probably enough to get over something. If she wants to hold a grudge and not let me in anymore because I’m such a terrible person, she has every right. I just thought she had more integrity than to hold something over someone’s head for their entire lives when she fucking told me she would do it. She told me she’d never let me in ever again and as time went on and she loosened up a little bit, I thought she’d said that in anger.
Nope.
She’s not responsible. I am deaf.
I’ve wasted a lot of time because there’s nothing wrong with my ears.
I can’t believe I’ve held out on you (without realizing it). I didn’t remember the story I was going to tell here until Zac picked me up from the Metro, because he’s not an intelligence officer, but he does work in an intelligence agency that gathers data from the other 17-30ish (depending on who’s counting). His office is at Ft. Belvoir, which is what made the story come up in the first place.
I was sitting next to a random dude on Southwest coming back to DC a couple weeks ago. I asked him if he was coming or going. He said he lived in Fredericksburg and worked at Ft. Belvior. I wait a second and say, “so what kind of intelligence operations are you doing right now?” The look on his face was simply priceless. Just “how in the hell did you know that?” We laughed together and he said “I’m not a spy. I’m their ride.” He was an airplane mechanic. Just so fascinating because he talked me through takeoff and landing as it was happening. I’m not a nervous flyer at all. This is because I automatically assume that if the plane is going to go down, there is nothing that I can do about it. I don’t have to sit there and worry because no one is going to ask me to help out.
Even the airplane mechanic next to me can’t help if the plane is currently in the air.
Up on the airplane...... nearer my God to Thee. I start making a deal, Inspired by gravity.
He did that DC thing where people complain about the traffic and I said I preferred public transit because I can zone out and do something else, not advisable in a car. 😛 The thing that I really like about this area is that even if you live in the suburbs, you can use public transit to get anywhere. The Virginia Rail Express connects to the Metro, and there’s a similar line for southern Maryland called the MARC (transfer is available on lower level). It runs between Union Station and most of Baltimore. Having grown up in Houston, this is the most amazing thing ever. It’s cool to own a car, but it’s even better when you can get one because you want it and not because there’s no other option.
I also think “why drive? Let someone else do it.” I’m not talking about mooching rides off friends. I’m talking about Uber and Lyft, which I generally use to get to the train station and not my final destination. 😛
Other days, I walk. It’s about two and a half miles from my house to downtown Silver Spring, which is just long enough to feel like I’ve worked out and thus accomplished something.
I also love that I live in MD and Zac lives in VA, because the vibes at our houses are so incredibly different. I think that’s because Maryland is so small and Virginia is so large. We in Maryland do not spread.
Taking public transit is kind of the point for me. I am introverted to the point of insanity, and trying to branch out. Yesterday, I met a woman named Angel. We’ve been texting for about the last hour. She also has the cutest kids on the planet. Meeting new people is exciting, because it’s the beginning of a story. Right now the story we’re working on is hers. She asked me if we could collaborate right off the bat, and I told her I’d never been in a writer’s room vs. alone and why not? Also nice to have a friend in Brookland, which isn’t too far from me. Red line represent.
Holla.
Zac and I shot the shit and drank way too much and I hate being hungover, so this morning was a wash. I didn’t feel so hot, but was touched that I woke up next to a cup of coffee and a sippy cup of water (does he know me or what?). The train home was the worst part, but it wasn’t the train’s fault. Feeling bad physically didn’t do anything for me mentally, and I was tearing up thinking about my writing. What I’ve put out into the world lately have been the most vulnerable pieces of me that have existed so far. It’s little fragments of lines that stick with me, like “ironically the score is love when we’re the most furious.”
I think I was at the airport when that one passed by. Speaking of which, I think the Metro stop for the airport is in the wrong place, because I like the old building better. 😛
Also, it’s been years and years and years. Still never heard a local call it by its name. I won’t even say it during Pride month. The person it’s named after did more to fuck up my future than anyone could have guessed, because that was the beginning of every message about queer people on TV being that we were going to die and we deserved it.
Today I was very surprised that Bryn told me she loved Finland. Full stop. She didn’t get it from me…….. and is going to adopt Finnish Independence Day with me. Here’s a breadcrumb for the people who already know this story. It’s on December 6th.
It’s so stupid and yet it works. Believe me, she is not adopting Finnish Independence Day just to share something I like. Nope. She loves it for the same reason I do, because when we write our stories together, they fit like holding hands, which is very interesting in and of itself. I’ve written about it before, so let’s just not go there. It’s not relevant anymore, and it’s too deep for today. I want to focus on something else. Basically, being a Finn for a day helps me not think about something else that needs to stay walled off, because I’ve already had that exorcism and feel peaceful about it….. but not invincible. Triggers happen.
I have a long sleeve gray t-shirt that has the outline of Finland on it, so I have something supportive to wear that day. It is my armor. I laugh to myself when I read Jesus saying “it is finished,” because to my mind that’s a typo.
I don’t think I’ve ever said that before…….. about something being too deep for today. However, the weather is miserable and I don’t want to help it out.
When we get the pennies, we’re out of here. At least for a little while. We need to stand on the steps of the “outdoor living room” in Helsinki, with all the military bands and choirs and the blue and white candles and the lights and EVERYTHING. I’ve just told her be prepared not to want to come home. It’s the happiest country in the world, and we’ll be there in December, so if that’s not a road test I don’t know what is. I don’t mean this December. I’m just holding onto the dream of doing it *someday.* I want to save up my pennies because there’s a chef I will do some shady shit to meet. Hell yeah, reindeer pizza. Plus, I have developed a soft spot for salmiakki (sp?). The other plus is that most Finns speak English, so we wouldn’t have to be fluent in Suomi unless we just wanted to be sort of impressive. Why would white girls speaking Suomi be special IN FINLAND. 😛 It would blow their minds to hear us in our Oregon and Texas accents, because it would only be when we switched to English that people would realize something is afoot at the Circle K.
An additional bonus is that we’ll get to see what used to be a part of Russia without ACTUALLY HAVING TO GO THERE. I am seriously unimpressed with Russia and geeked out over Finland. I watched a documentary on a few of the epic battles. Keep in mind these people basically live in Hoth, okkkkkk. So, they played to their strengths. White camo. Skis. Bazinga.
If I was Russia, I’d be pretty pissed that a country full of skiers fucked up my program, too. But they deserved it, just like they deserve Zelenskyy handing them their asses.
Since conversation about Finland invariably leads to conversation about Ukraine given world events, I also told Bryn about “Servant of the People,” the show that launched Z’s career. He created some amazing people that I can’t wait to spend more time with, even if it’s just watching the first season again.
Maybe I’ll ask Zac if he wants to watch an episode. We’re getting together later and it seems like a show he would watch. I’m not sold on it for tonight, but I do think he would think it’s funny. The pilot is a masterpiece. For the uninitiated, here’s the basic plot.
Ukraine has ranked voting. That’s the first thing you need to know.
The second is that Zelenskyy’s character is a history teacher. The day before the election, one of his kids films him going off on a rant about the government and what it should be doing, and doesn’t see a kid filming him, who promptly posts it on YouTube. Oblivious, Zelenskyy goes to bed. The kids have registered him as a candidate, and he’s in the bathroom when the Secret Service arrives to pick him up.
Every bit…. EVERY bit as funny as “The Office.” For instance, Zelenskyy says that he needs to go to the mall to get a CD for his niece. The Secret Service says they’ll take care of it. They can’t find the CD, so they just go and pick up the band.
Life happens when you’re doing something else. Through comedy, Zelenskyy absolutely filets Putin. I have no illusions about the fact that Putin’s ego probably helped cause all this if my blog is any indication. Zelenskyy embarrassed him on television, so he deserves to die.
Imagine what Trump would do if there were no laws preventing him from something like starting a war because someone embarrassed him on television. I’m surprised he didn’t do it while he had the chance. All of his other enemies were merely people who didn’t agree with them, and the facts were on their side.
I imagine Trump being Putin’s confidante, where they can talk about all the ways in which the world is just so unfair to them.
Maybe they’d be happier if they celebrated Finnish Independence Day. It worked for me.
Things have changed so much for me this year, and I’m reeling from it. I’m not sure that I meant to change this much this fast, but in retrospect things worked out. I’m not constantly worried that I’m a judgmental dickhead. I’m not constantly thinking of myself as less important than everyone else, and I’m finding out that not having interests as a child- in terms of fitting into society- I adopted a whole bunch of behavior patterns that I don’t like. I fell for everything because I didn’t stand up for anything.
I’m just a writer. I don’t know shit about shit.
The older I get, the more that lesson internalizes. What is different is that I am not constantly making up scenarios and conversations in my head to produce the least offensive outcome because I am a shell of a person. I was abused emotionally from the time I was 13. I absolutely lost everything I was interested in, favoring her interests. I think I carried around an opera dictionary for six weeks or something.
I feel like I learned how to be myself in a sandbox, that I was beta testing all kinds of things… and let’s be clear. Some of that software isn’t even out of alpha release. Keep checking GitHub. Good luck.
So, that’s what the Internet relationship was good for, if nothing else. I’m not a lead the charge into hell sort of person. But I knew someone who was. It felt like an ace up my sleeve, and it was.
And that’s why it hurts so much. I’m not disappointed that I never got to call her boo, I’m disappointed that our friendship had such promise.
You cannot imagine how long I just sat in silence, figuring this thing out. Or trying to, anyway. There was just no way to separate what I’d done from my level of trustworthiness, so I’ve known I’m a piece of shit for years. Intimately.
So, it lit me up inside that things started looking up. And then realized the swings were only going to get worse. If she’s not forthcoming, I’m not pushing. If e-mails are too big a deal, let me go.
Let me give all that love to someone else… not in a mean way, just that I hurt that I’ll never be able to make something right. I spent too long dwelling on how to fix a problem without realizing how much it was robbing me of any self respect. As I got older, I didn’t want to sit in it anymore. I didn’t want to cry any more than I already had. I didn’t want to wake up at 55 and see that I’d just kept at it.
So, I asked her what she wanted and where she was going.
Last time there was a huge break, I’d send her e-mails and get a few in return. It took a mountain of work to get where we are today, and I thought that we were in it for the long haul in a “sure, I can water the plants” kind of way. I don’t think I would have been wrong if I’d just kept my mouth shut, a running theme in this relationship for evil and for awesome.
My attention is starting to turn and it is a welcome relief after ten years of not being able to shake Gmail’s hand.
But it’s not all that. As I told her, “you’re in my head, Malkovich.” I do not know how to get rid of things I’ve thought about ad nauseam for ten years. I am making progress, but I’m not there yet. I feel like part of this is just delayed. That this is the conversation I should have been having with myself eight years ago instead of now. Except that some really good things have come in the last few years. I don’t even fucking know anymore, and that’s the saddest part.
Pretty much everything can be summed up by “I don’t even know anymore.” The difference is that I care a lot less in terms of what it’s going to take to keep me going and how other people are going to feel. I have to go hardline Lamott here. My story is mine. I’m not seeing what I want to read, so I’m creating it.
I loved loving a writer, because she could think as fast as me.
I’m remembering what she used to say about my writing, and letting myself fall apart for a minute. Just sit in it and let it hurt. It’ll go away.
My mother dying taught me this. That if I could just sit in the discomforts and not shut it away, I’d be better off because with tension comes release.
I keep seeing her in my mind and thinking, “do it, anyway.”
If I thought I could really help her, do it anyway. But make her come to you. Maybe reading my words will help, and that is the only thing I can hope for. I doubt anything will ever happen between us again and feel that our story is over. But I know I can help her just by being me. That if she wants, she has a wealth of information on what I was really saying- the answers to questions she might have, without any real desire to know whether she reads. I told her I didn’t want to know, and for now, I mean it.
She is a memory. I want to look at our entire relationship and decide what it should have taught me the first time around that it just didn’t. Mostly I learned that I talk too much, that I’m too much. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, just that most people aren’t ready for what I can do, and that part can fry people’s hair.
It’s not because I’m so much smarter than everyone else. It’s that most people don’t think like I do, and it’s difficult for them to relate. No one knows anyone like me. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve come off as absolutely brilliant for a little while.
My beautiful girl knows she’s brilliant for a lifetime, and she’s told me I am, too. That’s enough. I am sitting in the concept of enough. What I thought it was. What it should be. How my idealist bullshit caught up to me by creating wishes with no foundation. It’s all a lot, and not a damn thing has to do with parsing out anything she did except to point out what I didn’t know for a decade.
It’s paying to look at all the things I could have given attention, I just didn’t. It’s filling me up where I’m empty, letting me have back the parts of me that were hers…. Because after ten years, I know for damn sure that there’s a lot of her that’s in me. The best part about having an Internet relationship is that the joke you made this morning will be huge this afternoon and no one’s heard it.
Today my big laugh was Bryn being stuck behind a horse trailer and several cars going 25 miles per hour going down the back side of Mt. Chehalem and I started laughing so hard I couldn’t breathe. “Bryn…… Bryn…. I can’t believe you’re stuck in a hay pride parade.“
I couldn’t believe I’d made a joke that I didn’t have to rip off.
I lost a lot of myself, but I’ve regained it.
The blessing is that it is a lot of gray area. Nebulous whitespace that’s primed and ready for paint. Feeling like I’m making room for new things feels exciting, because if I’m going to end a relationship because I think it’s not working, then what will? I have ideas, but it’s about connecting with people who share them. I want to meet someone who’s excited to meet me.
Today I’m in the process of letting myself off the hook for “making” my closest ally feel bad by “bringing up bad feelings about the past.” Here’s what she missed.
I was devastated when she married her husband and I told her that, including why. That it wasn’t because she’d said yes to him and not me. I’m not wired that way. It was because someone I thought of as dear to me didn’t even tell me when her name changed. But it was water under the bridge and trying to tell her an important part of my process… including the fact that when I saw her husband through her eyes, it made my soul relax. She had someone to lean on in such a concrete way and it made me so happy rather than wondering if she was okay and not really feeling as if I could ask that question. I wasn’t focused on anything but wanting to know why she’d chosen to keep the information from me so I could stop thinking about it. I feel like I’d talk about an issue, she’d see me as trying to intentionally point out every flaw and failure she ever had, and I’d walk off like a kicked dog.
I was trying to tell her how much things had changed, that my perspective had grown as I did. That having a 50 foot view made me see how our patterns fit together and how far we’d come over time. I was trying to tell her how much I loved her and she thought I was trying to make her feel bad. I thought it would mean a lot to her to hear that her light erasing my dark wasn’t dependent on whether she changed her sexual orientation. I don’t have that much power, and wouldn’t use it if I did.
When I was telling her that she could lean on me, she took it as psychoanalysis, which to be fair it was. But it wasn’t pointing out flaws and failures, and I didn’t write the letter like that. I wrote it with as much empathy as I could muster, saying that I knew she’d been through a lot and I wanted to help. What does anyone who’s ever loved you want more for you than having less pain? I knew that I could help her have less pain by taking it on and hurting for her, breathing through it with her so that we both smiled on the exhale. I wish I had been able to express it in a way that she could hear it, because she is perfect in all her flaws and failures. Just perfect. I feel the way about her that people feel about babies… that no matter what their lives will hold, you know you’d die to protect them. There’s a place in all of us that is that vulnerable, the one that feels defenseless, and I gave her mine.
She just took away my piece of her. Let’s be clear, though. It was my fault entirely. She doesn’t do shit for no reason, but that doesn’t mean I’m not entitled to emotions about it.
I think she thinks I don’t know why she yanked my credentials…. That the victim part is in thinking I’ve never done anything wrong. Just because I don’t say I know I’m responsible doesn’t mean that I don’t know it. I’ve said it in as many ways as I possibly could, but that doesn’t mean she heard it. But the thing is, I sound like a victim because I’m only talking about my problem with you because I’m not reading your mind and looking for your problem with me. I can take a guess, but it will come across as psychoanalysis, or so I’ve been told. 😉
I show my empathy by telling people what I think of what they’re going through, and write with such care and attention most of the time. Sure, I have e-mails that just say “thanks,” but that’s not the majority. It happens more frequently now, because I’m scared of starting friendship that doesn’t have an anchor.
I’m processing all this to let go of the past, certainly, but also to understand what I didn’t want for next time. The only way I can do that is to understand what happened so I don’t do it again. If I make a mistake, the pendulum swings to the other extreme so that I don’t have another appearance of the same mistake.
It’s not about her anymore. It’s about knowing what to do if anything like this happens again. I don’t want to lean into the surreal. I want to touch you at least once in our friendship, even if it’s just you accidentally stepping on my heel. I need to prove that you are a solid mass as opposed to my conscience. 😉
It’s hard for people to accept that when they do something wrong, it doesn’t mean I’m taking love away. I’m not rejecting them. I’m trying to grow with them and not against them. If my beautiful girl is impressed by my enormous changes, it would stand to reason that we’d be better friends now than we were, because those impressive changes would have happened together. I am not offended that she feels goaded and provoked because I know by now that she sees my concerns as bombs because she’s not that deep. It’s not that she can’t. It’s that there’s a lot of “don’t want to” in “cain’t.” I know this because she’s done it.
I’m tired of working out all our problems and it only changing me.
And if that seems harsh, so be it. I can’t think of anything I’ve said about her in recent memory that she hasn’t taken as something I said to intentionally hurt her without ever looking at the ways I was asking her to take care of me, and asking her what she needed to feel loved as well. Therefore, when she said that e-mails making her feel bad were becoming the norm rather than the exception, I had no idea what she was talking about and she wouldn’t elaborate. If I don’t know what hurts, I can’t stop doing it.
We also have issues in both being fixer/pleasers, butt hurt when we’re actively trying to fix and the other isn’t receptive… not out of malice, but idiocy. I was dialed into my emotions, she was cut off. It wasn’t personal all the way around. She’s like that all the time, and so am I. But conflict with each other didn’t help. I keep asking myself why I required that of her, and let myself off the hook when I realized that it wasn’t me being demanding, it was me realizing that I couldn’t hold back my emotions. I couldn’t wall her off. I walked around in her inner landscape more than I should have, because she gave me a lot to think about that was interesting, and I gravitated toward interesting.
It made my asshole chew crackers when she said she’d marry Brene Brown (I would, too. That’s not the point. 😛 ). I can say that to you. It didn’t help hearing that Hannah Waddingham is hot as shit, either. That’s because me saying I felt the same way about her wigged her out, and she told me that, too. So, sexuality is nonbinary when there’s not a chance in hell it’s real. I am glad that she never in a million years said she’d marry me, even in jest. She definitely didn’t do it when she knew it was my landmine, but I mean early on, when neither of us could ever have done anything wrong. That’s because I would have hurt about it long after I died.
I just don’t feel let down. I don’t feel disappointed that I just wasn’t it for her. I feel like she has the right to be completely who she is, and to wish I could change her is the height of entitlement. I hate those people. What I did wish for is integration, and not necessarily physically, as in a cup of coffee together. Just that sense of integrating our ideas so that we were both up to speed on what the other thought.
I didn’t like being thought of as an asshole, and I didn’t like that she wouldn’t tell me why. I can’t hear that I’m making you feel bad when I’ve just sent you an e-mail saying that we’re both miracles and perfect, not together (but I can see it), but in all the things that we bring to the world.
I just have no idea what she was talking about, because I can have empathy for the way you feel and also no idea how to fix your problem with me if you don’t give me a little more detail. What did I say that made you feel bad, because I am not going to go through every line and have my stomach hurt trying to read your mind.
I also didn’t think it was fair that I looked at every feeling she had about me, seeing her as a spectrum, not a binary. She had me pegged as a dickhead unless I called her out and then I was very impressive for a few minutes.
It would always go back, though, because she hated being judged and couldn’t wrap her brain around the fact that I’m not judgmental about people. I’m judgmental about situations, but not in a way that’s trying to hurt people. I mean like an ACTUAL judge. Someone who listens to all of the facts and collates what they think and feel. Judgment is a way of making decisions. How do you differentiate between signal and noise? Some people perceive, some people judge. One is not more or less than the other, they’re different.
I judge people and situations to be perfect all the time. My judgment not only sees problems and analyzes them, it also makes me an incredible gift giver because since I’ve actually spent time muddling through our issues, I remember more of what you say and little things stick. Your favorite charities. Your job. Your interests. Your teams. Just anything that will tell you that when you get a gift from me, I’ve been paying attention. For instance, if your job requires that you be absolutely wired at all times, I’ll send you SBUX to maximize where you can spend the money. If it is Galentine’s Day, I will make you waffles, or send you a gift certificate to buy them. If I find out you’ve been a fan of Arsenal since you were a kid, I’ll kit you out over the next five years.
It’s a little bit like Sherlock Holmes deducing information, because through logic, he has a more complete data set than people think he does. I have a similar example to Holmes knowing Watson fought in Afghanistan. Not that extreme, of course. It’s just that I’ve picked up things over the years because I’m reading everything she’s not saying as well. This isn’t it, but a universal example would be someone being lactose intolerant because they’ve never said that, yet when you ask them what they want from a coffee shop, it’s always vegan.
The heuristic is that it’s more likely that someone is lactose intolerant than they just don’t like milk if they’ve never indicated they eat vegan food.
But I don’t tell her any of that crap to make her feel bad. I tell her that stuff because what I think is going to make her feel noticed and appreciated makes her feel terrible. If I can’t fix that, I need to move on, because it hurts too much to hurt her.
I let her go because I loved her, not because I was being a toddler.
If I’m the only one that makes her feel bad, my reactions don’t feel amazing, either. I’m just willing to tell you why so that more information means less conflict. Or it should, anyway.
Besides, fuck marrying Brene, because obviously if she hadn’t learned Microsoft Word from me, she wouldn’t be Brene Brown. I am directly responsible for all of her success and I won’t believe anything else. 😛
Again, I do not tend to write short essays, so you’ll get more than you bargained for. NOW HOW MUCH WOULD YOU PAY?
This writing prompt is coming at a very good time. Today is Lindsay’s birthday. Lindsay is my younger sister. She works as a lobbyist for a federally funded clinic that does trans medicine. She lives with her husband, Matt, and her dogs, Charlie and Teddy. I would post a picture of her, but I don’t want to bother her. If I posted a picture she had not pre-approved to make sure she was looking the most fly, she would lose her shit. Pretty sure that’s a direct quote.
My favorite moment of all time that nothing can ever beat is going to see Lindsay in the hospital when she was born. It’s the most important day of my life so far. My favorite words are “it’s a girl.” We’re everything the other is and isn’t. I can say things to her that I can’t say to anyone else, and not for lack of trying. It’s just that those who weren’t there don’t have the comprehension. I’m not talking about a particular situation, just the natural ebb and flow of growing up together. Like all siblings and couples, we have our own emotional shorthand.
Lindsay is emotional about music in the way I am excited by the math. I can’t do it, but I like to listen to the outcome. Lindsay is looking for catharsis. I’m looking to set my brain on fire and blow my hair back. There’s a reason my favorite choral composer is Bach. The man was brilliant. I believe he was the first person to do mashups, because in some of the pieces, they’re in eight part harmony, then divided into two groups of SATB. They basically have individual oratorios that fit together like a long zipper..
I listen to music while memorizing rhythms and drumming my fingers on the desk trying to figure out the key and how to play the parts on the trumpet, which I don’t play now, but I reflex is a reflex for all the practicing I did in junior and senior high. I pulse my toes so that people don’t think I’m a freak show for tapping my foot. I learned that trick from my dad, another trumpet player, because conductors don’t generally want to see your foot going up and down during a performance.
Contrast that to my sister.
When Lindsay listens to music, she is deaf to the rest of the world. You’ll startle her the same way a bookworm will jump out of their skin if you touch them while they can’t see you. She wants to find comfort, and finds comfort in tracks while I prefer entries. I’ve tried to write songs before , and I’m crap at it because I’m aggressively verbal. Trying to find words that fit in a particular rhythm and also makes sense would take me hours and hours, while an entry generally only lasts one at most. The majority of the time, I type so fast it’s 20 minutes, because I’m not preplanning anything except looking at the writing prompt and seeing if it’s any good. I can do all that silently, while Lindsay does not want to be interrupted and neither do I. It’s her introvert space, because she’s more extroverted than I am, and also has to be “on” a hell of a lot more than I do. Being “on” is a reflex for us, one that was hard to beat out of me, but I would say that I have done it. It’s not that I don’t want to be polite. It’s that I don’t want to have to think of the appropriate response. I want to respond. I know I’m often wrong, but at the same time, you’re seeing the real me and not one I designed to make you happy.
I think that Lindsay is also experiencing extraordinary change in her life and trying to decide what she wants it to look like. She wants to do great things, not just talk about them. The only pie in the sky idea we’ve ever had is that we want to be filthy stinking rich. Just multimillionaires. Then, we’re gonna fix all the things Jeff Bezos and Steve Jobs can’t- one because he’s dead, but never gave money to charity while he was alive…. Maybe a few times. I can’t remember. But Walter Isaacson made sure to indicate sharing was rare. The other is just egocentric. Homelessness? Not on my watch. Hunger? Here’s groceries for a week. Just everything we can possibly do to die broke.
It’s not money for us to spend, it’s money for us to give. She makes good money, I have a killer idea. It’s not outside the realm of possibilities, and not likely, either. But it was a fun conversation. It’s like that scene in The Three Amigos where they’re all lying in bed thinking about how to spend their profits from the movie and we’re both Ned Nederlander.
I don’t NOT want a big shiny car, either. 😛
I say I want a car, but I don’t. My favorite moment recently has been road tripping with Lindsay. She drove all eight hours, and I realized that though I love cars, I’d rather ride than drive. During our trip, I wrote and she listened to music, which is what I do when I travel in any way. I don’t need a desk. I’ve got a keyboard that’s pretty heavy that has a slot to hold my tablet. My lap is perfect.
I feel like it’s fancy enough that I can completely dissociate and not notice anything, because knowing my stop is rote. My attention is laser focused, and because of it, writing while riding fits my personality perfectly. It doesn’t invite people to talk to me, because I look like I’m doing VERY IMPORTANT WORK because I’m typin.’ I remind myself of Richard DeLongpre at work on the TV show “Allen Gregory.” “This is Richard DeLongpre. I’m on the phone.” This is said with no small amount of pride.
It is important work. My emotional vomit has impressed tens of you across the world.
My favorite activity is writing this blog. That’s because it’s just stream of consciousness, a literal translation of what’s in my head. The path winds everywhere because I’m interested in everything.
Today I’m sad that my favorite woodworker on YouTube lives in Portland and I didn’t know of him then. It “wood” have been cool to meet. That’s where my mind goes when I think “I’m interested in everything,” because of all the things I thought I’d be addicted to, watching people refinish or make new furniture isn’t even in the top 50. And yet, woodworking videos are my Great British Bake-off. “Did you really just do a box joint when miters are at least three times stronger?” “She’s gonna paint it…. gonna paint it….. Jesus God. I bet her next project’s a river table.” ” “You’re putting wood…. near water….. not even a coat of Total Boat. Playing fast and loose, bud.” I have nearly given up on TV. I haven’t seen anything recent. I’m just going to YouTube Youniversity. I’m telling you, though, it’s a rabbet hole. I find it so similar to cooking, because in woodworking, you also start with “the mis.” (mis en place)
Although if I have to hear another advertisement for Rubio Monaco I’m the one that’s going to lose my shit.
I’d like to make a friend who’s a woodworker, because I don’t think I’d be a very good carpenter with my vision issues I’m not the person that has the funds or the desire to get a CNC, where I could do all of it on a computer and then fit it together. However, I can stand there and hold stuff. I can do little things rather than big things to see if I’m even capable of graduating to big things. There’s lots of carpentry that can be done without measuring or math. Sanding, painting, routing finished pieces, etc. Plus, I’m knowledgeable about wood, epoxy, and metal.
Jesus, is there anything the two of us *don’t* have in common? Unclear.
The Bible is one of my favorite things, because it’s the lens through which I see everything else. Don’t freak- I’m not an Evangelical. All I mean is that I see Biblical people as human and not exalted (The Bible is an ancient blog at best. The authors of the Bible were the me of their generation. I just have less “begats.”). I see the God in all of us. Heaven and hell are created by the environments to which we belong, because God lives in the thread of energy that runs through the human race. If we count on our rewards being in heaven, we have no motivation to make heaven right now. Evangelicals are just a bunch of welfare moms in their own shitty vernacular. What makes their behavior extra hard to take is their sanctimonious bigotry masked as thoughts and prayers.
They’re the modern Pharisees and Sadduceees. You know, the religious zealots Jesus hated? The ones we’re encouraged to call out because Jesus’ law is not letters. It’s love.
My favorite thing this morning was waking up and going to drink some water and coffee. I was halfway through both before I thought about Supergrover. Progress. Generally she’s my first thought, and it’s nice to know that I’m not always going to be this sad. I’m not done with her. I’m done quietly begging for just a little bit more. If I had my way, we’d do lots of cool stuff together, but I am all about compromise. I don’t have things I need. I have things I wish for. The difference between “this is what I need” and “this is what I want, but don’t want to be selfish.” I only needed her to open up a little more, because she said she trusted me and clearly didn’t. Feeling like she was giving lip service to it destroyed me. If I’m honest, that’s the moment I was out. This is because I have an example that’s really cut and dry. I needed to go, and I didn’t want to leave.
I wrecked both of us in the process, but I do not take credit for a hundred percent of it. At ten years (really ten years now), that would be impossible. I did a lot wrong. So did she. I hurt her more, and that’s clear. Otherwise, she wouldn’t be so gunshy about talking to me about anything important to me about us. Yes, she’s married and has kids and friends and siblings and the whole nine. I do not expect her to change anything for me in terms of spending time together except for maybe a few longer e-mails, because I know she doesn’t have time for anything else. In retrospect, I should have come to the conclusion that nothing would ever change years ago. For all the joy I’ve had over the last few years, it didn’t last because I would write about anything and everything and for months I’d get three word responses. When I finally asked her to think about some things- take it away so she wasn’t responding off the cuff, she replied in about 20 minutes and said she really didn’t have time for anything but three word e-mails. She’s diplomatic, and I’m not stupid. It’s not rejection dysphoria. It’s life.
When I’d ask for the smallest things, if she couldn’t do them, she’d say something like “of course, not good enough for you.” It made me feel like a dictator I am most certainly not. I’m Type B, and and unimpressed with passive-aggressive martyrdom.
Not good enough? I think it’s crazy she believes anything isn’t good enough for me because I have told her how amazing she is, how much she’s loved, and how much her intellect feeds mine. What about my opinion says she’s not good enough for me? Or that any task she couldn’t fulfill was a disappointment? It’s not. It’s just life. She’s not responsible for me. I don’t need her to save me. She’s not the only friend I could ask for something in a pinch. She’s the one I want, not the one I need in a way that feels codependent or romantic. Just that while I’m single, she’s been my first thought. First priority. I didn’t want romance. I needed friendship on a fundamental level, and I thought we had enough history to really forgive each other and move on. I have been disabused of this notion, and it feels internally histrionic (not that intense, but I am struggling to word and the best I could do outside of that diagnosis is “extra intense.”
That’s because I didn’t give up until a few months ago, and I feel stupid. Instead of calling her out, I should have just ghosted her because calling her out has gone so spectacularly badly in the past. The imbalance was frightening because there was no direction, like being in space. I got tired of being the half of the relationship that was talking to a brick wall. You can’t wall off an INFJ. I mean, you can, but that’s not the friendship they want. I had the friendship I wanted, and I ruined it out of desperation. When she stopped confiding in me, I felt like her personal content creator….. a sideshow…. and most of all, unwanted. She reinforced that idea too much of the time, probably the same way she thought she wasn’t good enough for me and I still haven’t wrapped my brain around that thought process. We so obviously need to talk, I just don’t want to anymore. I was on hold for eight years…. and I think that’s because she thought I’d act like a man. That her worth was tied up in whether she’d sleep with me or not, because I didn’t ever think that and yet I can see how she’d get there. If she saw herself through my eyes, she’d faint. When I think of her, I blank out into complete bliss, and so does everyone who knows her. This is a stone cold fact.
I’m also not stamping my feet and asking why I’m not her favorite. What’s done is done. I am certain she thinks I’m being childish because I didn’t get what I wanted and threw a tantrum, because that’s what having feelings means to her, apparently. Feeling rejected is okay. It wasn’t her responsibility to feel guilty, just to hear me say I felt rejected and decide if she wanted to do anything about it or not. She didn’t. It’s okay, but I’m not wired for shallow. It hurt too much. Because there were no clear boundaries, all of the things we could have worked out are nebulous. It is not on her to decide when I get up from the table if love is no longer being served.
This is not to say she doesn’t love me. I don’t think that. I never could. But I think we both like our memories more, because I love the sweet things she did for me, but those also felt surface-level because I don’t trade gifts for emotions. So, I felt lonely even when we were talking. That I was sharing too much with someone who didn’t really want to open up to me, and how the amount of information I have on her pales in comparison to what she knows about me.
But now I want to talk about another favorite moment so we end on an “up.”
My beautiful girl dropped me a note out of the blue… “Argo is on HBO. Made me think of you.”
Bryn sometimes calls me on her way to work, which gives us about 15 minutes to talk (note to Bryn- let’s do this more). Today the notable news is that we’re both obsessed with Starbucks food. The coffee I can take or leave, but no one else has egg bites and Impossible sandwiches. Eggs and cheese are cheating on my vegan diet, but I only eat mostly plants, anyway. I’m living Michael Pollan’s advice…. “Eat food. Not a lot. Mostly plants.” I was also telling her that I liked Starbucks getting Trente cups because I’m a sucker for their iced tea. Just shut up and take my money. My favorite flavor is green because it’s a bit minty, but their black tea makes me smell numbers at that quantity. I get a breve, which is black iced tea, no extra water, Splenda, and soy or oat milk. It sounds weird, but you wouldn’t think so if it was a Thai restaurant, now would you? I think the’ve caught on to my idea, because now they’re selling iced London Fog lattes (Earl Grey and vanilla syrup).
We’re also working on bringing joy into our lives. That we are responsible for our own suffering because of our rejection sensitivity, but it’s something we can improve about ourselves by relating to each other. When I look at Bryn, my heart floods with gratitude. She’s the face I look to for love, because I can. She is also safe in loving me, because she’s getting me the me that has already made so many mistakes that I’m not so closed off to her because I see how that isolation affects her. I don’t want to make her think I’m doing anything that’s pushing her away, because when I feel sad, it’s not about her. I can’t ignore her needs, and sometimes they’re more important than mine….. like not encouraging her to believe that I’m being distant because of something she did. That’s more important to me than taking care of myself, because if I don’t make it more important than I will isolate based on what I’m going through when the situation isn’t even that bad….. I just think it is.
The story we’re telling ourselves is often skewed, because we’re so unkind to ourselves. We disconnect quickly out of embarrassment or self preservation, because it hurts to think about the ways we’re responsible for contributing to another’s behavior, or giving someone else negative consequences….. true whether you meant to or not.
We disconnect quickly because we’re so digitally oriented. Think back over the last 10 years. Are you quicker to anger because of the wall of separation between you and another person? That even though this person is close to you in real life, you have a desperate need to fight with people on the Internet, leading the charge into hell and forgetting that you are creating some awkward cocktail parties…….. because being right over whatever it is has become more important than empathy.
I don’t think this happened in any organized way. It is the nature of becoming digital. Too many relationships go up and down because of Facebook and Twitter, because everyone can see how you interact with everyone else. You’re not only taking into account how people treat you, but how you observe them treating everyone else. I don’t care if you have me a kidney 20 years ago. I will not let you get away with saying watching two men kiss gives you nausea….. and that’s why you’ll never go to a gay wedding.
Someone from my high school actually said that to me. He apologized and I’ve moved on permanently. I got an apology, but I want no future contact.
It’s the same kind of bullying I endured in high school, and it’s just noise. It’s chatter designed to make me feel awful about myself. Imagine being so certain that God is telling you that you need to tell queer people they’re going to hell. Imagine that message being preached to a church that has 40,000 members. Imagine that message going to all churches that have 40,000 members. Then imagine going to high school 15 minutes away from that church so its bitchy little mean girls all go there. I can’t think of anything more psychotic than getting into a performing arts high school and being homophobic….. especially if you were in theater. Even the straight kids are queer.
Probably because actors have to be two-spirited anyway. It’s the full range of human emotion.
I think it’s notable how fast I’m putting together what has happened to me over my life and how it is affecting me now. Being gay in Texas is a rough gig, and it always has been. I am not oppressed. WE are oppressed. We did not create the system that hates us, and we can’t really do anything about it due to the 80/20 rule…. That 20 percent of the population has to convince the 80% they’re right.
………over things that shouldn’t be legislated.
Thomas Jefferson is rolling over in his grave, because his ideas of conservativism was that the highest government in the land would be the equivalent of a school board. Just as little legislation as possible. He would be incensed that conservatives were trying to parent the whole nation. You don’t get individual freedoms if it’s perfectly acceptable to treat you as if your entire personality is a sin.
Sometimes I wish that the US had lost the Revolutionary war because the Commonwealth countries are so much more progressive than we are. I would deal with Boris Johnson a lot better than I’d deal with Ron DeSantis (I’m assuming he’ll be the nominee because more people are being convinced he’s an actual criminal every day. Hiding classified documents near water? Obviously he’s a genius….. we knew that when he looked directly at the sun during an eclipse. Don’t get me wrong. Hiding documents in your house is always wrong. But putting them near toilets and sinks is a special kind of stupid.
I also think it’s great he lost the E. Jean Carroll case, because that judicial standard says that it is more likely he’s guilty than not. This is different than a criminal trial, because “beyond a reasonable doubt” is a higher standard than a “preponderance of evidence.” The best example I can give of this is FBI and CIA. FBI collects data that has to stand up to scrutiny in a courtroom. CIA has no law enforcement capability. They collect data and return it to Congress and the president. Therefore, their information only has to be analyzed in percentage of sureties on outcomes. To me, that is the difference between judicial standards in American courts as well, because nothing in intelligence is beyond a reasonable doubt. Those issues change like a CNN stock ticker.
It’s too quiet in here. I put on the soundtrack to Argo The theme in the bass is about to drop, and that’s the best feeling I get with my headphones. The bass of the strings….. omg…. Fabulous. Although my favorite track is “Hotel Messages.” Hard to describe, just listen to it. I’ve been trying to learn the whispered rhythm for years.
Second favorite is The Mission, but Hotel Messages is all you get because I want you to actually watch the movie. 😛
I know the score intimately because I had to memorize it to get it out of the way while I’m writing. I don’t want to think about walking bass, suspended chords, etc. I had to do all that stuff independently, otherwise you’d just get an entry full of bad music theory with my third grade education on the subject. No open fourths. Rules are made to be broken. That’s kind of my limit.
I love movies about intelligence set in the Middle East, because that kind of music fills me up. The melodies are haunting because they’re not using a Western sense of chord structure. It’s also different hearing Middle Eastern music with a full orchestral arrangement vs. a couple of people.
Argo was all written by a composer named Alexandre Desplait, and he’s done a lot of movie scores…. But all middle eastern spy movies have that vibe. The music in Syriana, Beirut, Three Kings, etc. is just so complex. Speaking of which, there’s a great documentary on Amazon Prime called “The Sounds of Bond” or something like that, and it’s incredible. I like Bond music, too, but it is secondary to my love of strings moving to the notes you don’t expect.
The one thing you get with American music that’s not so prevalent in the East is a good Picardy Third. It’s the term for when a piece is written entirely in a minor key, but switches to major for the final chord of a line or piece. “Coventry Carol” is a great example of this.
Comparing Hotel Messages to Coventry Carol and the difference between how scales are used is apparent.
So, just another reason to love intelligence. The soundtrack to their lives is better than everyone else’s.
I don’t have a bigger job right now than to look at who I want to be with as much passion as I can muster. I need to release guilt and shame, and move into the next phase of my life. I’ve kept it at bay long enough. I have a doctorate in being single by now, and in some ways I’m just as dumb as ever, but the key is to always make new mistakes. I am tired of all the internal punishment I’ve given myself and am trying to work through all of it so that issues stay resolved and flashbacks can’t pop up, because they don’t mean anything anymore.
I want to be able to look at a memory without reliving it. I do this most often through this blog, because I only have to write it once…….. but I have somewhere to go to read and reread and reread until the emotions that come up for me feel very far away. It depends on the issue as to the timeframe, but desensitizing myself is much easier when I have a handle on what I actually thought instead of relying on my (very) fallible memory……. Or maybe it’s my fallible memory.
I CANNOT CHANGE THE STORY I’M TELLING MYSELF.
Do you see how it’s so much harder for me to get off track when my memory of what I was thinking during certain times in my life is infallible? Do you know how many times I’ve had to use the “Search” feature on this web site? It is so helpful that my memories do not bleed together and warp, because rereading my own work gives me a general idea of what happened when. Do you know how embarrassing it is to have to basically Google yourself because you’re so ADHD you couldn’t remember a date if your life depended on it? What saves embarrassment is being able to recall things accurately years after the fact, because I’m not speaking off the cuff, and not speaking for anyone else…… keeping in mind that this is only a record of what I was thinking, and I cannot be a fully reliable narrator because I’m only going on the information I have. Because I know I’ll never reach perfection, I strive for excellence. I will never please everyone. Fact.
Something has changed in me this year, and now I can put my finger on it. I feel more comfortable in my skin because I’m older. I do have wisdom and experience to pass on to other people who are probably smarter than me and already have this stuff figured out, anyway…… this blog is for the ones who don’t.
This blog is for readers who know they’re train wrecks and are actively working on the problem. I don’t know any perfect people, so I know I’ll never get there…. But what I can control is the amount of time I’m willing to dive into the wreck. What I have found that works the most effectively is to be present for every awful feeling you have. If you work it out in your mind, the next time those emotions come up for you, they won’t hurt as much. Lean into emotional pain like a deep tissue sports massage where you get beat up for an hour and a half and somehow feel amazing.
I’m passionate about getting enough sleep more than anything else. When I don’t give my body time to repair itself, I am worse off both physically and mentally. You won’t notice I have CP (probably) until I get very tired. The ability to hold it together is at zero. I fall more often over things I don’t see. I miss steps both up and down. It all hurts when I fall, but I’m used to it. I don’t really have another choice, so I need to come to peace. Being angry at myself is the root cause of all the negative I’ve put out into the world, another universal truth. I am cleaning out my closet. Let’s get down to business and let the real Leslie Lanagan (please) stand up.
It feels different to stand up than it did when I was 20, because if the other person was slightly displeased, I’d go right back to apologizing for my existence. Now, I realize just how accepting my friends are (or not). This is not a slam, because I’m generalizing over hundreds of people including Facebook friends. It’s a spectrum, right, because no one has the same opinion of you on every issue. I have my inner circle, and they’re signal vs. noise, a line I picked up from a web zine in the early 2000s, but I repeat myself.
It’s not that I don’t value a lot of people’s opinions. I most certainly do. I just don’t have room to take on the emotions of more than a few people at once. I have to be absolutely open and vulnerable with them, which takes a lot of stamina, but they’re doing the same thing for me. We are each refilling each other’s social battery because we’re lightening each other’s emotional load. It’s also making sure that the give and take is roughly equal, because I know I’m a handful at times. If you’re the one that’s on my six, I sure as shit am on yours. I have an immense capacity for gratitude because it fills all my empty places. I smile more.
I am passionate about making myself smile more. Pick any one of my entries in the last few months and you’ll see quickly that I’m going through it….. and keeping on keeping on. My chin is up. I just need to keep it that way. The God part of me, my third person omnipotent point of view, hates watching me go through all this- and accepts that it is necessary. That POV is also responsible for a lot of what I’m experiencing now, because I’m only omnipotent regarding knowing what I’m going to do. There are too many permutations to even guess what’s going on in other people’s heads. Heuristics come in after you’ve told me what you’re experiencing because I’m relating your story to every one I’ve ever heard on the topic; I’m hoping that the next thing that comes out of my mouth is relevant to your situation and/or emotional state. #fingerscrossed
I get so embarrassed when what I’ve said is wrong that I withdraw, but I don’t need people to tiptoe around me. I need them to give me time to digest. Your problem with me is what it is; I can’t do anything to change what’s happened, but I can change the future by being willing to talk about all the things that are bothering me…. If I know you have my back. My work to do is turning down rejection sensitivity dysphoria so that I don’t make every mistake I’ve ever made a noose around my neck.
Turning down RSD would turn down a whole bunch of things…. Mostly social anxiety, but I’m sure it would be more than that. I could stop getting into knock-down drag-outs even when no one is in the room. When I fight myself, it is gloves off. I’m tired of knocking myself out because I can’t get up as fast as I used to.
I don’t have any fight left in me, and now I’m trying to find out why I ever got fight in me in the first place. I am aware that women taking back their power always looks like rage, but at the same time, I’ve said things that took all the velvet off the hammer because I don’t react like a Southerner anymore. DC is the South (technically), but Oregon sure isn’t. It’s not that I’m equating Portlanders to being mean, just that I’ve lost the need to sugar coat any and every sentence because I’ve had too many instances of it creating chasms. I’m overly sensitive to miscommunication, so I spell out everything.
I am now trying to remember to edit. Not every e-mail has to be a beautifully crafted essay because not everyone loves to read.
I am passionate about reading, and right now I’ve got a banger of a book. It’s called “The Secrets We Kept: A Novel” by Lara Prescott. It’s about female spies in the 40s and 50s, a group of women there at the founding of CIA hired for the typing pool. They get noticed for their operational potential, and here’s the line that got me…. I love this so hard…… “We bonded over the belief that a life of adventure wasn’t reserved for men, and we set out to claim our piece of it.” They’re the original “Swallows,” which is code for women who use their sexuality to get information out of people. I don’t know of any programs in the US that seriously created these women…. It’s a novel. Says it right there on the cover. Sleeping with an asset is a fireable offense now (or maybe it always has been…. Not fact checking til the book is done), and the US has never been known for it. Russia invented Swallows.
Women, in my experience from talking to a wealth of people in the industry, tend to make better spies. Misogyny works for them in terms of being The Little Gray Man. They tend to stay more calm in stressful situations, because that morning her toilet probably broke, the dog threw up, and her finger was broken so she had to change the baby with one hand while maintaining the facade that she is completely fine. Tell me that woman can’t remain calm when the goods are military equipment and classified documents. She’s probably calm because this meeting sucks and she can sleep standing up. This book takes place after CIA was founded, so past Julia Child’s time at OSS. Yet, she’s still the woman I picture in all these stories…. Unless it’s by Jonna Mendez, because then I don’t have to put my own pictures on fictional characters. I’ve met her a couple of times at the museum, which is kind of cool because now the movies that play in my head are accurate.
I am passionate about Julia Child. I do not think that you can technically call her a spy, because I don’t know if every employee is called a case officer or whether different departments have different titles. In the movie Julie & Julia, Paul and Julia tell a table full of friends that they aren’t spies, they’re file clerks. This is untrue. I don’t know if Paul ever worked for OSS or not, because he said he worked for State in the movie. You don’t really have to be one or the other. They work on things together all the time, so it’s not really important to give everyone at CIA that works with state a diplomatic cover, because the way I understand it is that the allotment of diplomatic jobs we’re funding is set. If CIA takes three of them as covers, then that’s three less jobs that State can fill. So, even if Paul says he worked for State, that doesn’t mean he was never an operations officer. Julia worked for the Office of Technical Services, which is why I would not classify her as a file clerk or an operations officer (perhaps the same title, not the same function. Q does not leave the building.). The biggest thing she’s known for is creating a powerful shark repellant recipe………………. #foreshadowing
I would watch the hell out of the miniseries I’m seeing in my mind right now because of course now Julia Child and James Bond are the same person. She didn’t just create shark repellant, she rappelled down the side of a building before the Germans made her.
It’s so crazy it just might work, which is apparently carved in the topiary hedges at Langley. I hope their pants have reinforced seats due to all the turbulence.
I am passionate about understanding Trump’s documents case, because so far he’s making Snowden look like a rookie through the cunning use of stupidity. We won’t know for a hundred years what this cult has done, because all Russia and China had to do was send people Trump wanted to impress to his house. They don’t have to carry a single thing. Even if every document is accounted for, cameras that fit in pens are unquantifiable. When Aldrich Ames betrayed us to the Russians, we lost ten assets in one summer. I guarantee that Trump never had any idea that sharing information could cause all that, because he showed people those documents to seem impressive to them. He couldn’t care less if Russia or China saw military plans or lists of our assets in country, because what matters is Russia and China thinking he’s cool.
That’s what happens when you need desperately to fill up all the space in a room, constantly interrupting to make sure that the conversation is one-sided and all about his favorite topic…. Him.
I am passionate about using this platform to have a voice in politics and international affairs. I don’t claim to be an expert- far from it. But what I learn I pass on, and I’ve always been a news junkie. I don’t go a day without listening to Chris Hayes or Rachel Maddow. So, this blog is not educational, but conversational. I am politically literate, but hold no authority. It’s the process that excites me, or it will if we ever get back to one set of facts. That’s because government is about compromise, and that isn’t even possible if the parties aren’t playing off the same deck. If people are determined to misunderstand you, they will. For instance, constituents vilifying the person designated to help them (Anthony Fauci, Mike Pence). The amount of Americans that believe Trump can do his job perfectly fine from prison if he’s elected boggles the mind.
From a historical perspective, it is not as baffling to me that Trump beat Clinton as it is Trump being the Republican nominee at all. How did he beat out Jeb Bush and John Kasich? Why is the loudest political voice in the country in need of a president to the right of Caligula? This time, it is the people fiddling while Rome burns and not Nero.
Apathy gets to me. Why didn’t more people care when Trump called John McCain a loser for becoming a Vietnamese POW? Why did so many people grit their teeth and vote for Trump anyway? Calling McCain a loser isn’t even in the Letterman Top Ten List of reasons why Trump was a horrible candidate, and people are still swallowing his bullshit filled capsules.
I think that too many people are embarrassed to admit they ate two slices of chocolate pie……………….
Meanwhile, it’s only our national security at stake. What could possibly go wrong?
I am just so passionate about learning how the world works. I am not particularly patriotic, though, because I see the US as part of a larger system. The same chessboard analogy used with states can be used with countries. Problems come in when you focus too heavily on one quadrant. By the time you’ve noticed there’s a problem, the game is over. Not going to lie, I still lose my shit at seeing the military in uniform and all the things that patriotic people do. It’s just that I’m not blind to colonialism or imperialism. We’ve participated in some very shady shit. So have other countries. Therefore, I do not hold the US in a godlike position, as if we should be the arbiter of all things right and good. I think it’s good for the US to finally cut the crap on believing in all that “best country in the world” bullshit. Some things, the US does really well. Some things are a shitshow, and that’s the bargain you make in any country. Some are absolutely more toxic than others, but people are adaptable and find pleasures no matter where they live. You have to focus on the positive if you can’t afford to run.
I am so passionate about bringing light into those dark recesses. I’d love to meet women and girls in the Middle East (we ride at dawn). I couldn’t do anything to help them save holding space, being in a room for the sole purpose of letting everyone else vent. Hopefully, they’d walk away feeling lighter and I’d walk away feeling less dumb.
I am passionate about not being dumb. I do not care if other people think I faked high school graduation, I want to feel within myself that I am intelligent, so I read a lot. It’s amazing how good reading novels is for learning about the world. Something you need to know this year will invariably be information you retained from a book you read in 1998, because the story might be made up, but the writing isn’t. For instance, I learned that Charlotte had a very small airport so I didn’t have to worry about a quick connection time because I read a YA novel that mentioned it about six years ago. Books contain random facts, whether the story is fictional or not.
I am passionate about stories, my own and everyone else’s. In the end, make it a good one. As I approach the second half of my life, I’d like to think I’ve got a better handle on craft, but diplomacy leaves a lot to be desired. The juxtaposition of how we own our stories is complicated and necessary. Relationships don’t survive if one partner is trying to change the other’s story, because no one can make another person do anything. By this I mean that too many people think partners are “fixer-uppers,” and people don’t change. They just don’t. People who want to change others hang in until their partners resent the hell out of them because they’re being controlled. If the controlling partner is willing to work on it, genuinely, then try. A narcissist will never want to work on it because they’ve never done anything wrong. Once a narcissist stops getting that dopamine hit from adoration, they wall off and escape to find someone new who doesn’t know what’s about to hit them.
I think that we call more people narcissists than actually exist. This is because sometimes the relationship can be fixed. Not all bad behavior means someone is a narcissist. Sometimes, they’re just lost in their own heads and not very other aware. The mark of a narcissist is the complete lack of empathy, and the lack was there before you met them. It’s generally caused by trauma, because part of a narcissist’s schtick is being able to control everything in their environment, so they create their own reality. Everyone knows that person around which people orbit. Lots of people have that ability, and it is not inherently negative. It depends on motivation. Narcissists have a desperate need to be liked, no internal validation at all, and they cover up all those significant fears with bravado. Anything they view as negative will be very loud, and that’s par for the course for everyone….. but narcissists will evade culpability by any means necessary. The reason human relationships are so difficult is that narcissists are hard to catch until their behavior is so outrageous that you feel like you’ve been yanked backward and dropped.
I have known so many of them that it’s hard to count, and here’s how I know I dodged that bullet. I want to hear people’s thoughts and feelings. I’m strong and definite in mine, but that doesn’t mean I’m emotionally unavailable. If I come across that way, it probably has nothing to do with the conversation, or I’m too angry in the moment. I am not saying that being too angry in the moment is something for which other people should make allowances. I am saying that is my work to do. Authentic rage is a symptom of PTSD, because it generally accompanies a panic attack. I am not making excuses here, only trying to provide context. I am not escaping accountability. I just think it helps to know why people do things, which is another trait most neurodivergent people share. We’re not trying to be threatening, we’re trying to understand.
Add that to the INFJ motto……. “I’m not insulting you… I’m describing you.” It seems so mean and yet I think of it all the time as profound wisdom. People do not like explaining their behavior….. which is of course the only thing the INFJ wants to help you understand. So, legit nine percent of the world is irritating as shit to everyone else. 91% of the world has trouble speaking in our love language. It’s gotten easier for me to think of love in Greek, because I like granularity and English just doesn’t have it. I now feel solid in philia and agape, but I’m preparing for romance in whatever package it arrives….. I’m just not there yet. I say I am, but I haven’t done anything about it. I don’t want to start another relationship without knowing whether Daniel is in or out, and I made the agreement with myself to give him time to chill, which is most probably just an excuse. Stay tuned.
I’m not averse to dating, clearly, but anything beyond that scares the hell out of me. Serious relationships haven’t gone the distance for me and I feel like I should figure out why before launching into something else and realizing that eight years has probably been enough soul searching. I don’t have to be perfectly perfect in every way before I consider opening my heart. It’s amazing how long I didn’t come to that realization. In retrospect, I couldn’t handle a relationship with a woman outside my beautiful girl because I felt like those things had to come in succession. Once I’d hurt one woman, I knew I was capable of hurting them all. I needed to know if I was really capable of resolving a conflict that large, because I didn’t think I deserved good things to come into my life after it. People have accused me of not being able to let go of the past, and this is untrue. I haven’t been pining away for a straight girl and lying to cover my ass. It’s a familiar story, but it’s not mine.
It just took a really long time to learn that there were limits to us being okay, and I have no ill will. Just sadness it didn’t work out. My perfect picture of us was blow your hair back conversations, nothing about the idea of being together a romantic fire, but an intellectual one. A brain dump on both sides because our life experiences are so different.
There was a beauty in it that is beyond words. We both think big thoughts, but never the same subject at the same time. If I had to sum up our relationship in one word, it would be “asynchronous.” Our upload and download speeds varied wildly.
I feel at peace being able to look at that relationship with a third person perspective and wonder what I would do if this was a story being told to me rather than one I wrote. It helps tremendously in the way I allow myself to talk to me.
It helps me to see whether it’s true that every accusation is a confession, and I believe it is. That’s because when I analyzed where my energy was going, I saw all the accusations between us and in each case, there was an instance where we could both say the same about each other, it’s just that the reasoning behind the behaviors would be different. If you’re in a relationship with someone and you’re both constantly doing the same shit to each other, you’re going to think what they’re doing can only explained by what you felt when you went through something similar, which may or may not match up with mine and defensiveness shuts down communication. You’re not really looking at a situation through the other’s perspective and trying to deal with your anger simultaneously. When you’re fighting, adrenaline makes you react out of fear instead of respond with grace. Being human sucks, because our very nature means we can’t avoid anger at each other all the time. It’s a hope for the best situation, but I always hope for that.
Hoping for the best in life is the fuel that feeds the other fires I feel in terms of gathering knowledge. Knowledge and I are in a passionate love affair, my one and only.
I have realized a problem with my introversion that needs addressing right away. I cannot tell you the number of times my friends have read something I’ve written and instead of asking me about it, talk amongst themselves and try to decipher what they’re reading on their own. People freak out about my life choices as if I’m just crazy, and not capable of thinking for myself. Then, we meet up in person, and they say “now that I’ve talked to you in person, I feel so much better. You seem more solid than you’ve ever been.” The time they’re wasting talking to themselves is hard on me, because I know that any confusion could be cleared up nearly immediately.
You cannot read me and think you know me. That’s because my mind is a computer working on several cores at once, and I can only write one line at a time. Tapes of my issues run in my head all day long, so I have an iron grip on them in terms of understanding where I am and where I’m going. I don’t think about anything else, because it informs future decisions over which I have control; my side of the equation needs to get shit done because it’s not on anyone else to create the life I want.
I feel like people talking about me is the exact same thing I do, just verbal processing instead of written. Plus, I have heard that I am interesting, so that probably plays into it, too. Regardless of what you think, you will never know me from this web site, and few of you will ever meet the real me, and not because I wouldn’t want to show it. It’s my own limitations on that one, both the fact that I feel fear and some of the things I deal with did not originate with me, thus the story isn’t all mine to tell. It’s not about being able to blame someone else. No, it’s much deeper than that. I need to understand myself to understand you, and vice versa.
The trick in relationships is to talk about behavior in such a way that the other person can hear “this has been happening more than once, and it’s having bad effects, so we need to change it.” So many people don’t like having things “thrown back in their faces,” and I agree with that. I need to be careful with my words to get my point across, because I do not mean in any way that anyone is a bad person. I mean there’s a difference between a pattern and a one-off. I’m going to notice if we have the same fight six times and wonder why you didn’t.
That’s why I’m so crazy about Daniel, even still. Our minds both work like that, the difference is that my infinite rumination centers around feelings and his centers on thoughts. We are the yin and yang of the Idealist world. Neither of us would ever get away with anything, which is why we’re not together now. We’re both too hot to handle, but I didn’t make a mistake in still loving him a hundred and crazy percent….. both in that he’s been my friend since we were seven and that he called off our engagement and I’m still sort of dazed.
It was the first time in my life where I could look at myself and say “it’s going to be okay.” I couldn’t think of anything better than me being bipolar and having an alcoholic spouse because those two things present so similarly that it’s a chicken and egg situation a lot of the time. Many, many alcoholics get bipolar when they stop drinking due to the loss of all that dopamine…….. the flip side being that bipolar people drink to self medicate, so who knows what came first?
Having that person we could each confide in was everything, because I am so emotionally driven… to the point where I wondered if Daniel would hear that my grandfather had died and just show up. He didn’t, but that’s not the point. The point is that it’s interesting I’ve never pined for a man like this as an adult. I could see marrying Ryan when I was a kid, but our relationship was over before it began in that respect. I don’t think we should have been the middle school sweethearts that stayed together through everything, but I do think that if we had been married as adults we would have had a blast. God, the Subaru jokes *alone.* (He would absolutely tease me about being queer and not owning one, but the ‘Baru jokes go back to 1992).
I feel all these new and emerging emotions because sex is sex and identity is identity and never the twain shall meet. I never thought I had much o a straight side, and I still don’t. But there’s a difference between finding the person that you want and finding the person that you need.
In that case, gender just ceased to matter.
But going through all of that made other people think I was off my rocker, then they’d talk to me in person and see that I was actually pretty level-headed about all of it. I knew what the limitations of people so alike and different would be, and how rehab could make everything go to hell in a handbasket, and it was still worth it.
However, I’m not exactly waiting, either. I’m still angry about his Fox News approach to critical race theory which feeds into queer theory which feeds into trans theory. That’s a lot of bullshit to wrestle to the ground, and I know that because I’ve done it. You have to let go of things you’ve known to be true your whole life, and even if you know it, it’s hard to do it…. to reach out for more knowledge because it’s “shameful” to admit you don’t know something. It’s hard to put that knowledge into practice. I still mess up people’s pronouns all the time, but have learned to just accept it and move on because I get misgendered all the time. I don’t have the energy to hear your extended apology that goes through your history with trans people.
So, I am “running the numbers” on whether it’s worth it to try and fail, because I don’t know the percentage on success in terms of Daniel, Cora, and me trying to gel as a family while Daniel is constantly stepping on trauma buttons installed by someone else. He’s not responsible, but when you know better, you do better. Or that’s how it’s supposed to work. He thinks of it as “the girls are ganging up on me.” I’m sure he’s still angry that I am part of the woke mob trying to reprogram him, a minority he resents. I’m not sure that’s teachable in a timeline that Cora and I could be comfortable.
I have said that I will not seriously start looking again for a partner until January, because I’m a firm believer that all the brain fog from the alcohol has to clear before Daniel is capable of major decisions. I’m not going to contact him, I’m just going to wait it out. If I don’t hear from him, I have my answer. I have no need to take on a project like educating someone who knows nothing about being queer or trans if they’re going to give me ad hominem attacks every step of the way.
I don’t ever want to be in a relationship with a white person ever again that can’t say they’re a racist. Full stop. All white people are racist. It’s baked into the fabric of our country and to ignore it is the height of privilege. I’ve never had privilege except with skin color, because being queer, female, disabled, genderqueer and bipolar has not won me any brownie points. So, perhaps I see it more clearly because that’s the only time it ever happens. You can look no further than a traffic stop or jumping the turnstile at the Metro (never done it, just saying).
But the point is that I think so deeply about anything and everything that rarely is a blog entry enough to contain what’s going on with me. Something that doesn’t add up on paper makes sense in a relaxed environment.
Something I said to my sister has stuck with me because it’s so incredibly true. I said that my depression is so profound that sometimes when people see a large amount of change from me all at once, I’ve been mulling things over for months and praying for hypomania just so I have the energy to execute an operation. People underestimate me and my decision making capabilities because they’re far away. It’s one thing to hear something over the telephone and another to be apprised of the situation at every waking moment. You haven’t seen my process to appreciate what I’m thinking and the process by which I do it. It’s foreign to most people because they’re not my personality type or my combination of meds. 😛
The title comes from something a friend said…. I was complaining about trying to find the right medication because I think I’m getting tachyphylaxis (the idea that a medication gets less effective over time, and I’ve been on Lamictal since college). She said, “however you are now, you’re good.” I’m not, but I liked the vote of confidence. And again, what I am learning is that everyone says that when they sit down with me in person.
It gets a lot easier for me when other people reach out, because I’m so anxious about feeling wanted. I’ve had enough of not knowing. However, I can control that feeling of being unwanted to a degree, because it’s a huge symptom of depression. There are so few things I can point to and say “that’s a symptom.” Most of the time, I just feel bad in a nebulous, under the weather kind of way…. but I’m not Eeyore, either. I’m very funny in person, but choose to keep to myself so that I can be a jackass on my own time.
In dreaming about my future, I want to be able to say to my future partner (whether it’s The War Daniel or anyone else), it’s that “however I am now, I’m good.”
If you know me at all right now, you know Kristen Chenoweth is playing in my head. I remember going to see Wicked in Portland, and I think Bryn was with me. I’ll have to check with her when we talk later, because it’s early AM in Oregon. If she saw the notification, she’d get back to me and go back to sleep. I know enough to know that she’s barely moving right now, so maybe text her later. 😛
I’m writing about “Popular” because I noticed that “No Fish on Mondays” is rocketing up to the top of my leaderboard in terms of hits, an ego boost because I never thought I’d write anything more popular than my marriage article, and now there are two entries beating it…. although I would like to think that “The Art of War” is educational. Don’t say anything even remotely threatening in a Facebook post, because they will can your ass even if you make “kicking your ass” part of a statement on a COOKING CONTEST.
I’m reflecting on all that has happened between the marriage article and “No Fish on Mondays.” Holy Jebus. It’s a lot. I’m divorced from Dana, which was a mistake, but one that should have been taken care of years before it happened. There is nothing I could have done short term that would have turned us back around, because we weren’t smart enough to go to a therapist, jointly or severally. Nothing that happened from summer of 2013 on was a symptom, not a disease. We never talked about the underlying issues between us, so we floundered. It happens all the time.
I learned during that time what it was like to make a mistake that couldn’t be forgiven, and so did Dana. I do not mean this to say that I have not forgiven her on my own. We’re all good. She could call me at any time for anything. But what I won’t do is go out of my way to see her again. I don’t want to intrude on her life, either, and I’m doing it enough already. My only saving grace is that I was like this when she met me. I tanked my last blog because her sister chewed me up and spit me out, then it took four years to start this one because I had such a thin skin.
It took four years to rebuild any confidence at all. Four years of sitting silently where I could have been building something. Four years of possible recognition from better writers than me. Four years of not having a safe space to go where I could say anything I wanted, because upsetting the apple cart was not my bag. It was only then that I realized that very few people saw this space as valuable for me. That yes, I’m angry and irate, but also loving and giving to the point where I don’t take care of myself. Both of those things are true of everyone on earth. They just don’t let anyone know their process for going from angry to loving.
Because of course, part of anger is shock. We’re frightened of the things we don’t know, taking off into the unknown. So part of coming down from anger is taking a step back and looking at the circumstances and identifying where that anger is coming from. What’s the root issue, because it’s popping up everywhere? You need time to mellow out, and I’m the first one to tell you that because when I don’t chill, I make mistakes. I work too fast without thinking long term.
But in terms of what happened between the marriage article and now, I don’t think I have in all cases. I think that ending this Internet relationship will be better over time, because I was giving it so much time and energy that I wasn’t paying attention to anything else. That’s why I was so angry that she read a volume on what I was going through without acknowledging any of it except to say that it was 100% clear I wasn’t getting what I needed and to go find other friends.
Meanwhile, I wasn’t thinking of anyone else’s problems except for hers. She needed silence, and I was happy to give it. Fuck all the noise, I’m looking for a signal. Why I lived in all that noise for so incredibly long is beyond me except that I thought I could make it right. I didn’t. I was an asshole because she treated me that way. I’m sure she could say the same thing about me. Neither one of us turned off our defenses and kept them firmly in place, and trying to cross that divide was unwelcome. So, I just won’t. I would have been a nicer person had I just let it lie instead of being irate, and yet I couldn’t shake my anger. Part of my anger was “I really am worth it.” I know she sure was, and I was trying to prove it to her. But you can’t help a little old lady across the street if she doesn’t want to go, and I stopped myself from seeing it because I wanted to.
I’m not going to stop her from showing up, or asking for things. But I am going to stop pointing my attention in her direction as fast as I humanly can, and “humanly” is very important here. Ten years is not nothing. I am a completely different person than I was when we met…. in the extreme, actually, because back then I was married and my mother was alive.
My mother’s death put everything on hold for me except this one relationship, because I couldn’t emote in front of people. I could only emote in front of her. She was with me from airport to airport. She listened to my cries of “Jesus Christ, just come pick me up.” Load up the kids, get it moving. 😛
She listened to my cries of “I’m empty, and I don’t know how to fill it.” I asked her if I could ask her mom stuff (she’s a few years older than me, and she’s a mom, so it made sense then). Her reply is one of the funniest things I’ve read in my life. She said something about sure, as long as I didn’t expect what she said to be what my mother would have said. The incongruous image of them having anything in common made me literally roll on the floor. I said, “I think of you and my mother being alike the same way Tom Brady and I are both 43.” Exactly none of that takes away grief now, but it stands alone as a truly bright spot.
She did everything right, I swear. I’m just not strong enough. I’m not strong enough to look at the difference between 2013 and now and not feel an inch tall. I’m not strong enough to carry all of it. I need her. She needs me. She doesn’t think so, and I can’t prove it. So here we are…. adrift until something happens in her brain that she remembers who I am. I just don’t think she will, because she would be totally happy with my own breadcrumbs for all eternity while I sat in a loss I couldn’t fix and watched her be totally fine. She could just say go and find other friends. Not sure I’ve ever felt so much humiliation.
I am sure I am not very popular with her at the moment, but I cannot care about that. I will never get over it if I don’t write about it, and I want to get over it more than anything else in the world. You’d just have to know what my insides have looked like over the last 10 years to see why I needed to step back to stop torturing myself…. to feel this desperation that she’s the only one who would understand, but only if I was talking about someone else. That my words would roll off perfectly if they weren’t about her, and she could see anger for what it was- fear.
But it would turn into “ragging her about bad feelings from the past” when I had just written something I thought was really sweet, or I meant it to be. Those kinds of misunderstandings happened all the time, and it was tiresome. I never thought that the real issue was the one at hand, because surely I wasn’t always wrong, judgmental, and a dickhead. No one is always anything. And then to sit in all that anger and to say there’s nothing wrong while you’re seething? So that when I even make dumb jokes I’m wondering if you’re going to go beastmode and destroy me? Wanting me to write accurately about their vibe and won’t meet up in person? I’m an intelligent, impressive, asshole. One of those things is not like the other.
I felt so afraid, and didn’t want to live like that anymore. Nothing I said was getting through, I just kept hanging onto a void. Holding something that slipped through my fingers. And yes, of course I’m still furious in some ways, but not at her. At me. I’m the one who decided to make myself unopular in the first place.
This is from last week. I’ll come up with something newer, I just haven’t yet. It’s unfinished, so I’m just going to leave it and move onto something else.
I’m at my gate at Hobby, waiting for my flight home. Despite the circumstances (my grandfather’s funeral), it has been a good trip. I was going to send out a touching message in case something happened to me on the flight (flying is safe, but accidents happen), and then I realized that I probably wouldn’t be posting this to the Internet until I got home…. unless it takes more time than usual for my flight to load. I just don’t care what my boarding number is on Southwest. I just put it there because if I was going anywhere, that’s the only thing Dana would want to know. It still makes me laugh to remember her being borderline diarrhea every time we traveled, finger on the mouse and victorious when making it into A group. Meanwhile, I know I’m going to be sitting next to a stranger and how strange they are is likely less strange than me.
I don’t need to sit down during the parade of weirdos at the cattle call.
The only thing that I thought might trip me up didn’t, because both of my flights have been middle of the day. I forgot to put my Known Traveler Number on my boarding pass, so I had to spend longer at security. However, both airports have been great. The only thing I can’t find is a decent cup of coffee, so I got a sugar free Red Bull instead (there was no other option. Not my favorite, but it’ll do.). I didn’t get to have my favorite this trip, Diet Big Red, but that’s only because I went to several convenience stores and none of them had it. I’ll just have to wait for another trip to Texas that’s long enough to go to HEB for Diet Wild Red, which is actually better. Everything from HEB is better. Give up.
I also didn’t get a Dr Pepper shake from Whataburger or Dr Pepper Float Blue Bell, but that’s okay. I had as much sugar as I could hold, anyway, including a “share size” bag of pretzel M&Ms, and the cutest child known to God and man wouldn’t be able to beg one off me. With snacks, the general rule is “I don’t know how many pieces are in a serving, but I’m going to go with “way less than I just ate.”
Speaking of eating, someone made a brisket for the potluck before the funeral, and it’s the one thing I would have specifically gone out for if they hadn’t. Oh, and there’s several good BBQ places in Houston. I’m not a purist and have to go to the same place until I’m dead, forever and ever, amen. I didn’t have time to go to Chuy’s, either, which is why I’m so glad they’ve built one in Rockville, MD, relatively close to my house. There are more in northern Virginia, but that’s kind of a hike for an on the fly trip.
I can’t decide if I want to go home right away, because once I get there, I will completely fall apart. Not in terms of grief, in terms of exhaustion. It was a haul having two four hour trips in two days, but I wouldn’t have missed seeing everyone for anything in the world. The only reason I didn’t go to my grandmother’s funeral six years ago is that we in DC were snowed in. So, I got to see Jason and hear him sing, ooh and ahh over weight loss and new boyfriends and how cute everyone looks in the dresses they got at Ross for $3.99! CAN YOU BELIEVE IT? Touch me. 😛
How do all women get cute dresses at Ross on clearance for pennies? It cracks me up, like Carol Burnett in “Went with the Wind….” “Oh, I just saw it in the window.” What I know is that if I wore cute dresses, I’d probably shop at Ross, too.
(They always have cute boys’ clothes, and that’s 90% of what I wear. It’s because with button downs, the shoulders fit perfectly. Nothing irritates me more than women’s clothes that try to imitate men’s clothes, because it’s just the worst of both.)
Anyway, I only have a tiny pilot case and a backpack, plus all the museums will hold luggage for you. I will just see how it goes.
I am not sure there is a thing as overcoming a fear. It doesn’t get better, you just learn. For instance, asking someone out feels like having your guts rearranged, but if you’re lucky, you’ll be laughing and smiling a minute later. If not, oh well. In the past, I would have taken that rejection and sat on it forever. Now, I don’t care if people like me or not, so it doesn’t wig me out to say to someone that I’m interested. If they’re not, I’m strong enough to handle rejection. I have been alive long enough to know that not everyone vibes with me….. although people seem to be drawn to me initially. They don’t find out what a train wreck I can be until later. It’s all good, because I won’t find out they’re a train wreck immediately, either.
We all have too much fear of rejection most of the time, because what goes on in our heads is much worse than what happens in the real world…. with one exception, the only thing that scares me.
I need my e-mail and documents to be secure, because ideas are my currency. That means one of the reasons I don’t date much is that partners like going through your phone, as if it’s some medal to be earned. Slow it down, Buster Brown.
The thing around privacy is mystifying. When you are a couple, are you supposed to let people think that you’re talking to both of us all the time? That nothing you say to me stays with me? What if my friends stop confiding in me because they don’t like you? They don’t have to. I have to like you.
I also don’t want you to read anything they asked me to keep tight and you thought it was your right to snoop. I promise you that if I’m attracted to someone, you’ll know it. Probably because I’ll tell you that so you won’t miss who I’m seeing. Jealousy is not my bag, and pushes me away faster than anything else. I’m not going to bat an eye if you see heaven on earth, either.
I have a fear of dating anyone jealous, because that’s the shortest path to getting my phone held up in front of my face while I’m asleep. I should wipe it, but it’s so much hassle. That being said, only my iPad, iPhone, and Apple Watch have biometrics. I should just move all my sensitive stuff to my Android products and eschew obfuscation.
See? I’ve overcome a fear right here. It makes me feel safe that I really can lock everything down. Anyone I date from here on out is not part of The Five (the people that know what my alternate history is about…. possibly six if Dana has been paying attention, but I don’t know and can’t.). I don’t want anyone to read e-mail in my history, because it reflects a lot that’s just not me anymore….. and it does no good to dwell on who I wanted to be, because there’s just so many variables. I am doing my best to show up without fail so that I see these changes happening. That I am creating the life I want, rather than being satisfied with the life I have. I don’t want to go anywhere. I want people to come to me. This is perfect in that my sister does not live in DC, but works here. Lots of people work in DC, so I have more than just her that drop in on a whim.
It was a huge fear to move back to DC, because I thought, “what if I don’t fit in anymore?” It couldn’t have been further from the truth. I integrated into my house and community easily. I remember that on the first day I was here, I was sitting out on the front porch and Samantha handed me a Dr Pepper. She said, “I thought I’d bring you one since it’s probably your blood type.” I told her that it wasn’t sugar free, but that she was correct. I still drank it. Let’s not get stupid. I was running a quart low.
DC started feeding me immediately, because I didn’t have to save up money to go and do things. I’ve loaded up my tablet and keyboard, writing anywhere and everywhere. If it’s not too hot, I write outside at the zoo. If it is, I write at any of the museums, I just have to keep a hoodie in my bag. Don’t wear shorts, because you’ll get really hot outside and then walk into Siberia, where you’ll be stuck in shorts for most of what you’re going to do that day.
My favorite Smithsonian museum is the National Portrait Gallery, but I like all of them. My favorite museum overall is International Spy, and when I go, I usually get a membership because it’s the cost of four tickets and traditionally I spend hours at a time, going eight or 10 times for shorter periods, and it’s $25 a visit. Belonging to Spy is a trip, because you get access to all the stuff that goes on after hours. It’s also a tremendous resource if you’re like me, and have no problem browsing at the bookstore for an hour and a half. As I’ve said before, I’m not writing a book about spies, but people who have to become them under duress. I can’t think of a better place to go than a museum who’s already bought all those books.
It was a fear to become a museum member, because I’m quite shy and introverted. I didn’t know if I would spend enough time there to warrant getting a membership. It was a combination of forcing myself to get out of the house and wanting to meet people on a different level, brain-wise. I never felt like anyone was talking down to me, and I had a lot of stupid questions so that I could learn how to ask what I really wanted to know. I actually asked the museum if they’d start a class like that for writers, but I haven’t heard from them. I don’t know enough to teach it (Spy Jargon 101), or I’d offer to spearhead the program so that it’s done by a volunteer and not their meager resources. Yes, they do fantastic things. They’re also privately funded and don’t get government assistance TO MAKE EXHIBITS ABOUT PEOPLE THAT WORK FOR THE GOVERNMENT. Ironic.
If I had time, I’d stop by and see some of Jonna and Tony’s masks before I head to DCA. They give me strength when I don’t have it. I just stare at them and think, “if they got up and did what they did, where’s my excuse?” It has to stop being that I’m afraid, because I am afraid of nearly everything.
It’s why I’m the president of overthinker’s anonymous, why I spill out possibilities regarding problems and solutions…. anything to make it where I have a roadmap because I’m so likely to be distracted. I have a concrete need to know what’s going to happen, because I feel so adrift at times. It’s never a good time for a grandparent to die, but I do feel lucky in that I’ll get to see my family in person for a few days (tomorrow through Friday unless plans change).
What I know for sure is that my grandfather’s house is not near Houston. We’ll have a road trip ahead of us- at least five hours each way. That is premium time just to talk and laugh, road tripping because of sadness, but also the fact that we’ll get to see family we haven’t seen in a long time. I tend to focus on laughs and togetherness when it comes to funerals, because what else are you supposed to do? Even when my mother died at 65 and was robbed of getting to live out a long life, I still focused on the fact that I hadn’t seen my cousins in years. It kept me upright.
The fact that my mother died so young created another fear in me…. that someone would die before I got to tell them something. It made me ramble on in e-mail without taking into account how long they were. I’m sorry to people who don’t communicate like that, but I figure if I put everything in a letter, everything you need from me is probably in there somewhere. I tend to use conversations to clarify. It’s irritating as shit to some people, so I generally ask if people like e-mail before I send them. I warn them that I’ll talk about anything and everything, and so can they.
But it’s a fear that people are just being nice, and therefore I try to get together with people as often as I can. I have a better gauge of the situation, I’m not unloading information that no one needs, even if I think they do.
It’s a fear to write to other people now that this Internet relationship has just gone so wrong. Am I setting myself up for the same rabbit hole? Have I learned enough to be able to handle e-mail responsibly and not get upset and reply without thinking?
Had I thought about it, I would have said something like, “I can see that you’re going through a lot, and have for months. I don’t want to do anything that takes away from your life, only things that add to it. I really do understand your point of view, and have so much empathy for it that I’m hurting for you.” I was too angry to respond and I did it, anyway. I think the outcome would have been the same, though, because it was so clear to me that I didn’t have a place in her life that I didn’t feel like spending more energy and attention. That I could be happy with bread crumbs, or I could take that energy and use it on someone else….. because her breadcrumbs were my morning coffee. I was seeing her emotions through my filter, because she didn’t give me any.
I don’t know why. I didn’t ask why. She said something about not fitting into the mold of friend I’d made for her, and I could only agree. It was based on times past, not times present. That made the present too hard and hurt too much. I’m not even sure she remembers who she was to me anymore, or if it even matters. What attracted her to me was great writing, and, in the end, repelled her. I hope she’ll go back and read in five years….. that maybe something will jump out at her that didn’t before. I need her to see what a mutual admiration society we had, and how I never lost my awe of her, but hers of me was gone and I had a complex about it because I knew exactly when it had gone and why it would never reappear. I wasn’t dumb about this, just too full of hope. She must have been, too, because she tried so hard. We just couldn’t make it gel, and I have to believe that I was right to step back, because I needed to take care of me. I needed to lick my wounds. Every elephant in DC knows how wrecked I am, and they are sympathetic. My bees are flat getting tired of me, but they’re the ones that need to hear all this. They live on gossip, and right now I’m pathetic. I have given them more tea than they can possibly carry…… but they can hear all the things that no one else can. I imagine that they’re flying between our houses, so I tell them to tell her she is loved. That way, I don’t walk around feeling anything except relief that the situation is bad, but it won’t get worse.
I feel extraordinarily selfish and wonder what I should have done instead, because I know it’s not what actually happened. I couldn’t live with three words a month (in its extreme), and she couldn’t live with pages and pages that she thought were telling her how bad I thought she was, when nothing has ever been less true. I thought the sun came out because she was smiling, not the other way around.
I didn’t like being blown off by someone I valued so much, and not knowing whether that’s the message she intended to send…. that blowing each other off was who were now. You would just have to see what happened on Day One to see why Years Three Through 10 were so problematic. It couldn’t have been fun dealing with me, because I hated it, too. We saw each other at our worst, and clawed back up…. just not to where it was solid enough that I could say things like “I have one of those. Lemme drop it in the mail for you.” “I’m headed to Chuy’s. You guys need emergency burritos or anything?”
No one should ever turn down an emergency burrito.
I never actually said those things, just once offered to take her to a thing and realized two others. The first is that I’d accidentally offered to take her to a Mother’s Day event and she has actual children. I don’t, and my mom is dead, so I spaced it. The second is that I realized I shouldn’t be THAT nervous, and I was. By then we’d known each other for years and years. We’d supposedly worked through all our shit. I told her the ball was in her court, and it was 2017 or 18. It’s not something I put a whole lot of stock in, because our relationship has always been virtual on purpose. How do you talk to anyone about anything? Make it where there’s no time constraints. Facebook Messenger was just as real as Skype, and back then I couldn’t just hit a button in Messenger to bring up calling. We were our real selves, and ghosts of ourselves all at once. I think that because reading her e-mails and looking at her picture brings her presence close, but of course it is not the same as being outside on a restaurant patio with frozen margaritas on the way.
Therefore, it’s a fear to write blog entries as well as letters, because I come off great at first. People keep up with me no matter what………… Keeping someone close to me is hard. I seem to have a learning curve of which I am completely unaware. Getting to know an author is tricky, even if you like them. We don’t like us very much, so good luck. 😉
So, there was the pull of having that experience with her, but no passion or drive toward it. Just a “wouldn’t it be nice?” picture floating by. In fact, it didn’t even become important until recently, because I realized that the patterns we used to talk to each other wouldn’t change unless we changed mediums. We need to prove to the other one that we aren’t scary, because that’s what happens when you’ve known someone for ten years and not at all. It’s hard to know how to grieve someone you’ve loved a hundred and crazy percent for a decade, and yet can’t tell you where she keeps her cutting boards. I opened up, and didn’t. She doesn’t know where my cutting boards are, either, but I do know enough to know that her best outcome would be never knowing that. I am not being mean, it’s just that she doesn’t like to cook enough to make that fact worth remembering. She would rather read about the things I cook, if that were a thing I wrote about. People keep telling me to put up recipes. I don’t do that. I look at your pantry and decide what the recipe is on the fly.
I have been told I could get a lot of readers by putting up recipes, and to me, that is the “live, laugh, love” of blogging.
Speaking of writing and drawing people in, that’s a fear as well. I am terrified of success, because every time I’ve managed it, I’ve torn it down out of sheer unpreparedness for life. I barely manage without a partner, and yet I’m still alive….. mostly because I’ve spent so long telling myself that I can be independent, and finding out that ain’t necessarily so.
I am coming to terms with significant fears about my mental and physical health, that I’m not doing so hot on either plane and don’t yet know what it will take to fix it. Nothing is so horrible that it needs attention tonight, I’m just saying. I have a lot of appointments to sit through in which I try not to get worried as we run the numbers on treatment. Some of it isn’t even treatment. I just need to join a gym. No one would say that I needed to lose weight, even me, but I have specific needs in a trainer. I need to strengthen all the muscles that control balance.
My fear touches a little bit of everything, and I am trying to get stronger day by day. It sometimes feels as if I have a mountain to climb and no boots, but I’ll get there one way or another. I do have a spirit that leans into the divine, so right this moment it’s all about letting mystery guide me rather than fear. I want to see where I’m going, without being so impatient to get there that I repeat the same mistakes.
And now we’ve arrived at my biggest fear…. that I will stay the same.
I would not be the person I am today without my father’s father, and I am slightly unmoored at his passing yesterday. I say “slightly” because he was 92. At that age, it’s never unexpected, and he was ready to go. He had a health problem serious enough that to put him through the treatment was to make his chances of survival worse. He said he wanted to see Mary, my grandmother, and we were all at peace with it. Still sad, but happy that he got to make his own decision.
It reminded me of the last time I talked to him about a death in my own family. I have never seen him come unglued, and he was sobbing when he told me he was sorry about my mother. I think it’s because he’d known her since she was a little girl, and losing your child does not follow the natural order of things. It doesn’t matter that my mom and dad divorced. He was just as much a part of her life while the marriage was happening. I am grateful for nothing about my mother’s death, but see a silver lining in processing that grief with him. It made me feel less alone. I’d known her for so many less years. We chatted about “Option B.” He said he thought it was written for younger people. I agreed in sympathy. By then, he’d lost my grandmother and we were both sad and lonely. Leaning on each other was a golden thread between us.
When my grandmother died, we became closer because of the phone. I hate talking on the phone, and he didn’t like doing it much, either. Not a computer person. So, there we were, the two biggest introverts on earth, not really wanting to talk to anyone and making conversation, anyway. We found connections in movies, writing, and that there were five Gospels including Rachel Maddow…… both very religious and very liberal, two ideas that don’t always make friends but should.
My granddad worked for Lone Star Steel, the largest company in his area while I was a baby, but has dwindled now. He was the corporate version of me, writing copy and taking pictures for the steel plant. Then, he began writing a story about our family when I was older, starting with the ancestors from Ireland/England and filtering down to me and the rest of our generation. That was the original idea that my story was worth something. My granddad wasn’t rich and famous, yet my dad has five volumes on where we came from and where we’re going.
I see my story as the same thing- I’m not rich and famous. I just live here.
Therefore, my story is not valuable to everyone, but to some it is priceless. My grandfather taught me that; write it tight, shoot it anyway. The fact that copy, pictures, and videos exist may not matter right now, but it will in five. Get people while they don’t know they’re on camera to make sure that there’s at least a record that someone was there, they don’t have to talk.
Music can say what you can’t.
I didn’t get much of my theological upbringing from him, but I did get his dry wit and delivery. If there’s anything my grandfather and I share, it’s being the quietest person in the room until we’re engaged…. and then it’s generally an acid funny comment that you may or may not have been meant to hear. 😉
My granddad gave me someone in the world I could look at and say, “yeah. I’m his. No DNA test needed.” My dad is more extroverted than I am. My grandfather is where I got my style…. which is mostly to be entertained by everything, just watching and absorbing. We both get into moods where we want to hold court, but that is not our default setting. We want to cook. We want to read. We want to watch videos of PBS and the BBC.
Seriously, go find something to do. “Two Fat Ladies” is on.
I’m going to close with a video, but not because it’s of me. It’s because he made it. The video is of me being born, but the first few minutes is all made up. That’s because I was born five weeks early (my mother says eight) and at 9:59 in the morning, so NO ONE was prepared. My mom hadn’t even gone through Lamaze.
And when you watch it, please remember my family. Nearly everyone in the video is gone except for me and my dad, which makes it all the more precious. Please note my grandfather’s voice in the beginning, because it’s one that I dearly love. Remember him as young and handsome and funny as he was.
I feel that I know intimately how handsome he is, because he helped make me. 😛
Describe one simple thing you do that brings joy to your life.
I don’t tend to write short essays, so I’ll tell you about all the things that bring me joy. I need to write this out because I am not experiencing joy in my life at all right now. I’m in DC while I have an emergency in the family going on, so I’ll probably leave next week for Texas. Right now, though, I feel the weight of being far away, and I won’t know anything until I see it. For those who are worried, my dad and sister are fine. I’ll give you more details, I just don’t know whether the word is public or not. Let me clear that up first, and then I’ll let you know why I’m going. It won’t be information that needs to be kept tight for long. Just know that I’m going through a thing, and remembering joy helps.
The first thing that’s giving me joy is comments on my web site. Some of them come from readers that post here and are public. Most likely, I’ll get an e-mail. I got one this week re: my beautiful girl that will live in my memory forever…. “how could she deny you the one thing you love, which is her?” It didn’t make me feel joy because of the situation, only that I was able to connect…. to write it in a way that would make someone say that. The reality is that she didn’t deny me anything. I chose to walk off because of the things she was doing that hurt me, because it didn’t make the fantastic less so. I have lots of stuff from her that reminds me every day of how much I just love her to pieces. That’s enough.
I want more e-mails that kid me about our favorite genderqueer Instagram influencer, my Bozo the Clown red hair, and my Dalek winter hat. I want less e-mails that say I’m goading and provoking. People have issues with each other. Full stop. I can’t go on pretending that our problems are small enough not to talk about them. On the flip side, I indeed got impatient over time because of exhaustion. But though I was exhausted, I wasn’t actively trying to provoke her. I just wanted her to pay attention, when there’s no reason she really should have. It’s what I wanted, not what I deserved.
But to have someone who doesn’t know me say that they see me? Priceless. That’s the message I need- that I am not perfect, but redeemable. This internal freakout was eight years ago, and I’ve been fighting against the tide ever since, because I didn’t know where we were and I didn’t have a map.
So being reminded to take in joy is very important. It’s taking away the sting of this family emergency, losing my Richard from Texas, and that I’m in DC typing all this. The cure for every one of these things is time.
I focus on the joy that it will never be over with someone I have loved this much, because she’s here whether she meant to be or not. I tease her that I even have a t-shirt with her picture on it, not her but a symbol that represents her. I can’t tell you what it is in case it’s identifying, but I will tell you that the pic is similar to a T-rex cuddling a stuffed bunny. That level of incongruous, anyway. My Kindle library is littered with books she likes, both recommendations and presents. What I have to say to that is she needs to pick out all my books from now on, because she reads me so often that she picks up on these things easily.
Karin Slaughter and I are a little bit alike in that we walk into the darkness with our Southern style. I have never been more surprised than I was at hearing her voice. Those books come out of that mouth? Seriously, it’s a trip.
I am fully able to accept that the dark and the light feed each other and make the other feel more extreme. I wouldn’t be hurt if I had not felt that level of joy and could remember what that was like. But I never knew if the things I did elicited the same reaction…. the same reaction that it was from me. I tried to be as creative as possible, and I hope that’s one of the things I got wrong, that I thought because we had conflict it wasn’t fun to her to reflect on the parts that felt right.
There was no persuasion, no changing her mind. There was only letting her be her. If I really loved her, it had to be dependent on her….. not the idea that if I just kept at it, things would fall into place the way I would have wanted. It’s the craziest thought ever, because I can flat hear a “no.” I didn’t do much to prove that almost a decade ago, but I prove it every day now.
I truly believe that I’m forgiven in the macro, but not the micro. It’s scary to say the thing you’re most afraid to say. I feel bad that I stepped all over her ass for explaining what was going on with her in the moment, because I was angry that she’d read a volume on what I was going though without acknowledgement of what I’d said. It’s not that I didn’t feel empathy, it’s that I could have written the essay on what she was going through. I wasn’t angry that I wasn’t a priority. I was angry that I was never a priority. No one is that busy when you’re that excited to meet someone at first.
I certainly don’t think I gave her the same amount of joy, but I can’t do that, so it’s time to take those lessons and build a solid friendship with someone else. I couldn’t live the way I felt anymore, because no one does well with that much uncertainty. Are you the person that’s been my friend for 10 years and wants to move forward without carrying all this shit around?
She said no, and that’s fine. But she couldn’t expect me to stick around forever. Toothpaste does not go back into the tube. I got rid of all the feelings that needed to go, but all the other ones stayed. I will never be the person she needs me to be, because my emotions regarding her will always be larger than hers for me. I have always hoped that I was wrong about that, but I’m not.
I handled it like building a relationship with an ex rather than a former friend because I had land mines that were painful when stepped on that she mirrored…. a problem with me on the opposite end of the spectrum from seeing that I was treating her like an ex because I had to. I needed her to see that I understood where she was coming from and where I went wrong. I needed her to see that resolving the issue made it where I could talk about a flashback without attaching emotion to it. It didn’t make the issue unresolved. Triggers made it feel unresolved in the moment, because I was seeing something from the past and snapping out of it.
It ended like she was an ex, too, because there are some things that are very, very difficult to come back from and trying to be friends where there was attraction before is one of them. Neither party really believes that the other has changed, can’t believe that the other person genuinely loves them for them with no belief about the situation is held except that being together is better than being apart.
I didn’t treat her like an ex because I suspected that she wasn’t telling me the truth, that she was hiding her real feelings, or anything that sounds as schizo as it would be had I done it. I did it because that’s how I knew how to relate. That’s how I could rebuild and eventually not have to treat her like that anymore because I didn’t need it. The emotions I had to get rid of were gone.
But that doesn’t mean that going forward, I’ll love people the same way. This was completely unique and a little bit crazy, but completely worth it. 10/10 would recommend, no regrets. But that doesn’t mean I want to make more memories, either. I’m done if she doesn’t want to show up, because I’m tired of getting blamed for having feelings. There were many things I saw that made me know it could go this direction, but those are just for me.
She has always been just for me, my Raggedy Doctor. You never forget your first Doctor, and you never forget your first Pond.
Stories That Are All True 