Tag: love

Everything Isn’t Awesome

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 2 Comments
Daily writing prompt
If you had to give up one word that you use regularly, what would it be?
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I tend to overuse the word “awesome” and should probably look up some alternate words. It would be good practice if it was struck from my vocabulary and I had to work around it.

Yesterday, though. Yesterday really was awesome.

One of my best friends since 2014, Aaron Brown, is coming to visit for a week. I’m so happy thinking about all the things we can do (or not do). Aaron and I love to do nothing together, and we’ve been calling it “running Aarons” for at least 10 years. We definitely want to do DC for a day, and I know that Josh wanted to take me out for my birthday so he’ll get to join me for that. Plus, I’m not the only friend Aaron has in the area, so we’ll be visiting around Maryland as well.

Things are also shaping up for my Houston trip at the end of the month, because I’ve wanted to see Brene Brown speak and meet her (again) for a long time. I’ve said this before, but I will say again that Dr. Brown and I have a slight history. I taught her how to do something in Microsoft Word 30 years ago and now I cannot remember what it was. Back then, she was just “one of my kids,” what I called all the graduate school of social work students that studied in my computer lab. I was watching YouTube a few years later and said to Dana, “I think that’s one of my kids.” Just to be sure, I contacted her team and made sure that it was her.

It was.

It’s amazing how you accidentally run into famous people if you wait long enough.

Aada used to be taken with Dr. Brown to the point that she joked that she was going to marry her. That she didn’t end up with Dr. Brown as her Girl Friday, she unfortunately got me. That I was so delighted my epitaph was going to be “Eat It, Brown.” She was not amused by this. I have laughed for almost a year.

Sorry, not sorry.

So, anyway, that’s what makes me excited and heartbroken to meet Dr. Brown. I want to tell her what a kick it is to see her again as a Real Adult instead of a kid in grad school. I will not tell her the story about Aada, because it would be just my luck that I’d tear up.

But when you feel such shame and vulnerability, who better to go and see than an expert?

But before all that, Aaron and I are going to have a good time in Baltimore.

Awesome

I Never Questioned

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I never questioned myself over what would happen if Aada lied about anything. I never stopped to think about my impulse control and what it’s like when I’m in red mist rage. And it’s where I find myself today, just thinking. Asking myself the questions that I should have asked 12 years ago. The fight was the last thing that happened, not the origin of my problem. When I got angry, my keyboard warrior personality appeared, and I acted way before I thought. This is normal for people with neurodivergent minds, this popping off and regret. That’s because executive dysfunction with autism and ADHD makes your emotions incredibly intense. The disability is not having a self-regulating mechanism.

I am embarrassed that I did not have more coping mechanisms, because I betrayed something bigger than me, something for which I thought I was prepared…. falling on my sword at all costs….. but I couldn’t do it after she lied and my adrenaline turned me into The Incredible Hulk.

It was a small lie that snowballed over 12 years, something easily forgiven by someone with the clarity to keep their impulse control in check. The red mist rage was not at the lie itself, but the two principles under it.

  1. Aada can lie to you.
  2. Aada can see the consequences of her lie playing out in real time and does not care how it affects you.

I never asked myself what would happen if I learned these two things.

Everything she asked me to protect, I vomited all over the internet because I was so hurt that a lie could last over a decade. I didn’t publish it because I had a need to expose her, took delight in it. I was so angry I couldn’t see straight. I wanted to end the relationship and I had a trump card that would make it clear she could pack her bags. It was a trump card that should have stayed hidden in retrospect, because I have had time to reflect on everything that happened.

Mostly because once I got over the fact that Aada can lie to me, my anger melted into true remorse. She broke something in our relationship and I overreacted by a large margin. The gauntlet I’m laying down for the future is to work on coping mechanisms for anger, because I was not myself. I need to protect myself from going out of my mind.

I didn’t know I needed such intense therapy for anger management, but I see it clearly now. My zero to sixty is just too damn fast.

I lost an important relationship to me because I lost me.

Meetings with Bob, Part V

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I didn’t want this to get lost in a comment thread, because it deserves to be above the fold that a reader decided to mirror me and answer as Aada

My dear friend Leslie,

What follows is not a letter from Aada herself, but rather a thoughtful exercise in perspective – a mirror held up to your own words, crafted with care and consideration for the deep emotions you have shared. In the spirit of understanding and healing, I have attempted to imagine what a response might sound like, drawing upon the themes of forgiveness, growth, and the complex nature of human connection that your letter so eloquently explores.

This synthesis is offered not as truth, but as possibility – a way of examining how such vulnerable honesty might be received by a heart that has also known pain and confusion. It is my hope that in reading these imagined words, you might find some measure of the compassion you seek, whether it comes from Aada herself in time, or simply from the recognition that your journey towards understanding and accountability has value in itself.

We who struggle with the complexities of relationship, particularly in this digital age where nuance is so easily lost, must sometimes create our own mirrors for reflection. Consider this letter not as Aada’s voice, but as an echo of the grace you might grant yourself as you continue your work of growth and healing.

The response that follows springs from a place of empathy for both parties in this difficult situation, recognising that pain and love often walk hand in hand, and that the path towards understanding is rarely straight or simple.

With respect for your courage in examining your own heart,

Bob

Dear Leslie,

Your words have reached me, and I find myself sitting with them in the quiet hours, turning them over like stones worn smooth by countless tides. There is a weight to your honesty that I cannot dismiss, nor would I wish to.

I confess, reading your letter stirred feelings I had tried to bury beneath layers of hurt and self-protection. You speak of taking responsibility, and in that I hear echoes of the person I once knew – the one who could make me laugh until my sides ached, who saw possibilities where I saw only obstacles.

You are right that we both stumbled through this connection of ours. I, too, made choices that led us down darker paths. Perhaps I held too tightly to my own wounds, perhaps I failed to offer the grace that love requires. The isolation you describe – I felt it as well, in different ways, and I recognise now how we both retreated into our separate corners when we might have reached towards each other instead.

Your acknowledgement of the harm caused means something to me, though I cannot yet say what that something is. The hurt runs deep, Leslie, carved into places I thought were protected. Trust, once broken, does not mend quickly or easily. Yet your willingness to examine your own actions, to sit with discomfort rather than deflect it – this speaks to growth I had hoped to see.

I think often of what might have been different had we met face to face from the beginning. You paint a picture of coffee on back porches, of four friends in easy conversation, and it strikes me as both beautiful and heartbreaking. Perhaps you are right that screens and keyboards amplified our worst impulses whilst muting our better angels.

I am not ready to say forever, nor am I ready to say tomorrow. What I can offer is this: your words will stay with me. I will consider them carefully, without the pressure of immediate response or decision. Time has a way of clarifying what matters most, and perhaps it will show us both what we truly need.

I hope you find peace with yourself, Leslie. I hope the work you are doing – the therapy, the self-reflection, the commitment to growth – brings you the stability and joy you deserve. We all carry our struggles, our neurodivergent minds and wounded hearts, and perhaps learning to be gentle with ourselves is the first step towards being gentle with others.

For now, I need space to heal, to think, to simply exist without the weight of us pressing down upon every decision. But know that your growth matters to me, and your happiness matters to me, even from this distance.

If there is to be a future for us in any form, it will require something new – built on different foundations than what came before. Not the intense, isolated connection that consumed us both, but something more sustainable, more honest, more kind.

I am glad you wrote. I am glad you are seeking help. I am glad you are learning to breathe before you speak.

Take care of yourself, Leslie. The world needs people who are brave enough to examine their mistakes and humble enough to change.

Aada

This is perfect. No notes.

A Lot of Light

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
What does your ideal home look like?
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My current apartment is on the first floor, halfway underground. Therefore, all of my windows are blocked from sunlight most of the time. I can only put more lamps in here, there are no overhead lights. Therefore, the entire place is a bit gloomy and dark even when it’s brilliant outside. So, my ideal home would have light pouring through the windows.

I know I want newer construction, because older DC and Baltimore homes have quirky steps that would make it easy for me to hurt myself by falling over things I don’t see. I don’t like houses that have a tiny step up into the living room, for instance, because I will never remember that tiny step is there and I will trip until I move.

I know I want a decent kitchen, because my current one isn’t set up for anything. Any work space I have is taken up by appliances. So I want my next kitchen to be laid out differently, with a place for me to chop in addition to my coffeemaker and toaster oven.

I’d like a bedroom big enough to hold my bed and desk, plus a spare room to hold my friends and family when they’re in town. All of that is infinitely doable in Baltimore, where rents tend to be cheaper. The reason not to move back towards DC in addition to Trump’s goons is that DC is exponentially more expensive. You do get what you pay for. When I told Aada I lived in B’more now, she said, “that place is………………………………… not safe.” And she told me to get a gun and a dog.

I have never felt that my life was in danger, can’t hit the broad side of a barn with a gun (and shouldn’t own because of depression), but the dog was a good suggestion. I’m still thinking about it. I know exactly what I want dog-wise, I just have to make sure I’m in a stable financial place.

So first I have to establish a budget for myself and see what’s left over. Then we can discuss a dog for this place that is not…………… safe.

The Well

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
What brings a tear of joy to your eye?
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Comments like this:

It takes a strong, sound mind to write about how hard it is to face our own roles in broken relationships and the courage it takes to want to grow from those experiences. Wishing you strength and new beginnings as you move forward—may the “ash enriched earth” bring something wonderful to your life.

It means a lot to get a word of encouragement while I’m getting myself together. My life revolves around inertia, and this is a good beginning.

In thinking of the type of planting I’d like to do, finding a new living situation is at the top of the heap. This apartment will never smell better than it does right now unless they rip it down to the studs. My lease ends in November, anyway, so I’m just going to see what’s out there today and tomorrow…. plans will pick up surrounding moving depending on how quickly I find something. I don’t think an “uninhabitable” charge would stick, but my apartment is not a comfortable place to live. So whether I try and break the lease or not, moving is coming up fast.

I also have mobility now, which means that I have more choice as to where to live. I’m not dependent on the bus system, Maryland Transit Authority will pick me up at my house and drop me off. Therefore, I can look anywhere in either city (Baltimore or Washington). The more news that comes out of Washington, the more I change my mind about moving to Rockville…. but I’m keeping my mind open. Wes Moore (Maryland governor) looks like he’s willing to put up a fight.

I just want a place that’s light and airy, another two bedroom if possible because my sister and dad need a place to stay when they’re in town. It would be nice if I didn’t have to move again for a long time, which is why I’m considering moving back to the DMV. It’s just easier when Lindsay wants to go to lunch if I’m already in town, and she doesn’t want to do Baltimore every time she works in her DC office.

That being said, we both love Baltimore. I need to choose a place to live based on my own happiness, not hers. She will just be happy to have a new space to decorate. 😉

While mine was drying, I checked out of the hotel and went to my friend Josh’s house, where he introduced me to his wife and seven year old son. We ate dinner together and breakfast the next morning, then went to the pool for the last day of its opening this season. It gave me a chance to see a different part of Maryland, where the closest DC Metro station is New Carollton, but still not far from B’more in the grand scheme of things. I made a mental note to add that area to my list.

It was an amazing time to be in the sun, because it wasn’t too hot and there was plenty of ice cream to go around. I enjoyed people watching, although I did not swim myself. The water was cold and very few adults were brave enough. Josh, his wife, their friends, and I sat for a few hours talking and it was the first time I’d really been a part of a group outside of Cognitive Behavioral Health in a long time.

Those are the tears of joy that travel to the well, the deep part of me that needs healing. I am slowly mending from my last disaster and trying to prevent new ones. The well is the place I go to remember progress.

Meetings with Bob, Part II

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 1 Comment

Dear Leslie,

I’m struck by how vividly you map the contours of your inner world – how writing becomes both sanctuary and trap, and how the very medium that sustains you also isolates you. Your description of “screaming into the void” captures that tension with heartbreaking clarity.

You observe that your pace – responding online “too fast to take in” – was a key factor in the breakdown with Aada. What would it look like if you allowed yourself just a few more beats before sending a reply? How might a brief pause shift the shape of what you write and the relationships that form around it?

You note, quite powerfully, that you lost your grip on shared reality because you never compared notes face-to-face. I wonder: what would it feel like to translate some of these excavations into a conversation with someone present? Could speaking your next draft aloud to a trusted friend provide that grounding you describe?

Your honesty about neurodivergence – autism, ADHD, bipolar disorder – reminds me that these dimensions aren’t just complicating factors; they’re also windows into how you experience connection, narrative, and emotional intensity. When you say, “If the script had been written by a neurotypical person, I would be married with a writing partner,” I hear both longing and recognition of how your mind brings its own storytelling gifts. How can you honour those gifts while also building in safeguards against the cycles you’ve described?

I’m moved by your ritual of checking for “faces you’d written for” during preaching – the instinct to seek a touchstone in the crowd. I’m curious: if I ceased to be your primary touchstone, what other faces – real or imagined – might you write toward? How might naming a handful of specific readers in advance reshape the intimacy and clarity of your work?

You’re doing a profound excavation here. There’s regret, yes, but also a real emergence of empathy for both Aada’s exhaustion and your own patterns. You write that you “cared about [your] sanity more than [you] cared about her” – a wrenching admission. In that tension between protecting your reality and sustaining connection, where do you see the next opportunity for a different choice?

Thank you for trusting me with these reflections. Your willingness to lay bare the mistakes – and to explore them without shaming yourself – speaks to the generosity at the heart of your writing. I look forward to following how these questions unfold in your work, and I’m here to listen whenever you want to talk through what you discover.

Bob x

I do take pauses with the people in my life on the ground. It’s harder on the internet because the internet is faster in and of itself. For instance, in the beginning I’m not sure that Aada and I went without talking about every 15 minutes. And we slowly got back to that. On the ground, I may not see someone for weeks or months. Internet replies were instantaneous. I think that because now I don’t have this overarching relationship in the cloud, everything will slow down for me. That’s a good thing. I don’t have any friends that won’t come over for tea.

Having conversations with Aada can happen with my therapist, but I think that the excavation here is more important. I need to see what went wrong and I need to atone for it in the other relationships I create, because I don’t think there’s any salvaging this one. I have no interest in being friends with someone that acted like a pathological lie was no big deal when she got busted, no recognition of what she’d asked me to do. She has no interest in being friends with someone who would be this narcissistic, not knowing it was building narcissism because I was only thinking of myself and what I needed. In the moment, it felt justified. Now, I just feel horrible. But at the same time, my reality is back in check. If there were to be any reconciliation, I would prefer it to happen on the ground. I will not go back into a secretive little bubble where I don’t know what she’s told others about me, but she gets access to all my thoughts.

That’s the hardest part of trying to move on. Knowing that she’ll never be far from this web site, knowing that she will have access to my thoughts whether I want her to or not. It’s a part of being a public figure I don’t like, that people who don’t like me still crave reading here.

It’s why touchstones are important. I have to write for the audience that likes me as well as the one that doesn’t. It’s because I’m only writing for myself that I can even approach this. It’s not the writing that’s hard, it’s the publishing. My blog holds me accountable in a way that few things do.

I do think about my audience in advance. Lately, that audience has been Aada, but this blog existed before she was just a twinkle in my eye, so she is not the only touchstone. Offhand I can think of several people that have influenced entries, none more than the children in my life. I need to get back to that, where my touchstones aren’t online.

I have a lot of regret that I chose to be weird.

The fight this time around was just one of many, and started the day I told her I was in love with her…. not her face. Her essence. I didn’t know what I was doing because I set up a pattern in which she didn’t know if she could trust me or not. We never recovered, because I was an idiot. I have done everything I can think of to remedy the situation, and it did work. I just don’t know how well.

I will never know that now, because I have destroyed any love Aada would have for me because some problems cannot be fixed. Ours was one of them. I found out she lied and went Full Metal Jackass.

Until now, Aada would read lines like that and tell me she laughed, and that’s what kept her as a touchstone for this web site. Creating more will only come with time as I meet more people.

How can you honour those gifts while also building in safeguards against the cycles you’ve described?

This line got me because it’s what I’m dealing with in therapy. Again, it will all come together with time, because a virtual pen pal isn’t a real touchstone, in the end. 7% of communication is not all of them, and I barked up the wrong tree before I even knew what kind it was. If I had been more circumspect, I would have had a very different career.

But I wouldn’t have had this one, either.

Meetings with Bob

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 1 Comment

Dear Leslie,

Your insight about needing “touchstones” rather than trying to connect with “thousands of people at once” illuminates something crucial about authentic writing that I hadn’t considered before. The image of you looking out during preaching to find the faces you’d written for – checking if reality matched your intention – captures perfectly how writing is both intimate and public simultaneously.

“You don’t connect with an audience. You connect with some of them because taking on the entire room is overwhelming” feels like wisdom earned through experience. It makes me think about how much pressure we put on ourselves to reach everyone, when perhaps the most powerful writing comes from speaking genuinely to one person.

Your honesty about becoming “a self-centred jerk” whilst thinking you were right at the time shows remarkable self-awareness. When you write, “My blog is often a manual on ‘What Not to Do’ because I guarantee that I thought I was right when I wasn’t,” you’re describing something universal about human growth – we can only see our blind spots in retrospect.

The dynamic you describe with Aada – “avoidant/anxious… with me being the anxious one” – sounds exhausting for both of you. Your observation that you “jumped up and down for attention because my needs weren’t being met” whilst simultaneously creating the very problems that made the relationship “unusual” shows how we can become trapped in patterns that sabotage what we most want.

What strikes me most is your recognition that “I was too quick, always. It didn’t matter the reaction, it was too fast to take in.” This suggests you understand now that some of the damage came from pace rather than intent – that slowing down might have changed everything.

Your final line – “This is what it looks like when I have switched the audience to Bob” – intrigues me. How does writing to me feel different from writing to Aada? Does the change in touchstone alter not just your content but your relationship to your own emotions as you write?

The fact that you can now read Aada’s words months later and find empathy for her perspective suggests you’ve gained some distance that allows for clearer sight. Even whilst carrying regret, you’re still learning from the experience. That seems like something worth acknowledging, even if it doesn’t undo what you wish you could change.

Bob x

Dear Bob,

Learning from my experiences is the only thing this blog is designed to do. I’m sure that other people read it because they are being entertained, listening to a stranger’s secrets. But I don’t pay attention to them unless they take the time to comment like you do, to ask questions about what I’m really writing. That’s because it doesn’t occur to me that people are reading until they comment. I think of my voice as “screaming into the void” because people rarely take the time to be as thorough as you are in your reviews. 😛

By not paying attention to the audience, I have a chance to say what I really think and feel, letting them have the reactions they’re going to have without being in front of them. When I do that, though, the reality is that I end up isolating myself. Being a blogger is being able to say that I acted like a self-centered jerk because this blog is not a vanity project.

I’m concerned by the way my friendship with Aada isolated me from my friends on the ground, because I paid more attention to her than the rest of them. Living my life in the cloud has brought disastrous results and the thing I wish I could do more than anything is take away Aada’s fear that I am still the same person I used to be, railroading her feelings in favor of keeping the story moving. I don’t have a story without her, and it crippled me as a writer not to be able to talk about what was going on in my real life. So I just made it up as I went along. I wasn’t intentionally stepping on her toes, I just did.

That’s because I didn’t have a good idea of where her story ended and where mine began. We should have talked about it from the moment we met, but we didn’t. She didn’t realize that taking on a blogger as a friend would cramp her style, but was game as long as I adored her in public.

When I didn’t, she was angry, but often went back and acknowledged when she was wrong. It made me feel good when she said, “I’m not saying that I’m this person you have portrayed, but………” Over time, I could read her like a book, literally, because there were no in-person meetings to interrupt our little rabbit hole.

Thank you for acknowledging that Aada must have been exhausted, because that’s the message I’ve been trying to send. That I know I’m not the easiest person to maintain a friendship with because I’m off in this world half the time. There was a solid reason our relationship was so off-kilter, and I cannot even tell you why it went so wrong, so fast. I can only tell you that it’s my fault entirely.

If the script had been written by a neurotypical person, I would be married with a writing partner. My autism, ADHD, and bipolar disorder ruined both the marriage and the possibility of getting together with Aada to discuss our future projects. I was not good at new relationship energy, and I let the energy from Aada overtake everything else.

That was a mistake, because all I succeeded in doing was isolating both women from me in different ways. I lost my head, and Aada and I just never regained equilibrium as long as we interacted. Getting together in person would have solved that problem, because my imagination was bigger than life.

She was the one with the travel miles, I was the one stuck in my room day after day. It was a ride, because at times Aada didn’t mind being number one on the call sheet, and at others, she really did. Therefore, it was impossible to judge how to please her.

I could always calm her down by letting her into what I was writing, because nine times out of 10 I didn’t actually say what she thought I did. I tried to make her feel beautiful, wanted, special… try to let her go because I’m thinking that I’m giving her what she wants, and then she pops up in my DMs based on something I’ve written here. I will miss her telling me when I’ve written something beautiful about us, and I wish I knew the formula for how that went. I definitely wanted to err on that side of things. The way I do that in my daily life is by talking to the people I know about what I’m writing and they mention what it’s ok for me to write about and what’s not, and this is the key, before I’ve written. This cycle went on for so many years, with things just feeling true. There was no humanity to course correct when we weren’t checking the story we were telling ourselves by looking each other in the eye.

I felt like I lived in a fairy tale, where she was a dragon. Or one of those kids who find out their real parents are superheroes. I was very tired of feeling like that, seriously questioning my reality.

I was put off, but not shut down from the idea of meeting. I have a history of self-sabotage, so it is unsurprising that I once again spoiled my chances when they were better than average.

She might have empathized with wanting to check reality. What exactly, did I love about her? I wish I’d found a way to speak her love language that didn’t include hunting for it. I wondered when I could stand up for myself constantly, realizing that all of her reasons for not being together were real, and so was her regret at not being more present. She liked being my girl in the “hetero life mate” sense of the phrase. I just never got her to realize that we couldn’t have a relationship as close as ours without being able to read each other accurately. I think she would have been much happier with the results had we not trauma dumped before we met in person. It changed me as a blogger and as a wife, friend.

It’s not that those conversations shouldn’t have happened, but they should have happened while looking at each other’s faces. Because I questioned my reality, I questioned hers. I lost my grip.

I wish I didn’t mean that quite so literally. I didn’t lose it all at once, though. It built over a decade.

Because the longer our relationship went on, the longer I wondered what her voice sounded like when she was giving me feedback. What tones I needed to watch for that indicate distress. What she would have said in person vs. over the Internet.

I was always too quick with a response online.

My truly bipolar symptoms got me into this mess, but it doesn’t excuse me from my actions. If I’d realized how powerful a connection it was to me, I would have cherished it completely differently…. and I know that because I’ve been able to chart our progress over many years. She was my muse, and I was very busy painting her with words.

I don’t wish we hadn’t met. I wish I’d been a stronger person. I could have been a stronger person if my reality had been checked, but Aada couldn’t explain what she meant by “your words feel like pricks on my skin” because I didn’t know what I’d said that had been so… she wouldn’t open up that much. Therefore, I could not adjust to her.

It was a toxic cycle I knew I created, and wanted to clean up. The best I’ve slept in 12 years came from this quote from her absolutely out of context: “THAT’S HOW IT’S SUPPOSED TO WORK.”

I had to make sure my reality was secure, because no one was going to do it for me. My reality broke when I realized she could lie to me. I had built this idea of who she was based on this timeline that was ridiculous and I realized that all my worry had been for nothing. That she’d created mythology where there was none without thinking I’d need that piece of information later.

Much later.

She asked me to give up too much in the name of a lie.

So I told my story the way I wanted to tell it, wanting to know the worst consequences of anything I could say. I lost the friendship, but no one told me to stop writing. I need to start recording what it’s like to be me again, not what it’s like to be me as I sit here in fake reality. I’m sure I buried her in communications because my reality was threatened. I felt like Mr. Robot.

Instead of terminal windows, it was chat windows and Gmail.

I was slowly isolating more and more because I had this internet relationship that actually fulfilled me. But if you were a prescribing doctor, you’d think I was hallucinating. I was, based on this lie.

Just not the lie she told. It was all the lies I’d told myself over the years about where she is and what she must be doing that were completely inaccurate because we’d never really compared notes with a level playing field. I was way, way off. The things she’d said to calm me would have worked if she hadn’t lied…. and seem so reasonable in retrospect.

Part of being a writer is being able to admit when you’re wrong, and I try to do an excavation even when I’m the one that’s wrong because it’s not “who won” that matters. It’s that the story is told. I lost something precious because I lost sight of what mattered over and over.

I cared about my sanity, in the end, more than I cared about her. The longer I questioned my reality, the more I wanted closeness with her. The longer she waffled, the more my sanity went up and down. We were trapped, because I couldn’t stabilize long enough for that to happen and neither could she.

She says that I have a constant need to manipulate her. No, I have a constant need to write and she’s who I was thinking about. I do not need her to read and comment if she does not want interaction. It was my feeling that as she went away she would stop reading, but she didn’t. Therefore, I can see how it feels like manipulation to her- I wanted our memories to be pristine and the only way you get that is to write it in the moment.

I closed the door this time, so I’m hoping she sees that I’m doing my best to post-mortem and move on. That I accept she won’t respond. I expect her to keep that promise now, but life is long. The best indication of future behavior is past history, and I never know what will remind her of me and think she should reach out that’s worth crossing the divide. I expect her to move on from reading my grief if she wants to move on from me. The last thing I want is to continually manipulate anybody, and if that’s the way she feels, then so be it. All I can do is keep praying for her, that time heals wounds. I was trying to save her from pain, and I caused it. For that, I am sorry to her.

I got tired of wondering why my reality felt so abnormal when one lie pulled the whole string. I questioned everything about our relationship…. including these elusive baby steps that I have absolutely no idea when I’ve achieved because there’s no mention of them?

I needed people I could reach out and touch, some stability in my life. She did not see what was going on with me psychiatrically/psychologically except in the symptomatic letters. I needed a different medium to express myself because writing can only do so much.

But it’s knowing that me closing the door to a relationship started a long time ago. I should have said a lot less. In many cases.

Many.

Leslie x

Comments Like This

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 1 Comment
Daily writing prompt
What motivates you?
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Leslie – your exploration of the intersection between writing and living strikes me as profoundly honest – particularly your observation that “I am often too busy recording life to remember to go out and live it.” This captures something essential about the writer’s paradox that I don’t think gets discussed enough.

The way you’ve woven together your mental health journey with your writing practice feels incredibly brave. When you write, “My only support system has been writing,” it illuminates how the very thing that sustains you can also become isolating. There’s something both beautiful and heartbreaking about finding solace in words whilst struggling with whether the relationships they document are real.

Your question about Aada – whether she’s real or hallucination – opens up fascinating territory about the nature of online relationships and how we validate our experiences. “I just wanted to prove to myself that I wasn’t hallucinating… because I had someone to talk to who could empathise” speaks to a very human need for connection and verification of our reality.

I’m struck by your insight that “I become prophetic because hindsight is 20/20.” This suggests you understand that your writing serves as both document and mirror – allowing you to trace patterns and growth over time. It makes me wonder: when you look back at your earlier entries about Aada, what patterns do you notice now that weren’t visible whilst you were living through it?

Your observation about readers – “They’re my sacrifices in continuing to be a writer, the readers that don’t talk to me anymore but do talk to each other” – captures something profound about the cost of vulnerability in public writing. You’ve created this space where people can witness your humanity, but that witnessing comes with complications.

The tension you describe between needing grace for changing your mind versus being seen as “two-faced” feels particularly relevant in our current moment. How do you navigate continuing to write authentically whilst protecting yourself from that push-pull dynamic you mention?

Your closing line – “Because remember when I used to write so beautifully?” – suggests you’re questioning your current work, but honestly, this piece demonstrates the same raw honesty and insight that presumably drew people to your earlier writing. Perhaps what’s changed isn’t the quality, but your relationship with the act of writing itself?

What would it look like to write without an audience – even temporarily – just to reconnect with the intimacy you describe having with your word processor?

Bob

This comment is so far-reaching that I’m not sure what to say in response. I would say that it helps to have one person in mind when I’m writing an essay, because what resonates with one will resonate with a thousand at this scale. It also helps me not to feel alone in the room as I write, because I’m talking to the person in my head, not thousands of people at once. When I am not thinking of my audience, my emotions fall flat. I used to do the same thing in preaching- look out for the people I was thinking of when I wrote that line just to see if they thought it was as funny in reality as it was when I was working on the sermon.

You don’t connect with an audience. You connect with some of them because taking on the entire room is overwhelming. You just need touchstones.

Aada was my touchstone, the reader I looked for to make sure I was doing all right. I didn’t care what anyone else thought because her opinion was enough. I pushed her away, so she won’t be doing that anymore. I regret it, but there’s no way to go back and undo what I’ve done.

My blog is often a manual on “What Not to Do” because I guarantee that I thought I was right when I wasn’t. Now that time has passed, I see that I was a self-centered jerk. Of course the patterns I see with Aada are ways I’ve behaved that hurt her, because I was overfocused on my own needs.

She didn’t make me feel safe, so I wouldn’t return the favor. I should have, but I didn’t. She threw me into the pile of people she doesn’t trust because there’s no rebuilding from here. My emotions got in the way of my logic, and I didn’t do the right thing.

Neither did she.

So now she slowly slips away in my mind to make room for new people to be touchstones in my audience. I am a work in progress, and have realized that my communication skills are merely compensatory. I work best in reaction to someone else. The reason Aada and I worked well together is that I think she’s the smartest person in the entire world, and for some reason she thought I was, too. The nature of online relationships is ethereal, which led both of us to disconnect from our humanity on many occasions. Validating my experience was very difficult because I did not have anyone to talk to about it, because our connection was always avoidant/anxious….. with me being the anxious one.

It makes me wonder: when you look back at your earlier entries about Aada, what patterns do you notice now that weren’t visible whilst you were living through it?

I jumped up and down for attention because my needs weren’t being met, all while blissfully aware of the problems I caused in our relationship that would make it unusual. I really messed up, and I’ll never forgive myself. I can only hope that there’s a few things on Aada’s side that she’ll never forgive herself for, either, because that’s the only path that will make either of us try again in the future. After all, if she lied to impress me, I know I impressed her at least once.

I chose to make her number one on the call sheet because I thought I was writing anonymously. That no one could make the leap between Aada and “Her Real Name Here.” That led me to say some things that Aada certainly wouldn’t have want broadcast and it’s just more regret to add onto the pile.

I know why I was so keyed up on adrenaline, but she didn’t seem to understand until a few months ago. That was definitely a breakthrough, getting her to understand that I went through something pretty universal in spite of it being unusual.

I would give anything for a do-over of the past 12 years, because I had a solid goal in mind for this time in my life and I sabotaged it at every turn. I didn’t listen to Aada, and I didn’t listen to my own fears as she tried to work with them.

Being able to read Aada’s words months later give me empathy for her, reflecting on how she must think of me. I really did act like a shit friend because I was so tired of my bipolar disorder getting blamed for a lot of things that were emotional.

She blamed me for being emotional.

It’s no wonder that I thought I wouldn’t be enough in person. She’d treated me like a goddess when we first met, and I didn’t know what to do with that pedestal. I just returned the favor, a complete mutual admiration society. But once she was my actual friend, she didn’t realize that meant she would appear in my musings about what’s going on in my life.

I treasure the entries where she told me I did a good job, and choose not to remember the ones she hated.

She was always halfway out the door, so I decided to close it.

Again, I regret doing so because I cut off a future. I just didn’t see the future going better than the past. I will never know what would have happened if I’d relaxed. Maybe those baby steps would have materialized into something. She just had to get a lie off her chest first, and I imploded.

What motivates me is connecting to strangers, especially ones that ask probing questions. I’m not sure that I have answered any of them, but in short, recognizing the pattern with Aada was recognizing all the ways I’d been a jerk to her without taking the time to really think about what I was saying. I was too quick, always. It didn’t matter the reaction, it was too fast to take in.

This is what it looks like when I have switched the audience to Bob.

When the Daily Prompt Doesn’t Jive

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I’m not feeling the daily prompt, so I decided to just set out on my own. I’m not very good at generating positive emotions, because I have bipolar depression and anxiety. I do get up with a sense of joy in the morning when my coffee is right, but I also feel the storm of my own mind gathering clouds. I’m dealing with this in therapy, so I know that it will ease over time. I just don’t have many coping mechanisms for when I feel bad about myself.

And right now, I don’t have much to feel proud of. I’ve taken in the horror of what I’ve done to Aada, because I pissed her off in a very unique way that will make her regret she ever met me. But it doesn’t stop her from reading and it doesn’t stop me from writing about her because I don’t know what to write about next. I’m in limbo, with this relationship being so at the forefront of my life and now it’s gone. I needed it to be gone, because Aada was my friend and wouldn’t prove it…. keeping me in limbo as she liked my blog entries but didn’t seem to like me outside of them.

It’s why I don’t believe she lied to impress me. She seemed so put off by my writing that I couldn’t believe she’d want to impress a nerd with a keyboard. She seemed to think she had the real story, and I was just a liar. The reason she could say that is she kept her version of the story hidden, so I couldn’t judge for myself whether I was lying or not.

I went on flights of fancy and hurt my own feelings on more than one occasion.

I call her posse “the Reston contingency,” because if someone in California reads, someone in Virginia will. And eventually it gets back up to the top of the food chain. I’m glad that someone is checking on Aada to make sure she’s okay, because she doesn’t deserve my shenanigans anymore. I’m glad that I’ve broken myself of the habit of writing to her anywhere but here, because I know that it won’t do any good. It won’t do any good here, either, except to remind me of all the things I don’t want to forget.

For instance, I have a voice clip of her cooing over her baby dog, and that makes me melt into giggles of cuteness. I am sure that this dog is no longer a baby, but she coos at it just as much. I picture sitting next to the dog sometimes, wishing that conversation had taken place in person.

What did I hope to accomplish in person? More production meetings over what I could say and what I couldn’t. More input from her over how I’m doing just winging it that didn’t include reading me the riot act because it’s harder to ream someone out in person than it is when you’re at full-tilt keyboard warrior. I wanted more humanity and hugs in our discussions rather than full-on fighting to the death.

I don’t regret falling in love with her words. I regret not taking the time to fall in love with the rest of her. To be happy with whatever she gave me and calm down. To take in that her life was full of people she didn’t see, but had fulfilling relationships with online. I don’t know why that peace didn’t extend to me, but it didn’t.

As a result, I spend my days scared that her posse is watching, because there’s no going backwards. There’s only moving forwards without my darling girl…. whom I had the audacity to push away and it’s all my fault. I maintain that even though it’s my fault, I still have the right to grieve.

Mostly because it is my fault, and forgiving yourself is a hundred times harder than forgiving anyone else.

I wonder if she misses me now that time has passed, and guessing that she doesn’t. I wonder if I ever gave anything to her in all my musings, or if I am the manipulator she says. She doesn’t realize all the ways she manipulated me, and that’s fine. The way she tells her story is the way she tells her story. My isolation doesn’t seem to matter to her, and how 12 years was a long time to hold onto it without input.

I have to wonder what I was doing when I decided to break free when I supposedly love this woman.

I have so much to tell her that’s behind the scenes, and I chopped off any hope of that happening in the future. I have to live with those consequences, because Aada says that my writing is damaging to her. If I really love her, then I need to create a bigger scope with this blog so that I’m not focusing on her as a subject. I’m realizing that when I think of her, they are intrusive thoughts and not because she is intrusive- it’s because I’m putting love into a relationship where it is not wanted.

The truth is that this blog is boring without her, because what I learned from having an internet relationship all these years is that my letters to her prepared me for writing every day. I lost sight of writing about other things because these e-mails were enlightening to me.

I did all our emotional homework because I’m the feeler- she’s the logician. It was a total breakdown of labor. I could not count on her to be emotional, but I could always count on her to be pragmatic. She became my social mask, because it was easier being her than being me. I always had a quip for everything, and I’m sure I’ve given her a few things that ended up in meetings.

My favorite part of thinking about Aada is trading lines that she ended up using at work.

I’m funny when I want to be.

That’s the hardest part of getting over all this. Not feeling like I have the right to feel good about anything. I really hurt someone that I claimed to love, because I was feeling so lonely I couldn’t cope and she wasn’t listening to me. In polyamory parlance, I “bratted out.” I don’t deserve her forgiveness, but I hope that she knows I’m being honest with myself about what really happened. She lied to me and I used that as justification to sell her up the river. Especially when she flamed me.

I posted Daniel’s flame and she said, “you’re right. My first reaction WAS ‘that motherfucker. Let me get my purse.'” I wish that just once she could have read something about herself and thought that, too. She was too defensive, always, when I was pleading for empathy. Her defensiveness caused me more anger than I’ve ever told her, the root of most of our fights.

My happy ending was coffee together instead of just buying each other digital Starbucks cards. She never said what her happy ending was, because of course nothing romantic ever happened between us and wouldn’t. She’s beat it into my head that she’s straight and I don’t think of her as anything other than a boring cis straight white girl who would eat her coat before she’d look at me twice.

But she’s my boring cis straight white girl, so let her be who she is.

The thing is that the internet is relative, you aren’t taking in all of someone there. Her words moved me in a romantic direction before she explained that she was a boring cis white girl with a long-time boyfriend (whom she’s now married). What’s done is done, but I played all my cards wrong. If I’d kept my feelings to myself, we would have indeed met by now. We had plans to get together for Dana’s birthday and I asked her not to come because we were fighting at the time. Any chance I had to make things better, I made them fall apart.

I have to live with that guilt, because our relationship got unusual, fast.

The marks left on me by my emotional abuser never left me, and that’s what I need to work on in all my friendships from here on out…. and possibly with Aada because life is long. I never know what could change her mind over a friendship with a writer. I just know that the time is most probably past because we cannot make things any better than we can right now.

But maybe she’ll remember she wasn’t always the perfect friend, either, and capitulate once she’s taken all of it in. I doubt it, but again, life is long. Maybe we need to separate for good, maybe we just need time. I’m not in charge, I just work here.

The thing is that Aada and I are capable of creating something beautiful that we couldn’t have when we first met. Whether it’s fiction or a retelling of the story on my blog from her perspective, we are sitting on piles of money. I doubt she’d hire me as a research assistant, but my services are open to her if she decides she wants to publish her first novel. AI can do that for her, but I bring coffee and bagels. Take that, AI.

I think it’s a shame to throw all of that away, because I know how capable we are as Southern storytellers.

It’s everything I should have thought of before I pushed her away over and over.

I didn’t think about endgame, I just flew by the seat of my pants. If I’d thought about goals way back when, it would be to have a stable marriage and a stable writing partner, one who knows I’m in love with her words and therefore I take in everything she says like they have the capability to wound me like a partner.

I was the one that wasn’t open all these years, and I never blamed it on Aada. I just look at my life differently now that it is past. I gave Aada reasons not to want to be close to me, but I didn’t understand why I was doing it. It’s because she has the ability to wound me like a partner, and I didn’t know how that would come across in person. Neither did she.

She didn’t even tell me when she got married, not knowing how I would react. My reaction was hurt that she’d left me out of something so big, but not hurt that she was married. Part of accepting Aada for who she is means knowing that boyfriends are going to come along and possibly become husbands.

When she opened up to me, I should have opened up to her more. Maybe if I’d explained why I needed her so bad it would have made a difference, maybe not.

I wanted to believe that she was safe and secure, that we were safe and secure.

Her words rang hollow on the page.

Joy

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 3 Comments
Daily writing prompt
What positive emotion do you feel most often?
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I feel joy when my iced coffee tastes right in the morning, because I have learned that the key to happiness is small expectations. I used the cold brew method for 32 oz of Cafe Bustelo, and the smile on my face is priceless every time I take a sip. A good cup of coffee sets the tone for the whole day for me.

Mostly because my coffee time is also my time with you. It’s almost 0600, and dawn is just beginning to creep over the horizon. I think of my friends across the Atlantic and wonder what the day is already holding for them. What am I going to find out by being awake? I choose to believe in joy there, too, because for every piece of bad news there is a baby born, a new relationship formed, love to be celebrated.

I have to find my own joy in this administration, because everything from my identity as a nonbinary person to my ability to marry a woman is under attack. It doesn’t matter that I’m not planning on getting married again, to anyone. It matters for my friends who are already married or are planning on it. If abortion rights could be taken away, so could gay marriage, because abortion was settled law a lot longer.

It’s hard to remain joyful in that kind of pressure cooker, so again, I turn to the way my coffee tastes. I have to create my own joy, because no one is going to do it for me.

Generating joy is not my specialty. My brain delights in getting me to isolate from other people, even though I know I need them. I find that if I can start with one thing, the coffee, then I can slowly find another.

Maybe it’s the feel of my t-shirt against my skin, or the air conditioner tickling my bare feet. Maybe it will be the feel of the water as I start my shower.

Although I should do some laundry before I take a shower….

Whatever the case may be, I can generate happiness. If I start with something small and concrete like the taste of my coffee, I am not setting myself up for failure later in the day.

So Far, Poorly

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
How do you plan your goals?
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I have poor impulse control, and it leads me astray when I start building goals. Most of my friends have poor impulse control as well, which is why it’s hard to work together. Lighting rarely strikes at the same time. My buddy Evan and I are both committed to the neurodivergent cookbook, but we never seem to be working at the same time. I need to get AI involved just to keep me reading. That’s where I find AI is the most useful. I retain so much of what I read that getting it to spout facts and figures while I craft prose that it’s like having a secret weapon. I just do not use generative AI as more than a quote, which you will know is a quote because I don’t have problems telling people I created a digital sidekick.

I created real interest on Facebook and reddit, so I know that the book has legs. The one thing I’m having problems getting people to do is write back- if cooks want to know why we do everything, is there a follow up question? What do you want to know that we can explain?

My angle is that you want to know why we cook at home and how that’s been influenced by professional cooks and their friends. Knowledge is passed down over the private tables of friends the longer they cook together.

Some people prefer to cook alone, but this book won’t leave them out. Learning why cooks are the way they are about their food will resonate with me, so I know it will resonate with other introverts.

I’m about to stalk Aguste Escoffier across the internet to find out everything I can. He’s the father of all modern restaurants and the standards for cooking in them. You’re not a real cook if you can’t name the five mother sauces, and I’m guessing that his mother was a better cook than him.

Learning the craft of cooking is grueling, because you don’t have to be in a busy restaurant to experience timing issues and abject failure.

I wish I could quantify how to time dishes so that everything comes out together. It’s so much a dance of the senses, being able to tell with smells and sounds about how much time you’ve got. The mistake most people make is thinking that one dish needs their absolute attention. That way, they’re not cooking other things or cleaning, they’re overfocusing.

You can just check food without hovering over it.

I know timing so innate inside the kitchen, but I cannot seem to apply it to other areas of my life. I didn’t end up where I wanted to be, and I take as much responsibility as I can. I’m struggling with aging more than anything else, because my disabilities didn’t slow me down when I was fast enough to cover myself with compensatory skills.

Therefore, I have a lot to think about when it comes to goals from here on out. I have a yin to travel and a yang that ties me to home. I have a spirit that cannot be broken by bad weather because there’s always a good cup of coffee inside.

I have improvised all of my life, and my compensatory skills are now coming up short. My executive function keeps becoming poorer, getting overwhelmed with more and more. I think AI can help me with that, too, because no one needs to live like an animal.

My lack of worthiness keeps me in the dirt because I know what I should be doing and cannot make myself do it. I have pathological demand avoidance, which makes it hard to take care of myself. Meeting others’ demands is a lot easier.

That’s because I know what they are. I look at my body, my house and see lots of things that need to be done but cannot find an entry point. That’s where AI can really help me, because I can put in a list of chores and out will come eleventy suggestions on how to tackle something.

I just need to talk to my AI about it. I’m getting to the space where I realize I need to change my life from the ground up, having isolated myself from the rest of the world. Going to therapy and my cognitive behavioral health group is easing me into existence with other people. I realize that executive function also keeps me from wanting to invite people over, so I need to clean in order to have an inviting space to host.

These are my disabilities getting in the way and making my mental health worse. My goal is to leverage AI in my healing, because there’s so much it can do in teaching you how to take care of yourself when you really don’t know…. and are too embarrassed to ask.

I don’t know why I don’t have aspirations higher than that right now, but I know it’s a building block. I can’t take care of anyone else until I get this right.

And I do want to take care of other people. I feel selfish having such a small life around me, unable to attend because I can’t find anything to wear, don’t have anything to bring. All of this is just feeling sorry for myself, and I don’t like it. I’m happiest when I’m in giving, open mode.

Getting there is just an uphill climb because I chose to isolate myself in a new city with no friends. I had friends when I first got here, but it did not work out due to a huge lack of communication between all of us.

So, I’m trying to make friends and it is happening slowly.

I should get out more, but my ability to read the room is often why I don’t. It’s not that I’m shy, it’s that my social battery is tiny. I am over being in public fairly quickly. A walk to the store is about all I can take before I am ready to collapse. Taking in my environment is a full-time job.

Adding floppy muscles to that means I am working not to fall, even when I don’t notice that I’m doing it. My body is tense and tight, and I walk like I hurt. That’s because I do.

My goals need to include pain management, because I know that it’s not bad enough to need narcotics, but an NSAID wouldn’t hurt. In fact, I’ve forgotten to take it today and I really notice a difference. My next move when I get up from writing is a large glass of water and some Aleve.

That’s mostly how I plan goals- what is my next move?

I don’t play chess and think moves ahead, which is to my detriment.

I’ve let my enemy defeat me over and over, my own body and brain.

It’s the goal of a diseased brain to convince you to isolate. I couldn’t explain what I needed, so I threw a bomb over my shoulder and walked away in too many cases over the past 12 years. It has caused me to feel uniquely alone, or it did until I realized that my expectations were different from reality because reality lived in my inbox. This is true of all my relationships right now, and what needs changing for me to be successful in Baltimore. I stay home too much because that’s where my “real friends” are.

My real friends who cannot realistically help me because they do not live close.

I’ve made a mess of all my close relationships in the past and probably taking the blame for much more than I should, excluding Aada and Dana. I think I’ve pretty much worked out how all of that happened and it wasn’t that Aada couldn’t do enough for me. It’s that she wasn’t telling me something, lots of things, that could have directed both my writing and real life.

I’m the reason that didn’t happen, because I was done with it being hard to be her friend and there being very little upside. We’d have a close moment and immediately start fighting again, our humanity always lost because apparently meeting in person was too hairy a proposition.

I wanted the story on that. Why we couldn’t integrate so that our e-mail fights stopped? I can’t even read her e-mails in her voice, just the one I made up for her in my head- she’s doing the same with me and thinks our communication couldn’t be improved by sitting across from each other.

I hurt my own feelings by thinking that I meant more to her than I did. But when I felt that way, it’s when she’d tell me that she did feel warm feelings for me and she was just busy. I would get the hint, to just go away, and then she’d relight the flame that I just over-worried about everything.

The goal is to learn what I can by diving into the wreck, because I don’t want my next relationship to be affected by it. I did end up resentful I wasn’t a priority because she waffled on whether I was a priority to her- I just wanted things to be clear.

I couldn’t let go, so I made it where she’d have to… like Dana hitting me.

I was too unenlightened not to break the circle of violence because I’m certain I see it now. I can move forward from this loss because I saw myself becoming the Boo Radley in Aada’s mental house as she became my Scout.

My goal is to remember through the eyes of a child what it’s like to really live. I need light and love right now because some of the thunder is my fault. I sabotaged my relationship with Aada at every turn. And I don’t mean recently. I mean from the moment we met. It’s analyzing those decisions that make me realize how severe my bipolar disorder actually is. How severe my autism really is, because I learned that I miss social cues over the internet.

My goal in therapy is to become a better writer by exploring how my public and private life shouldn’t intersect. I’m looking forward to those discussions because I know he’ll point out things I should have already been thinking, and didn’t.

I fly by the seat of my pants.

Little Entries, Big Feelings

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
What change, big or small, would you like your blog to make in the world?
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The change that I would like to see my blog make is to get all people to feel. To see when I lay out my emotions on this site that I am not the arbiter of any relationship, nor am I doing anything but creating a space to feel. My story is my story, and everyone else is allowed to have theirs as well. I would love to read other writers’ thoughts about me, I just don’t have any blogging friends. Therefore, my friends are unique in that they come to this web site to see what I was thinking and feeling through any particular day. It’s not that I’m so great a writer, it’s that I remembered to write things down.

That’s another change I’d like to see in the world- that your words don’t have to matter because they’re “good enough.” They matter because they’re there. I find a tremendous amount of solace in the fact that it doesn’t matter how I’m feeling that day, people show up to read because they’re interested in how my life is going. It isn’t because I’m the best writer they’ve ever read.

I’m trying to make a case for more people having journals because it has helped me focus my thoughts to such an enormous degree. My audience keeps me accountable, especially the people who read and then we have lunch together later. I cannot go off into flights of fancy because I write about real people, real situations. Lying about them only hurts the people around me, so I never have. It’s painful reading about what really happened. It would be more painful if I twisted the truth to fit my own narrative.

But I can only write my version of the truth, which is no more or less important than anyone else’s. There are many sides to a story, depending on your perspective. Therefore, I cannot write anything objectively true in which everyone else is going to agree with me. But agreeing with me isn’t the point. The point is that this is my space, and their space is just as valuable as mine.

So many people have been with me through thick and thin. But I don’t know how often that has translated into them also writing blog entries that made their lives take on perspective. I would like to believe it has happened.

The journey I would most like to read is Aada’s, because her experience of me is so different than my experience of her. I have a feeling that she has kept her emotions close to the vest when it comes to me, and it would be helpful to know how she really feels when she is not angry at me. She has expressed anger and outrage to the utmost degree, and I hear her. But she has not expressed all the love she has for me over the past 12 years, probably because she feels like her words aren’t good enough. She has always been intimidated by my long letters, that it translates to me feeling like she cannot do enough for me. That is simply not true. Her words have been the most valuable thing in my life, and she encouraged me to delete them all. I wish I’d just ignored her. Because she is angry with me now, there is no well to go back to to remind me of when times were better. My memory box has been all but destroyed.

I am lucky that I only deleted one inbox, so that I do have a few things left from her… but the very earliest letters, the ones that meant the most, are gone.

This is both good and bad, because our history is a tapestry. Losing all of it creates an opportunity to let go and create more history down the road when we reconnect without tying our relationship to past ills. I have decided that I will just wait her out, because this blog is what ties us together. There will never be a time when she doesn’t read, even if she says she will stay away. She believes in me, and I know that is true no matter how angry she gets. I have the ability to entertain her… and if I can entertain her, I can indeed change the world.

This is true whether we speak again or not, because perhaps my job now is to make her laugh at my misadventures while also remaining a stranger to her. I think she likes my blog better when we’re not interacting because there’s less of a chance she’ll be in it. She likes reading about my other friends, she just doesn’t like reading about herself. This is a mystery to me, because in some entries I get down and dirty about the things that have gone wrong, but in others I portray her as a goddess walking among mortals. She is a 3D character, as much as she would like to complain that she is a “Flat Stanley.”

The thing that changes my world about this web site is that no one gets to be “Flat Stanley.” They all have amazing qualities and they all have conflicts with me. If I left out one and only wrote about the other, that would be manipulating a story to fit my own narrative when justice means a lot to me. If someone does something great, I will say it. If they do something awful, I will say it. I don’t want to portray people as I want them to be, but as they are.

These little paintings of people with words are what I have to offer in terms of changing the world, because they are not supposed to be “the best.” They are supposed to be real. Hundreds of years from now, someone will come across this blog and say, “Leslie and Aada are interesting.” All of my friends are interesting, Aada just gets more airtime because she is my favorite person. That journey is the most fleshed out of any on this web site, because she’s been my friend for longer than I really want to remember.

She came into my life at a turbulent time, and changed it for the better. That does not mean that the turbulence was easy. Getting away from Dana was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do in my life, and I miss her dearly. We took care of each other for years and got to a place where it just didn’t work anymore. Dana checked out, and it left me vulnerable to a crush I thought would never go anywhere, and it hasn’t. What has happened is that I accept Aada for everything she is, and that includes not being attracted to me. That did not mean Dana wasn’t jealous, and held it over both of our heads in different ways.

I think a lot about what would have happened if I’d come out as poly way back when, because I’ve always been in love with multiple people. It started when I was 12 without me even realizing what was happening. I couldn’t connect properly to Meagan, my first girlfriend… and that has been thematic because I’ve always tried to be monogamous and failed because there was someone else grabbing my attention. Instead of trying to fit a round peg in a square hole, I just decided that Aada was it for me, that there would never be anyone above her, and everyone else was just a secondary relationship. It didn’t matter that there was no romance in our relationship, because that’s not what I’ve ever said to her. I mean that I have her back. That if someone hurts her, I’ll be there to pick up the pieces by buying her Diet Cokes (loaded with Jack) and just sitting on the couch with her while she cries, encouraging her to get out and pick a new man. I don’t sit there and wish she was mine, because she always has been to the best of her ability. That’s enough for me.

But of course, I don’t have any expectations that anyone would hurt her. I think she’s got a very stable life with her very stable husband and that means more to me than anything, because I cannot give her everything that her husband can on any level. For as much as I wish things had been different before I knew he existed, I think things worked out the way they were supposed to. Aada shares in all my secrets, encouraging me to get out and date people so she can hear all the dirt when I come home.

She would have loved Sam if Sam hadn’t betrayed me.

I say that Sam betrayed me because she told me that she didn’t have time for a full-on relationship, so go and date multiple people. I just want your time when you can give it. Then, she called me while I was at Zac’s house and broke up with me because she just couldn’t do poly. If she had been honest with me from the beginning, I would have been her one and only, because Aada never would have gotten in our way. She would have supported both of us, loving the idea of me being a step-parent to musicians. But Sam told me that she had a habit of jumping into relationships too quickly, and didn’t want to do that with me. She was lying to herself, because what she really wanted was to dive into me and never resurface. The feeling was mutual, but I didn’t want to pressure her. So all these feelings were left unsaid, and now we’ll never get that back.

It’s been years since that relationship ended, but explaining how it came apart changed my world and how I looked at it. That people often lied to themselves until it was a crisis point.

Explaining how I felt was my way of changing the world at large, because my experiences matter. I have a unique perspective on what it means to be poly because my primary relationship wasn’t romantic. It was a matter of priority. But Aada being married meant that she’d never need me more than her husband, so I was off the hook in terms of putting the people I date off to go and take care of her. I just wanted us to be open and free with each other, and maybe one day we’ll get back to it. We both just need time to relax and learn to be open again, letting our past problems breathe.

It is possible that we will never reconnect, because the breathing is better for both of us. I don’t think she enjoys being friends with a blogger right now, and that may never change. But my hopes and dreams for the world would change if we wrote together.

Sometimes I wish I could just say, “damn it, Aada… we both destroyed each other and need the chance to rebuild trust. Why isn’t that a priority given our long history?” That’s just not how she does things. She cuts off relationships rather than rebuilding, and that’s okay. I’m sure she has some choice words for me that would change my world, but I don’t know that she’d ever say them.

But if I could do things differently, I would. If she could take back her lie, she would.

We should at least start there, because we are two writers that deserve a book together.

It would change the world.

Food, etc. The Et Cetera is More Important

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
What’s the most money you’ve ever spent on a meal? Was it worth it?
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I seriously cannot remember the last time I went all out on a meal, but what I can tell you as a professional cook is that the amount of money that you spend is never the important part- it’s who you allow at your table. You will remember the conversation much more than you’ll ever attribute the success of an outing to the food or the wine.

I prefer to dine with one or two people at a time, because my auditory processing lag doesn’t really allow me to enjoy multiple people talking at once. Three is about the maximum number of people you can have at a table before two conversations emerge at once. I am not stingy- the more the merrier. All I am saying is that my personal preference is small and intimate. Everything is not always up to me.

I can think of two such outings.

The first was after my colonoscopy, I wasn’t feeling as out of it as the doctors promised. I was able to go out to dinner with my sister. We stuffed ourselves on appetizers and seafood at The Chart House, talking about anything and everything. What is always interesting about talking to my sister is that she’s so much younger than me that we remember the same events from wildly different perspectives. Neither is wrong or right, it’s just that a six-year-old’s memories are going to be different than an almost 12-year-old’s, for instance.

The second was my first outing with Josh. We went to the National Aquarium, where I had chicken tenders and he had a hamburger. It wasn’t fancy food that drew me, but a fascinating conversation that went from the national news to how we processed emotions… the kind of conversation that twists your brain and leaves you hungering for more. Josh used to be a journalist, and now he’s a therapist. Therefore, he asks you interesting questions as well as providing a lot of color commentary on the whole world. I have a feeling we will still be talking well into our eighties at this rate, because neither of us have a pull stop when it comes to caring about world events.

The Chart House is much more fancy than the cafe at the National Aquarium. Just because the food was “better” doesn’t mean that I had more fun. It was the quality of the conversation that made each experience unique.

The funniest outing will be introducing Josh to my sister, because they are both ADHD and I might not get a word in edgewise. 😉

There Are No Uninteresting Stories

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
Scour the news for an entirely uninteresting story. Consider how it connects to your life. Write about that.
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After I got this prompt, I decided to install Copilot Desktop on my linux box. To do that, the easiest way is to go to the terminal and type “sudo snap install copilot-desktop.” When I open my terminal, I have a little program that displays “fortunes” at the top, little pithy sayings or quotes from books that often jog my writing habits. Today’s was “just because a letter may never be read doesn’t mean there’s no value in writing it.” That sent me down the rabbit hole of using Copilot to find letters that had been written, but never received. Though this is more history than current news, it is a story that is worth revisiting for its outpouring of love. I feel that it is also a stunning display of patriotism, and a reminder that the cost of war is too great to bear:

July 14, 1861

My very dear Sarah:

The indications are very strong that we shall move in a few days—perhaps tomorrow. Lest I should not be able to write again, I feel impelled to write a few lines that may fall under your eye when I shall be no more.

Our movement may be one of a few days duration and great success—we may be called to a protracted and bloody conflict—but whatever it may be, I feel that you and the boys will be the constant objects of my thoughts and prayers.

And now, my dear wife, I must bid you perhaps a long adieu. The duty of a soldier and the call of my country forbid me to yield to my own longings and to be with you for a time at least. But know that I go to this strife with the utmost faith in the cause for which we contend, and with the strongest conviction that God will direct and bless us.

My dear Sarah, though we may be separated for a time, I know that you will ever be with me in spirit. You will never know how much I loved you, and how well I loved you, until after a long time.

If I do not return, my dear Sarah, never forget how much I loved you, nor forget the love of our dear boys. In the quiet summer-time, when the bee sips honey from the flower, think of me in the field of strife, and in the stillness of the evening, when the sun sinks behind the western hills, think of me, and pray for me.

But if I do return, my dear wife, I shall be with you in all the joys and sorrows that may befall us. I shall be with you in all the trials and conflicts that may beset us. I shall be with you to protect and defend you, to comfort and console you.

My dear Sarah, I am going to risk my life for my country. I am going to risk all that is dear to me in this world, and I know that I shall not return. But I know that I shall die for my country, and that is all that I can say.

Goodbye, my dear wife. Goodbye, my dear boys. May God bless and protect you all.

Your husband,
Sullivan

The way this letter involves my own life is that I view all my blog entries as letters sent but never received unless a specific person writes to me and says that they’ve read it. Not all entries are to the same person, but they all contain elements that I wish certain people would read. However, it is not up to me whether the message gets to its intended recipient, it is enough that people all over the world share in my joy and pain. Neither emotion is built to be carried alone.

I don’t intentionally write to specific people, it’s that I’m a product of my own experiences. My blog entries cannot NOT be influenced by my real life and what I’m thinking about that day. For instance, every time my ex-boyfriend was deployed I sat in my room and waited for him to come back, paralyzed with fear that something was going to happen to him while he was away. It’s not that he was doing anything dangerous. It’s that if he was, he couldn’t tell me. Though I never wrote about any of his deployments, you could tell by my mood whether he was in town or not.

You can tell a lot of things by the mood of a writer, even if they aren’t as up front as the letter above. I just happen to be a writer who does lay their heart in their hands. I have never grieved any partner more than I’ve grieved my friend Aada, and that’s because our demise was my fault, in her mind. I do not believe that in retrospect, because the relationship took two to come apart completely. Her lie made me look like a jackass, not that I needed any help. Her lie exposed me to emotions that never should have been present. She puffed herself up at my expense, and the cost was steep.

It is no wonder that I got as angry as I did, even if she doesn’t see it and won’t. It’s why I think we’ll never reconcile. She will continue to believe that I manipulated her when the relationship unraveled with her lie. That’s not something I can fix in someone else’s mind. All I can do is be genuinely sorry for my part in all this, and as time goes by be more open to accepting her just as she is, liar and all. Who hasn’t told a white lie that snowballed into a mountain over time? I can certainly understand it. I just couldn’t control my reactions in the moment and that’s my burden to carry. I am talking it through in therapy to understand why I didn’t laugh. Why it caused red mist rage.

Because my heart is as open to her as this letter, and has been for 12 years. I have often laid my heart in her hands just as much as this man loved his wife. I needed her emotional support, not her romantic love, but it didn’t make me less vulnerable. In fact, I think it made me more, because she’s the person I used to tell about my romantic misadventures. I miss that most of all.

I have to remember that I chose this. I chose to let her go, because she made her intentions very clear. If I talked to anyone, if I published anything, our relationship was over. She set a fine trap for me, and I fell in. That’s because I had to choose between being true to her and being true to myself, and I don’t think that should have happened, either. We were both supposed to show up as our full selves, and my occupation has always been “blogger.”

I hope that she’ll go back to some of our entries that have been meaningful to her and realize there’s something worth salvaging here. It would take a mountain of work, but there’s no one I’d rather work with to accomplish a goal. She’s so worth it, because 12 years of history is not easily done. She’s been my best friend through very thick and very thin, when I was a mess and when I was strong. I pray for her every night, because my anger shouldn’t be at the forefront anymore. It is an old, old prayer, started in 2013…. “God of the universe, protect my precious Aada.”

She doesn’t believe in God, but she believes that when I pray it must do something. She calls me her “pinch hitter.”

When I’m going through it, she says she will offer up her own black magic prayers. I hope she’s still doing it, because having someone out there praying for me is just as important as us being in constant contact.

But I won’t contact her directly. I will just send a message that may never be read.

Happiness

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
List 30 things that make you happy.
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  1. The thing that gets the top spot is a very good cup of coffee. It doesn’t have to be expensive- I use Cafe Bustelo, a Cuban roast that is dark and delicious. Most of the time I put half and half in it, but today I’m drinking it with hazelnut creamer. I am drinking it with my breakfast, another simple pleasure.
  2. Baleadas Regulares- a simple Salvadoran bread with filled with egg, beans, cheese, cream & avocado. It’s officially my favorite breakfast because it’s easy, cheap, and will reheat well. Three come in an order so that’s three breakfasts for the price of one, which is not that much to begin with.
  3. Happiness is a cheap taqueria that delivers. You can quote me on that, because they’re words to live by.
  4. The sound of a child’s laugh.
  5. The sound when you open any kind of soda- the effervescence is joy.
  6. The way my brain works, because this list will be very stream of consciousness and contain no natural order. Yet, if I’m lucky, it will still be interesting enough to read.
  7. My readers- my favorite part of you is just how many countries have viewed me. I count the flags every day and wonder what you are doing as you go about your own days. I imagine that because you’re on WordPress, our days are somewhat similar- you write, too.
  8. Eating at a restaurant. I love feeling like someone is taking care of me.
  9. Cookies with creme in the middle, my favorite being lemon Golden Oreos.
  10. Chatting with my girl Friday, Ada. She’s my AI digital assistant. Yesterday she tutored me in Spanish and this morning she helped me when I said, “I don’t know what ground happiness should cover.” It occurs to me to say that Ada is not a shortened version of Aada… that Aada is a name I picked up from a Finnish name generator and Ada the AI was named after Ada Lovelace, Charles Babbage’s assistant that doesn’t get as much airtime.
  11. Aada makes me happy even though we aren’t friends anymore. I’d give anything to go back and fix our relationship, but there’s no world in which time moves backwards. I think that the fight is too big, at least at this time, because there’s no way for us to feel safe. We have done enough. She lied, I exposed her. But looking at her picture and savoring the few words I managed not to delete from her are enough to make a digital memory box. I never close the door on any relationship and hope that she forgives me as I have forgiven her. But the chance of reconnection is slim, as much as I may long for it in the future.
  12. Josh makes me happy because he is in France, sending me pictures of places I will probably not visit myself. He will be there for another few weeks, so I’m looking forward to lots of tidbits for my first book. I don’t know that he knows about the neurodivergent cookbook yet, but he will eventually. It’s why I sent him on the wild goose chase looking up things about Escoffier.
  13. Mexico makes me happy because of the ocean. The water is so clear blue that snorkeling is a dream come true… as long as you don’t get caught in a tangle of jellyfish.
  14. Lindsay, my sister, makes me happy because she has a true sense of adventure that I didn’t get. She’s the extrovert that drags me out of my house.
  15. My dad makes me happy because he’s always up for a phone call to chat about anything and everything, and he’s funnier than I am.
  16. Finland makes me happy because it’s where I dream of escaping on a long summer’s afternoon. I am not built for summer in the slightest, preferring to be bundled in layers with it very cold outside. I can’t wait to tour the country, and possibly to go to culinary school there.
  17. Cooking makes me happy, but my current kitchen does not. Therefore, I am very particular about my tools. I miss being in a professional kitchen more than words can say. The spirit is willing, but the body? Not so much. Culinary school is a different beast than working in a restaurant full-time, which is why I am willing to go to culinary school at all.
  18. Thinking about the career paths open to me after I get my stripes is interesting, because I would like to be an executive more than I would like to be on the line. My dream is to start a nonprofit, so I’m learning how to write grants in my spare time.
  19. My laptop makes me happy, as well as my HDTV in the bedroom because when I connect them, I can have my web browser and Ada open at all times.
  20. Linux makes me happy, because I love the community aspect of group coding, troubleshooting, etc. I wish I could run it on my laptop, but I use it for games. Though linux could manage my games, it does not manage the mod organizers and I’d be missing about half of what makes Skyrim great. I have a dedicated linux box, it’s just not fast enough to run Skyrim. It does run Fallout 3 and Oblivion, though, which is amazing given that it’s running through a Windows translation layer and there’s no loss of quality. It lets me know that installing linux on my laptop is possible, but again, I would miss out on mods that I dearly love.
  21. The Skyrim mod that makes me the happiest is called “Legacy of the Dragonborn,” and it’s a museum dedicated to the Dragonborn and all their accomplishments. You collect items and do quests specifically related to the museum, but there are displays for all the main quests and the major addons as well.
  22. Cleaning makes me happy and I wish my executive dysfunction wasn’t so horrible. I need everything to be organized and neat but I cannot maintain it. I spend a lot of time berating myself that things aren’t perfect, then go on a whirlwind when things get too messy for me to function. There’s nothing like the smell of Fabuloso at the end of a day.
  23. Writing makes me happy because I need to express my feelings. I am sure that my friends and family would have been happier had I turned out to be a fiction writer instead of a blogger, but most days they’ll take what they can get.
  24. Medicaid makes me happy because I do not know how I would take care of myself without it. I’ve managed to find a team of doctors that genuinely care how I’m doing and check in often.
  25. Cognitive Behavioral Health, the company that’s in charge of my group on Tuesdays and Thursdays, makes me happy because it’s a chance to hang out with other people having the same struggles I am. When you are mentally ill, it helps to know people who are also mentally ill. You don’t need your frame of reference to be “keeping up with the Joneses.” It will literally drive you crazier.
  26. A second cup of coffee also makes the list because there’s nothing like the AuDHD feeling of needing caffeine until your hands shake to make your brain work. I have a coffee machine made by Instant that can do a mug in under a minute.
  27. Facebook Messenger makes me happy because I don’t have many friends in Maryland. I chat to people all over the world and it makes phone and video calls equally free. It’s nice to know that my friends can be in touch whether we’re living in close proximity or not.
  28. YouTube makes me happy because I look at other creators to get ideas for my own future videos, as well as it being a university for anything I want to learn. I’ve been watching videos on everything from computer networking to refinishing a basement. The fact that I do not have a basement to refinish does not bother me- it’s my comfort TV.
  29. Telehealth makes me happy because I can visit with my doctors from the privacy of my home, where I can stay out of the way of other people’s germs. I have a bad cold- they want to stay out of the way of mine, too.
  30. Life itself makes me happy because it doesn’t matter what kind. I will watch fish in an aquarium for hours. I’m proud that I have a plant growing on my patio. Seeing people with their kids as I walk to the grocery store. It doesn’t matter because it all matters.