Tag: love

Describing the Color Choice

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Part of the reason my entries about the woman I call “Supergrover” is because she won’t answer a lot of basic questions about herself, and yet I have access to her heart in a beautiful and unique way. I got in through the back door in the hacker sense of the word, because nothing would ever have happened between us if we hadn’t kept to staying out of each other’s real lives.

I realized a few days ago that I had burned down the entire house on mutual friends. However, I wasn’t being encouraged to do so in any way. It was my reaction to her words, always. I cannot describe what she or anyone else went through at that time in our lives, and so far I’ve been handed more confusion than answers.

The closest I’ve ever gotten to feeling secure is “someday, perhaps” and “also. Thank you.” She’s quiet when she’s sincere, and those words echo just as much as the ones that hurt me. There is no possible way that she does not come across as a 3D character, and I will not believe it. I cannot write both the entry she referenced and a letter to her husband telling him to be good to her because she wouldn’t let me be good to her as well. If I can think those thoughts, why can she only accept the dark ones as the truth? Why can she not see that I am woven into her like The Impossible Girl, the one whose DNA is spread within The Doctor’s. I got there by only being her inner monologue as well. Our similarities show in our writing. One thing touched me deeply, and she said that I portrayed her as flat as if it’s not a wheel with many spokes. I told her that if she took every entry from March until now, she’d see the many different spokes in the wheel. That I remembered every one and wrote them all down.

You cannot think someone is worth nothing and a villain if you’re willing to go toe to toe with her husband and have it out. Who does that? Someone who thinks there’s no such thing as “the friend zone.” It’s better when we’re in each other’s lives than it is to be apart. I’ve written about that pain in exquisite detail so that I don’t forget a moment of it. There was a passion and drive within me to have her in my life at whatever level she could accept me into hers, but then it became about the cost/benefit analysis of living in so much confusion. I told her it caused anger and issues that needed to be resolved. She didn’t want to resolve them. At no time did it mean that I became that person who wouldn’t safety net her through anything. I am still her red telephone, and what I know is that Bryn and Zac would not deprive me of her, because they’re always rooting for me to succeed. I just would have to balance Bryn’s needs as well, because I cannot abandon her after the ways in which she’s made me grow. We have the ability to have a very deep and meaningful relationship because we have lived in the same place. We were raised by the same “parents.” We both lived to tell the tale. She’s my partner in terms of the one I’d want you to go to if something was up with me where I couldn’t be contacted. That’s because she’s the only one I’ll talk to when I really need to reach out. She feels the same way about me.

Just because you haven’t gotten married to someone doesn’t mean that loyalty and confidentiality mean less. That my vows to my friends are less important than the ones I’d make to a partner. I look to Bryn’s face for love because I can. I would look at my beautiful girl the same way if I thought she thought it was a privilege to be let in. But that power imbalance kept both of us from really laying things on the table.

Oh, the stories we could have told. Stories that are both true and factual. I still have the picture in my head of a photo shoot I want with her, and I hope it makes her laugh if she remembers what I’m talking about. Let’s just say it involves gender role reversal and leave it at that. I’ve checked with me and her husband absolutely wants this picture, too.

To think that I want to paint her as the villain when I’ve poured out everything in terms of how I feel about her makes me lean on the memories that make me laugh.

Here’s the best one of all. In ten years, she has never sent me a voice mail of her saying her own name. I say it like it sounds. She says it the way she likes it, but I can’t correct it and I’ve been saying it wrong the whole time.

I call her all kinds of nicknames because I can’t say her fucking real one.

Now that’s describing all the colors. She’s not a villain. She’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met in my life, and I don’t understand why she thinks she isn’t.

She is my red and my violet. My whites, greys, and blacks.

I paint my feelings as fact, but never once have I used PhotoShop to make it prettier, or to crop something so that the framing looks better…. like I have that good an eye naturally.

It’s all a spectrum. It’s all an ADHD mess. The temperature of our relationship centers on hot with drive to reconnect, not hot with passion. It never will. But painting my feelings as fact shouldn’t go unnoticed here, either.

I love her, and I won’t apologize for it anymore. I don’t even care if she believes it. I know it to be true, and I cannot be held together by one entry alone. I hope, for once, she’ll focus on this one.

It’s one of my favorite colors.

Whatever It Is, It Isn’t Enough

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

What’s the most money you’ve ever spent on a meal? Was it worth it?

I am a cook, therefore I cannot afford to eat all the places I’d really like to go. Since my sister can afford to treat me, she does. But that’s not how I spend money on food and drinks. I lay out serious cash at the grocery store, because I can make food exciting by making a dish, then making a completely new dish out of the leftovers. I buy things at grocery stores that most people just think, “it’s too much work.” I will roll sushi at home. I will soak beans overnight so that I don’t need the convenience of cans. I will wash rice. I will do all the things it takes to be an awesome prep cook so that I’m comfortable on the line at home as a solo act.

The only thing I don’t do is buy meat at the grocery anymore. It’s fine if I’m eating out at a restaurant. I just don’t like wondering if it’s going to spoil, or the whole process it takes to thaw things without cooking them. I don’t want to leave chicken in the sink with water dripping down because my housemates will either get soap in it or try to clean it up. I have had them throw away things when I went upstairs to get my phone.

I think the most money bit comes from having the “keeping up appearances” marriage first. We ate a lot of money trying to be social with our ExxonMobil friends. We went to bars and restaurants that cost a lot, but we never really got anything substantial out of them. There’s only one thing I remember from that time in my life with clarity. It was a brewpub out in Fairfax that made banana clove beer. The combination of lightly sweet banana (not artificial) with Belgian spices made my palate sing. This was before I met Dana, before I went to her mini culinary school. The palate was there, I just wasn’t putting energy in to the right direction.

Meeting Dana brought a lot of things together. The above paragraph is why we would have had a lot of fun in DC together. The thing is, though, I had to get away from her to become a better person, and I hope she feels the same way about me- that we are both wonderful people, but we do not need to be together to know that. We’ve checked.

It would have seemed less weird to the outside world if we’d moved to DC together, but the plan was always to end up here eventually. It’s an adventure we wanted to go on together, and when we split, I still had fire in the belly to do it.

It made it look to the outside world that I was chasing a girl, and I did nothing to help myself out there, but I just didn’t care. It wasn’t worth the energy to figure out how to care about so many things that were beyond my control. Getting the girl in the end would have been nice, but it wasn’t necessary. She and DC are not synonymous in that if I’d suddenly taken off to a city I knew nothing about and the only thing other people knew is that she was there, I’d allow everyone to raise eyebrows at me. Clearly that’s insane.

But when you’re presented with a move that will solve every need including getting the girl? We’re getting somewhere. That’s because there was never any pressure on the relationship to succeed. Washington is big enough to hold both of us, even at full strength.

I stopped thinking about food a few paragraphs ago because I’m still reeling after getting an e-mail from Supergrover that I don’t know what to do with. I’m just spiraling out in my little neurodivergent head because she is bound and determined to wall off and let me know she thinks I’m not that great a writer because I paint my feelings as fact and everything is all about me.

This is my web site. I don’t project feelings onto other people unless they’re interacting with me and I am trying to explain it. No one else in her life has made any move to get to know me, so what they think is all her business and none of mine….. but it would be my business if I knew what she was talking about.

I am only an authority on me and what I perceive.

What I perceive is that prepackaged food holds no nutrition, and very few people are willing to create a dish without shortcuts.

Wash the rice. Soak the beans. Dice the mirepoix.

The most expensive ingredient in food and relationships is time.

A Comprehensive Response

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I blog, therefore I am healthy.

Writing is a comprehensive response to life. That is true no matter what kind, but particularly blogging because the story moves forward every single day, because it’s a choice to post, not a responsibility. I do not feel like I have an audience to whom I owe anything. If I needed to, I’d push the red button and everything would be gone. Nothing threatens you if you don’t need something out of it. I would be giving up a lot, but I wouldn’t stop writing. It’s a huge deal to be a blogger, because people cannot predict what you’ll remember and think they can.

Someone might be totally freaked out and barking up my tree not to write about them, but what they don’t know is that if I can’t make an illustration out of them that works, I won’t. Not everyone makes a good character. Telling them that is worse than blowback, because their ego gets involved. What do you mean, I don’t make a good character?

I feel like I handle this better than most after coming out to straight people without a clue. You’ll never see a more butt hurt child than when they’ve told a gay person they don’t like them “that way” and the person says “you’re not my type.” They are horribly offended in the most hilarious of ways. It is more than physical attraction, and they’ve taken your rejection as if you think it isn’t.

My straight girl crush was because I was struggling in my marriage and it was easier to feel high as hell on new relationship energy than it was to deal at home. She is drop dead gorgeous and it didn’t mean anything to me because I wasn’t looking at her picture while I wrote. She was the equivalent of my “corporeally challenged celebrity girlfriend on the radio.” (I went on a date with a woman from OPB/NPR… maybe two… but this is what Dana and I called her for 15 years.) I could have a crush on a straight girl because it couldn’t go anywhere. I’d get all the good stuff without all the bad except I didn’t. My trauma bond screamed with empathy because she didn’t give me a slap bracelet after the fire.

When I say that someone makes a bad character, I mean that when I write about you, the emotions fall flat on the page. If I can’t make myself feel anything, no one else will feel it, either. If you go back to my older entries, you’ll be able to tell when I’m distressed. I can, but I also have the memory of writing the piece if it’s so overwhelming it made me sob. People think I get really angry when I’m actually crying my eyes out. I am literally pouring myself out onto the page so that I have an accurate idea of how my mental and physical health are treating me. I realize when I’ve been too harsh. I realize when I’ve been too nice.

What makes Supergrover such a great character is because when I write about her I can cry. Not many people evoke emotion in me like that because I just won’t get vulnerable enough. When I write about my beautiful girl, I step into a museum with ten years’ worth of collected art. Some of it was bought and paid for. Some of it we stole in a heist. We’d push and pull and tumble and roll, but for whatever reason, we didn’t cut each other off. That’s because the museum had no easily accessible exits.

I became exhausted because bringing up conflict and it never getting resolved was eating my self-esteem for every meal.

It was very, very confusing because we’d have a fight and she’d say we were done. When I assumed she meant it, I’d try to move on and then she’d drop in. When I assumed that she was just angry af and apologized, it was perceived as me trying to get attention. She would tell me that she told me it was over and I just pushed, but I have two solid memories that stick with me.

The first was a huge fight that really was the end of it for me. Like, I am just not capable. She reads on my blog that my dad is having surgery and checks in. I was pleased, but I felt weird about it because I thought, “surely she sees why this would be problematic.” It felt like “leave me the fuck alone, but I’m going to make sure you know I’m watching.” It has never gotten any more resolved than this, because when she dropped in on me, it was fine. When I dropped in on her, she felt creeped out because she thought it was me saying “I’m always watching.” It happened again when we had another blowout and I thought maybe then I’d get a break long enough to figure out what really happened. Someone said something to her that reminded her of me, and she was back in my DMs.

Neither one of us could break the connection, just “tumbling through a freefall, no one’s going to go unscathed….. but it’s not because you held back, and it’s not how I behaved.” Now I’m humming…. “and I believe that underneath it all, you are my friend. And the way that I fell for you, I’ll never fall that way again. I still believe despite our differences that what we have’s enough” because I believe in her (and I believe in love). You know I have the ability to cry about this if I’m writing and suddenly quote Indigo Girls.

I told my friend Missy that I didn’t even listen to them for the longest because it created a “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” amount of “AS IF I’M NOT WEIRD ENOUGH.” I had a stereo in my room. Their albums didn’t leave when I did for years.

Now, one of my favorite songs is “When We Were Writers.”

Writing is not what Supergrover does for a living, but she does write in her spare time to get away from work. She’s right. It’s a bubble, When I say that I can’t do something or I have to go because I’m writing, it is taken every bit as seriously as when Lindsay says, “I’m going on a run.” Nothing else is more sacred than spending time alone so you can actually hear your thoughts.

With a virtual relationship, you never have to feel alone. That’s because their physical presence has never been needed. The relationship wasn’t created that way. We’d become each other in our work, borrowing style, structure, and tone. It was quite sophisticated in retrospect. It’s amazing how much we were able to do for each other virtually, and now everyone knows it because of the pandemic. We were virtual BEFORE IT WAS COOL.

We’d trade off being The Holy and The Moly.

We both went scorched earth too much when it was infinitely possible to just be out with it and either be done or decide we have something and work toward it. My emotions were larger than hers and always have been. She absolutely knew this. But I do not think that she ever thought that she’d be reopening a wound if she reached out. My part in all this is that because my feelings were large, I ignored everything bad and just kept on believing that one day, I’d find the combination of words that would unlock her. In my mind’s eye, I’m 14. She’s six. I’m older, and I should have known better.

When you know better, you do better. Maya Angelou’s words, but true for me as well. I don’t even know if she likes Coke, but she has a unique name and I knew for damn sure she wasn’t going to find a “Share a Coke with…..” bottle anywhere. So I ordered her one from Atlanta. There were actually six. One with her actual name, one with her character’s name, her husband, her kids, and her dogs. Except the Coke bottle said “Boytoy” on her husband’s because that’s how we referred to him. She never saw them, because I mixed up the address and put my name on the wrong part of the form. So they got a box addressed to me for a reason completely unknown to them and returned it. I was furious because it cost so much to do, but I was only angry at myself for mixing up the web form. It was so unique, and ADHD fucked me. I was absolutely miserable because it was the nicest thing I could think of to do virtually because I’d been a jackass. It was the friend equivalent of having to sleep on the couch and buying chocolates and flowers to beg.

Since she wears suits and crap for work, she also travels sometimes. I sent her a bracelet with a charm for her favorite cause. She told me it was perfect and sent me a picture of her wrist. I feasted on that for weeks because now I could go wherever she was, metaphysically. She just isn’t the sort of person that would tell me where she went, because it’s not important in her daily life and that’s really what I wanted to hear. I don’t care how she’s doing professionally. I care how she’s doing emotionally. I am the red telephone where she is concerned. Even now that we’re done I won’t hear a bad word about her because my friends don’t care about her. They care about me. They don’t recognize how much she gave me because even I’ve never heard her side of the story. I couldn’t make anything better. She was looking for hurt, so she found it.

The bracelet said to me that as long as I kept my behavior consistent, she’d know that my drug protocol was working , and not to worry if I spiraled out, that it had nothing to do with her. It had to do with my mental health, and no one else is in charge of managing it. I know when to go to the ER/psych ward. If that doesn’t end up being the whole story, still not her damage. Blame poor health and bad medicine, not the patient.

It all seems scary to people the way I lay it out because I’m dispassionate. I have a disease. It has to be managed. People need to know they’re off the hook for checking in on me, because when mental health issues pop up, if I don’t do anything that’s my fault.

“Oops. My bad. Should I leave a note?”

Wow. That was dark, even for me. I’m mostly fine, so that’s not an indication that things are about to get worse. It’s just a reality check. Run the numbers, don’t diagnose me.

I am awaiting the cause of Sinead O’Connor’s death. I think I already know what it is…. and no matter what it is, you don’t die at 56 of natural causes.

I don’t want to know, but I ran the numbers.

Here’s the other thing you need to know. You cannot guess what mood I’m in, or whether I’m experiencing depression or hypomania in my work because I write about things that have already happened and I’m searching for the road ahead. I map out what I feel now to plan for what I’ll feel later. It’s not because I know you better than you, it’s that I have to decide how I’m going to react to our next interaction based on past history. I will know whether it’s time to stand up for myself or apologize with fancy Coke.

However, I did not just send a gift and assume that she’d take it as “I’m sorry.” It’s just that her love language is action and mine is words of affirmation. I compromised, she didn’t. She could respond in her own love language, but she couldn’t meet me halfway and talk about her feelings. I never knew which way was up. It’s just not fair to leave someone in that much confusion because my need was being rejected. I needed her to show up, be present in the moment. Instead, her responses were dismissive or angry. Meanwhile, I’m trying to do things that make her less angry and annoyed, but I couldn’t because I was guessing all the time. I got done with guessing way too far past my breaking point. She had enough information to blow up my life, not the other way around. And yet she saw me as a threat without realizing she felt like one to me, too. We were in the same boat, just back to back.

She is the Aunt Voula. I am the Toula. She will be everyone’s favorite and I’m okay with that because she’s my favorite, too. We’re in that weird age gap where I’m not young enough to be her kid, but not an average age between siblings, either.

In the beginning, she treated me like an equal. After fights, she treated me like a pest. It is my fault I treated her badly, and her fault that she never got over it.

The problem isn’t even that she “never got over it.” It’s that she is free to be someone who decides how they feel about you on a daily basis for someone else. It was chaotic and I was tired of the swings.

It wasn’t good for my mental and physical health.

We Will Come, Because We Love Our Girl

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Dear Michael,

I wish I’d thought to write this letter a long time ago, because I have things to say to you that should have come from me years ago. You know everything I didn’t. Just more than I can possibly take in. It was a shitty hand to be dealt for both of us, because here’s the thing…. the woman we love didn’t let us bond, so we couldn’t talk to each other about the ways we could support her. I wonder all the time what it would have been like had I been your wing man long ago, because I would have. I would have cheered you on from the beginning. All the things I never knew cost me, and you should know it. We both know how it feels.

She should have let us feel each other out and then claim our corners to regroup. It would never have come together in one hour. We both would have had to learn to manage the other’s feelings and not get frightened of them, because we both know they’re large.

We should have been allowed to make room for each other, and I was stuck in the bathroom. I hope we’re both sorry we never sat down at your table and just served every dish we’d created over eight 10 years. If you were me, you would have traded those two for a lifetime and you fucking know it.

We should have been allowed to bond because we didn’t have a full house and wouldn’t until all parties saw all the cards. I would have dealt you a hand if you’d been allowed.

What I know for sure is that that we all would have won and rotated hands. What I know to be even more certain is that you and I would remember every loss and celebrate every victory until we were dead.

If you’re the man I know she’d choose, I know you’d move heaven and earth just to stand next to her. If you didn’t turn out to be that man, God have mercy on your soul for this life and every lifetime after. My feelings are just as feral as hers and I will find you.

My only job in this whole equation would have been to allow you to be the best husband you knew how to be, because I wanted to be you and I’m just not capable for many reasons. Neither is she. That doesn’t mean that my protective nature went away when she said it should. She may be her daddy’s little girl, but not the fuck in my presence. I said that about her EA. But her EA was me.

It was my role to be “The Girl Whisperer,” and we never got that chance. So here is an itemized list of things you’ll do if you love her:

  • If you can’t cry when she does, you’re not paying attention. She doesn’t generally cry, so by the time you get to that point with her, she has no myelin on her nerves and she’s working practically blind.
  • She loves levity because of it. It preserves her armor for too long until she’s desperately needing help because she hasn’t asked for it. You are going to have to fight her on accepting love every day, and if your game isn’t sharp, her life will pass you by because you’re not really taking it in.
  • If men do not talk to her first, they will overfocus on her beauty and undermine her smarts. If you have never seen her with someone who has underestimated her and taken in its enormity, you are missing out on the best part of her. When you realize that you are missing out, course correct immediately. Your story is not more important. Her story is only more important right now.
  • If you give up, you will never see what delayed gratification looks like, and it is immense. You cannot take it in. She will see your sacrifice, I promise. She sees it too much and it weighs on her. I am walking away because I did not want to cause those swings of emotion in her. I didn’t need her to think about me while she was busy. Neither do you, but don’t go too long. One resentful feeling can be put away. Years of them can’t without resolution.
  • When she doesn’t have time, she doesn’t take time. Do everything you can to lower the volume on television channels in her mind. You can’t turn them all off, but you can make your signal more pure. I hear she likes well-written letters.
  • If you write something beautiful for her, she will keep it forever. Even if everything ever written between us has been put into the trash, she’ll be able to quote her favorite lines from memory. This is not a humblebrag. This is acknowledging sometimes a piece of notebook paper and a pen end up being more expensive in value than a day at a spa.
  • She is also a writer. If you can’t reach her through talking, switch mediums.
  • Dark begets dark. Make sure she knows she’s an absolute diamond every second of every day, and make sure she knows she’s of the purest color, cut, clarity, and brilliance. That’s because she won’t tell herself, and her inner monologue keeps her from seeing how beautiful she really is.
  • I will never get over this loss, and you won’t either if it happens. Make her your first priority because you can’t not. You will not be able to afford those consequences, and I assure you from the wisdom of my experience.
  • Everything I write has a thread of her running through it, and if you were me, they’d be mostly about her. It’s not because I’m not capable of doing my own thing. It’s because my story isn’t more important right now. It will be more important later. I had to choose which story was worth telling. Look at me and tell me it’s mine. I dare you.
  • Because she’s a boss, she’s going to remembered for her professional accomplishments. I hope you’ll come here to read about her emotional accomplishments, and know that they are much more important than anything anyone else will ever read, and only we know it. We’re the ones that love her for who she is. We will remember all the things other people never knew.
  • She uses ellipses to an enormous degree. It’s your job to find out where the trail goes.
  • Sometimes, that trail leads to me. Being apart is injuring all three of us.
  • It is not lost on me that I can move on, but if you ever do it’s going to be a straight up problem. I’m glad she knows you well enough to know that I am not projecting jack shit. You’re a rock and I fucking love you for it. You have no idea. Just none.
  • Make sure that you’re capable of telling when she’s in hell, especially when it’s your fault. Most of the time it will be. That’s the hand we’ve been dealt.
  • In moments when it gets difficult, remember that her love will overtake you with a forest fire’s intensity. Remember everything you love about her in order to keep the flame in your mind and not the ash.
  • She thinks she needs less help than she does. You’re going to be stuck in a fight to let her love you, so sharpen your weapons.

I have never wanted anything but Kings full over Aces for you. I would have reached out. I would have been a better person if she’d let me grow into that role. I would have trusted you to drive, and just slept in the car.

There are so many more bullet points, but I couldn’t go any longer without expressing all the things you never knew, either.

There are so many things we could have shared. I will leave it up to you to decide what I mean because that’s exactly why I need you…………………. on some days more than I need her. It’s just that you have the Google Calendar and I have a yellow string.

That yellow string is now yours if you want it. I just wanted to offer because that’s all I was ever trying to do. If our relationship was going to get healthy, it had to be the three of us, with a relationship that allowed for more as I accepted it from the universe.

You’re the coauthor of her story, I just wrote it down.

Always and as you wish,

Leslie

Wordless

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

What is your favorite genre of music?

I am the one that provides the words.

I need music to flow like water around me. I love the word “soundscape.” I love how composers and writers make love to each other, birthing individual creativity that feeds the other.

Probably one of the reasons the partners I’ve had haven’t been creative (except Dana). I thought it was a good thing that we were so different, because we were feeding each other. Now, I realize that nearly every relationship I’ve ever had with a woman became based over time on division of labor. They’ll do all the thinking if I’ll do all the feeling.

I was comfortable with my beautiful girl’s availability because it was no different than any relationship I’d ever been in with a woman except the relationship I was currently in. That does not mean I choose wrong, or that I’m a bad person for not getting rid of the Internet relationship. There’s several reasons I couldn’t do that, and even when I realized it was necessary, it was too late.

I can’t remember which entry I was reading where it became clear, but I know for sure that I am trauma bonded to this woman and perhaps it just didn’t present for her in the same way. That’s fine, and I don’t expect anyone to have my experience. I was just reading over what I’d written when it hit me….. “that’s a trauma bond.” You need her so bad it physically hurts? That’s a symptom.

If she doesn’t have an itch on her skin when she thinks about disconnecting from me, then of course we are not the same. I wish I’d thought about that years ago. I should state for the record that I am not saying she caused trauma. It’s the opposite. She came into my life while I was experiencing acute trauma, and sat next to me while I took my own medication. No one who sat with me at that time isn’t bonded to me in that way, it’s just not as extremely loud and incredibly close.

I think the itch on my skin is thinking that I am too incomplete within myself to do life without her, but that’s my trauma talking, not my personality. Even she would be surprised to see how vulnerable I really am, because I don’t write from that place often. It never left my mind that she’s older and wiser, so be on your A game. Seeing her as younger comes from getting to know her inner voice. I care for that child as much as I care for that adult.

I betrayed everything I believed in because my disease started managing me. I don’t think I came back to myself until I moved to DC and had been here long enough to feel stable. I had to get away from Dana, and I had to get away from Houston. Our relationship looked so much different without those two things, and I was grateful. This is because I moved to Houston with Dana because she wanted to teach, but then when we got there, she didn’t do anything until she had to.

So I was managing my career and all kinds of PTSD triggers everywhere I went. It was unsustainable, especially the day when I learned that my new therapist’s office was a couple streets over from…. That house.

Getting out of Houston so that I could be myself again might also have been the answer to saving my relationship with Dana, but I don’t think anything could have done that. We got into a pattern where she’d check out on her phone, I’d decide she wasn’t interested in interacting, and e-mail my Supergrover. It wasn’t a big series of fights, just more that when we each looked up, the other was busy, so we assumed we could just keep on doing what we were doing. We woke up months later and didn’t have much of a connection anymore. The reason that a straight girl did not and could not have had any culpability in this is that if Dana and I had made more time to be emotionally available to each other, we would have been okay. We just stopped communicating.

Just because Dana was jealous didn’t mean anything my beautiful girl did to contribute had purpose. Dana chose to get angry at the wrong woman.

Actually, she forgot to get mad at two women. She should have destroyed me, and also herself…. Because I am betting that she does not think of herself as checking out and not caring, and how that might affect my relationship with her.

Because if I tried to engage her and it took more than a few minutes to get her to engage, I gave up. Maybe it was too fast, but I don’t have patience for saying “just five more minutes” when it comes to a video game and I am offering to take off your clothes.

Gay or straight, Supergrover whooped Dana’s ass, and here’s how she did it. Dana didn’t start acting like I had serious value until Supergrover noticed I was brilliant.

So, everyone can think I’m the bad guy until I’m dead. I don’t care. But the relationship started to fail before I shot it out of its misery.

In a perfect world, I would have seen another woman looking at my brilliance and thought, “oh, that’s sweet.” It’s not a perfect world, and she’s hot as shit…. Therefore I lost mine.

I was the one that tumbled out of reality, because at that time in my life, reality bit (if you’re my age, you wore out that disc. It’s probably scratched to shit yet still in your parents’ basement somewhere).

I just wish that I’d used music to help me more than I did. I wish I could have drowned out both women so that I could hear me more clearly. Perhaps my need would have been filled by something healthier, cleaner.

Music definitely would have helped me move on for good, but even that was confusing because I did have a relationship with my beautiful girl. Tenuous, but there. It was a note that grew up to be a symphony, because I love dissonance in the right chords.

Too much had happened for either one of us to feel the same way about each other without work, and we decided for whatever reason that this was a conflict that could be solved by writing. In retrospect, it made things more complicated because neither one of us can read when it comes to the subject matter. How would our conversations be different had she ever put her arm around me? How would kissing each other’s cheeks and hugging tight have mixed up the equation? I go back and forth.

It’s not something I think about a lot, because it’s pointless except in determining that I don’t know as much as I thought I did. It’s just not possible for each of us to feel as much fear in person, because there’s more to grab onto in terms of context.

Because of what has happened, I am wary of online dating, because I know what a shit show it has become. I’m getting a taste of my own medicine in terms of not being able to deal with others’ emotions, because a guy who randomly reached out to me now thinks we are in a much heavier relationship than I do. I just tell him everything she’s told me and surprise, it works. So obviously I know that we were not on the same page and she was trying to fix it as well. Our approaches were just so different that they prevented us from seeing what the other was doing or even understanding it.

But it’s not the same situation. I did just meet this guy out of nowhere, and he started acting enamored after a couple of conversations that had legit nothing to them. Nothing was said that could have created a trauma bond, because I don’t talk to anyone about that unless I’m writing on my web site. I feel like people get enough of my problems if they’re fans, so I won’t talk about my issues unless people ask….. or with Zac, I’ll just ramble around until he finds a point. 😉

I am finding out that being bisexual has nothing to do with sex at all, ever. I have learned that I have dated few men not because I’m not wired that way, but because men legitimately have no clue about what women go through societally and are so damn condescending about it that some dude will say two things wrong and I’m like “block.”

To be fair, I haven’t specifically started seeking out men or women. I just connect with people. However, I notice how I’m being treated and overall, men treat me like I’m little and cute. Boy, I will fuck you up. Respect me as such.

It’s because men aren’t looking at me like I’m half a husband, and it is their downfall. I will never be “the little woman.” I don’t understand most social constructs and step all over them, so expecting that I already understand everything about male/female relationships is a mistake on both our parts.

When a trauma bond snaps, it feels like quitting caffeine cold turkey and then having to deal with the headaches. So, that’s a lot of fun as I negotiate being a new person. It’s why I feel like I’m not good at dating. I go out and I’m not focusing on them, but about how long it’s been since I had at least a goddamn Diet Coke. My body doesn’t feel right, and the one friend that’s always been there for me has taken a back seat…. When music could have handled the detox on its own. Music and I have been together since I was born.

My mother was a classically trained pianist with a degree in piano performance and pedagogy. My father played both classical and jazz trumpet, getting 26 full rides for college. Curtis, Juilliard, Oberlin, you name it.

I am what happens with “the Mozart effect,” but I’m not sure whether that’s a ringing endorsement.

Music has a way of focusing me that other things don’t, and I’m going to have to make a Supergrover playlist as well, because the music I needed to get rid of romantic feelings isn’t the music I need to feel calm. I’ll start with the color green. She reminds me of new life, new growth, new everything and the music should reflect it. I’ll have to go through my music apps, but it should start with something like “Sheep May Safely Graze” yet not exactly that because I’d be whistling it 24/7.

I just need things that are mathematically complicated in a major key.

Actually, that would be a good tagline for her, if there was one. Never have I met anyone with such a range of emotions that centered on light, often shining it into my darkness while I cleaned up. It was easier because I could see.

I listen to classical music a lot while I’m doing other things, because it relaxes my ADHD mind to have at least one plug filled. One less way for another stream of thought to interrupt.

That’s how I think meeting in person would have helped. Talking would have avoided all the traps of going down the wrong road too far before having to figure out an exit strategy, which as you can see is going really well. Obviously I’m not bothered by the situation because I never write about it. Eyeroll.

The writing prompt today reminded me just how much I cannot separate the music of my life from life itself. I am put together with blood and bones and skin, and yet that doesn’t mean music’s contribution isn’t there. Music is the invisible fourth wall providing structure…. So thick you don’t even have to have a stud finder. Just decorate it up, it’ll hold. Like concrete, music drips like water into all your softest places and hardens. Music that moves you will call you to you forever, and not everyone is attuned to your beat.

To turn that back on me, my rhythm changed and I didn’t realize how different it had become. I was a basic 4/4, with a new composer who only knew how to write time signatures by subbing in random numbers. Today, it’s a waltz. Tomorrow, it’s a march. Tuesday is experimental jazz odyssey.

I am living my life with the map on the table, knowing there’s no way to fit it back into the package.

Which ultimately leads me to my favorite song in life, and a story about my ex wife. I thought it was hilarious that the Indigo Girls were on tour, and Kathleen was late to the concert…….for the “GET OUT THE MAP” tour…….. 😛 😛 😛

The thing that stays with me from the first time I heard it until now is “I’m going to love you good and strong while our love is good and young.” The hope for that love is eternal, knowing a piece of it is in me. I can stop the itch on my skin, I can go back to my life, I can move on. But there’s never going to be a moment in my life that is bigger than “you think I’m smart? You? Really? Are you sure?”

Teaching Me, Part II

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I found a poem which expresses my feelings toward my beautiful girl, the platonic soul mate sent to shake me out of complacency… yet so far not designed to be a lifetime appointment. I am not letting that change me, however. Love does not depend on the recipient.

I told Kristina that she had saved me trying to translate my soul. Everything she writes guts me, but this takes me back. It is my entire personality, and the heart of miscommunication in a hundred percent of my relationships with neurotypical people. I have been this person in every relationship I’ve ever had.

It’s nice to see it clearly.

Poorly

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

How do you practice self-care?

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.

Failures Past and Present

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

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. 😛

What Do I Do Now?

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 1 Comment

One of the things that happened during the relationship with my beautiful girl was a very skewed sense of self. This is because she would say things that were completely counter to what the rest of my friends said about me. This was a very good thing in some ways, because I needed an outsider’s perspective. It was therapeutic to be able to talk about everyone in my life with no strings back to her, because we existed out of each other’s time and space. The dark side of it was believing a lot about myself that wasn’t true, because she wasn’t there. She was commenting on “there.” It took me a long time to take in that difference. It made me wonder what we’d have been like as a part of a larger group, because it would have made her commentary on my behavior so much different (I think).

The thing that reads universal to me is the difference between how you present in person vs. online. Seeing someone in their context matters. Isolating so that you’re only seeing each other is a blind spot. Tone of voice matters. How I see you treat other people matters. It is a different feeling of inclusion, physically and virtually. I will always be this person, the one that prefers virtual to physical, and the one that shouldn’t doubt its power. I get caught up in my writer personality, which leads me to ignore meeting in person until long after I’ve needed it- absolutely starving for a hug.

I wouldn’t even have suggested to said Internet friend that we should meet if I hadn’t discovered every single way my writing personality could fuck something up first. I wanted to meet up because I was tired of being misunderstood, but wouldn’t have cared about meeting in person if it wasn’t affecting us negatively. Text can only impart so much, and comprehension is due to context clues. It’s freewheeling to disconnect from anything that provides them. This is why I use the phrase “the emotional equivalent of freebasing cocaine.” Everything is coming at you straight, no chaser.

What would it have been like to know her as a girlfriend and mom- not because she told me she had a boyfriend and a kid. Because I was there and I saw them interact? Neither of us were keeping those things out, they’re just impossible to add as attachments (at least with Gmail). I would have loved to see her wipe the floor with her husband, because if she’s as brilliant with conversation as she is with writing, I could have popped popcorn. What I can do virtually is love him as an idea, a concept. What I can’t do is look at him while he’s looking at her to make sure he knows he’s the luckiest bastard on earth.

I also know that anyone she didn’t like wouldn’t last long…. Except maybe for my own amusement. Hearing her get bent out of shape over my dating life led to some of my favorite quotes ever…. All of them unprintable. I wonder what it would have been like for her to see me as a wife and a friend, and how fiercely devoted I am to both roles. I could tell her about it, but so different than her observing everything.

I’d want her to tell me when my girlfriend wasn’t looking at me the way I wanted her husband to look to look at her. She’s an excellent judge of character, and I could make a meal out of watching her feral nature when it comes to the people who are allowed to date me. I laugh when I think about how different it would have been had we experienced her physically meeting these people. I double over picturing asking her “what do you think?”

I grieve for that image as well. I feel like a bad writer when I cannot capture exactly what I mean, and I am sure a lot of what I’ve written has made wanting to meet me impossible. She thought I was a loose cannon as often as I thought she was, because physical interaction wasn’t slowing anything down. Anonymity helped at first and was hard over time, and not because of anything illicit or bad. It’s that only so much of each other comes through when you are not physically sharing the same space.

It’s a weird feeling knowing that there is so much I would have said with my body language that was cut out entirely. For me, it is similar to having a conversation with someone in Spanish. If they only spoke to me in Spanish, they’d think I was an idiot because I can’t even speak in more than one tense. I don’t know how to tell you what happened or what will. I can only tell you what is happening right now…. And even that is garbled. They will have missed what I can do with language when I have it. Choosing to be only virtual pals was the equivalent of being limited to Spanish when we were both natural English speakers.

It informs how I proceed. I make an effort to see Zac and not just Facebook Messenger him all the time. I make the effort to video call Bryn (though right now she’s on vacation). I try not to write so much down, because it’s not exhausting to write, but it is to read and it’s too much to ask of people who are too polite to say anything. Part of my love language is hearing the emotions that come up for you when you’re reading, and I know that if I send too much at one time, it’s overwhelming. When I have physically spent time with someone, it lessens my need to write to them because we just talked. Not having that guardrail is also problematic, because the last thing I want is for people to think that I am just rambling on for attention. From my perspective, I am including you in my life by describing it. It comes across to others as too much homework. Therefore, I am reticent to begin relationships over the Internet when I know there’s not a chance we’ll meet. You can only be so vulnerable with me in a vacuum, because I might know things other people don’t know… and yet I don’t know anything they do, either. Everything I know about that person has been distilled into black and white, where their pictures are all in color.

Color in a black and white relationship blossoms in commentary. Connection is so easy on one level, complicated on another. You can’t get to know a person’s natural rhythms, even in speech. The tendency on the internet is to pick out the angry things and comment on them first, without seeing what kind of day the other has had in any real sense… over time, it just becomes your perception of what their life is like. Perceptions attach certain moods and behaviors that compound in the other’s mind without ever being founded in reality.

I don’t know whether I am foolish for thinking it was better not to have this friendship than it was to live with the disconnects, because the perks were great. She’s my favorite humorist because there is literally no topic on earth she doesn’t know about, so no matter what ball I’m lobbing, she’s there with the world’s best pithy comment…. And the best ones are unprintable.

At the same time, I was carrying a lot of pain knowing that in some ways, I’d made meeting me feel scary. It made me afraid of myself. Not knowing where I stood gave me more reason to doubt our relationship would ever be more well-rounded, and that there would be an end to feeling like I was hurting her all the time. I knew innately that if I could emotionally injure her, I could emotionally injure other people. So I absolutely fixated on trying to make things right because if I could be redeemed from this mistake, I might be capable of a relationship where no one got hurt.

I had these perfect pictures in my head, changing as she and I did. Funny moments teaching her how to cook, joking with her husband because we know we’re the roadies on a pretty great tour. If the fates had aligned differently, I know I would have been Paul Child, not Julia…. And that’s why I needed her in a nutshell.

I don’t want to be the Julia. I want to be the Paul. I want to be the one cheering people on to do what they do and be who they are. Being supportive of her fills my purpose in life, too. But in this case, I am not limiting Julia to my beautiful girl. I just know I was born to help other people be great. Not having been that for the one I love the most is an exercise in torturing myself and leads nowhere good. Now, I absolutely know what I want in order to avoid the same mistakes. It is learning to negotiate those desires with others so that they also feel heard where the sharpest pain lives, because now I am overly protective of myself. I don’t let people in the way I should, because I’m thinking constantly about what I have done versus what I will do.

Telling me what you think while looking at me has become important again where it wasn’t for a very long time. I was afraid to come out of my shell for fear of rejection, so I just wouldn’t. Asking my beautiful girl if she wanted to hang after she’d already witnessed the worst things about me mattered. However, it was not a moment I knew I could take. It had to be given. So, when she said she wasn’t ready, I didn’t bring it up for years. It didn’t seem important in the grand scheme of things.

It became important because of all the things being lost in translation. Particularly, not knowing if saying that someday you might be ready is real or is something you say when you don’t know what to say. It is impossible to glean from mere words.

I made a meal out of someday without really looking at the amount of time that went by, engaging in the same behavior patterns over and over. It wouldn’t resolve without one of us doing something. I couldn’t stop feeling these large feelings, but I could do something to discourage them. I could turn my attention. I was tired of all of it. All the self recrimination. All the guilt. I have learned that I am not a bad person, and I should stop treating myself like it. I was holding myself to my worst mistake, reliving it in a way that she never would have endorsed. She would have protected me from me if I’d let her.

Dear God, how she tried.

Knowing she loved me that much, to try and understand something that wasn’t tangible or explainable, made me ferocious in trying to understand everything about me that repelled her. This is what I mean when I say that she’s always been the most honorable part of me even when I couldn’t be that for myself. She was rock solid in all the areas I was blind. She taught me to me in a way that will never be duplicated, because I had a yardstick to measure my success. Not in terms of material things, but in terms of emotional strengths she had where I was weak and needed time to grow.

But if the other person isn’t learning and growing with you, the imbalance shows quickly. There are too many chances for things to go wrong when 93% of you is somewhere else.

Strength and Helsinki

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

This One Time, Listen Up and Hard

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 3 Comments

I want to tell you something about the man I eventually want to be with for the rest of my life. I need you to really hear me, really cry with me, really feel the pain and joy that I felt when Daniel decided that I was trustworthy enough to be trusted with a story this big. I want it to go around the world by tomorrow, and I’m not kidding. I want you to lose your MINDS when you hear his story, and I want to make myself the best known writer in the world for this one entry alone. I do not think this is undoable. Please make me famous for this one thing, and I will owe you everything.

I just got a text message from Daniel that said, “my girl, be prolific.”

Well, I am nothing if not that.

It was a calm day in the market when Daniel was in country. He noticed something out of the corner of his eye. He stood strong and shot.

The “noticing someone” was a terrorist wiring up a five year old child to explosives so that he could blow up everyone in the plaza.

If I showed you the award he got for it, the Marines in the audience would lose their minds.

I did. I took on all his pain. Just all of it. I sobbed and sobbed and couldn’t get ahold of myself for hours, and I’m sobbing even now. I can’t get over it. I am too filled with joy that even though it was the worst day of his life, it feels like the best day of mine.

I definitely had thoughts. The first was the strength it took for a military-trained nurse practitioner to break the Hippocratic Oath…. to wrestle with it, because he was tasked with saving life, not taking it. I wonder what it was like to look a terrorist in the eye, knowing that under normal circumstances, you’d be taking his history and physical. The second time was just how close I came to losing one of the great loves of my life before it ever happened…. well, as children. It counts, but there’s so much more. The third was how humbled I know I’ll be to be in his presence. It’s a reverence that will fade when he hasn’t done x or y, but will never be forgotten. Please don’t let it be forgotten by anyone else.

But don’t you DARE do it to honor me. I’m just the messenger.

This entry is going to be short, but I hope it hits you like you didn’t even see gravity’s rainbow until the bomb NEARLY went off, taking a five-year-old with it.

Sit in that. I did. I am humbled. Just bleeding out with gratitude. My heart can barely take it, but it wants to.

Editor’s Note (DW): When we called general quarters on the ship, I never felt the mixture of fear and excitement. It was all business. I took control of my sound powered phone with my CSOSS manuals and a dry erase marker and kept track of what systems were up and down. That was my job during the shit in the shop. Afghanistan isn’t even a different animal. It’s a different being. You literally see a bag of chips and ask if that’s a ied. The excitement is skipped and the fear is squared. Getting back to the wire was a tear leaking experience , because thank fuck today wasn’t the day and all 7 of us came back

I just had a thought that is so funny that I cannot end the entry without telling you. “When you want something done right, hire a Corpsman.”

Let me also add a note to my dad and all my friends in Naples, particularly Tiffany Anthony, MD. I am fully convinced that I am eventually going to marry Hawkeye and House, mixed with the very best of Jimmy Leeves we have left in this world and Dr. Anthony in our corner from Dallas.

50 Things You’ve (Probably) Never Been Asked

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 1 Comment

Hat tip to Martina for the writing prompt. 🙂

1. What is the color of your toothbrush?

It’s black & red, but I need a replacement soon. Stay tuned.

2. Name one person who made you smile today:

Bryn, who said she was sending me birthday presents in the mail (my birthday was 10 September). I love mail.

3. What were you doing at 8 a.m.?

Talking to my sister on the phone. Sometimes we talk during her commute.

4. What were you doing 45 minutes ago?

Drinking coffee with cinnamon & soy milk and talking to my new housemate. I’d tell you all about the conversation, but it wasn’t that interesting. If it had been, this entire entry would be about it instead.

5. What is your favorite candy bar?

I’m not really a candy bar person, although I do like Zero. Right now I am all about licorice allsorts. I ordered the original from Geo. Bassett & Co., Ltd. for my birthday and I just sat there and ate them until I felt fat…. and then I ate some more.

6. Have you ever been to a strip club?

Several, but it’s not a turn-on. I have to love the person to be attracted to them. There was a strip club across the street from my apartment in Portland that I used to go to for a drink occasionally, because it was within walking distance of my house. But I didn’t sit where you could see the women. There was a closed off bar section that was really fancy and the bottles were back-lit with neon. I didn’t even know something that cool existed in my neighborhood, and to this day I’m not sure why I went in the first place. I’m sure it was originally someone else’s idea and I just went with it, but I went back because it was a cool place to hang and no driving afterwards.

There is also a famous vegan strip club in Portland that I went to for another lesbian’s birthday party. I ended up sitting outside for most of it, but honest to God I loved the food, particularly the sloppy joes and mac & cheese. The part of the show that I saw, I liked, though. It wasn’t just women looking bored and dancing to music, it was acrobatics that defied the laws of physics, like Cirque Du Soleil but naked. Not only that, there were no French existentialist clowns. For that reason alone, 10/10. Highly recommend.

7. What is the last thing you said aloud?

I can’t remember exactly, but I was trying to get out of the conversation with my roommate so I could go back upstairs and enjoy my coffee quietly.

8. What is your favorite ice cream?

Every flavor I try is my new favorite, but I have a special spot in my heart for the banana/vanilla swirl soft-serve at Florian Fortescue’s in the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. My dad, sister, and I got different flavors to try, and I think that was the winner out of all of them. Now that I’ve been eating a lot of plant-based frozen stuff, I like “ice cream” made out of almond milk that has almonds in it….. really ties the dessert together.

9. What was the last thing you had to drink?

Coffee…. are you even paying attention?

10. Do you like your wallet?

I love it, and I haven’t seen one like it, so if I find one, I need to buy it because this one will wear out. It has a clear pocket on the front that I’m sure was originally for an ID, but I put my Metro card in it so I don’t have to take it out to swipe. The only thing I don’t like about my wallet, and this is a small gripe, is that it has a money clip on the outside that makes it uncomfortable to put in my back pocket.

11. What was the last thing you ate?

Extra, extra Hot Tamales.

12. Have you bought any new clothing items this week?

Does a new clear protector for my Apple watch count?

13. The last sporting event you watched?

Franklin, one of my housemates, is a rabid soccer fan, so I watched a game for a few minutes with him, but I can’t remember who was playing.

14. What is your favorite flavor of popcorn?

If I’m buying it while I’m out, it’s hard to find but I love cinnamon-glazed. I also love caramel-glazed and cheese corn mixed together, which is much more widely available. If I’m making it at home, I pop low calorie butter-flavored and then spray Pam on it to get turmeric and All-Purpose seasoning to stick (the more garlic, the better).

15. Who is the last person you sent a text message to?

Well, I use FB Messenger a hell of a lot more than texting because I can respond on any of my devices. It was to Dan, confirming our birthday plans for Tuesday.

16. Ever go camping?

Once. For me, the line about only wearing long underwear in your sleeping bag was the worst piece of advice ever. I finally got up around 4:30 and put on every piece of clothing in my suitcase. I would probably enjoy it more at a lower elevation where it’s not so cold. I was on Mt. St. Helen’s, which to me was freezing even in the summer.

17. Do you take vitamins daily?

Not always, but I do take an iron pill daily because I donate platelets and your iron level has to be above 12.5. Multivitamins give me terrible gastrointestinal distress, so I limit my intake…. but sometimes I need them because I am not the best eater on the planet.

18. Do you have a tan?

As Jim Gaffigan said, “I am what you would call ‘indoorsy.'” I tan vicariously through my friends who do that sort of thing. I think I’ve only tanned a few times in my life, and that was from living in Houston/Galveston. The most serious tan I ever had was spending weeks outdoors. I went to Mexico on a mission trip, then spent a week at choir camp, then three weeks at marching band practice before school started. Marching band practice in Houston is akin to signing up for a three bedroom, two bathroom condo in hell, except hotter. Who was it that said given the choice, they’d live in hell and rent out Texas? Same.

19. Do you prefer Chinese food over pizza?

I can’t. I eat pizza every Friday night in memory of my mother, who started the tradition when Lindsay and I were young. Besides, Argo, Aaron, & Dana would be so metaphysically disappointed (I’ll link to the entries, but if you got those jokes without clicking on the link, you are an OG “Fanagan”).

20. Do you drink soda with a straw?

There aren’t many “always” and “never” questions in this life, but here’s one of them. I never use a straw if I’m sitting down at a table, but I will always use one on the go. I am down with both the reusable and plant-based plastic straws, and I am so proud that my McDonald’s (don’t know if it’s a national thing) has switched to the latter.

21. What did your last text message say?

“Leslie, your Rx order is ready. Get it delivered!” I get wigged because they don’t offer delivery in my area and it irritates me that I get the possibility of delivery with every message and the disappointment of reality at least three times a month.

22. What are you doing tomorrow?

Finally, I have something exciting to say on the topic!

  1. Drink coffee and be awesome.
  2. Find something cool to do until 8:00 PM. I’m thinking of going to the National Gallery of Art, because I just learned today that they have a Van Gogh room, and I didn’t get nearly enough “time with him” at the Musée D’Orsay. I’ve always said that if I ever go back to Paris, I would like to spend an entire day there, staring at Van Gogh paintings while writing so that my crazy mixes with his crazy and we’ll see what “comes out of us.” I would be lying if I said Doctor Who had nothing to do with this (truly memorable trying to not freak out with joy at seeing The Church in Auvers-sur-Oise for real). By the way, none of the sunflower paintings say “Amy.” I checked. Twice. Also, as far as I know, Bill Nighy does not actually work there. I could be wrong.
  3. Meet up with Dan for outrageous desserts at Tryst. You might have heard of it during the Gary Condit/Chandra Levy scandal. Not why we’re going there, but when Dan suggested it, I realized I’d walked past it but had never been in, so it’s not NOT why we’re going there……….
  4. Curl up with a good book. Right now I am in the middle of Three Women, Blink, and War and Peace. That last one may sound ambitious, but after reading The Moscow Rules, I decided it was appropriate (and only 99 cents for the Kindle version with amazing commentary). I wanted to go back and read Tolstoy’s take on Russian history having started it in high school and never finishing. This time around, I have learned that the Russians thought Napoleon was every bit the fool and tyrant that over half the country thinks our current president is now (for reference years in the future, I’m talking about Donald Trump).
  5. Eventually fall asleep, but there’s no telling when because it depends on how engrossed I am in reading.

23. Look to your left, what do you see?

An empty McDonald’s cup that I need to refill with green tea, all of my medications, and my iPhone.

24. What color is your watch?

It changes at least four times a week, because I have an Apple Watch that makes it way too easy to slip the bands out. Today it is hot pink with a black & white Minnie Mouse face. I have a red leather strap that I wear the most often, with the classic color Mickey Mouse face. Today, Minnie is in grayscale because she is also classic colors and I needed her to coordinate with my choice of band. The face also has lots of colors, as you can put on “complications.” I have no idea why they’re called that. They’re basically “desktop icons.”

bindi-irwin-o-bindilrwin-some-days-you-just-need-to-3323284725. What do you think of when you hear the word “Australia?”

Not a thought so much as pictures of my friend Allison and a meme of Bindi Irwin (if the text is too small for you to read, click on the image for hi-res).

26. Do you go in a fast food place or just hit the drive thru?

I don’t drive, I am rarely pressed for time, and generally there’s free wi-fi. So, inside it is.

27. What is your favorite number?

So easy I don’t even have to think about it. Eleven. Matt Smith, the baby giraffe in a bow tie (and sometimes a fez), is my Doctor. I’m in love with him a little bit because when he got the role, the Internet rebelled against him and said he was never going to be any good, but I haven’t felt more emotion in the show than watching his interactions with Amy, Rory, River Song, Vincent, and himself in a memorable soliloquy in “Nightmare in Silver.”

Also, Stranger Things. Eleven completes me.

28. Who’s the last person you talked to on the phone?

We have covered this.

29. Any plans today?

Well, my prescription is ready and they don’t deliver in my area.

30. How many states have you lived in?

Lots of geographic areas, four states:

  1. Texas
  2. Virginia
  3. Oregon
  4. Maryland

Maryland is where I have really put down roots, but I would move back to Texas to be with my family in a heartbeat if they needed me. It is the only reason I would ever move again. I’m done.

31. What most annoys you?

A little thing? When people use up all the toilet paper and don’t replace the roll.

A big thing? Injustice, anything and anywhere. I am never more angry than when I feel something is unfair, locally or globally.

33. Can you say the alphabet backwards?

I would really, really have to think about it. Not something I’ve ever really had to know…. although a funny thing about me and the alphabet is that when I was first learning my ABCs, the setup is that my mother’s name was Carolyn. I thought the song went “ABCDEFG, HIKJ Carolyn NOP.” “KJ” is not a typo.

34. Do you have a maid service clean your house?

No, but I would think I had died and gone to heaven if I did. So jealous of Disney Princesses, Mary Poppins, and Molly Weasley.

35. Favorite pair of shoes you wear all the time?

It’s a three-way tie between brown Converse All-Stars, black Converse All-Stars (black laces, rubber, AND canvas), and Keene sandals. I told this to a friend and she said, “ok, you just lost cool points for wearing Keenes.” I had an unprintable response.

36. Are you jealous of anyone?

Disney Princesses, Mary Poppins, and Molly Weasley. I would even settle for Shary Bobbins.

37. Is anyone jealous of you?

I didn’t think so until I was telling a friend that I was absolutely done moving (unless my family needed me in Texas) because I had already moved so much in my life that I was ready to settle down permanently. She told me that she was jealous of me, because she wasn’t ready to make that decision yet. Actually, I’ve had that conversation twice with the same results. One lives here in town, the other lives overseas.

38. Do you love anyone?

Not romantically, but agape and philia are the rivers that run inside me. I couldn’t do without my friends. They are my lifeline, the brothers and sisters I chose for family because my bio family is so far away.

39. Do any of your friends have children?

Yes, some of them even on purpose.

40. What do you usually do during the day?

A little of everything except laundry. It’s an issue.

41. Do you hate anyone that you know right now?

Hate is such a strong word, and changes me a lot more than it changes them…. but everyone I dislike at the moment, I’ve never actually met in person.

42. Do you use the word “hello” daily?

No. I generally say “hey” even though “hey is for horses.” There’s your “Texas-ism” for the day. The reason I don’t use “hello” daily is that I generally only answer the phone that way, and people rarely call me (not that I don’t like it).

43. What color is your natural hair?

Dark brown, but liking it better and better now that I have a few gray strands that look like highlights. I might dye it anyway, though, but only because the color isn’t quite deep enough for me. It looks a bit mousy. Probably won’t go back to auburn, though. Stay tuned.

44. Are you thinking about someone right now?

Deeply.

45. Have you ever been to Six Flags?

I have. I’ve been to three Six Flags-owned parks. Six Flags Over Texas in the Dallas suburbs, AstroWorld and WaterWorld in Houston. For those that aren’t familiar, the company is named after the governing bodies throughout Texas history:

  1. Spain
  2. France
  3. Mexico
  4. The Republic of Texas
  5. The United States
  6. The Confederate States

It seems apropos right now to also give you this fact: Texas and Hawaii are the only states in the union that can fly their flags at equal height to the US flag, because we were both once our own countries.

46. How did you get your scar?

Christ, which one? I fall and hurt myself all the time. Although here are the ones tied for first place. When I was 16, I was cutting a lime with a serrated knife and sliced into my thumb. Those nerve endings never came back, so I have a dead spot I play with all the time. When I was in my early 20s, I had choir practice on Thursday nights and my first wife was way too obsessed with ER. I forgot my house key one night and even though she wasn’t a mean person, she did a mean thing. She wouldn’t let me in until a commercial. So I’m fumbling around in the yard because it’s after 9:00 PM in the fall and I trip over a tree stump, scraping and cutting my shins so badly that the scars are still so deep it feels weird to shave those parts of my legs. Let me remind you that it’s been 20 years, and the scars are no more shallow than when they happened. Geez, and I actually spent time wondering why that relationship didn’t work out……………..

47. Do you have tattoos?

Yes, an ichthus that says “Yahweh” in Hebrew, a tribal dragonfly, a Celtic knot, a quill dripping blood, and $1.83. The last is the smallest, but it’s the most important. Here’s the story behind all of them.

48. Have you ever been out of the country?

I’m not especially well-traveled, but I’ve been to Mexico, Canada, England, France, and The Bahamas. I do have a bucket list, though, and I may never make it to some of them because in the Middle East, I am terribly afraid that everything I want to see is going to be reduced to rubble, and even if it isn’t, I don’t currently have a male chaperone. I’m a feminist and all that, but I’m not stupid.

49. Looks, brains, or personality?

I am going to go with personality, because if they have a great one, their intelligence will naturally show itself. I don’t know many dumb people I could stand for more than a few minutes. For me, personality and brains are inextricably interrelated, because brains inform humor, and if I don’t think you’re hilarious, I’m out.

50. Biggest regret?

Let’s end on something real. I used to be on the “think it, say it” plan no matter what emotions I was feeling. My biggest regret is all the misdirected rage in my life at Argo. It was over-the-top and egregiously wrong, because by then I wasn’t fighting with her. I was fighting the real enemy and Argo was a not-so-casual bystander, the receiver of all the shit rolling downhill. It was not a short amount of time until I realized that I was fighting with two people who weren’t even in the room, and only one of them deserved it.

I am so glad that part of my life is over and done, but if I could pray for a do-over and it materialized, I would go back and love her the way she loved me…. with sweetness, bright, white light, honesty (both painful and real), walking around in each other’s inner landscapes……………… truly receiving all the other had to offer- no more, no less.

Psychosomatic

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I don’t know what got into me yesterday in terms of switching gears and writing about technology instead of emotionally vomiting all over the Internet. Oh, I know. I was being selfish, because I needed a place to go back and copy and paste my commands. The one thing I didn’t do was show you a picture of what Cinnamon looks like when I’m finished with it. Cinnamon is my next favorite desktop after MATE. They look a lot alike, but Cinnamon has better graphics. I also have the wallpaper set to change every five minutes, so I always have more cool quotes. I find that I take them away, think about them, and sometimes use them as writing prompts.

Workspace 1_002
“Thus, in a real sense, I am constantly writing autobiography, but I have to turn it into fiction in order to give it credibility.” -Katherine Paterson

This one isn’t so good, because when I write fiction, I feel like an imposter. Character studies are generally okay, but I have no knack for world-building or plot. In a very real sense, I see that as a flaw in my own character. So, I stay in my lane. For the most part. What’s interesting is that I could lay so many more cards on the table in fiction, but I don’t feel it would turn out better. Maybe someday I’ll write a novel with someone else who really knows what they’re doing and can edit/add to my complete and utter crap work.

Autobiography seems to be my jam, but I also think I would be good at non-fiction if I put some elbow grease into it. I have a ton of interests (in none of which I am truly well versed…. jack of all trades, master of none). Perhaps illiteracy, real crime, espionage, cooking…. I don’t know. They’re all things I’d have to study intensely, but it might be fun. It’s a wonderful thing to be able to study in the Library of Congress at a moment’s notice. CIA also has an advisory board for writers, film makers, etc. to help people get their facts right (and in some cases, “if this is what you’re saying, here’s how we would say it”). In DC, though, there are already more people writing those things than the market will allow. Food for thought, in any case.

I’ve always thought that I’d like to collaborate with a spy on a novel that’s a hybrid fiction and non-fiction book. It would alternate chapters. One would be the story, then the next would be the real life inspiration for what just happened. It’s a good thing that now I know one, but not well enough to get down on one knee and ask her to write a book with me. Not only that, she’s already collaborated on all the books about espionage that I really want to read. Plus, she makes me laugh. In one video, she says that when she was at CIA, she was a real hard-ass. It’s funny because I am a hundred and crazy percent sure she was being accurate. Introspection is key.

And while that is true, I would also bet dollars to donuts that her attrition rate was low, because her people would take a bullet for her. It seems to me that acid funny and inside jokes go a long way as a boss.

It’s funny how your relationship changes with espionage once you actually meet a CIA case officer, albeit one who’s retired. You begin to think a lot more about the families behind said spy, and that they are completely normal people with an extraordinary calling.

For instance, Tony Mendez was an artist. He was always, first and foremost, an artist. Being a spy was almost a side gig. He didn’t even write Argo until George Tenet asked him to do it. Tony said, “that’s classified.” “No it’s not,” Tenet replied, smile on his lips. Tenet waved his magic wand, allowing Argo to be born.

I am not immune to the reputation of The Company. What I have learned is that there are good officers and bad, good agents and bad (case officers work for the CIA, agents are informants- generally overseas. The movies always get it wrong, and for someone who has read so much non-fiction regarding the history of spycraft, it’s quite a bit irritating.). I’ve even watched interviews on YouTube where the host calls the case officer an agent, and you can see their pained expressions (actually, that’s pretty funny).

Where my emotions come in is that I feel case officers do extraordinary work, and I have always wanted to be extraordinary at something. On my best day, I am fair to middlin’ at most things. I am a good writer, not a great one. I am an above average cook. It would be a much longer list regarding things I don’t know about computers/networks/the Internet.

If there is one area I feel extraordinary, it’s love. Romantic or platonic, local or global, I love hard. I am so empathetic I can share mirror neurons with strangers. It’s the one good thing my ADHD does for me. It heightens my sensory perception and most of the time I feel like I have emotional X-ray vision. I am excellent at cutting through bullshit and seeing what’s really going on with people.

And perhaps that feeds my fascination with spies, as well, because they are the embodiment of what I feel all the time…. the way they have to cut through bullshit to see others’ weak spots, sussing out what to say in order to obtain an asset. Gathering information in conversation without letting on to what they’re doing.

People want to tell me things, whether I want to hear it or not. I am so polite that I will always listen, but when strangers go deep, I am fascinated and exhausted all at once. This is because I don’t have very good clinical separation, and I will take their scars and write them on my own skin. I am truly capable of manipulation, not for malice, but for getting people to spill things they’ve never told anyone else. And then I hold on to those secrets until they make me sick with worry… to a lesser extent with people I’ll never see again, but still.

All that pent-up emotion presents physically. Just because it’s psychosomatic doesn’t mean it’s not real. It’s hard to tell whether headaches and stomach aches will be cured by taking medication or thinking about something else.

Slaying the dragon of emotional abuse freed up my mind, but since I hadn’t lived my life since I was 12 without the constant puzzle of other people’s emotions, it left a big hole to take on everyone else’s…. from people I’d known for years to strangers on a train. I live for black comedy because for people that have experienced much, it takes a lot to reach them with laughter.

That was what drew me to Argo in the first place. I saw the movie before I read the book (very shortly before), and it spoke to me on a spiritual level… mostly because every note of humor was my kind of humor. I quote it incessantly, especially when I’m in the kitchen and my eyebrows are about to go over my forehead (“There are suicide missions with better odds than this.”). There’s basically an Argo quote for every occasion. Meeting with the boss? “Brace yourself, it’s like talking to those two old fucks from The Muppets.” On the daily? “This is the best bad idea we have, sir.”

I also named my friend Argo because just like the movie, she was named after the Greek myth. At that time in my life, I was trying to tie myself to the mast to avoid disaster, breaking my life apart at my own hand. It did not work. Though thankfully, those days are long past, they are not forgotten. It has engineered the way to move forward (“I think we’ve all arrived at a very special place. Spiritually, ecumenically, grammatically.”). Past missteps have truly made their imprint upon me, a reminder to keep reaching upward. Self care is the most important thing in my life, because if I can’t take care of myself, I can’t take care of anyone else. Eventually, I’d like a girlfriend. Eventually, I’d like my life to be bigger than it is. Eventually, I’d like to be a person of interest in the very best sense of the phrase. Alas, baby steps (pregnant sigh).

Having a girlfriend isn’t completely up to me, but what is my doing is making room for her. I haven’t made room for even the idea in my mind, heart, or house. I suppose it’s a self defense mechanism. Once you’ve been hurt badly, you’re caught between the ideas of loving like you’ve never been hurt and taking time to lick your wounds, especially owning the ones for which you feel responsible. By now, everything I’ve wanted to accomplish in that arena is done. All that is left is reticence…. the fear is real and it’s deep.

The first step was realizing I was capable of disaster and fixing it to the best of my ability. The second step is not constantly beating myself up, because when I am really paying attention, I realize that I am not the only one. Not realizing this has led me to be incredibly hard on myself.

I get headaches and stomach aches. Just because it’s psychosomatic doesn’t mean it’s not real.

 

An Open Letter

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Dear Dana,

I couldn’t have done it without you.

kcstrI got the job at Denizen’s, seriously one of the most popular brewpubs in the DC Metro. Believe it or don’t, I haven’t tried any of their beers, which seems like a prerequisite for working there, but I’ve got time. I’m not so much on the alcohol these days, because living with a Middle Eastern family, it’s not that there’s any prohibition against drinking, we just don’t. My tolerance is so low that the other night I had a cocktail and I felt like I was losing my mind, and as we all know, I don’t have much to spare. 😛

It’s a different atmosphere than we’re used to. Front of house and back of house barely have any interaction, because the pub is built on three levels, and the kitchen is at the bottom. I feel damn lucky I got a job in BOH, because I cannot imagine with all my movement wonkiness that I’d be good at carrying food up stairs. It’s funny to picture, though.

But the thing that makes me the most happy to picture is learning to cook from you, and I remember everything in bits. When a ticket comes across, your voice in my head tells me what to do, and we debrief endlessly in my dreams about what I could have done better or faster.

The most important thing was ordering my own knife, because just like everywhere else we’ve worked, the community knives are not up to our standards. I got the same Chicago Cutlery we loved at Biddy’s before you got Lenore, and if anyone borrows it before I get first blood, I will have a hard time not coming unglued, as I have every right to do. This time, it’s personal.

They’re on sale if you happen to need extras, because the original price was $27.99 for 7-1/2-inch Chef, 4-3/4-inch utility and 3-1/2-inch parer, and I got them for $17.49, the cost of the Chef on its own. They should be here before I start on Friday, God willing and the creek don’t rise…. but I don’t think I’m going to carry them all. Just the Chef…. it’s all I need. The bread knives seem to be solid, so I’ll skip that, at least for now. Maybe a santoku later on….. I thought about buying a second set for home use, but I am terrified that someone will put them in the dishwasher while I’m not home to be vigilant.

I still have a shot at the job at University of Maryland, which is customer service for a new GPS app in the Engineering College, and I’m excited to say that the pub is flexible enough I can still work on the weekends if I succeed, because I can’t think of a better cure for customer service than continuing to follow what, thanks to you, has become and incredible obsession/passion. I knew that I needed to do something when I realized that I was cutting all my water bottle mix-in packs on the bias. They look very professional.

I wanted to write just to say that you’ve given me an incredible gift, because since my mom died, this is the first thing that has really “cut through” the fog of grief. For the first time in what seems like eons, I am excited about something, as if life is starting to bubble up from the spring in my soul. It is such a kick in the ass, one that will knock you down with incredible force, when you realize that your parents are not immortal. I feel like I have been crawling on my belly, and am just now starting to crawl on my knees. Maybe in a few months, I will even be able to walk. Let’s not talk about running just yet. I still feel like hiding under the blankets when I think about Mother’s Day.

But right at this very moment, it helps that your spirit is inside me, because I can do more and be more in the kitchen with it than I ever will be without. I’ll never be half the line cook you are, but it’s my goal to try…. and to never, ever give up. I am no stranger to working hard and with pure excitement, because few people would understand better than you what it’s like to feel that much adrenaline at once.

Even though we don’t talk in words, I hope you realize that every time I pick up a knife, we are in communion with each other. You’ve never given me a better gift than your knowledge, and I won’t forget it.

Best,

Leslie

 

The Resurrection Has Begun

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Yesterday was red-letter for me, albeit a bit scary in multiple ways.

At 1:00 PM, I met with a recruiter in downtown Silver Spring face-to-face, something about which I was incredibly anxious. I felt the fear and did it, anyway. My comfort zone is Zip Recruiter, LinkedIn, and the hundreds of e-mails that come to me from recruiters in the area because my job profiles are listed as “actively looking.” I’ve gotten lots of bites this way, but as my father reminded me, my personality is usually what gets me jobs- impossible to show off over e-mail… well, not impossible, because I’m generally funny and engaging in cover letters to stand out, but the whole package is somewhat hidden.

I got lucky because the recruiter had literally gotten a call not an hour before about a job, therefore I was the first and so far, only candidate. He looked at my resume and thought I might be perfect for it, given my wide range of past experiences. He said to call him back on Monday at 11:00 AM and he’d tell me what the employer said…. but he didn’t think it would be a problem. My only issue is that it’s a contract that only lasts until August, so there are two things I need to do in response. The first is to continue my job search starting in June, and the second is to try my best to make myself invaluable so that there’s no reason for the contract to end…. possibly getting hired as a full-time employee.

The job itself is part customer service, part marketing analyst. It is responding to surveys in the Office of Government Affairs given to it by the Library of Congress, and creating new surveys after the response part is complete. Basically, the Library of Congress wants to know how it’s doing when people visit. I’m a voracious reader and writer. The Library of Congress is my jam. If I get this job, I will be over the moon. It will be a chance to showcase what I do best- talking to people and writing content for both web & print. You’d think I’d be awful at talking to people, but I am engaging and funny and not anxious at all when the conversation is for work. Anxiety about cold-calling is not an issue, because I don’t have to come up with things to say on the spot. Writing? Amazing. Off the cuff? Hit or miss (in the moment, it is often “I’m sorry, what are words again?”). Plus, working for the government I’d get more days off than everyone else. 😛

The hourly wage is more than I’ve ever made in my life, but there’s a reason for it. Because I’m not a full-time employee, I have to cover my own insurance. At that rate, I cannot continue to be on state-run programs. Now THAT irritates my anxiety. No private insurance is as good as the one I’ve got now. All my doctors’ appointments and therapy sessions are free (no-copay at all), and my medications are a dollar a bottle. Plus, Vesta does not take private insurance, so I’d have to leave both Leighton (my psychiatric nurse practitioner) and Sarah (my therapist).

I hate the thought of starting over with a new therapist, especially if I do not get a job right away after August and am back with Sarah again, having missed over eight months with her. Perhaps that will not happen, though, because this recruiting agency seems solid, and even if I have to go a couple of weeks to a month without a contract, that’s ok. I can save up enough to float me if necessary, thanks to that insane hourly wage. I have no doubt that my hourly would go down as a permanent employee, more than made up by a government benefits package. It’s exciting to think about embarking on this new path, because for over a year, I have felt dead inside.

One of the hallmarks of a parent dying is that a part of you dies, as well. The will to live life to the fullest is wrested away from you in favor of “what’s the point? They’re not there to see it.” Looking for a job is the one area of my life in which I have no problem, because applications are rote. Trying to fund my own dreams is another thing entirely. I’d like to work for myself by starting a homeless ministry, but that is the point at which I’ve felt the most ennui. My mother will not be there when I graduate from college and grad school, will not be there for my ordination ceremony, and will definitely not be there to play the piano and direct the choir while I find my own “Ed McMahon.”

Things looking up has provided me a way to start believing in myself again. This has been a garbage dump of a year, being so close to getting several jobs and then not, fighting the worthlessness of having nowhere to go and nothing to do.

Well, that’s not entirely honest. I’ve enjoyed working on myself and several different writing projects that may or may not earn money in the future. Time will tell once they are finished. I decided early on not to do NaNoWriMo this year, because it requires an entirely new idea and not a work in progress, as well as a time commitment I planned not to have. My works in progress are more important to me than trying to come up with something new. I dropped working on -frog.-, however, because the original idea was to explain the trilogy of Dana, Argo, and me in fiction…. and I just don’t have it in me to spend that much time thinking about them anymore. However, my memory is long, and maybe I’ll go back to it in five or ten years, once the grief has faded and I can look at the situation without exploding the land mines therein.

My main work in progress is a child/young adult novel called Fish Ralph, of which you can read an unedited and entirely off-the-cuff first chapter. I sent it to several middle school kids and teachers. The feedback I got encouraged me to not ask the teachers anymore. They thought it was too wordy, and something kids wouldn’t like. The kids ate it up.

Restarting that work was just one more step in raising my self esteem, especially when my sister said she was dying to hear what happened to Sarah and David Michael. One note- when you get to the part about geez, is the bike ok?,” I stole that from a story my first boyfriend, Ryan, told me about his dad. Now, his dad was just being funny. Sarah’s dad is just that clueless. Credit where credit is due.

On to the rest of my yesterday.

At 3:00, I went to donate platelets. I was pleased when I found out that my iron level had gone from 11.7 to 13.9. I passed with flying colors and they hooked me up to the machine. I wore all the winter clothes I could find, because when you’re giving platelets, your body temperature drops significantly and you cannot stop shivering. About 30 minutes before I was done, my body temperature spiked and I was so warm I had a vaso vagel reaction and almost fainted and vomited at the same time. They gave me some ice cold paper towels and orange juice, but it did not help, so they brought me a trash bag in order to try and keep me going. It didn’t help, either, so they stopped the treatment early. Because I was only 30 minutes from finishing, I don’t know if they had enough platelets to be useful, but the important thing is that I did it. It was excruciating to get ready, because you cannot take any NSAIDS (non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug- basically anything in the aspirin category) for two days before you give, so my arthritis was extraordinarily painful despite Tylenol. Plus, it was pouring down rain, so I took an Uber pool both because I did not want to wait for 30 minutes for the bus in the rain, and because I was running a little short on time. This backfired, because two other people joined my pool and I was dropped off last, making me 45 minutes late for my appointment. You only have a 15-minute grace period, so I was lucky they took me at all. Sometimes a couple of dollars cheaper is not better.

Even though I felt like death warmed over, I pushed through to make it home on public transportation, because Uber was spiked at that hour. Even a carpool was $20. I was so out of it, though, that I added time on my commute because I completely walked past Farragut North and ended up at Farragut West. However, that’s not important. I wasn’t trying to make it to another appointment, just home. My biggest concern was not throwing up on another passenger, which I thankfully did not. By the time I reached Silver Spring station, the Uber spike had ended, so I gratefully paid the four bucks to get home. My Uber driver was new to the area and despite navigation, missed every turn. But that was okay- we were having a wonderful time talking. I wish I had gotten her number, because we could have talked for another four hours…. and what person new to the area doesn’t need friends?

We were in the same boat- she’s two years older than me and still has a year and a half left on her Bachelor’s thanks to having two kids very, very young. Now, her kids are both in college and I told her that was somewhat lucky, because as a young empty nester, she actually has the energy to work and go to school. She laughed and said, “truth.” She said her youngest just started at Howard, and I became animated- “that’s where I want to go!!!” I started talking about my dreams to finish my degree and go on to their UCC-affiliated seminary, and for the first time in a year, I felt passion about it.

It’s funny how things change. When I first got to Maryland, I wanted to go to seminary in Virginia to become an Episcopal priest, jokingly joining what they call “the Virginia Mafia.” What changed my outlook is that I did not want to use the Book of Common Prayer at every service, because I am talented at writing my own liturgy. In the Episcopal church, this is just not done. My ultimate goal is to create an Anglican-inspired service, because there are elements I love. For instance, the choir will have to be in cassocks and surplices. There are just no other options. For starters, they are WAY more comfortable than those polyester piece of crap robes. Plus, most cassocks have slits where you can reach your pockets. Invaluable to me as a singer for Kleenex and cough drops, as well as being able to pull out my phone for pictures, video, and recording the sermon…. although I don’t know how I feel about recording everything I have to say. Sometimes my sermons are brilliant and engaging. Sometimes I feel as if I am a danger to this profession…. there is no in between.

It is weird how the sermons you think are total pieces of crap you phoned in are sometimes the ones people like, and the ones you think are brilliant and engaging just don’t connect. Every Sunday is just a complete crapshoot, and pretty much every preacher alive would agree with me. I remember a story from long ago about a bishop who was asked the best thing about retirement. He said, stopping the interminable march of Sundays. It’s funny ’cause it’s true. Coming up with sermons and liturgy is not unlike the writing schedule at Saturday Night Live. Sometimes your best ideas come to you at 2:00 Sunday morning. Even better ones come to you the moment you step down from the pulpit. 😛

All I have to say in conclusion is that it’s nice to feel something again…. regaining the piece of me I thought was lost to history, feeling the resurrection coming in the middle of the mess.

Amen.
#prayingonthespaces