Tag: Music

When I’m Pharrell Without the Hat

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

When are you most happy?

I am most happy when all my relationships are in balance. I do not expect perfection in anything, but I do expect excellence. I’ve gotten to a point in my life where I can pick out patterns that I do not like and ask to change them. If it doesn’t happen, I don’t keep hammering the point anymore, because people’s actions tell you their intentions. I have a larger tolerance for it the longer our relationship, but I do not feel guilty for setting boundaries. I am allowed to take up space in the world.

My opinion matters, even when it’s wrong, because I am not explaining something to be right. I am explaining something to be heard. The one way to truly piss me off= the quickest and shortest path to rage, is this conversation.

Neurotypical: Explain to me exactly how this happened.
Leslie: (starts explaining an AuDHD amount)
Neurotypical: I don’t need your fucking excuses.

What I have not done is actually call people on it. I could have said so many times, “you asked me to explain, and I did, so I am not getting why you’re annoyed/angry.” This conversation happens quite frequently with neurotypical bosses…. or in the kitchen, because there’s no time for an AuDHD-length explanation. I am at a loss because I do not know what neurotypical people do in the same situation, because I am not picking up what you’re putting down if you ask me for an explanations and then write me off as making excuses. I don’t do excuses.

For instance, with this blog I feel like I’ve made it clear that I’ve done a lot wrong. At no time have I excused my own behavior away, and I’m not using my entries as justification, either. These entries are all context, because behavior doesn’t come out of a vacuum….. and for me, context is important. I am not trying to merely understand a situation, but to grok it.

It is honestly how I am able to be so forgiving and loving in my relationships, because if I start with the axiom that I’m not perfect, it allows me to see others’ humanity as well….. particularly if I write about them. Writing allows me to see the ways I’ve been treated in both negative and positive ways, and that is the nature of relationships. No one is wrong or right all the time. You are often presented with situations in which both halves of the relationship are right to different degrees…. and instead of focusing on the 80% on which we’re agreed, we’ll fight tooth and nail over 20% of a problem. Or worse, we won’t tell each other our feelings at all, content to resent.

If someone says nothing is wrong, and it clearly is, the energy surrounding them pushes you away. It’s your body’s intuition saying something is wrong, and you have to believe your intuition over what people are saying. This is very much affected by depression, because someone else’s words will come across to you differently than they would if you didn’t have it.

The way I handle this is to acknowledge that my attachment style is anxious; all I ask is that people not irritate it. I choose to do this by communicating early and often, and to take people’s words to the bank and see if they cash. If they say nothing’s wrong, but there’s no concrete reason for them to be snappish and nitpicking, then they’re probably not telling the truth. So, you ask what’s wrong and if nothing changes, you don’t have the right to say “you’re the one that needs to change, because I’ve tried everything.” I can only control my actions, not theirs. I also won’t do other people’s emotional work for them. I have consistently found people with avoidant attachment styles and made them out in my head to be more emotionally capable than they are. It leads me to believe that people will rise to an occasion that just never will.

That’s because I don’t believe there are red flags, and I’ve never been wrong to hold onto a relationship with a deeply flawed person, because I am also deeply flawed. I don’t get the kind of love I need from unbroken people, because if you’ve never been through trauma, you will come to resent me. Here’s something really scary. I have never in my lifetime had to look for a girlfriend with trauma. It’s not because I chose the most toxic woman in the room, it’s because I was dating women.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

People who haven’t been through trauma treat PTSD like autism in that even if you don’t know someone is autistic, you know their reactions are different from yours and you somehow judge your own reactions less harshly than mine. But honestly, it’s not blame I can put on anything but the fact that neurotypical people have always believed they were more capable than neurodivergent people because workplaces reward all the things that come easily to allistic people and feel threatened by neurodivergence because we’re not “following the script.”

I believe that I could work out a two state solution for Israel and Palestine easier than I could make myself follow a morning and evening routine for any length of time. I have empathy for demand avoidance, because I’ve felt it down to taking a shower. I have empathy for executive dysfunction, because I panic when I have more than two things on my plate. The absolute worst feeling in the world to me is presenting my task list to my boss and asking which is the most important and them saying it doesn’t matter. What I have learned is that it means “it doesn’t matter if you’re neurotypical, because what you accomplish is not what I would have accomplished, nor any other neurotypical.” It is not that one is morally superior, it’s that an autistic person has different pattern recognition than an allistic one. Therefore, all autistic thought processes are going to seem ludicrous to a neurotypical boss.

To be fair, if I’m not doing something that 90% of people would do, it’s not all the boss’s fault. It’s lack of education. No one knows what to do with autistic people after they graduate high school. I have been lucky in that I have had some neurotypical bosses who have also been parents of neurodivergent kids. Therefore, they had experience in “being the boss of” someone neurodivergent and how to get them to perform what you need because the way of asking looks different. I also think that I get along better with female bosses than male, because that’s another communication style difference when it comes to empathy. Most female bosses- most, not all- understand the neurodivergent way of thinking even if they’re neurotypical because dollars to donuts if their kids aren’t ADHD, they’ve still been around ADHD kids their whole lives. Because which parent is usually the one who knows their kid’s friends?

Plus, there’s little discernable difference in being neurodivergent and being female, because violence occurs to all women to varying degrees. Not one of us escapes it, and one in four women have been raped. PTSD, particularly when it’s chronic (e.g. raped in childhood), will give you the same symptoms as ADHD and autism; the trauma rewires your thought processes and reactions. Most people make the mistake of thinking that going on medication and doing therapy will fix everything and it will all go back to normal. This is untrue.

If you had an idea of what your life would have looked like before trauma and you’re trying to get back there, it’s never going to happen. Give up. Slash those old dreams, because they’re the ones you won’t fulfill and think it’s “your fault.” You have to make a new dream starting from where you are, not where you used to be. That map marker fell off the day you were traumatized. We all tend to undercut the abuser on how much we were abused, and take more responsibility than we need. For me, it was always that I deserved to feel the way I did because I asked for it, and that’s not unique at all. Most abused children think this. I was never physically abused, and it didn’t matter. Emotional abuse hurts worse to someone who already has bipolar depression.

In my case, it’s not really bipolar depression. My downs are so incredibly profound that hypomania looks like a regular person amount of energy…. one on caffeine, I’ll grant you, but a regular person nonetheless. My biggest symptom of hypomania is insomnia. I have roughly the same thought processes in an up that I do in a down, I just don’t get enough rest unless I take sleeping medication, and even then sometimes it fails. It depends on how married to the idea of being awake my brain is that day.

Not sleeping well makes me focus on what’s wrong instead of what’s right. I self-sabotage a lot, because I attribute negative things that aren’t there….. and in a relationship with an avoidant attachment style, you won’t know whether your negative feelings are wrong or right….. because they’re avoidant.

Which brings us up to now.

Zac and Bryn are partner-level close to me because if I say I feel anxious, they’ll tell me whether I am right or wrong in terms of their emotions. They will not let the story I’m telling myself be that they’re avoiding something and don’t want to be close. I won’t let them tell themselves that story, either.

If you’re not emotionally avoidant, you have to ask yourself how long you’ll tolerate someone who is. That’s because good relationships don’t function with that kind of blame cycle. “If I don’t tell you how I feel, then I don’t have to express myself AND I can also blame you for not considering something you didn’t know.” I can assure you that your needs will never get met by me if you do not tell me what they are. To think that I should be able to root around in your head and find your feelings is crazymaking….. particularly when it comes to things like my relationship with Sam. She couldn’t say “I want you all to myself and I also don’t have time for you,” so she couldn’t let me deal with it and decide what I was going to do. So, when I told her that I had a date with Zac, it was during one of our very first conversations because I wanted my words and actions to line up. I knew Zac wouldn’t care what I decided, I just needed to give him more information, too. I would have been fine with it if Sam had said she wanted me to herself. I’m a writer. I don’t need to see people in person much to connect with them. It wouldn’t have been a big deal, but it was because she didn’t ask for it and lashed out.

By lashing out, I mean that my first date with Zac was on a Wednesday, and we had plans for dinner the next Monday. She couldn’t wait that long. Breaking up with me had to be done while I was with him, apparently. She admits that things were going great and she just flipped out, so I’m not telling tales out of school. She thought she could handle it, and she couldn’t. But what she didn’t get didn’t come from something I couldn’t provide. It came from something for which she never asked.

I will not put up with any kind of loyalty test based on “if you really liked me, you would…” This is because you don’t say those things out loud, they’re societal conventions anyway, so it’s not like I’m not thinking the same thing…… No, I can guarantee that our thought processes are nowhere near similar. I have the rarest personality type in the world, literally a Christ figure because the historical Jesus is thought of as “INFJ,” then made even more rare with AuDHD. In fact, there is such a large crossover between autism and INFJ that I’m wondering if Jesus was autistic as well. His robes were all made of the same material, as well as his shoes, and he only ate like five things. I’m laughing, but really. The Sermon on the Mount seems like it was written by an autistic person. Who would wish more for the meek to inherit the earth?

That thought makes me the most happy, the Advent devotional that’s something missing from the diaspora. Maybe I’ll take it on, because if there’s female theology, queer theology, etc. there should definitely be neurodivergent theology. People who are mentally and physically disabled are very much part of the Disinherited (“Jesus and The Disinherited” is a relatively small book, always found in an inside pocket of Martin Luther King, Jr’s suit coat.). Liberation theology means more to those who need it. Not that all people aren’t worthy of having their wrongs forgiven. Not all people look at the resurrection in the light of Jesus having to struggle…. losing the battle, but not the war. His ideas got him killed, and it takes a strong man to say that these ideas will last forever even if I don’t.

It’s why I write digitally instead of in a paper journal. I know from The Wayback Machine that things on the internet don’t disappear. There’s the lesson. If you’re famous enough that dirt on you is a good thing, it doesn’t matter if you take it down or not. Whether you’re immortalized in the Wayback Machine before you take it down is directly linked to how fast you remove it. The longer you wait, the more likely it is that the Internet Archive has taken a snapshot of the server. For instance, Matt Rife will never be able to live down sending people to a web site for disabled kids’ helmets as an “apology” for his domestic violence jokes….. this is not problematic to me, that he will go away at some point; I never thought he was that great a comedian in the first place. Like, some clever lines, to be sure, but I took him about as seriously as I took Dane Cook. I’d rather see Matteo Lane than Dane Cook, because he isn’t a commercial for toxic masculinity and does the same kind of crowd work.

Crowd work makes me happy, whether it’s a brilliant comedian or rapper, because clever written lines are my jam. I feel like rappers tend to be more like Stephen Fry than anyone else, because in order to drop a verse, you have to know a little bit about everything. For instance, readers are better rappers than non-readers, just like novelists are better writers when they read, fiction or not.

Stephen Fry, rappers, and writers are all deconstructing words as we use them, and rappers do it faster than the rest of us. You don’t have to be smart to enter the arena (and bring a knife), but you have to be smart to win at freestyle verse. That’s because I believe it was easier for Billy Joel to write “We Didn’t Start the Fire” than it was to do the research for it. Imagine what you’d have to do to be able to think of something that clever on the fly….. and yet rappers do it all the time.

Listening to rap and hip hop is when I’m the most happy…. because the only people who come close are bloggers like me.

My Family Does

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Do you or your family make any special dishes for the holidays?

I don’t cook anything for holidays anymore, because when I got divorced and moved to DC, I moved in with a family who already had Thanksgiving wired, and I wasn’t the only cook in the house. One of my housemates when I first arrived had gone to Johnson & Wales, and was the chef at Jaleo Crystal City (Jose Andres is the executive chef, I mean the guy who actually ran the restaurant on a day-to-day basis). Therefore, I know Jose Andres intimately, even if he doesn’t know me…. and all of his secrets are safe. 😉

We used to laugh together about the things that happened around us that we were helpless to stop. Neither one of us in all of our cosmic culinary power could get people to stop putting knives in the dishwasher or in the bottom of the sink. More than once did we look at each other and say, “I can’t.” We honestly didn’t spend that much time together, it’s that our relationship was like all brothers in arms. We had an emotional shorthand not there for others in the house. If you are not a person with ADHD/Autism when you start a kitchen job, you will gain the ability to see the kitchen that way. Everything in cooking is a sensory issue, and you’re learning to fine-tune it. The tiniest changes will cause absolute anarchy.

For me, a big one is soap. They’re all concentrated differently, and it seems there is a large leap from generic to brand. It also affects the kitchen to change the smell of the dish soap, because you get used to how those fragrances mix with spice. For instance, going from a floral scent to a lemon scent gave me gastrointestinal issues because the lemon mixed with the scent of eggs and ruined Hollandaise sauce for me because every time I think of it one of the flavor notes is surfactant.

Soap is a trigger for a much bigger sensory issue overall. Most autistic people who have sensory issues with smell are because it’s turned up to “pregnant woman.” I throw up more due to bad smells than anything else, and why when I live alone and have a cat, I have disposable litter boxes and change them out often rather than ever force myself to change it. I was lucky in that Dana didn’t mind and had permanent boxes at her house, but I wasn’t counting on her to care for Asher. I had my own system, I just didn’t have to use it. I wasn’t allergic to chores. I traded that one out.

Being married is really the last time I had any holiday traditions, because when I moved to DC, I was folded into an established family here, Lebanese heritage and not Irish. For Thanksgiving and Christmas we have turkey and dolmades. Stuffing and kibbi (Kibbi is actually one of our dog’s names, too- “meatball,” basically, in Arabic). It’s a wonderful life. Hayat and I have talked often about the fact that “I’ve picked up Arabic,” because when I first moved in, Hayat spoke Arabic and Nasim spoke Farsi. I asked both of them if it would bother them for me to listen in on their phone calls, because I didn’t want it to feel creepy and I knew they wouldn’t really, either since I don’t understand either language. I just wanted to take away the feeling that I was trying not to watch them by making it obvious that I was.

Listening to Nasim was hearing the end of “Argo” all day long. Learning the Levantine dialect of Arabic was learning the rolling lilt of the ocean and not the Middle East RP equivalent, Cairo (I checked). Some words in Egypt and Lebanon are different, some words are the same because Lebanon has had a bigger influx of Mediterranean immigrants. In fact, my cover photo on Facebook is a picture Hayat took of the marina in Beirut, now a city on my bucket list if it ever calms down enough for me to go. I would feel comfortable with Daniel or Zac in that situation, but I would not feel comfortable traveling without someone who could defend both of us. That whole idea started the romance with Daniel, because I initially wanted a travel companion and then I realized I wanted him. I don’t know whether Zac and I will ever travel together or not, but what I do know is that he may have not been in the same situations as Daniel, but not because he didn’t train for them.

But Zac and I haven’t started our own traditions yet because we haven’t spent a Christmas together. Since he celebrates Yuletide and not Christmas proper, it doesn’t matter whether I see him on the 25th or not. What I do know is that we as people are a spectrum. Maybe we’ll go for Chinese, maybe we’ll finally watch “The Pigeon Tunnel,” the Apple TV+ documentary based on interviews and John le Carré’s last book. I would have jumped on it the moment I saw it if I wasn’t so insistent about not cheating on him. Infidelity is one thing. This is couple TV. THERE ARE RULES. There are shows I still haven’t finished because I promised Dana I’d wait. It’s getting a bit ridiculous. Still can’t do it.

I have been asked to make a Christmas list and so far the only thing on it is a long-sleeved SAS t-shirt. I’d also like a Senators baseball cap because of the Duke Ellington concert in the spring, because even if I didn’t wear it, oh my God would it ever look good with Jason’s signature on the side. For my international readers, the Senators are the current hockey team in Ottawa, but the baseball team in DC was called the Senators when we first joined the league. Duke Ellington started selling peanuts when he was like, 11?

When Jason told me that he was going to do a Duke Ellington concert in The District, I told him that he was a brave, brave man. He laughed because he knew exactly what I meant. If you come for Ellington in his hometown crowd, you best not miss. Here’s what I know that you don’t. Jason is objectively better at piano than Ellington ever was. He can take Elllington’s ideas to a place that the composer himself couldn’t- another brain seeing different patterns. Ask me how I know that? He’s been doing it since he was 17 (probably younger, but I’ve known him since then), the Mozart of jazz, too many notes that boggle the mind.

I do not say this lightly. It probably sounds like I’m just part of the Houston jazz scene and trying to promote my boy. No. Jason is different. Jason goes to places I don’t like and I don’t know why and then I fall on my ass when I figure out the chord structure. It’s not that I didn’t like Jason, it’s that my mind wasn’t big enough to hold Jason yet. I had to grow into him. He’s an artist that is perfectly capable of giving you a beautiful haircut that you don’t like until you realize you were wrong. You thought it was a mess, and it makes your whole face.

The last time I saw Jason, I left the Kennedy Center and walked around for two hours trying to deconstruct that concert in my mind. Every time I came to a new metro stop, I decided I wasn’t done thinking about jazz yet. If you’ve never been to see Jason, I do not believe you have a grasp of modern jazz and where it’s going. I hope the concert is not too esoteric for Zac, but I don’t think it will be. I just think the difference is that when he looks at Jason, he sees the finished product. I see every iteration. Tall, skinny, quiet, softspoken when he does, can’t get used to the fact that he doesn’t wear a stocking cap every day. Can’t believe he and John Schutza aren’t a thing at lunch anymore.

Zac is going to become a bridge from my old life to my new one, and I think that’s a beautiful thing. I know Jason wouldn’t necessarily look for me at the concert, but what I do know is that he would be disappointed if I came to the concert and didn’t say anything. If I had my life to do over, I would have loved to be as serious a jazz musician as Jason. But, on the other hand, I did not have the ability of Konrad Johnson to “see where they were going and go with them.” I did not have Jason’s ability to see the rules of composition in such a way that he plays as if they aren’t there. No open fourths? Here’s seven in a row. Deal. Not a real example, but on brand.

Jason, like I am, is an unapologetic artist trying to get the audience to come to him, and he’s so good at his craft that he deserves to be a leader.

If there’s anything in my family that starts with me, it’s a love of music- the only special interest I had before intelligence because the first time I ever sang in front of an audience (congregation), I was three. Never in my lifetime did I think I’d get involved with it enough to understand what an open fourth might be, but here we are.

I know that when we talk about dishes, we’re often talking about the things put on the table. To me, sharing music with someone is every bit as important as a Christmas or Thanksgiving table. It’s where my mind goes now that I don’t have to cook for either holiday.

I also talk about music not to talk about what is going to be missing.

Also, here is a meme to express my feelings, one of my love languages:

Show Mode -or- Fixed Point in Time

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I’ve been disconnected from everyone lately, because having two people validate my experience as AuDHD has made me run. I am not isolating to piss people off, it’s just that there’s three people in my life for which I have enough energy because I’ve made commitments to them. To augment that is to overload my sensory perception while I’m going through a hell of a lot, and I have not taken this tack my whole life, just the last 10 years (on purpose- I’ve isolated, but through mental illness, not working out a processing disorder). Meeting Supergrover was the catalyst for leaving Dana, but falling in love with her was not.

While I had a virtual relationship, it unlocked the disconnect between ADHD and autism. Dana and I began to drift as I holed up in my office to write. It wasn’t just attraction on my end; it was being able to process through writing all the time and becoming dramatically more introverted and quiet. I have a tendency to let another person drag me along because I don’t know what the hell I’m doing, so me being steamrolled for eight years in this relationship is what I do. If I am not pleasing someone, I will not give up. I didn’t give up on the woman that emotionally abused me until someone who could read the situation blind (three someones, actually) and tell how she messed me up. They gave me permission, in a sense, to stop. Nothing was ever going to change or get better, because she made a horrible emotional mistake and was running from it. She gave me a college journal that was full of information about sex I never should have had at 14. Whether she meant to or not, she’s opened a door to something that I couldn’t handle…… but I was 14, so I wanted to…….. JFC I was so wrecked. I wanted to be married before I could drive or vote. She piqued my interest on so many levels that I know it wasn’t all abuse and there were genuine moments.

I wouldn’t be the singer or the personality I am today without her, for evil or for awesome. I would like to think that as I grew, I shed the things about her that no longer served me and tried to let go of rage. My rage toward her is the biggest trigger that makes basic anger multiply into red mist rage. At the time, in my mind I wasn’t being abused. She was a bird with a broken wing and I was going to help her fly again…….. in my infinite 14-year-old wisdom.

Guilt and anger led her to tell everyone how mentally ill and obsessed with her I was, because she opened herself up to becoming a monotropic thought process for me and fucked me over. The reason that the relationship with Supergrover is not the same, because the woman who abused me was a narcissist who fed on my emotions. Supergrover didn’t trust me after I’d hurt her. I got screwed over by my emotional abuser, so I perpetuated a bad pattern. Full stop. But regaining trust was impossible because for as much as Supergrover hates when I say it, their mutual experiences are the same, therefore so are their trauma reflexes. That doesn’t mean their behavior comes from the same source. I could not take responsibility for being 14, but I can take responsibility for being 36.

My isolation is thinking about The Gospel of Billy Joel:

They say that these are not the best of times, but they’re the only times I’ve ever known….. and I believe there is a time for meditation in cathedrals of our own. I have seen that sad surrender in my lover’s eyes… I can only stand apart and sympathize, for we are always what our situations hand us… it’s either sadness or euphoria. So we’ll argue and we’ll compromise, and realize that nothing has ever changed. For all our mutual experience, our separate conclusions are the same. -Psalm Summer, Highland Falls 1:1-2

I wrote that from memory because an interviewer asked Joel what song was his favorite of all the ones he’s written, and this is it. I don’t have anything but the first two verses memorized, but that’s because they’ve changed my life the most. I realized that my entire personality was living life in two different time streams, because my writing digs backward as I move forward. It’s not a thing I do, it is a comprehensive response to life. I skirt the edge with blowback not because I’m asking for it, itching for a fight. It’s that I cannot understand my environments without it. What other people think of me is none of my business.

I did not come to that thick a skin unscathed, I just want you to know that. I had to tank my blog out of embarrassment and stop writing for a few years to get up the confidence to come back. It’s all connected, though. If I hadn’t taken the time out to regroup, I might not have written the article on Facebook Notes that translated into more popularity than I’ve ever had…. popularity that snagged my beautiful girl out of my peripheral vision and made her the whole show. I didn’t fall in love with simple adoration. Like Driving Miss Daisy, it was “I’m here to take you where you want to go.” You want to know how well Supergrover knows me? She bought me a font.

She’s crazy gorgeous, and remembers all my favorite things. Tell me my feelings are wrong. I’ll wait as long as it takes for all y’all to catch up. 😉

And in fact, I do not not think she had the same effect on Dana, the source of her jealousy and ire. It’s just a whole other thing because our adoration looked different. As my beautiful girl and I opened up to each other, it excluded her in a major way. Her jealousy was not wrong or bad, just, I feel, misplaced. Logic and emotion are not the same. Even if she didn’t understand my feelings, she completely understood why I would feel that way.

That being said, I do not think that Dana and I would have worked it out later because a) I couldn’t shut up and II) she overfocused on Supergrover being a monotropic thought process for me and not that I was actively trying to remove her (not from my life, from my “obsession” that’s actually autism- a trauma bond making it impossible to not make her my first thought every morning.). Thoughts of being with her were fleeting. Thoughts of supporting her were not.

I told her I would be the Merlin to her Arthur, and at no time did I stop meaning it. I figured out the balance years ago, and waited for the butterflies to fade. They did, but she hasn’t left the space she occupies in my head. Due to a series of fortunate events, I might be able to move her from a monotropic thought process to a passing interest, but she’ll never move out. She’s in the tapestry of my writing and my gray matter.

But, sensibly, since I couldn’t shut up about her it made her nervous. I didn’t have to love it, but I did have to live it. Therefore, I just had to be okay with seeming threatening in order to leave Dana; I didn’t want to be within a hundred miles of her. Staying in Houston would have been okay if I’d moved to a different quadrant. Leaving to go back to a familiar city was better, because I felt that the biggest mistake of my adulthood was leaving DC originally and not establishing myself on my own…….. social masking my closest friend was easier, treacherous when I realized that she wasn’t, in fact, my closest friend.

If I hadn’t left DC, I wouldn’t have been in water that kept getting hotter. I also wouldn’t be where I am now, so out of pain came glory. If I hadn’t moved back to Portland, no one would have been able to see the patterns we established in my childhood because they wouldn’t have been current patterns. An abuser always cold shoulders you when they’re done…… but you’re still pining for them because they trained your body with a Pavlovian response.

In fact, that’s why we “broke up.” It was years before Supergrover and I connected, but the spell had been broken and I’d started to reevaluate. There are three instances that pushed me into a cathedral of my own.

First, coming to Portland was rough on day one. Basically, I’d come to visit about four weeks before and we solidified plans for me to move. Then, when I arrived with my car, she looked more freaked out than I’d ever seen her in my life, like telling me I should move and encouraging me to find a job and a place was just child’s play. Like we hadn’t been discussing this since she got the job offer in 1996 or 7. It wasn’t a dumb move. She’d moved to Dallas so she could live with her partner while she used her for free rent to get through grad school (don’t think I couldn’t suss that out- her partner was every bit as much trouble as Dana- with her DUI, not Dana’s ability as a wife.) With the emotional abuser, as it turns out, “for all our mutual experiences, our separate conclusions were the same.”). Coming to Portland was about being able to have someone to lean on, even if we weren’t a couple…. just like had been modeled for me. She might have stayed with her partner, but not because she meant it.

Secondly, I know said emotional abuser saw the pattern repeat coming, the abusive one between her and me. I know she did. For every time she pushed me away, her love for me was the purest thing in her life. I know this because I got in under the wire. As I got older, I was not a person. I was an event….. an opera with many intermissions, plot twists, and both sopranos die at the end.

I don’t know how she knew, because I don’t know how she knew Dana’s drinking history. But I swear to God that’s what her eyes said….. “this is a mistake, but I know you cannot even see it yet because I have walked this path and you haven’t.” I was mad AF and still defend Dana to the ends of the earth.

Thirdly, at the time, it came across like “you’re better than Dana. She works at a grocery store.” It was very muddled because she was not the only one who held such an opinion. Neurodivergents have trouble holding down jobs. Period. She had to find the job she could do, not where she’s the most talented. Consistency over excitement. Hospitality every single day. That doesn’t mean she hasn’t studied Shakespeare. That doesn’t mean she wasn’t a technical theater major in college. That doesn’t mean she’s not an actor. She would have been hilarious on Portlandia- I would have, too, in the writer’s room.

But did my current friends see that? No. No, they didn’t. I didn’t just dump the abuser, I dumped all of them, too. They weren’t my real friends because they couldn’t see Dana the way I could. I saw her the same way as the people who birthed her, grew up with her. I didn’t live in her limitations, I reveled in her strength. Despite her truly bad case of ADHD, she’s higher functioning than I am. Social masking her was like social masking my sister (and that line is specific).

I learned all of this by going down to the river to pray, studying about that good old way.

One day when I was particularly wrecked about all this, two friends took me hiking in the Columbia River Gorge, where I sent my tears down Wahkeena Falls, out into the river, and around Cape Disappointment. They were the friends who bailed me out the first time I got dumped by this woman in a way I knew we’d never come back.

I mentioned before that abusers install a back door in you that activates dopamine/sex drive because it feels exactly like the first rush- if they’ve been turning the sunshine away from you to regain access. This came in the form of a phone call when I was in my 20s, one that when I got it, I didn’t want anything more in my life…… until it was over.

I would say her tone was seductive because I’d just watched her do it to someone else, but I’m willing to entertain the fact it’s not correct. At the very least, her tone felt inviting in a very heightened way, and I’m dead serious, not spitballing. She said that she felt like I was a woman she’d like to get to know. I don’t remember anything else because it was a trigger. I went into fight or flight immediately and damn near passed out from red mist rage. I’d had a full-on panic attack at work and went home early. It was 10 years before I knew why I’d been triggered, and couldn’t explain why I felt the way I felt, but avoided her from there on out.

Two things about that. The first is that when I reacted, she immediately pushed me away and I knew there was no chance to prepare my environment and “win” another chance. Second of all, I have to believe that she knew what she was doing. She didn’t stop herself, but she realized it was wrong afterward. On some level, she realized it was hurtful because of the back door and because it was a little too little too late.

I watched her marry a partner I didn’t like because she was just like me, the spitting image except older and more degrees. I watched her manipulate her best friend into “friends with some benefits,” keeping her on a leash for years. Someone I’d once wanted so bad I couldn’t breathe proved to me beyond a shadow of a doubt that she didn’t deserve me in her life, much less as a partner.

She has no idea how much damage she’s done, because since I was social masking her, I’ve been the best and worst of her without ever understanding why. It’s not that I’m not the best of my own mother as well, it’s that we didn’t spend time together as intimately for her to know me on that level. She got frustrated, I did, too, we gave up.

Years later, I went back to the Gorge with Dana, crying and singing my eyes out; it was the moment I knew I wanted to marry her, in retrospect. We were years away from it, and I knew. That’s because when I was finished crying and singing, I looked over and Dana was crying, watching me. She saw how much pain I was experiencing and took it on. It is a gift I will never be able to repay. I traded something valuable for something valuable, even though the relationship wasn’t valuable to me at the end. We became a bad thing for each other, we didn’t start that way.

Those three experiences shaped me- the ablutions in the river after a truly rough jump scare. I was so frightened of everything because I lost all my social masks at once; they weren’t social masks. They were triggers, and why I don’t like to speak. Speaking means not having enough time to think or delete things so I can never be sure when I will say something without thinking that she used to say and the pitch perfect imitation becomes the jump scare. When I mentioned having her sense of musicality, that’s the healthy part. The negative part is that I’m not in shape because I don’t like to hear myself sing.

I’m a lot more low-functioning than people think because of her and my dad. They’re both unique presences on stage and social masking them covered up just about all my executive function disarray because I was always “on.” What covers my executive function now is not covering it, because people thought I was coasting on charm because I was lazy….. not that when I don’t have a social mask for something, I am utterly and completely fucked. “Coasting on charm” is not a want sort of situation. I am only now trying to social mask Leslie Lanagan,™ because for once in my life, I don’t think she’s that bad. I also don’t think that “Diving Into the Wreck” is something I should avoid.

Supergrover and the rest of my friends don’t have all this context (or, they didn’t until I started writing it down). They haven’t known me since I was 12 years old.

Supergrover in particular gets on my ass about said abusive relationship, always has from day one. She does not see why I do not spit white hot rage all over this woman every day of my life. Easy answer is that monotropic thought process damn near killed me for real. Fuck her, but I’m taking my peace on my own by telling my story exactly the way I want to tell it, because she’s the one person in my life that I absolutely want to tank her career. Writing it out over and over gives the story less power and I’m done being worried about what she thinks, have been for 10 years. I’m not a vindictive motherfucker. She’s just worked with too many kids over the years and I’m also done protecting her. We cannot, do not have any more mutual friends….. or if we do, I run away when she comes up. I don’t talk shit about her in person because I already have a “shelf” for that.

I would Google tattoo her every day of my life if I hadn’t indirectly told Supergrover I wouldn’t. She didn’t ask me to do it, just disapproved of my approach to things because she knew my attention needed to be redirected before I did- not that my ire toward this person was unearned and/or undeserved. She encouraged me to lose my shit on many occasions. Though I decided loving Supergrover was worth my all-encompassing attention, I didn’t get over that abuse immediately because of the genuine moments it contained. My experience, unlike others, wasn’t all negative and I had to wade through it. With the information I had at the time, I wouldn’t do anything else but move to Portland if I could do it over.

For better or for worse, Supergrover is a wolf with terrible yellow eyes when she’s angry. When she met me, she found an excellent use for her jaws in my emotional abuser. When Supergrover bit her, the abuser’s claws finally, finally let go of me…… a mask falling off like the end of a Very Special Episode of Scooby Doo. What was valuable was not concrete. I’d had an experience with my cat recently that felt the same way. Asher was closer to a human than she was a cat, and I could tell the moment her personality left her body, because her face changed and she looked like a wild animal. Revealing the emotional abuse gave that face a different context, looking no less feral.

Supergrover and I are so much better at fighting for each other than we are fighting against, because if someone crosses her, God help them.

The only reason I was okay with the abusive relationship dying at the end is that I got time to make my peace. I was reborn into something I never would have been otherwise. My grumpy old wizard did find a knight, a “Wart” who’s already Arthur and I have to avert my eyes (WELL,STOP IT). I made it to Camelot, which is indeed a silly place.

Because I don’t have to think about abuse anymore, Supergrover has been in my head for 10 years as I process my mutual experience with abuser. Her anger carries me when I don’t feel it enough, and that was important in the months afterward- just not now because none of that is close anymore. I can write about it with the emotional separation I need not to explode emotional landmines.

I’ll let you know if Supergrover moves from her castle “in the cloud.” Just because I gave her an eviction notice means legit nothing in terms of the way I process, and she’s stubborn enough to keep me around in her mind, too. No matter what, we have a past, present, and future

…….because I live in two time streams, forward and backward. Where they meet is a fixed point in time, and you can’t cross your own timelline (I’m so, so sorry). You can only understand it after you’ve passed it by.

Life is Like a Full Time Job

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I ran across a post on Facebook about looking for friends. They said they were an enneagram two looking for another one. I had no idea what the hell that meant, so I took the test on my own. I am a four, The Individualist. Apparently, this is the INFJ of enneagram, because it had all the traits of a healthy four, and all the negatives. It was fucking brutal. Enneagram is one of those tests where it comes off like psychological “data” indicating what’s wrong with you and why……. through a web form, so that’s legit.

The good news is that my personality is as rare as I think it is. The bad news is that my personality is as rare as I think it is (before the ADHD/Autism/PTSD/Bipolar enter the chat). INFJ in Meyers-Briggs–speak is about leadership and finding yourself in order to find others. Four sounds like they want to make the world revolve around them……. but, of course, they do this while also giving examples of great “narcissist” fours in history- Jesus, Rumi, Ghandi, Martin Luther King, Jr………. and Leslie Lanagan.

Ok. I get it.

Amazing people, enormous flaws (even Jesus, die mad about it).

I believe that Meyers-Briggs INFJ is more accurate (kinder?) for me than Enneagram Type Four, because my personality does not lend itself to narcissism. My personality lends itself to being able to look at a situation from more than one angle and people believe I am two-faced. When life is a spectrum of possibilities, two things can be true at once. More than two things can be true at once.

I cannot control anything but me, and I don’t try. I, like the INFJ/healthy four I am, have retreated into the silence to regroup. I’m learning what I can about other people who are also like me, beginning the vamp to “Take Five,” and we started in common time.

With an enneagram, you lean more toward one number than the other in terms of lower and upper limits. For instance, if you are a four who also has characteristics of three, you would be a four wing three. I am a four wing five, which means that I am just as inquisitive about the rest of the world as I am about me. It seemed to be one of the few bright spots in which the results didn’t focus on telling you why you were fucked as a human. The only other bright spot is that I learned which enneagrams I’m most compatible with, so at least if someone asks me where I fall, I don’t have to pretend I know what they’re talking about…… At the same time, I also believe “four wing five” would translate to 4/5 time, not 5/4, but Dave Brubeck didn’t write a chart in 4/5. 😉

It seems to me that enneagram has a lot to learn from “Ted Lasso” about being curious and not judgmental…. because essentially what it says is that we’re some of the most unique people on earth and also have to let everyone know it….. when people don’t respond, we’ll isolate and say “I liked it better that way, anyway.” I am sure this comes out in autistic rage, but even if behavior comes across that way you can’t always attribute underlying emotions.

Because it’s a spectrum, I know that other people are going to read different interpretations into it, but I feel that Individualists/Idealists fall into the trap of alienation and have to cope. We’re not begging for attention and the description makes it feel like we are. There’s no narcissism to it, there’s only handling a lonely world for neurodivergents. What are people supposed to do when they feel lonely besides pretend they like it?

There is a strong correlation between neurodivergence, four, and INFJ; however, the enneagram four copy was very much like getting a performance review at HR where they list all your worst characteristics to your face because they can’t just say “autistic.”

Language around “INFJ” talks about the good things in your life- that you’ll love one or two people intensely (perhaps three, but no more than a partner and two friends at a time), but shun more superficial relationships. INFJs are all about relentlessly trying to understand themselves, and the enneagram does not speak kindly to this. The description makes you feel like a loser, because it seems like extroversion is an ideal.

The enneagram will straight up tell you that if you don’t make friends, you’ll have a tendency to make being alone your personality, that individualism is the point because we’re too unique for the unwashed masses (Jesus would like a word). All personality types have their good and bad sides, and it isn’t wrong as long as extremes aren’t overrepresented. They often are. That being said, I was relieved to find that I have a lot of healthy four traits, and the enneagram does tell you what they are. It’s just that the list is a lot shorter, because apparently people like hearing how awful they are in great detail.

The biggest of the positives about a four is their ability to laugh at themselves. The trap in being a four is thinking that you’re such a special little snowflake no one can possibly understand or love you. Again, the wording of the enneagram is harsh and I do not like it. In my opinion, it is ableist.

Most creatives are coming from a place of deep pain, and autistic people score four/INFJ in droves. Therefore, the population of INFJs is already a group of people who have been led to believe that they’re lesser than. There is no need for all that because we can whip our asses on our own time.

When you’re autistic, getting out of bed and leaving the house takes work. No one is making us dive into self-pity except for hearing people talk about disability as if it’s an excuse. The world is designed like that, not us. Telling you no one is listening and nothing changing is par for the course; neurotypicals put the onus on the disabled person to fit in and this is proven, not my personal opinion.

If you’re an INFJ and autistic, you probably love personality tests. It took me a while to figure out why, though. Learning ourselves in-depth helps us figure out social masking easier, because when we find out how we fit into the puzzle, it’s easier to see where the other pieces go. Output can be dangerous if you don’t know yourself well enough to know what applies and what doesn’t. It’s not an exact science, and there’s no way to score it accurately (what is true today might not be true under different circumstances later).

Reading your enneagram, to me, is like reading “What’s My Toxic Trait?” porn because then you can compare how awful you are to other people. If you have mental illness, the trap is not feeling sorry for yourself. The trap is entering the pain Olympics. I’m going to be the best at therapy by proving I’m way more fucked up than you. It’s especially gratifying to see your therapist realize this is, in fact, her first rodeo.

Part of the reason I’m such an intimidating case is that in medicine, everything combines into comorbidities. In psychiatry, if it’s not one thing, it’s your mother. 😉 When a therapist is deciding how to work with me, they’re doing a lot of processing on the backend. What they get with me that they don’t get with most patients is that I want to understand me as badly as they do, and I can speak their language. I have not done enough reading to diagnose anyone including me, but I have read enough to be confident discussing my own body and treatment. I come into therapy already more self-aware than most patients, and this is not something I’ve said about myself. This is what every therapist I’ve ever had has told me after I let them read a few blog entries. They joke about “what do you need me for?”

Technically, they’re right. I don’t need them. I want them to provide feedback on what I’m learning about myself, but therapy cannot be my only outlet for my feelings because it’s harder for me to process while speaking than writing. It takes the energy of having to social mask away, when in therapy I’d be trying to balance the energy in the room. I’d notice the therapist’s discomfort and change tacks, fully realizing that’s their job. I am not a very good patient, just like I’m not a very good parishioner. The struggle is real.

I tried “Better Help.” Perhaps it’s just that I didn’t get the right therapist, but she told me that the way it worked was that I’d write and she’d respond. The problem was she didn’t. I’d write just like I do here, and I’d get a link to a Google document about something and no actual treatment. I think their therapists are overloaded and I didn’t get the right one for me. Doesn’t mean I feel inclined to go back. I will find something- a hybrid.

What I know is that even if this isn’t the answer, it is an answer I didn’t have yesterday. Autism is a new and frightening world, because so much of it makes sense in the context of feelings and issues I’ve had since childhood. So much of it is new in terms of not knowing how far behind the eight ball I’ve been in not having a diagnosis. I have never learned coping mechanisms for rage and burnout. I didn’t know I was social masking, I just felt alone. Alone and overwhelmed with no ability to do anything except cry in frustration. You can’t get it right, you’ll never please your boss, and you can’t clock out.

With autism, you don’t have to get a job to know hard work. Life is like a full time job.

I’m ADHD. I’ll Love Them All, Eventually.

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

What is your favorite hobby or pastime?

I have never found anyone ADHD that didn’t get obsessed with everything a hundred dollars at a time. That’s because it takes about a hundred dollars’ worth of interest before your brain moves onto something else. The two hobbies I’ve always had are reading and writing, and I’m finally learning that it’s where my most basic need and the world’s wants combine. I am giving people solid answers in their own lives by being able to see someone else struggling with the same shit, and I know that because I’ve been read in every country in the world, sometimes because my beautiful girl has a reason to be there and I don’t. I have faith in my abilities because she believed in me before I did. That being said, if she’d ever tasted the beer I made, we might be doing something completely different together. 😉

Dana and I made beer through a kit once, a Hefeweizen. For a basic mix, it was fantastic. So, I would get into beer making again if I had the stuff, so not every hobby I’ve invested in has been a waste. In fact, I think I asked for the beer-making kit from my mother for Christmas just to see if she would buy it. When you’re a preacher’s kid, being a little devil is relative.

To her credit, she was a lot more fun when she realized I was joking 90% of the time and loosened up. Lindsay and I always thought she was funnier than us because we were acid funny all day long no problem. When my mother dropped a truth bomb, she destroyed because she picked her battles better than we did and knew when she had an entrance that couldn’t be beat.

With my mother, I enjoyed crafting because she enjoyed it. Mostly cutting up things for her bulletin board in her room, which is why I’ve enjoyed connecting with all the teachers I’ve dated as an adult, because we have that lingo in common. I’ve never been up in front of a classroom, but I’ve done the work it takes to get a classroom ready for many years. I think it would be fun to be married to a teacher because they’d naturally be as creative as me and if their specialty was English I’d never get away with anything here, either.

I could be happy every day of my life with access to an eighth grade teacher’s library. This is because I prefer YA in every subject. It takes finesse to explain adult issues without adult language, like the stark reality that kids die, and not even in wizarding worlds. Cancer can and often does take them out. John Green taught me how that plays out, not Elizabeth Kubler Ross. Concepts are built with Eric Carle, not Erik Erickson. Sesame Street, not Skinner. Tolkien and Lewis, not Dr. Spock. I know this because they are who comes along to rescue children with terrible parents.

I am not singling anyone out. We are all terrible parents and children at once point or another. Children are traumatized in all sorts of ways from things we don’t remember we’ve even said. I know that this is the case because if I take the time to remember what someone has said and why it hurt me, I will regret it if I bring it up. No one likes to have things brought up that make them feel guilty, even if it’s for the purpose of not letting me feel bad over something I needed to talk out.

I am sure that because I’m AuDHD, this comes out wrong, but it doesn’t vary no matter what I do or say. People do not like to talk about their flaws and get defensive and angry immediately. I am no exception to this, but that doesn’t mean I’m not glad that someone chose to lance a boil so we could feel closer later.

I will never get over feeling insecure in my relationship with Supergrover because I didn’t have a choice over what to do when Dana and I broke up. She could think of me as trying to help her or hurt her and “in the end, it doesn’t even matter.” She can think I was trying to make our relationship easier and freer if we wanted it in the future, or she can believe that I set out to be her friend whether she wanted me to be or not. How does that work, exactly? Explain it to me like I’m five.

I didn’t think that anything would be truly solved until I looked into her eyes, and if she really had the time and space to think about it, she would agree with me. We needed to sniff each other out with more senses than sight. We did not have enough context to know whether we were scaring the life out of each other or not, because there was no context. For instance, I think she thinks it’s cute that I ask her how famous people smell, but what I bet she doesn’t know is that I picked that up from a morning radio show in Houston; what else are you supposed to say when someone name-drops? That’s because I know she’s not trying to name-drop. It’s her real life and I have to learn to hang. She’s not being an asshole, they’re her reality and now mine.

I can choose to hang or I can choose to think she’s a name-dropping asshole. I can either learn from her how to walk in rareified air constantly, or I can’t. I don’t think I would have had as much of a lock on why it’s necessary, due to two fans, her and a date I’ll call Stephanie (mostly because that’s her name and it was several years ago, so no one in my life would remember this.

Supergrover was the kind of fan that when she met me, she treated me like she’d met Dooce, Will, and Jenny (The Bloggess). She lovebombed me into complete submission, and I did the same. We just didn’t end up being the same sexual orientation (sapiosexual rather than straight/gay); according to my notes, this was hard for me to accept. Didn’t mean I was threatening. I had been sucked into a brand new world; I was green, afraid, and trying to push her away. In trying to push her away, I only made her angry. It was not a good situation because I didn’t think. My aim was to get her to block me on everything so I wouldn’t have this constant conflict within me of feeling incapable as a friend and a wife in every way possible either one could dream up. I was falling short of he glory of God when my sweet wife realized she was being Mickey’d because I hadn’t so much fallen for another woman as the TARDIS was on our lawn, then it wasn’t. Instead of moving on with my life, she became The Raggedy Doctor, me running every time she left the e-brakes on just because she liked the sound.

It was exactly the same vibe as if I’d been tapped for a tour with Beyonce, and I really, really mean it. Beyonce was three years behind me at HSPVA.

  • I would not think of her as a celebrity when I met her, because as a junior I would have been unimpressed by freshman. Therefore, I really would be capable of meeting Jay-Z and Eminem and not get rattled because to me, it’s just my homegirl’s husband and his friends.
  • The power imbalance would be the same because I would never want to hurt her in the press with my own writing….. therefore, you can take a guess on any given day who is more powerful in our relationship and she knows it. She reacts to it by not telling me anything and thinking it’s better that way. I am an anxious alpha dog, and my reactions to Supergrover have always reflected it when I could really rival Jay in my loyalty.
  • Actually, I can MORE THAN prove my loyalty over Jay, who is not a bad person but has done bad things…… and I would never treat Michael as if he is that person because I’ve never found that he’s ever done anything wrong. He cannot say the same thing about me. I can’t complain when my acting crazy was to act like the person they thought I was rather than the person I really am because saying “all this scares me” was apparently just too big a job. It’s the difference between thinking you have a problem with your next door neighbor and finding out you have a problem with Eminem on both sides of the equation for different reasons. She’s on the level, and I spit bars.
  • It would be every bit the same as sleeping with Eminem’s girlfriend and finding out just how much people can hate you in the audience. The audience will kill you if you lat them. I have no doubt that the reaction in the press if there was any interest (there wouldn’t be, anyway, because she’s famous among other people who don’t care who she is, and neither would the press. It’s just an analogy. No one
  • I would never want her to think I was running away because of something she did, so I thought acting like an asshole was better and so did she. I can say that of a relationship with Beyonce. The same rareified air that takes a while to grow into. Treating everyone like their most childlike selves not to reveal them and having some issue with something I can’t talk about here.
  • Because I’m an intel fan and she’s not, she won’t get that I mean this with all my heart. We need to rekindle our friendship because Will and Francie are caught up in Sidney’s bullshit without a clue. Left outside in front of the bank, but I’ll go into Credit Dauphine when she does.
  • Where she fails is only seeing me as Will season one, just like Beyonce would if I got into it with her.

So, if I couldn’t read her like a magazine, I would think she was a narcissist. This is not the case. We could go back to lovebombing each other at any time, because that shit is genuine. The purest on earth because I love her mind with such passion and she loves mine that way when we’re talking about intellectually diving deep.

With Supergrover and Beyonce, it is and would be hard to tell between avoiding something because it’s hard and avoiding something because you’re too busy…… and not expressing it clearly yourself because you can’t even choose. Additionally, why wouldn’t learning how to love Beyonce take over your hobbies if one of them was writing? Wouldn’t you have something to say about it? That it’s amazing and problematic?

Just because it takes a long time to turn over in my mind doesn’t mean I wouldn’t give a limb to make everything right in the end. What if Beyonce never acknowledged that her rooms were different than mine? I hope she’d know that it didn’t mean anything between us, because she’s still an annoying freshman.

Our biggest problem in life is that I treat her like she’s Beyonce and I know it. She doesn’t treat me like I’m Wil, Dooce, and Jenny anymore, and shouldn’t forget why it’s important. It’s what makes us work on all cylinders…… because Beyonce left HSPVA, and Supergrover and I both like being classically trained.

First and Second Chair

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

In what ways does hard work make you feel fulfilled?

The title is a music reference, because when you’re the lead trumpet player, depending on where you live it’s called “first chair” or “first desk.” Everyone has a chair, and they’re ranked. Yes, I have been as low as 7th chair. I wish I’d done better on that audition. But I was 7th in the city of Houston. Beat that with  stick.

I was also 13 years old.

I am not a prodigy. I make a lot of mistakes.  I’ve splatted wrong notes on the back walls of MOST Houston auditoriums, but a time I didn’t and it went really well, I was on a television show called “Black Voices.” I was a soloist during Summer Jazz Workshop. Didn’t make it less funny when I was on camera. I am just picturing all my black friends falling over with laughter right now. “You were on what now?” My favorite was the logo over my big ass glasses.

Another time it went really well was when I was in one of the jazz bands (I was in Jazz II. I told you I wasn’t a prodigy. But again, different playing field. You know who else was in Jazz II? Robert Glasper from “The Robert Glasper Experiment.” and Jon Durbin from “The Suffers.” If I’d stuck with it, maybe I’d have a Tiny Desk Concert of my own, but I sincerely, sincerely doubt it. I loved performance. I was unconvinced by hard work. It’s not because I didn’t want to do hard work. It’s that my embouchure was wrong (how you set your jaw and ilps), which made practicing for more than a half hour complete murder, and it’s good concerts don’t last that long because I’m not sure I would have made it through all of them, either. For that reason alone, symphony was wonderful for me because in general, trumpet parts in classical music alternate between resting for 200 measures and the most majestic clarion call you’ve ever heard. It feels like being a goalie when your team is superb.

Most of the time, everyone is on the other end of the pitch, but when it’s your turn, you come up BIG. You have to have enormous balls for classical music, because a random eighth note high A in the middle of nowhere and perplexingly alone is not uncommon. The other thing s that I could hit a high A out of nowhere, but it may wander a bit in pitch from left to right until I find dead center. In classical music, this is not an option. It must be crisp and clean, every note tapered. The hard work was never the notes, though. The hard work for me was in reading music the first time accurately, which takes thousands of hours to learn how to do.

I have never been so relieved in my life than when I went to a huge ass choir competition in high school. The sight reading portion was lifted straight out of the United Methodist Hymnal. It was the first time in my life I had “sight read” anything so perfectly. And no, I did not tell anyone…. no trumpet player (or soprano, for that matter) would tell you they had an edge at something. Trumpets are line cooks. Sopranos are line cooks with nail polish.

I got into choir the same way. I auditioned, and I got into the junior varsity choir. I asked the choir director, “are you sure? I’ve done major works at my church…. messiahs and requiems and all that stuff.” Believe me, questioning her was the hardest work I’ve ever done, but I came up big. She gives me this contemptuous look and throws a Handel at me. Hard. Then, she picks the most exposed, most difficult entrance she can find……………… FOR HER. Bitch, I earned this. She thought she was so clever, but I’d been in the adult choir for three or four years by this point. You know what you do EVERY SINGLE YEAR? The Messiah, or at least highlights. Few churches put on “the whole thing” (in quotes because even that is redacted most of the time by taking out optional sections. It’s long. It’s really, really long. And you do “The Hallelujah Chorus” occasionally at Easter as well. This was not a piece with which I was unfamiliar. I’d memorized the highlights by now…. and if I could explain my voice type, it would be “Charlotte Church as a teen.” My voice (and hers) has matured, but still what people at Bridgeport used to call my “high, high, fluty voice.” I drove that audition like I stole it, and I was the first person in the history of Clements to be in varsity band and choir at the same time.

I’ve just noticed I sound like an obnoxious dick. It goes with the territory, but I figure I can tell you I’m good at something when I’ve spent so much time telling you all the ways in which I need to get it together and how my life is an emotional dumpster fire of my own making a lot of the time.

Additionally, I gave up trumpet a long time ago. I’ve taken prescription meth for a very long time (Adderall or Concerta, depending on what release schedule we’re doing this month……… eyeroll……..), and it has been murder on my jaw and teeth, just like for junkies. Therefore, playing my horn is painful because of the sound vibrations. The fact that I don’t play anymore has not occurred to the rest of my personality, because I have turned ego up to eleven when I need it. The key words are “when I need it.” I don’t need to walk around DC feeling 10 feet tall and bulletproof all the time. I’m sure that if I dressed like a baller I could walk into any meeting anywhere and fake it. You cannot convince me for love or money that I do not have the smarts to be a Rep or a Senator. Not possible anymore. But I have the mental acuity to do the job. I am woefully unelectable, mostly because I would hate every minute of campaigning. I would frustrate the fuck out of my support staff because my answer to every problem would just be “let’s skip it. There will be people there. ” But if I was in Congress doing the job, I’d be as diligent as ADHD allows you to be, and on my worst day I would wipe the floor with Y’all Queda. I’d probably be censured by my own party for my language, but nothing I said would be untrue. Congress has issues and they scare me. The legislation doesn’t matter right now. The people are sub-par, and that’s okay now.

Because of all of these experiences (except working in Congress. I was a political science student, so I know about working in that part of Washington, I just don’t.), writing sets me on fire. I’m old enough now that I really have stories. It’s age that gives me credibility now, because I don’t have letters to fall back on. Graduating from college has been a shit show because I am barely capable of working a full-time job and going to school. I should have stayed the extra year in Houston to finish up, but I had a partner with a very lucrative job offer who said “go to George Mason. it’s right across the road.” I didn’t even get a chance to enroll and register for classes before that deal fell apart.

Besides, I got my money’s worth, anyway. I wasn’t one of Brene Brown’s kids at Graduate School of Social Work, but she was one of mine when I was the supervisor of their computer lab. I actually got into the Graduate School of Social Work contingent upon my BA. I’d just helped the Dean figure out a very complicated computer issue and she was very grateful. But I didn’t get into GSSW based on that issue. It was based on the conversation I had with her while trying to fix it. I always chat about nothing because people have no idea what I’m doing. All they hear is “blah, blah, blah, I’m done.” So, we engage in small talk and she’s the Dean of the GSSW and I’m an INFJ. I didn’t get in because of what I do. I got in because of who I am.

The thing is, though, I’d forgotten all about it because all I heard from Kathleen was “blah, blah, blah let’s go to DC.” And if I had thought about it, it wouldn’t have changed my mind because unless I’m at my family’s house and never leave to do anything, Houston feels like a toxic mess. The only exception to this is that Lindsay still lives there and introverts don’t make friends. An extrovert adopts you and drags you into public.

That’s the hard work right there. Being industrious enough to make my own friends and get my own dates. It took a lot of courage to lay it all out in front of Zac and say “this is what I’m dealing with, are you in?” In fact he was. ❤ The added bonus is that Zac told me that he was military intelligence the second time I met him, but not the first. So, I actually was brave enough to get my own date that time and manifested a really great partner, because my interest in intelligence doesn’t come from him. It just provides us with “intelligent” conversation.

He doesn’t emotionally overload me and I don’t do it to him. That’s because I process like a lesbian all day and by the time it’s evening I do not give a fuck about my feelings. (I just laughed so hard I would have made Oliver jump straight in to the air if he was here.) Zac doesn’t hear my bullshit, because I don’t need him for that. In fact, it’s great when he opens up to me about his problems, because I’ve spent enough time on myself.

Editor’s Note: Straight women are crazy. Absolutely insane. Why do you not date bi men when you’re all over gay men like white on rice? I would bet A LOT of money that my boyfriend smells better than yours and I’ve never even met him. Remember when we used to have a special term just for straight men who bathed? Straight women worry a whole, whole lot when his ex is male. They can save a lot of time and energy by not doing that.

Also, I’m a good enough writer that I could have gotten into a GSSW anywhere. You see all the stream of consciousness crap, but I clean up nice. 😉  I sometimes feel bad that you’re getting the B-sides and rough drafts, but at the same time, this is the hard work (said in Kristen Bell’s voice). Blogging is writing as a valid art form. It is a lesliecology of brain droppings in which I can cherry pick the best lines I’ve come up with and use them elsewhere. So much of my writing comes from e-mail and Facebook comments because I’m reflecting on something that someone else said, or something I’ve written previously works even better in another context. Making the commitment to write every day without fail. I got up to 63 days before I broke my streak for one. This is because writing is a muscle. I will not be a good writer until I can write in any mood, in any situation, in any anything. Creativity is a grind, and I will not be where I want to be without woodshedding, a music term that extrapolates nicely here.

When you’re practicing, some parts of a piece are really easy. The notes, that is. You still have to craft a narrative and that’s where the work comes in. That being said, you have to be technically accurate before you can craft the narrative, so you isolate the four measures in which you’re really going to be screwed during a concert if you miss. In a symphony, you have moments where if you miss a note, it won’t be noticeable because there are 150 people playing next to you. At others, there are three. When you’re out there all by yourself, it is frankly really fucking scary. You learn to manage, but it doesn’t go away.

Through voice lessons, I’ve become a phenomenon with singing comparatively.

It’s not how good of a singer I am, it’s what a train wreck of a trumpet player I was. I mean, obviously, there are high points to when I was living that life, but I feel so much more at home in my body as a singer because apparently the large amount of metal in front of my face was blocking my talent.But now that I’ve worked really hard in all things, given my whole heart to everything and everyone I’ve ever loved, I only have one thing left to say.

I am fulfilled.

Second chair no longer exists.

I Don’t Have Favorite Children

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 2 Comments

What’s your all-time favorite album?

The Eminem Show, Eminem

In order to know why it means so much to me, you’d have to know the circumstances in my life when it came out. Maybe six months before, my wife had slept with two of her coworkers in one weekend while I was out of town, and I know that because she called me while I was still away to tell me that and break up with me. I was not feeling particularly kind toward women at the time. I couldn’t get angry, but my music could. Eminem literally became the paramedic healing my emotional wounds, because his pain stood out to me. I am Stan yet I have wonderful boundaries and I don’t care he didn’t write me back. 😉 I hate to do this to all my other favorites, but this one takes the cake.

That anger went away quicker than it would have on its own because through someone else’s eyes I could see that my pain was valid in his artistic expression……. when to put out my own was worse because I protected her when I shouldn’t have on my blog and only told my closest friends how bad it got. I can look at either one of them and they know which person I mean when I say “Sgt. Fucktard” and both of them will fall out with laughter, because now I can laugh about it, too (such a pity that neither live in DC now).

I barely even remember her name is Kat anymore, and that’s for the better. Karma was good to me. If she knew what I knew about what happened to me, she’d be too jealous to be happy, and that would be true if I’d never published anything at all, especially blog entries. It’s a beautiful thing when you meet someone that is worth your career. It puts everything into perspective really, really fast. The love of my life isn’t out of romance, it’s that she has a space in my heart no one else can have or will ever duplicate because I have to lose the master.

Also, this part of “Cleaning Out My Closet” made me stronger: “have you ever been hated or discriminated against? I have. I’ve been protested and demonstrated against… picket signs for my wicked rhymes…” It felt a lot like blowback from my web site because I have never been protested against by more than one or two people at a time, but it felt like hell because my first reaction was always to pull the plug; I wanted to please them and my career said “people think you’re a good writer. If you want to be able to do this for money, you have to keep going. Dooce didn’t become Dooce overnight and you won’t become Leslie Lanagan that fast, either.” Eminem slowly gave me the confidence to push away people who don’t like being on this blog and gather the people who tolerate it, even if they don’t outright love it.

I felt like Supergrover felt like she was in some sort of hostage situation, that I was writing about her to provoke her so she’d have to be stuck with me, yet didn’t get that my feelings would naturally go away if I wasn’t focusing constantly on her. This is, in fact, not our situation at all. She’s acting blind when she shouldn’t or can’t.

She’s my first thought every day, nearly every moment because I accidentally went from a blogger to a journalist in 15 seconds flat. It’s not as cool as it sounds, but yes it is. Both extremes are enormous, and I cannot cope with the downside alone. I shouldn’t have to ever and it’s a gift she can’t or won’t give. I feel that by letting me into the little things, I have more material to protect her because I have a bigger library of analogies to protect her identity publicly, because she might not freak in my personal life (although she very well might, too), but there would be hell to pay if it leaked here, and she would be well within her rights and responsibilities to hate my guts. I don’t protect her like a lover. It’s so much deeper than that.

I’m neurodivergent. Rambling like this at parties just doesn’t happen. I am literally using my quirks for me rather than against thanks to having the strength to stand up for myself. It’s just that now, one of the friends I ramble about is the least likely to need or want it. So, I cut her loose off and on to see if these feelings will go away and they never do, because either I’ll apologize again or she’ll drop in and yet won’t. Three word e-mails most of the time aren’t going to cut it and she’s avoiding it and blaming it on time. It’s a conversation we desperately need to have in a situation where we can’t have it. Given the option, I’d choose her over writing every time, mostly because she’d never ask me to pull the plug unless this was a real problem and not a possible one. She thinks I’m entitled to my stories even when they’re all bullshit, but doesn’t realize they’re all bullshit because I’m doing the very thing I need to do. Even when I’m angry.

Especially when I’m angry. Right now I’m angry that she doesn’t see that she opened up herself to having a right hand ring out of necessity and by blowing up each other’s lives and not talking about it, the right hand ring burns us instead of tempers. She thinks I should get over it. I think I should think through it with her brain and my heart, because that’s how we show love. She does the thinking, I do the feeling. She would rather have a root canal than acknowledge what she’s done and move on from it, because it seems to me that I’m activating guilt where it doesn’t belong by needing something she doesn’t deal with in herself and also needs desperately. We could support each other, but we don’t. That ship, in some respects, has crashed against the rocks because of a Siren, and now she’s having a heart attack. Because she doesn’t have time to heal me and feels guilty, because she thinks I’m asking for so much more than I really am.

I don’t need to have chocolate and coffee with her every week, I need her to acknowledge that she’s the Earl Grey in the box, the one most people sleep on and I adore because she didn’t sleep on me. I am not the person that when she comes to work all this out, I heap guilt on her. I express needs and that’s what she reads, so she doesn’t respond like a mama wolverine when she’s the issue, but God help everyone else. There are a couple people in my life that if they became mutual friends, they’d regret it. I would have looked forward to seeing that in person. Something equivalent to “surely you do not believe that this person who is a mental bag of rocks is worthy of you?” Probably everything I would have felt about her husband until I realized that he was perfect for her and I was wrong. I have never been convinced that we would be even close to happy as partners, we’re just connected by chance. The enlightening that she found her person would have been a good day, too.

Lesbians totally have a straight guy side to them in terms of possession and jealousy because we’ve been taught to act that way by men. Not that they’ve straight up told us that, they’ve just modeled it for centuries. In my head I’m Anne Lister without the hairstyle. It’s unfortunate that Supergrover married a man on purpose and a gentleman jack by accident with loyalty, because now she has two guard dogs that probably wouldn’t always agree with each other (but I’m certainly willing to have that fight as it is so worth having).

The Eminem Show had the same effect on me that my mother’s cemetery has on me now. It gave me perspective on the fact that more people than me were in pain much worse than mine. It helps me now to release pain in the situation with Supergrover, because I will never be jealous, but always possessive where she’s concerned. She hasn’t made the connection that she needs me to be possessive. I see something she doesn’t. It sucks.

History repeats with music, because it also contains some of the tracks she likes. I’m naturally gravitating towards it. One of the things I remember from our first few years is listening to that album again because some of her favorites are ones I usually skipped, but became beautiful to me because she loved them. I am listening to this album because I have the right to that much anger and I feel same type pull that makes me crave her words, while she thinks I am telling her that I regret meeting her when I need her to open up. I am doing my best to curb my enthusiasm, but it cannot go away so it won’t. I am the Impossible Girl because I have to be wound into her whether I want to be or not, because it’s for life, even by accident.

It’s an album, a presentation. I haven’t bought any songs separately.

I bought the album, so I go to all the concerts, waiting for a Piccardy Third that might never come. We’re in the middle of the rap battle, not the delight of singing to Hailie. I look forward with hope because to not is not being me. When we resolve, so does the chord.

If and when it does, get ready for “the most feared duet since me and Elton played career Russian Roulette.”

A Lot More Than People Think

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 4 Comments

What brings a tear of joy to your eye?

I cry a lot.

I’m the most tenderheart bear you will ever meet in your entire life if you could, because first of all most of you aren’t American, much less close enough to see me in real life. Secondly, I said I cried a lot. I didn’t say that anyone saw me do it.

To be honest, most of my tears fall when we’re talking, because your side of the conversation isn’t in the room.

I wasn’t always this way. I used to cry in front of people all the time… mostly because I’m a musician and there are certain chord structures that control my tear ducts. If a dissonance resolves by dropping the bass so that the resolution expands deep into your chest, my physical reaction often includes tears. If it is a choir singing a capella, I can pretty much guarantee it.

I have even fallen apart in rehearsal.

There is really nothing like a basso profundo standing behind you, projecting a low E into the center of your back. I’m a soprano, yet basses make me happy. There have been moments I’ve wanted to cry during a performance, and luckily not because it was a train wreck (usually). Sometimes, the beauty of a moment descends upon you and you really don’t have a choice.

I had a conductor speak to this once, and it changed my life by helping me put on a game face. When we (the choir) are singing, it’s not our job to have a reaction. It’s the audience’s turn to have a reaction.

After that, touching moments during a concert were not for me to enjoy. I hadn’t paid for a ticket.

Writing brings tears of joy as much as music does, because I’ve already said that I cry when I’m writing to you. But there are television writers that can flatten me way faster than I can destroy myself. I have cried at long distance commercials, Hallmark movies, and knives “made for my family by a Boston silver smith named Paul Revere.”

The tears of joy started falling while typing out the last line.

Making My Own Space

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

What daily habit do you do that improves your quality of life?

What really helps me is a place of my own. I think about it all day, every day. About how in this house I have one. It is my space and no one is allowed in without permission. There is no social expectation on me to share my bed with anyone.

When Dana and I moved to Houston, not long after I realized that our house was huge enough for Dana and me each to have our own rooms, and I set it up that way. It didn’t have anything to do with my relationship with Dana. It had to do with the fact that we seemed to be exceptional at everything except sleeping next to each other. When I moved into my own room, I slept deeper than I had in years, and it made me a convert. One of the things you can do to make your relationship better is to sleep in separate beds as long as neither one of you are taking it personally. Dana definitely did take it more personally than I did, but also rolled with it, so at this point, I don’t know if my needing space was good for both of us or not. If It was too selfish, I apologize. Cosleeping is just not going to be a part of my life going forward. I have to take care of me in this way or I do not function well.

If Zac and I were on a relationship escalator, the thing that would work in his favor is that he has a huge house with many bedrooms and absolutely no expectation for me to be in his. I am betting that neither one would turn down the other’s invitation, however…….

That’s the difference. Right there. Even in a couple, you need to carve out room to still be the two individuals you used to be.When I could sleep better, I could handle having the rest of my identity being leslieanddana. It wasn’t the relationship I objected to. It was the cultural norm, thinking that there was something wrong with me because I didn’t want to sleep next to her every single night. So, I looked it up. Lots of couples suck at sleeping together, and sleep is too precious to waste.

Not cosleeping is dating energy. It’s as fresh and as hot as you want it to be… But that is my answer. It is not everyone’s. I’m not saying it’s the right way, just my way. At this point in time. I am both too young and too old not to know what’s coming down the pike. If I say never again, the next person I date is going to have a toddler that likes to sleep with his ass glued to my face. Never say never.

It has nothing to do with the way I feel about my current life… and everything to do with the way I sleep. I get night terrors, and I’d rather be alone. They don’t happen often, short and intense. I don’t think I’ve been with Zac long enough for him to see one, because if he did, he would have said something. That’s because I see him so rarely that sleeping next to him is a treat, not an obligation. If we were closer, the novelty would wear off. I can make it work for a night here and there, but in negotiating living with another partner, I need to know it is not demanded of me unless there are extenuating circumstances like a toddler sleeping with his ass glued to my face.

Although now I’m getting old enough that my partner’s kids would be teens/20s or there would be an age gap between us. Not that I am complaining about either thing. It’s just reality. The only thing of which I am certain is that if I do have children, I will not birth them. I know I am physically capable of carrying a child at 45 or 46, but I have no desire at all. Just put it in the negative numbers.

Thinking about the one thing I do every day- being safe in a space of my own- lets me branch out to an enormous degree. My thoughts can run wild because there’s no one to interrupt them (although interruption can be a good thing when I’m going down the wrong road). Being alone allows me to be a better writer because I am living in shifts. I am reacting and reflecting. To take away a space of my own limits rumination, certainly, but it also curbs creativity. I don’t just bitch in these sessions. I’m trying to figure out what’s signal and what’s noise.

For instance, I got a Facebook meme THIS MORNING bitching about the U2 album Apple put on their phones once. That was in 2013. As if that is the worst problem in your world….. to get FREE MUSIC (and if you didn’t want it, you could just delete it).

When I listened to that album, I found one of my favorite songs, “Every Breaking Wave.” Of course my favorite song of 2013 came from that album, but knowing why is above your pay grade. That’s an inside joke, and I know who will laugh when they get here. People who have real problems just roll their eyes at stuff like this, and that’s a large part of the joke.

I remember the conversation surrounding it- not funny until we ran the conversation into the ground a hundred times. Basically it was all about perspective. There’s conflict all over the globe, as well as hunger and a thousand other problems, but you’re cranked up because you lost maybe 150 MB on a 16 GB phone. What the fuck ever.

I have two paths of thought regarding this. The first is that there are so many problems in the world. Why is this something they remember over 10 years later? Alternatively, most people don’t like to get vulnerable. Bitching about U2 is infinitely easier than walking into your own valleys of vulnerability. Even then, I said something along the lines of “honey, I get it. The world is fucked up. But more today than yesterday?” Said person was also using the surface level to express fear and doubt about much bigger problems.

At the time, I was sort of going through a thing vicariously through someone else. A friend of a friend had been murdered. So, of course the U2 album was going to set them off. It was the right thing at the right time to blow off some steam.

It wasn’t that the world had become worse. Ours had.

I think about those kinds of memories all the time in the name of putting them down. I wake up every morning and reassess the day before, and it has been habit for 20 years. Although I haven’t always posted daily. I’m on my 61st or 62nd day of that, trying to get it ingrained as a habit. I was going to talk about writing every day vs. cosleeping, but two things about that. The first is sleeping alone informs everything else. I could not do what I do without rolling over and accessing my tablet first thing. The second is that I already have an entry called “This,” It asked about my collections, and these entries are it for me.

They don’t take up space. In my room.

And now, without further ado, the best thing that came out of the worst thing that Apple has ever done, apparently:

Commence Smiling

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

List 30 things that make you happy.

The thing that is making me angry right now is that I cannot find a way to do an ordered list, and the way the instructions are worded, the software won’t do what it says it will, either. No, you cannot just type a one and a period and the list will automatically begin. So, I don’t know if there are going to be 30 or not. Decide it’s 30 when you get bored.

Disco and Rosie are the dogs I cared for all last week. They’re both adorable and hilarious. Both of them have elongated toes, and once I massaged their feet, I was not allowed to slow down or stop. Paw massages were very popular with Rosie when Disco would let me give her attention. Paw massages were very popular with Disco as long as I gave Rosie no direct eye contact. Learning their quirks made me very, very happy.

Bluetooth coffeemakers make me happy, and I didn’t know that until I got to use one while housesitting. Very cool to make your order from the app upstairs and come down into a professional coffeehouse. The only drawback is that it makes one mug at a time. I can just picture my partner and me racing to wake up five seconds before the other one to ensure our order is made first. The interface was like Starbucks Mobile. It didn’t add milk, but you could choose coffee/espresso/Americano and how bold.

Jason Moran makes me happy. The last time I saw him, he told me he was planning on doing a Duke Ellington concert in DC. I told him he was a brave, brave man. Then, Saturday I got a brochure in the mail announcing that the time has come and the concert is this season. I believe it will be a hit because Jason will do the homework. No one leaves a Jason Moran concert sad they didn’t see someone else. The last concert I attended was the 25th Anniversary of Black Stars. Sam Rivers had passed, and it was still one of the most moving things I’ve experienced at the KenCen.

Robert Glasper makes me happy, because he does concerts here that also blow my mind……. and at the same time, we’re both the geeky jazz kids who stood behind Jason Moran just to watch. A kinship was born in our teen years from sitting together in history and also watching a master at his craft. Jason could do something as a high school student that most professionals can’t. He could speak with authority. If Jason said something about jazz, it was true. Period. It wasn’t because he projected that…. it’s that we could all see that he was a subject matter expert and we were kids with instruments. His virtuoso didn’t start with being on the cover of Jazziz and Downbeat. It started with walking the halls of HSPVA with not a single moment unaccounted for in terms of bettering his jazz education. When he wasn’t playing, he was listening. When he wasn’t listening, he was teaching us how much we could learn if we listened. If he runs across this, he has my undying devotion for introducing me to Oscar Peterson, and realizing I needed to listen to Miles with different ears. So, seeing Robert is a reminder that we both aspired to do great things by watching someone who already had things handled.

The marvelous thing that has come out of ending the Internet relationship is that I’m not spending energy crafting pages for her. I’m spending energy crafting pages for you. It’s not that hers were more or less intense, it’s that now my energy feels so much higher because all the information is going in the right direction. If I could be a great writer in a sandbox, I could be a great writer on the world wide web. The difference is how much to personalize something. With blog entries, I’m always looking for the thing I’ll want to remember about someone 20 years later. Everything matters, good and bad. I own everything that has happened to me. Blogging feels much more like an episode of one of those podcasts where you have to read your journal. It makes me happy to know I’ll always have a time capsule.

It makes me happy that those things I’ll want to remember often jog people’s memories and take them to where they need to go. I hope it matters that you can clearly see how much people mean to me even when they aren’t acting all that lovable. That I do remember the little things, and I write them all down. I heal myself by not forgetting the moments I loved you so that I have a place to go when I feel weak. My writing makes me fall in love with you when I think I can’t. I am a better partner and friend because of my web site, not in spite of it.

It makes me happy not to hold myself above like a sky god watching ants. I am a deeply flawed, scarred individual and I take myself to the mat as often as I can so that my wounds don’t become infected. It makes me happier that Zac and Bryn understand this.

It makes me happy that I was able to create boundaries with them on what I could write and what I couldn’t, but that wasn’t just it. They respected me enough to see why writing was important to making me a better person. I thought it was really sweet when Zac said that he should be a bigger fan. It was in no way true that he should be, it pleased me that he said it.

Washington makes me happy, has always made me happy. I came here the first time when I was eight. That awe and wonder is still present. I cannot land at DCA after sunset without crying when I see the monuments. It has stopped happening during the day. That’s just exciting.

Taking off at DCA is a trip in and of itself. That’s the happiest I’ve been as a speed junkie. The incline at takeoff to avoid federal airspace is the most expensive roller coaster ride on record.

Cooking makes me happy, as does gardening as I watch more and more DIY. I wouldn’t want to get into gardening for a living, like selling produce or plants, but I would like enough yield to feed myself. I get the whole commune thing now. I don’t know that I’d want to do it, but I get it. See “gardening for one” for details.

Food makes me happy. It would be a blessing every day to pick out my own chilis, for instance. I could wait to pick them until they were truly ready, caramelized just by age before I take out the seeds and roast them, making sugar dance on hell’s tongue.

Shaving makes me happy. It’s one of the few rituals I remember to do on a semi-consistent basis. I’m into it. I have the soap and the brush, and I watch YouTube videos. It’s surprising how many tips for getting a great shave on your face also help you get your legs that smooth, too. I had to study up because I don’t have a bathtub anymore. It’s just a shower. Shaving is not the same when you can’t soak in the tub for 10 minutes before you start cutting.

Walking makes me happy because it means I can eat what I want. I don’t have to worry if I want three slices of pizza for breakfast because after three miles, it won’t feel like enough. But that’s only when I’m not appetite suppressed. The rest of the time, I’ll have three pieces of pizza for breakfast and not eat the rest of the day.

Speaking of which, I do need to eat breakfast. I’m sure there are 30 ideas here, even if I couldn’t find the ordered list button.

It’s Going to Be Okay…. Eventually

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Write an open letter to your 15-year-old self.

Sometimes you see a writing prompt and you know it’s going to hurt. I’m going to be blessing and releasing a lot of pain. It’s not going to be easy, but I hope it’s going to be worth it.

Dear Leslie,

You are my precious, precious child and I wish I could protect you. You’ll learn to protect yourself, but it will take so long you’ll lose hope. Just when you think it’s never coming back, you’ll find the woman of your dreams. It’s not what you think. She’s safe. Do not fear her. You’ll know her by her suits and crap for work. She will hug you so tight all your pieces will glue back together. Please don’t be too jaded to let her. There’s going to be a lot more pain before It Gets Better. Love her to the best of your ability- it’s for life if you can learn to be kind even under stress because sometimes………..

Things Fall Apart

You need to learn about the Civil Rights Movement. I know you know what it is, but dig deep. You’re already thinking big thoughts. You want to be the Martin Luther King, Jr. of pink people. In some ways, you already are- but in order to be great, you’re going to have to find a way to be strong. You already know this, but I’m not sure you know how much. Those big thoughts will never go away, and you have a stunning ability to write and speak in a way that people will listen. The hard part will never be getting others to believe in you. The hard part is getting you to believe in both of us.

I know you’re fragile and broken. I know you don’t recognize love unless it destroys you. Just keep writing to deal with pain, and start taking Tylenol before school. The one thing I can tell you about the future is that we find out Tylenol also dulls emotional pain. The next three years will be the hardest of your life so far, and I’ll be 46 soon if that’s any indication. You’re going to grow in so many ways, but everything you know right now is not everything I know, and I cannot change anything because you are a child. It’s not our call yet. I know you don’t feel like a child, haven’t for a long time. But Leslie, you are…. even if this letter doesn’t convince you.

I know it will be hard for you to accept it as reality, but it is true. It will be true for a long time, longer than you thought possible. Just hang in. I cannot give you anything more specific, because if you don’t go through the hard parts, you won’t get where I am now. It’s all going to be okay if you can learn to walk through fire.

You are capable of leading your people, but you need to protect your energy until it’s time to step off a ledge. You will feel in your bones when it is time to jump. You’re a superhero, but no capes. it is very good advice. Live in the now, darling. It will be Incredible, and you think that being Incredible will come later, and it will in some ways. In others, you’re already the bravest person I know.

Being “out” at school is one of the most courageous things you’ll ever do. You will not be at your schools long enough to see what you’ve done, but it matters. People still talk about it as if you’re some sort of hero…… and yet, you’re just trying to survive. Stop listening to her music so you can hear your own. If you work hard, you’ll be as good as she is. There is no doubt.

If you work harder, you’ll be even better. Maybe don’t go to PVA for trumpet next year. I think you’ll have more fun in choir. Just don’t be a soprano. Be an alto if you want to survive. I know you already know this, but it bears repeating. You will turn out to be a lyric soprano, but it’s not your personality. Just “cigar and vodka it down” (that was a joke). Your inner diva will come out regardless when the right teacher comes along. You’ll be able to sing to the heavens while you’re in hell.

I can picture you walking the halls of High School for Performing and Visual Arts with your Walkman, because Jason Moran said that you needed to listen to everything and he had a Walkman, too. But only you and I know that it’s not jazz on the tape. It’s her.

I know this is the biggest heartbreak you’ve ever had, and there will be so many more. Some will be older, some will be younger… but if you’re not careful with picking a partner (this is a future word you will like), you’ll be exactly where you are now. Jumping up and down for an approval that will never come because of what has happened over the last two years. This will happen over and over until your person arrives, and even then it won’t go all that great. Just keep hope alive. With enough courage, you’ll gain a lot of respect. It’s just that no one will tell you that until years later. You’re going to think people don’t care about you, when in reality you’re their hero.

I need you to do something for me. I need you to take better care of Lindsay.

This is critically important. Tell her you love her in both words and actions. Protect her while you still can, because later on it’s her turn and you won’t want to feel like you haven’t done enough. You just don’t know how she’ll save you, and if I could tell you I don’t think you’d recover from the happiness. Through her, you’ll get to tell Jimmy Carper about the clock radio under your pillow, the story every teen in Houston has for him.

I know you’ve harbored a lot of pain. This is one of the things that will go right. She’s the best thing about your life. I know you already love her. Make sure she knows it goes to 11. If all goes according to the same plan, you’ll look up to her. Literally. I’m sorry, but you’ve grown as much as you’re going to grow. You’re going to be in her shadow, but I also know that you already know that’s where you want to be. Her shadow is The Grand Prize Game.

You’re going to get the new bike, Archway cookies, the Bun bars, AND the photogirrafic pimento.

Spoilers. However, I cannot tell you how much joy will come out of your pain. It’s coming out right now in this letter. That’s because you’ll learn how to look over your life as I have, like you’re doing right now. It’s going to change your life. Lean in, and enjoy the ride.

You’re just not there yet, but already know you’re a disaster in the PVA hallway- a ticking time bomb that’s about to go off….. but I checked with me and it’s still okay for you to tell your nemesis to go to hell. Remember that nemesis rhymes with emesis. Do with that what you will.

You’re going to vomit up emotions until you’re dry heaving, and then you’ll keep on doing it because you don’t know how to stop. You already have a good friend, though. Dianne is safe. You’ll love her more as the years go by, and realize you were on the wrong track. The extra N means that she is a better person, even if you can’t imagine that’s true.

She’ll pick you up in her little green Volvo and it will change your life, in what you think are small ways, but here is the secret to life. The small things are the big things……. because she knows what you refuse to acknowledge at home- and think you’re hiding at church. She will hear the distress in your voice when no one else does. Love her to the moon and back. Love her until you think you just can’t and then love her a little more. She sees you, Leslie.

Look for the people who see you. Always. I give you permission to walk away from anyone. Protect yourself, but not so much you can’t receive love.

If you keep that in your mind and keep writing, you will go places and see things you never thought you could. You’ll meet people that define you, because you’ll love yourself when you’re with them. Cut yourself some slack. You’re a pretty great kid. It’s okay to love yourself, too….. even when it seems selfish.

The only thing I would suggest is that when Dana invites you for Easter dinner, go.

Love,

Me

The Letting Go Show

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I said something about a Supergrover playlist the other day, that she reminds me of the color green, new life, new earth, etc. But what I needed in the moment was to release pain before I could enjoy everything again without anger or resentment. Here is the list.

  • She’s So Mean, Matchbox Twenty
    • Her clothes are on the floor and my records are scratched, but she’s the best thing that ever happened to me.
  • I Believe in Love, Indigo Girls
    • When we tried to rework all of this, each to our rendition, painted blindly in a corner, lost for ideas blinding fishing for a compliment or kindness just to bring us into view. You could not interpret me, and I could not interpret you.
  • Unwell, Matchbox Twenty
    • I wasn’t crazy, I was unwell. She’s hell on wheels in a black dress, but not by choice.
  • Hold On, Wilson Phillips
    • This is a direct result of the movie “Bridesmaids,” and it is completely responsible for making me cry and blow my nose at red lights.
  • Nobody Knows, The Tony Rich Project
    • It’s everything you can’t say, because no one wants to hear it.
  • Pink Triangle, Weezer
    • It’s the quickest way to make me sob with empathy at Rivers’ plight, because I would know nothing about the reverse….. #eyeroll
  • Not Your Fault, AWOLNATION
    • I yelled at her for so much that didn’t have anything to do with her, and that’s where I’d start if I got to meet her on the ground. Just “I’m sorry” all over the place. Alternatively, there were other times when I felt she was doing the same thing to me with no hesitation or apology. It cuts both ways.
  • Despacito, Louis Fonzi and Daddy Yankee
    • This is probably the most controversial song on the list because I loved it based on the idea that I was blogging the most innocuous things about her because no one else would think they were important and the narrator talks about writing on her body. This is what happens when you decide a song is about someone and ABSOLUTELYFUCKINGNOT fluent in Spanish. Dude is a creep, and my thought was beautiful because she was writing our story on my shoulderblades as well. I still like it, it’s just not a mutual story anymore. The ink on my skin I got from the amusement park is fading and when it goes, there’s no re-entry. I will not let people tell me one thing and do another. I want to hold your hand while the ride lasts, and if you decide to jump, my emotional support can’t depend on whether I’m happy about it or not. It can’t depend on getting things I want that you don’t, and vice versa, trying to convince the other we’re right. Relationships aren’t supposed to be THAT much work. You aren’t supposed to find dealbreakers once a week.
  • Superman, Eminem
    • This is only when I’m really angry, or I skip it. She was the equivalent of “I’m not fazed, I hang around big stars all day, It’s not a big deal to me anyway… you’re just plain old Marshall to me.” I was all “girl, you run that game. First off you don’t know Marshall. At all so don’t grow partial… that’s ammo for my arsenal.” Great at first, a shit show later. I could never recapture her attention even though I wanted to rescue her.
  • Love Game, Eminem and Kendrick Lamar
    • The chorus makes me laugh my ass off in this context. “Have a blessed day.” I am the little fuckin’ Ferris wheel and I have no shame.
  • Business, Eminem
    • I desperately want to know what it would be like if Dre and Em were us. She would drop me like a sack of potatoes in a rap battle. You can do that when you have ten years of blackmail. Alternatively, I’m cleaning out my closet.
  • Closer, Nine Inch Nails
    • It’s not about her. It’s the cry of The Timeless Child. It’s perfect when you see it in the context of abuse.
  • Dope Nose, Weezer
    • This has no particular meaning, just a good beat to make me feel good….. even if it is a little “Peter Gunn.”
  • This Could Be the Start of Something Big, Count Basie
    • I can’t not hear brass like that without thinking of her. She’s too quick. I should have put this as the intro track.
  • Church, Lyle Lovett
    • She should have joined me at National Cathedral if she wanted to see me fly like a lead trumpet. Not getting to see her face while I was riding on a high C makes me sad. She has heard me on a recording and all I have to say is that you didn’t even see the best part yet.
  • Til the Sun Comes Up, David and Devine
    • The video says more than the song.
  • Paper Bag, Fiona Apple
    • What it feels like to struggle with ***gestures toward everything***
  • Hit Me Baby One More Time, Bowling for Soup
    • Chad Michael Murray played me in a movie. It is every bit as embarrassing as it sounds, thank you for noticing.
  • This mashup. It’s too cool to describe.

I Am Already Changing Modern Society

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

What would you change about modern society?

I am already holding a mirror in front of society, because my microcosm represents everyone else. People read me because if it’s true for a hundred people (my on the ground reach), it will be true for a thousand. If it’s true for a thousand, it is a good indication that everyone will find something they can relate to written by me. That’s because I’m a bisexual man wrapped in a lesbian’s body, a minority who is trapped in the majority (I’m white), with spirituality and religion weaving themselves into the themes of my life.

I am always spiritual and seeking an audience with God. I am sometimes religious. I enjoy church and miss it, then go back and see why I don’t go anymore. It’s not that I don’t believe in organized religion. I believe in it so much because it has the power to change you if you let it. It’s just different for me because I don’t find God there anymore. I find God in other ways because I know how the sausage is made. It’s like being a musician and a line cook. Everything changes once you’ve been on stage, sat in the orchestra pit, and worked in the kitchen. I enjoyed being a lay preacher of all the jobs I’ve had in church, so I lay out my thoughts here as if I was preaching.

Every entry has a thread of that preacher persona running through it because I’m making connections through a library of images collected from every piece of media I’ve ever consumed. Very few entries are so stream of consciousness that I forget to tie it up at the end. It is short sighted AND impressive that every entry I write is one shot, hit post, go back and fix typos. When I go back and read something from five years ago, I am astounded at how quick I am at writing sentences that will flatten me emotionally and other people say that as well. My marriage entry, the one that was shared all over the world, some of them celebrities? It took about half an hour.

My blog is the very best example I can give you in terms of why I was terrible at school until I got to college. It all looks like the ADHD kid who stayed up all night trying to finish a paper. In college, you can do that because there is no daily homework to be checked. English and Language Arts didn’t eat my lunch, but remembering to turn things in sure did.

Blogging is how I know to use my ADHD superpower. I have been capable of thinking very deep thoughts and writing them down since I was a child. I have not been so capable at remembering the minutiae of life. I can best be summed up by Rhythm of Love by The White Ts, because this is a conversation that makes me laugh in terms of several relationships where I’m this man……..

My head is stuck in the clouds,
She begs me to come down,
Says "boy, quit fooling around."

No one likes a dreamer. Even fewer like what happens when our creativity is cut off or managed. Russian and Chinese TV is an extreme example of it, but it’s the best illustration I can think of at the moment. They are held back by strict standards. I would be lucky to find some.

I tell people I like the view from up here, and their constant quest becomes telling me why I’m wrong. I don’t write because I’m talented. I write because no one will ever understand themselves without being able to read themselves later with a dispassionate eye. Journaling is so important whether you let others read it or not. I am glad that’s the message the church instilled in me that stuck. Praying gets your ego out of the way, but it will creep back in when you think about a situation in retrospect and you can’t fact check anything. If someone tells you you’re being unfair, you have no way to check and see if they’re right. You won’t know when you need to yield, and dollars to donuts you won’t figure it out immediately because it takes so long to convince you that you might, indeed, be fallible.

You develop a more acute sense as to whether people are listening to you, because you have concrete examples of where you did and did not take in love or justified anger. If you grew up in a family that doesn’t fight and you’re terrified of it, that’ll be something I need to know up front, because I know it will make you run from every conflict for all time and to be gentle. Also, to learn when you’re running too much of the time and decide whether I want the relationship to continue. I can stop doing your emotional work for you at any time when you refuse to show up.

I see so much on the Internet about how women are not hospitals for broken men, and yet we are. We so are. Men can’t emote for the most part and you become their entire emotional support system within three months flat. It’s not because they’re not capable of having multiple relationships so they’re not putting everything on you. It’s that they won’t emote in front of anyone but you. The best thing you can do is encourage your partner to go to therapy and get their shit handled. You cannot do anything more. You can only notice when you’re not seeing results and move on. You get to decide how tired you’re going to be from getting your needs constantly ignored while they think nothing of trauma dumping while not being able to take it when they dish.

Men, 99% of the time it’s your fault. Period. End of story. You were not socialized to do anything but be angry all the time and it’s a lifelong battle to be whole again. It is not that you are generally wrong in your beliefs. It means that you are really bad at communication because you fear other people so much. If you open up to a woman and she breaks your heart, then what are you going to do? Who do you tell about those feelings? Why do you need another emotional support person/rebound right away? You can’t handle your emotions on your own. Everything stems from that one issue.

You can’t handle a household, either, because you weren’t taught those skills because why would you ever need them? Your mother’s frustration doesn’t mean shit to you, Holmes. She’s not going to be there forever to wipe your ass, but she loves you enough to do it even though you’re ungrateful because you’re not taught to look around and notice women’s contributions to your life, either.

You need to be able to communicate your needs and wants so that we don’t have to take care of you physically or emotionally. If you want a woman to cook and clean and raise the children and stay home all the time so you can be with others, you are free to be that for someone else. I’m not playing. There are going to be certain times when you’ll submit or I’ll walk away, and you’ll have those dealbreakers as well. It takes a tremendous amount of work to be in any serious relationship, and men are treating all their relationships with women as if they matter so much less. That’s because their way of doing everything is better according to them. I don’t have rights because I shouldn’t need them, etc.

If I wanted to get my tubes tied, in a lot of states I’d have to marry Zac to get my tubes tied, because I need my husband’s permission…. and then we’d have a marriage that didn’t mean anything to either one of us, I just needed health care.

This has no place in society at any time.

My happiness and survival shouldn’t be dependent on whether I’m working, and I don’t mean whether I can be lazy or not. It’s whether I can afford health insurance on my own or walk away from a job with really good benefits because my boss is a walking nightmare.

Proving that you have a disability severe enough not to work is a nightmare for many people. That’s why you have to get a lawyer and it costs money to be different. It is severely ableist and makes people live check to check because it’s not enough to generate savings. The one thing that’s sacred about disability is that they can’t take it away from you and make you dependent on your own money again. In order to live paycheck to paycheck, there cannot be an end in sight. A gap will drown you immediately.

If you have to go to the ER without health insurance, you will almost certainly be fucked for a number of years. You have to pay a lot of money to get Band-Aids and ibuprofen, because women’s pain doesn’t mean as much as men’s to doctors. They’ll think nothing of prescribing another white man enough oxy to down an elephant, but you’re suspicious or needy for being hysterical when you’re in pain.

They need to cut that shit out if they’re going to say Tylenol and Advil are strong enough to compete with narcotics after surgery and/or childbirth. It will work in the days and months after, but never immediately. That’s not your first call when you’ve sliced someone open, ever, unless the patient is an addict and are self-aware enough to know they need nerve blockers instead.

If you can’t get narcotics after a serious injury that all people with eyes can see, your arm’s off, you’ve cut your bleeding leg off, etc., it is not merely a flesh wound. Your doctor’s just an asshole.

Ibuprofen is right out.

I am not pushing for giving out oxy like Tic-Tacs. I am saying that narcotics have a time and place, and that place is in the delivery room, the ER, and the recovery room. It takes more than your hospital stay to heal, and most doctors are very concerned that Karen is going to become a frequent flyer while ignoring Chad’s warning signs. Chad gets what Chad wants. If not, it’s time to call Daddy.

Daddy will think his daughters’ lives are worth less and not with words. It will play out in actions. Boys get condoms and a later curfew because their dad is just as excited about the loss of his son’s virginity as he is, while shaming the women that provide the outlet.

The whore/madonna complex is real and it’s deep.

Either we’re the ones that wipe your asses or the dirty sluts who will actually sleep with you.

It’s why I’ve dated women so long. I don’t have to deal with your bullshit. I can live around it.

Here’s the take home message that really ties the room together:

Modern society is only going to change when men realize that they’re just as emotionally needy as everyone else, while blaming women for being hysterical. This will not change in my lifetime. I can only get more men to see what it’s like for women from an outside perspective.

It’s the difference between getting the ticket to La Boheme and playing in the pit. We’re just “the help.” It’s the same issue with media. You love Succession and Archer while shitting on arts grants. All of it stems from having your creativity and humility quashed.

In order to change society right now, start getting there faster and keep up.

“When my coach said ‘you run like a girl,’ I told him that if he picked up the pace, he could run like a girl, too.”

– a paraphrase of Mia Hamm

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?”

The Commute

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

What notable things happened today?

Bryn sometimes calls me on her way to work, which gives us about 15 minutes to talk (note to Bryn- let’s do this more). Today the notable news is that we’re both obsessed with Starbucks food. The coffee I can take or leave, but no one else has egg bites and Impossible sandwiches. Eggs and cheese are cheating on my vegan diet, but I only eat mostly plants, anyway. I’m living Michael Pollan’s advice…. “Eat food. Not a lot. Mostly plants.” I was also telling her that I liked Starbucks getting Trente cups because I’m a sucker for their iced tea. Just shut up and take my money. My favorite flavor is green because it’s a bit minty, but their black tea makes me smell numbers at that quantity. I get a breve, which is black iced tea, no extra water, Splenda, and soy or oat milk. It sounds weird, but you wouldn’t think so if it was a Thai restaurant, now would you? I think the’ve caught on to my idea, because now they’re selling iced London Fog lattes (Earl Grey and vanilla syrup).

We’re also working on bringing joy into our lives. That we are responsible for our own suffering because of our rejection sensitivity, but it’s something we can improve about ourselves by relating to each other. When I look at Bryn, my heart floods with gratitude. She’s the face I look to for love, because I can. She is also safe in loving me, because she’s getting me the me that has already made so many mistakes that I’m not so closed off to her because I see how that isolation affects her. I don’t want to make her think I’m doing anything that’s pushing her away, because when I feel sad, it’s not about her. I can’t ignore her needs, and sometimes they’re more important than mine….. like not encouraging her to believe that I’m being distant because of something she did. That’s more important to me than taking care of myself, because if I don’t make it more important than I will isolate based on what I’m going through when the situation isn’t even that bad….. I just think it is.

The story we’re telling ourselves is often skewed, because we’re so unkind to ourselves. We disconnect quickly out of embarrassment or self preservation, because it hurts to think about the ways we’re responsible for contributing to another’s behavior, or giving someone else negative consequences….. true whether you meant to or not.

We disconnect quickly because we’re so digitally oriented. Think back over the last 10 years. Are you quicker to anger because of the wall of separation between you and another person? That even though this person is close to you in real life, you have a desperate need to fight with people on the Internet, leading the charge into hell and forgetting that you are creating some awkward cocktail parties…….. because being right over whatever it is has become more important than empathy.

I don’t think this happened in any organized way. It is the nature of becoming digital. Too many relationships go up and down because of Facebook and Twitter, because everyone can see how you interact with everyone else. You’re not only taking into account how people treat you, but how you observe them treating everyone else. I don’t care if you have me a kidney 20 years ago. I will not let you get away with saying watching two men kiss gives you nausea….. and that’s why you’ll never go to a gay wedding.

Someone from my high school actually said that to me. He apologized and I’ve moved on permanently. I got an apology, but I want no future contact.

It’s the same kind of bullying I endured in high school, and it’s just noise. It’s chatter designed to make me feel awful about myself. Imagine being so certain that God is telling you that you need to tell queer people they’re going to hell. Imagine that message being preached to a church that has 40,000 members. Imagine that message going to all churches that have 40,000 members. Then imagine going to high school 15 minutes away from that church so its bitchy little mean girls all go there. I can’t think of anything more psychotic than getting into a performing arts high school and being homophobic….. especially if you were in theater. Even the straight kids are queer.

Probably because actors have to be two-spirited anyway. It’s the full range of human emotion.

I think it’s notable how fast I’m putting together what has happened to me over my life and how it is affecting me now. Being gay in Texas is a rough gig, and it always has been. I am not oppressed. WE are oppressed. We did not create the system that hates us, and we can’t really do anything about it due to the 80/20 rule…. That 20 percent of the population has to convince the 80% they’re right.

………over things that shouldn’t be legislated.

Thomas Jefferson is rolling over in his grave, because his ideas of conservativism was that the highest government in the land would be the equivalent of a school board. Just as little legislation as possible. He would be incensed that conservatives were trying to parent the whole nation. You don’t get individual freedoms if it’s perfectly acceptable to treat you as if your entire personality is a sin.

Sometimes I wish that the US had lost the Revolutionary war because the Commonwealth countries are so much more progressive than we are. I would deal with Boris Johnson a lot better than I’d deal with Ron DeSantis (I’m assuming he’ll be the nominee because more people are being convinced he’s an actual criminal every day. Hiding classified documents near water? Obviously he’s a genius….. we knew that when he looked directly at the sun during an eclipse. Don’t get me wrong. Hiding documents in your house is always wrong. But putting them near toilets and sinks is a special kind of stupid.

I also think it’s great he lost the E. Jean Carroll case, because that judicial standard says that it is more likely he’s guilty than not. This is different than a criminal trial, because “beyond a reasonable doubt” is a higher standard than a “preponderance of evidence.” The best example I can give of this is FBI and CIA. FBI collects data that has to stand up to scrutiny in a courtroom. CIA has no law enforcement capability. They collect data and return it to Congress and the president. Therefore, their information only has to be analyzed in percentage of sureties on outcomes. To me, that is the difference between judicial standards in American courts as well, because nothing in intelligence is beyond a reasonable doubt. Those issues change like a CNN stock ticker.

It’s too quiet in here. I put on the soundtrack to Argo The theme in the bass is about to drop, and that’s the best feeling I get with my headphones. The bass of the strings….. omg…. Fabulous. Although my favorite track is “Hotel Messages.” Hard to describe, just listen to it. I’ve been trying to learn the whispered rhythm for years.

Second favorite is The Mission, but Hotel Messages is all you get because I want you to actually watch the movie. 😛

I know the score intimately because I had to memorize it to get it out of the way while I’m writing. I don’t want to think about walking bass, suspended chords, etc. I had to do all that stuff independently, otherwise you’d just get an entry full of bad music theory with my third grade education on the subject. No open fourths. Rules are made to be broken. That’s kind of my limit.

I love movies about intelligence set in the Middle East, because that kind of music fills me up. The melodies are haunting because they’re not using a Western sense of chord structure. It’s also different hearing Middle Eastern music with a full orchestral arrangement vs. a couple of people.

Argo was all written by a composer named Alexandre Desplait, and he’s done a lot of movie scores…. But all middle eastern spy movies have that vibe. The music in Syriana, Beirut, Three Kings, etc. is just so complex. Speaking of which, there’s a great documentary on Amazon Prime called “The Sounds of Bond” or something like that, and it’s incredible. I like Bond music, too, but it is secondary to my love of strings moving to the notes you don’t expect.

The one thing you get with American music that’s not so prevalent in the East is a good Picardy Third. It’s the term for when a piece is written entirely in a minor key, but switches to major for the final chord of a line or piece. “Coventry Carol” is a great example of this.

Comparing Hotel Messages to Coventry Carol and the difference between how scales are used is apparent.

So, just another reason to love intelligence. The soundtrack to their lives is better than everyone else’s.

Notable.