Tag: nre

After the Fallout

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Share one of the best gifts you’ve ever received.

Today,, I hope you get the best of me. I am sick to my stomach and dragging ass. But I have to keep writing, because I have to be able to write in any mood. Today, I’m not going to write about just one, because they’re the best gifts according to category.

The two best gifts I’ve ever been given emotionally are Dana and Supergrover. This is because things went down hill at all our hands, but it didn’t start out negative, it just became that way…… mostly because I was just so……… meeeeeeeee.

Editor’s Note:

I hear that phrase, “I was just so…….. meeeeee,” in my friend Drew’s voice because one day Dana and I were in the kitchen at Biddy’s for brunch and Drew was doing dinner. He was late, and said, “I was going to throw my clothes on and run, but I said, “what’s that smell?” And then….. “oh. It’s meeeeeeee.” His lateness was instantaneously excused. Some of the other reasons he was late are absolutely unprintable, but make me love him more.

As you can imagine, the conflict with Supergrover was large and we were both angry at the poor choices we made in getting to know each other. They were numerous, and new relationship energy made us avoid all of it. Anything that would have said “this could be problematic down the road” went out the window. Just because someone is a platonic friend doesn’t deter the feelings of “oh my God I just met the most incredible person.” I honestly think this happens to women more than it does men, because I’ve noticed that men choose three friends in fifth grade and decide that’s enough. Plus, straight women bond easily. You could meet your new best friend online or in a bathroom at “Off the Record.”

So, I sent her a Christmas gift one year without knowing how she’d feel about it, and then I opened up about it. I said, “I’m sorry if I overstepped a boundary by sending you a present. To me, it doesn’t feel weird because I got all my other friends presents and you are one of them.” She thanked me and said it was thoughtful, so then I began to treat her just like my friends on the ground.

The next year, I got her two presents because like Jesus, “this is for Christmas AND your birthday.” I told her I was sending her a present. She said, “a real one?” I said, “as opposed to the fake presents I usually get you? Yes. A real present. Like with wrapping paper and shit.” They came in two different packages, but I didn’t clarify. So, she said that if she had known they were for two holidays, she would have waited. She said she’s very good at that, and I have no proof otherwise.

The gift that year was a bracelet with her favorite charity on it. She told me that it was totally something she would have bought for herself. I was so glad that I hit the nail on the head and she was pleased. She’s sent me a lot of presents over the years, though “not like with wrapping paper and shit.” She prefers digital because we’re both book junkies. None of them have ever stood up to the smile on my face when she sent me a picture of the bracelet I got her on her wrist.

That’s because I really sat there and thought about the jewelry that straight women give each other, because I wanted the present to be nice, but not romantic. I wanted to be genuine and sweet to her without upping her fear that we were always going to have to deal with feelings I couldn’t get rid of. It was too important to not.

I think at first she thought it was just a continuation of trying to change her, but over time she began to reciprocate when she realized that no, I was being genuine. I think that’s because I apologized for overstepping a boundary and I wouldn’t do it again if she didn’t approve. By being vulnerable and just asking rather than living in unease, I couldn’t spin out about it. These are exactly the kind of talks that we should have to go forwards and should have had if we don’t. When she gave me the information that she appreciated the gifts and it was very thoughtful, I believed her the first time and stopped worrying. I can take care of my anxiety on my own, but not when people don’t tell me how they’re feeling. I feel that some people are afraid of getting vulnerable with me because they’re afraid of my reaction. Some of it is that they don’t know how an autistic person is going to react to them. Some of it is that they don’t know how a bipolar patient is going to react to them. Every time they’ve replaced my disorders with my personality, and some people try to guess when I’m manic or depressed depending on how I write.

I can assure you that my mental state has nothing to do with the way I write. What has to do with the way I write is that I don’t go back and polish anything. I don’t go back and edit when WordPress screws me over by not publishing the last line of something. I want this blog to be entirely organic until someone else offers to clean all this up for me. This is because I know that I have often kept talking when I’ve run out of things to say….. and I should know better. I think it all the time while creating sermons. However, there are so few long form blogs anymore that I feel I should make use of it. Nowhere else on the internet do you have as much room to say as you can say on WordPress. Although I might test this by posting an entry in its entirety on Facebook just to test that theory. My opinion is that Facebook, X, Insta, etc. are for pithy soundbites, but I could be wrong. I do, however, love a good pithy comeback. “If you can’t say something nice, say something clever but devastating”- Father on the playground with his son in a New Yorker cartoon.

Editor’s Note:

Now that the Doctor Who Anniversary specials are over, I can tell you what bothers me about X. Twitter is so old that it’s like The Doctor went back and changed it. Because now X is a lot easier to remember now since it’s been around a while, adding to its mavitational pull. But, just like with X, I’m wondering how long it will take for Doctor Who to go back and change history so that its gravity again. At this point, it’s a running gag. I hope it was for the Americans, because nothing grabs you into that show like knowing an inside joke….. and after lots of episodes, knowing all of them.

The reason I think it was for the Americans is that it’s an inside joke that’s only a few months old. It wasn’t reaching into history with jokes like that because the Americans don’t have that institutional knowledge- more now since the series first hit Netflix, and I owe my love and devotion to that show to the company itself. I’d watched a few other sci-fi shows, and it was a suggestion. I watched one episode and was absolutely hooked. I wanted to watch the entire thing at once. However, since Dana is as big a sci-fi fan as me, I decided to wait until she got home to see if it grabbed her, too. That’s because if she did like it, I didn’t want to rewatch five episodes later. She loves it just as much as I do, so I suppose waiting could be considered a gift? I hope Zac appreciates my restraint with Slow Horses………..

To get back to being afraid of my reactions, what you imagine in your head is going to be a thousand times more amplified than the conversation is going to be if you show up open and ready to both hear and listen. We will not get anywhere if you only show up to think about your responses while I’m talking and not actually consider what I’m saying; it makes me feel unheard. It goes from trying to resolve a problem to trying to prove you’re right. Instead of leaning together, you dig in and conflict deepens.

It is not choices in life that make me spin out. It is uncertainty in relationships. For instance, Supergrover constantly telling me she was busy was perfectly acceptable, even over and over. But in the last eight years, she hasn’t written more than a few sentences in which I couldn’t glean anything. It wasn’t a problem in the moment, and the problem never would have popped up if after six weeks, there was a letter that actually had some thought put into it. Kicking the can down the road was so miserable that I decided to leave her behind. It does not mean that I take only bad memories away. I am fierce about all my feelings for her, for evil or for awesome (wow, that reference dates me).

That’s because my heart is all tangled up with her, because it made no sense. I wish there had been so much more “my mama wolverine instincts are kicking in, here” and so much less “you’re goading and provoking me.” We could have had something incredible, and we both let it go. One day I hope she’ll see that all of my letters are my mama wolverine kicking in, but also loving her like a Democrat instead of a Republican. 😉

I can’t love her like “everything mommy does is right and good and I’m a bad person if I want to change anything.” (You have to keep up with me to know what that means……). I have to love her like an adult who sees the good in everything, but isn’t shy about addressing conflict. That’s why you’ve seen my feelings in real time about this relationship, that they change depending on what I’m remembering that day. My biggest problem in life is that when I say she was a different person, she doesn’t believe me because she deleted everything and I didn’t. Maybe I should have done the same, because I’ve written every entry off the top of my head. I never have to go back and read them. I think the reason I didn’t delete any of them is that I need hard evidence that I am not responsible for everything that ever happened, and I need to forgive myself. That whether she is in my life or not, I got the gift of learning from her even for a time. It was useful, valuable.

And she scares me, but in a good way. I saw a video online of someone like her (not kidding, like when Dr. Wall said, “some other guy who looks just like me.” It was just someone who works for the same type industry and I thought they might know each other), and it made me realize that it was probably good our relationship was online; by the end of the video, my eyebrows were over my forehead and my hair was blown back. Her tone made me want to sit up a little straighter and behave myself, and I felt embarrassed I was in my pajamas. However, it was not a feeling that was unique to the woman in the video or Supergrover. I feel the same way standing next to my little big sister. I say that tongue-in-cheek because I’m older and a lot shorter.

I always think that other people assume I’m her nephew when my hair is cut short, but she’s always so welcoming no matter what I look like that I just try my best not to feel like a troll. Just proud a woman like that doesn’t mind being seen with a woman like me. If we’d met in college, I think we would have had as intense a relationship as we did when we were actually in college together. However, I think that as she drifted towards politics, then lobbying, I don’t know if it would have hung on or not. I would like to believe that we would have, because I cannot drill down on policy with her, but I can certainly advise her on how to treat people when you’re in front of a crowd. I can’t advise her on what to say, but I can advise her on how to say it.

The parts of me that live in her are queer. Not that she actually is. She’s married to a man and has been for a long time. However, she’s queer in the way she votes, where she works, what legislation she puts forth both in Austin and DC, and I’ll give you a for-instance.

She asked me if I thought it was okay to use the word “queer” on their web site because she knew it was a slur. I told her she was right, I wouldn’t do it……. but she was outvoted by her team. It’s fine, it’s their page. What I realized is that I’m the one that has issues with the word “queer” when straight people say it, because they’ve said it with sneers in their voices for so goddamn long. Because of Gen Z, who has no attachment as such, I am starting to feel like an old person…. Actually, that’s not true. The first time I felt old was when I saw a DVD in the grocery store that was ET: 25th Anniversary Edition. And if I felt old then, I’m probably still old.

I just realized I got off on a tangent and got away from talking about gifts and how they dropped into my lap. It’s what happens when you go back up and read a paragraph, think about something you meant to say, and all of the sudden the thing you were writing about isn’t even on the screen anymore………..

If Supergrover didn’t want to be a red string, she was off that list and onto the next. I think that my platonic relationships run just as deeply as my romantic ones, which is probably why at times I didn’t sound any different and at times I totally did. For instance, if I asked her a question that she thought was too personal, I wasn’t asking to goad or provoke her. I was genuinely interested in what she was going to say. On the flip side, my writing language is naturally flowery and romantic because that’s my style with friends, not because that’s how I’d act in person.

When I’m writing, I am not thinking about how to have a conversation with you. I am thinking about how to lay out my thoughts in a beautiful way so that you will take them in. To give you information to chew on without getting in your face.

More and more often, though, the gift was questionable, but hard to stop holding because the wrapping indeed was the gift that changed the me of then into the me of now. When she responded immediately with anger, I went into autistic meltdown. Then, she took her turn to gutter snipe and it went back and forth. We kicked each other out of our lives three or four times a year because she’d never met me in person to hear my tone of voice when I was talking about these things, not even a concept of how it might sound. She also never had to sit with me while I was in pain, rather than attacking me over e-mail. I realized I was done when there was more anger than empathy. She could get away with “judgmental dickhead” in the moment, but attacking me while I’m unarmed is frowned upon in this establishment.

The gift was the journey; we came a very long way, but it took years. That being said, she was always sitting in the guilt of thinking that she wasn’t responding as fast as I wanted- part of her “you’re a dictator” schtick- because I wasn’t angry that she wasn’t responding fast enough. She could take six months, five years, whatever as long as I received all the parts of our story that I’m missing…. on every topic, really, because there are so few things that she talks about, because hearing my story is threatening to her, and she thinks that it will help for her to shut down, because I’ll just forget and move on. No, I’ll think about it more, because I don’t want to nag anyone and I don’t want to be the person that doesn’t take up room in a relationship because I’m frightened of being abandoned. I realized that it was unfair that I had to mind read with her all the time, because it allowed me to step into it up to my ass. It’s how most emotionally unavailable people work. If they don’t tell you their feelings, you can’t take them into consideration. You have to hope you’re going to say/do the right thing rather than knowing how to act beforehand. It’s exhausting.

Learning all of this was hard won. Very hard won. But I think it has made me a better writer, and the gift I’ve given myself. Even if none of my blog is ever made into a book, it was the training that mattered.

The gift was the journey.

So here are more happy memories instead of sad ones.

The best gifts I’ve ever gotten was from asking her for two things. The first was a voice mail, because I’d never heard her voice before. The funniest thing is that she didn’t start with “Hi, Leslie. It’s Supergrover.” She just launched into talking and I laughed my ass off because I’ve been asking her for a recording of her saying her own name for 10 years. 😛

This was her big chance. 😛

The second was a picture. I would post it if I could, because she’s just one of those women that if she were a model, she’d be one of the people you’d remember and want to see back. At the very least, she’d be the generic picture that comes in a frame you bought off Amazon…….. and you can’t stop staring at her eyes. Now the picture has been in that frame for three years and you really don’t know why. There’s just something about her.

I also think that straight women love just as deeply as lesbians, because I am certain that there are a lot of marriages where that triad is strained. It’s actually threatening when someone has a best friend that will be there for all the partners (especially if they predate you by eons) and you have to measure up………. because again, she’ll be at the wedding, but you may or may not.

In fact, I love getting numbers from straight women because first of all, I’d like to have more friends in the area. Second of all, it shows me just how much progress has been made since I came out (to myself) in probably 1986? Thirdly, I hate dating. I’d rather hang out with friends to see if I like them enough to date them or not. That means it doesn’t matter what orientation the person I meet is, because it doesn’t matter. Either there will be mutual feelings or there won’t, but that doesn’t decrease the quality of the connection. So, I’m looking for people. Who they become to me later is unimportant at this time.

It’s how I know I’m pan. I would say that I was bi, but there’s more than two genders now. Please don’t hate me for wearing bi flags, anyway. It matches more of my outfits. That yellow, tho….. (from my brother-in-law’s X series, #shitlindsaysays: “He looks fast because he’s wearing yellow.” It was my first thought when I wrote the line about the yellow stripe. That at least I would look faster).

I had the gift of enlightenment about the bi flag. Originally, the pansexual movement started with a fight on reddit (no, I’m serious). Someone said that the bi flag wasn’t inclusive of trans people, when that has never been true. Back then, dating both genders meant cis or trans. But I realized that I had to switch teams in terms of identity because bisexual only represents male and female. So, now it’s not that it’s not inclusive of trans people. It’s not inclusive of nonbinary people. I’m not exactly happy with the colors they chose, but it’s not like I’m going to come up with something better…. and not because I’m not capable. It’s just not going to catch on the way it already has.

Maybe it’s just that I’m old and it looks kind of 80s beach to me. I think if the other colors were as dark as they are on the bi flag, I’d be a lot more prone to wear it. I don’t know. Sometimes it might be fun to look like you’re wearing three highlighters.

This year has been the most growth-filled in 10, the best gift I’ve been given- both the memories created and the space to reflect on them…… however, I would be remiss not to include my most popular entries on gifts, about my Scandinavian Snowball Ring. This is because it was in a television commercial in the 80s, so my blog comes up in searches for it because there’s so little information about them left.

It’s a gift I’m giving my Xennial readers, who probably remember the commercial but can’t find a clip.

The Tao at Play in the Writer’s Brain

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Do lazy days make you feel rested or unproductive?

Let’s get one thing straight.

As a writer, there is no such thing as a lazy day. Work is inverted. In order to put out content, you have to spend time thinking about the ideas before you start typing. Writers look lazy and unproductive because they’re lost in thought….. and that’s a good thing. I sit at my keyboard with my head working independently of my hands. I will stare off into space, typing as I think of something. Some days, the thoughts are fast and furious. If I feel that kind of mood, I’ll put on some EDM and dare the bpm to keep up. EDM really makes me type faster, because it takes an extraordinarily high amount of beats per minute before I lag.

This is not to say that there is no such thing as being a lazy writer. I’m just not, so I don’t assume others are, either. To me, being a lazy writer is avoiding typing. That if you really want to be a writer, you’ll do it. The longer you say you’re a writer and don’t type anything is where the issue lies. If there are stories inside you that you can’t type, you are only limiting yourself by your own fear.

Intelligence is one of my favorite topics, and I love Jonna Mendez on YouTube. She’s a former spy (Chief of Disguise before she retired) who is also a local, so I cannot remember if I heard this from her directly at her book talk here (for The Moscow Rules), or whether it’s from one of her videos with Wired Magazine. But she says that the bigger the crowd, the more no one notices what you do. it inspired me as a writer, because of course the bigger the sample selection of readers, the less will care what I do. I can say whatever I want, because people are always going to be lost in their own lives and so am I. I’ll deal with their feelings about me when they realize I have feelings about them. When you think about it that way, you allow yourself to step off a ledge. Those who know you best might not catch you, because they cannot adjust the version of you in their heads. It might take a different audience for you to level up. As a blogger, my audience gets bigger and changes every day in different ways. Sometimes it’s that Facebook brings in more people than WordPress. Sometimes, it’s that i’m more popular in India or the UK than I am here in the US. Sometimes the US is even third, and those are the days I really, really relax. Whatever it is, it is not waiting for criticism or letting me cripple myself with fear. It is also not letting fear of criticism build, either. It’s getting bigger and getting used to it. I can only dish as much as I can take, and my level is just about where the trolls come in.

I write in the dark to walk in the light, because I cannot take in what others think at all. It would paralyze me. Everyone’s a critic and most of the time wonder why I stop writing about them. So, in order for someone to criticize me and for me to need to keep writing about them after that must take a hell of a lot. Trust me, you don’t even know.

There’s no way to be lazy with the way a writer’s mind works. You haven’t signed up for a nine to five job. It doesn’t matter if the baby woke up fifteen minutes ago and you just got back to bed and “why God? Why won’t it stop?” If you have an idea that you know will express how you feel as art, you have to write it down. I don’t mean writing down every thought you have. I know on this blog it seems like it. I mean leaving yourself key words so that you can pick up the brainstorming session later. It is so very, very difficult to strike gold at an inconvenient time because the creative process is a flow. It, like grace, does not leave you where it found you. To help this, I have two modes and I do one or the other. The first is that I have a lime green Moleskin so it’s easy to see that also has a pen attached next to me in bed. Not on the nightstand. I literally sleep with it like a teddy bear. If I want to write something down, I use the flashlight on my phone. This is my preference almost 100% of the time because the idea is cemented in the writing of it. But occasionally, I’ll be lazy and just say, “Siri. Open Notepad.” I don’t know what the app is officially called, I just said that to Siri one day and it worked. I use voice dictation rather than voice notes, though since Beck and I communicate with them, I’m liking it more. So, perhaps. The best thing about voice dictation is that speaking aloud and reading it later helps ensure I’ll remember it.

It’s also not a lazy day if you take the time to have deep interactions with people, because as a writer you have to have things to describe. Your life is on display, particularly when you write fiction. On my blog, people already know I’m talking about them. Case closed. Not knowing for sure creates buzz that isn’t here. But at the same time, you have to have real life experiences on which to base your world. For me, that’s my angle on everyone else’s behavior and not because their behavior is bad. This blog is the result of trying to overexplain to myself why people are doing what they are doing. It is less intimidating than trying to build a fictional world, which is why I’ve gotten into a professional writers’ group on Facebook that’s really not for sissies. Supergrover would be so proud of me, and I know it. I also know that I’ll miss telling her about my criticisms because she would want to see me grow over time just as much as my writing group does.

Do you remember that scene in “Eat. Pray. Love.” when Liz and her friend are talking about all the people signing her divorce decree? Like, they weren’t even there… Mother Theresa and people like that. Well, that’s how I feel about Supergrover. That if she knew about the wriing group thing, it would make her feel good so I’m imagining her signing off on it.

Most days I know I cannot be a writer without her, and I wish I could mean that differently, because it would make me look like less of a sad sack with an excuse not to be great. It’s not that. It’s that when you love someone, your dreams have to be balanced. You have to take the other person’s fears into consideration. I do not want to be great in a way that ever costs her something. What thrilled me about being together was that we both made the other feel capable and strong… but only when it was good. We turned on each other and never recovered. Now, I’m struggling with a work in progress that could introduce questions neither of us want to answer and she doesn’t see that as problematic. I do as I’m looking down the road. My romantic life doesn’t depend on her. My career as a writer does. At no time do I mean this blog. I mean I don’t want a book to be published and I get those questions nd handle them badly. I’m working through it because I believe my idea has legs, but it’s not anything I’ve talked about before. It’s something I sit in when I look lazy.

I have new ideas for books every day, but I don’t let it control me. Having an idea for a new work in progress is like being polyamorous. You need the stability of the day in, day out grind…. doesn’t mean your life won’t flip upside down during new relationship energy. I cannot fall prey to those bursts of dopamine, because it’s just my ADHD. Those are the things that go into my Moleskine or I dictate into my phone. They’re the brain droppings that could later on become content in my books.

You work every minute of every day of your life when you write. This is because whether you’re completely immobile or laying brick or cooking or coding software or selling insurance or modeling hand cream, you’re still writing.

You’re writing when you’re doing everything else. The collation of your ideas is the most important part, because it really helps to have a clear map of a subject before you start typing. If you think that is not true of this web site, that I wander into nowhere, you’re both right and wrong. I do not see plot and character until I am reading something back. Not while I’m laying it down. It’s the only thing that allows me to be completely open and honest- my willingness to completely change my opinion. I also look at “All Things Considered,” but it might take me a week or two to get there. I can’t explain everything I was feeling during a situation in one entry. To hold me to a single entry is a literary device called “synecdoche,” when a part represents a whole… like calling cars your “wheels” or female lawyers “skirts.” I do not know whether “skirts” is offensive or not, because I never heard it said with derision. But I’m also from the South, so please don’t cancel me in New York or some shit. My synecdoche for Supergrover was “Cheerios,” and yet it doesn’t come close to representing her whole self. Reducing me as a writer to a snapshot of my day isn’t fair or helpful, but lets my beautiful girl score as many political points as she needs to avoid opening up to me. Therefore, I rattle on about her here because our shit is unresolved. She thinks I’m doing it to get back at her, I think I’m doing it because this is how I survived life before her. She seems to forget that I was a writer for 10 years who also blogged before we met, so it doesn’t seem to occur to her that I’d be processing this way no matter how our relationship was doing.

It doesn’t surprise me that her synecdoche for me is “entry.” I cannot get her to accept that she is everything, everywhere, all at once. That no one entry can contain the complexity of our relationship and doesn’t try. That’s because I hope I’m explaining to her like I’m explaining to everyone else; I haven’t stopped seeing the world in 3D, writing about the world around me. She has stopped talking to me about what I’m doing. I don’t have enough information to put it to rest, and I never will at this point. I just had to let the train wreck happen and pick up the pieces. I am just not blessed to have someone who thinks they can learn something from it. She thinks I’m out to get her when I’m the main character on my own blog. How dare me! Of course I should write about my anger from your perspective……. no, I can’t, and here’s why. That’s expecting someone else to read your mind and then getting upset when it doesn’t happen.

What all writers know is that the more we look lazy and unproductive while writing and no one understands the way we process, the easier it is to lapse into thinking your only friend is you….. wherein you spend even more time alone writing into a Moleskine or asking Siri to open Notepad.

0930 and 0530

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

What time do you go to bed and wake up currently?

If it seems like I’m really old, I’m going to be 46 on my next birthday. Sometimes I feel old, sometimes I feel like three little boys in a trench coat. Waking up so early doesn’t come from anything but being able to be creative in a much more solid manner, because morning is when I write best. I always write something that early, even if I don’t publish it until later because I’ve taken a break and we still have shit to discuss.

Just yet another reason my beautiful girl would have dumped me in a heartbeat. Don’t poke the bear.

And yet it would be worth it because I didn’t settle for fine. I got hit by lightning.

It’s not lost on me that someone else has to deal with her when she wakes up, because fuck. That’s what he’s for. We both had different roles, and in retrospect it’s the best thing that could have happened.

I am really annoying at 0530 to people who don’t have a circadian rhythm that wakes them up naturally and they feel good. I have learned over time that it’s the best time to write because I can sit quietly until everyone has had coffee.

It helped me to get past what she didn’t want to think of him as an ally. I’m so thankful to him in ways he’ll never understand if she doesn’t tell him that. It would have been a big moment for us to look at each other and understand. The fact that I didn’t get it says everything to me about what my beautiful girl meant in terms of friendship,

For her, I was a hot mess because she didn’t know me. She didn’t take the time to say “now that I’ve talked to you in person, you seem more solid than you’ve ever been. However you are now, you’re good.”

Meanwhile, if I continue the analogy of my sister being my first priority and not my wife, the baby’s needs woke me up every night.

And that’s the crux of the last 10 years. I could hate her for it, but I don’t. I’m letting her off the hook in a way she never let me, and to be the bigger person makes me happy….. mostly because I’m so much smaller. It’s not that she’s so much bigger. It’s that I am about as tall as a party size bag of Doritos and about a buck 25 soaking wet. She looks like a real adult with suits and crap and everything.

To let her off the hook is to release her back from whence she came and just feel peaceful about that. I can do all my emotional work here. She doesn’t have to look at it. But she damn sure will. She has to make sure I’m not a problem to be solved, because she knew I’d be a problem for her and she told me that very, very recently. Why I didn’t tell her I thought that was a dick move, I don’t know. But she thought I was trying to meet someone for the sole purpose of making her blood pressure boil, a running theme because she thinks I seem to do everything that way, because she’s being a jackass and not listening. Jackass is, of course, not a permanent state (estoy, not soy). So, she can think I’m a judgmental dickhead for all eternity, because I have a lot more pet names than that. I will never let go of “judgmental dickhead,” because that’s all she let me be.

The problem is that I very much wasn’t.

She had someone who’d absolutely bleed out for her, and reacted poorly to it. I’m guessing because she thought she’d heard this story before and used all her heuristics to tell her she was fucked.

The problem is that she very much wasn’t.

I loved her, she tolerated me, and she didn’t think that way. She thought that talking at me and sending me stuff was enough and to just shut up about it. That’s because she wanted to be a fan, and I wanted to be a friend. So she didn’t set down boundaries and acted as if I was out to get her.

I wasn’t responsible for what she understood, and yet, I stayed. Things eventually got to fantastic and then slashed into ribbons once again. That’s because we couldn’t solve the base issue. She’s a thinker. I’m a feeler. She doesn’t understand touchy feely crap. I don’t understand treating your friends as if you don’t have any.

For the last eight years, only her pain has mattered.

She made the choice to keep her pain away from me, so I couldn’t help her be less angry. I couldn’t call her out on being avoidant. I couldn’t call her out on playing games, because she insisted that she doesn’t do passive aggression or play games. She is firm in her belief, and then I get shit like “I don’t have time, of course, not good enough for you.” I never said that being busy was a problem. Her being a judgmental dickhead was the problem, because she’s every bit the asshole I am. The game was “how long can I get away from feeling guilty?” and “no, nothing is wrong. Someday you’ll realize I’ll tell you when something’s wrong.” Fuck THAT. No, you won’t. You’ve proven it for eight years.

She’s not the sort of person that looks too deeply at patterns, so we had the same fight eight times and she never noticed because she didn’t want to. In the beginning, she didn’t understand why I pulled back and didn’t talk to her for three months and called me on it and I said nothing, because I was in over my head and it had nothing to do with her. Every time we talked, it wasn’t a thought exercise. It was strengthening our bond and only making me want to dive deeper into her at a time I couldn’t afford it.

When I took my armor off about it, I told her that it was getting damn hard to look in the mirror because I felt so guilty. If I’d ever looked up polyamory, it would have helped. I am unsure whether it would happen again, but I was over the moon for both her and Dana. I have enough love in my heart for both of them, especially since I was married, so it provided a natural safety net until I spiraled out with bipolar bullshit.

It was navigating how much of me both of them could have that got difficult. Before that break, neither one of us went an hour without talking. It was the most intense relationship I’d ever had, because it caused such a struggle within me that made Dana jealous and her deeply uncomfortable. I was fucked six ways from Sunday, and the only answer was to disengage. I didn’t tell her all that at first. I just disappeared and it mystified her.

How she had no interest in learning why I felt that way, I’ll never know. Because even though she knew some of it, she didn’t ask any questions, either. She didn’t recognize that even if it was always platonic, I’d always need her. I’d always need her to look over my blog (it was only creepy when she was doing it behind my back), and I’d always need to be able to reach out because I’m a moron and she’s not. Instead of letting me go off the deep end, she could have helped create the narrative, because none of my shit includes how she felt. It’s only a guess.

I never felt like she saw the situation as the problem. She thought it was her. She moved me deeply, challenged me, made me want to fight together instead of each other. We were never back to back shooting out. We had guns on the table, pointing toward each other (I don’t want to argue about semantics, I just want the protein). She thought I wanted it that way, when I just wanted her on my six.

She didn’t seem to get that once the fight was over, all I wanted was to move on and let ourselves connect, but too much happened to make that a reality on both sides. If she eventually remembers who I am to her, She will not be received with open arms unless she’s willing to own her shit and give me what I need. In short, stop dicking me over and stop saying that you wish our relationship never happened because you have this wrongheaded idea that I also think it shouldn’t have happened.

I absolutely think that the relationship should have happened, I just don’t think we should have moved so fast. We excited each other’s brains, but she excited my body as well because she could. Not that she was malicious or held any culpability in my feelings. I mean that if I’d been straight, too, none of this happens. It didn’t happen because she said she didn’t want it and did, or did anything to promote that kind of behavior. I’m just not sure she was aware that she’d be playing with fire, even though I told her that and she still showed up…. so, okay. You’re not threatened.

She couldn’t see the forest for the trees, and that’s not her fault. She’s not enculturated the same way.

So, she’s telling me things that would spark anyone’s interest in her and was completely oblivious. That’s not her fault, either.

However, she could have helped Dana and me immensely if she’d told us she had a boyfriend already. I thought I was flirting with someone who was single, and then I REALLY freaked the fuck out. That is not my wheelhouse, and lesbian wasn’t hers, either.

There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that she thought she was protecting me, and it did. It protected me from seeing reality. By the time she lowered the boom, I couldn’t walk away for love or money. Still can’t in some ways. Obviously. I wouldn’t write about it if I didn’t care.

What has been good is seeing how much of my crap was harmful and not internalizing it as “everything everywhere at once is all your fault.” It wasn’t all fighting, either. Some of it was just miscommunication because for as much as we thought we knew each other, we were strangers.

For instance, it was idiotic to say she’d marry Brene Brown, and not because I wanted her to marry me. It was that she was kidding and straight women do that too much of the time while ignoring the fact that it would hurt me. Why wouldn’t it? If straight women want to get married, that’s fine. I don’t care. But qualify it. It’s not a marriage. It’s a Boston marriage. The difference is that Brene Brown will never invite her to metaphorical dick o’clock. And I know her well enough to know she’d think that was fucking hysterical, so I’m leaving it in even if she finds it.

Straight girls, stop doing that shit. It fucks us up.

That’s because now we know you think our marriages are playtime.

If you think that, then you’ve probably never seen what we want to do to you and how we know you’ll react. That’s because we’ve been with enough women who didn’t think they were bisexual before scream so loud the neighbors needed cigarettes. The fact that you want the Fisher Price version of that tells me all I need to know.

It’s time for them to throw away their fucking rainbow pins, because when push comes to shove, lesbian marriage isn’t real.

You’re not bad people, it’s just not funny. It’s taking something serious and making light of something serious, mostly because you think we’re just like you. That we’re besties who just happen to dig each other more than you dig Pam at the office.

If you believe that, you’ve never seen a butch work a room, and I am NOT talking about me. If I was, Zac would call bullshit and I’d get sued for false advertising. I do not need that today. 😛 (But I do need Zac and Oliver.)

Do they really think that women’s sexuality is that tame? It’s wild, hair pulling passion, and I’m not going to tamper that down for her or anyone else, and I don’t mean in terms of pursuit. I mean in terms of understanding that if you’re an ally, you don’t know shit. Stop pretending you do.

It wakes me up at 0530.