Tag: Relationships

TW: Suicide

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

What have you been putting off doing? Why?

I just lost paragraphs and paragraphs of this essay because WordPress screwed me, including the part where I said this was an expose on what it’s like to live that life of bipolar depression, not an indictment of my situation right now. My answer is that I, like all bipolar patients, struggle with life feeling like a series of moments where you’re putting off killing yourself… and that Supergrover was the thing that helped me keep all of that in perspective. That there are bigger things than me at work, a chessboard I’d never see with other factors at play, and a face I’d never forget because she’s “hell on wheels in a black dress.” She lost that beloved position in my life because she couldn’t commit and I was exhausted. Doesn’t mean I currently love her any less. I’m just sad. But full of hope because I am so much more than I thought I was. That’s due to her covering my ass. She’s not getting that I need her to own the fact that it’s difficult saving hers while also being a writer who publicly examines her life and her deciding that she wants to tap out is problematic and is absolutely contrary to the Mama Wolverine she said she was. Not interacting doesn’t take away my need to dive into the wreck, and it’s dangerous on many levels because I understand her better than most people and not because I’m a diagnostician. I am holding more cards. Again, it would have been so much more clear if I hadn’t lost the lead. Literally.

What you see is what you get. My situation is dire, and the reason I go on busting Supergrover up is that the dire part is completely and totally her fault. She cannot escape that fact, and doesn’t think she owes me anything when I agreed to help her carry her bag of shit. I’m not so much married to her as married to it. And she knows it. But it’s my behavior and not what triggered it until she comes back and says she’s been licking her wounds. It touches me that she thinks about me while she’s away. That what I say does resonate with her. That my words may be used in situations that matter. That I am actively building up someone who really, really needs it. That I pray to God all the peace that’s running through our chord is with her in the darkest moments of her life, because they are darker than mine. Her life feeds mine and is part of what puts off killing myself because I spent so many years loving her more than me. My first instinct is to protect her, and she knows it.

Thinkinng I was stalking her was over the line, Smokey. Mark it zero.

I can respect her thinking it and I don’t punish her for it. I really don’t. I punish her for not talking to me about it and telling the one person who hated my guts at that moment……… the wife who was tired of my crap and used that information to great effect. She ended my marriage with it and thought nothing of it. Me breaking up with Dana didn’t involve her actuallly believing that I was stalking someone. It ended because she wanted to break up and needed information she could hold over my head, and that’s what she picked because those closest to us know our biggest vulnerabilities. She hit below the belt for YEARS on this one issue when it was completely fucked up for her to think I would ever walk away from Supergrover. Ever. And she knows it and she supported it. So, instead of working with me, she got tired of my crap and used every bit of information Supergrover gave her to berate all my opinions and bully me for something that she knew wasn’t my fault. I wasn’t the actor. I was the responder. And she knew it.

Supergrover didn’t leave me even in my darkest hours. The complete darkest. She, like Dana’s alcoholism (which I will state exactly that way because I’m describing her behavior in retrospect, not what I believed in the moment.), according to Homer Simpson, was “the cause of, and solution to, all of life’s problems.” Dana’s alcoholism made her alternate between funny and scary. I could say the same about Supergrover all day every day and twice on Sunday, because her words at the beginning of our relationship affected the way I viewed her and she didn’t correct any of my assumptions. In my mind, her little girl decisions on how to cope with consistent out of body experiences made her who she is. She is 12 feet tall and bullet proof and when she’s angry she has no problem lettiing you know that. Our power imbalance causes me great anxiety whether we’re getting along or not, because I am reading between the lines on a lot of shit. She doesn’t have time for me and now that she’s said it, I’m out. But I still see her face is everything I do because she made it where I can’t not.

I can’t afford it, and neither can she.

I spend time with her character because she won’t talk about our issues with me. She takes all her feelings about me and tells someone else, then finally, finallly, after eight years broke it down and said she could do nothing for me. It felt like a bullet to the chest because I’d given up so much for her already without her even having to ask. I had to do those things to protect myself as much as her. Anticipating her needs was so easy right up until it wasn’t.

Seriously, when we’re working on all cylinders, it feels like flying over the mountains. The best audition you ever had. Hitting a high C perfectly in a concert. Knowing powerful, powerful writers I don’t. Knowing that if I’d moved here when we were at our best, I would have been welcomed with open arms because she didn’t constantly think of me as a low-key threat and I didn’t think of her that way, either. She might have even picked me up from the airport back in those days. I know she would have picked me up at her old Metro stop… at the very least, she would send someone else to do that. She’s very good at that, and I mean that so very lovingly and not in a snarky way at all.

But there were things that gutted me. Like moving and not giving me her address so I could surprise her once in a while. The last things that were meaningful to both of us were a bracelet with her favorite cause on it (and it’s now fairly ironic) and a pen that was meant to be a gag. It was her present, but I lit up like I was Santa Claus himself. I also just thought of a joke about her that she would love and now I’m laughing very hard and sad I can’t tell it. Too close to the hard out. But anyway, since I knew those things were big hits, as well as some books in case she wanted to change careers that I thought would be helpful (these were all different Christmas and birthday presents on different years, I’m not a baller trying to win her like a carnival prize). There is one way that I am more precious to her than her husband and always will be, and not because she kept anything from him. It was that she told me before she told him, so she remembers that, not that she didn’t want him to know.

Because Michael and I are the only ones who know all her secrets at once, it’s why I need him more than I’m jealous. I know they control every bit of her behavior and I know that if I’m struggling, so is he and I will not apologize for that statement. She is a queen and she needs to be told that every single day and not because I don’t want her to have it. I really believe that shit. If you believe nothing else I tell you, believe THAT. She has released so much dragon fire for me while also accepting a hell of a lot. Doesn’t seem to give a fuck that I’m in love ith this character every bit as much as I love her in real life. Is, I hope, secretly proud of the little bubble I’ve made for us in this corner of the Internet while also respecting her privacy.

It’s a lot, but it keeps me from putting off the things I love the most about life. It gives me a different perspective, one that’s bigger than I used to have. I realized that from the very beginning, my hunger for her was always about knowledge, not that particular kind of intimacy. It’s why the idea attracted and repelled me for far longer than it should have, and it was my own choice to be miserable over it…. but again, the way she laid everything out anyone would have. She knew how I felt from the very beginning. That what she did turned me on because it felt like she had shown up like fucking Richard Gere while I was in the middle of a tumultuous relationship. It was a hardcore disaster, but a bomb I needed to wrestle with like The Moment. I decided that especially in retrospect, but even in the moment, I knew I was making the right decison. The bomb was going to go off, and it was going to be hell on earth, but I’d be able to escape domestic violence and alcoholism if I left right the fuck now.

Supergrover has changed her mind many times over whether she wants to respond or not, and it kills me when she vacillates between Mama Wolverine and I don’t even want to tell you how I feel.

But that push pull is exactly what I need to keep the mystery of faith……..

Once you hear the emergency brakes, you’re likely to hear them again.

I do not call her a character like The Doctor in real life. I call her a character here because it’s just an outline of who she is, not the complete picture. You can’t ever know that because there’s so much I can’t include. So much she’s seen that I haven’t that I can’t talk about. So many things about her life that affect me, but I can’t hold onto her as tight as I can for once in our lives. It would help me a lot to know she’s real at this point. Or, as I told her a hundred years ago, “besides. Can I really make a decision like whether I’m in love with you or not if I haven’t seen your rack? What kind of idiot do you take me for, woman?” Then, she punched me in the metaphorical balls with the answer and I told her to fuck off. Now I’m laughing so hard I might fall off the couch. Grasshopper will never in her lifetime reach satori compared to that. Or, at least if I have, I wouldn’t know it. I hate it that she’s funnier than me. She needs to tone it down. 😉

Learning what I’ve learned over the years has been the 10 years I’ve needed that the first therapist I told all this to said I’d need to get over it. That’s because the trauma started years before I met Supergrover and she was the one who told me her secrets in hopes of understanding my own. It’s what makes us two peas in a pod, and our relationship goes better for both of us when she recognizes it. By now, again, it’s not getting any better because instead of talking through the situaton, she’s avoiding it. What I have not thought until having months to think about it is that our relationship is crazygonuts because we haven’t met in real life. I have been perfectly happy with not meeting before now, and will be. Our relationship is not dependent on it, and wouldn’t need to be. I just believe we will continue the same pattern until we make the commitment to each other to break it, and I can’t think of anything faster than realizing the other actually exists in a way we haven’t experienced before. We get angry and troll the hell out of each other in a way we couldn’t do in person. It’s the shortest way to make us stop regressing.

I’m proud of myself for recognizing what I needed and stepping away, because I really can’t handle Supergrover’s life without being able to understand it from her perspective. I also can’t stop living vicariously through her because I need to know what the boundaries are on the hard out before I start writing that day. She talks around everything and I Socratic Method everything until I figure it out on my own. It’s exhausting, and figuring out how to pray for her and love her from a distance is so much easier than working without a net.

I just can’t stop caring that I might identify her, so I feel the weight she put on our relationship in a deep and meaningful way that I’d rather share with her than carry alone. It would feel different after a walk on The Mall, and it’s what calms my internal rage. That whether it was romantic or platonic, all of my dreams where we share a glass of wine or a meal have been picnics in the sunshine. Walking around a pond feeding ducks. Now we can do that in my dreams, but I have no need to wine her and dine her even in lucid dreaming because it’s just not worth it to dwell, even in dreams. Nothing is going to change, so why bother? I am proud that even when I hit the sleep stage where I’m so crazy I don’t remember my own name, I don’t go there.

We walk on the beach as if we’ve been doing it our whole lives, and I want to be there for the rest of it. It’s what saves me from living my life as a miserable bipolar patient staving off the inevitable. When we’re together, I feel like I could do anything. No one has ever given me those feelings in such a unique was so that they were instantly believable and objective in fact.

What I have been putting off is laying out these feelings in front of her. That I’m as married to her as Michael will ever be, and those conversations in the sunshine are more than gold to me, even when I’m making them up. And I know they’re made up, because they’re the out of body experiences that help me deal with my real life…. complicated, wild, and wonderful because I once fell in love with a girl, standing in front of a girl, asking to be a fan because she thought I was a great writer. I wish I could bottle that feeling and use it as hair product.

It stops everything I used to want to stop putting off, which makes me feel safe in a way I’ve never felt before. I sleep better because this love became mine, completely by chance and no less wild and wonderful than the ups and downs of a decade in which we’d seen each other every day.

But if we’d seen each other every day, we wouldn’t have this, either. The cause of, and solution to, all of life’s problems…… according to Homer Simpson.

If Ever

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 5 Comments

When was the first time you really felt like a grown up (if ever)?

Neurodivergent people are stuck between childhood and adulthood through no fault of their own. The system is not built for them. People cope in all kinds of ways, but no neurodivergent person can claim that there are no problems in the system. We all manage the best we can, and I never feel like I’m doing enough. That’s because I’m not a real grown-up. People have explained this to me many times.

I don’t drive.

I don’t like to socialize that much.

I have never had job security because neurotypical bosses traditionally become parents. They think they’re helping you because you’re disabled/neurodivergent while simultaneously resenting that they have to do things differently for you than they do for everyone else. “Why do you question me more than anyone else? Why does it take longer for you than everyone else? Why do you look at me like that? Why aren’t you looking at e? It’s so weird the way your eye drifts off as if you’re not even paying attention. Are you even listening to me?” Then, while they’re talking, I’ll trip or something to make myself look even more infantile without meaning to. I spend a lot of time wishing the earth would swallow me up.

People love my personality here but doesn’t get that it comes from being infantilized my whole life. People give up on working with me really easily and I don’t know how to fix it, because it’s not something I’m doing consciously to piss anyone off. I literally see the world differently, and I’m sorry that when I’m trying to explain what neurodivergents see, there’s no way to translate perfectly. I have too many vision and brain issues for me to help you understand, because all my energy is going into the description.

You taught me how to do a task yesterday. You see me doing it today and it’s still taking the exact same amount of time. For you, that’s because work becomes rote. You don’t have to think about what your hands are doing every single time. I will never be able to put less effort toward a task. I will also not be able to divide energy between tasks. I can only choose a job like cooking, where everything is managed on a very strict clock with Machiavellian rules of order.

But in choosing cooking, I was often infantilized for being female, let alone disabled and neurodivergent. It was not a good fit except for the ADHD. Cerebral palsy didn’t win me any favors because I just couldn’t move as fast as everyone else and I got tired quicker; my performance was spotty because some of my muscles were weaker than others, particularly during exhaustion. Didn’t make me a bad cook. It made me bad at a racing against the clock.

Because of all of this, the first time I knew I was an adult wasn’t until I was 45. I hadn’t met many other autistic and ADHD adults so I didn’t have any coping mechanisms for being neurodivergent and disabled. I gave myself permission to push away relationships that weren’t working, even when it was killing me. Now I have relationships that I really want, because none of my friends see me as lesser than. I need it because some days I really don’t function all that well and I feel like a waste on society. I don’t need people who gladhand me and say everything I do is perfect, but people who are willing to work within my limitations because they know I’m willing to work within theirs.

Because I have only had masked, canned neurotypical responses my whole life to things, getting away from conversation and into writing is essential. When I’m writing, I’m not paying attention to what everyone else is thinking. I could drive myself insane with it, and often do. I wonder how long it’s going to take my beautiful girl to stop being mad over something I’ve said (while we were ON A BREAK) because she always comes back after she’s thought about it. Like I’ve said, something about this time feels final, but she’s my girl and I’ll always hope for better.

Being a grown-up in front of her is so difficult because I do have so much mother-love for her, admiration of how she raises her own kids…. and also knowing that her way of parenting wasn’t working on me. I knew it was going to be hard from the beginning. I asked her what she was like as a sister once, and she said “tough in some ways, rewarding in others.” This was before I broke her trust, so I knew when I did it that an apology would need to be complete and sincere.

I felt like a grown up when I asked myself what crime was worth taking eight years of so much tough when the rewarding was so hard to find? I felt grown when I didn’t need to be reminded I fucked up all the time. I didn’t need a friend who wouldn’t listen when I told her that’s how her actions made me feel and she just kept on doing it because hey, fuck my feelings. I decided I was worth more than that.

I can have moments of feeling grown up even while bawling like a little girl.

The Crazy

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

If you had a million dollars to give away, who would you give it to?

I don’t know how to quantify giving a million dollars to a mysteriously labeled “crazy people,” but I do know that according to an Apple commercial from the 80s, people who think they’re crazy enough to change the world are the only ones who do.

That Chiat/Day commercial runs through my head all the time, because it lends an authority to something I know, but don’t. In some ways, I am smarter than everyone else. This is not said with a hint of megalomania, because neurotypical people try to prove to me why they’re smarter than me all day long and twice on Sundays. It’s not a case of smart or less smart. It’s a case of “I see it and you don’t.” That works in both directions, it’s just that neurotypical people are taught that autism, ADHD, and retardation are all the same thing. Autism and/or ADHD change how information is processed, but doesn’t limit the amount I’m capable of knowing. Right now I’m sitting in my bed with a Bluetooth keyboard and tablet. It’s 0524, but my scope isn’t limited here. My mind is in the Middle East……… again.

Mossad got caught with their pants down on a fight some say has been going on since the 50s. Some say the fighting after Abraham’s death never really stopped. Either way, a massive intelligence failure. Doesn’t mean that Mossad is stupid. It means that there was a missing link in the system, just like there was when President George W. Bush took office and failed to pay attention to an upstart little shit named Osama bin Laden. Clinton left plenty of clues, and the W. administration can look as dumb about it as they want. Doesn’t take the stink off ’em.

Because this is the problem weighing on my mind this morning, it doesn’t seem like a million dollars will do anything for it. A million dollars wouldn’t even buy blankets for all the people who needed them after an attack when you start thinking of shipping them from here. A million dollars also won’t bring Israel its safety and security back, and that’s dangerous. The United States has already decided that Muslims aren’t people and they need to stop that shit immediately. Obviously, CIA doesn’t think that way because we have to have Muslim friendlies in the Middle East to be able to get our jobs done. But an EVANGELICAL CHRISTIAN CONGRESS is not going to get off their asses to bail out Muslims from Jewish oppression. So, even the do-gooders we hire to work in that part of the world don’t have the million dollars they need to hand out blankets.

A million dollars would be a nice amount of money to get started in a country like Palestine if you were going to start a humanitarian organization. I’d love to be able to help as long as this is just a thought exercise. Things are heating up because Palestine is trying to show Israel it has bought its big boy pants and I don’t think they care if they’ve bitten off more than they can chew at this point. I am pro-Palestinian because they do not have an established government or military. I believe in a two-state solution. I do not believe that killing children is the way to get there, and the issue only gets more complicated as each side makes themselves less redeemable.

Maybe the million dollars I have is greasing wheels to get information and goods where it needs to go. I don’t know who needs what right now, but I know it’s enormous. I know everyone is shitting on Palestine right now, but they’re only the current aggressor. It turns over and it soon will.

They need a two state solution and keep bombing any chance they have at it whether other countries step in to help Palestine or not, because everyone seems to think “poor Israel.”

Especially the Evangelicals in Congress, who love Isaac more than Ishmael.

I do not have a dog in the fight except for keeping Americans safe, and there are Americans all over Israel and Palestine. What Americans do not have is a US embassy in Palestine. The US embassy for Palestinians is in Jerusalem, which as you can see is not problematic at all. Thankfully, we do have a US Office of Palestinian Affairs, so we are recognizing Palestine to the point we’re able, but we could do so much more.

I feel like I understand countries fighting because I understand individuals fighting. Who you support depends on when you entered the war. For instance, if you only read about me and my friend “Supergrover” yesterday, you’d probably think I was absolutely insane. But I’m going to bet that you wouldn’t feel that way if you’d been in my head for the last 10 years, not the last 10 days. I am still laughing over the “spinster in the attic” joke because what I know that she doesn’t is that lesbians are very concerned for my well being and are trying to Mary the hell out of me and can’t understand why I don’t want someone who’s not Claire. I waited for the right person with Sam, even though she was the wrong person in the end. I wanted something that was better than having Supergroer to myself, which I only mean in terms of the amount I can pay attention without guilt, as her issues aren’t piddly shit. All of the sudden, I didn’t really care about my problems when the seemed so incredibly small.

It’s not that I couldn’t move on. I just wanted signal without noise, and I waited until I found it. Someone I could lose myself in to the appropriate amount. She just lied. Full stop. Here I’m talking about both women, slamming neither. Neither one of them knew themselves well enough to tell me the truth. They both thought they were so cool.

Supergrover told me that she wanted to be my fan quite clearly, and wanted to be my friend in a smaller voice so it has never been clear what her boundaries actually are. I feel like her lie to herself was centered on the fact that she could be friends with someone who used to be into her. That she could trust me afterwards and feel secure in our attachment. She didn’t know how and she didn’t ask. She tried to run everything from her own mind and it bit her in the ass because I got tired of having to read her mind all the time because when I got it wrong, her dragon fire was immediate and harsh. I would say the same thing about me, because I felt like her heat was oppressive due to the nature of our power imbalance.

Supergrover has a military, and I don’t even live in an organized state.

For Sam, her lie to herself was that she was a successful business owner who didn’t have time for a girlfriend, so let’s not be exclusive until I really have time to think about it. We talked about it for weeks, and she lied to herself all the way through them. She lied to me all the way up until I was at Zac’s house, after talking to me on the train while I was going there. What she really wanted was monogamy from minute one, to be absolutely obsessed with each other. She could have had that if she’d asked for it. I refused to read her mind, and I gave up a relationship that was a huge deal for me. But I also won, because I wasn’t stuck with a girlfriend who wouldn’t tell me the truth and expected me to read her mind at all times. That’s been a disaster in my other relationships and a red flag for which I’ll always have a hard out.

I am “AuDHD.” I have two modes. Complete buy-in with the rules or “this is stupid and God themselves wouldn’t move me.”

Palestinians can’t read minds and are also tired. Palestinians are tired of oppressive heat because it makes you feel defensive all the time. Palestine throws rocks to make sure they’re heard. Israel throws rocks to make sure they’re the only ones that are heard.

Meanwhile, and this is true of both sides, the call is coming from inside the house.

If you understand conflict, you understand conflict. So, $250,000 to Palestine, Israel, Supergrover, and Sam to figure out what it is they actually want. Sam can just go tell someone else, because she’s the outlier who completely walked away without putting any negotiation on the table. You can’t have a hard line and expect buy-in, and you won’t get buy-in if you’re going to constantly treat me like a liar afterwards. Sam was never going to get what she wanted from me because she decided not to trust me before she even knew me.

Meanwhile, if you take the names out, you really can’t tell whether I’m talking about the global or the personal……. and it’s worth a million dollars to figure it all out. We spent more than that trying to figure it out yesterday. I just hate that Evangelical Christians are the ones treating Palestinians as lesser than because they don’t fit their narrative of child of God, as if there is one.

There’s a wholly different problem at stake here. In believing the Christian right, you believe statistically in people who haven’t been anywhere. Haven’t been to the Middle East except as white saviors from these great United States from whom all blessings flow. It’s trusting Y’all Queda to figure this out instead of CIA, who isn’t even charted to work in the United States, so everyone in that organization knows what they’re talking about and I cannot say that about Baptists at gunpoint. I may be a Southern, polite preacher’s kid but never underestimate how ready and willing I am to call out anything that feels unfair. Biblical literalism is killing this country one bass ackwards Bible college at a time. If you want to be a minister, go to Harvard, Oxford, or Yale colleges of divinity with the rest of the real grown-ups.

Here’s my pitch for being crazy. Giving my whole ass million to the United States government to help provide infrastructure for moving the US embassy out of Jerusalem. They knew they were mixing church and state unnecessarily and they did it anyway. What in the actual fuck were they thinking? In terms of US interests, we are sitting ducks going down on the wrong side of history. I’d give anything to be able to do something.

I want to change the world as much as Richard Dreyfus told me I would.

Be Yourself

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

What was the hardest personal goal you’ve set for yourself?

My comfort level with fighting is nil. I don’t know what to do when I express my opinion and someone gives me theirs in return, because no matter how hard I try to make my voice sound inert, people will add things into it that I don’t mean. This seems to be even more true of the last 10-20 years, where patience was destroyed one Facebook Notification at a time. God forbid you think about what you’ve done rather than ripping a relationship apart.

One of the reasons I allow myself to get so angry on this web site is that people do it to me all day, every day. I’m just processing my problems with them in a way that neither one of us has to listen to it. I don’t hear that anger until I’m reading back to myself. The difference is that I take the time to really make friends with why I’m angry. The root of the issue. A quarter to never will you actually see me pop off at someone here. Generally, by the time I’m mad here, there’s little hope for our relationship because if they don’t care about being my friend, I sure as shit won’t care about being theirs.

I am hard on myself because I ask the questions other people won’t and they get angry. For instance, I am sure that Supergrover hated it when I told her that I hated not knowing what her husband thought of me. Whether he hated me or got turned on by me created two different sets of problems. One I was willing to work on. One I am absolutely not. I will never in my lifetime look in that man’s face if he’s put her through that even once, and thus me by proxy. He doesn’t deserve to know me on that level, and neither does she if she’s not willing to warn me what I’m walking into…… and she couldn’t unless I just directly said it out loud. A man being turned on by one of his wife’s friends is not something he’ll tell his cute, perfect straight wife. No, he’ll wait till his angel is in the bathroom and suggest entrapment…… but this is all done as a joke, of course. Who wouldn’t think that suggesting I could get what I wanted by working with him wasn’t absolutely on the up and up? I didn’t think all men thought this way until they did, my beautiful girl. This is not between Michael and me. This is the dance between Frank and Idgie for all time.

I think my personal goal is just to be a bee charmer. You know Idgie would have gone on loving Ruth until she died whether Frank had fucked up and made being with her possible or not. Sure, there would be others. Just not in the same way. And she is every bit my Mary Louise Parker, apt because she kind of reminds me of Amy from “The West Wing,” too.

Being myself as a personal goal meant growing into the love I have for Supergrover (and Michael. And the kids. And the dogs. And the fish. And the books.). Growing into it meant allowing me to be me, because by asking questions without bullshit filters, most of the time I got what I needed to know and could build on it. Telling her that I had feelings for her destroyed all that , because she didn’t know how to react to me as a woman anymore. It’s cute and innocent in some ways, very hard for me in others. What’s easy is being ridiculously cute to each other online. What’s hard is knowing how much of that translates, if at all.

I am glad that she doesn’t treat me as if those feelings have to go away. They did, and we agree that they should have. They do not disappear as if they were never there, though, and it’s wonderful when she remembers that fact- she’s not my love, but has been, and is tender with me because of it. Being tender with each other is all I want out of our relationship now, and because it’s too unhealthy to interact, I’m glad I have a garden here on WordPress. I have lifted the plants, but the leftover roots season the soil. Romantic love has been allowed to attach to other feelings and the wheat separated from the chaff quite naturally. Love is a thriving aquascape of growth. The goal was just to make “in-love” feelings the chlorine you have to remove first. I never struggle with chlorine removal anymore. I have to protect life.

Things were unclear about meeting up in the real world and neither one of us knew (knows?) whether we’ll meet in the future. The reason I plan a future with her is simple. She is such a writer that she will kick herself when she thinks of how lame her last words were to me and she’ll want to say something better and so will I because I love her. Her last words to me were “obviously you’re the only person who can change.” I assured her that was not true or would ever be the case, but she disappears if I don’t say something against which she can rage. I am also trying to step away from a trauma bond, which makes your emotions play tricks on you, anyway. I waffle between wanting to cry on her like a four year old and being perfectly fine. She doesn’t deserve to come back at this point, because she’s not willing to change a damn thing. Letting her in would be a disaster, but I’ll never be strong enough to keep her out. It’s just not me. I believe everyone has a resurrection story, and I forgive them over and over. This often leads me into spending more time on a story than I really should. Not interacting has shown me how much I initiate.

It’s so hard, living in that disconnect between “it’s not personal” and “it really is personal to an enormous degree.” I always want to be the one to give her the next thing she loves to read. I don’t like it when she doesn’t provide me any reading material in return. It makes the relationship feel too one-sided, pouring emotion into someone where it’s not wanted. She doesn’t see that I love her in every color, in every dimension, and tries to say that I’m writing her as a flat character.

My boyfriend’s dog is better at context clues than that.

I set out to be a bee charmer when I realized she didn’t love her as much as I did.

The personal goals came in when I realized that I was talking about a universal problem. Women aren’t taught to love each other because they don’t know how to love themselves, especially as part of a patriarchy.

She says that I write about everything as if it’s not multifaceted in anger, as if I wouldn’t give everything to hear her tell me one of them. I feel like I am painting this journal with our emotions, and it would be great if she would also show her work. She’s doing all the algebra in her head and her teacher’s counting off points- not in judgment but because they can’t get there without showing their work.

The hardest personal goal for myself has been walking away from her in order to make my emotional life stronger. I want her in my life, but not at the steep, steep cost of always feeling terrible about myself.

She wants me to be her friend without her having to invest anything anymore, and her life is too complicated to go without investing in each other.

The second hardest is not feeling like running back toward her every time something doesn’t go right. To know that I really was meant to grow in this direction, and that she’s strong. If she sees where I’m going and wants it, she’ll pack.

The hardest personal goal is being yourself even when the one you love the most doesn’t like them.

The Other Fan

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I said in my last entry that I learned what I wanted out of life from two fans, Supergrover and Stephanie. I said what Supergrover brought to the table- a fantastic person that anyone would die to meet and turned out to be a great editor. I did not tell you about what I learned from Stephanie. I learned not to trust the impressed.

I had forgotten about this until my friend John got published and I was telling him to watch out. Fanagans, if you notice me in real life, please do not let me know you have done this sort of thing. I would be secretly flattered but mostly terrified as fuck and I will let you know that because I do not want that temperature in my life.

I am free to love Supergrover as much and as often as I want because there is not a damn thing I want more in this life than friends and lovers who remain unimpressed by me. Supergrover and I could not live on the pedestals we created for each other, and Stephanie showed me why that was the case.

Stephanie invited me for coffee after having read three years’ worth of entries in four days and didn’t get more than a fifteen minute conversation out of me because of it. She treated me like she was a lawyer trying to break me in a deposition. I will go that hard with someone I love like a house on fire. I had known her for thirty seconds and enjoyed none of them. I decided right then and there that I never wanted to pick battles with someone I met that only thought they knew me.

It mattered that my honeymoon with Supergrover was over and we’d never be on those pedestals again. I like us better as we are. It shows our capacity for love is bigger than we ever thought it could be.

If I am going to be the big deal my friends have told me I’m going to be, then it’s good that I’m upping my game instead of bringing everyone else down to mine. I decided that was the coolest thing ever- her weird Barbie when she is Margot Robie in my eyes…….. and she would be that in yours just as easily. The best analogy I have in our relationship is how Mike Wazowski is framed in every single picture.

I just realized she’s my Boo.

But I wouldn’t have known how it felt to be her in most conference rooms until I had it done to me hardcore. People hold her accountable and in a lot of cases, the buck stops with her whether those were the intended consequences or not….. It wasn’t that I was aiming for street cred, I just had it. Tony Robbins in a teacup or some shit. I just understood and had empathy for why she might feel I was coming across that way and why I really didn’t want to be that for her.

I didn’t want to be her other fan, either.

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.

I Already Have

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 3 Comments

What would you do if you lost all your possessions?

My house, the United Methodist parsonage in Naples, Texas, burned down to the ground on December 20, 1990.

It was a child’s Christmas in wails. Presents were given that year that would have been cool had they not been distorted by smoke or water damage, and I only know that looking back. Alternatively, we got presents that we knew were collected five minutes ago, and knew enough to be grateful because we had an awareness that of course no one has our lists anymore. Lindsay and I were grateful for any normalcy at all. The the first few hours, I internalized absolutely everything because I was the only one home. My parents and sister weren’t there. So, I did what I always did in that situation. I became a very tiny hostess to the fire department….. so sorry I was inconveniencing them. There were church members in my neighborhood that were all flocking to the middle of the street and I just started doing everything through an out of body experience. Too much pain to stay connected. In order to emote where people could understand me, I had to put my feelings away. My trauma reflexes do not all come from emotional abuse as a teen, but those reflexes were built on someone who’d already developed those reflexes independently.

I learn a lot about trauma using myself as a case study, because I’m looking back far enough into the past that I write like I’m someone else’s little girl. It’s a lot easier to parent yourself when you see yourself now as a different person…… because when you do all the work, you realize that you are indeed the same person and uncovering all your trauma allows you to reclaim the childlike parts of yourself that were stolen. I also use myself as a case study because even if I had an MD and a PhD, I would still never be as sure about someone else’s history as I am about my own. Patients lie, and about the stupidest shit because they think doctors are judgmental (they’re not, and you have no idea what you’re doing when you leave something out, capiche?). Doctors are, for the most part, judgmental like our last letter in Myers-Briggs is J, not judgmental like an asshole. A doctor is just as much of a geek as a computer programmer. Don’t hold back the tools that let them “if, then.” My dad was a pastor and my grandmother worked in a blood lab. I’ve been steeped in the languages of ministry and medicine since I was born, so it’s entirely possible for me to lose my shit and be completely fine in the same exact moment.

My computer had melted into my desk. My hangers had melted onto and into my clothes. When it all started, I’d been the only one home in my pajamas, getting ready for a district-wide church dance and even had a date.

I was wearing pantyhose and curlers with a Snoopy nightgown when I rang the doorbell next door. I was in preacher’s kid trauma victim mode, the first time I’d ever experienced trauma in its true sense. My house was burning down in front of my eyes and I was the only one of the four of us who knew it. My mother and sister were shopping. My father was delivering communion to shut-ins. It was all me.

All. Me.

I had just turned 12 three months earlier. My grandfather wouldn’t have known what to do in this situation, it was so unique. Age couldn’t line up to experience here because what happened was rare. The other thing is that I would not have felt as alone today. This was at least 10 years before I had a cell phone (because I’m that old, not “we didn’t buy one”) and every contact programmed into it so I wasn’t dependent on my memory for the numbers. In that kind of situation, you’re glad emergency services only have three numbers to remember.

If I’d had my current cell phone, I could have called my mother and sister at the shops. I could have called my dad while he was visiting the elderly. I could have called my grandparents because they only lived about a half hour away. My cell phone now is not handy to me because it can call out. It’s handy because without it, I wouldn’t know who to call.

(As an aside, aren’t cell phones a miracle? I have been impressed with being able to walk around and talk on the phone anywhere since our mobile was in a black bag.)

I am certain that I assured Doris nothing was wrong, it was no big deal, but I had to call the fire department. And would it be okay if I waited with you? I was doing all those things you do when you’re a preacher’s kid, assuring everyone around me that everything was under control.

So, in short, I learned two lessons. The first is that stuff doesn’t matter. The only thing I lost that were precious to me were photographs, and even those don’t matter anymore because any I have that are precious are also on Facebook or WordPress, so they’re backed up. There is no material thing I could lose that would hurt me, really. What hurt me was the second lesson.

Even when things are fucked six ways to Sunday, the reflex to make everyone else more comfortable is intact.

It’s something you don’t find until you lose everything else. You don’t find it until all the bullshit is stripped away and realize you’re pretending to be fine. The reality break from trauma makes it where you live and reflect. You have a binge-purge relationship with feelings because when they come up, you are too overwhelmed. It’s a continual cycle.

It was a brand new ball game when I realized that an anxious attachment is just an avoidant attachment style in disguise. I’ve just been avoiding me.

Another World Before Columbus

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Your life without a computer: what does it look like?

If your love were taken from me
Every color would be black and white
It would be as flat as the world before Columbus
That’s the day that I lose half my sight

Suzanne Vega

If the Internet didn’t exist, life as I know it would be very different. I still would have gone to Oregon, but I wouldn’t have married Dana. Dana moved to Oregon for an Internet relationship, so without it, I wouldn’t have met her or her former partner (said Internet relationship is a mensch). I went to Oregon for what I thought was family, but I stayed because I made my own. I really did like it more than Texas, and the only reason I say that is even in 1997, no one cared if two women were holding hands if they walked down the street. I walked into all kinds of things (not just a door) seeing cute girls interact. I wasn’t trying to pick anyone up- I just noticed sweet female couples all around me and thought, “I want that.” I might have gone to DC, I might not. This is because Kathleen worked for Global Information Systems. I don’t know what she would do had the internet not been invented, but it wasn’t as prevalent then as it is now, so perhaps we would have still gone to DC because databases don’t need internet connections to function. We could do everything old school- backing up to tape drives and floppy disks if we needed them.

No e-mail necessary.

I wouldn’t have joined AOL chat rooms or Internet Relay Chat, so I wouldn’t have been able to widen my network to the extent that I have now. There are some people I’ve known for 30 years and have never seen their faces in real life. When you’ve got as many complications as I do, and the personality type that I have, being friends online fits better. I can cast a bigger net for people like me. I express my thoughts clearer when I’m writing, but it takes out tone of voice and everything that goes with it. There is also no way to redirect after a sentence or two, also problematic. I type 90 words a minute. You cannot imagine how far down the wrong road I can go before someone calls me on it.

I also would have gotten worse grades in college. If I wasn’t doing so hot, I’d go up to the professor and ask if they needed a web site. Cher Horowitz had nothing on me. It was a jumping off point to start negotiations. I worked my way to an A one blink tag at a time. (That was actually a joke. I made fun of it all the time. When the blink tag was deprecated, it was like working for a restaurant. Web developers were popping champagne while Geocities went apeshit. It was a very good day when the customer realized they were wrong.)

I wouldn’t have gotten a job in IT when I was 19. I started as an Academic Support Assistant in the main computer lab, then eventually got two of my own at different times. The first was the one in the Graduate School of Social Work, where I met Brene Brown and still kid her that the hottest ticket in Houston is being invited to her house to watch her watch “Ted Lasso.”

I wouldn’t have learned that Brene had really done well for herself unless she’d been on television after writing successful books. If I close my eyes, I can literally see her next to Johnny Carson. I think those two would have had a riot together, and I’m sorry it didn’t happen. I do think that Brene would have been successful, I just don’t think I would necessarily know who she was because my introduction was YouTube. It’s not her books that made her famous. It’s the Internet.

The second computer lab I supervised wasn’t for the kids. It was for the professor. I was the only support staff for the entire college when it came to WebCT (distance education software bought by Blackboard), because there weren’t that many professors interested in using it, frankly. It was hard to get buy-in at first. The smartest ones saw that this is where we’re going now. I need to learn this before I have to rely on it. It reminds me of a Netflix president, though I don’t remember their name. “If we didn’t know streaming was coming, we would have called it “DVDs by Mail.”

The worst said “I’m too old for this shit” and tried to pass their course management onto me, because they were far too Important to do it themselves. Male professors treated me like “the help” a good bit of the time. Men are not programmed to see women in IT. I never fit their narrative. What they didn’t know that I did was that I was more man than they’d ever be and more woman than they’d ever get.

Now that I’m 46 I still think that, but I have empathy for not wanting to learn new software now. I have reached saturation, and did a long time ago. What is this “Instagram” you speak of? Seriously, though. I don’t use it. I accepted a Threads invite right away because now I’m using social media to introduce myself to readers (and you, for that matter. The comments section is just as important  what I say.). I have to go back and learn what I’ve missed, because you’ve never seen a more “deer in headlights” look when I think about the fact that I haven’t noticed anything since SnapChat.

I started using linux when I started being a web developer, because at the time, Apache was vastly superior to IIS, the Windows version of a web server. In fact, that was about the time I learned how to install WordPress on my own server, which I used as production before I transferred everything to go live. Still a database for content management, which was a game changer in terms of managing web pages. The difference is that back then you also had to know webdev because you had to get a hosting company, install and maintain it yourself, and code all the things that didn’t come with the theme.

I did all of that for my first blog, “Clever Title Goes Here,” but for my second, I decided I was a writer. I don’t have my own hosting company anymore, but I’m thinking about it because I could do so much more with it. My main problem is that in the free tier of WordPress, I don’t have access to what’s called a head tag. That’s where you put all the things you need for web analytics, because if you don’t, WordPress offers a pay-by-month solution for a free product. I understand that it’s the labor dollars to pay the engineers for updates to the plugin, but it’s not necessary for someone who already knows this stuff.

And finally, I wouldn’t have met Supergrover. I’d have been an arrested teenager the rest of my life. I’m angry af at her right now, because her actions are making her look like a jackass and she won’t listen to that. She ramps up my anxiety and beats me up emotionally when I tell her that. It’s not personal. Emotions are for weak people. It’s the only reason she’s even got a shot at redemption, that it’s not personal. She’s a hurt little girl with third degree burns all over her body and she doesn’t realize she’s spreading the fire to me. I cannot say for sure, but either she does this with everyone, or she does it with me because she’s pleases everyone else and I’m the only dog she has to kick. It is generally one of those extremes, and in abused kids it rarely varies. She’s not a narcissist. She’s protecting everything she has left. She doesn’t emote because she can’t access emotions all the time.

It makes her invulnerable and impervious, the things she does in her job that make her piss excellence are killing her when it comes to strength coming to her through her vulnerability instead.

I finally just cut through the silence and told her that her actions made her look like a jackass because she wasn’t giving me the tools to love her or move on. Either way, I’m screwed. She doesn’t get that she made me responsible, and I hear Ben Affleck as Tony Mendez in my head when I say that word, because he’s about to get the houseguests to the airport not knowing if he has tickets for everyone or not. He calls Jack Donovan and tells him he’s going to take them through, and to get his shit together before he gets there. “I am responsible…….” It’s disturbing to think I’ve heard Ben Affleck in my head since 2012, but it is what it is.

As an aside, I love Ben Affleck’s films so much. Argo was great. It won best picture and should have. But Air has the same vibe; it’s set in the same time period, so it’s the same color palate, etc. It is amazing, and I want more from him. Doesn’t he also have a friend that acts or something? Seem to remember something about it in the news. 😉

We could have watched both movies together and bonded in 15 minutes, but we didn’t. Just another cultural reference of mine she never picked up, because intel and science fiction are my bag, not hers. She didn’t even know what I was talking about when I said that Wakanda had a Tolkien case officer. 😉

Her face would light up at the music in Argo because she’s never seen me when I listen to it. Never seen me excitedly say, “OOH! OOH! Listen to this! The horns are about to enter the chat.” I think she would also enjoy my reaction to the bassoon solo in my other favorite movie, which I’m betting only Jack Lucas will know because even I thought it was an English Horn at first. But he’d know it was a bassoon even if I woke him up in the middle of the night. For the rest of you, there’s a correlation between Air and the movie I mean. But I’m not going to tell you what it is because I want to know if Jack knows what I mean first. 😉 He absolutely will.

She doesn’t think about me at all, but not because she’s trying to be an asshole. She just dicks me around because she doesn’t get back to me when she does have time unless I get angry enough at having my needs ignored that I don’t walk on eggshells around her. Walking on eggshells has been my only choice in this matter, and I’m just not going to do it anymore.She took away my right to write whatever I wanted and now constantly ramps up my anxiety that all I’m good for is getting her fired.

She really didn’t have the right to shut down for eight years, but I let her. It’s because I’m emotionally intelligent enough to know why she’s an avoidant attachment style, and she’s not emotionally intelligent enough to deal with it, nor my anxious attachment style on top of it. An anxious attachment style is not bad, per se. It’s bad when people talk to you and you don’t believe them, worrying yourself to death, anyway. This is what I’ve done because she keeps her trap shut and doesn’t give me anything to calm me down. I’ll give you a for-instance. If I say to Zac, “hey, you seem distant. Did I do something wrong?,” he’ll say he’s been slammed and he’s sorry. Now, I can choose to believe that he’s hiding something or not. If I spiral out, that’s on me. He told me what he thinks, and I’m undermining him by not believing what he says.

But you can’t do that with an avoidant attachment style because if they’re being avoidant, they won’t even give you words like, “no, we’re okay. I’ve just been slammed.” For an avoidant personallity if they say them, it could be the truth or it could be a lie. You do not know because their words and actions do not match…. and they’ll leave you in that anxiety til Jesus comes or you die mad about it.

They’re reassuring you while being their avoidant selves at the same time, talking around nothing. It’s the same way that when people meet in the grocery store and say they want to get together. Good luck. God bless.

In short, without the Internet, I don’t have a life. I love her in color, but when she pulls back, I fall into a world before Columbus. I’m not in love with her, it’s just that my life becomes all gray area, all the time. It’s too much pressure and she knows it.

And the more I think about it, that might be a good thing. The jury is still out, and “the hardest part of being a lawyer is convincing 12 K-Mart clerks you’re right.” -John Grisham

You Got Me Straight Trippin, Boo

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

What’s the trait you value most about yourself?

I’m not so good at talking about my “traits,” because it feels like all of them are somewhere in the middle in terms of value being good or bad. I’m tripping because none seem more important than the other.

For instance, being queer does not make me interesting in and of itself. Overcoming other people’s reactions to me being queer is what makes me brave, because it’s not something to which people have the right to react. It is what it is.

To me, it’s all like that. A trait’s beauty is dependent on its circumstances. If having brown eyes had been interpreted as wrong in the Bible, I would be overcoming fear and hatred of that instead. It’s the same amount of important.

Plus, my mind is an interesting combination of nothing right now, because I just woke up about 20 minutes ago (getting up at 0700 hasn’t taken. It’s 0520). I could go downstairs, get some coffee, read the paper. But that’s what normal people do. Creativity is a cruel mistress, even when it’s Internet word vomit.

[At this point I started joking with Cora (The War Daniel’s daughter who is now also mine)… Why was I not smart enough to have a child that lives with me? “The problem with using infants for waitstaff is that you get very poor service.” -Lemony Snickett She’s 25. Still funny.]

We’ve been chatting back and forth- she’s got some amazing artwork and I was telling her she should put it up on CafePress. All kinds of weird creatures with extensive back story- just more creative than I’ll ever be with visual art. She could make money easily because all she’d have to do is upload her art digitally. CafePress buys all the merchandise and you just pay for what you use- no up front cost because the costs to CafePress are billed to the customer.

I did a limited run of “Fanagans’ Wake” t-shirts, as well as one for line cooks that says “Keep Calm and Sell the Rail,” and they eventually did ok. But I’m not Cora. I enjoy working with fonts and spacing. She can design and decorate whole worlds.

An inborn trait for all INFJs is wanting others to be the best they can be. I thought of this because when Cora started sending me her artwork, I thought it might be useful for her to know about CafePress, and not because I’m trying to direct her into success. I genuinely would like to have a coffee mug with her artwork on it because I’m not saying that as “overbearing tiger queer mom.” I mean that her work wouldn’t look out of place at ComiCon, and I believe that the only reason she’s not making bank is that she’s an unknown. All unknowns start somewhere, and I’m getting in on the ground floor. I am also not here to make my dreams her reality.

INFJs think in visions of what might be. We start with an issue and spin it out. We throw everything on the table to see what it looks like and look before we leap to an enormous degree…….. except in my case, this is often derailed when I have stars in my eyes to an enormous degree. But everyone goes stupid at love. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t.

I saw kids with Auna.

I saw living with Theresa.

I saw being old with Sam.

I do see being old with Supergrover because life is long and it’s not over. I am terribly small, but would never sing that particular song.

None of these things have or have yet come true, and it doesn’t matter that they didn’t or haven’t. That’s because the visions in my head are only guidance. I think in some ways it’s my brain protecting me from fear. That if things do work out, here’s what it will look like. Here is a goal you can work towards.

It was particularly important for me to see a future with Sam because I was so terrified. I am glad she broke up with me in retrospect, but she’d have to know just how many walls she broke down in order for me to even go on a date with her, especially after she gave me so many red flags in the beginning that I just ignored because she was adorable and I felt safe. Even with the red flags, everybody’s got ’em, so I would have tried harder had she let me. I’m just glad I didn’t have to. It was too early to work hard. I’m sure I came with red flags, too, clearly. I’m just glad I didn’t have to mourn her, because Supergrover was there to catch and told me how much of an idiot Sam was. She has a history of telling the absolute truth, so it was easy to rest in my pet monster on a leash.

If you’re playing Skyrim, she’s very unapologetic that she is Alduin.

She’s not. She is Paarthurnax for everything he was, is, and will be.

I want the best in life for her, too. If she was a fan of Avatar: The Last Airbeder, I believe she would see some direct correlations to our relationship with Uncle Iroh and Zuko. It feels amazing that I’m in season three now.

If you never met Supergrover or she never sent you a photo, you’d think you were being e-mailed by a prize fighter, but one who seems like he spends his time at home painting his nails and wearing a tutu just to see his daughter smile. But then you look at her and realize that she’s a six year old girl with lots of complicated layers who also believes in adorably seductive and tasteful Halloween costumes, thanks be to God.

Just because we’re not a couple doesn’t mean I can’t be interested when Vogue magazine is on the coffee table. I, just like her, love pictures of beautiful people. I’d like to see pictures of her in different outfits and settings whether I knew her personally or not. I love photography. I do know her personally, though, so I pretend like settings and outfits matter when I’m really only looking for her microexpressions.

An inborn trait of INFJs is that we all know you can’t tell when someone is happy by looking at someone who’s smiling. It is not found there. It is found in their eyes, the way their muscles tense when pulled just so, whether crow’s feet go up or down (in my case). You can hide a drained soul from many people. I am just not one of them.

If you are my friend, though, I do have boundaries. If I can tell that you’re struggling, I will not intrude unless I feel there is clear and present danger. I need you to be capable of realizing that you’re struggling and asking for help. I also see when people are incapable of doing those things and probably won’t just step in, but I will be relentless about telling you to handle your shit with medication and therapy. It’s not my job to fix you, but it is my responsibility to tell you when your behavior is affecting me. I am not the be all and end all, but I know from depression and alcoholism. If I’m willing to say something, it’s already bad because I’m not judgmental about everything. I assume you’ve got it handled right up until you don’t. However, I’m not sure I would be insistent with someone who didn’t live with me. Their behavior just doesn’t affect me enough for it to be a burden on me otherwise, and criticism is always unwelcome no matter how constructive you’re trying to be. No one thinks you are trying to lance a boil. It’s always an attack.

I’ll give you a huge for-instance. I couldn’t, shouldn’t, and didn’t tell Dana to stop drinking or I’d leave. That’s because I was in the situation, not looking down on it. Is it surprising to anyone that I accidentally developed a wandering eye? I needed a catalyst for change, and Supergrover was it. The “accidentally” part is that I did not go into that relationship expecting anything close. I walked into a wall of bullshit I’m still not out of yet. Even she would agree that I stepped in it up to my ass, because she knows she’s a handful and calls her own life crazy because it is. Laying out the story exactly how it happened is like that scene from Men in Black II:

J: Okay. Straight to the point. [whispers in a serious voice] You are a former agent of a top-secret organization that monitors extraterrestrials on Earth. We’re the Men in Black. We have a situation, and we need your help.

K: There’s a free mental health clinic at the corner of Lilac and East Valley. Next!

No one gets this life by accident, and yet I did….. just through my inborn traits.

Lost in Your Mind

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Dear Supergrover,

When my mind goes quiet, there’s a black and white picture of you that appears. It’s the only one you’ve ever taken just for me. It’s not that I don’t like other pictures of you. That’s not it at all. I like that you were thinking of me when you took it, and there’s just a hint of a smile with mischievous eyes. I wonder what your eyes looked like that day, and the days after…. in which we were clinging to each other and you kept whispering “you’re safe.” Beautiful girl, you whisper me to sleep with that one enduring phrase. I don’t sleep much, but when I do you watch over me, just like you’ve done since I was “young.” When I get scared in the night, I hear you in my head. “Maybe a doughnut will help.” I would have taken any vow that day, but the one I took was unusual.

Sometimes I feel like you don’t realize it’s unusual, because you’re big picture and I’m in the weeds. I know it would take you being on vacation for us to even have a chance to drink coffee together, so it’s just difficult having feelings you’re not there to catch because you can’t and shouldn’t be. Yet, I still signed the paper with blood.

The game changed from Old Maid to No Limit Texas Hold ‘Em, beautiful girl. Please know that this is true. Feel it in your heartbeat. Let the knowledge settle in you, because I am not placing guilt or blame. I am asking “where do we go from here?” Our connection is pure, but not our communication.

This relationship just makes me turn things over in my mind constantly, but is only one cog of many. My complications are dependent on what I’m tracking, and I owe you an apology for making you think you’re not on the face.

I am so sorry that when you came to me with what you were going through, I reacted poorly. I was having a bad day and I exploded. A laundry list of what you were going through with no thought to what I was going through made me crazy, because it was just reinforcement of the last eight years. I express needs, you express avoidance. I was frustrated that nothing was changing no matter what I did. I thought you were blind to something that has been in place since our inception. That the things we share do not go away when we don’t speak. We are making things worse for both of us, convinced we’re right and without each other. It’s stupid, but I’ll live.

The reason, though, that I was upset is that I could have written the essay on what you were going through. I do not take my needs lightly where you are concerned because your time is more objectively valuable than mine (during business hours). I have to weigh how I feel before I talk to you because I pick my battles carefully. I don’t try to goad, provoke, or scold you. I agonize over every decision because I have to think “does this matter right now compared to what she’s doing?” There will never be anything in my life as important, comparatively, so by the time I’m brave enough to lay something out with you, I’ve thought about it for weeks.

Every decision where you are concerned comes with complications, and I’m one of the people that can handle complicated. What I cannot handle is a conflict between two people where only one person says anything. You explained to me what you were going through, but ignored everything I said so I felt unheard after years of saying the same thing.

While you’re off thinking I’m a judgmental dick about everything, here’s what is actually running through my mind:

Where’s she going? What’s she doing? Does she have all her meds? Where’s Michael on this? Did she get that weighted blanket? Are the girls going with her this trip or is she on her own? Is a driver picking her up? What’s his story? When is wheels up? When does she land? Will she have e-mail in-flight or will there be crap going on? Don’t forget to tell her you love her when you know she’s going to be in the air.

This type monologue has been running every day for 10 years, and intensifies when I know it should. I know you don’t necessarily like it, but I remember pleading with you- that you need someone to care about you and could you just let me? Please? I always want to take care of you and I’m sorry I haven’t done it more often.

Limiting our interaction stops me from feeling unwanted, but it doesn’t stop the monologue because we fucked up and we’re married now- without me ever being able to explain why I mean what I mean to anyone other than you, and so far you don’t get it, or you really, really, do and that’s why you don’t want to talk about it. My job is to be lost in your mind. To be the best at separating what can go into the character of Supergrover from what can’t leave the building. I am afraid that I’m the worst.

The simplest answer would be to just stop writing about it, and I say that to myself every single day and realize I can’t go anywhere else. In this space, I have complete control of the narrative. I can relax and breathe, because no one else can respond. I mean, they can. People leaving comments is fun. I mean that Bryn and I aren’t going through each other’s comments and responding on the other’s behalf. I tell a story, people only talk to me.

I am not just writing the you in the entries, but the you in the comments. The you that exists in my world vs. the you that exists in yours. It’s never going to go away and we are both cutting off our noses to spite our faces by pretending we can walk away as if nothing happened…. but that’s not the problem.

The problem is that you absolutely can walk away like nothing happened, shooting emotions like metal spikes while I’m telling you that nail guns fucking hurt. By the time you told me everything you were going through, you told me there was no space for me in a way that meant change. That I could deal with things as they are. Period.

It cannot be the whole story. I know it. But you should understand that you walked into this willingly. I don’t need you to say you’re sorry and disappear into the ether. I need you to accept the reality of the situation and say “what’s next?”

There’s no one else for me and you knew that’s what would happen- because it happens every single time. The information becomes more important than the connection. I do not say that to guilt you at all; there will be others, just not ever again in the same way. It’s what I’ve been trying to tell you for at least seven years (now eight).

Nothing about our situation is wrong and bad. I love you in a way I don’t have the capability to love anyone else, and that makes me feel unique and special in a way I didn’t before. My worth on the planet doesn’t come from you, but the perks to living here sure do.

No judgment. No guilt. I just can’t engage anymore because I can’t communicate where you can hear it.

If I send a letter by publishing it here, it’s because I don’t have any expectation of it being read. I don’t want to open the door to more fighting. I want you to be at peace, even if I’m not it.

We told each other we loved each other once upon a time. Now, that check needs to cash. I’m just not going to wait at the bank all day, leaving empty-handed at 4:00 PM.

But know that if we agree to meet, I’ll be in the lobby with your coffee. I’m tired of feeling crazy for doing exactly what you need me to do. I’m just working without a net, and afraid.

Until my mind quiets, and the shadows reveal your face…. contemplative because I’m lost in your mind.

Yours,

Leslie

Evensong

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Today I found a quote that made me feel better about moving on from Supergrover (if that’s what she ultimately wants, I don’t know). That’s because it made me know that we won’t move on. We’ll absorb:

The two worst days in falling in love with a writer are realizing they’re writing about you………….. and realizing when they’ve stopped.

Supergrover didn’t fall in love with me as a woman, but she did with me as an author. She absorbed me like she absorbs every writer she’s ever read…. completely. I know she’ll never forget words I’ve said in anger, but she’ll also never forget how much I love her, either. That’s because I have learned through writing to you that she lives in my ink. As long as I write, a thread of her will be somewhere. There will be other women, other stories, none of them her. None of them even close. She cannot be convicted of a crime by a jury of her peers. She doesn’t have any peers, like Meryl Streep….. except comparatively Streep is a swamp witch. Nothing makes my face light up more than hers. Nothing. I doubt anything ever will. I do not say this in a sad way. it is the truth. I will never meet anyone like her ever again. Our connection means she cannot go away, so I’m not going to make her. She can sit here until she’s ready to go on her own. I’m at peace, and when she comes to me in dreams we have the conversations I would have liked to have had in person. I bring her a new book every time. New books make her smile at me. I would do anything to have her keep doing that. Even when she’s smiling at me in a photo, I feel light and warmth.

If she thinks I’m painting her as a villain, it’s not because I have any need. She is made of industrial light and magic in a film George Lucas could never dream up. I have had negative thoughts about this relationship as I’ve worked through whether our patterns work for me, things she’s unwilling to discuss. At no time has that made my love for her smaller in any way. I can choose to limit interaction to protect myself and have this space to get angry on my own….. but as the anger leaves me, you’ll see joy as well.

A lot of it has been stopping being an apologist. Trying to make my emotions look smaller so that they’d be more acceptable. For instance, I played off what hearing her voice did to me because it would not have been a proportionate response. I’m flowery and romantic with language, anyway, so she starts talking and there are bells ringing in my head… not church bells, just that her voice was musical and I wanted more. I could have listened to her talk for hours about nothing or everything, and I minimized it. I’ll never get that moment back.

I should have told her a lot of things, and i didn’t. But more than what I wish I’d said, I wish I’d heard. I wish I’d heard how my words affected her and in more than just broad strokes, because I know it wasn’t all bad or good. I have e-mails where she’s just copied and pasted what she’s liked, and I wish I had more of those. I have taken so much hell for the things she hasn’t liked, and there are a lot of them.

Alternatively, I love her anger. I never want to see it because it’s scary, but it walks the pain/pleasure line quite effectively. We rile each other up and seeing her fire is impressive. You just can’t put it out. She has to sneeze angry fire until it reduces to sparks on its own. You stand there with a blanket, because making fire takes a lot out of a dragon. You give her a shoulder to sleep on because when she gets that angry, she’s about to pass out. When she does, I’ll be still til she wakes. Never wake a sleeping dragon. This has been written many times.

I don’t need to be her husband/wife/partner because I am none of those things and also permanently etched into her mind. Affixed on her heart. She cannot forget me even if she tries very, very hard………

So I know she does indeed know how it feels to be me.

I am a writer, lost in a book.

She is a reader who doesn’t know whether she’s reading a story that’s finished, because the author isn’t sure, either. We will chase each other through time. If love is as certain an energy in the universe as novelists think, she and I will keep finding each other. Love never gets destroyed, it just changes. In our next lives, we may not even be female. But because we’re writers, we would recognize each other anywhere. There’s slim chance I wouldn’t recognize her, even in a different face. She can put on all the Halloween makeup she wants, but I’ll remove it in three punctuation marks.

Opening up to each other the way we did was just as vulnerable as rushing into an affair. We will never see each other without our clothes, but we have been naked emotionally more than once. I absolutely think that’s harder to find in a relationship.

I did indeed get my romcom with someone who absolutely knows it, whether she accepts that she’s my shite in nining armor or not. I will always be the Keeley to her Rebecca, because I didn’t settle for fine. I got hit by fucking lightning. She’s the gift you get from the universe for being an extraordinarily good person and somehow the universe still sent her to me. My heart is big enough to accept the package that comes with her. She is too big a gift to be mine alone.

On this evensong, I am reflecting upon the fact that I never want the second day to come for either one of us………

I can fall asleep easy knowing it never will. Neither of us will ever forget this time in our lives, when the story was us. It has already been written.

Staying Up

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

What could you do more of?

I am slowly starting to stay up later and sleep in. Not by much. Just one or two hours. I’m starting this entry at 7:48, after I’ve done the things I need to do to get going. I have taken my medication, and gotten myself something to drink, and settled in. Therefore, I woke up at 0700 instead of 0500 for love.

That’s because the person that most represents safety to me and vice versa is in Portland, Oregon. That’s three hours into the past from here. I’ve done it with other friends, had this asynchronous life because I’ve had friends in Portland since 1996 or something like that and moved to DC in May of 2001. The events of September 11th did not drive me away. Kathleen did. It was the best mistake I’ve ever made. When I went to Portland, I found everything I have ever needed to know myself. It affects me every day, and I’m grateful to my time there for it, no matter how low my Vitamin D was when I got home (six).

I don’t stay up for me. I stay up for Bryn. I want her as a real part of my life rather than a fake one, and video calling is easier for both of us in the evening. It’s just that her evening is generally my bedtime when I’m getting up at 0500. When I get up at 0500, sometimes it’s so early for her that she hasn’t gone to bed yet. We make it work, and yet we don’t. It’s not a matter of how much we love and adore each other, just that our relationship isn’t as full of practical love as it would be if we lived in the same neighborhood. Maybe we will eventually, but I don’t want either of us to do the hard sell on each other. Our lives will unfold as they should. The difference between this relationship and most of my other virtual ones is that I don’t video call with them, ever. I barely even do audio. I can do that with Bryn because we’ve had so much face time over the years that we call each other no matter what we’re doing or how we look because the video call is more important than fixing up for it. Video calls are so much easier when you don’t give a shit how you look on camera. It’s not that we look bad, it’s that we’re going to love each other no matter how we look, so why waste time on something so frivolous?

I like our back and forth, the way we’re both on the “think it, say it” plan because we can be. It’s a trust that’s implicit and makes it easy to breathe. She’s made the commitment to learn my attachment style and love language, but she doesn’t really have to do research because they’re the same as mine. She understands something in me because she wears it on her skin, not because she’s lost in a book…. or if she is, it’s the one I’m writing for us.

You’ll just have to put up with romantic and flowery language from me about her because I am Anne Shirley crazy for her. She knows that she is my Diana Barry…. so much lighter than I am in some ways, darker in others. We complete, not compete. I am the friend that would get her drunk on purpose, though, and she wouldn’t complain because I’m an excellent bartender and it doesn’t take much for either of us. 😉

I am sort of in a relationship in terms of having a companion but not a possible husband, and she definitely is in a relationship with promise. It fits us to a T to have other partners, while also making space for each other; our history is too long for us not to put each other first in some ways. I might have to be around for the next boyfriend, and Dave will be excused for cause. I have no reason to believe this will be the case, it’s just a sitrep. We’re a package deal, get used to it. 😉

Being with our respective guys gives us more to talk about, not less. I don’t feel jealous and neither does she. It’s nice to have a place to unload about everything, because neither of us blink when the other has a problem. We’re on it like a team. Later I have to call Multnomah County on some business of my own, so I’m going to do hers as well. It’s no thing because if I have to do something over the phone, I know she’d be my proxy if something needed to be done in person. It’s a give and take now that I have someone on the ground that I can trust to have my back in a city where I used to live and still need to bat cleanup.

I’m not divorced yet, or at least, I have been unwilling to check. Dana told me she would take care of it, but I haven’t been sent anything to sign and I don’t think people have the capability to divorce someone without their knowledge. I could be wrong, but I can’t assume Dana is more likely than me to fill out paperwork, either, even though she said she would. I am not being catty. Paperwork causes anxiety for both of us sometimes because of the emotional attachment it represents. We’re both ADHD. If it fell off her radar, it won’t come back.

I can have empathy because in some ways, we’re the same person and that will never change.

Now my mother lion has kicked in, because I should have done it long ago for Dana and followed up on the paperwork myself, because I know it was difficult for two reasons. The first is that the way our relationship ended is shameful to both of us given the connection we threw away. We should have been able to deal with the Supergrover issue because I shouldn’t have gotten so high on her. Dana would know exactly how being married and being lost in new relationship energy would feel, because she was married during most of the time she was dealing with her feelings for me……………. yet another reason I didn’t want to get involved in the first place.

I struggled with the idea of having an affair because she was using her wife as a safety net if I said no and I knew it. That’s because her wife knew what Dana was doing, too, and was never blind to it. She saw how Dana reacted to me and thought her days were numbered, then stuck around watching Dana be lovesick over me for years and putting up with that shit. By the time she broke up with her wife, even our girlfriends were convinced we should be together instead of with them because we couldn’t stop talking about each other. Being friends was easy. Taking the leap was hard……………. right up until it wasn’t. By the time we were ready to leap, we had years of emotional closeness feeding our fire. We loved each other because of what we’d been to each other as friends, not because we each thought the other was perfect. We knew what contract we were signing, and we were better for it.

For a while.

She could not accept that the same thing was not happening to her. That my feelings were supposed to have been light and flirty wordplay to give me some dopamine after Dana and me going through a really rough time. Supergrover wasn’t threatened, and she was so cute about flirting with me one time that I knew I’d opened the door to something I could dish, but I could not take. I thought I was a silver-penned devil.

I was, in fact, mistaken.

I laid the golden fiddle at her feet because I had gone down to Georgia and knew that I’d been beat. It was a mistake. It called my bluff. I felt things I never had because it was attention from someone who really deserved mine.

It was all a mistake. It was not a happy compromise, It jumped me further into something she was rightfully afraid would happen. It jumped me into something the relationship couldn’t sustain, but it wasn’t her fault because I pretended to be so cool. it was the beginning of the end with both of them. It just will never be a new beginning with Dana because I can forgive her punching me, but it’s not worth a chance it would happen again and the statistics are against us.

I fucked up asking for more patience from both of them and then not actually doing anything to move myself forward. It was my own choice to feel heat for someone that would never feel that way about me, but that’s based on all the other relationships I’ve had, the mark my emotional abuser left on me. That I couldn’t really know someone until I’d slept with them. I know that because if someone opens me up emotionally, I tend to want all of them. I don’t tie people’s worth to it, though.

If they just want to be friends and I love them that much, I’ll sit in that pain until it goes away. I certainly have done enough of that to feel secure. It’ll never happen again, like women who do fall in love and realize later that it was never the sex that mattered and they’re better off as roommates and friends. But it’s because I’ve felt those feelings that I’m a real and genuine friend and also never less protective and possessive of her than her husband- and not because I want to “keep her safe from him” by acting like a jealous fool. It’s not him that matters. It’s the the rest of the world.

I’m not here to fight her battles for her, just with her. But I won’t if she acts like I don’t matter, gets angry when I tell her that, and treats me like an annoyance a good bit of the time. I’m not here for that, but I am for the relationship in which we do the work to be strong and comfortable at 20 years, like we predicted we would be in the beginning. I can live with boundaries, but not when I don’t know what they are. I will fuck up, and I have. I was out of control, then lost and finding my way back.

I can’t be lost anymore, because I’m tired of feeling insecure. I can’t make up fantasies to ignore the reality of the situation because they feed me. She avoids me in a way she shouldn’t, and that’s not my call. But because she says that she’s enormously impressed with me as a person, everything I’ve said tracks. There is room for all our feelings by now because nothing happens quickly anymore. There’s not an exhilarated rush of trying to know each other as fast as we can.

Our feelings are extreme on both ends. The lovebombing is absolutely genuine, and so is our conflict. The reality is that I would have left Dana no matter what because of two hard outs, not just one……… and now need Supergrover in my life despite her not needing me because of the first hard out’s upper limits, not because I am “trying to get her back.” I was damned if I did, damned if I didn’t at that time. Life was full of hard choices, and I did the best I could with the information I had. It didn’t matter what Supergrover thought. It matters what I thought would happen to me in the future. Supergrover didn’t think about that and I know she didn’t because I didn’t, either. We both got lost in new relationship energy and told each other things that would have consequences long into the future without knowing how stable we were or weren’t. Without knowing how stable I was with Dana, because even I didn’t recognize the toll her DUI would take on me and how that was more of a threat to me than anything Supergrover said that enticed me. I never want to have to bail anyone else out of jail, because it was traumatic. My friend Volfe drove me downtown to pick her up, and she had already left on the bus. I was racing to get to her only to have my hopes dashed. I did get to see her later, but she knew we were coming to get her and she left, anyway. It made me crazy to the point I couldn’t think, and then Dana lost her license. The entire legal process wore me down, and Supergrover was the gift I needed at a time when I was really open to receiving it.

I fucked up by loving her so completely I couldn’t see anything else, and not because it was wrong. Some of my actions were crazy, but I’m not. It was all painful and could have been avoided. But I’d already run from her several times, saying that I couldn’t be friends with a woman who excited me this much, and because we couldn’t separate, we didn’t. The swings just became bigger as my emotions grew. It was embarrassing to tell her I had to back off and why so she didn’t feel like I was dumping her because I wanted to. I had to. Dana could compete with romantic love, but platonic trumped it because it had to, not because I wanted it to, for two reasons. I felt like I couldn’t have reactions in front of Dana anymore, because it drove her crazy for me to have a woman in my life that was just as important as she was for very different reasons. She could not accept that Supergrover and I needed a relationship that was separate from her out of necessity, not malice. I knew that every one of my actions would be up for discussion with someone. As Sam Seaborn would say, “oh, this is bad on so many levels.”

Having a relationship with someone who runs hot and cold is not my jam when they’re as close to me as Supergrover is. If we hadn’t already been so close, running hot and cold wouldn’t be a thing because I wouldn’t notice or care.

I reached out for Bryn because our attachment is secure. I don’t have to worry because there are no swings too big. We know that the other’s style is anxious, so we take care of it up front rather than letting the other believe we’re pulling back, or let the other know when we need some space, but we’ll talk about what was said later; we need time to reflect. It is not time to choose what kind of life we want together, we just know it’s there if we want it. I cannot be on thin ice. I cannot run from her love because it’s just too big. I can’t jump into something the relationship can’t sustain. We are there for every regeneration, making it a good story in the end.

I could do, need to do more of staying up…………… to read the chapters she has written on her own.

Speak More to That -or- That’s So Interesting

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 1 Comment

In my last entry I was talking about hearing people’s voices in my head when I type, literally transcribing a movie onto the page. Two of the voices I hear all the time are ex-girlfriends, and one of them means just as much as the other even though one relationship was seven years and change, the other was three months. That’s because they’re the two that caused me the most growth and development the fastest.

The first title comes from Dana doing an impression of her therapist. When Dana would put out a statement, she’d always say, “speak more to that.” Every time we got into an argument, pulling that one out made us both dissolve into laughter and we could proceed arguing again because it was never a case of right and wrong, but a case of figuring out how to move on. I didn’t want to pack up and live in our problems. I moved to Washington so I could say, “what’s next, Mrs. Landingham?” DC gave me the backdrop to believe I could be more than I was used to being in the world, and I am.

I mean something to someone who really means something. Her Wikipedia page would be better than mine. That my history is woven into hers in such a unique and beautiful way will never leave me.

Beautiful girl, whether you believe it or not, meeting you is the best thing that’s ever happened to me. Just because there are complications doesn’t mean it’s not worth it. Our Apple Watches also have complications, and we use them every day. I hope the day comes where our complications are in the right place. We both need to be on each other’s six, and I’m on it if you are. I just need you to want it more, and you can’t. Life is long. I’ll wait because you’re worth it, and you always will be. When we can say “one more mountain…. hey, so what” we’ll be able to say “trust me baby, this is love.” (That’s an Amanda Marshall song, but mountains just about cover it in terms of metaphor.)

Sometimes I hope I can resolve things with Supergrover, sometimes I don’t. I feel the same sort of push/pull I feel with Dana. That because Supergrover won’t talk to me the way she used to and it hangs shame over my head. I don’t want to live that way anymore when I’ve agreed to do big things for her the rest of my life, and I did that without really thinking it through in terms of being a blogger. Neither did she. Now it’s the tie that binds because I need you guys emotionally to support me and I can’t slip up. It’s walking on a wire every day, because she made it where she couldn’t not be my first thought. Clearly, she doesn’t want that, but it’s work product, not emotions that are my concern now.

I don’t know what to forget, and what to remember.

I can talk about absolutely getting wasted off her energy, but I can’t describe her too closely. I can only tell you she’s up there with Helen Mirren on my list of gorgeous women (no one can beat out Helen, stop trying…….. but Supergrover does think I have amazing taste in women). I can say she has power, but not where because it’s a niche and would make her immediately identifiable. I have to think like a journalist protecting a source, not a blogger with friends who have everyday issues not tied to working here. The power imbalance is absolute and correct.

So that means I think a lot about someone who doesn’t want to think about me, and not for malice. Just through the nature of how we work, which is vastly different from each other. The problem comes in when she will never have a problem smaller than me so that I can move up on the priority list while I am also struggling, genuinely. I can either move on and try to forget, or we can be close. In the middle is too scary because I don’t know what I’m doing….. and I’m a perfectionist, so it’s really hard to admit that.

I am sure that Supergrover thinks that me digging deep to let go is what should have happened long ago, but I didn’t realize then what I do now. We both regret making fuckups that affected our careers, but by not acknowledging it, we are keeping to our separate corners, unable to trust each other when we should lean on each other the most.

In my own life, it feels like I’ve given up a lot for her that she hasn’t recognized, and it hurts, but it’s not my responsibility to change her. It’s not even her responsibility to want to change. It’s deciding how much chaos I’m willing to breathe without putting a safety net under the trapeze. However, it was never in the interest of getting closer tot her, it was an added bonus in escaping from Dana and getting a clean slate. That’s because I cannot tell her story. Only she can do that. She cannot even tell it to me, much less others. Whether that part is ironclad or subjective is up for grabs, because I cannot know that, either.

I’ve made a lot of assumptions and missed a lot of messages. She stopped standing up to me and started telling me that I wanted too much, so she isolated me from everyone else including her. I have a legitimate issue where I need her more than anything and she’s the one person who doesn’t have any bandwidth left over for herself, much less me. I have a ton of empathy, and know that’s not the whole story. She gets offended, shuts down, and wants to rage at me, but doesn’t. She saves up my e-mails to reply later, because she feels guilty and now doesn’t have any context to make connections.

I wanted to stop that part.

There was an ironclad space for me before, and there isn’t now. I have always understood why, yet marveled at the time that’s gone by without us ever really getting to the bottom of anything…. or if I did, it was completely on my own, like having a therapist who disengages and you feel like they’re bored….. they’re not. They’re covering up how bad they want to scream “LEAVE HIM!” When I perceive disinterest, what they’re feeling is trying not to take on my problems as their own. Those messages are drastically different, and lost in a chasm if you don’t address it.

I don’t have that kind of relationship with Supergrover, but I do have that kind of push/pull. I need things and get frustrated. I express that, she tells me I’m the only one who ever ruins anything. Then, she won’t tell me why she thinks that. Why am I so impressive that I’m worth keeping around when your responses come off as defensive and angry? To me, when you love someone and think they’re extraordinary, it means you’re willing to invest. I caused the original rift, butt she said she forgave me. Our ways of moving on were completely different. She thought the best answer was never to trust me again, but keep up the surface level stuff. I can’t do that. I won’t do that. I won’t feel insecure in an attachment and keep feeding it. I don’t care if she’s mine in a way no one else is (and frankly, I’m hers in a way no one else is). When she doesn’t look at my letters with love, she feels guilty and runs away. She shits on herself every time, saying that something isn’t good enough for me when it’s just that we have more to work out, and it’ll keep. Life is long.

She doesn’t feel as excited and impressed by her as I am, therefore why should I be interested in her? Meanwhile, she is 3D chess built on a Rubik’s cube. As I told her, “if you think about your story hard enough, you should want to hit that, too.” That was a time in which jokes like that actually made her laugh, because honestly. It’s just true.

We are connected because “what God has put together, let no man put asunder.” She is not God in this case, but she’s the face I use when I need to visit that place inside me to work out my shit on my own.

Through it, I can maintain a connection to the God I serve and how it is both Old and New Testament, vengeance and promise, everlasting life, and even still I’m making it up as I go along with fake as Christianese.

I just think of it as “the church has left the building.” If I translate that into line cook, it’s “we don’t have to talk about it. Just eat it.”

Going into your closet to pray has always been an excellent turn of phrase for me, and now it’s even more important. I don’t have to speak out loud to be heard. You guys listen enough as is. But you are the God that can take it, the face made up of many names, wants, and desires. I use God as the punching bag, not my beautiful girl. I can’t be sure that God is listening, but sure as shit, you are.

The second title come from an old girlfriend who knocked me on my ass with clever. she was a Rhodes Scholar who had the facade of a kooky teacher, but that was for show. She was brilliant, and a fantasy. We were at different places in our lives, but that didn’t stop us from having a ton of fun and leaving each other better than we found us….. eventually. It was hell when we first broke up because we had to live with each other, anyway (that has no bearing on my current situation……… Jesus. She’s straight. I’m gay. And we still would have had an easier time of it if we’d had triplets. I can laugh about that because we’re both past the age where we’d want to have kids, anyway.

But I know her. If I said “let’s foster” even ONE TIME we’d have five kids by EOB. But to be fair, that was her 10 years ago. She probably just adopted half her neighborhood instead. It’s one of the things that makes her Supergrover to me. It’s fun to have a hero that is also approachable. I think it’s because I am, too. I just talk about my life and invite other people to talk about theirs. I don’t choose friends based on what they can do for me, as much as they think I do when I don’t feel my needs are being met despite fulfilling theirs. Deciding how much energy they get of mine when I’m not getting theirs. It’s not dependent on how each other feels, but how well we can communicate to a happy medium where both people feel like they’re being heard. it is much more lonely to feel alone when someone else is in the room.

My ex-girlfriend used to touch my hand and say “that’s so interesting” to show that she really was intellectually turned on by something. It showed joy and passion on her face for every subject on earth. The whole time I’ve been writing, she’s been touching my shoulder and saying “interesting” the way she’d say it just so. I hear her in my head all the time, as a lot of my life is so interesting.

I cannot speak more to that.

I just know it’s there, and I’m grateful. I am settled within myself in a number of ways. I hope for a resolution in the end, it’s just going to take more than she thinks, but less than I do. If she thinks love is best served by avoiding conflict, that’s fine. I just need her to not do it to me, because she’s reinforcing the idea that I am no longer a value add and hasn’t stopped…….. when to me, I am Jay and she is Silent Bob. She is Harold. I am Kumar. We would look so cute together in a picture because if she’d just posted a photo of us in real life with a caption that said “I’m dating Pete Davidson” people would have believed it. They would have thought she was just as out of her damn mind as his other loves, while also being quietly pissed that they’re not dating Pete Davison, too (or her, for that matter. Christ on a cracker.).

But one relationship taught me how to feed the others. My relationship with my ex-girlfriend settled into her feeling at home with both Dana and me. There was a much larger age gap between us than Supergrover and me, so I was used to the yin and yang of having different cultural references and having to look them up. They’re west coast, I’m Houston. They’re Tupac, I’m Bun B. Different issues, different playing fields.

I am not explaining the rules of the game. I am giving color commentary on what it’s like to play it when there is no discussion or alteration of rules. You have to improvise and work with what you’ve been given.

Yet the more I speak to things, the less information you have. It’s just so interesting.

It All Mixes Together

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?

I remember things by the way people say them, because if it’s a good line, I will hear it in their voices for the rest of my life. Good lines often have a cadence to them. For instance, my pastor came up with “resurrection happens in the middle of the mess.” I came up with “messages I’ve missed in the middle of the mess.” I gravitated toward it because it had the same musicality. One line leads to the next, a call and answer. Resurrection happens by examining the emotional places you’ve never been.

I have memories playing in my head like movies a good bit of the time. My writing is what happens when I stick my head into a pensieve, and I’m giving you access to it. The messages I’ve missed are often in plain sight when I’m seeing me as a different person, rather than perpetually reliving things. I am not reliving anything, I am searching for what I can do better in the future, and that only happens when you can look at yourself and see both your inner Aziraphale and Crowley.

How do I know what will work in the future if I don’t know how I broke the past? I know how I’ve broken my past because I wrote it down, essentially giving myself a past because few people write about their lives to this degree. When they go back to reassess, their memories are faulty. You cannot say that yours is infallible, but if there’s a blog entry on what happened written that day, that memory is secure by the nature of the timestamp. I’m not just making shit up. I am also very musical with words by nature of crafting rhythmic phrases on my horn, music only I can hear because only I know the voices on who said what.

I retain information with rhythm, essentially becoming a mimic in my writing and in my thoughts; I don’t just go back to that one line. It feels like I’m standing in the same room again, even just for a few seconds.

I give myself a lot of good advice by going back and reading what I thought years ago and seeing if I’m doing okay comparatively. Except that I don’t think of it as listening to myself, but the people who inspired my writing that day. It’s like an actor watching their old films. They aren’t living in the story on screen, but the one about how the art was created.

I like having written intimate things about the people in my life, hoping that the musicality of my words will stick with them, because being my friend isn’t easy. They all have their favorites, I’m sure, and their favorites never match up to my favorite things I’ve written about them.

Bryn loves the mirror I hold up on our relationship because she says it teaches her new things about herself. She gets what I’m trying to be, which is so real that people identify. I don’t want to be famous, I want to be heard. That’s why I don’t have to be on Oprah to know I’m making a difference. My platform is smaller, sure, but a platform nonetheless. And on the Internet, where everything is protected by a wall of anonymity, I never know when I’m speaking to people like her or people like me.

In fact, now that I think about it, Oprah did give me the best advice ever. On the last episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show, she talked about how everyone has a platform. Your family. Your church unit. Your work colleagues. All of those people add up, so no matter how small you think that platform is, it’s enormous. Use it.

Oprah’s not on at 4:00 PM anymore, so someone has to pick up the slack.

It’s the message I’ve missed in the middle of the mess.

This is the Thursday of Our Discontent

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I don’t know how I did it.

But I have a guess.

Somehow I did not post yesterday’s entry before the clock flipped over on the server. So, I did today’s writing prompt yesterday and now I have no idea what to do. I still have food prompt pieces to finish, but it’s not a “finishing” mood. It requires an editorial brain I do not have today. This is the winter of our discontent, the long, dark Bloguary of the soul, the long day’s journey into white (live, laugh, love).

I am being so dramatic for someone who just has to come up with a damn writing prompt on her own. Leslie, you do this every day. Every. Day. Buck up, buttercup.

Pack a lunch, son.

When I’m sitting in my room writing, I remember that scene from the 50th Anniversary Special for “Doctor Who.” Ten, Eleven, and The War Doctor are arguing, and for those who don’t watch the show, that’s three actors playing the same person at different points in their lives. Matt Smith (Eleven) starts laughing when they’re arguing and says, “I just realized this is what it must be like when I’m alone.” “What it’s like when I’m alone” is very much John Hurt, Matt Smith, and David Tennant arguing in my head, because that’s how it’s the easiest to tell what issues are working on which processor.

For instance, the heartbreak of losing Supergrover at my own hand eight years ago is nothing compared to the pain of trying to make it work and repelling each other so that neither of us were happy. But the threads processing on that core are alongside the other core, which is joy that goes all the way back to “you like to rap to Eminem? Explain to me exactly how I’m not going to fall in love with you. USE BIG WORDS..” She said “you’ll fall in love with truth an honesty, as adorable as I might be.”

She’s right. I confused them and then got my head on straight. Trying to prove that my head is on straight has been enormous, because I was jumping up and down for attention in my own way, just not the ways in which she thought I was. She was getting mad at me by focusing on the wrong things. For instance, I wrote her something that meant “there’s nothing that you could tell me that would scare me away and I love you.” She took it as “who you are as a person is bad.” Those messages are drastically different.

Thus, trying to write it all out and it seems repetitive because I’m aware of the fact that not everyone reads every day. I have become the Ann M. Martin of bloggers. There’s a story here, but you have to make it through explaining club rules and characters for the people that would be confused if they read a book as a standalone. It also gives me room to stretch out because I’m not working on all cores every day. I see thoughts from the day before and something jumps out at me.

Blogging seems self-aggrandizing when you’re processing because it’s necessarily all about you. You can’t think about anyone else’s behavior as good or bad, you have to say what happened and how you reacted. You are not an authority on how the other person acted and reacted, because you’re not their combination of experiences or family history. Where it gets problematic is other people thinking I’m being a dick when I’m trying to say “I don’t live in your head, but you certainly live in mine.” Everything I wish I could tell them, but can’t because neither of us have time. I reflect on my problems in the third person when I do.

They’re free to read it, but when they do, they often think that I’m writing the way something went down to hurt them, when I’m trying to understand me. This is not limited to Supergrover, because I talked about her yesterday. This is every single person in my life who is threatened by the fact that I write. She told me at last interaction that I was entitled to all my stories, and I hope to God that’s true. I would never say anything to negatively affect her on purpose, and I’ll leave it at that.

Not just Supergrover, everyone in my life so far has thought about the negative things I’ve said more than the positive. If they can’t give me hell, they take it out on Lindsay because she’s local. I’m not Walter Winchell. I’m Brene Brown in real life. How her stories of “the story you’re telling yourself” play out in an anxious/avoidant trauma bond and how most people have them with their parents even when they haven’t been emotionally or sexually abused. Just as often the child has one style before and one style after. The style after is a mask, a myth we made in the middle of the mess to cope. The relationship with an abuser is always an anxious/avoidant attachment because the kid is so keyed up about accidentally giving someone away, and the adult is a monster, shearing a sheep many times because you can only skin it once.

Just so Supergrover doesn’t get wires crossed and think I’m saying my abuse repeated and she’s the monster, let me take a second and reassure her that’s not what happened at all. We’re just two different attachment styles because of who we are as people, and it’s the two adult attachment styles that have the most compatible wounds because our emotional blind spots are completely different. People who have an avoidant/attachment style have it because someone withheld love from them when they didn’t act as planned, especially their abuser, the one they’ve been programmed to think of as God. Your personality goes back to the moment your reality broke, the moment you became responsible for secrets too big for you to carry…. because the way you’re covering it up is counter to how you used to act, it’s taken as a behavioral issue and few people are smart enough to outsmart a child who’s been programmed not to trust their parents or therapist.

I ran toward Supergrover not because of anything illicit like an affair. It’s that her inner circle feels like being part of Lindsay’s, where I can’t tell people everything she’s working on, even when it affects me directly- like Lindsay’s hand in queer legislation but on different issues. I have been programmed to be a confidant from childhood, and it’s a whole other thing to choose to hear stories that are large rather than to have them put on your shoulders during years 12-14; you don’t even know enough to know that adults don’t do that to kids when they’re healthy. It’s the same dynamic as when a parent’s a drunk- the inversion of parent/child roles. With Supergrover, I get to bring my whole self to the table. I don’t forget about the past, I use it to inform my future. Supergrover and I just did that thing where fools rush in. Now she thinks I want her to tell her my stories so that I have more material, and I think that the reason I have to process so much on my own is that she’s ok with letting me twist in the wind and it is not okay. There are three sides to every story…. yours, mine, and the objective truth. Peace is found in knowing that I am finding my truth and reaching for the objective. But I don’t know the whole story, I know as much as I’m allowed to hear.

While that’s happening, Lindsaay told me I can write the story of us and our ugly stepsisters and to say whatever the fuck I want. My mother and her husband are both dead, and we no longer speak to their family. We just want to move on. The gist of it is that Lindsay found out about the funeral from Facebook. Our stepsisters didn’t even tell us when the graveside service was so we could be there when he was buried next to our mother. I’m going to do a saga, I’m not just mentioning it. I want to find the objective truth, the third eye looking down on both sides. I can’t know the story they told themselves, but I know the story of how it made me feell.

I will find it by writing it out, and so might they. But they’d never let me open the book.