Tag: Relationships

Fear

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 5 Comments

What motivates you?

I am motivated by the same thing that motivates all neurodivergent people….. the fear of being misunderstood. I think I’m worse about trying to please others because I was raised in an environment where it was prized. My parents didn’t have to do or say anything. I would react if I displeased anyone anywhere. I don’t think I have necessarily been good at it. Sometimes I’ve stuffed anger down until I’ve completely exploded. I’m excellent when I have no needs and/or agree with someone that what they’re doing is correct. If I do not understand you, I will want you to explain until I do. If it’s a social cue I’ve missed that isn’t written down, please be prepared to defend your dissertation. I am not going to be the cook that walks around with everyone’s orders memorized……….. anymore.

I’m not being a hardass, I’m being real with you. In order for me to comply with something, I need to know why it is necessary. Sometimes I do not feel empathy if the reason you need me to do something is “I’m embarrassing you,” because first of all, no I’m not if you’ve got good boundaries. My behavior is not a reflection of others and I resent people who treat me that way. That’s because most of the time, they’re embarrassed by the same things I am because I am trapped in this body and they aren’t. I tend to be a clown because of my cerebral palsy, because God forbid someone actually need help.

I am starting to change that internal motivation, because there are starts and setbacks just like everything else. People are quite used to me not having feelings, and therefore not having to take them into account. I am not going to be the person who caters to everyone else until I die, hoping to get some of it back and feeding the problem by not letting anyone know what they’re doing is hurting me.

I know that if I put myself out there as your friend, I will do the things it takes to keep you when you let me know what they are. I cannot agree to a deal I don’t understand, especially when you make it murky trying not to hurt my feelings. I would rather you take a knife and stab me all the way through than think that we are solid because I don’t notice all the times you’ve simply shaved a bit off the top.

I am also not innocent of these things, and am not trying to make excuses for it. I am trying to create better communication with my friends going forward. I will do anything for them if communication is clear. I will work on any problem if I know that someone wants me to work on it with them. My PTSD makes me think that every problem in a relationship means it’s the end of the world, so I don’t need conversations that allude to “we need to talk” without actually talking about whatever change it is you need.

Keeping me in that kind of limbo is not okay, and I have enough emotional fortitude not to leave someone in that place of wondering whether I’m mad enough to walk off or not.

I’ve just stopped getting angry when they don’t do the same for me. I take inaction as my answer and move on. It’s easier to do having a journal, because even when I say goodbye to future interactions, I still spend time with them in our memories. It’s not an immediate end to a story when there are recurring themes.

Recognizing that I love emotionally unavailable people because that’s the pattern of relationship I love the most was progress. I learned to stop expecting other people to express themselves to the level that I did when I knew damn well they were incapable. That’s why I loved them.

I was familiar with that pattern/division of labor. The one where I did all the feeling and the other person just told me if I was right or not. It was great because they were doing all the logical, neurotypical decisionmaking and understanding why I don’t think that way. They also did not dive into themselves and give me information based on their understanding of themselves, just what I thought. By the same token, I could have read up more on logical decisionmaking and done my own.

Understanding the ways in which I am and am not the main character in every story has been essential these last 10 years. My perspective has changed. I have become a completely different person because of writing. I know that I only have the right to this space. I am free to spread out and decorate and be my whole self. At no time does that make me the main character anywhere else.

I am trying to motivate myself less out of fear these days and more in the hope that I can write stories here that are worth reading. That’s because they are so valuable to me that it makes me cry when I take in how much other people enjoy listening…… as fallible as I am. God, it would be easier to write down the mistakes I haven’t made. But even when they’re painful, writing them down does give them a better chance of being humorous in the future. I’m not sitting there holding everything in.

Sometimes, motivation is seeing the things I write about me and wanting to reinforce them. It makes me want to live up to the character I present, to take moments of bravery and remember them so they happen again, for instance.

I cannot expect anyone else to provide me with validation, so the motivation is to find the things in life that make me feel whole so that I am not searching for anything outside my own brain housing group. It is the thing that stops fear-based motivation, and it has given me some peace that I got to these conclusions myself. That they weren’t easily won. It took decades.

I cannot always be angry at myself for my mood and behavior because a lot of the time I’m berating myself for a symptom of a disorder. I cannot expect others to have compassion for it, but I need to or I’ll hate myself my whole life.

No one else has to love me, and really can’t, until I do.

Fear is motivating me to find my people and stick with them, but it’s the good kind of fear, now. The kind that keeps you from the people you know you can’t handle and directs you toward the ones you can….. and not for any other reason than them letting you know it’s okay. Their fear is your fear, and we’ll melt it together.

Access

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 5 Comments

What do you love about where you live?

There is a very underrated quality about Washington that I’ve found to be true not only in the last eight years, but also 2001-2. Washington attracts a “type,” and they’re generally misfits in other places. That type is writer/news junkie. We come in all shapes, sizes, and professions. A lot of us are lawyers. Some of us work for the government. Some of us work at the newspaper. Some of us sit on the floor at the Spy Museum bookshop and don’t buy anything. 😉

Washington is the only city in the world I’ve found where being knowledgeable regarding American politics, intelligence, the military, and world news is seen as an asset and not a liability. The American people want “folksy” most of the time, but they’re only meeting the candidate and not the 200 people that work for them. They are not the same. We’ve got veterans who’ve been strategizing since they were in diapers, they wanted to get here so bad. In this day and age, do not ever underestimate how “The West Wing” affected this town. If you were in college when you met CJ, Sam, Toby, and Josh, then you are probably some version of one of them now. That’s not a bad thing. They all came here thinking that we were as idealistic as that show. We weren’t, but they “made it so.” With the influence of Trump, that’s changed a bit because we weren’t dealing in two different realities back then. Yes, there were Republicans, but they were more like Arnold Vinick and Ainsley Hayes than Glen Beck and Donald T****.

That’s because staffers have more in common than they don’t. According to President Clinton, it’s criminal the way candidates work interns (except he used the word “shitbox” and I thought that was particularly hilarious despite the soul-tearing irony of Bill Clinton making the right kind of sense about interns at all.

People have no idea how government works in the rest of the country (overall) and vote against their best interests all the time. The reality is that we do not have the infrastructure for any third parties. This is because ever time a third party emerges, one party splits and the other one wins. I took an entire class on political parties in college and this information stands up. We haven’t managed a third party since 1856. In Congress, voters don’t know anything about committee assignments and will screw over their state by electing a freshman over someone who’s had enough clout to move up in the system. This has had disastrous effects in recent memory as Congress has been overrun with extremists, because their rhetoric is so fascist that even though they’re the minority, there’s too many.

But this doesn’t take away anything from the beauty of the Mid-Atlantic. In terms of what people know about Washington, they see the federal government and don’t know it’s a great place to hike, bike, kayak, fish, etc. If you’re into skiing, there are easy road trips to the slopes. If you like the beach, there are plenty. I was in a sailing race in Annapolis once with my sister. She was working with a local lobbyist who took us out and didn’t tell us until we were already underway that we were in the middle of a regatta. We lost, but it was fun. The point stands, though. Both the Chesapeake and the Atlantic are extraordinarily fun.

The similarities between DC and Portland, Oregon (where I lived for 12 years) are striking. First of all, a river runs through it. The Potomac and the Willamette both run south to north, making the southern boundary for The District. However, the layout is exactly the same in terms of neighborhoods. The places that will remind you of southeast Portland and The Hawthorn are on the DC side. The places that will remind you of The Pearl District complete with Trendy Third St. are in Arlington and Alexandria. There is just as much beauty to Great Falls, VA as there is to the Columbia River Gorge.

Virginia really is God’s country when I think about the Blue Ridge mountains. I have driven through them once and it was one of the most moving experiences of my life. I felt a presence, the one we all do when presented with the absolute miracle of nature.

I haven’t explored Maryland as much as I’ve wanted to, simply because I don’t have a car. It’s not that I can’t get there, it’s that it seems like a lot of hassle. I’ve ridden the train to Baltimore a few times, and it’s great. Seriously. It’s just takes about an hour and a half each way (it’s further north than BWI). I love it when I travel sporadically. I’m not so sure I would want it as my morning commute. I would deal, though, because getting on the MARC is available in Silver Spring and I don’t have to go to Union Station first, which shaves a lot of time……. but it’s still three hours guilt free that I should be doing something else. I can read, write, listen to music, or watch TV. If you’ve ever been stuck on 95 N in rush hour trying to get to an Orioles game, you’ll know why the train is far superior.

I think of myself as having a driver. 😉

Baltimore is one of the cities I considered when moving to Washington, because to use another Pacific Northwest reference, Seattle is the Washington and Baltimore is the Portland. Not the same industries, but the same vibe. With John Waters and Divine, there could be a show every bit as outrageous as “Portlandia,” if not more so. The other thing about Baltimore is that it’s more affordable than DC. A great apartment relatively close in can be had for under $2,000 a month…….

People move away from here to the middle of the country because it’s less expensive and then figure out they have to live there. It costs real money to live on the coasts, but to me it’s worth it because I’ve gone out of my way to find the cheapest deal available and my rent hasn’t gone up in eight years. That’s because I don’t pay a rental company. I literally live with my landlords and they’ve adopted me as one of their own. It will be a huge deal when I move, so I’m not going to unless circumstances absolutely require it.

That’s because downtown Silver Spring is cool AF. We have an outdoor living room and streets that have been blocked off downtown so that you can walk around and take everything in. Lots of festivals happen in the summer, and in the winter the outdoor living room becomes a skating rink. Everything is frozen over from Thanksgiving to New Year’s.

I am a huge soccer fan, and Houston didn’t have an MLS team. I’ve been rooting for DC United since my girlfriend introduce me to them in high school. I have had a DC United piece of clothing in some shape or form since 1996. My favorite player was named Raul Diaz Arce, who was young and energetic. He played like a dancer. I was in love with his movements as much as I was with Meag’s. I honestly think that my love for soccer absolutely stems from the fact that she was one of the great loves of my life. We aren’t in touch, but she’s still with me and will be for the rest of my life thanks to this passion.

Speaking of Meag, I figured out why I’ve struggled with making her accent authentic (to her. I’ve always fooled Americans joking around). It’s because words like boot and boat don’t actually sound anything like either of them. The vowels are a dipthong as big as the country. As in, they’re right in the middle and if you weren’t born there you’re always going to swing right or left. As an American, I think I’ve at least grown enough to be convincing on a recording to people who haven’t been in love with me and wouldn’t give it to me for anything in the world because it’s going to be a thing between us until you die mad or not.

I feel as if I have just performed a Canadian Public Service Announcement. You’re welcome.

It’s not just soccer. The first time I came to DC, I was eight years old. I wondered until my junior year of college what it would be like to live here. That’s when my first wife got the offer from ExxonMobil and given the choice for her to start in Houston or Fairfax, Virginia. That’s how we ended up in Alexandria for 9/11. I am so glad we did it. I wouldn’t have wanted to miss that institutional memory for anything in the world. It’s just one of the things that makes me feel that DC is every bit as much a part of me as Houston.

DC is the place where, three times now, it has made me feel the entire spectrum of human emotion. I am steeped in everything it has taken to keep our country together and how it’s falling apart. We are in a crisis where we are going to have to rebuild culture from the ground up. There is no such thing as alternate facts, and people’s attitudes are just getting worse. What gives anyone that doesn’t work there the right to disagree with people paid to do what they do? Not for little things. For opinions that take years to develop. Years to become seasoned and ripened. Years of technological and scientific analysis. We are here to shape that future for the government, which locally leans liberal. People think of DC as full of conservatives, but remember the Congress just works here. Locals are truly progressive and I promise it’s as weird as the clash between places like Columbia Heights and Shaw vs. Arlington and Silver Spring.

The short answer is that the thing I love about where I live is me. It is part of my identity now. I am the Kennedy Center. I am the Lincoln Memorial. I am the reflecting pool. I am also Ben’s Chili Bowl, Madam’s Organ, SE Waterfront, Howard University. I am gogo music and mumbo sauce. I am Frederick Douglass’s house.

I am able to be it all, because I write it down. And that’s what I love about where I live.

You’re Supposed to Plan Them?

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

How do you plan your goals?

I am only now learning what is within my control and what is not. It’s only been within the last year that I’ve allowed myself to have opinions. They’re not always the correct ones, but it beats searching for the right words- not because I would like to use them, but because they are the ones that will keep others from reacting. I tried so hard to need nothing that resentment built over time. 45 years, in fact. Having all of that anger rush out had consequences, but I knew what I was putting into motion.

Relationships changed when I wouldn’t let anyone run game on me anymore. Either be up front or get out. I do not want to read your mind, nor do I want to be infantilized because of my CP or bipolar disorder. It’s my job to take care of me, and I will take input, but I don’t need coddling. I need empathy, though. Caring that I’m neurodivergent goes a long way. So does compassion for my physical limitations. But if you cannot do those things, don’t be mad when I close the door behind you. I won’t lock it. I’ll give you room to grow. But I won’t let you come back until you prove to me that you can do those things. The people who aren’t my friends do it enough.

I just don’t want that temperature in my life anymore. I don’t want to live with rage, even if it is appropriately directed. No adult likes to feel parented or that other people are frightened by their emotions to the point they feel unlovable. This is not a limited to me problem. Most ADHD/Autistic people feel this way. Our emotions are too convoluted for them to make sense most of the time. As I was telling Bryn earlier, I have never met an ADHD person that could plan a goal for shit, so what am I going to write about today?

I’m going to write about how much it sucks to be neurodivergent in a neurotypical world. We are struggling to be heard and understood. We will explain until dark when the street lights are on and Mama’s callin.’ It’s an intrinsic trait with ADHD/Autism. My particular need to expound upon everything I’ve already said once is generally a reply to someone hearing my words and don’t have any idea what dog I’m walking.

It’s Oliver, btw.

So, I’ll just ruminate until people say they get it or walk off. But even when they walk off I want to keep explaining because up until now, I cared deeply and desperately about what people thought of me, and I extended that kind of energy to everyone I met instead of keeping it to the friends I loved the most. That way, I was sure to disappoint everyone all at the same time because I was so overextended.

I have made Zac, Bryn, and Oliver my entire world because that’s as much as I can handle right now. I have so much to think about that it’s incapacitating at times, so I need to be mostly single and just focus on what’s right in front of me. It’s all ADHD/Autistic people really know.

Life with no executive function leaves me absolutely brilliant in some ways, feeling like I continually fail other people all the time because my software is different and there is a huge chasm that people dismiss all the time. Even my CP is problematic because my case is so slight it’s not as noticeable as, say, RJ Mitte. Therefore, people see me as normal when I have no balance and floppy muscles. I trip through life because I can’t not.

Very few people explain the logic behind things, and that’s all I really want to know. If I can’t figure out something on my own, I will tire and confuse my friends and family… and I know it. That’s the worst part. To know you are capable of handing out that exhaustion is devastating because you can’t change the way you were made. People alternate treating me like I have the smarts of all my favorite authors and then they spend time with me and all that goes out the window…. because when people are in adoration mode, they act completely differently once they see how my mind actually works.

I think that’s why I like the book shop at the Spy Museum so much. They don’t care if I sit on the floor and get obsessed with a subject and pull out 10 books and not buy any of them. It’s the same at the library, when I used to go. I don’t have to anymore because I can borrow them with an app on my phone (Libby), cutting out all the social interaction necessary to maintain isolation.

My self-esteem has been that low my whole life. That I have to get up the energy to even leave my house because everything becomes a Dorothy Parker quote within minutes.

What fresh hell is this?

That wasn’t terrible. That was fancy terrible….. with raisins in it.

Sometimes I’m the one that thinks them, sometimes it’s another person in reaction to me.

I can’t make anything better unless people tell me what’s wrong, and even that is a common problem. Because I do most of my communication in writing, people constantly write themselves off as “not a good enough writer to compete with me.”

First of all, you’re probably not. It’s not because you’re dumb. It’s because I’m a blogger and you’re not. I didn’t get to be a good writer overnight. I got to be a good writer by taking a knife and slicing it into a vein, bleeding out over my keyboard day after day after day after day after day.

Secondly, me being a writer is a pitiful excuse to shut down two-way communication, or extraordinary if you don’t want to be in relationship with me. That’s because it doesn’t matter to me how you communicate and what your natural style might be. It’s that you think that completely shutting down your emotions is okay. That our relationship will survive despite neither of us getting our needs met.

Zac, Bryn, and I are all good writers. Therefore, no one shuts down. And if we need to switch mediums for a conversation, we do it. Bryn calls me even when she can see I’m still typing. 😉

Because I live an hour and a half from Zac (whether I was caught in traffic or taking the train), Facebook Messenger is the most awesome thing ever invented. He sends me a picture of himself every morning so that I can see how he is before he leaves for work. I don’t have to guess, I can see it in his face.

Removing all the barriers to communication with those closest to me has been a godsend.

I don’t know if it’s the best way to plan a goal, but for ADHD/Autism, it is 90% of the time “accidentally on purpose.” I’m not sure that I could do anything differently, so I’m not a Monday morning quarterback in the way most people think. My mind moves too fast to retain all the information I need. It’s one of the reasons you’ve started getting entries every day. It’s not for me to show off. It’s for me to have a place to go when I need information about my own life. Seriously, how many of you can pick a year out of thin air and remember everything about it?

I can’t.

But my goal is being able to look it up.

It’s a plan.

I Don’t Even Want to Be Here Today

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

If you know the television show I’ve referenced in the title, we’d probably be good friends. It’s one of the kids on The Magic School Bus. At least once in every episode, something goes so wrong that he says “I didn’t even want to be here today.” I’m riffing, because it is now. Things didn’t start out great and devolve, they just started. I feel like the tap is dry and I’m picking through recycling, because reading my thoughts creates others I haven’t written down. I am not sure that I’ve had a thought in my head for the last 45 days that hasn’t ended up here.

It’s kind of like training for a marathon. I am building the skills I need to craft pages by using my own thoughts instead of fiction. However, in reading this blog, you have to know that of course it’s fiction. Of course it is. It’s not because I’m not telling my own truth, either. It’s that when I sit down to write, no one is here with me to say that I’m wrong.

I’m writing my observations. When people look at my stuff and say “that’s not true,” it is 100% always the case that it’s a piece of information they had and I didn’t. It may not have been malicious on their part not to tell me something, but they don’t get to take me to the mat over it, either. It is a losing game, always, and I will isolate to accommodate it. I would rather be alone than be chastised for writing about a situation in which they didn’t give me all the facts and then beat my ass for not being able to divine them. This pattern is not limited to Supergrover, but she’s the person it has happened with the most recently, so I am spiraling the fuck out. I knew I would. That’s because psychobiology is eating my lunch.

I’m feeling the panic of letting a trauma bond release and the longer it goes on the more I know this is the right choice for me, but that doesn’t lessen my thoughts and physical symptoms. Too much adrenaline is a bad thing; it’s what creates the panicked feeling when searching for dopamine. I do not think this is a limited to a me problem, because I cannot tell you how many times over the years I’ve gotten a letter from Supergrover that said “I vowed I wouldn’t respond, but.” We both have searched for the friendship we lost at different times, and it has affected both of us greatly, though not in the same ways.

Dealing with our relationship publicly is good and bad. The good? Everyone can read it. The bad? Everyone can read it. If I write about it here, there’s a hundred percent chance she’ll see it because she can tell me she won’t read all day long and it will be true for two weeks tops. If I liked Instagram, I’d feel the same way about her. We’re genuinely interested in each other and have problems with communication issues, so instead of working on the issues, we go scorched earth. Interested is relative. Maybe she loves me, maybe it’s schadenfreude…..and what I have to ask myself is does it matter?

No. It doesn’t. That’s because it feels like getting my own legend- a Santa Claus, a Tooth Fairy, an Easter Bunny- that visits in the night and leaves gifts. I do not underestimate presence as a gift, and in fact her presence means more to me than anything she could give me materially. It’s kind of fun never knowing what’s going to jog her mind, but I don’t write toward it.

I write toward her because no one else has written books about her, therefore I’m writing what I need to read. She came here looking for facts when I hadn’t recorded any. I recorded the way I felt, which is completely separate from her own memories. I couldn’t incorporate two stories because I only had two years’ worth of feelings for a 10-year relationship because she wasn’t updating me on anything. So, I write based on what I know, and she reads based on what she knows. Those are not the same “knows.”

The alternative is keeping those memories to myself and not putting them into the repository where I keep all the others. I don’t want there to be a real blog and a fake one. To me, that’s what not writing about my life means, that there’s some sort of dark magic journal where all the blackest secrets go, and you’re just getting the public layer. I cannot manage that, so I won’t. Where our issues lie is that she needs privacy and protection, and she is also my real life friend. I need guidance, she’s a brick wall. That does not work for me.

She was the person who needed privacy and protection after I’d already started writing about her, and it was a good coping mechanism for both of us at that time.

After a while, as we got deeper and deeper into our issues with each other, it wasn’t good for either one of us and I just stopped cold turkey. Now that 10 years have gone by, it’s a different ball game. A lot of the people who would take issue with the things I’ve said either don’t read it or know they don’t have a right to say anything to either one of us. Time is a beautiful thing. No one has a right to care anymore except us. 10 years ago, I knew it would be true. That I’d get here. That no one would care because it was too long ago.

I also cannot write her story according to her, because I have not heard it. The relationship is turbulent because she berates me for not reading her mind and telling our story accurately according to the picture in her mind. Her relationship with me is all in her head.

I wonder what adventures I’ve been on when I wasn’t even there.

She doesn’t know I would have wanted to hear she was angry, or sad, or depressed, or anxious, or, or, or………… She doesn’t have mental health issues per se, but I’m talking about feeling depressed or anxious stuck in a moment you can’t get out of……..

Recognizing the patterns was important. Choosing not to continue was growth. If the pattern breaks, we can be healthy again. But it won’t. That’s because I’m nothing if not loquacious and she’s nothing if not stubborn. Doesn’t mean we’re bad people. It means that I’ve grown.

I hope to God I’m wrong about everything, but I cannot hope for more. I have done all I can do. The rest is just being sad about it.

Did I mention that I don’t even want to be here today? Here is relative. In my head, it’s not so great. Downstairs? Caffeine.

I Don’t Admire Professions

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

What profession do you admire most and why?

In the United States, we have a tendency to focus on what we do for money, even at parties. It’s not a party conversation, but we have them all the time. Washington can be soulless like that. I have had several people see me out and about with my sister. When she walks away, they ask me how much money she makes. First of all, ask her that. Second of all, she’s a Democrat. AIM LOW.

I make Washington less soulless because even though Lindsay’s crowd is political, my words are not and they need a break. You can see the table relax when my sister says, “This is Leslie. She’s a writer.” Or “she’s a cook.” The writer thing is only seen as positive when both of us make it clear I’m not a journalist. That’s a tupperware party I’m just not going to host. The difference is that if someone knows you’re a journalist, they’ll monitor everything they say because they think you’re looking for sensitive information. Bloggers don’t do that. They’re looking for a slice of real life, and politics is anything but that.

I’ll give you a for-instance in a completely fictional example that could indeed happen the longer I live here.

If Kamala Harris and I met, I would not remember the date or time. I would not remember much of what she said. But I’d remember the way her hair sparkled in the sun, whether her hugs were memorable, whether she smelled like generic soap or a perfume I’d recognize, definitely whether she was wearing Chucks or not.

I wouldn’t even say on my web site that I met Kamala Harris, most likely, because the higher you go in government salary, the less of your schedule is published. I wouldn’t want to say that I met her on a day she was supposed to be in Ukraine. In Washington, you learn to think like that no matter who your friends are, because you know you’ll have to do it for at least one person in your life, so why not do it for all of them? I doubt there would ever be a scenario in which I met a public figure at a time where they weren’t supposed to be there, but it is the nature of living in the federal city and not watching them on the news.

If I did respect a job, it would be journalism. I am very, very picky though. I figure out my favorite columnists and stick to them like glue (Shane Harris, Greg Miller). I will buy their books (I have most of David Halberstam’s, several of Rachel Maddow’s, and “The Apprentice” by Greg Miller). As I was telling Supergrover, I like to read novels, but I do not like to write them. I find that journalism jogs my brain for blogging, and I am in a rut with fiction because I am working on my own content right now. Novels will come back soon. I have just gotten into the groove. I don’t think “let’s go see what’s on the Internet today.” I think, “let’s go make the Internet today.”

Disrespect of someone’s profession comes from years and years of being tired of listening to complaints about people’s lives. If they don’t like what they do, why should I ask them? I would much rather ask them what they love. This works with anyone, because everyone has that thing. For me, it’s writing content for the web…. but not because it makes me popular. It’s that when I didn’t have any readers at all, I changed myself an entry at a time. Just because other people read my entries now doesn’t mean that it’s not all about self-improvement. I do the same thing I’ve always been doing. I wake up, think about my life for a few minutes, and the urge to write wakes up hungry.

I want to hear about that fire in other people. For Supergrover, it was also writing, She’s a blogger and writes children’s fairy tales that I hope to God one day I am old enough to understand. She writes clearly and beautifully, but what I mean is that I do not have a child’s heart anymore……… but she does. I will never carry a tenth of her little-kid wonder.

For Bryn, it’s all kinds of things. She likes cooking, gardening, making, being outside, having dogs……. all of it is creativity she pours into her relationships with animals (and dirt).

For Zac, it’s all the same stuff Bryn does on a smaller scale. He loves hiking and being outside with Oliver. The fact that what Zac does for money is my real life interest is a new thing. I am never more interested in what he has to say than when it’s about life inside his intelligence agency. His is a generic one that collects raw data from all the others, but he has the backstage pass to places like CIA and NSA.

It’s nice to know that even if I only have lawn seats, I can giggle with Zac after the show.

And yet it’s another relationship in which our interests feed each other to an enormous degree, because what I want to know isn’t even close to classified. It’s not important to me whether he has chatter on Iran, although I will definitely be listening to that if he does. It’s that he can tell me what his day to day life is like. He tells me when he’s going into a  no personal gadgets building, and because we’re both on the think it, say it plan, when I’m on a government computer and when I’m not (as in sending to his work computer). I learn what circumstances dictate being in a SCIF vs. why he’s actually there. Does that make sense? I want to know everything without knowing anything.

I’m dating the man who’s president of his queer group at the agency and it’s definitely not “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” in the military anymore. Zac is also in the Navy Reserves, and I want to hear about every waking moment of that, too. That’s because he got to learn what it was like to walk into other countries and have people know they were talking to an intelligence officer based on past history with other people………… and being able to sniff them out so that he can deflect questions in advance.

I called him an intelligence officer, but I’m using a generic term because I don’t know military slang. He was active duty in the Navy and his job was intelligence. What that’s actually called is beyond me. Now, he works at a national intelligence agency and does his Navy stuff as a side gig. 😛

If I tell you what I love, it’s going to be reading and writing. But people vastly underestimate how much I actually write because blog entries seem like they take a very long time. If I’m going full stream of consciousness like I do on this blog every day, I type as fast as I think and generate about a page of single spaced type every two or three minutes. I have found that I am getting faster at this by writing every day, because it’s difficult to sum up a week at once. Much easier to sum up a few hours.

Even the conflict I was talking about the other day doesn’t matter now. I thought I was being told one thing, I was being told another. Once the communication freakout was over, I got back in on the ground floor of something exciting. Doesn’t mean the conflict wasn’t worth remembering in the past. Just that I’m glad it all resolved in the best way possible for all parties.

But no one takes into account just how long it takes to nurse an idea, or how long I slave over other ideas in addition to blogging.

I have also learned something important. If I want to be successful at a party, tell everyone I’m a professional cook. If I don’t, tell them I’m a writer.

So I suppose that if I admire a profession, it’s writing……. only because someone has to.

It might as well be me.

Observations, Part II

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I am spread out on Zac’s bed as Oliver cuddles my feet. Zac is in New Orleans, so I’m on puppy duty. I don’t like being here while he’s not here as much as I do when he is, but Oliver is a 24 hour friend. He is just there for me and all my dog-cuddling needs.

I’m grappling with how to move on in one sense and how to stay in another. Being present and showing up, but also being sensitive to my friends’ needs as well. No one is more important, I just have to struggle with how much I’m willing to take on at any given moment. I have reached my breaking point, but it doesn’t matter that I’m here. It matters how I respond. I can’t fold into myself and be comforted by isolation. I don’t want it anymore.

I also reserve the right to stay home and lick my wounds. Balance.

I could tell you more, but I won’t. It’s sensitive and not worth the hassle of blowing everything up. I don’t want to live with it, and I don’t want to live around it.

I thought I was in on the ground floor of something, and it blew up in my face. I let someone into a sacred space, and was welcomed and rejected within hours. I don’t deal with whiplash well, and I’m spiraling out in my own head while not trying to talk about it here.

It’s the balance of being respectful and writing around things on purpose because to tell the real story would cause more harm than good. I have more experience doing this than anyone can possibly imagine. But just because I’m good at it doesn’t mean that I want to.

Living my life out loud has consequences that I care about this time. It’s what happens when you have good boundaries. You don’t let just anyone stomp all over them, but you make the agreement with people to be the one that’s willing to throw down with them when you’re in every mood known to God and man. There’s no option not to pick up the phone, because you said you’d be there. It’s not a matter of going to extremes. It’s a matter of adjusting boundaries so that everyone feels safe, even if it’s hell on earth right now.

Hell on earth is relative, because it won’t last long. It is born of confusion and grief for something I thought was solid.

I don’t want to change too much too fast, and the adrenaline of a moment comes down. It always does. It is the dance of intimacy. You get close to someone, and then you can’t handle being that intense, so you back off. That cycle runs on repeat for the length of a relationship no matter what it is. Even coworkers. Sometimes you want to be near them. Sometimes you don’t. That can vary by the day.

Life is full of those gray areas, but it’s not about whether you’re enough for someone or you’re not. It’s being clear in communication so that no one has expectations they can’t handle because they don’t know how to meet them. Figuring it out takes more time than people are willing to spend thinking about how they want to react, and not looking at their reactions after they’ve happened to make sure the decision they made was right for everyone.

Not doing it leads to nuclear fallout. It escalates prank wars, real wars, Facebook comment sections……….

No one thinks of real world consequences on Facebook.

I can say with clarity and honesty that my beautiful girl and I didn’t. Everything was a dance of intimacy that bordered on two extremes. It’s not the situation I’m talking about here, but it’s a good example of it. If Facebook messenger had been then what it is now, there would be much less of a problem. Boundaries could have been created and maintained with the button that indicates “video call.” Doing everything through writing cost us a connection and gave us another. It affected how we related to each other with HUGE differences between, as Zac would say, “meet space and meat space.”

I should have had to sit with her anger. She should have had to sit with my fear. I should have seen her eyes when we talked all that through.

Knowing that not everything can be done virtually is like breathing for me now, and I pay attention to it closer than I ever have. This is because I spend so much time in this space, the one where everything centers on writing, I am prone to forget that I need things like hugs and kisses, too.

It’s a complicated construct, and the first step to managing it is being aware. That the things you say in instant messages and e-mails matter. You are not putting on a game with someone else’s feelings. It just seems like it because the leap in someone’s head is too great. That if you feel something here, you won’t feel it in person. That’s okay.

One of the things I’ve noticed is that because I’m direct, people often bite off more than they can chew because they think they’re playing with me and they’re not. What I’m saying to you via writing is the exact same thing you’d get in person…. I would say things completely differently, but the reaction is the same. I am hearing you and adjusting everything based on what you say.

My relationship with my beautiful girl broke down because of this very dynamic. She felt threatened, like she was being scolded and there were all kinds of recriminations. In reality, I would say “this is what you’re doing that hurts me. Please adjust.” She was not direct with me in saying “this is what you’re doing that’s hurting me. Please adjust.” Instead of going toe to toe with me, she held it all in and said I was painting my feelings as fact. What I wanted her to do was paint her feelings as fact as well, because they are. I can argue logic. I can’t argue emotion. How she feels is how she feels. I think you can only paint your feelings as fact because of this.

I wanted to dive into her, it’s just that her depth was about 4 feet deep and diving requires more than that. I do not mean that she is not deep. I am talking about respecting limits on how far down I’m allowed to go and all those breathing apparatuses.

My analogy for this is that we both said things that got us to 12 feet and then we tried to take it all back and it was too late.

But I’m telling you about this relationship in order to protect another, because my beautiful girl is not the only one that deserves a hard out.

But these are just my observations.

This Thing We’ve Created and Managed

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I’m thinking about the -email that I got from my beautiful girl this morning. It came a few days ago, but she made a lot turn over in my head that’s just not finished. Here’s the line that got me in a good way. She said something about me deciding I was the only arbiter of the friendship/relationship. I said something bothered me, she adjusted. I was upset at last interaction that she called it “this thing we’ve created and managed,” and I felt like I’d been mortally wounded. It seemed very dismissive of what we’d built and/or destroyed.

The entire truth of our relationship rests on that slash.

Because that slash rests on our burn. We can’t sit down and “and/or our way through something.” I’ll say too much, she’ll say too little. She is content to let me think what I think, when I’m starving for her input. I’m the arbiter of our relationship because she stopped throwing down. We couldn’t move any better, stronger, or faster than the day before because when she walls off, my history is to go off like a chihuahua because her distance makes my trauma bond scream.

At the same time, she’s not responsible for treating me or bending toward me just because I’m having a moment. I have never been telling her to jump in and fix things. I’ve been telling her that if she wants a relationship with me, here’s what I need from her. If not, we can’t have a relationship because too much has happened for me to both manage those trauma bonds and the relationship concurrently. That’s because when she wants me to be close, I don’t have a problem with that. I have a problem with middle-of-the-road, will they or won’t they bullshit. I cannot de-escalate anything because either the trauma bond goes off or it doesn’t. There’s no middle ground. It feels very much like being an addict. If I can’t have hard drugs because I’m addicted to them, the right answer is not “just do a little bit less heroin.” There are so many layers as to why I have a trauma bond that screams, but part of it is that there’s not just one. We have the childhood trauma dump, and what I’ve come to call “the hard out.” I cannot tell you everything I know, and I cannot tell you everything she knows, either.

So, part of the reason that I paint my feelings as fact is that I am trying to talk around a lot of shit. I am weaving the tale as I see it according to the limits I’m trying to enforce, because I have a hell of a story I’m not writing at the same time I’m trying to describe my life. But whatever anyone knows outside the two of us, it’s not enough to make sense of anything that I could say if things were different.

So, I would imagine that when Supergrover thinks I’m bagging on her, she’s not getting the real story before my blog entries get published, so when she reads, she’s not taking it into account. That I am not blaming her, I am blaming the situation and circumstances because I cannot actually tell you about the situation and circumstances.

In protecting her, I have probably made things worse. But I don’t feel bad about it, because there’s no possible way that I’d be okay without being able to use this space as a tool. I write my way into and out of things all the time. She’s an easy target because she brought those circumstances into my life, but I am not taking my anger out on her. I project that anger onto the character because I have a hard out.

I am exhausted and I feel it in my bones. That I know we’ll be successful, but not based on anything that happened in the past. She’s going to have to step up, because I’ve adjusted my vision and realized the ways in which we aren’t good for each other. I have told her those things a number of times, and while she has managed to say what she doesn’t like, she’s never said what she does. I mean, even to the minimum. I know she likes Diet Coke and coffee. I know she likes Jack Daniels. I know she likes pizza. I know those things about most of America. Random factoids that have added up in all kinds of ways, but those I can talk about… because they’re not close to the hard out.

Nothing that I have written on my web site in 10 years has had the real story, and it never will. So my process is trying to find things I can write about. It’s not sordid or illicit. It’s the purest love I’ve ever known. Still can’t talk about it.

Trauma bonds are tricky because again, when you try to break them it makes you weak, like physical withdrawal. I can handle being away from her the longer it goes on, because when we’re not interacting I’m not feeding said bond milk and cookies. I’m not babying it and allowing it to grow.

And none of it is even close to her fault, because I could deal with the hard out so much better if we were collaborating. It’s not a hostage situation over here. I am not saying, “I have a trauma bond so you must accommodate me.” I am saying that both being together and apart causes different sets of problems and I need to know which one I’m working on today. Our relationship going up and down like a roller coaster was making my trauma bond feel like dopamine and depression in a continuing cycle because I could not achieve homeostasis. I don’t have a crush that’s out of control.

I never have.

What I need is more e-mails like this one, that recognize we both participated. We both need to adjust to each other and get with the program. The clue phone is ringing in terms of where we need to go to be stable and happy. Those options are two extremes, because it’s not child’s play. It’s the nature of our friendship/relationship in this thing we’ve created and managed.

Here’s what I know. When she’s really taking it in, she’s doing everything in the most wonderful way she knows how. It’s when she stops listening that there’s a problem. Here’s what I mean. She really saw me. She saw how much it bothered me for her not to call it a friendship or a relationship because it doesn’t honor what we’ve actually been through. It minimizes it to an enormous degree.

It’s the thing that proves to me that Michael and I aren’t the only ones who will come, because she loves her girl, too.

The small things are the big things.

Because I have a hard out.

The Man Who Regrets, and the Man Who Forgets

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 2 Comments

The title comes from a Doctor Who episode about The Moment. The Moment is a weapon that can take billions of lives, but has developed a consciousness and you have to reason with it and accept your fate before it will activate. The Moment stays with The War Doctor as he grapples with whether to blow up Gallifrey to save the universe from collapse. The Moment is with The War Doctor when he’s with Ten and Eleven. The Moment tells The War Doctor that this is who he will become if he blows everything up….. that he will live long enough to become the man who regrets, and the man who forgets.

It resonates with me today as I look back over 40 straight days of posting, because I talk a lot about regrets and remorse so I can change myself going forward. I forget to play. I forget to explore alternate universes and dream bigger. In my last entry, the alternate history was staying with Kathleen long enough to have had kids, but I didn’t change anything about the relationship itself. Everything that cost me would have continued right on being expensive.

I’m trying to get smarter about where my energy goes. I haven’t lost myself in new relationship bliss because I’ve stayed motivated to write to my heart’s content, which is far more than I thought it would take to keep it happy. I am relentless about self-discovery, and I truly do not love when other people think they’re the main character. They’re the main character when we’re interacting, but they do not have a lock on our memories together because we were having different experiences when those interactions occurred. How I perceive someone shouldn’t have bearing on how anyone else sees someone because they’re not going to get the same interaction I did. They bring a different set of experiences to the table.

Those are difficult conversations to have, which is why it’s easier for me to have partners and friends who either get it or don’t care. People who get it see everything I write about them. They lived it. They don’t have to love it. They know when our conflict is resolved in real life, it will be resolved here. That I do not have a preconceived notion of who they are and expect confirmation bias. I am a diarist, and the only reason I’m considered good at blogging is that it’s not very popular anymore. It’s easier to stand out, the way it was when both Dooce and I had 200 readers on a good day.

I absolutely tanked the blog that made me in a fit of rage. I didn’t have the coping mechanisms to deal with blowback that I do now, and I couldn’t get mad at anyone else. I self destructed.

I have been afraid I would do it again, and instead of attracting people into my life that care I write said diary, I actively avoid them.

Zac only reads something if I tell him to in any kind of urgency. The rest of the time, he just surfs because he knows that writing is my interest. He doesn’t have to make it his. It just helps that he’s also a bookworm and I wake up to “Zac has gifted you” for my Kindle. He’s introduced me to writers I never would have discovered on my own. He also knows I’ll read anything, so just send me what he likes. I don’t need him to find me things he thinks I’ll like, because I’ll dig into whatever since he likes it. I’m not being cute or coy. If Zac likes something, I probably will, too. None of that classic gender role shit, because he’s fairly femme looking for a man and I’m fairly butch looking for a woman. Christian evangelicals and queer radicals all get what they want and everyone wins.

The part about Christian Evangelicals winning was way more about being afraid to walk into just any bar holding a woman’s hand than it was about hoping they ever win anything. And how it would be twice as bad for Zac to walk into just any bar holding a man’s hand.

It’s important to me not to project heterosexual privilege, and when people can tell that Zac is queer, it means something to me. When I’m not glued to his hip, there’s an equal chance that someone is going to say something nasty to us. It’s why I don’t want to date straight men again. It would be too harsh to say never, although I’ve said it. If it happens, you’ll know something extraordinary has happened and it is a flaw I’m willing to overlook. The benefit would have to be huge.

Bryn has the same outlook that I do. Say what you want, we’ll work it out. I just collaborate with her a lot so she has a rough outline of what I’m going to talk about She reminds me of past history so I have a jumping off point to connect the past to the present. Developing our relationship is the best thing I’ve ever done for myself because I don’t have many people in my life with whom I share that much history.

It’s how I would have liked my relationship with Supergrover to go, but she didn’t like bringing up the past for frames of reference and didn’t want to collaborate with me for the future. She has just influenced every single thing I’ve written here because I was workshopping the idea with her, first. She was getting the rough drafts because I wasn’t publishing my letters to her. I was going back and taking the feelings out of them that read universal. I was taking the details that made it too personal to the two of us and casting them aside. When she cut contact with me, she was no longer that internal monologue, so she wasn’t hearing my thought process every day like she had for the last 10 years.

She didn’t like the play because I stopped giving her the brochure.

I am not comparing the two women to each other, only the reason they are both so valuable to me. My history with Bryn starts in 1997. My history with Supergrover starts in 2013. Both of them have palaces in my head because they’ve lived there long enough to create them. Bryn likes hers. Supergrover doesn’t. I am not turning one away in favor of the other. I am giving my energy to the one who needs me.

I have needed Supergrover from the moment I laid eyes on her. She needed me. I still need her, but I can’t put energy toward her because I don’t feel needed. She told me that she’s read through many lines, and I think it was probably that she thought I’d found a new toy and I’d forgotten what she meant to me, has always meant to me.

I stopped responding to her because I was willing to do anything for her and I didn’t feel a quarter of that coming back at me. It doesn’t mean that she didn’t feel it. It means that I couldn’t hear it. I couldn’t get her to interpret it. I didn’t want to be the equivalent of the girlfriend who obsesses over the meaning of intended punctuation……………… anymore.

I missed laughing when she flipped me shit about things, missed having make up text after we fought, missed telling her I loved her and I missed her and that being a good thing.

That’s always what I’ve meant by “showing up.” “Loving me enough to struggle.” Lay out your thoughts, fears, dreams, hopes, secrets, lies, all of it. I used to be that place for her, and I will always be there if our differences are reconciled and celebrated. There’s no possible way I could tell our story as if it was fact. You’re not even getting the whole picture in my head because I can only write one line at once. So, not only are you not getting her side of the story, she’s not correcting anything with either one of us. Your guess as to what her story might be is absolutely as valid as mine. Other people influence her behavior to an enormous degree, but I don’t write about them because I do not have a relationship with them. Here’s a big for-instance. I learned about Michael way too late for that knowledge to be helpful. But over time, he became a useful coping mechanism. That our relationship could be virtual because theirs was on the ground. I didn’t have to worry about her- he had it handled. Remember, in my head, she’s six years old with a lot of layers to cover up that fact. I needed her to have a boyfriend. I needed her to get married. I needed her to be the country mouse to my city mouse. Knowing that I would have run to the drugstore in the middle of the night if she was sick didn’t have to eat at me because she already had someone to do that.

I wish she would just take in the enormity of the things I’ve said that I don’t regret, like “of course I’ll want to be the first one tested if you need an organ. Please.” To me, that promise is every bit as real as running to Walgreens at 0300. I didn’t do anything because she needed me to do it. I did it because I saw it needed doing.

Although before I gave her an organ, we would have had a very serious conversation about the YouTube video in which she woke up from surgery queer as a three dollar bill. Just the weirdest organ rejection side effect ever.

It has been long enough since I’ve wanted to be the person that ran to the drugstore at 0300 that I know within myself just how much I am…………

The Man Who Regrets, and The Man Who Forgets

Into the Multiverse

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Describe your life in an alternate universe.

I am good at a lot of things. I’m going to write until I find something real. That might be in one scene, that might take a couple. Today is one of those days where I just have to start the tap running and hope something comes out. I am very low energy today, but I’m fried. I’ve written an entry every day for over a month- today is my 40th day in a row. I know that I am posting more than normal because I can’t find things as easy when I go back. 😉 I am dedicated to letting the past stay there, so I don’t link to anything. If you’ve missed it, good luck. It’s a different way of reading the web, and it is successful. That’s because people know they’re OG and can prove it. A true Fanagan knows what my life was like in 2013 and still does, so I can make jokes about things I’ve written without all of you knowing what I’m saying.

It creates intimacy, and it keeps blowback to a minimum because if someone didn’t read something about them, they generally won’t go look it up unless someone sends them a link. Trust me when I say that no one ever lets someone know when I’ve said something glowing about them. It’s a lot to want to escape from, which is why my inner circle is so small. I cannot have anyone in my circle who doesn’t understand that they are a complete person. That they are light and dark and angels and demons and hot sauce and peanut butter. All of ’em. None of us can truly be changed by the other, and no one gets changed by my silly web site, because they don’t pay attention to it unless they want to be here. There is no requirement on being a reader and being my friend. But when I don’t have friends who care about my writing, it makes me comfortable enough to continue. My writing matters. My personal relationship with every one of you does not.

If Hottie McHotterson wanted to define me by one entry and I was happy about it, it would have been “Go Tell the Bees,” preferably the audio version as I think it means more in my voice. I’d re-record it if I had spare time and server space, because I was so emotional the first time around. But it got me where I needed to be. Full of love, anger, remorse, grief….. and also joy. In one scene I told her about the day she was having a moment and I told her that we were sitting outside with a glass of wine in the sunshine, and we worked at GEICO.

That would be a good jumping off point if only because I’ve thought about that picnic for 10 years, and have imagined it many times. However, I can make our friendship look good. I can do nothing for working at GEICO.

So, I’ll write about what I could have done had my life followed the track that most people’s do. I used to be married, and I had all the hope in the world for that relationship. In fact, I was married twice on too much hope. With one, it was that we were the wrong personality type for each other. With the other, we were so much alike that we didn’t take our conflicts as seriously as they should have been taken for far too long to course correct. I’m going to write about being married to Kathleen, since it’s the closest to my real life now. I could have stayed in Alexandria after we met. It’s an alternate history that starts in college as opposed to 20 years ago.

I am alone in the doctor’s office. Kathleen would have come with me, but she’s at a softball game. I’m flipping through a magazine when she comes in. She’s smiling.

Leslie…. it took.

I say, “are you sure?” This woman has run three blood tests, but I’m asking if she’s sure….. #thankselizabethwarren

The doctor’s glasses slip a little on her nose and she looks at me like she’s gotten an A on the group project. “Your little monsters are going to own this town.” She knows she can say stuff like that to me, that I already feel like there has been some sort of alien invasion…. one that I can’t feel yet….. but she can. There are two heartbeats, both of them strong. We weren’t trying for twins, just a side effect of the implanted embroyos. We only did two, because Kathleen is Catholic and neither one of us wanted to think about having to remove them. I just hope that they turn out looking completely different from the jump. Otherwise, I will have to write their names with Sharpies on their foreheads. If I don’t, I know myself. One baby will get fat, one will look like it’s malnourished, all because I’m embarrassed that I don’t know which child is which. Thank God there’s not a chance they’re identical. There’s a chance they won’t even be the same race, because we didn’t use one donor. We chose based on education. Both donors majored in math- if I’m going to be of help in the homework department, it’s not there.

My doctor has noticed that I have left the conversation and that I am off in my own little world….. and when I get home, I’m going to blow up someone else’s. Oh, wait. I’m not going to need to go home to blow up someone’s world.

Kathleen is at work softball, but my mom and dad aren’t.

Kathleen is at work softball, but my sister isn’t.

That’s three whole ass phone calls to jump up and down and say “it’s twins” before I go home, because I know how my parents and sister are going to react. I cannot predict my wife, and I stopped trying long ago. I’m surprised she didn’t want to quit trying to have babies at all. She’s been distant lately, but I don’t care. The entire world fits into my tiny 5’2 frame.

I’m not in it for her reaction. I’m in it for my kids.’

It’s not that I think she won’t make a good mom. I don’t think she makes a very good wife, but she’s what I’ve got and I’ve made promises I intend to keep. Besides, I don’t really have to pay attention to her if I don’t feel like it. I have better things to focus on than who she’s screwing this week. If it makes her happy to have boy toys over a real relationship, I can only go with the flow. I cannot change her behavior. I can only change mine.

If I didn’t have to tell Kathleen I was pregnant, I probably wouldn’t. I wanted the real deal, and I got it….. but having everything costs something. If I had it to do over, I might have chosen differently. Now, it’s all a matter of dancing with who done brought me. I am only asking her to hold onto more hands when she twirls.

My doctor says “you’re not even really here anymore, are you?” I apologize and say, “I absolutely was not, but I am now. How do we do this?” She tells me to cut down on the pizza and beer (I found this banana cove one out in Fairfax…) is non-negotiable. I look at her and say, “I can understand why babies don’t like pizza, but why is beer a problem?” She laughs because she knows I’m joking and we start making a diet plan.

It will all go to shit later. I know it will. Kathleen and I do not have the emotional fortitude to fight through something like this. But right now? In this moment? She’s going to hear the most important words of her life and I get to say them.

“Sweetheart, I went to the doctor today…… and we’re going to need to do a lot of shopping. I’m not pregnant with a baby. I’m pregnant with two.”

She will look at me with the same wide-eyed wonder I gave my ob/gyn.

“Are you sure?”

Describing the Color Choice

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s one of my favorite colors.

Whatever It Is, It Isn’t Enough

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The most expensive ingredient in food and relationships is time.

I Had Enough in a Good Way

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I learned something today because Supergrover came to me to say that she’d read all that she needed to read- and said that I cast her as a villain. Nothing about why I call her Supergrover, why she’s my beautiful girl, why she is light and dark in one gem. She sees me as writing her as flat, when I think of her as a spectrum. I almost quit writing, because I thought, “if I can’t do her justice, what hope do I have of anyone else? She’s lived inside me for 10 years.” It hurt like a bitch, because she focused on one entry where I was angry and not any of the others. Not the letter to Michael. Not the entry where I said I thought she was the face of God. She sees what she wants to see, and I cannot fix that for her. I do not want her to see herself as the villain in my story. I want her to see why it was so important for us to have met at all. If someone is determined to misunderstand you, let them. There’s no changing their minds.

I didn’t do anything but think about that letter for hours, like I knew I would. But I realized that she proved my points on a number of levels. Nothing said “I’m really sorry you’re hurting, let’s fix it.” By the same token, she thinks she’s the villain in my story and a flat character and her personality shows across my stats. I wasn’t lying when I said that she was the Aunt Voula. She will be your favorite. When I write about her, I feel so deeply that you will, too. Some of my best work that has connected with people came from me looking at our relationship for everything it is worth (still worth?).

I told her to keep reading. Keep absorbing.

I need her to know that what she said in her letter didn’t clear up anything, and also made me feel bad for needing anything… while at the same time having so much empathy for her situation that I overfocused on it. I didn’t need the primer on what she was handling emotionally. I could recite it, chapter and verse. I needed her to trust me, love me, see me.

She did not see me. She saw her in the most negative things I wrote and not in the most positive. That is not my call. I have never and will never love anyone like this again. She is unique, perfect in her imperfections, and I will always wish that things had ended differently. If she’s willing to listen, I’m willing to talk. What I don’t want is to end up in the same place next year.

I got a haircut today. The hardest part was not sending her a picture.

But I did hear from her, and despite everything I am in love with her words. It doesn’t matter what they are, because they bend and challenge me.

She lives in my ink, in the spectrum of color that has defined our relationship. I am sorry that she only sees in grayscale. I don’t love this. I miss her terribly. I just can’t anymore, really, because when I miss her I place hope in something that I think is there? There should never have been a question mark. I told her point blank that I feel helpless about the situation, not that I am painting her as a villain. That I’ve owned everything. I cannot do anything more or better, and she will not lay out her thoughts and feelings so that different patterns can emerge.

I hope for our sake that they begin, but love does not depend on the recipient. I get to love her whether she loves me or not. Even if it doesn’t mean anything to her, it means everything to me.

I smiled down at that e-mail for a long while, knowing that no matter what came of it, even nothing at all, I had done enough work within myself not to get rattled. She focused on thinking that she was a bad character.

I didn’t tell her she’s everyone’s favorite.

You’ll Have to Define It, First

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Describe one habit that brings you joy.

People with attention deficit or autism don’t create habits. There is nothing in our brain to create subroutines and keep them going. Every task takes the same amount of energy as learning to do something the first time, from brushing your teeth to remembering to take out the garbage on Wednesday nights because trash day is Thursday. Trash day seems insurmountable to someone with time blindness.

There is a meme going around Facebook that addresses this. “The problem with 10:30 PM is that it is one minute before 2:30 AM if you’re not careful.” The way time slips away at night for most people is how time works in neurodivergent people all day long. It’s relentless. We live and die by our calendars and task lists with alarms, because otherwise we’d have no real sense of the month, day, or year. It my mind, it has been six minutes since my mother died and also years.

Memories are arranged by importance, not when they happened. Time blindness was actually a good thing in one case. The way I was treated during my childhood melted away and I stopped thinking about it at all. It just failed to register. Every bad memory I have of ages 12-36 is not locked away anymore because it doesn’t have to be. None of those things can create a reaction in me unless I let it.

I will dig deep into them for resolution, but that is only to make the present me a better human being. It has nothing to do with trying to resolve those memories to make anything better for them. Too much has been done for there to ever be reconciliation, and if being sorry was ever childhood abuser’s intent, she would have come to me long before now. She said she was sorry, but I don’t believe it because her actions didn’t line up. I had every right to make her jump as high as I wanted, so when she proved that she couldn’t even do the barest minimum, it was okay to be done.

Our relationship was virtual in that before the Internet, there were letters and calls. Even with both of those things, you’re not really living the same reality. You’re fitting each other into your real lives…… except it cost me money I didn’t have. There was no such thing as long distance calling across the country for free. I didn’t even have a cell phone until I was an adult, so my parents knew who I was calling because they could see the number on the bill. I think they thought that making me pay the money back would make me quit calling. They did not understand the game. They did not understand the trap. They did not understand being willing to die before you’d tell a secret.

It is my habit to treat everything I know with that kind of security because it was ingrained when I was 12. It doesn’t matter how the secret makes me feel, even if it is toxic I have proven that I won’t say a word. It made me who I am for richer or for poorer. In some ways, I’ve kept secrets that have made me sicker. In others, it makes me powerful enough to be someone like Bayard Rustin, who knew all MLK’s secrets and lies. If I’d go so far for the wrong woman, just think of how far I’d go if I met someone like Martin?

Olivia Pope completed me because I saw her as having to manage the same secrets I did when I was a child. It was translated through the lens of politics, but to me keeping Fitz’ and Jake’s secrets was as difficult as keeping mine.

There was also light and dark. Keeping the president’s secrets was one thing because he was a public figure. Jake very much wasn’t. But one fed the other and Shonda Rimes healed me with a bit of media. Art imitates life, and it was so awe-inspiring to have that mirror.

My abuser’s public persona needed to be protected, and so did the dark undercurrent from everything else in her life. I knew that because I was a preacher’s kid. I’d been taught to be that kind of friend since I was born. Therefore, no one could get a word out of me and even though my personality changed practically overnight, no one noticed because I was already hard to predict being ADHD. I always had my head in the clouds to one degree or another. I am an INFJ, the pastors to the whole world at once. I am built for it, and all the things I don’t know cost me because I think I can take on way more than I can without support from everyone else. That requires someone like Bryn, who can deal in emotions as large as mine consistently because she knows I can offer what I require. Her secrets are mine, in some cases, literally. When Supergrover convinced me of what I’d been ignoring, I didn’t get to tell her that she helped another little girl, too, because I got to pass on the knowledge that her strange feelings weren’t strange at all.

There was a reason I became a frightened dog, not sure which way was up in almost every relationship of my life. I had so much to protect and nowhere near the ability to choose how. The secrets made me the alpha dog, given the responsibility of protecting the person and the path, but no support in how to do it. I think that’s because of the nature of the cycle of abuse. No one taught them how to react during trauma, either.

Support would be empathy that goes in both directions. No abuser tells a child thank you for keeping those secrets. No one notices when you’re saving their career. Therefore, as adults we know we need it. We know that a relationship is not equal when one person is the dumping ground emotionally for another………. because they’re so focused on themselves that they don’t think to ask about us.

It’s not that we mind being the emotional dumping ground, we’re asking for equal airtime. Reconnecting with Bryn reminded me why that was so important. That I couldn’t have a healthy, successful relationship until I’d been in a more serious one with her in terms of emotional intimacy because I needed to learn what a healthy relationship felt like before I could extrapolate that into a full-on romance with someone else. I even know that’s hard, because Bryn wouldn’t care if I slept with someone else, but she’d for damn sure notice if I ditched her emotionally for someone else. It would have to be a balance, because she needs to know that I have enough love in me that my partner will know how much you matter to me and not taking us as a package deal is in and of itself a dealbreaker. There will be times where she is way more important than you. Die mad about it.

I feel like that’s the way Zac loves me. That if something was up, depending on the situation there would be times when I was more important, die mad about it. But at the same time, I am also respecting the fact that he and I are not close enough to expect his attention the majority of the time and I am not asking him for that. I am saying that if I was in the hospital, I could call him from there because he would definitely want to know. That would be true whether we were dating or not. I don’t care about the dating as much as I care about the not, because a long term relationship isn’t built on romance. The cornerstone is knowing you’ve got someone who will be there for you in a crisis, big or small, because even if they can’t do anything to fix it acknowledge that they want to know. Acknowledge how big that is. Relationships take showing up, and people won’t if you don’t communicate that you need it. You’ll just feel stepped on all the time, and I’m telling you it’s your own doing if you’re the Type B who never says anything.

Not saying anything doesn’t allow our friends to respond the way we want them to. It doesn’t test anything. It doesn’t allow you to notice the way you’d be treated if you needed something, and that is completely fear-based. You’d rather not know until it’s so bad you can’t ignore it.

Choose not to stuff things down so that you can see if someone can give you what you require instead of constantly giving them what they need emotionally in hopes that someday will come because they’ll divine that you’re in trouble.

I moved heaven and earth to stand next to greatness because I could give what I required. The fact that she couldn’t is of no consequence, because I love it here. The main problem is how to get Bryn to think it’s her idea to move here. 😉

The thing is, people, I have that friend. I have that friend who would move heaven and earth to be near me if I needed her. Even if it damn near killed me, I’d do the same for her. It would be a lot. I’d have to live in the city where I chose to continue a very toxic relationship based on the one we had when I was a child. But her life is so different there that I could see it working out long term. I think it would be hell on wheels in the beginning as I grappled with being grateful to be near her and muting all the triggers that would reappear.

I was in a bad relationship the last time I lived in DC, too, with the same archetype of the woman I’m talking about when I call that character “Supergrover.” It was like trying to hug a cactus every day. I got a lot of negative attention…. It will pop up if you search for “The Great Raspberry Jello Caper” or something like that.

It was so different, though, because Kathleen and I were both adults. I could expect her to respond like I thought she would, or I could express needs and she’d kick my ass. It was unsustainable. I have chosen that relationship over and over, making them that if they weren’t that already.

It’s the pattern with which I’ve become most familiar, and I bring it out in people after having wronged them, then them getting very resentful that I need anything because the fissure has begun.

Bryn deserves me because she doesn’t expect me to be perfect, and I’ve tested her on that to an enormous degree. I have never intentionally tried to hurt her, and she knows that, too. It counts for a lot.

What I have learned is that Bryn is completely unique, and Supergrover is a dime a dozen. That’s because once a fissure began, the power imbalance was set for the rest of our time together. It was imperative for me to jump high because I’d found someone I could be as vulnerable with as I could with Bryn. That became problematic when I was vulnerable to her about her. I was trying to be tender and to heal wounds. She thought I was trying to load her up with guilt, make her feel bad, etc. and didn’t tell me that for a long time. I wrote her the longest love letter of my life, annotated with detail about why I wanted to help her. I wanted her to know that I really saw her. It was not a one-way transaction. I shouldn’t have said anything, because she just took it as psychoanalysis and that I was trying to provoke her.

I thought she was the sweetest person I’d ever met, and she liked thinking that I thought of her as a monster. It’s why I call her Supergrover…. that even when she acts monstrous, she’s still cuddly, furry, and blue. It’s the smallest part of her, the little girl I love.

It’s a habit.

Over and Out

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 3 Comments

I realized this morning that the fairy tale I’d been living the last ten years had come to an end. That it has been long enough now for me to get some distance and close the book. My beautiful girl has gone into the wind at my invitation, and I no longer feel any pull toward her in terms of friendship or protection. She said something about me being “hostile” now that she didn’t fit into the mold of friendship I made for her, and I’m sure they were sharp even if they weren’t meant to carry that much anger. What she didn’t seem to get was why I was acting that way. I needed her, and I thought I was more important than I was.

I will no longer apologize for having emotions. I will no longer apologize for anything that makes me tamp down my feelings to the level at which she can accept them. I will always be more than she’s ever thought, because she doesn’t seem to think of me at all.

We haven’t been in contact since March, and that’s not the longest we’ve gone without contact, but something about this time feels final. I don’t think she cares what I know and what I don’t. I don’t think she feels any pull to be near me.

I also don’t want to be in a relationship like that. I don’t want to go years on end jumping up and down for attention because I actually need it and have never been trying to goad her, provoke her, take her to task. She was hearing all of that through me expressing genuine need. Her life is just so busy that she attributed everything to me being on her ass all the time. There was nothing I could do or say that would change her mind. I am also sure that telling the world about her shitty behavior has helped us both to move on, probably because if someone treats you badly, it’s not okay to say so.

Meanwhile, it feels like she is emotionally immature to an enormous degree because she can’t get into a conflict without running, and she does that with spikes. I don’t want to feel like I’m trying to hug a cactus anymore. Her wire monkey schtick brings nothing into my life that doesn’t hurt, because when I open up to her, it might be good in the moment, but it will devolve whether I want it to or not.

She will not address bad patterns and change them to accommodate emotional health on either side of the equation. She is not responsible for what I understand, but no one could comprehend her story with the amount of information I was given. I felt like she half-assed her side of it just to keep me happy, but there was never going to be a happily ever after…. even though we definitely started with a “once upon a time.”

I feel like this chapter of my life is over, and I want to close the book. That being said, the nature of the conflict will never go away. I just won’t believe anything she says ever again, because the truth isn’t found there. It will be found in her actions.

If being my friend is important to her, she’ll have to show up. I would like it to mean knocking on my door, but that’s not necessary. If she actually came clean and told me how she felt and made her behavior line up, I would accept her back into the fold. It was not a bait and switch where I told her I would leave the door open so I could later slam it into her face.

It’s that I want our relationship, but not like this. I cannot let her reopen wounds and then react as if I’m trying to rattle her on purpose. She doesn’t realize how much my actions are in response to hers. She thinks that I make them up.

It’s easy to tell yourself that story when your side comes from a completely different book.

The End

One of Those People

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Yesterday in my thread about Sinead O’Connor, I was called “one of those people.” The assumption she made was so far off that I could easily see she was butt hurt in her own life and lashing out at me. Those of you that do know me will laugh. She thought I was a health nut when I said that high cholesterol was an indication of how bad you need to break up with Pizza Hut…. that certainly people do drop dead, but it’s difficult to separate out random cards when the deck is stacked against you. That’s because people who die of natural causes so young are in the minority. There is ALWAYS an explanation if you look hard enough, because it’s science. We are not talking about woo woo shit here. I am also betting that the person who called me “one of those people” didn’t have JAMA articles for company. I could have been wrong, but she didn’t say she was a medical professional or that she had family who are.

However, I’m definitely “one of those people.”

It’s just not who she thinks. I’m bipolar. What I have noticed is that no one loves a bipolar person more than they do at their funeral. They weep and gnash teeth and say “they’re so sorry,” but people aren’t generally interested in learning how to support people with mental issues because it’s genuinely difficult, especially if the patient isn’t medication compliant and has symptoms that show consistently.

It is a truism that Sinead O’Connor had mental health issues that weighed on her. She also had lots of critics that treated her like crap, as well as people who aren’t fans just talking trash and none of them had any idea what was really going on. She took people’s shit her whole life, and it wore her down. It might have been cancer. It might have been a heart attack. What I know for sure is that bipolar didn’t help. It made her feel worse, carrying burdens that are too large for anyone because the medical example would be an autoimmune disease. Your brain is constantly trying to protect you. It thinks the answer is to shut down. It will, if you let it.

I am doing what I can to become emotionally bulletproof so that people can’t rattle me. But it doesn’t take away from the fact that I still deal with people who are insensitive all the time and very, very sure that they’re right. What they don’t say is that they’re bipolar.

Not the woman that called me “one of those people.” Not the person who said she was a fucking therapist and proceeded to try and diagnose me from a couple of Facebook comments. You aren’t even supposed to diagnose someone in the first session, as impossible as health insurance makes it to leave it off the table. After I said that I was just talking medicine, that I was expressing an opinion, that I had the patient perspective and the background to be able to express my opinion as educated but not fact, she said, “I don’t need your resume. I don’t think you’re being attacked as much as you think you are.” There were 75 comments worth of bullshit. My phone has been blowing up all night. The audience will kill you if you let them.

I told her that her comment about “I don’t need your resume” came across as passive-aggressive and that I hoped she was more objective with her actual patients… and that if I needed to look at my words, she needed to look at hers. She assumed that I had some sort of wish to say that Sinead’s whole life could be summed up with bipolar. I was talking about her health history.

My phone is still blowing up, but I’ve tapped out. I’ve said everything in the most objective, dispassionate tone I can muster. To other people, it comes across as aggressive, apparently, but I think that’s because on the Internet, people aren’t used to there being boundaries. That you cannot make up a whole bunch of shit and decide that’s the sum total of me, either.

When people don’t have context for something, they make it up. I cannot tell you how true this is with my beautiful girl. I made a ton of assumptions because she was so busy that she couldn’t pay attention to me, but she could skim my e-mails and tell me if I was on the right track. Sometimes I was. Sometimes I wasn’t. It just was difficult because when she’d get angry about an assumption, we wouldn’t talk it out.

That’s because I was sending her heartfelt letters, and she was reducing me to a Facebook comment section. I can’t show her my weird little world, and I can’t show that to all of Facebook, either. But what I can do is clear up misconception as long as other comments don’t anger me. When I get angry, I withdraw. I deal with my anger on my own instead of taking it out on other people.

But people have a stunning ability to gut you when they think you’re wrong and they’re right, because fuck your feelings. It’s not just Republicans vs. Democrats. It’s all of us. We’re too quick to anger, trigger happy idiots because when someone questions you on something online, you must go nuclear immediately. And then when you don’t get the answer you thought you were going to get, you must double down and keep stabbing.

The audience will kill you if you let them.

So I stopped putting on the show.