I’ve been close to Bryn’s mom and dad since I was 19, as well. Here’s the most important thing her dad has ever taught me, because it has influenced a lot of what I write and preach. The hardest part of teaching is remembering what it was like not to know.
It’s a very difficult thing to be enlightened and also remember the dark. If you can record that transition, you might be able to explain it. You can help others by acknowledging their fear, and being their Moses.
The phrase “being Moses” means something to me, because Tony Mendez has taught me a thing or two about being a writer/teacher. In “Argo,” he tells State that the only way out of Tehran is through the airport…. That State should “send in a Moses” to bring them home. Because the meeting was speculative- so State could say they ran their ideas past CIA’s best ex-fil guy- I am not sure that Tony Mendez meant to say “it’s me. I’m Moses.”
The next scene in my mind is Tony preparing The Six for their trip to the grand bazaar in the middle of the city. Moses is sweating bullets for two reasons. The first is that if he is caught, The Agency cannot claim him. He’s working without a net. The second is that it’s not just his ass on the line. He and The Six get caught, as Jack points out, they die badly. The entire world will be watching.
That is an extreme example of having to teach someone, but it illustrates frustration on both sides of the equation. If Tony doesn’t prepare The Six, one if not all of them will be pulled in by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard for questioning. Alternatively, The Six are just basic policy wonk diplomats with no training in deception and Tony has to teach them to walk their covers in a day.
It’s not the same as remembering what it was like not to know multiplication and division, but it’s the same concept. The difference is an age-appropriate level of fear. It clutches your chest whenever you leave your comfort zone, which is not the same when you’re five and when you’re fifty. It’s a proportional response.
Remembering what it was like not to know is often a failing of mine, because things that are so patently obvious to me are hiding in plain sight for others. I am going to be able to feel you before you even say anything. I can tell what kind of mood you’re in simply by watching body language. I can feel the frustration, anger, etc. steaming off you and the moment when that energy changes. I don’t have to learn someone’s mannerisms, habits, mood, and behavior to do this. It happens automatically. I will not be able to tell that there is a problem, but I know what it looks like to move in the world showing different emotions. The more people claim there isn’t one, the more I know whether they’re telling the truth or not, because there is an energy behind truth and white lies. I can feel that shift, and can feel you bullshitting me. Your next words don’t even matter, because the way you stiffened up before you answered betrayed you.
I feel like I can tell the most about people’s personalities and group dynamics without saying a word. I stand there and soak up everything in the room. I’m not just feeling how we are interacting, but how everyone is. I can tell not just how your behavior affected me personality, but also how well you know how to read a room…………
I am not bragging on myself, because others have this gift. Bryn is better at it than I am. Having her is like having a bloodhound. She can sniff out when I’m upset, and sometimes I think she does it by reading how the phone rings. 😛
Speaking of Bryn, she told me that she feels like a celebrity when I write about her on my blog. I told her that she is not the first person to tell me this. My friend James nearly made me die of laughter when he said, “I really just go to your page and search ‘James.’ Yes, I am that fucking shallow.” She told me that my entries were the perfect length for a morning constitutional, and I told her that she was nowhere near the first person to tell me that.
I missed my calling. My blog should be called “The Shit Show.”
One of the things that makes me frustrated about this time in my life is how crazy this must all seem to the outside world because I can’t be any more specific that I can right now. It doesn’t make any sense why an Internet relationship would make me react this way, and I can’t give you any more than “if you knew, you wouldn’t think I was crazy at all.” Nothing in my life is as it appears, I can only show you what I can show you. I need to protect my beautiful girl as much as I’m protecting myself, and these entries are just for me. They are written so that I can tell what kind of progress I am making, but not telling her story. Please remember that you are missing at least 50%, and I am comfortable looking like a total wack job in front of the whole world. All I can do is rest in my belief that no one else’s opinion matters. You’re just looking at my reputation.
I am looking at my character.
If you cannot see the difference, then you’re probably not introspective. When you dive into yourself, you see the difference between what others think of you and how little it matters compared to whether you can look in the mirror every day. How others’ opinions don’t pay your bills. How no one else is going to save you, so you have to find ways to save yourself. It’s a tangled web I’m weaving. It looks from the outside like I’m a fly, but I built this web by hand in a rainstorm.
The fact that there’s a chunk missing doesn’t make me feel good, but it’s not my work to sit with that. It’s my work to look at what happened and why. I feel like it’s an important story…. Critically so as we slouch toward a digital society where everyone lives and loves like this to some degree. Also, it’s an important story, but not unusual. It is to people who haven’t lived on the net since ‘99, maybe…. If you look up “geek” in the dictionary, it’s just a picture of me and Wil Wheaton.….. where was I going with this?
It’s not an unusual story, or at least, it doesn’t begin in an unusual way. Our deal was to be confidantes. I love women, so that kind of shit made me catch feelings (an inconvenient truth). She loves women, too, but not in the same way. She caught feelings, too. They just didn’t match, and yet that doesn’t mean her feelings are lesser than. There is no such thing as “the friend zone.” Either you love someone and want them in your life, or you don’t. If you think otherwise, grow up.
I have always felt this way. It’s just that as my life starting spinning out of control, she was the unlucky recipient of shit rolling downhill, and it wasn’t pleasant for either one of us. She kicked my ass, daily, in a way that truly hurt for all the right reasons. I was in the hospital for a few days because I couldn’t get in to see a regular psychiatrist quick enough to deal with acute suicidal ideation, and it was my beautiful girl’s idea. Just move under your own power. I did, and I’ve never regretted it.
I haven’t regretted it to the point that think her strident, no bullshit personality could have saved other people struggling with depression as well, because depression uses the very best lies against you to make you powerless against your own thoughts. No one loves you. You’re too much. You’re so much no one will ever love you. No one will ever be able to put up with you.
I find it interesting that her words made me go to that place sometimes and lifted me out of it in others. It all depended on what my disease wanted out of me that day, and it was relentless. Neurotypical people want to save you, and there is no way to do that. It’s not that they’re incapable. It’s that they don’t know how to fight brain gremlins, and if we already feel like you think we’re too much, we’re not going to help you or even let you know what they are.
I got to that place with my beautiful girl. When she cut off her emotions from me, it didn’t feel safe to open up to her anymore. We weren’t dealing with our mutual brain gremlins anymore, which made me feel like a freak show most of the time. She’s neurotypical, which means that even our brain gremlins are different. But that doesn’t mean hers are less valid. It didn’t feel safe to have a sounding board that was just me talking to myself, because for as much as I got out of workshopping my issues, what makes me feel safe in a relationship is mutually diving into things. Feeling supported as well as supporting others. She supported me and wouldn’t let me support her, so I always felt like “the younger one.” I have bipolar and ADHD, which leads a lot of people to attribute my behavior to immaturity, when in reality, it’s just different. You don’t get the same behavior out of people who literally have no idea how to function in society.
It’s exhausting to feel like you’ve given 350% to something and it still looking like you’re in kindergarten because everything went wrong at once because of some fucking brain chemical or another. At night, I’m not relaxing. I’m paralyzed with indecision and it reads as lazy.
Here’s why it’s so much effort to be alive. I have to remember to do everything. Nothing becomes habit, nothing gets easier. The morning routine is hard every day. It does not “get easier once you get used to it.” Ever. You spend the same amount of energy on every task, every day.
Because I’m not just ADHD, my bipolar and anxiety remind me all the time of just how unacceptable that is, and it’s not something I can change. I just have to manage it. If I designed a house, it would have all my shit where I could see it, because my mind doesn’t store where things go. My mind doesn’t store the memory of where I put things, even if it was just a few minutes ago. I have very little peripheral vision, so I can drop something next to me and spend 20 minutes looking for it, because where I thought the thing dropped is several feet from where I thought it would be.
If it’s not one thing, it’s your mother.
Speaking of my mother, it’s a shame that I didn’t get to have the relationship I wanted with her until the very end. I think all the time what it would be like to have my mom as my beautiful girl…. The one I look to for love because I can…. The one who’d die to protect me and I’d feel the same. I would never have traded one relationship for the other. It’s just a type of female friendship that my mother and I would have enjoyed.
I’m not sure that I mentioned what it was like seeing my aunt Nancy at my grandfather’s funeral. It was my father’s father, and I knew in less than a second that she hadn’t come for her. Of course Lone Star, Texas is a tiny town and they knew each other, but she was bringing my mother’s spirit even though it was the other side of my family.
I choked up and tried not to cry the minute she started talking. She could have read the phone book and I’d be sobbing. That’s because there’s about the same age difference between my mom and Nancy as there is between Lindsay and me, so their voices are for all practical intents and purposes, the same. That voice is still in my head days later, and I’m glad that she comes to DC all the time. My cousin Nathan is a doctor in Alexandria, VA, about 40 minutes from me.
My aunt still has a house in Lone Star, very near my grandfather’s on Starlight Lake. Our family has agreed to all chip in and keep the Lanagan house so we’ll be neighbors even if I’d originally come to spend time with my dad’s side of the family.
Here’s the thing about Lone Star, Texas.
It doesn’t seem ideal until you realize that with a fast internet connection and being able to buy land for a dollar, it’s not so bad. I’d never want to be that isolated full time, but I get it. If I could get an affordable lake house somewhere, that’d be the end of it for me, too…. It just wouldn’t be in Texas, and I’m not sure there are any lakes in this area where the houses aren’t a million dollars…. Wait. Scratch that. They were a million dollars in 2001. Now they’re seven.
The great thing about buying land is that if you didn’t have a lake before you bought it, you can just put one in. 😛
(Oh, that would be so fun. I’d love swimming in water with actual fish.)
So, you can do all that in bum fuck, Texas, and nothing on God’s green earth would tell me buying property there would work out well. I would hate the politics. I’d hate the struggle. I left all that behind because Lindsay is strong enough to work with those people and try to get them to change their minds. I am a nervous wreck when it comes to that kind of stuff. In this case, I think it helps her that she’s straight because she has more clinical separation than I do.
Maybe in ten years I’ll be grouchy enough to rejoin the cadre of Texans screaming to get their state back. Dallas, Houston, and Austin are tired. Get your shit together, Texas. I realize that in some ways, Austin is the problem….. but they have the same issue as DC. The government is conservative as shit, and the locals are actually smart.
Speaking of Texas, I reconnected with a high school friend from HSPVA that lives in The District, so he’s even closer to me than when he lived in Virginia. He posted on Facebook that he needed a house sitter because his regular one was unavailable, and even though we hadn’t talked in legit years, I thought, “this is an Honors Band friend. You gotta do it.” He felt the same way, so we spent some time together on Saturday. I met his partner, dogs, and corn snake. I think it will lead to more down the road, as we both have mutual friends here, as well as having gone to PVA, so our friends come through all the time.
I learned something I didn’t know, and that’s always fun. My 10th grade science teacher gave Beyoncé a C. 😛
I wasn’t there at the time. It must have been either the year I left or the year after, because I don’t remember whether B was two years behind me or three (yes, I am older than Beyoncé. I was hoping you wouldn’t notice).
Since I’ll be in The District all week, I’m looking forward to having a home base in the middle of everything. The house is indescribably close to the Metro, easier to walk from one to the other than drive because you can cut through parking lots. It’s also a classic DC row house, just the perfect house I’d have picked for myself had I wanted to live in the middle of the city all the time.
I do not regret choosing to live in the suburbs, because for what I pay, what I get is RIDICULOUS. I chose to have the smallest room in a GIANT house. I love having a real kitchen and not a shitty apartment galley. The only thing I would change is the stove- it’s electric and not gas. When we had to replace the stove, I asked if we could switch, but our kitchen isn’t wired up like that. No big deal. I have friends who will let me cook at their houses….. even if they have All-Clad, DANA. 😛
That is an old, old joke. Dana’s All-Clad set is heirloom. Her great grandkids wouldn’t have to buy new cookware, and I was there when they were new. It took Dana a little bit to trust me with them, and it became a running joke. Here’s a story she doesn’t know. I invited a woman over to hang out while she wasn’t home, another cook so I thought she was sane. I told her that Dana would freak the fuck out if she used steel wool on the pans, so please don’t. I come in the kitchen and there she is, scrubbing the fuck out of our pans with exactly the thing I told her not to use. I didn’t care if she wanted to “get away with it.” I bitched her out and we’re not friends anymore, mostly because she thought I was crazy for telling her what to do.
It was a “keep my wife’s name out your mouth” moment.
I’ve had classic little kid surgeries, but I don’t know if they count because none of them were what you’d think of when the phrase “major surgery” comes around. I had tubes put in my ears. I had the muscles shortened on one eye so it didn’t drift as bad. Nothing where I had to stay in the hospital, except for an allergic reaction. That was at least 30 years ago, and I never did figure out the trigger. Perhaps it was the stress of coming out. I was in fifth grade. It is not impossible, because it was so mystifying that Dr. Leaves thought it could be the pink dye in Benadryl.
With the benefit of time, I doubt it.
Right now I am doing emotional surgery on myself, which I have been doing all along as a blogger. I just feel like I’ve graduated from stitching myself up to removing diseased tissue. I am getting out all the good and bad things in my life, throwing them up here like a set of X-rays so that I can look at them dispassionately. It’s the only way I can direct myself, because I cannot feel this level of emotional pain and physically move without it.
I have come to a very good place. This morning, I am just empty. I have spent all my energy pouring everything out, and the tap is dusty. I have to wait for a rainstorm to access inspiration, and that is okay. When the inspiration to write is the ending of a major relationship (in terms of time, not romance), I write until I shut down.
Part of me has never been in love before, and never will be without truly divine intervention. This is because for as much as I’m afraid of someone hurting me, I am also afraid of hurting them. I know I can make and keep healthy friendships. I have resolved enough in myself at least to do that, and I never have to worry about finding another friend in my life, because I only need one. The position has been filled.
I worry about everything, and overexplaining is a trauma response. When I absolutely shut down this thing we’ve managed over the years, I told her I’d realized that every fight was like this one. I’d say too much, she’d say too little, and on and on and on. Birthday present, Christmas present, fuck off, judgmental dickhead. There’s a problem and I won’t tell you, I just won’t speak to you for weeks or months.
The pattern was sick and twisted and I made it happen. Therefore, I needed to make it unhappen. She told me she didn’t know a damn thing about love in the very beginning, and when I decided to teach her, it was perfect. We were tracking together like white on rice. I just didn’t teach her to love me in the way I could hear it, but not for lack of trying. If anything, I was Mozart’s “too many notes.” I commissioned an SATB arrangement for every issue we had, and it was ridiculous. That was the quickest way to divorce for me, and she helped my marriage fail in her idiocy, not malice. She broke me, and she doesn’t know it. But that part of it wasn’t about me.
Learning to recognize where I was in my polyamorous haze of a head, where I was loved romantically and platonically- yet in my brain, there was no difference in priority. For instance, if your wife and your mother are hurt at the same time, you prioritize based on how serious the injury might be on your mother’s part, because your wife comes first. Always. You made that vow when you married her. At the same time, Dana couldn’t fault me for loving my beautiful girl intensely, either. She loved her family just as much and would have said exactly the same thing. Actually, she never did anything to prove to me that I was more important than her family. Nevermind. Bad analogy.
So, when Dana and I broke up, I had absolutely no need for a replacement. I’d been hit, and it took years until I fell in love again, and it is no fucking coincidence that he was the biggest motherfucker I could find trained to hit the nuts off a gnat with several different kinds of weapons. If you think dating men didn’t have anything to do with that fight, fuck off. I’ll be looking for that kind of protection forever. Why do you think Zac is so important? He’s not just interested in intelligence so we get along on that level. He will fuck you up if he thinks you’re going to mess with any of his friends. He just doesn’t because he wouldn’t start a fight, but he’d end it.
Trying to decide if that’s enough pain for today, because I am in it now. Just looking at everything painful and deciding how to let go of it. I feel like everyone is seeing me through the heuristic that I’ve been in love with a straight woman for ten years and that’s the only reason I haven’t gotten married again. That’s a double fuck you because most women who have been HIT BY MEN wait a long time to get married again, too. So what’s the real issue here?
I am terrified of women, and my beautiful girl is goddamn lucky I didn’t run from her as well. She’s as physically intimidating as Dana, just in a different way. Even more muscular, which should have turned me on and instead felt like a risk.
Because there was no chance in hell that we would actually be domestic partners, I could interact with a woman from hundreds of miles away. That’s fucking close enough. I think it is absolutely perfect that we’ve never met and yet I feel like a Doctor Who companion because we’ve “traveled together” long enough that she knows my original hair color……… and I know hers. That she doesn’t dye it, it has changed colors over time because women age like fine wine. Men just tell them they don’t.
I would do unspeakable things to Helen Mirren with the proper permission, preferably in writing and notarized. She is the perfect example of getting better with age, because she’s another person who doesn’t give a fuck what you think. She started out as a carny. You can’t scare her for love or money.
Where am I? What’s my name again?
I have to interrupt my pain signals and thinking of beautiful women is the easiest way to accomplish that goal. Therefore, when I’m writing, it often surfs up and down in my subconscious as I touch pain and back off….. again, overexplaining as a trauma response. I realized I could just roll with it because I am not focusing on the people who read every day, but making it feel lie you had to be there or you missed it. You have to read every post rather than dropping in once. I just have to be interesting enough not to lose the ones who are bored, and right now they can take a right. I’m going through a thing here, man. Back the fuck up.
I swear to Christ, falling in love with my beautiful girl is probably the first time I’ve ever really been in love before, and absolutely no disrespect to anyone I’ve ever dated. You didn’t do anything wrong, and I loved our time together. It’s that my perspective changed. I wasn’t in a narcissistic train wreck of a relationship that started years before I had a girlfriend, and I’d only been dating Ryan for a few months. It was the first time I really saw myself, and I fell in love with me…. the me in love with her.
When I realized that I couldn’t have that romantically, but she’d show up for me anyway, I was on board. I don’t care if my only job is to bring her a Diet Coke when she wants it. Seriously. Just hit the button, baby girl. I treat her like I treat my sister…. seeing her as both older and younger as well. She’s older in some ways, I am in others. Lindsay is a lobbyist, I’m a writer. She’s in front of people all day, I’d rather have dental surgery. The differences are striking, and they’re not the same as with Stifler’s mom over there (she has a son and I’m not stupid- though if she reads this I will have a black eye by morning………. “why would you say something so controversial, yet so bold?”). But just because they’re not the same doesn’t mean she and Lindsay aren’t the same archetype. Lindsay would definitely be Stifler’s mom if she had a kid. There’s no doubt in my mind.. I also know that she would be pleased to know she’s still that hot at 40 (we’re almost six years apart- my 46th is Sept. 10th).
It feels good to get back to the kind of humor we used to share instead of there being topics that are off limits. I could never have told that joke in front of her now, but when she sent me a recent picture, I did say “wtf? You wake up like this?” Like, fuck me. Just let me be the swamp witch in our relationship because all the other women are. Bet.
The fact that she thinks it means something now is ridiculous, so let her. If my other friends think I’m serious, I’ll remind them how I have spent months detailing why this relationship is deceased, pining for the fjords, met the choir invisible, fucking snuffed it. I feel like ten years is enough stories to keep me going. I don’t need more if they’re all going to be like our last few interactions. I don’t care if she thinks I’m the devil, because having a friend who is a writer and blogs all the time and you support them in every way possible until you don’t like what you see in the mirror? I get why she can’t be identified. I don’t get why she cares what people think. I just have to respect it.
I can quote chapter and verse why I shouldn’t write about her, and yet none of the things I said before I broke her trust mattered. She automatically assumed that once our relationship was over, I’d google tattoo her. No. I gave a google tattoo to a woman who abused me as a child. If we’d gotten into it as adults, equals, she would have deserved the same protection. It was the hard line of keeping her secrets and protecting other little girls. I chose the WRONG ANSWER for 23 years. So, anyone who thinks I gave that tattoo lightly can take a long walk on a short pier, but I hope you choke on your words first.
This relationship is different. For the first time, I knew what it felt like to love someone with wild abandon, not worried that our relationship was toxic. I am worried that we set up toxic patterns through the nature of the Internet, but never that we are toxic people. We have issues to work on, but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing there. Or, it didn’t until she said she had a problem, I handled it, I asked her to talk about her feelings, she dumped me. I went apeshit because her first reaction is to run always. I thought we were finished with that shit. I’ve told her abandonment is my trigger a hundred times, and not one goddamn one mattered. She did it twice in like a two month period. I wasn’t the only one who could accuse the other of being done and not done, bombing everything. Every accusation was a confession.
I wasn’t out because I couldn’t forgive her. I was out because I don’t respect her, and won’t until she uses some of that big dick energy to say she’s ready to work on the problem, because that’s what it’s going to take. Turning her words back around on her, “looking inside yourself isn’t for sissies.” If she grows emotionally, she’s welcome. But I won’t stand for someone treating me like they wish the relationship never happened. She stomped all over my worthlessness loop every day for years, and I fucking aged. That’s because she made sure to tell me what a mistake she’d made in befriending me in the first place. I just kept thinking “well, that escalated quickly.” She always thought of herself as the protagonist. Never looking at her behavior from the outside in her writing made it look like she had never hurt me at all. I’d stood there and slapped my own face.
Surely she’s not that stupid. Surely she has a concept of her role in things from my view. Surely she’s taken in how I feel about things. Surely she’d spent time in her mind running over my questions.
I only ran away from her when I couldn’t read her handwriting.
What’s the most delicious thing you’ve ever eaten?
I am a cook. I don’t have a way to rank anything because in my world, when I say “apples to oranges,” I mean actual fruit. What I will say is that I have a very advanced palate, so it takes a lot to impress me. It doesn’t need to be fancy. I can tell a good cook from a bad one in one egg.
I was taught by the best, so I’m the best through transitive properties. But I’m the best at home. “No Fish on Mondays” is written from the first person perspective because I was living in a memory, not recalling it. However, I decided that the kitchen was too much for me physically- that I could have cerebral palsy or get my stripes in the kitchen, but I couldn’t do both and I figured that not being a chef was easier than curing CP.
That reminds me of a beautiful memory with my Supergrover, which I only bring up because I need it so bad. I figured out some more stuff that went into our demise that I could have told her, but I didn’t because I was trying to spare her feelings. As a result, I’m working through all of it on my own so that I don’t turn into a bitter queen. I don’t read “angry dyke.” I read “bitchy queen” all day. Anyway, the story is that another line cook sexually harassed me and she offered to kill him. I know enough to know it would have been with her bare hands. Honey badger don’t care. God, I feel the same way. I go apeshit inside when anyone crosses her. Believe me when I say she is a monster in the best sense of the word. It’s a good feeling when you’re the one holding the leash, and the ones closest to her often do. She’s not mean to us. She’s mean for us.
If you don’t have that friend, you don’t have a friend. Choose wisely.
And now back to our regularly scheduled program. It just feels better to write about all the things I love about her rather than sending negativity out into the world. I don’t even know if she’s reading and I don’t care. It’s not about her. It’s about healing me.
So, no way to rank but lots of standouts. I love everything, from cheap to expensive.
My favorite cheap thing is grocery store pizza, particularly the fancy kind with rising crust that actually smells like yeast. If you get your pizza delivered, you can’t enjoy the smell of it baking and it takes the same amount of time now that Domino’s drivers aren’t constantly tasked with delivery or death.
My favorite middle tier thing is pesto sauce. This is because you can buy pasta for a dollar a box and $15 pesto and all of the sudden you have a dish you could sell at a restaurant for more than that.
My favorite expensive thing is sushi, because even at the grocery store, sushi grade ahi is pricey. So is good wasabi. However, being able to “roll my own” has meant a lot to me in terms of education. I can make pretty good sushi-su (sp?), the rice with Kewpie and rice vinegar. I never roll it tight enough, but I don’t care. I could eat ahi and rice out of literally anything. I should learn the difference between Japanese and Hawaiian cooking because I could probably do a poke bowl with one hand tied behind my back…. but again, sushi grade ahi is just ridiculous in price most of the time, and even more expensive at a restaurant, where I’m always tempted to upgrade to yellowtail, soft shell crab, or salmon (seriously, there is no logic to the Philadelphia roll. WHY IS IT ADDICTIVE.)
The funniest conversation I’ve had in a sushi restaurant is that I told Dana that I wanted a Mexican roll (I don’t remember what was in it, probably fried jalapenos). She asked me if I could eat a whole Mexican, didn’t realize what she’d said, and then we both ended up nearly on the floor…… just shaking with laughter. The whites are so pretty next to the coloreds (that was the lights on the Christmas tree). Lord Jesus, help me I’m falling down the stairs I’m laughing so hard…. as if I was listening to the Eddie Murphy routine from whence the line appears.
When I talk about food, I talk about my ex-wife. It’s inevitable, because most of my adventure with food started at “Hi, I’m Dana.” We worked together for three years (I think?) and two restaurants. In the first, we basically ran our own kitchen because we were the only ones on shift. The second was at the Portland airport, and those restaurants don’t come to play. It wasn’t irritating locking up the knives at night, but it was hell trying to find parking at the airport and it took a long time to get from the parking into the building.
The coolest part of my cooking career was having the badge that let you walk directly up to the planes if you wanted. I could literally stand out on the tarmac and no one gave a shit. You cannot imagine how many times I imagined stowing away, but the issue with being on the tarmac is that you have NO idea where the planes are going. To some, that might be exciting. X means airports with international flights, so at PDX I could have ended up in Houston or Helsinki. Those are two very inconvenient cities to arrive with no luggage…. not that any city is, but not to know whether you need ski pants or sundresses isn’t that great.
Speaking of ski pants, I watch this YouTuber named Dave Cad that has ads for the most amazing Finnish clothing company. It’s kind of like REI and Uniqlo, and I’ll look it up if you’re interested in the comments. Anyway, Dave lives in Helsinki, but he was road tripping up to Kilpisjaarvi (sp?), which is so far up it was only three degrees Celsius in late June. It makes sense. Lapland is supposedly where Santa Claus lives, as well as the thrill of seeing Dave’s glass igloo. The glass igloo is so that you can ile in bed and watch the aurora borealis. OMG Bryn. That’s on our bucket list now, too. Note to self…. rent a car. Kilpisjaarvi is the most beautiful tiny little town I’ve ever seen. If I lived in Finland, that’s where I’d settle. I want hygge for the rest of my life (from Norwegian… the cosy feeling you get in the winter…. SO similar to Portland except not constantly raining. Snow is easier to me to deal with than rain, because it doesn’t hurt as much when it’s being pelted at you.
Plus, I’d like to start a garden. I’ve watched a couple videos on Finnish chefs because the palate is so much different than ours. I mean, just straight up BIZARRE. In every piece of footage, I am reminded of Anthony Bourdain in Iceland. It’s my favorite episode of No Reservations because he is the crankiest little bitch I’ve ever seen all the way through it. Comparable to Namibia, where he griped he hadn’t had anything without sand, fur, or shit in it for three days.
That part of the world has completely different plants. Vegan food would be off the chain when fruits and veg are in season. If I did have the strength to open a restaurant, Kilpisjaarvi would be excellent because it’s a tiny, tiny town and I could start out small. (I’m just gaming this out. I’m not crazy enough to do this by tomorrow). I think I’d close in the winter, at least part of the time, because I don’t think there would be enough business to survive on bread, cheese and meat until Spring. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe that’s what they eat. Just don’t drink with a Finn. Ever. You just don’t have it in you, and I don’t even know you.
I would be an excellent Finn, for the same reason that I’d rather spend time alone as much as they would. I may not have Finnish blood, but my personality is limited to one country. 😛 No DNA test needed.
Actually, I think Lindsay said we do have some Finnish blood, but it’s only like 3%, which is obviously enough to practically knight me there. Obviously.
Stating the obvious to an obscene amount, what would it be like to live in a country where they don’t hate women and lesbians?
That means I’d go check it out even if the food was terrible.
Not in a mean way, like launching a bomb. In the way where you realize that you have absolutely said the thing you needed to say and it cleaned you out so hardcore that the tears actually stopped. When I am writing, I am the most vulnerable. I often cry when I’m writing, the ablutions coming from my own eyes. I touch type so it doesn’t matter if the screen gets blurry.
It occurred to me that I’ve been looking at this wrong. If my beautiful girl is telling me that she doesn’t have time, that’s why she thinks I’m goading and provoking her. She’s not taking the time to correct the story she’s telling herself, and hurting herself with my words. I know this because she could say the same thing verbatim, we’re just opposite. She’s only processing our interactions through the lens of what’s going on right now. I’m filtering her behavior through every interaction we’ve ever had. Our perspectives are different, because she is seeing me as the person I am in this minute, and not whether my behavior is out of character or not.
She thinks I bring up things a second time in order to goad and provoke her, when I’m repeating myself because it’s important and she hasn’t acknowledged. She has too much on her plate for me to expect that she’d go back to an e-mail, because there’s a thousand on top now. So, what comes across as context to me doesn’t translate.
Now do you see what I mean about wanting to clear up this crap in person? I cannot tell you how much fun we would have had if we’d only made the commitment to just be weird. Just have it out. It’s going to be awful at first. We’ll get over it. We’re fucking hysterical.
We would have owned this fucking city, and I know it. I would have done some very shady shit just to be able to show her my DC. Ashton Kutcher made me laugh the other day when he said that he just loved Jennifer Aniston, so he went up to her husband (Brad Pitt at the time) and asked him if he could take her on a date. That he would be very respectful and have her home by ten and all that shit. Brad laughed his ass off and told him to go ask her. This is the high comedy I was looking for. I would never in my lifetime do anything to make my beautiful girl uncomfortable, and that probably would have, but it made me go into the “I can’t even make any sound” laugh. I’m thinking about it again today, because he and I have a wonderful relationship in my head. Don’t think we haven’t gamed out what it’s like to be hers. Shit.
He’s the face of God when I need a higher authority.
I cannot speak for him, but I think he decided a very long time ago that he was going to marry her cerebral circus, knowing intimately that he was the Rhoda and she was the Mary and that would never, ever, ever change. This is because she’s the kind of personality that everyone who has ever loved her has felt this way within five minutes. After meeting many narcissists who’ve been like that, it was unimaginably beautiful standing up with someone who really was that genuine. That lovebombed because her love really was that big, it wasn’t a ploy or a game. Finally, someone who loved every bit as big as me. Someone who wanted to think big and didn’t think my ideas were crazy because she was in charge of lots crazier shit than my goat roping clusterfuck of a blog. I hope she felt the same way about me, but I am not sure I did enough to prove it. That’s because the story she was telling herself is that because she’s so busy, I am unhappy. This is not true. She is not emotionally available, and I am unhappy. You can spend five minutes a year with me if you’re willing to go deep and actually catch up. She told herself that she was failing me, when there aren’t even words for how much my love and loyalty branches over her, as if to provide shade.
She doesn’t recognize wanting to hear her emotions and deepen our connection as my love language, or doesn’t want to open up. This is what felt the most nebulous. If you don’t want to open up to me, that’s fine. But tell me you don’t want to open up to me so that I can leave in peace, because I have learned so much about what love is after so many years of learning what it isn’t. Those aren’t my words, but they’re true and I can’t remember who said them.
Everything she told me I was doing was passive-aggressive, because since I’d broken her trust, it was impossible for her to believe that my motives were pure. She got tired of me speaking to her the way I normally do because who even am I? Why should she even have to listen to this crap? Why can’t I just move on?
I did move on, but trauma triggers happen. Doesn’t mean I was trying to attack you when it did. I am emotionally intelligent enough to explain anything on earth. That’s when her thinking I was goading and provoking took an ugly turn, because it taught me that she really didn’t understand me at all because not correcting the story she was telling herself over the years made her think I was a dark character most of the time. Fair, but don’t keep me in your life if you think that. Go have your feelings by yourself. I let her think I was a dark character because I thought that she’d realize how much time had gone by and snap out of it.
She didn’t, and it gave me a complex because she’d do things like accuse me of trying to meet her friends just so I could get close to her. It was never even in the realm of possibility. Ever. She treated me like dirt and I let her, browbeating myself for opening up to her on a romantic level because she’d be able to use it effectively forever. She could justify emotionally starving our relationship for years on end, because I wasn’t a priority.
That wouldn’t have even registered as important to me if she didn’t also love me like a house on fire and show me that, too. It was an unusual kinship, which I thought of as a unique, quirky platonic love story we could have sold for millions and she called it “this thing we’ve managed over the years.” I should have ghosted her then, because Jesus fuck. That was harsh, even for her.
She never addressed the virtual/physical cognitive dissonance and didn’t even bother to respond when I called her out on it, a full eight years after I’d broken her trust. That’s when I knew we were absolutely fucked and to stop trying. If she couldn’t even talk about her feelings or meeting up to try and change our reactions to each other, this pattern needed to die because we were both exhausted at trying to read the other one. It’s just that because she wasn’t really seeing me, she was attributing behaviors to me that aren’t my personality at all.
I don’t think she realizes that every INFJ is thousands of years old. Every single one, from the time that they are born. If you’ve read “The Giver,” I can think of no better analogy. INFJs are the Givers and Receivers of the world, the memories. I should never have let this relationship get to where it is now, because I feel like I should have recognized what I’d done and why things would never go back. Every time our relationship started up again, it reminded me that I wasn’t enough. That I would never be enough. She didn’t see me as the same person, and a stain stands out on white fabric.
She would say none of that’s true. That’s she’s done plenty of things for me. And yet none of them were the things that would have actually said to me that we’d be all right. She felt like she couldn’t win with me, when I was constantly telling her what would work. My love language is words of affirmation. Hers is action. Because of the virtual/physical disconnect, I had to get creative, and I did.
She did the same creative and wonderful things for me, but we weren’t connecting the way that we had. We didn’t even use the same language. It felt like getting a cheap futon home and only having Spanish instructions, that we could have figured it out working together…….. but we didn’t.
I’m going to have to stop saying I’m going to stop writing about things, because I just realized that the ablutions are not the tears.
My favorite form of self-care used to be taking a bath, but our bathroom got remodeled and now I don’t have a bathtub. It’s not an easy feat to have smooth legs, a standup shower, and cerebral palsy. Most days, pick two. In fact, I have two bags of Epsom salt (one in lavender, one in eucalyptus) that have never been used because I didn’t know we were getting a shower when I bought them.
Self care changed a bit when Zac and I started dating, because then self care started leaning toward getting out and walking with Oliver, and taking the train to his house, etc. I’m not a social butterfly unless I have to be. Most people take care of themselves by staying in. I’ve got that covered. I need to go out.
I find comfort in my bedroom/office more than anywhere else. This is because my house is very, very large and I am a small person. I tend to hole up in favor of feeling safe. I avoid most people in real life because I don’t live with my family.
I am fairly certain that my housemate thinks that because I’m queer, if she touches anything after me, that thing will turn her queer as well. I’ve gone out of my way to assure her that it TOTALLY WORKS. Don’t you dare pick up this peanut butter lest you suddenly find yourself noticing my sweatpants do fit extra tight today, you’re welcome.
Self care is learning to see others’ idiocy, otherwise it would bother me more often than it does that my housemate thinks I can King Midas her into submission (OMG. EVERYTHING SHE TOUCHES TURNS RAINBOW). First of all, ew.
I can also say with a healthy amount of confidence that she’s not smart enough for me.
Self care has been about creating boundaries, which I can’t say has gone all the right way, but has produced all the right results. Having a relationship that was all in my head changed my neural pathways, but there was almost always an air of flying too close to the sun.
The relationship ended my marriage, which I’ve said before; what I haven’t said outside it was all my fault is that we trauma dumped too much too fast and each made the other take on things that they wouldn’t have otherwise chosen. This in and of itself was a crack in my relationship with Dana, but I couldn’t and wouldn’t undo it for anything in the world.
How it worked out was how it was supposed to work out, because I can truly say that I did not choose one or the other. The situation unfolded over years and I retconned it so I could explain it to myself. It was too much to act and process at the same time, and I think that’s what’s happening now. I couldn’t act and process at the same time, so I ended the relationship when I realized what it would take to be on the same page and not having someone to work with on a shared goal, because no goal was set.
It was a roller coaster, when my idea of fun is more “sitting outside by the pool and/or fire.” But that doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy the ride while I was on it, or would turn down another trip if the situation were actually right to do so. I just don’t feel like she’s willing to hammer it out, because instead of seeing questions, she saw entitlement. It wasn’t my intention, but what my words said to her. As if I had an agenda she was constantly failing when I actually saw her as the good kind of trouble. I would do anything for her, and if the situation actually required it, I might even call her on the telephone (no, I wouldn’t. I’m not even that dedicated to me).
If it seems like I’m ragging on her a lot, I would tell you everything I ever loved about her if it wouldn’t result in identifying her. She is just too fun and funny to miss. I would be her second in command at anything just to watch her go off script.
I realized that if I meant as much to her as she meant to me, there wouldn’t be any doubt in my mind as to where we were and where we are and where we’re going because she’d actually want me to know all those things. Now I think she’s just afraid that I value me more than I value her….. that anything truly personal we shared will end up splashed all over everywhere. I doubt it, as we have no mutual friends, but it’s possible if I’ve managed to leave enough breadcrumbs without realizing it because that’s not something I’d do intentionally. I value her privacy, but it’s more than that. Talking about what we’ve shared means sharing things about me that only belong to her. It’s taking that tiny virtual meeting space and opening it up to others, when the purpose of our friendship in the first place was to be the other’s safe space. I would never intentionally violate that. I don’t want to invite anyone else into our space any more than she would want me to do it.
Self care is knowing that I need to turn my attention inward, that I need to protect my energy. So much of it went to her at times that I lost track of me. Not always, but enough. There’s one thing I won’t do, though, and that’s stop praying for her. It’s the least intrusive thing I can do, and probably all I ever will. I am certain that I have said enough, that she is done…. mostly because I told her if she was going, she couldn’t come back unless it was big. That us being so nebulous was kicking my ass. I wasn’t entitled. I was clueless.
That’s because I’d already done the clawing back up part, and it wasn’t happening again without major buy-in. What I didn’t do that I should have was cure her of all her shitty assumptions, like assuming I wasn’t getting what I thought I should out of our relationship. The truth is that she prides herself on not needing anything, so why wouldn’t she think that me being emotional was a weakness? That I’m needy?
I wasn’t needy. I was uneducated. If you don’t tell me what you need and resent the hell out of me for feeling, I’m going to rely on self care.
Truly, I think a lot of our differences can be summed up in our four ages….. ours and our inner children and how those developmental milestones rubbed up against each other. She’s chronologically older, and yet I see her as so much younger than I am. I wanted to protect her because of it, and I failed.
Caring for myself is now harder, because since I failed to protect her, I don’t care as much about myself because I don’t think I’m worth it. I’ve already proven I don’t take care of other people well, why do I think I can help me? I know they’re just intrusive thoughts; most of them don’t even have basis in fact.
I thought of something from yesterday that made me feel amazing. Years ago, I sent her a pen for Christmas. So. Who knows? Maybe I live in her ink, too. 🙂 Moments like that remind me that thoughts of her are not the intrusive ones. My giggle box turns over every time I think of that thank you letter…. that the pen (a novelty) was the first thing that had made her laugh in a while. It helps to think of these things, because I know that I am not chaotic evil 24/7.
Self care is being a little chaotic evil, though. No true regimen would leave out mass quantities of carbs and chocolate at any time, much less right the fuck now (the cramps are starting and I feel my uterus getting ready to scream).
Ohhhhhh……. the cramps are starting…… that’s why I was such a hot mess yesterday. Sounds like I could use some self care.
Things have changed so much for me this year, and I’m reeling from it. I’m not sure that I meant to change this much this fast, but in retrospect things worked out. I’m not constantly worried that I’m a judgmental dickhead. I’m not constantly thinking of myself as less important than everyone else, and I’m finding out that not having interests as a child- in terms of fitting into society- I adopted a whole bunch of behavior patterns that I don’t like. I fell for everything because I didn’t stand up for anything.
I’m just a writer. I don’t know shit about shit.
The older I get, the more that lesson internalizes. What is different is that I am not constantly making up scenarios and conversations in my head to produce the least offensive outcome because I am a shell of a person. I was abused emotionally from the time I was 13. I absolutely lost everything I was interested in, favoring her interests. I think I carried around an opera dictionary for six weeks or something.
I feel like I learned how to be myself in a sandbox, that I was beta testing all kinds of things… and let’s be clear. Some of that software isn’t even out of alpha release. Keep checking GitHub. Good luck.
So, that’s what the Internet relationship was good for, if nothing else. I’m not a lead the charge into hell sort of person. But I knew someone who was. It felt like an ace up my sleeve, and it was.
And that’s why it hurts so much. I’m not disappointed that I never got to call her boo, I’m disappointed that our friendship had such promise.
You cannot imagine how long I just sat in silence, figuring this thing out. Or trying to, anyway. There was just no way to separate what I’d done from my level of trustworthiness, so I’ve known I’m a piece of shit for years. Intimately.
So, it lit me up inside that things started looking up. And then realized the swings were only going to get worse. If she’s not forthcoming, I’m not pushing. If e-mails are too big a deal, let me go.
Let me give all that love to someone else… not in a mean way, just that I hurt that I’ll never be able to make something right. I spent too long dwelling on how to fix a problem without realizing how much it was robbing me of any self respect. As I got older, I didn’t want to sit in it anymore. I didn’t want to cry any more than I already had. I didn’t want to wake up at 55 and see that I’d just kept at it.
So, I asked her what she wanted and where she was going.
Last time there was a huge break, I’d send her e-mails and get a few in return. It took a mountain of work to get where we are today, and I thought that we were in it for the long haul in a “sure, I can water the plants” kind of way. I don’t think I would have been wrong if I’d just kept my mouth shut, a running theme in this relationship for evil and for awesome.
My attention is starting to turn and it is a welcome relief after ten years of not being able to shake Gmail’s hand.
But it’s not all that. As I told her, “you’re in my head, Malkovich.” I do not know how to get rid of things I’ve thought about ad nauseam for ten years. I am making progress, but I’m not there yet. I feel like part of this is just delayed. That this is the conversation I should have been having with myself eight years ago instead of now. Except that some really good things have come in the last few years. I don’t even fucking know anymore, and that’s the saddest part.
Pretty much everything can be summed up by “I don’t even know anymore.” The difference is that I care a lot less in terms of what it’s going to take to keep me going and how other people are going to feel. I have to go hardline Lamott here. My story is mine. I’m not seeing what I want to read, so I’m creating it.
I loved loving a writer, because she could think as fast as me.
I’m remembering what she used to say about my writing, and letting myself fall apart for a minute. Just sit in it and let it hurt. It’ll go away.
My mother dying taught me this. That if I could just sit in the discomforts and not shut it away, I’d be better off because with tension comes release.
I keep seeing her in my mind and thinking, “do it, anyway.”
If I thought I could really help her, do it anyway. But make her come to you. Maybe reading my words will help, and that is the only thing I can hope for. I doubt anything will ever happen between us again and feel that our story is over. But I know I can help her just by being me. That if she wants, she has a wealth of information on what I was really saying- the answers to questions she might have, without any real desire to know whether she reads. I told her I didn’t want to know, and for now, I mean it.
She is a memory. I want to look at our entire relationship and decide what it should have taught me the first time around that it just didn’t. Mostly I learned that I talk too much, that I’m too much. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, just that most people aren’t ready for what I can do, and that part can fry people’s hair.
It’s not because I’m so much smarter than everyone else. It’s that most people don’t think like I do, and it’s difficult for them to relate. No one knows anyone like me. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve come off as absolutely brilliant for a little while.
My beautiful girl knows she’s brilliant for a lifetime, and she’s told me I am, too. That’s enough. I am sitting in the concept of enough. What I thought it was. What it should be. How my idealist bullshit caught up to me by creating wishes with no foundation. It’s all a lot, and not a damn thing has to do with parsing out anything she did except to point out what I didn’t know for a decade.
It’s paying to look at all the things I could have given attention, I just didn’t. It’s filling me up where I’m empty, letting me have back the parts of me that were hers…. Because after ten years, I know for damn sure that there’s a lot of her that’s in me. The best part about having an Internet relationship is that the joke you made this morning will be huge this afternoon and no one’s heard it.
Today my big laugh was Bryn being stuck behind a horse trailer and several cars going 25 miles per hour going down the back side of Mt. Chehalem and I started laughing so hard I couldn’t breathe. “Bryn…… Bryn…. I can’t believe you’re stuck in a hay pride parade.“
I couldn’t believe I’d made a joke that I didn’t have to rip off.
I lost a lot of myself, but I’ve regained it.
The blessing is that it is a lot of gray area. Nebulous whitespace that’s primed and ready for paint. Feeling like I’m making room for new things feels exciting, because if I’m going to end a relationship because I think it’s not working, then what will? I have ideas, but it’s about connecting with people who share them. I want to meet someone who’s excited to meet me.
Today I’m in the process of letting myself off the hook for “making” my closest ally feel bad by “bringing up bad feelings about the past.” Here’s what she missed.
I was devastated when she married her husband and I told her that, including why. That it wasn’t because she’d said yes to him and not me. I’m not wired that way. It was because someone I thought of as dear to me didn’t even tell me when her name changed. But it was water under the bridge and trying to tell her an important part of my process… including the fact that when I saw her husband through her eyes, it made my soul relax. She had someone to lean on in such a concrete way and it made me so happy rather than wondering if she was okay and not really feeling as if I could ask that question. I wasn’t focused on anything but wanting to know why she’d chosen to keep the information from me so I could stop thinking about it. I feel like I’d talk about an issue, she’d see me as trying to intentionally point out every flaw and failure she ever had, and I’d walk off like a kicked dog.
I was trying to tell her how much things had changed, that my perspective had grown as I did. That having a 50 foot view made me see how our patterns fit together and how far we’d come over time. I was trying to tell her how much I loved her and she thought I was trying to make her feel bad. I thought it would mean a lot to her to hear that her light erasing my dark wasn’t dependent on whether she changed her sexual orientation. I don’t have that much power, and wouldn’t use it if I did.
When I was telling her that she could lean on me, she took it as psychoanalysis, which to be fair it was. But it wasn’t pointing out flaws and failures, and I didn’t write the letter like that. I wrote it with as much empathy as I could muster, saying that I knew she’d been through a lot and I wanted to help. What does anyone who’s ever loved you want more for you than having less pain? I knew that I could help her have less pain by taking it on and hurting for her, breathing through it with her so that we both smiled on the exhale. I wish I had been able to express it in a way that she could hear it, because she is perfect in all her flaws and failures. Just perfect. I feel the way about her that people feel about babies… that no matter what their lives will hold, you know you’d die to protect them. There’s a place in all of us that is that vulnerable, the one that feels defenseless, and I gave her mine.
She just took away my piece of her. Let’s be clear, though. It was my fault entirely. She doesn’t do shit for no reason, but that doesn’t mean I’m not entitled to emotions about it.
I think she thinks I don’t know why she yanked my credentials…. That the victim part is in thinking I’ve never done anything wrong. Just because I don’t say I know I’m responsible doesn’t mean that I don’t know it. I’ve said it in as many ways as I possibly could, but that doesn’t mean she heard it. But the thing is, I sound like a victim because I’m only talking about my problem with you because I’m not reading your mind and looking for your problem with me. I can take a guess, but it will come across as psychoanalysis, or so I’ve been told. 😉
I show my empathy by telling people what I think of what they’re going through, and write with such care and attention most of the time. Sure, I have e-mails that just say “thanks,” but that’s not the majority. It happens more frequently now, because I’m scared of starting friendship that doesn’t have an anchor.
I’m processing all this to let go of the past, certainly, but also to understand what I didn’t want for next time. The only way I can do that is to understand what happened so I don’t do it again. If I make a mistake, the pendulum swings to the other extreme so that I don’t have another appearance of the same mistake.
It’s not about her anymore. It’s about knowing what to do if anything like this happens again. I don’t want to lean into the surreal. I want to touch you at least once in our friendship, even if it’s just you accidentally stepping on my heel. I need to prove that you are a solid mass as opposed to my conscience. 😉
It’s hard for people to accept that when they do something wrong, it doesn’t mean I’m taking love away. I’m not rejecting them. I’m trying to grow with them and not against them. If my beautiful girl is impressed by my enormous changes, it would stand to reason that we’d be better friends now than we were, because those impressive changes would have happened together. I am not offended that she feels goaded and provoked because I know by now that she sees my concerns as bombs because she’s not that deep. It’s not that she can’t. It’s that there’s a lot of “don’t want to” in “cain’t.” I know this because she’s done it.
I’m tired of working out all our problems and it only changing me.
And if that seems harsh, so be it. I can’t think of anything I’ve said about her in recent memory that she hasn’t taken as something I said to intentionally hurt her without ever looking at the ways I was asking her to take care of me, and asking her what she needed to feel loved as well. Therefore, when she said that e-mails making her feel bad were becoming the norm rather than the exception, I had no idea what she was talking about and she wouldn’t elaborate. If I don’t know what hurts, I can’t stop doing it.
We also have issues in both being fixer/pleasers, butt hurt when we’re actively trying to fix and the other isn’t receptive… not out of malice, but idiocy. I was dialed into my emotions, she was cut off. It wasn’t personal all the way around. She’s like that all the time, and so am I. But conflict with each other didn’t help. I keep asking myself why I required that of her, and let myself off the hook when I realized that it wasn’t me being demanding, it was me realizing that I couldn’t hold back my emotions. I couldn’t wall her off. I walked around in her inner landscape more than I should have, because she gave me a lot to think about that was interesting, and I gravitated toward interesting.
It made my asshole chew crackers when she said she’d marry Brene Brown (I would, too. That’s not the point. 😛 ). I can say that to you. It didn’t help hearing that Hannah Waddingham is hot as shit, either. That’s because me saying I felt the same way about her wigged her out, and she told me that, too. So, sexuality is nonbinary when there’s not a chance in hell it’s real. I am glad that she never in a million years said she’d marry me, even in jest. She definitely didn’t do it when she knew it was my landmine, but I mean early on, when neither of us could ever have done anything wrong. That’s because I would have hurt about it long after I died.
I just don’t feel let down. I don’t feel disappointed that I just wasn’t it for her. I feel like she has the right to be completely who she is, and to wish I could change her is the height of entitlement. I hate those people. What I did wish for is integration, and not necessarily physically, as in a cup of coffee together. Just that sense of integrating our ideas so that we were both up to speed on what the other thought.
I didn’t like being thought of as an asshole, and I didn’t like that she wouldn’t tell me why. I can’t hear that I’m making you feel bad when I’ve just sent you an e-mail saying that we’re both miracles and perfect, not together (but I can see it), but in all the things that we bring to the world.
I just have no idea what she was talking about, because I can have empathy for the way you feel and also no idea how to fix your problem with me if you don’t give me a little more detail. What did I say that made you feel bad, because I am not going to go through every line and have my stomach hurt trying to read your mind.
I also didn’t think it was fair that I looked at every feeling she had about me, seeing her as a spectrum, not a binary. She had me pegged as a dickhead unless I called her out and then I was very impressive for a few minutes.
It would always go back, though, because she hated being judged and couldn’t wrap her brain around the fact that I’m not judgmental about people. I’m judgmental about situations, but not in a way that’s trying to hurt people. I mean like an ACTUAL judge. Someone who listens to all of the facts and collates what they think and feel. Judgment is a way of making decisions. How do you differentiate between signal and noise? Some people perceive, some people judge. One is not more or less than the other, they’re different.
I judge people and situations to be perfect all the time. My judgment not only sees problems and analyzes them, it also makes me an incredible gift giver because since I’ve actually spent time muddling through our issues, I remember more of what you say and little things stick. Your favorite charities. Your job. Your interests. Your teams. Just anything that will tell you that when you get a gift from me, I’ve been paying attention. For instance, if your job requires that you be absolutely wired at all times, I’ll send you SBUX to maximize where you can spend the money. If it is Galentine’s Day, I will make you waffles, or send you a gift certificate to buy them. If I find out you’ve been a fan of Arsenal since you were a kid, I’ll kit you out over the next five years.
It’s a little bit like Sherlock Holmes deducing information, because through logic, he has a more complete data set than people think he does. I have a similar example to Holmes knowing Watson fought in Afghanistan. Not that extreme, of course. It’s just that I’ve picked up things over the years because I’m reading everything she’s not saying as well. This isn’t it, but a universal example would be someone being lactose intolerant because they’ve never said that, yet when you ask them what they want from a coffee shop, it’s always vegan.
The heuristic is that it’s more likely that someone is lactose intolerant than they just don’t like milk if they’ve never indicated they eat vegan food.
But I don’t tell her any of that crap to make her feel bad. I tell her that stuff because what I think is going to make her feel noticed and appreciated makes her feel terrible. If I can’t fix that, I need to move on, because it hurts too much to hurt her.
I let her go because I loved her, not because I was being a toddler.
If I’m the only one that makes her feel bad, my reactions don’t feel amazing, either. I’m just willing to tell you why so that more information means less conflict. Or it should, anyway.
Besides, fuck marrying Brene, because obviously if she hadn’t learned Microsoft Word from me, she wouldn’t be Brene Brown. I am directly responsible for all of her success and I won’t believe anything else. 😛
Again, I do not tend to write short essays, so you’ll get more than you bargained for. NOW HOW MUCH WOULD YOU PAY?
This writing prompt is coming at a very good time. Today is Lindsay’s birthday. Lindsay is my younger sister. She works as a lobbyist for a federally funded clinic that does trans medicine. She lives with her husband, Matt, and her dogs, Charlie and Teddy. I would post a picture of her, but I don’t want to bother her. If I posted a picture she had not pre-approved to make sure she was looking the most fly, she would lose her shit. Pretty sure that’s a direct quote.
My favorite moment of all time that nothing can ever beat is going to see Lindsay in the hospital when she was born. It’s the most important day of my life so far. My favorite words are “it’s a girl.” We’re everything the other is and isn’t. I can say things to her that I can’t say to anyone else, and not for lack of trying. It’s just that those who weren’t there don’t have the comprehension. I’m not talking about a particular situation, just the natural ebb and flow of growing up together. Like all siblings and couples, we have our own emotional shorthand.
Lindsay is emotional about music in the way I am excited by the math. I can’t do it, but I like to listen to the outcome. Lindsay is looking for catharsis. I’m looking to set my brain on fire and blow my hair back. There’s a reason my favorite choral composer is Bach. The man was brilliant. I believe he was the first person to do mashups, because in some of the pieces, they’re in eight part harmony, then divided into two groups of SATB. They basically have individual oratorios that fit together like a long zipper..
I listen to music while memorizing rhythms and drumming my fingers on the desk trying to figure out the key and how to play the parts on the trumpet, which I don’t play now, but I reflex is a reflex for all the practicing I did in junior and senior high. I pulse my toes so that people don’t think I’m a freak show for tapping my foot. I learned that trick from my dad, another trumpet player, because conductors don’t generally want to see your foot going up and down during a performance.
Contrast that to my sister.
When Lindsay listens to music, she is deaf to the rest of the world. You’ll startle her the same way a bookworm will jump out of their skin if you touch them while they can’t see you. She wants to find comfort, and finds comfort in tracks while I prefer entries. I’ve tried to write songs before , and I’m crap at it because I’m aggressively verbal. Trying to find words that fit in a particular rhythm and also makes sense would take me hours and hours, while an entry generally only lasts one at most. The majority of the time, I type so fast it’s 20 minutes, because I’m not preplanning anything except looking at the writing prompt and seeing if it’s any good. I can do all that silently, while Lindsay does not want to be interrupted and neither do I. It’s her introvert space, because she’s more extroverted than I am, and also has to be “on” a hell of a lot more than I do. Being “on” is a reflex for us, one that was hard to beat out of me, but I would say that I have done it. It’s not that I don’t want to be polite. It’s that I don’t want to have to think of the appropriate response. I want to respond. I know I’m often wrong, but at the same time, you’re seeing the real me and not one I designed to make you happy.
I think that Lindsay is also experiencing extraordinary change in her life and trying to decide what she wants it to look like. She wants to do great things, not just talk about them. The only pie in the sky idea we’ve ever had is that we want to be filthy stinking rich. Just multimillionaires. Then, we’re gonna fix all the things Jeff Bezos and Steve Jobs can’t- one because he’s dead, but never gave money to charity while he was alive…. Maybe a few times. I can’t remember. But Walter Isaacson made sure to indicate sharing was rare. The other is just egocentric. Homelessness? Not on my watch. Hunger? Here’s groceries for a week. Just everything we can possibly do to die broke.
It’s not money for us to spend, it’s money for us to give. She makes good money, I have a killer idea. It’s not outside the realm of possibilities, and not likely, either. But it was a fun conversation. It’s like that scene in The Three Amigos where they’re all lying in bed thinking about how to spend their profits from the movie and we’re both Ned Nederlander.
I don’t NOT want a big shiny car, either. 😛
I say I want a car, but I don’t. My favorite moment recently has been road tripping with Lindsay. She drove all eight hours, and I realized that though I love cars, I’d rather ride than drive. During our trip, I wrote and she listened to music, which is what I do when I travel in any way. I don’t need a desk. I’ve got a keyboard that’s pretty heavy that has a slot to hold my tablet. My lap is perfect.
I feel like it’s fancy enough that I can completely dissociate and not notice anything, because knowing my stop is rote. My attention is laser focused, and because of it, writing while riding fits my personality perfectly. It doesn’t invite people to talk to me, because I look like I’m doing VERY IMPORTANT WORK because I’m typin.’ I remind myself of Richard DeLongpre at work on the TV show “Allen Gregory.” “This is Richard DeLongpre. I’m on the phone.” This is said with no small amount of pride.
It is important work. My emotional vomit has impressed tens of you across the world.
My favorite activity is writing this blog. That’s because it’s just stream of consciousness, a literal translation of what’s in my head. The path winds everywhere because I’m interested in everything.
Today I’m sad that my favorite woodworker on YouTube lives in Portland and I didn’t know of him then. It “wood” have been cool to meet. That’s where my mind goes when I think “I’m interested in everything,” because of all the things I thought I’d be addicted to, watching people refinish or make new furniture isn’t even in the top 50. And yet, woodworking videos are my Great British Bake-off. “Did you really just do a box joint when miters are at least three times stronger?” “She’s gonna paint it…. gonna paint it….. Jesus God. I bet her next project’s a river table.” ” “You’re putting wood…. near water….. not even a coat of Total Boat. Playing fast and loose, bud.” I have nearly given up on TV. I haven’t seen anything recent. I’m just going to YouTube Youniversity. I’m telling you, though, it’s a rabbet hole. I find it so similar to cooking, because in woodworking, you also start with “the mis.” (mis en place)
Although if I have to hear another advertisement for Rubio Monaco I’m the one that’s going to lose my shit.
I’d like to make a friend who’s a woodworker, because I don’t think I’d be a very good carpenter with my vision issues I’m not the person that has the funds or the desire to get a CNC, where I could do all of it on a computer and then fit it together. However, I can stand there and hold stuff. I can do little things rather than big things to see if I’m even capable of graduating to big things. There’s lots of carpentry that can be done without measuring or math. Sanding, painting, routing finished pieces, etc. Plus, I’m knowledgeable about wood, epoxy, and metal.
Jesus, is there anything the two of us *don’t* have in common? Unclear.
The Bible is one of my favorite things, because it’s the lens through which I see everything else. Don’t freak- I’m not an Evangelical. All I mean is that I see Biblical people as human and not exalted (The Bible is an ancient blog at best. The authors of the Bible were the me of their generation. I just have less “begats.”). I see the God in all of us. Heaven and hell are created by the environments to which we belong, because God lives in the thread of energy that runs through the human race. If we count on our rewards being in heaven, we have no motivation to make heaven right now. Evangelicals are just a bunch of welfare moms in their own shitty vernacular. What makes their behavior extra hard to take is their sanctimonious bigotry masked as thoughts and prayers.
They’re the modern Pharisees and Sadduceees. You know, the religious zealots Jesus hated? The ones we’re encouraged to call out because Jesus’ law is not letters. It’s love.
My favorite thing this morning was waking up and going to drink some water and coffee. I was halfway through both before I thought about Supergrover. Progress. Generally she’s my first thought, and it’s nice to know that I’m not always going to be this sad. I’m not done with her. I’m done quietly begging for just a little bit more. If I had my way, we’d do lots of cool stuff together, but I am all about compromise. I don’t have things I need. I have things I wish for. The difference between “this is what I need” and “this is what I want, but don’t want to be selfish.” I only needed her to open up a little more, because she said she trusted me and clearly didn’t. Feeling like she was giving lip service to it destroyed me. If I’m honest, that’s the moment I was out. This is because I have an example that’s really cut and dry. I needed to go, and I didn’t want to leave.
I wrecked both of us in the process, but I do not take credit for a hundred percent of it. At ten years (really ten years now), that would be impossible. I did a lot wrong. So did she. I hurt her more, and that’s clear. Otherwise, she wouldn’t be so gunshy about talking to me about anything important to me about us. Yes, she’s married and has kids and friends and siblings and the whole nine. I do not expect her to change anything for me in terms of spending time together except for maybe a few longer e-mails, because I know she doesn’t have time for anything else. In retrospect, I should have come to the conclusion that nothing would ever change years ago. For all the joy I’ve had over the last few years, it didn’t last because I would write about anything and everything and for months I’d get three word responses. When I finally asked her to think about some things- take it away so she wasn’t responding off the cuff, she replied in about 20 minutes and said she really didn’t have time for anything but three word e-mails. She’s diplomatic, and I’m not stupid. It’s not rejection dysphoria. It’s life.
When I’d ask for the smallest things, if she couldn’t do them, she’d say something like “of course, not good enough for you.” It made me feel like a dictator I am most certainly not. I’m Type B, and and unimpressed with passive-aggressive martyrdom.
Not good enough? I think it’s crazy she believes anything isn’t good enough for me because I have told her how amazing she is, how much she’s loved, and how much her intellect feeds mine. What about my opinion says she’s not good enough for me? Or that any task she couldn’t fulfill was a disappointment? It’s not. It’s just life. She’s not responsible for me. I don’t need her to save me. She’s not the only friend I could ask for something in a pinch. She’s the one I want, not the one I need in a way that feels codependent or romantic. Just that while I’m single, she’s been my first thought. First priority. I didn’t want romance. I needed friendship on a fundamental level, and I thought we had enough history to really forgive each other and move on. I have been disabused of this notion, and it feels internally histrionic (not that intense, but I am struggling to word and the best I could do outside of that diagnosis is “extra intense.”
That’s because I didn’t give up until a few months ago, and I feel stupid. Instead of calling her out, I should have just ghosted her because calling her out has gone so spectacularly badly in the past. The imbalance was frightening because there was no direction, like being in space. I got tired of being the half of the relationship that was talking to a brick wall. You can’t wall off an INFJ. I mean, you can, but that’s not the friendship they want. I had the friendship I wanted, and I ruined it out of desperation. When she stopped confiding in me, I felt like her personal content creator….. a sideshow…. and most of all, unwanted. She reinforced that idea too much of the time, probably the same way she thought she wasn’t good enough for me and I still haven’t wrapped my brain around that thought process. We so obviously need to talk, I just don’t want to anymore. I was on hold for eight years…. and I think that’s because she thought I’d act like a man. That her worth was tied up in whether she’d sleep with me or not, because I didn’t ever think that and yet I can see how she’d get there. If she saw herself through my eyes, she’d faint. When I think of her, I blank out into complete bliss, and so does everyone who knows her. This is a stone cold fact.
I’m also not stamping my feet and asking why I’m not her favorite. What’s done is done. I am certain she thinks I’m being childish because I didn’t get what I wanted and threw a tantrum, because that’s what having feelings means to her, apparently. Feeling rejected is okay. It wasn’t her responsibility to feel guilty, just to hear me say I felt rejected and decide if she wanted to do anything about it or not. She didn’t. It’s okay, but I’m not wired for shallow. It hurt too much. Because there were no clear boundaries, all of the things we could have worked out are nebulous. It is not on her to decide when I get up from the table if love is no longer being served.
This is not to say she doesn’t love me. I don’t think that. I never could. But I think we both like our memories more, because I love the sweet things she did for me, but those also felt surface-level because I don’t trade gifts for emotions. So, I felt lonely even when we were talking. That I was sharing too much with someone who didn’t really want to open up to me, and how the amount of information I have on her pales in comparison to what she knows about me.
But now I want to talk about another favorite moment so we end on an “up.”
My beautiful girl dropped me a note out of the blue… “Argo is on HBO. Made me think of you.”
Bryn sometimes calls me on her way to work, which gives us about 15 minutes to talk (note to Bryn- let’s do this more). Today the notable news is that we’re both obsessed with Starbucks food. The coffee I can take or leave, but no one else has egg bites and Impossible sandwiches. Eggs and cheese are cheating on my vegan diet, but I only eat mostly plants, anyway. I’m living Michael Pollan’s advice…. “Eat food. Not a lot. Mostly plants.” I was also telling her that I liked Starbucks getting Trente cups because I’m a sucker for their iced tea. Just shut up and take my money. My favorite flavor is green because it’s a bit minty, but their black tea makes me smell numbers at that quantity. I get a breve, which is black iced tea, no extra water, Splenda, and soy or oat milk. It sounds weird, but you wouldn’t think so if it was a Thai restaurant, now would you? I think the’ve caught on to my idea, because now they’re selling iced London Fog lattes (Earl Grey and vanilla syrup).
We’re also working on bringing joy into our lives. That we are responsible for our own suffering because of our rejection sensitivity, but it’s something we can improve about ourselves by relating to each other. When I look at Bryn, my heart floods with gratitude. She’s the face I look to for love, because I can. She is also safe in loving me, because she’s getting me the me that has already made so many mistakes that I’m not so closed off to her because I see how that isolation affects her. I don’t want to make her think I’m doing anything that’s pushing her away, because when I feel sad, it’s not about her. I can’t ignore her needs, and sometimes they’re more important than mine….. like not encouraging her to believe that I’m being distant because of something she did. That’s more important to me than taking care of myself, because if I don’t make it more important than I will isolate based on what I’m going through when the situation isn’t even that bad….. I just think it is.
The story we’re telling ourselves is often skewed, because we’re so unkind to ourselves. We disconnect quickly out of embarrassment or self preservation, because it hurts to think about the ways we’re responsible for contributing to another’s behavior, or giving someone else negative consequences….. true whether you meant to or not.
We disconnect quickly because we’re so digitally oriented. Think back over the last 10 years. Are you quicker to anger because of the wall of separation between you and another person? That even though this person is close to you in real life, you have a desperate need to fight with people on the Internet, leading the charge into hell and forgetting that you are creating some awkward cocktail parties…….. because being right over whatever it is has become more important than empathy.
I don’t think this happened in any organized way. It is the nature of becoming digital. Too many relationships go up and down because of Facebook and Twitter, because everyone can see how you interact with everyone else. You’re not only taking into account how people treat you, but how you observe them treating everyone else. I don’t care if you have me a kidney 20 years ago. I will not let you get away with saying watching two men kiss gives you nausea….. and that’s why you’ll never go to a gay wedding.
Someone from my high school actually said that to me. He apologized and I’ve moved on permanently. I got an apology, but I want no future contact.
It’s the same kind of bullying I endured in high school, and it’s just noise. It’s chatter designed to make me feel awful about myself. Imagine being so certain that God is telling you that you need to tell queer people they’re going to hell. Imagine that message being preached to a church that has 40,000 members. Imagine that message going to all churches that have 40,000 members. Then imagine going to high school 15 minutes away from that church so its bitchy little mean girls all go there. I can’t think of anything more psychotic than getting into a performing arts high school and being homophobic….. especially if you were in theater. Even the straight kids are queer.
Probably because actors have to be two-spirited anyway. It’s the full range of human emotion.
I think it’s notable how fast I’m putting together what has happened to me over my life and how it is affecting me now. Being gay in Texas is a rough gig, and it always has been. I am not oppressed. WE are oppressed. We did not create the system that hates us, and we can’t really do anything about it due to the 80/20 rule…. That 20 percent of the population has to convince the 80% they’re right.
………over things that shouldn’t be legislated.
Thomas Jefferson is rolling over in his grave, because his ideas of conservativism was that the highest government in the land would be the equivalent of a school board. Just as little legislation as possible. He would be incensed that conservatives were trying to parent the whole nation. You don’t get individual freedoms if it’s perfectly acceptable to treat you as if your entire personality is a sin.
Sometimes I wish that the US had lost the Revolutionary war because the Commonwealth countries are so much more progressive than we are. I would deal with Boris Johnson a lot better than I’d deal with Ron DeSantis (I’m assuming he’ll be the nominee because more people are being convinced he’s an actual criminal every day. Hiding classified documents near water? Obviously he’s a genius….. we knew that when he looked directly at the sun during an eclipse. Don’t get me wrong. Hiding documents in your house is always wrong. But putting them near toilets and sinks is a special kind of stupid.
I also think it’s great he lost the E. Jean Carroll case, because that judicial standard says that it is more likely he’s guilty than not. This is different than a criminal trial, because “beyond a reasonable doubt” is a higher standard than a “preponderance of evidence.” The best example I can give of this is FBI and CIA. FBI collects data that has to stand up to scrutiny in a courtroom. CIA has no law enforcement capability. They collect data and return it to Congress and the president. Therefore, their information only has to be analyzed in percentage of sureties on outcomes. To me, that is the difference between judicial standards in American courts as well, because nothing in intelligence is beyond a reasonable doubt. Those issues change like a CNN stock ticker.
It’s too quiet in here. I put on the soundtrack to Argo The theme in the bass is about to drop, and that’s the best feeling I get with my headphones. The bass of the strings….. omg…. Fabulous. Although my favorite track is “Hotel Messages.” Hard to describe, just listen to it. I’ve been trying to learn the whispered rhythm for years.
Second favorite is The Mission, but Hotel Messages is all you get because I want you to actually watch the movie. 😛
I know the score intimately because I had to memorize it to get it out of the way while I’m writing. I don’t want to think about walking bass, suspended chords, etc. I had to do all that stuff independently, otherwise you’d just get an entry full of bad music theory with my third grade education on the subject. No open fourths. Rules are made to be broken. That’s kind of my limit.
I love movies about intelligence set in the Middle East, because that kind of music fills me up. The melodies are haunting because they’re not using a Western sense of chord structure. It’s also different hearing Middle Eastern music with a full orchestral arrangement vs. a couple of people.
Argo was all written by a composer named Alexandre Desplait, and he’s done a lot of movie scores…. But all middle eastern spy movies have that vibe. The music in Syriana, Beirut, Three Kings, etc. is just so complex. Speaking of which, there’s a great documentary on Amazon Prime called “The Sounds of Bond” or something like that, and it’s incredible. I like Bond music, too, but it is secondary to my love of strings moving to the notes you don’t expect.
The one thing you get with American music that’s not so prevalent in the East is a good Picardy Third. It’s the term for when a piece is written entirely in a minor key, but switches to major for the final chord of a line or piece. “Coventry Carol” is a great example of this.
Comparing Hotel Messages to Coventry Carol and the difference between how scales are used is apparent.
So, just another reason to love intelligence. The soundtrack to their lives is better than everyone else’s.
I don’t have a bigger job right now than to look at who I want to be with as much passion as I can muster. I need to release guilt and shame, and move into the next phase of my life. I’ve kept it at bay long enough. I have a doctorate in being single by now, and in some ways I’m just as dumb as ever, but the key is to always make new mistakes. I am tired of all the internal punishment I’ve given myself and am trying to work through all of it so that issues stay resolved and flashbacks can’t pop up, because they don’t mean anything anymore.
I want to be able to look at a memory without reliving it. I do this most often through this blog, because I only have to write it once…….. but I have somewhere to go to read and reread and reread until the emotions that come up for me feel very far away. It depends on the issue as to the timeframe, but desensitizing myself is much easier when I have a handle on what I actually thought instead of relying on my (very) fallible memory……. Or maybe it’s my fallible memory.
I CANNOT CHANGE THE STORY I’M TELLING MYSELF.
Do you see how it’s so much harder for me to get off track when my memory of what I was thinking during certain times in my life is infallible? Do you know how many times I’ve had to use the “Search” feature on this web site? It is so helpful that my memories do not bleed together and warp, because rereading my own work gives me a general idea of what happened when. Do you know how embarrassing it is to have to basically Google yourself because you’re so ADHD you couldn’t remember a date if your life depended on it? What saves embarrassment is being able to recall things accurately years after the fact, because I’m not speaking off the cuff, and not speaking for anyone else…… keeping in mind that this is only a record of what I was thinking, and I cannot be a fully reliable narrator because I’m only going on the information I have. Because I know I’ll never reach perfection, I strive for excellence. I will never please everyone. Fact.
Something has changed in me this year, and now I can put my finger on it. I feel more comfortable in my skin because I’m older. I do have wisdom and experience to pass on to other people who are probably smarter than me and already have this stuff figured out, anyway…… this blog is for the ones who don’t.
This blog is for readers who know they’re train wrecks and are actively working on the problem. I don’t know any perfect people, so I know I’ll never get there…. But what I can control is the amount of time I’m willing to dive into the wreck. What I have found that works the most effectively is to be present for every awful feeling you have. If you work it out in your mind, the next time those emotions come up for you, they won’t hurt as much. Lean into emotional pain like a deep tissue sports massage where you get beat up for an hour and a half and somehow feel amazing.
I’m passionate about getting enough sleep more than anything else. When I don’t give my body time to repair itself, I am worse off both physically and mentally. You won’t notice I have CP (probably) until I get very tired. The ability to hold it together is at zero. I fall more often over things I don’t see. I miss steps both up and down. It all hurts when I fall, but I’m used to it. I don’t really have another choice, so I need to come to peace. Being angry at myself is the root cause of all the negative I’ve put out into the world, another universal truth. I am cleaning out my closet. Let’s get down to business and let the real Leslie Lanagan (please) stand up.
It feels different to stand up than it did when I was 20, because if the other person was slightly displeased, I’d go right back to apologizing for my existence. Now, I realize just how accepting my friends are (or not). This is not a slam, because I’m generalizing over hundreds of people including Facebook friends. It’s a spectrum, right, because no one has the same opinion of you on every issue. I have my inner circle, and they’re signal vs. noise, a line I picked up from a web zine in the early 2000s, but I repeat myself.
It’s not that I don’t value a lot of people’s opinions. I most certainly do. I just don’t have room to take on the emotions of more than a few people at once. I have to be absolutely open and vulnerable with them, which takes a lot of stamina, but they’re doing the same thing for me. We are each refilling each other’s social battery because we’re lightening each other’s emotional load. It’s also making sure that the give and take is roughly equal, because I know I’m a handful at times. If you’re the one that’s on my six, I sure as shit am on yours. I have an immense capacity for gratitude because it fills all my empty places. I smile more.
I am passionate about making myself smile more. Pick any one of my entries in the last few months and you’ll see quickly that I’m going through it….. and keeping on keeping on. My chin is up. I just need to keep it that way. The God part of me, my third person omnipotent point of view, hates watching me go through all this- and accepts that it is necessary. That POV is also responsible for a lot of what I’m experiencing now, because I’m only omnipotent regarding knowing what I’m going to do. There are too many permutations to even guess what’s going on in other people’s heads. Heuristics come in after you’ve told me what you’re experiencing because I’m relating your story to every one I’ve ever heard on the topic; I’m hoping that the next thing that comes out of my mouth is relevant to your situation and/or emotional state. #fingerscrossed
I get so embarrassed when what I’ve said is wrong that I withdraw, but I don’t need people to tiptoe around me. I need them to give me time to digest. Your problem with me is what it is; I can’t do anything to change what’s happened, but I can change the future by being willing to talk about all the things that are bothering me…. If I know you have my back. My work to do is turning down rejection sensitivity dysphoria so that I don’t make every mistake I’ve ever made a noose around my neck.
Turning down RSD would turn down a whole bunch of things…. Mostly social anxiety, but I’m sure it would be more than that. I could stop getting into knock-down drag-outs even when no one is in the room. When I fight myself, it is gloves off. I’m tired of knocking myself out because I can’t get up as fast as I used to.
I don’t have any fight left in me, and now I’m trying to find out why I ever got fight in me in the first place. I am aware that women taking back their power always looks like rage, but at the same time, I’ve said things that took all the velvet off the hammer because I don’t react like a Southerner anymore. DC is the South (technically), but Oregon sure isn’t. It’s not that I’m equating Portlanders to being mean, just that I’ve lost the need to sugar coat any and every sentence because I’ve had too many instances of it creating chasms. I’m overly sensitive to miscommunication, so I spell out everything.
I am now trying to remember to edit. Not every e-mail has to be a beautifully crafted essay because not everyone loves to read.
I am passionate about reading, and right now I’ve got a banger of a book. It’s called “The Secrets We Kept: A Novel” by Lara Prescott. It’s about female spies in the 40s and 50s, a group of women there at the founding of CIA hired for the typing pool. They get noticed for their operational potential, and here’s the line that got me…. I love this so hard…… “We bonded over the belief that a life of adventure wasn’t reserved for men, and we set out to claim our piece of it.” They’re the original “Swallows,” which is code for women who use their sexuality to get information out of people. I don’t know of any programs in the US that seriously created these women…. It’s a novel. Says it right there on the cover. Sleeping with an asset is a fireable offense now (or maybe it always has been…. Not fact checking til the book is done), and the US has never been known for it. Russia invented Swallows.
Women, in my experience from talking to a wealth of people in the industry, tend to make better spies. Misogyny works for them in terms of being The Little Gray Man. They tend to stay more calm in stressful situations, because that morning her toilet probably broke, the dog threw up, and her finger was broken so she had to change the baby with one hand while maintaining the facade that she is completely fine. Tell me that woman can’t remain calm when the goods are military equipment and classified documents. She’s probably calm because this meeting sucks and she can sleep standing up. This book takes place after CIA was founded, so past Julia Child’s time at OSS. Yet, she’s still the woman I picture in all these stories…. Unless it’s by Jonna Mendez, because then I don’t have to put my own pictures on fictional characters. I’ve met her a couple of times at the museum, which is kind of cool because now the movies that play in my head are accurate.
I am passionate about Julia Child. I do not think that you can technically call her a spy, because I don’t know if every employee is called a case officer or whether different departments have different titles. In the movie Julie & Julia, Paul and Julia tell a table full of friends that they aren’t spies, they’re file clerks. This is untrue. I don’t know if Paul ever worked for OSS or not, because he said he worked for State in the movie. You don’t really have to be one or the other. They work on things together all the time, so it’s not really important to give everyone at CIA that works with state a diplomatic cover, because the way I understand it is that the allotment of diplomatic jobs we’re funding is set. If CIA takes three of them as covers, then that’s three less jobs that State can fill. So, even if Paul says he worked for State, that doesn’t mean he was never an operations officer. Julia worked for the Office of Technical Services, which is why I would not classify her as a file clerk or an operations officer (perhaps the same title, not the same function. Q does not leave the building.). The biggest thing she’s known for is creating a powerful shark repellant recipe………………. #foreshadowing
I would watch the hell out of the miniseries I’m seeing in my mind right now because of course now Julia Child and James Bond are the same person. She didn’t just create shark repellant, she rappelled down the side of a building before the Germans made her.
It’s so crazy it just might work, which is apparently carved in the topiary hedges at Langley. I hope their pants have reinforced seats due to all the turbulence.
I am passionate about understanding Trump’s documents case, because so far he’s making Snowden look like a rookie through the cunning use of stupidity. We won’t know for a hundred years what this cult has done, because all Russia and China had to do was send people Trump wanted to impress to his house. They don’t have to carry a single thing. Even if every document is accounted for, cameras that fit in pens are unquantifiable. When Aldrich Ames betrayed us to the Russians, we lost ten assets in one summer. I guarantee that Trump never had any idea that sharing information could cause all that, because he showed people those documents to seem impressive to them. He couldn’t care less if Russia or China saw military plans or lists of our assets in country, because what matters is Russia and China thinking he’s cool.
That’s what happens when you need desperately to fill up all the space in a room, constantly interrupting to make sure that the conversation is one-sided and all about his favorite topic…. Him.
I am passionate about using this platform to have a voice in politics and international affairs. I don’t claim to be an expert- far from it. But what I learn I pass on, and I’ve always been a news junkie. I don’t go a day without listening to Chris Hayes or Rachel Maddow. So, this blog is not educational, but conversational. I am politically literate, but hold no authority. It’s the process that excites me, or it will if we ever get back to one set of facts. That’s because government is about compromise, and that isn’t even possible if the parties aren’t playing off the same deck. If people are determined to misunderstand you, they will. For instance, constituents vilifying the person designated to help them (Anthony Fauci, Mike Pence). The amount of Americans that believe Trump can do his job perfectly fine from prison if he’s elected boggles the mind.
From a historical perspective, it is not as baffling to me that Trump beat Clinton as it is Trump being the Republican nominee at all. How did he beat out Jeb Bush and John Kasich? Why is the loudest political voice in the country in need of a president to the right of Caligula? This time, it is the people fiddling while Rome burns and not Nero.
Apathy gets to me. Why didn’t more people care when Trump called John McCain a loser for becoming a Vietnamese POW? Why did so many people grit their teeth and vote for Trump anyway? Calling McCain a loser isn’t even in the Letterman Top Ten List of reasons why Trump was a horrible candidate, and people are still swallowing his bullshit filled capsules.
I think that too many people are embarrassed to admit they ate two slices of chocolate pie……………….
Meanwhile, it’s only our national security at stake. What could possibly go wrong?
I am just so passionate about learning how the world works. I am not particularly patriotic, though, because I see the US as part of a larger system. The same chessboard analogy used with states can be used with countries. Problems come in when you focus too heavily on one quadrant. By the time you’ve noticed there’s a problem, the game is over. Not going to lie, I still lose my shit at seeing the military in uniform and all the things that patriotic people do. It’s just that I’m not blind to colonialism or imperialism. We’ve participated in some very shady shit. So have other countries. Therefore, I do not hold the US in a godlike position, as if we should be the arbiter of all things right and good. I think it’s good for the US to finally cut the crap on believing in all that “best country in the world” bullshit. Some things, the US does really well. Some things are a shitshow, and that’s the bargain you make in any country. Some are absolutely more toxic than others, but people are adaptable and find pleasures no matter where they live. You have to focus on the positive if you can’t afford to run.
I am so passionate about bringing light into those dark recesses. I’d love to meet women and girls in the Middle East (we ride at dawn). I couldn’t do anything to help them save holding space, being in a room for the sole purpose of letting everyone else vent. Hopefully, they’d walk away feeling lighter and I’d walk away feeling less dumb.
I am passionate about not being dumb. I do not care if other people think I faked high school graduation, I want to feel within myself that I am intelligent, so I read a lot. It’s amazing how good reading novels is for learning about the world. Something you need to know this year will invariably be information you retained from a book you read in 1998, because the story might be made up, but the writing isn’t. For instance, I learned that Charlotte had a very small airport so I didn’t have to worry about a quick connection time because I read a YA novel that mentioned it about six years ago. Books contain random facts, whether the story is fictional or not.
I am passionate about stories, my own and everyone else’s. In the end, make it a good one. As I approach the second half of my life, I’d like to think I’ve got a better handle on craft, but diplomacy leaves a lot to be desired. The juxtaposition of how we own our stories is complicated and necessary. Relationships don’t survive if one partner is trying to change the other’s story, because no one can make another person do anything. By this I mean that too many people think partners are “fixer-uppers,” and people don’t change. They just don’t. People who want to change others hang in until their partners resent the hell out of them because they’re being controlled. If the controlling partner is willing to work on it, genuinely, then try. A narcissist will never want to work on it because they’ve never done anything wrong. Once a narcissist stops getting that dopamine hit from adoration, they wall off and escape to find someone new who doesn’t know what’s about to hit them.
I think that we call more people narcissists than actually exist. This is because sometimes the relationship can be fixed. Not all bad behavior means someone is a narcissist. Sometimes, they’re just lost in their own heads and not very other aware. The mark of a narcissist is the complete lack of empathy, and the lack was there before you met them. It’s generally caused by trauma, because part of a narcissist’s schtick is being able to control everything in their environment, so they create their own reality. Everyone knows that person around which people orbit. Lots of people have that ability, and it is not inherently negative. It depends on motivation. Narcissists have a desperate need to be liked, no internal validation at all, and they cover up all those significant fears with bravado. Anything they view as negative will be very loud, and that’s par for the course for everyone….. but narcissists will evade culpability by any means necessary. The reason human relationships are so difficult is that narcissists are hard to catch until their behavior is so outrageous that you feel like you’ve been yanked backward and dropped.
I have known so many of them that it’s hard to count, and here’s how I know I dodged that bullet. I want to hear people’s thoughts and feelings. I’m strong and definite in mine, but that doesn’t mean I’m emotionally unavailable. If I come across that way, it probably has nothing to do with the conversation, or I’m too angry in the moment. I am not saying that being too angry in the moment is something for which other people should make allowances. I am saying that is my work to do. Authentic rage is a symptom of PTSD, because it generally accompanies a panic attack. I am not making excuses here, only trying to provide context. I am not escaping accountability. I just think it helps to know why people do things, which is another trait most neurodivergent people share. We’re not trying to be threatening, we’re trying to understand.
Add that to the INFJ motto……. “I’m not insulting you… I’m describing you.” It seems so mean and yet I think of it all the time as profound wisdom. People do not like explaining their behavior….. which is of course the only thing the INFJ wants to help you understand. So, legit nine percent of the world is irritating as shit to everyone else. 91% of the world has trouble speaking in our love language. It’s gotten easier for me to think of love in Greek, because I like granularity and English just doesn’t have it. I now feel solid in philia and agape, but I’m preparing for romance in whatever package it arrives….. I’m just not there yet. I say I am, but I haven’t done anything about it. I don’t want to start another relationship without knowing whether Daniel is in or out, and I made the agreement with myself to give him time to chill, which is most probably just an excuse. Stay tuned.
I’m not averse to dating, clearly, but anything beyond that scares the hell out of me. Serious relationships haven’t gone the distance for me and I feel like I should figure out why before launching into something else and realizing that eight years has probably been enough soul searching. I don’t have to be perfectly perfect in every way before I consider opening my heart. It’s amazing how long I didn’t come to that realization. In retrospect, I couldn’t handle a relationship with a woman outside my beautiful girl because I felt like those things had to come in succession. Once I’d hurt one woman, I knew I was capable of hurting them all. I needed to know if I was really capable of resolving a conflict that large, because I didn’t think I deserved good things to come into my life after it. People have accused me of not being able to let go of the past, and this is untrue. I haven’t been pining away for a straight girl and lying to cover my ass. It’s a familiar story, but it’s not mine.
It just took a really long time to learn that there were limits to us being okay, and I have no ill will. Just sadness it didn’t work out. My perfect picture of us was blow your hair back conversations, nothing about the idea of being together a romantic fire, but an intellectual one. A brain dump on both sides because our life experiences are so different.
There was a beauty in it that is beyond words. We both think big thoughts, but never the same subject at the same time. If I had to sum up our relationship in one word, it would be “asynchronous.” Our upload and download speeds varied wildly.
I feel at peace being able to look at that relationship with a third person perspective and wonder what I would do if this was a story being told to me rather than one I wrote. It helps tremendously in the way I allow myself to talk to me.
It helps me to see whether it’s true that every accusation is a confession, and I believe it is. That’s because when I analyzed where my energy was going, I saw all the accusations between us and in each case, there was an instance where we could both say the same about each other, it’s just that the reasoning behind the behaviors would be different. If you’re in a relationship with someone and you’re both constantly doing the same shit to each other, you’re going to think what they’re doing can only explained by what you felt when you went through something similar, which may or may not match up with mine and defensiveness shuts down communication. You’re not really looking at a situation through the other’s perspective and trying to deal with your anger simultaneously. When you’re fighting, adrenaline makes you react out of fear instead of respond with grace. Being human sucks, because our very nature means we can’t avoid anger at each other all the time. It’s a hope for the best situation, but I always hope for that.
Hoping for the best in life is the fuel that feeds the other fires I feel in terms of gathering knowledge. Knowledge and I are in a passionate love affair, my one and only.
I am not sure there is a thing as overcoming a fear. It doesn’t get better, you just learn. For instance, asking someone out feels like having your guts rearranged, but if you’re lucky, you’ll be laughing and smiling a minute later. If not, oh well. In the past, I would have taken that rejection and sat on it forever. Now, I don’t care if people like me or not, so it doesn’t wig me out to say to someone that I’m interested. If they’re not, I’m strong enough to handle rejection. I have been alive long enough to know that not everyone vibes with me….. although people seem to be drawn to me initially. They don’t find out what a train wreck I can be until later. It’s all good, because I won’t find out they’re a train wreck immediately, either.
We all have too much fear of rejection most of the time, because what goes on in our heads is much worse than what happens in the real world…. with one exception, the only thing that scares me.
I need my e-mail and documents to be secure, because ideas are my currency. That means one of the reasons I don’t date much is that partners like going through your phone, as if it’s some medal to be earned. Slow it down, Buster Brown.
The thing around privacy is mystifying. When you are a couple, are you supposed to let people think that you’re talking to both of us all the time? That nothing you say to me stays with me? What if my friends stop confiding in me because they don’t like you? They don’t have to. I have to like you.
I also don’t want you to read anything they asked me to keep tight and you thought it was your right to snoop. I promise you that if I’m attracted to someone, you’ll know it. Probably because I’ll tell you that so you won’t miss who I’m seeing. Jealousy is not my bag, and pushes me away faster than anything else. I’m not going to bat an eye if you see heaven on earth, either.
I have a fear of dating anyone jealous, because that’s the shortest path to getting my phone held up in front of my face while I’m asleep. I should wipe it, but it’s so much hassle. That being said, only my iPad, iPhone, and Apple Watch have biometrics. I should just move all my sensitive stuff to my Android products and eschew obfuscation.
See? I’ve overcome a fear right here. It makes me feel safe that I really can lock everything down. Anyone I date from here on out is not part of The Five (the people that know what my alternate history is about…. possibly six if Dana has been paying attention, but I don’t know and can’t.). I don’t want anyone to read e-mail in my history, because it reflects a lot that’s just not me anymore….. and it does no good to dwell on who I wanted to be, because there’s just so many variables. I am doing my best to show up without fail so that I see these changes happening. That I am creating the life I want, rather than being satisfied with the life I have. I don’t want to go anywhere. I want people to come to me. This is perfect in that my sister does not live in DC, but works here. Lots of people work in DC, so I have more than just her that drop in on a whim.
It was a huge fear to move back to DC, because I thought, “what if I don’t fit in anymore?” It couldn’t have been further from the truth. I integrated into my house and community easily. I remember that on the first day I was here, I was sitting out on the front porch and Samantha handed me a Dr Pepper. She said, “I thought I’d bring you one since it’s probably your blood type.” I told her that it wasn’t sugar free, but that she was correct. I still drank it. Let’s not get stupid. I was running a quart low.
DC started feeding me immediately, because I didn’t have to save up money to go and do things. I’ve loaded up my tablet and keyboard, writing anywhere and everywhere. If it’s not too hot, I write outside at the zoo. If it is, I write at any of the museums, I just have to keep a hoodie in my bag. Don’t wear shorts, because you’ll get really hot outside and then walk into Siberia, where you’ll be stuck in shorts for most of what you’re going to do that day.
My favorite Smithsonian museum is the National Portrait Gallery, but I like all of them. My favorite museum overall is International Spy, and when I go, I usually get a membership because it’s the cost of four tickets and traditionally I spend hours at a time, going eight or 10 times for shorter periods, and it’s $25 a visit. Belonging to Spy is a trip, because you get access to all the stuff that goes on after hours. It’s also a tremendous resource if you’re like me, and have no problem browsing at the bookstore for an hour and a half. As I’ve said before, I’m not writing a book about spies, but people who have to become them under duress. I can’t think of a better place to go than a museum who’s already bought all those books.
It was a fear to become a museum member, because I’m quite shy and introverted. I didn’t know if I would spend enough time there to warrant getting a membership. It was a combination of forcing myself to get out of the house and wanting to meet people on a different level, brain-wise. I never felt like anyone was talking down to me, and I had a lot of stupid questions so that I could learn how to ask what I really wanted to know. I actually asked the museum if they’d start a class like that for writers, but I haven’t heard from them. I don’t know enough to teach it (Spy Jargon 101), or I’d offer to spearhead the program so that it’s done by a volunteer and not their meager resources. Yes, they do fantastic things. They’re also privately funded and don’t get government assistance TO MAKE EXHIBITS ABOUT PEOPLE THAT WORK FOR THE GOVERNMENT. Ironic.
If I had time, I’d stop by and see some of Jonna and Tony’s masks before I head to DCA. They give me strength when I don’t have it. I just stare at them and think, “if they got up and did what they did, where’s my excuse?” It has to stop being that I’m afraid, because I am afraid of nearly everything.
It’s why I’m the president of overthinker’s anonymous, why I spill out possibilities regarding problems and solutions…. anything to make it where I have a roadmap because I’m so likely to be distracted. I have a concrete need to know what’s going to happen, because I feel so adrift at times. It’s never a good time for a grandparent to die, but I do feel lucky in that I’ll get to see my family in person for a few days (tomorrow through Friday unless plans change).
What I know for sure is that my grandfather’s house is not near Houston. We’ll have a road trip ahead of us- at least five hours each way. That is premium time just to talk and laugh, road tripping because of sadness, but also the fact that we’ll get to see family we haven’t seen in a long time. I tend to focus on laughs and togetherness when it comes to funerals, because what else are you supposed to do? Even when my mother died at 65 and was robbed of getting to live out a long life, I still focused on the fact that I hadn’t seen my cousins in years. It kept me upright.
The fact that my mother died so young created another fear in me…. that someone would die before I got to tell them something. It made me ramble on in e-mail without taking into account how long they were. I’m sorry to people who don’t communicate like that, but I figure if I put everything in a letter, everything you need from me is probably in there somewhere. I tend to use conversations to clarify. It’s irritating as shit to some people, so I generally ask if people like e-mail before I send them. I warn them that I’ll talk about anything and everything, and so can they.
But it’s a fear that people are just being nice, and therefore I try to get together with people as often as I can. I have a better gauge of the situation, I’m not unloading information that no one needs, even if I think they do.
It’s a fear to write to other people now that this Internet relationship has just gone so wrong. Am I setting myself up for the same rabbit hole? Have I learned enough to be able to handle e-mail responsibly and not get upset and reply without thinking?
Had I thought about it, I would have said something like, “I can see that you’re going through a lot, and have for months. I don’t want to do anything that takes away from your life, only things that add to it. I really do understand your point of view, and have so much empathy for it that I’m hurting for you.” I was too angry to respond and I did it, anyway. I think the outcome would have been the same, though, because it was so clear to me that I didn’t have a place in her life that I didn’t feel like spending more energy and attention. That I could be happy with bread crumbs, or I could take that energy and use it on someone else….. because her breadcrumbs were my morning coffee. I was seeing her emotions through my filter, because she didn’t give me any.
I don’t know why. I didn’t ask why. She said something about not fitting into the mold of friend I’d made for her, and I could only agree. It was based on times past, not times present. That made the present too hard and hurt too much. I’m not even sure she remembers who she was to me anymore, or if it even matters. What attracted her to me was great writing, and, in the end, repelled her. I hope she’ll go back and read in five years….. that maybe something will jump out at her that didn’t before. I need her to see what a mutual admiration society we had, and how I never lost my awe of her, but hers of me was gone and I had a complex about it because I knew exactly when it had gone and why it would never reappear. I wasn’t dumb about this, just too full of hope. She must have been, too, because she tried so hard. We just couldn’t make it gel, and I have to believe that I was right to step back, because I needed to take care of me. I needed to lick my wounds. Every elephant in DC knows how wrecked I am, and they are sympathetic. My bees are flat getting tired of me, but they’re the ones that need to hear all this. They live on gossip, and right now I’m pathetic. I have given them more tea than they can possibly carry…… but they can hear all the things that no one else can. I imagine that they’re flying between our houses, so I tell them to tell her she is loved. That way, I don’t walk around feeling anything except relief that the situation is bad, but it won’t get worse.
I feel extraordinarily selfish and wonder what I should have done instead, because I know it’s not what actually happened. I couldn’t live with three words a month (in its extreme), and she couldn’t live with pages and pages that she thought were telling her how bad I thought she was, when nothing has ever been less true. I thought the sun came out because she was smiling, not the other way around.
I didn’t like being blown off by someone I valued so much, and not knowing whether that’s the message she intended to send…. that blowing each other off was who were now. You would just have to see what happened on Day One to see why Years Three Through 10 were so problematic. It couldn’t have been fun dealing with me, because I hated it, too. We saw each other at our worst, and clawed back up…. just not to where it was solid enough that I could say things like “I have one of those. Lemme drop it in the mail for you.” “I’m headed to Chuy’s. You guys need emergency burritos or anything?”
No one should ever turn down an emergency burrito.
I never actually said those things, just once offered to take her to a thing and realized two others. The first is that I’d accidentally offered to take her to a Mother’s Day event and she has actual children. I don’t, and my mom is dead, so I spaced it. The second is that I realized I shouldn’t be THAT nervous, and I was. By then we’d known each other for years and years. We’d supposedly worked through all our shit. I told her the ball was in her court, and it was 2017 or 18. It’s not something I put a whole lot of stock in, because our relationship has always been virtual on purpose. How do you talk to anyone about anything? Make it where there’s no time constraints. Facebook Messenger was just as real as Skype, and back then I couldn’t just hit a button in Messenger to bring up calling. We were our real selves, and ghosts of ourselves all at once. I think that because reading her e-mails and looking at her picture brings her presence close, but of course it is not the same as being outside on a restaurant patio with frozen margaritas on the way.
Therefore, it’s a fear to write blog entries as well as letters, because I come off great at first. People keep up with me no matter what………… Keeping someone close to me is hard. I seem to have a learning curve of which I am completely unaware. Getting to know an author is tricky, even if you like them. We don’t like us very much, so good luck. 😉
So, there was the pull of having that experience with her, but no passion or drive toward it. Just a “wouldn’t it be nice?” picture floating by. In fact, it didn’t even become important until recently, because I realized that the patterns we used to talk to each other wouldn’t change unless we changed mediums. We need to prove to the other one that we aren’t scary, because that’s what happens when you’ve known someone for ten years and not at all. It’s hard to know how to grieve someone you’ve loved a hundred and crazy percent for a decade, and yet can’t tell you where she keeps her cutting boards. I opened up, and didn’t. She doesn’t know where my cutting boards are, either, but I do know enough to know that her best outcome would be never knowing that. I am not being mean, it’s just that she doesn’t like to cook enough to make that fact worth remembering. She would rather read about the things I cook, if that were a thing I wrote about. People keep telling me to put up recipes. I don’t do that. I look at your pantry and decide what the recipe is on the fly.
I have been told I could get a lot of readers by putting up recipes, and to me, that is the “live, laugh, love” of blogging.
Speaking of writing and drawing people in, that’s a fear as well. I am terrified of success, because every time I’ve managed it, I’ve torn it down out of sheer unpreparedness for life. I barely manage without a partner, and yet I’m still alive….. mostly because I’ve spent so long telling myself that I can be independent, and finding out that ain’t necessarily so.
I am coming to terms with significant fears about my mental and physical health, that I’m not doing so hot on either plane and don’t yet know what it will take to fix it. Nothing is so horrible that it needs attention tonight, I’m just saying. I have a lot of appointments to sit through in which I try not to get worried as we run the numbers on treatment. Some of it isn’t even treatment. I just need to join a gym. No one would say that I needed to lose weight, even me, but I have specific needs in a trainer. I need to strengthen all the muscles that control balance.
My fear touches a little bit of everything, and I am trying to get stronger day by day. It sometimes feels as if I have a mountain to climb and no boots, but I’ll get there one way or another. I do have a spirit that leans into the divine, so right this moment it’s all about letting mystery guide me rather than fear. I want to see where I’m going, without being so impatient to get there that I repeat the same mistakes.
And now we’ve arrived at my biggest fear…. that I will stay the same.
I would not be the person I am today without my father’s father, and I am slightly unmoored at his passing yesterday. I say “slightly” because he was 92. At that age, it’s never unexpected, and he was ready to go. He had a health problem serious enough that to put him through the treatment was to make his chances of survival worse. He said he wanted to see Mary, my grandmother, and we were all at peace with it. Still sad, but happy that he got to make his own decision.
It reminded me of the last time I talked to him about a death in my own family. I have never seen him come unglued, and he was sobbing when he told me he was sorry about my mother. I think it’s because he’d known her since she was a little girl, and losing your child does not follow the natural order of things. It doesn’t matter that my mom and dad divorced. He was just as much a part of her life while the marriage was happening. I am grateful for nothing about my mother’s death, but see a silver lining in processing that grief with him. It made me feel less alone. I’d known her for so many less years. We chatted about “Option B.” He said he thought it was written for younger people. I agreed in sympathy. By then, he’d lost my grandmother and we were both sad and lonely. Leaning on each other was a golden thread between us.
When my grandmother died, we became closer because of the phone. I hate talking on the phone, and he didn’t like doing it much, either. Not a computer person. So, there we were, the two biggest introverts on earth, not really wanting to talk to anyone and making conversation, anyway. We found connections in movies, writing, and that there were five Gospels including Rachel Maddow…… both very religious and very liberal, two ideas that don’t always make friends but should.
My granddad worked for Lone Star Steel, the largest company in his area while I was a baby, but has dwindled now. He was the corporate version of me, writing copy and taking pictures for the steel plant. Then, he began writing a story about our family when I was older, starting with the ancestors from Ireland/England and filtering down to me and the rest of our generation. That was the original idea that my story was worth something. My granddad wasn’t rich and famous, yet my dad has five volumes on where we came from and where we’re going.
I see my story as the same thing- I’m not rich and famous. I just live here.
Therefore, my story is not valuable to everyone, but to some it is priceless. My grandfather taught me that; write it tight, shoot it anyway. The fact that copy, pictures, and videos exist may not matter right now, but it will in five. Get people while they don’t know they’re on camera to make sure that there’s at least a record that someone was there, they don’t have to talk.
Music can say what you can’t.
I didn’t get much of my theological upbringing from him, but I did get his dry wit and delivery. If there’s anything my grandfather and I share, it’s being the quietest person in the room until we’re engaged…. and then it’s generally an acid funny comment that you may or may not have been meant to hear. 😉
My granddad gave me someone in the world I could look at and say, “yeah. I’m his. No DNA test needed.” My dad is more extroverted than I am. My grandfather is where I got my style…. which is mostly to be entertained by everything, just watching and absorbing. We both get into moods where we want to hold court, but that is not our default setting. We want to cook. We want to read. We want to watch videos of PBS and the BBC.
Seriously, go find something to do. “Two Fat Ladies” is on.
I’m going to close with a video, but not because it’s of me. It’s because he made it. The video is of me being born, but the first few minutes is all made up. That’s because I was born five weeks early (my mother says eight) and at 9:59 in the morning, so NO ONE was prepared. My mom hadn’t even gone through Lamaze.
And when you watch it, please remember my family. Nearly everyone in the video is gone except for me and my dad, which makes it all the more precious. Please note my grandfather’s voice in the beginning, because it’s one that I dearly love. Remember him as young and handsome and funny as he was.
I feel that I know intimately how handsome he is, because he helped make me. 😛
Describe one simple thing you do that brings joy to your life.
I don’t tend to write short essays, so I’ll tell you about all the things that bring me joy. I need to write this out because I am not experiencing joy in my life at all right now. I’m in DC while I have an emergency in the family going on, so I’ll probably leave next week for Texas. Right now, though, I feel the weight of being far away, and I won’t know anything until I see it. For those who are worried, my dad and sister are fine. I’ll give you more details, I just don’t know whether the word is public or not. Let me clear that up first, and then I’ll let you know why I’m going. It won’t be information that needs to be kept tight for long. Just know that I’m going through a thing, and remembering joy helps.
The first thing that’s giving me joy is comments on my web site. Some of them come from readers that post here and are public. Most likely, I’ll get an e-mail. I got one this week re: my beautiful girl that will live in my memory forever…. “how could she deny you the one thing you love, which is her?” It didn’t make me feel joy because of the situation, only that I was able to connect…. to write it in a way that would make someone say that. The reality is that she didn’t deny me anything. I chose to walk off because of the things she was doing that hurt me, because it didn’t make the fantastic less so. I have lots of stuff from her that reminds me every day of how much I just love her to pieces. That’s enough.
I want more e-mails that kid me about our favorite genderqueer Instagram influencer, my Bozo the Clown red hair, and my Dalek winter hat. I want less e-mails that say I’m goading and provoking. People have issues with each other. Full stop. I can’t go on pretending that our problems are small enough not to talk about them. On the flip side, I indeed got impatient over time because of exhaustion. But though I was exhausted, I wasn’t actively trying to provoke her. I just wanted her to pay attention, when there’s no reason she really should have. It’s what I wanted, not what I deserved.
But to have someone who doesn’t know me say that they see me? Priceless. That’s the message I need- that I am not perfect, but redeemable. This internal freakout was eight years ago, and I’ve been fighting against the tide ever since, because I didn’t know where we were and I didn’t have a map.
So being reminded to take in joy is very important. It’s taking away the sting of this family emergency, losing my Richard from Texas, and that I’m in DC typing all this. The cure for every one of these things is time.
I focus on the joy that it will never be over with someone I have loved this much, because she’s here whether she meant to be or not. I tease her that I even have a t-shirt with her picture on it, not her but a symbol that represents her. I can’t tell you what it is in case it’s identifying, but I will tell you that the pic is similar to a T-rex cuddling a stuffed bunny. That level of incongruous, anyway. My Kindle library is littered with books she likes, both recommendations and presents. What I have to say to that is she needs to pick out all my books from now on, because she reads me so often that she picks up on these things easily.
Karin Slaughter and I are a little bit alike in that we walk into the darkness with our Southern style. I have never been more surprised than I was at hearing her voice. Those books come out of that mouth? Seriously, it’s a trip.
I am fully able to accept that the dark and the light feed each other and make the other feel more extreme. I wouldn’t be hurt if I had not felt that level of joy and could remember what that was like. But I never knew if the things I did elicited the same reaction…. the same reaction that it was from me. I tried to be as creative as possible, and I hope that’s one of the things I got wrong, that I thought because we had conflict it wasn’t fun to her to reflect on the parts that felt right.
There was no persuasion, no changing her mind. There was only letting her be her. If I really loved her, it had to be dependent on her….. not the idea that if I just kept at it, things would fall into place the way I would have wanted. It’s the craziest thought ever, because I can flat hear a “no.” I didn’t do much to prove that almost a decade ago, but I prove it every day now.
I truly believe that I’m forgiven in the macro, but not the micro. It’s scary to say the thing you’re most afraid to say. I feel bad that I stepped all over her ass for explaining what was going on with her in the moment, because I was angry that she’d read a volume on what I was going though without acknowledgement of what I’d said. It’s not that I didn’t feel empathy, it’s that I could have written the essay on what she was going through. I wasn’t angry that I wasn’t a priority. I was angry that I was never a priority. No one is that busy when you’re that excited to meet someone at first.
I certainly don’t think I gave her the same amount of joy, but I can’t do that, so it’s time to take those lessons and build a solid friendship with someone else. I couldn’t live the way I felt anymore, because no one does well with that much uncertainty. Are you the person that’s been my friend for 10 years and wants to move forward without carrying all this shit around?
She said no, and that’s fine. But she couldn’t expect me to stick around forever. Toothpaste does not go back into the tube. I got rid of all the feelings that needed to go, but all the other ones stayed. I will never be the person she needs me to be, because my emotions regarding her will always be larger than hers for me. I have always hoped that I was wrong about that, but I’m not.
I handled it like building a relationship with an ex rather than a former friend because I had land mines that were painful when stepped on that she mirrored…. a problem with me on the opposite end of the spectrum from seeing that I was treating her like an ex because I had to. I needed her to see that I understood where she was coming from and where I went wrong. I needed her to see that resolving the issue made it where I could talk about a flashback without attaching emotion to it. It didn’t make the issue unresolved. Triggers made it feel unresolved in the moment, because I was seeing something from the past and snapping out of it.
It ended like she was an ex, too, because there are some things that are very, very difficult to come back from and trying to be friends where there was attraction before is one of them. Neither party really believes that the other has changed, can’t believe that the other person genuinely loves them for them with no belief about the situation is held except that being together is better than being apart.
I didn’t treat her like an ex because I suspected that she wasn’t telling me the truth, that she was hiding her real feelings, or anything that sounds as schizo as it would be had I done it. I did it because that’s how I knew how to relate. That’s how I could rebuild and eventually not have to treat her like that anymore because I didn’t need it. The emotions I had to get rid of were gone.
But that doesn’t mean that going forward, I’ll love people the same way. This was completely unique and a little bit crazy, but completely worth it. 10/10 would recommend, no regrets. But that doesn’t mean I want to make more memories, either. I’m done if she doesn’t want to show up, because I’m tired of getting blamed for having feelings. There were many things I saw that made me know it could go this direction, but those are just for me.
She has always been just for me, my Raggedy Doctor. You never forget your first Doctor, and you never forget your first Pond.
Stories That Are All True 