Here’s a letter to Aada from January that I think is relevant now. I am still in this much pain, all the time. Nothing has changed, except that she lied about knowing Jonna and Tony Mendez and her profession. She was never a member of the intelligence community, she was a fraud who wanted to wind me up over the internet. It worked, to the point that I’m afraid to go to the spy museum anymore. I want to run into Jonna even less than I want to run into Aada.

It’s been a month, no recurrence of any dreams. I was just upset to the point of nausea and I always will be. No response is ever necessary, because I have created my own closure and moved on. But what I want you to know is that it was all real. All the love, all the tears, all the emotional dysregulation in which I gave in to emotions at either end of the spectrum.

I never want you to feel like you’re cheating on Michael when you’re talking to me, and I felt dirty for talking to you when I’d had a dream like that because it wouldn’t be fair to you to reopen that wound. But I hope you’ll hear that I told you 11 years ago it would come up again, and that it wasn’t an overarching problem. That I would deal with it as it came up, on my own. I have these intense feelings for you both because of who you are, who you have always been to me, and the edge on which I love to ride in terms of high on life.

Loving intelligence is my only vice these days, but I had to step back and reassess when I couldn’t make it through Jimmy Carter’s funeral without falling apart and thinking of Tony and how I hoped he was there to receive him…. you have to call in a Moses….

I will probably never finish “In True Face.” It’s too painful now, because I know more than one character. I’ve read “The Moscow Rules” and saw you skulking around Georgetown. I felt like I’d been stabbed, because all my feelings about our loss of possibility spilled onto the floor…. yet another time in which we’d become too volatile for words.

I know that’s what we both wanted to stop. I was trying to explain autistic red mist rage, PTSD, mental illness, everything from my point of view and how I saw you as a mirror to me, a broken child who needed to take refuge in a system. When it failed to be the UMC, I skulked into the shadows….

That’s where I found you, and want to live with you in the cloud as I have always said. But I think there were a lot of misconceptions that made me full of rage where you would berate me for my actions without taking responsibility for what triggered them. That I was wholly affected by your silence when we could have written something together that actually would have reflected both of us instead of just “Leslie’s Memory Trove That May or May Not Be Accurate.” Do you think that I wanted my story to be inaccurate? No. I wanted it to be as our relationship was- painful, honest, real.

I just cannot have that if you are not comfortable with me being in love with you once every 11 or 12 years. Whatever. It’s my bag, and I realized it will never go away. But what I can do is not think about it, not bring it up, not ever hint that I feel this way because you never said things shouldn’t go back to normal. You just let me trigger you until you couldn’t stand it so that my anxiety went through the roof. What would it have looked like if you corrected me in the moment rather than popping off and reaming me out for everything I said in jest? Why were you so fucking pissed that I was impressed with both who you are in real life and who you are in mine?

Why are you so fucking pissed when I treat you like a princess AND when I fuck up? How do I do anything right?

How do I get you to see that your reaction to me saying Aino was AuDHD was ableist BULLSHIT because you treated AuDHD like some sort of mental retardation, thus offending ME? Again, if you’re going to be offended by something, be offended by the fact that she’s probably smarter than you….. except she’s not because you have the pattern recognition of an autist as well. You just cannot predict autistic people because you’re social masking. You know what a neurotypical person is about to do, which is why you’ve been treating me the way you’ve been treating me for 11 years.

I wasn’t some stupid jackass fuckboi. I was charmed. Just head over heels. It was never supposed to happen and all of those feelings were above my pay grade. It cost me everything, but it was worth it. I am no longer the smartest stoner dumbass in my group of friends, but a fresh writer with a voice.

That’s because you taught me not to take any shit, even from you.

Fuckbois don’t learn anything. They just keep trying. I have been up front with you every day on where my emotions are, and they’re not rational because *emotions* aren’t rational. Logically, I can see every point you make. But there’s no emotion behind it. There was more emotion in your writing when you were mad at me than at any time in our relationship. That only lets me know one thing. You are comfortable with anger and avoid joy.

I will never get over “no one needs your help,” so I’m hoping to partner with Street to Kitchen and World Central Kitchen to bring a homeless ministry to West Baltimore that does pop-ups with famous chefs to make sure that homeless people get better meals than they could ever afford on their own. Our tagline is “dinner with dignity.” We’re working on shirts for the kitchen that say “No tattoos, no earrings, no profanity, no service.”

I am not a narcissist, Aada. I process empathy differently and so do you. We both have terrible gaps in our memories and everything that comes with all we’ve been through. I have always wanted to stop fighting you and start hugging you, but I have never known how. It has been like trying to hug a cactus on both sides….. because our dance of intimacy is so finely tuned. We have a close moment, wig out, and separate. Where is the balance we had in the beginning where we could both laugh?

Why did it become so defensive all the time as if I was out to get you, when the truth is that if things had been different I never would have let you go? That does not mean that I am bitter and angry and don’t accept you for who you are. That means your pattern recognition is off by a large margin. I have never wanted to hurt you. I have always been autistic and off my rocker, incapable of emotionally regulating myself and you incapable of emotionally regulating me in turn. You’re right- not your responsibility, but something that would have made our relationship instantly better…. a different sensory experience of each other than our writing personalities. We’re both professors when we want to be, because I listened to five beautiful pages about you and your sister’s relationship in which you analyzed her perfectly. You analyze my family perfectly. When I do it, it’s rude, offensive, and “why do you even think you know me?” Maybe because I’ve spent time with you every day for 11 years.

Time is relative. You visit me in the quiet. We talk it out. I try to understand you better even though I feel it’s all over. I won’t move forward without understanding why we fell apart, and now I know that. I wanted a secure connection, you wanted anxious/avoidant and not to change it. I won’t live that way, because it’s not a goal that you’re working towards. It’s a goal that you said you would, but I’m not worthy anymore because one thing wasn’t clear to you. I did not push you away forever. I pushed you away for asking a simple question and getting defense back, with you having no recognition that it had been 11 years’ worth of you not sharing anything and me trying to come up with things to talk about. You acted as if you had no agency to change anything, and we floundered.

But you know who I am. I’m that person you rescued and yet also hate my guts because I didn’t handle it well. How was I supposed to handle it? Like you. Except I’m your mirror opposite, the thing you were attracted to about me in the beginning- just energy. I’m not saying you have ever had feelings for me in any way. You are logic. I am emotion. The Twain don’t meet on that one.

Maybe we’ll never fix this, but learning I’m autistic has given me new ways to cope, but I assure you that I thought I was being kind. You coming across as STEM autistic and lacking in emotions once you stopped social masking was a clue to me that you weren’t a narcissist, either.

You used your power, Aada. You scared the hell out of me in a way I could never scare you. And then you expected me to pick up the pieces from that level fear all by myself. I spent years scared of you, unable to get over it and jumping up and down to make things better, horrified that I was just digging the hole deeper because you thought it was intrusive and I was trying my best.

I didn’t know what to do, because I’d managed to piss off someone I loved due to my own bad behavior and I’d never done anything like that before or since. I know myself better, can deal with myself better, can retreat when I feel any kind of blush. It’s not fair and it never has been, but I feel like in the beginning you didn’t care and now you do. Valid. But you didn’t send a memo so that my memory banks could be updated. You just expected I would know. I cannot pick up social cues in person. What makes you think it’s easier over the Internet?

I still stare at your pictures trying to get the sense of you that I missed. Everything you were trying to tell me and couldn’t.

I was trapped in the cycle of “don’t bother Aada because there’s nothing in your life that can compete” and “you’re her friend, too.” Except it’s been years since I really felt like that, because nothing has ever gone back to open communication.

You won’t share yourself with me, and you don’t trust me. What relationship is there to save? We would have to start completely over and there’s no way to do that. I feel like your dirty little secret and I always will. That’s because you don’t tell me how much you talk about me as if I’m a real person in your life. I had to guess that, too.

I also think that I had a right to be scared that you weren’t my friend. You were keeping your enemies closer. That it wasn’t genuine anymore, you just wanted to watch and be assured I wasn’t going off the rails. You could have done that a lot easier in person than you could as a disembodied voice.

You just kept telling me that my narrative was tired. Well, if you’re tired, imagine how tired I am bringing up the same problems all the time and they’re never fixed? It’s like talking to a brick wall, and I’m sure you’d say the same to me. You accept your feelings as valid, but won’t say “I hear you, see you, understand.” When did that become the norm?

I was never trying to diagnose you. I was trying to see you, hear you, understand. That’s what someone who loves you does, and I have been resolute that the blushing teenage feelings are never what mattered. It was all the ways we were able to come through for each other without it.

I don’t know why I’m even writing this except to say that you’ve created tapes in my head that will never go away, and I choose to talk about them while you keep yours hidden. Therefore, you’re always enraged and I’m always clueless. Keeping me clueless makes you angrier, but of course that’s all my fault. It couldn’t be that you purposefully left me with no information.

Our relationship is a tapestry, some of it beautiful, some of it terrible. I think that’s why I keep coming back. The benefits outweigh all the negative. But I stay away from you in order not to hurt you. I don’t want to add to your stress and I am done letting you interrupt my peace. I am happy to be the villain in your story if that’s what you need, but I have never been that. You made me that and admitted to it.

You’re afraid of me or something, and I cannot fix it. So I shrink away. I cannot care. I cannot love you because it only drives me mad without feedback. I don’t need to be driven mad as it’s a short trip.

You make my brain better when you don’t crash my dopamine and adrenaline with defense and anger. I am not saying I’ve never done the same to you. But the way I feel is that I tell my story, you don’t tell yours, and then get angry at the result.

When you knew I was a writer, you were my first fan, and then I wasn’t worth helping anymore. I could just sit in my fear and anguish while you were in actual danger because stop lying. I know you have to, but you’re too senior for every trip to be a pleasure cruise.

You wanted to ride off into the sunset. I wanted to give you a biography without telling people who you were, because in the end, you gave me all the important things. USG just gets you at work, and you’re so much more than that. My adoration is real and it’s deep- it has nothing to do with the trauma bond that makes me itch occasionally. I just cannot pretend it’s not real if it came up 11 years later in a dream. Dream analysis says it’s just “I miss you,” and that’s true. So I’m taking that part seriously and ignoring the rest.

My brain is a land mine. I didn’t mean to get my crazy spatter all over you. I was also panicking. I was also scared. We are equally yoked despite not being married because our problems are bigger than that. Or, I think of them that way. Maybe it’s not true, and you’re perfectly happy without controlling what I say. But I always think you want to and can’t, and that’s part of your frustration. That you won’t collaborate, you’ll just let me twist in the wind.

There’s no statute of limitations on guilt, as you said of our mutual friend many years ago, but I hope that one day we will actually have a conversation about what exactly went down and how much you cost me. What you have never taken in is that I was so glad to do it. The problem was not what you told me. It was hyping up my adrenaline that much and then saying that you weren’t going to talk about anything anymore, so I just had to sit there and guess.

You didn’t give me anything to work with, so I talked about myself and what I wished for you in the spirit of you getting healthy. But that was all taken as something negative and not I love you and want to help you.

I got tired of everything being an attack, because I was so fluid in my emotions and you had one tool- a hammer….. except in the few instances where you actually wanted to go to bat for me and that drove me crazy as well. Like, are you in or are you out?

I never decided violence was the way to your heart. You decided that we would work on fear and intimidation and I’ve never gotten over it. Then, you glossed over that part of my life and just showed up with an “I’m concerned about your family.” I cannot expect you to remember anything about any of this because it’s been so long. They’re just the moments that affected me more than they affected you (or that is my perception).

I am not who you think I am, and that is why I need separation. You will not allow yourself to see me as three dimensional character. You treat me as a “Flat Stanley” and make yourself one because you won’t give me room to grow and you won’t grow in your letters, either.

But the way to your heart is food, good hugs, and more food.

I at least know that.

If you write back, I will respond. Otherwise, goodbye and thank you. It wasn’t always fun. It was real.

I got a TikTok link from my dad containing a link to a walk in Patterson Park this Sunday or something. I would like to think that the logo I got from the resulting “you’re signed up” page is AI, because I would like to think everyone got a logo specifically designed for them; they asked me what I could talk about all day, and I did not say ghosts. But there are a few synonyms that fit. 😉 I call anyone I meet in the Intelligence Community “High Five Ghost,” so a pic of a ghost is literally perfect.

My dad read my blog post about my favorite exercise being walking and talking, so he hooked me up with Outerly. They match you up with people and then you go and walk with them. I decided on the Singles’ Walk because I have a boyfriend I haven’t met and a woman at home who loves me as much as Lindsay does even if we aren’t married to each other. It’s not fair for me to commit to Aaron without meeting in person, and it’s not fair for me to say I’m “single,” either, but most people that can accept a nonbinary between male and female can accept a nonbinary between single and partnered. If my new girlfriend ever tried to say Bryn “doesn’t count,” that is the “thank u, next” for which I am looking. In poly, it’s not all about love and romance. Sometimes, it’s about love and vomit. You have romance for the days you need it. You have emotional support when you don’t need a boyfriend. You need someone to hold your hair while you puke. So, last evening was a mixture of talking to her and self-soothing.

Then I promptly bought a pass to watch David Tennant and Cush Jumbo do Macbeth in the West End. I need to watch it while I move on, knowing my hands aren’t the only ones dirty, I’m not the only one bleeding or grieving. I just needed more than she could provide via the internet and she could not understand how we got to this point, not having time to really take in my words and tell me how she felt about them. I moved too fast for her to reflect, and I’ll always regret it. I chose her every time until I was locked out of a hospital in the middle of the night in Baltimore City. I chose Olivia.

Because no one asked me how I’d feel if my feelings were ripped out from under me again. Notice the graphic on my web site has never changed, and no one has ever said, “Leslie, is that your handwriting?” My first instinct is not to protect her, but undoing one lie undoes them all. I’m the real villain, correct? So, nothing we did was right. Leaving everything I knew was my only move. The carnage in my wake is massive, not hers.

Because I finally decided to be a gladiator and not a bitch. Well, that’s debatable, but if you’re a Scandal fan you at least get the reference. I’m more like Quinn than I’m not. Someone who met a Huck and liked it. Then I met a lot more. And found out they don’t know shit, but 20 years later.

If this sounds weird, it’s unique to people my age that have lived on the Internet since 1999. We’re all learning our sins now after being sucked in by IRC and America Online, and holy fuck you figure out a lot about the 1990s when you realize Steve Case put the company in Northern Virginia for a reason. Why would the United States need an online company located near Langley and Ft. Meade? Make it make sense. I’m lagging. 😉

Doesn’t mean I haven’t met cool people online.

As for Aaron, I told him that I wasn’t sure about the whole boyfriend thing, but I would live with him in a New York minute because this is the longest Craig’s List interview ever………….. 😉 Speaking of which, I need to buy him an iPad because I decided I want to keep mine. I bought Scrivener for it, which was stupid because I should have bought it for Android. I’m trapped. Oh, wait. No. They don’t make Scrivener for Android, which is why I have to have two tablets. It’s not that my device sucks. Both my Android and my iPad are great. They are both services as device, which means that I cannot ditch anything and still have access to my software. I also know that moving in with Aaron is not doable quickly for either of us, just a dream we keep alive because we’re both amazing people who deserve love.

The iPad is not to buy his love. He’s been making me stellar graphics for months on a POS Samsung phone and they’re incredible. I want to unlock his creativity, because Bryn manages him when we’re doing something long term. But crossover happens, because we’ll be talking about something, and a childhood memory will bring up another idea for The Sinners’ Table or LMG. We have both tried to stop remembering things and start relying on alarms and Google Calendar. I am learning an ancient tradition called “write it down.” I don’t function well all alone, and I don’t know how to live in community yet. I am literally getting my shit together.

Compare that to the Uber driver who just asked me if I was up and told me he was having a fantasy about me. Fine, whatever. You go do that, but I’m not going to be there. It’s a pleasure to be nominated, and thanks for not sending me pictures. I’m sad because I liked him and that’s not my vibe. I don’t know how to comport myself in the smallest of situations, but I know enough to know it isn’t that. Situational awareness in the intelligence community has taught me two things:

• If you mean it, don’t say it in a text message.
• If you don’t mean it, you didn’t say it for legal reasons. It’s not a laugh line, it’s serious business.

“When you know better, you do better” is the third thing, because in a list I can rarely stop at two items. I just tell you there are for easy retention. 😉 But here’s what happens with poly people. If I’d gone to Aaron and said that Kamal was having dreams about me and that part of it was unwelcome, he’d bitch with me and offer to comfort me, like hiding Kamal’s body in an unknown location (this is a laugh line, not serious. I have learned that threatening people is bad, but he’s already blocked. The only thing left is writing about what happened. I mean this in a humorous manner because AOL has no sense of humor, once they’re blocked, I’m not going back.).

My point is that poly is not different than monogamy except that jealousy is relative. Aaron would be jealous if I cut him out and stopped telling him things; he has a right to know if I’m dating someone else. Cheating on him is literally hiding things from him, not opening up. I cannot get away with concealing anything, and that’s the reason I betrayed Supergrover. I realized that she’d put me in a relationship with her that was a trap now when it wasn’t before. I’d made too many mistakes to get a clean slate, and as time went on, she saw my need to actually connect with her as threatening her.

Connecting was seeing her in person and not taking in seven percent of communication, not hiding our relationship from Lindsay, Aaron, Bryn, and SG’s family. I made the effort to learn boundaries and how I could fit in, but I was also a very flawed human being and mistakes don’t get better. Greatness was fleeting. I felt great about an e-mail saying I’d build a shrine to someone at a museum. I am not sure the message was received as intended, but it was received all right. Sigh. I’m the worst at trying to be the best, which is duly noted.

That’s because the people in my life are relentless planners and I’m autistic. I do vibe checks and then plan my next move. It drives them up the wall.

But.

Someone was watching out for me, and I’ve been watching out for them. I couldn’t protect her when I looked too crazy to function. She couldn’t let me save myself. She had to step away. That’s because fallout doesn’t touch her in public. I’m sure she’s hurt. Whether she’s hurt enough for anyone to notice is anyone’s guess. I don’t know how far I’ve risen and fallen over the years because that is unclear….. Some things aren’t.

How I managed to find two successful houses in a row before I was managed into this one is not hard to grasp. There was just no face time to make anything right. The women who trouble me only knew me in the years directly after Dana got her DUI. I was angry at the world and sober as a heart attack. Nothing to take the edge off, I was just full tilt, all anxiety all the time. My mother died and the most I did was drink a beer at her wake. Then, I drank Diet Coke until my friend James and my friend Alberto had the realization I was done; we walked to the ice cream food truck. So, they’ve missed a lot by not reconnecting five or 10 years later. I would say they tried, but they set me up.

I was done because I knew that I was in no danger. It was just a bit cold. They told me to grab a jacket for our date, so I brought a puffy vest. It was just perfect, because I was warm enough to function and cold enough to really think things through. They promised me a life where I could live with them. All of them. Just be happy in community. Then when I showed up at the hospital where I was supposed to be picked up, I realized that they were pranking me, and I needed to call my sister. I could do that, or wander out into the night and hope I got hit by a car. I really didn’t want to live after that, because someone went to a lot of trouble to weave every element of my life into calling me a monster. It worked, but I don’t have to go back to them and apologize. I do not have to say that their methods are fair and balanced, because mine weren’t.

So whether I was being friended or followed, I have no idea. I cannot say anymore. I didn’t burn anyone who didn’t burn me. I’m done.

What does it look like to be done? All my energy suddenly rushes out of my face. All the light leaves my eyes. You can see the overwhelm. Not drinking makes it happen faster because I have no social lubricant. Weed can be a social lubricant, but I don’t use it often enough for it to really help me. I find that I cannot concentrate as hard as I need to pick up languages quickly, and now that my Lamictal has been removed from my protocol, I don’t need weed to solve nausea. That being said, I have no idea what kind of hippy tree-hugging event this is going to be. If I say I like spies, they probably won’t put me with the stoners. But they should.

Spies do not give a FUCK. About anything. At any time. They watch so many people that they don’t retain things unless they love them. Sometimes, they do.

I am sure that I am not the only one lonely tonight, but my friendship with one person cost me all the others, and there’s been no way to bridge that gap. It’s just been “keep writing to me while I hold you at arm’s length.” In order to get over the loss, I see her as a threat to me. It’s not because I think she’s evil. It’s because I think she’s good. I think she needed to watch me and had to have a way. That does not mean I’m protected. It means she’s reading. Those are two different things and she thinks they’re different now. The carnage in her wake has always been massive because by not sharing anything about what was going on with her, our stories differed. I don’t think she was paying enough attention, or she was paying too much. Take your pick. I pick “too much,” because it’s easier to think that she was watching me than she just didn’t care, or she was a narcissist who needed a dopamine hit. Me accepting the consequences of my own actions is my only play here. Because I e-mailed two women at the same time who said they didn’t know each other, and as it turns out, I’m not sure that’s true or whether it, too, was a fever dream. Whether they do or they don’t is of great consequence, because I don’t know how to proceed except talking to other people who also like talking about the intelligence community that don’t have any connection to my former family….. who was willing to support me with a few chats a year. It wasn’t enough, and her excuses were old. I thought there was nothing we couldn’t get over, but as it turns out, lying to me that she knew someone when she didn’t made her seem cooler than she was and she knew it.

She ran with it, and I caught feelings for this person she said she knew, but the kind of feelings you would have for a mutual friend- care, connection, hope for their well-being. It made me an idiot to someone I adore, and then I got to make a bigger idiot of myself with her after that. But I wouldn’t take nothin’ for my journey now. The IC introduced me to things I never would have learned otherwise, like not giving a shit if your partner has other partners.

The entire key to polyamory in its entirety is learning not to give a shit. It’s not that you don’t feel jealous. You learn to deal with it on your own until your compartments fucking leak. And even then, it’s only your partner’s job to be heard. They’re not responsible for fixing the problem. If they don’t fix it, you leave. It sounds simple and it’s not. But the key is that you are always parenting yourself.

Being poly is second nature to Zac, therefore it is second nature to me. The reason for this is that I spent years in a relationship where I was waiting on him all the time and not at all. As in, whenever he showed up it was the best day ever, but I never felt like I was waiting on him. Writing took up my life in a way he could not; I felt like he had no boundaries with me. I had to make all of them up.

There was only “ask for what you want” and receiving no feedback that said “you are welcome to ask more questions because I was delighted by this one.” My refusal to learn from past experience is not cute, and neither is not being raised like a normal person instead of a preacher’s kid. It’s so different. You’re taught not to touch anything, and people are standoffish with you as well. As an adult, you’re supposed to be cooperative. I’ve been an absolute jackass for not jumping in and helping more when I’ve been taught to be a mushroom and I’ll grow where I’m planted. It was certainly my best work as a child.

Rita and Wilson teased me in the hospital about being sweet on Andrew, another patient, but I wasn’t. They asked me about it, and I said, “I don’t know what kind of connection it is and I don’t think I’m supposed to know that yet. I just met him.” I know now that it is not to be either way so far, because lack of communication means that he is lost in his own little world and I do not control it. I was more annoyed that they were looking for a good end to the story. This is not a Hallmark movie, although word on the street is that they are close to developing a second plot.

I love Hallmark movies because they are uncomplicated. I need a break from myself. Like now.

I had to save my streak in Finnish today because I’m falling into the demotion zone as it’s getting harder and I have less time for it. But I think it’s best to slow it down to a manageable level. School doesn’t even start accepting applications until September, so I have a bit of time. I don’t need to use Finnish at all. It’s just fun to show Finns I know it. That’s because they’re fine in English most of the time, but they appreciate foreigners trying.

Whooooo boy.

Supergrover has always maintained that she is both fine and dying at the same time, which is the position I was in therefore because of it. Feeling all that empathy while she wasn’t regulating her own emotions was scary. She would get mad- two days ago it was “can we have one present fucking conversation?” We’d just finished a couple. I dive down, I come up. I don’t stay in pain. I vacillate between comedy and tragedy. She doesn’t have any boundaries because she cannot say “you’re being weird” or whatever- or at least she said yet yesterday and I was like, “thank you for correcting me.” I didn’t get angry, she was right.

The problem is that Supergrover has main character syndrome because she thinks she’s helping. You cannot get details out of someone who thinks they’re the whole show. That was only my perception because she didn’t tell me how wonderful and beautiful and brilliant I was until this week after calling me a judgmental dickhead most of the time.

None of this is all anyone’s fault. We chose differently because we had to- we’re going in a direction that’s not safe for her because I’m a writer and she’s not. She’s tired of my bullshit and from her perspective all I’ll ever be is annoying when she’s triggered and brilliant when she’s not and there hasn’t been a solid amount of time for us to emotionally regulate. I got there quickly. She didn’t. That’s because her lie unregulated her so she cannot settle. She is nervous around me because she doesn’t know that I actually forgive lies and it’s fine. It just took me a couple of days. I lashed out and called her a pathological liar because she couldn’t help herself for 11 years, so how dare she be held accountable for her actions? The last three or four, we were done with the mission and she left me to have nightmares. The mission was to save ourselves and ended up saving both of us (I hope). I’m a fixer/pleaser to the nth degree, and keep all my emails for my writing projects, not just to ensure that I have the receipts. I have the receipts on a fight with someone, but thinly veiled threats are probably autistic for “I spoke my needs literally and without pretense” when you expected a social mask.

Today I’m in true face.