Tag: self-discovery

Staying Up

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

What could you do more of?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

For a while.

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

I was, in fact, mistaken.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is the Thursday of Our Discontent

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I don’t know how I did it.

But I have a guess.

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

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

Pack a lunch, son.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Observations, Part II

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No one thinks of real world consequences on Facebook.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But these are just my observations.

The Letting Go Show

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I said something about a Supergrover playlist the other day, that she reminds me of the color green, new life, new earth, etc. But what I needed in the moment was to release pain before I could enjoy everything again without anger or resentment. Here is the list.

  • She’s So Mean, Matchbox Twenty
    • Her clothes are on the floor and my records are scratched, but she’s the best thing that ever happened to me.
  • I Believe in Love, Indigo Girls
    • When we tried to rework all of this, each to our rendition, painted blindly in a corner, lost for ideas blinding fishing for a compliment or kindness just to bring us into view. You could not interpret me, and I could not interpret you.
  • Unwell, Matchbox Twenty
    • I wasn’t crazy, I was unwell. She’s hell on wheels in a black dress, but not by choice.
  • Hold On, Wilson Phillips
    • This is a direct result of the movie “Bridesmaids,” and it is completely responsible for making me cry and blow my nose at red lights.
  • Nobody Knows, The Tony Rich Project
    • It’s everything you can’t say, because no one wants to hear it.
  • Pink Triangle, Weezer
    • It’s the quickest way to make me sob with empathy at Rivers’ plight, because I would know nothing about the reverse….. #eyeroll
  • Not Your Fault, AWOLNATION
    • I yelled at her for so much that didn’t have anything to do with her, and that’s where I’d start if I got to meet her on the ground. Just “I’m sorry” all over the place. Alternatively, there were other times when I felt she was doing the same thing to me with no hesitation or apology. It cuts both ways.
  • Despacito, Louis Fonzi and Daddy Yankee
    • This is probably the most controversial song on the list because I loved it based on the idea that I was blogging the most innocuous things about her because no one else would think they were important and the narrator talks about writing on her body. This is what happens when you decide a song is about someone and ABSOLUTELYFUCKINGNOT fluent in Spanish. Dude is a creep, and my thought was beautiful because she was writing our story on my shoulderblades as well. I still like it, it’s just not a mutual story anymore. The ink on my skin I got from the amusement park is fading and when it goes, there’s no re-entry. I will not let people tell me one thing and do another. I want to hold your hand while the ride lasts, and if you decide to jump, my emotional support can’t depend on whether I’m happy about it or not. It can’t depend on getting things I want that you don’t, and vice versa, trying to convince the other we’re right. Relationships aren’t supposed to be THAT much work. You aren’t supposed to find dealbreakers once a week.
  • Superman, Eminem
    • This is only when I’m really angry, or I skip it. She was the equivalent of “I’m not fazed, I hang around big stars all day, It’s not a big deal to me anyway… you’re just plain old Marshall to me.” I was all “girl, you run that game. First off you don’t know Marshall. At all so don’t grow partial… that’s ammo for my arsenal.” Great at first, a shit show later. I could never recapture her attention even though I wanted to rescue her.
  • Love Game, Eminem and Kendrick Lamar
    • The chorus makes me laugh my ass off in this context. “Have a blessed day.” I am the little fuckin’ Ferris wheel and I have no shame.
  • Business, Eminem
    • I desperately want to know what it would be like if Dre and Em were us. She would drop me like a sack of potatoes in a rap battle. You can do that when you have ten years of blackmail. Alternatively, I’m cleaning out my closet.
  • Closer, Nine Inch Nails
    • It’s not about her. It’s the cry of The Timeless Child. It’s perfect when you see it in the context of abuse.
  • Dope Nose, Weezer
    • This has no particular meaning, just a good beat to make me feel good….. even if it is a little “Peter Gunn.”
  • This Could Be the Start of Something Big, Count Basie
    • I can’t not hear brass like that without thinking of her. She’s too quick. I should have put this as the intro track.
  • Church, Lyle Lovett
    • She should have joined me at National Cathedral if she wanted to see me fly like a lead trumpet. Not getting to see her face while I was riding on a high C makes me sad. She has heard me on a recording and all I have to say is that you didn’t even see the best part yet.
  • Til the Sun Comes Up, David and Devine
    • The video says more than the song.
  • Paper Bag, Fiona Apple
    • What it feels like to struggle with ***gestures toward everything***
  • Hit Me Baby One More Time, Bowling for Soup
    • Chad Michael Murray played me in a movie. It is every bit as embarrassing as it sounds, thank you for noticing.
  • This mashup. It’s too cool to describe.

Half a Line Bouncing Around

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment
  • I’m going to do another list because the dot reminds me to change topics.
  • What I have learned about emotionally unavailable people is that so much gets left unsaid, because they won’t address the issue and talk about it so that there is resolution of the conflict and/or dissolution of the relationship. Relationships rarely end peacefully, which is why I try so hard to be vulnerable. It’s not so that my pain matters more than someone else’s. It’s that if I explain fully how I feel, conflict won’t pop up. You understand intimately where I’m coming from, but you might not agree. The hard part is how to handle disagreement. It’s like learning to bench press. That’s because negative emotions feel like weight. You cannot be a wimp to carry it. The analogy would be that it’s not easy to carry an infant, either. You may not be a jock, but it helps if you can consistently lift 50 pounds.
  • Develop emotional strength to avoid anger, because what happens with cortisol is that it rushes in so fast you think you can’t breathe. Anger is powerful. There is no need for it, but conflict is also avoidable and people are fallible. Think long and hard about starting a conflict, because you never know what’s in anyone’s past and when you feel about them deeply, both your love and your anger are enormous.
  • Anger 100% leads to regret. Always. If you want to spend your life regretting what you said, go for it, but if you’re going to be that way, don’t expect people to stay no matter how bad it gets. Think to yourself “who am I to tell someone how they feel?” If you love them, you say “I gave you the right to have an opinion because I love you.” Your job is to believe whatever comes next. Actions tell a different story than words a lot of the time and exactly none of it depends on what you understand. You can’t have empathy for a story that’s never been told.
  • You will always come across as a selfish jackass to someone who can’t listen to your needs and respond. Notice when that happens early in a relationship no matter what kind it is. Even when you are a child, you are entitled to certain boundaries. It drives me up the wall when parents ask their kids to hug people, because sure as shit if they’re being abused they won’t want to and too many parents are way too fucking blind.
  • If you are going to have a child, before you do it you need to ask a very important question. How capable am I of being emotionally available to a child? Maybe if you’re an addict or have trouble expressing how you feel, use more birth control. When you know that about yourself and acknowledge it, you can make the decision to heal yourself before you start trying………. or not. But you won’t hold your injury over your child’s head, either way. Your child is not equipped to hear all your shit, and they will if it’s all about you.
  • Here’s a tip for working with teenagers (source? volunteer youth pastor): treat them as if they’re all grumpy old men- especially the popular kids, because that’s a mask they’re using to cover their anxiety. They are not the role models, they’re struggling like everyone else and they don’t know it, because they won’t talk about it to anyone, much less each other. They are not trying to fight with you, they are isolating to protect their energy. Recognize that it is the most emotionally vulnerable they’re ever going to be in their lives because too much comes at them way too fast. Treat them as such. Respect the process, even if you don’t understand it. Know when to be a helicopter and when to leave them the fuck alone.
  • “The hardest part of teaching is remembering what it was like not to know.” -Wayne Borum
  • We are all but broken children who need each other, trying to pretend that we don’t. This doesn’t show itself in just one way. We don’t allow ourselves to believe that others’ thoughts and feelings are as valid as they are. Like not thinking a monster level of neighborhood improvement came out of pain and anguish.
  • I think I just wrote another line I’m going to ponder for a while.
  • Maybe lists don’t remind me to change topics. Respect the process, even if you don’t understand it.

Adventure Time

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Are you seeking security or adventure?

I talk a lot of shit for someone who gets their groceries delivered so they can maintain isolation.

It’s stopping, though, because I feel stronger than I have in years. A lot of the last few months has been diving into the wreck so that now, I no longer feel those injuries. I haven’t made up with everyone, and that’s okay. I have tried my best, and all the other stuff isn’t my call.

I am thinking bigger these days because I’m exhausted. I have been told for years that I’m too much, so I’m going big or going home. I am sure that some people think it’s a mask to social climb, but what I have found is that if you want to be spectacular, stop hanging around people who don’t challenge you. I need to constantly up my game, and if there’s any justice in the world, karma will come to those who’ve wronged me and say to them that they lost something really spectacular. Whether that produces results or not is inconsequential. I’ve just noticed that more people will fawn over others when they’re popular than they will when they’re not. I wouldn’t be able to convince anyone I was a good writer if I didn’t believe it, and I shed a tear for Brandon Sanderson the first time I watched him on camera. That’s because he told me to keep going at a time when I was done. All the inspiration had leaked out.

A student asked him how he dealt with years of rejection and people saying he should get a real job. He said “I waited and got my moment. I was at a party and this guy asked me what I did. I told him I was a writer and he said, “oh, so you’re unemployed.” He said, “I hit the New York Times Bestsellers List last week.”

If you don’t start like me, you don’t turn into him.

Writing is a muscle. The longer you do it, the more your sentences are crafted. The only problem is that we don’t often see ourselves getting better and don’t recognize it. In my own opinion, I have made astounding progress because I’ve been in a writer’s room for 10 years. I am, therefore because of it.

Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc

I am ready to go big or go home, not because I’m taking a shot. I have been quietly plugging away for 20 years, and the Internet has changed around me. Most people don’t like reading stuff that’s this long, which is why I think I’m more popular on WordPress than I am anywhere else. First of all, WP was designed by my brother in arms, Matt Mullenweg. We both went to PVA (he’s younger), we were both in the jazz department, both taught by the same person, and both still count those years as some of the best in our lives. There will never be another Doc, and I am humbled beyond belief that he entered my life when he did.

WordPress is also where writers hang out. Writers like to read. My blog is slowly but surely gaining a bigger audience through the subreddit, the Threads, the comments on Wil Wheaton’s page, etc. Every tiny bit helps, because the hardest part of being a writer is having to talk to people and get them interested in what you have to say. A writer wants to share their stories as long as nobody asks them about it….. while at the same time suffering the weight of crippling anxiety that our friends make worse. Daily.

Our imposter syndrome makes it impossible not to want positive feedback, but bound and determined not to receive it. When I told Supergrover that I thought she had more to say on a topic, she thought I was telling her she was a shitty writer. There are entries I have memorized.

We internalize all the shit people say to us and constantly battle not to say it to each other.

I’m starting to make writer friends by the dozen, and it’s making me happy that we can mutually stitch & bitch. I think it’s better that I’m a blogger and they’re novelists, because if they want to pick up blogging tricks, that’s a different style than fiction and I can pick things up from them. However, they don’t know what I’m working on. That’s just for The Six. I added one of my family members at my grandfather’s funeral. She offered me a place to stay and an office. That’s what I mean about friends who see where you’re going and want to help.

The best part is that she’s another person I can ask questions about Foster, because I have to get his personality down. We are going to be that character. He was a C/DIA helicopter pilot in ‘Nam, one of the settings for my alternate history. By “we,” because he’s my great uncle, I want him to be both of us. I make characters of my friends so that they’ll have something autographed on their shelf that reminds them how much I love them.

It would be a plus if it was such a good idea that it made money. The money doesn’t really matter, though. The fact that someone bought it sure does. You should see how apeshit authors go when they have even four purchases. It is another profession that is absolutely relentless.

Absolutely all of it is to prove the people in our lives who said we were lazy that we actually are worth something. Because no one respects a writer until they’re Brandon Sanderson.

You just have to hold on to the thought that this is not just an adventure…..

It is yours.

I’m Getting Older

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

What’s your favorite thing about yourself?

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.

I’ve missed that feeling for a little too long.

So I Don’t Have To…

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

People don’t open up to me because they’re afraid of what I’ll write later. I am capable of taking on the world’s pain and am constantly laden. I think my blog has become a coping mechanism for weeding people out, I just couldn’t say that out loud until now because I didn’t know it was true. But it is.

There’s another level, though. It’s a shield. You don’t want what I perceived to be your behavior on this web site? Don’t be my friend. I’m also not hiding who I am or lying about the fact that I’m a blogger. We’ll have extensive discussions on what I can and can’t say and we’ll come to a peace about it. I just won’t give you editorial control. What will change is my own feelings in writing about you, and being able to sense that I’m hurting you. It changes me when I’ve hurt someone, and I don’t like it at all. Alternatively, you didn’t want your terrible words on a web site? Be nicer. I will tell your story as fairly and balanced as I think it can be, but it won’t happen overnight. It will happen through the tapestry of our lives, when sometimes I’m so full of love for you that it spills out onto the page. It might take an entry or it might take a year, but I’ll write about the bad things, too. If your choice is to walk away before you see the whole picture of anyone on this blog, you can. No hard feelings. No one is asking you to read my work, as far as I can tell. I will, but it’s like church. I’m showing you which one I go to and completely uninterested in offending you. I want to show you what I like and have no self-regulatory mechanisms, as well as things that make me babble, almost certainly brain gremlins.

I’m also showing you the very best and the very worst of me. I will take the knife and stab it further into my chest than I will anyone else’s. And because we’re close, you know I’m a blogger that talks about my life and I will never stab you in the back. I might anger you, but you knew it was coming. You also know that when the fight is over, I’ll be back to glowing about you because life is life. Relationships come in seasons and they certainly aren’t all perfect. If the hurt is bad enough, I won’t write about you at all because I can’t, then maybe when I can look at the situation differently something will come to me that reads universal above being personal. People think I’m talking about them, but I’m using them as illustrations for bigger ideas than that because I think in terms of individuals and groups.

For instance, I cannot tell you how many suburban moms probably think “why does she think I’m into all this shit?” First of all, I don’t care if you are or you aren’t. I’m going to talk about my life and invite you to do things. How do I know you’re not into it if I don’t ask? For instance, if I ask you to get a matching tattoo and you don’t like them, all you have to say is “I don’t like them” or “I’m Jewish.”

At the same time, I want to describe my life. I want you to see how madly in love I was with Dana and at the same time, the way she destroyed me (and vice versa, just differently and I cannot speak for her). Both of those things are indelibly true, written on my skin because we have matching tattoos. They’re not romantic, or they’re not anymore. It’s a Celtic knot and both our families are from Ireland. If it was her name, it would have been on my ass (it’s a stupid fucking gimmick and everyone knows it). We just decided that those kinds of matching tattoos were vomit inducing and painful to remove. We got symbols that would represent our family jointly and severally. I am so glad we did it, because it is artwork in my museum, representative of my history and I’m proud of it.

Here’s the other important thing. I don’t stick around for the other side of the story because you’ve already told me you don’t want me to hear it if you end our relationship without talking about the hows and whys. Perhaps my loved ones are all saying how much they hate me now and because I don’t care, they are free to continue hating me for as long as they want because it’s only killing them.

I do my best to make people memories so that I am not talking as if I care about the outcome of our future interactions because I can’t. I am hurt too badly to feel out next steps, and you didn’t stick around long enough for me to get over it. To ask/require that I don’t write about something is difficult because I’ll try my best, but I cannot function without blogging and you’re asking me to be less than I could be. I have to decide whether what you’re offering is worth all that.

The other thing is that you only see what I choose to show, and being able to explore these problems without talking about others is helpful because some problems are a way to explain others, using a library of images in my head from one issue to explain another to illustrate human behavior. I don’t care if that’s how you process information, I just need you not to care that I do it and it would help if you were completely unimpressed with me as a writer. Yes, it’s cool to say things like “I’m bigger in India and Ireland than I am in the US.” No, it was not cool to give my URL to a potential date only to have a fan show up for coffee. She knew me chapter and verse, and proceeded to berate me that my answers from four years ago were not the same ones I just gave in the moment, as in nothing had ever happened to change my mind or should have had the capability. After that I just wanted someone who didn’t speak English.

The pen is mightier than the sword, and I know that because when I experience physical rage, it comes out through typing. I can use my words to keep me from doing something kinetic. I see red and talk myself down.

And what people fail to notice is that if you hurt me bad enough, I will never talk about you at all, because some things are too painful to explore, even for me, even after years of experience. Nothing in my life is as it seems, but I’m not being shady in the slightest. There are some boxes in my subconscience where I’ve thrown away the key.

The way I eventually get there is dreaming, because in my dreams I have enough clinical separation to think about a problem hardcore without it affecting me physically. The way that becomes problematic is that when I have real conversations later, people aren’t following the script. I can’t stop myself from writing them, so I’m having to develop real emotional power so that I’m not quick to react when people aren’t picking up what I’m putting down…. Because that’s a trauma reflex.

I’m quick to react because I think I’m being abandoned and I will do anything to prevent that pain in myself, most likely pushing you away first so that the story I’m telling myself cannot be that you left. It would kill me.

And I just figured that out by writing.

So, in effect, Ireland and India are the ones to whom I’m speaking, and I allow you to listen (speaking to my real friends and family). Words are precious and I’m choosing to let you read my thoughts. To me, when you give me blowback, it means that you’re allowed to have opinions and I’m not, and you care more about India and Ireland than you do about me.

And I just figured that out by writing, too. I explained me to me so that I can grow from where I am and not have to repeat the same pattern. I can age, letting go of the things that no longer serve me. The rate is getting faster because I have less time now than I did 20 years ago.

When I’m looking for friends now, it’s a different capacity, because they’re the ones I want at my funeral because someone has to say nice things and it might as well be because they actually loved me out loud and where I could feel it.

Most people get frustrated that they can’t win with me while also not asking any questions at all, just running around shooting arrows in every direction while I am standing there fucking holding directions but my opinion doesn’t matter. I am not dictatorial or anything, it’s that I own half a problem. If you’d rather wander around in the dark rather than trying to understand me, your choice.

But don’t be offended when I give India and Ireland the map instead. They care, so you don’t have to.

I Would Have to Build One, First

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

How would you improve your community?

If you are one of the three people dying laughing right now because you know what an inside joke I’ve just made, you’re welcome. Tell the others, except Steve. Nobody does shit to David like that.

You have to go back decades with me to understand that paragraph, because it originated when Lindsay and I ended up in the same Constitutional Law class at University of Houston (I had a full time job and she was five years behind me, so she caught up easily). Not for nothing, she got a better grade in the class than me and I destroyed her on three of the four tests. The only one I blew was after my girlfriend had been an asshole to me that day and I couldn’t refocus. I came back with like a 102 on the final, which is the only reason we’re still cool. Between that fight and teaching my cat to wake me up at 0530 by sticking one claw up my nose (yes, really), I would have had good authority to leave well enough alone… and missed all the good things she brought into my life later.

It’s why I held my own beautiful girl in my heart for so long, but the writing prompt today reminds me that I put her down to make room for community improvement. If she does the work, the key to my clubhouse still unlocks everything. If she doesn’t, she’s not dumb enough to show up regardless. We both know it will end up exactly the same way…. But showing up scared, willing to be weird until it’s not? That’s not the clown shoes, that’s the tent. That’s the whole show, and I am the world’s best audience.

My job now is to find someone who does have emotional bravery and isn’t afraid to use it, because I think she just thought that she could go back to being a fan, just dropping in and out like people I’ve known for five minutes. I can’t do that. If you know me at all, you know I can’t do that. My love for my friends is gigantic, and I don’t give it freely because it’s too much energy to spend on anyone who doesn’t want it. I want friends that want me. Be a fan. Just don’t tell me you’re reading and what you liked, because it will cut me like a knife thinking of all the times I wished you were my sous…. And that line goes out to quite a few more people than you might think. Didn’t Tony Bourdain say something like “a sous chef with a criminal mind is a thing of beauty?” If you’re my ride or die, this description probably fits, and has for a lot more years than this blog has existed. But it’s not NOT about my beautiful girl, either.

Keeping in mind that my analyses of our problems are likely stupid assumptions because they’re all I have to go on, my guesses are educated. That’s because I have analyzed the problem through heuristics that have come at me since I was born- patterns that people follow regardless of income, social status, job, seniority at job, etc. Communities and people are universal. You can be President of the United States and a hurt child simultaneously, because every adult that does anything is a hurt child, just bigger.

That whole idea is how I am helping my community. With all that divides us, we’re just all frightened, hurt children who need each other while at the same time, insisting we don’t.