AITA?

September 12, 2023 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 5 Comments

It’s not really a question. I know I’m an asshole a good bit of the time… or I seem that way, because I’m direct and don’t sugar coat anything. I live the mantra of “be kind, not nice.” The difference is that “nice” says “oh, it’s okay” no matter what the other person does or says. “Kind” says “these are my boundaries. If you want a relationship with me, here’s how.” The reason it’s kind and not nice is that it’s counterintuitive. It’s hard as hell to have conversations about emotional boundaries and no one likes them, so let’s just avoid, avoid, avoid. That’s when a problem goes from small to enormous. I talked about that this morning when the daily writing prompt hit me hard…. and then something else hit me harder.

I don’t use all my e-mail accounts all the time, because I’ve gotten lazy and don’t authenticate every e-mail account on every device. It hasn’t been a problem until today.

I missed an e-mail from “The War Daniel.”

It’s been sitting there since August 25, and I know him. He probably thinks I’m mad at him when I just didn’t see the e-mail. I mean, yes. I’m totally mad at him and he can take a right….. and then I think, “the reason I say ‘take a right’ is that I got it from him and I hear him in my head every time I say it. Might want to slow your roll there, hoss.”

For those just joining us, Daniel is my ex-fiancee. He broke off the engagement in a fit of rage, but the fight was so worth having that it was good he just left. His daughter is trans. I’m bi. He didn’t know shit about either, and thought I was trying to fight him when I was trying to reach him. He couldn’t see anything except his own pain, which I do not discount. He’s an addict. I know from addicts. Bipolar presents the same and I’ve been a line cook for years. I’ve wondered if the reason someone didn’t show up for work is that they drank themselves to death. Daniel’s alcoholism is absolutely that severe, because he’s a combat vet. It’s a long row to hoe for both of us. That being said, I have the skills to be in a relationship with someone that traumatized because for some people, that level of addiction is the worst thing they’ll ever witness. For me, it’s Tuesday.

He’s equipped to handle me because he’s the equivalent of a nurse practitioner. He knows from bipolar. I am sure that he’s seen a thousand cases over the years, because if you don’t have it and you’re an addict, please get in line. Your diagnosis will arrive shortly because alcoholism will induce it. Alcohol is the pitocin of the whole operation. Congratulations, it’s mental illness.

The e-mail only said “checking on you,” and my reply was equally innocuous.

But it doesn’t take away from the fact that he had the courage to show up. He didn’t make excuses or apologies. He checked in on me.

That’s something.

It’s something that could lead to something else, or not, and either way it’s fine. I’ve had enough distance from actually being asked to marry someone and having it blow up in my face later to forgive something like that. Here’s why it’s so easy. I know Daniel was in a lot of haze and confusion, and he won’t be completely competent to make any decisions like that until the fog clears out of his brain. I know it like the back of my hand. He is not fine. He will be fine.

As I said months ago, “what kind of partner would I be if I gave up on him right now?”

I choose to acknowledge his humanity now so that I can acknowledge his divinity later. I hope we’ll get to have that conversation, but I’m not banking on it. He’s just turning over in my head because of the e-mail. I honestly haven’t thought about our situation, because of his alcoholism. It’s not that I’m unfeeling or uncaring, but Supergrover and I discussed it and we agree that family and friends are not the people to help someone out of something like that. I had to let him go- and the hardest part was not being able to take him and drop him off at rehab. Not being able to go to family days. It would be the case no matter what, because I don’t live in the same state.

I didn’t just pick him up after he fell off a turnip truck, either. He’s been my friend since second grade. He was my first boyfriend in any official sense, a badge he wears proudly. He doesn’t care that I’ve been with women since. He’ll wear rainbows and shit as easily as I will. It’s not broad strokes he has problems with. It’s the fact that he’s not queer at all. I am not saying that to slam him or make him feel bad, it’s just that his frame of reference is completely different. He does want to learn, he was just dealing with too much at once.

Having completely spiraled out in the same situation, I have a lot of empathy. I honestly cannot hold back forgiveness because I am so sympathetic to what happens when everything conspires to make you crazy. Daniel is not as fabulous as I am, though, because he needs alcohol to be that level of crazy and I can handle it all on my own….. the badge I wear proudly.

I hope I’ll have the chance to teach him how to love me a second time…… because everyone sucks here. Placing blame will get us even closer to nowhere. We both pop off and regret. We both love hard. It remains to be seen what will happen, because I don’t put a lot of stock into three word e-mails….. except one I got from the aforementioned Supergrover that I would like to forward to Daniel because he doesn’t know how enormous it is and I do:

Also. Thank you.

This Might Be Short…. Or Not

September 10, 2023September 10, 2023 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Name the professional athletes you respect the most and why.

Before we get started, today is my birthday and tomorrow Lindsay is taking me out for dinner because she had a meeting and was able to swing it. I love that we manage living in different cities so easily because she works here. I’m not the only reason she fits in. She knows the city better than I do. Also, I did write yesterday. It was just so bad and rambled off into nothing that I thought, “I don’t even like what I think today. This blogger sucks.” It helps to focus on elite athletes and people who think like them.

In a lot of ways, this city knows Lindsay better than I do, because I do not walk in her circles, often rarified air. She and I are perfect for each other the way Supergrover and I are in that we can be objective about what’s going on in the other’s life because it doesn’t affect our friendships at all. I have no official Washington power and wouldn’t use it if I did. Therefore, either one of them could say anything to me and it wouldn’t be boring. Lindsay drills down into policy all the time, and I’m neurodivergent and a paralegal in the state of Texas. I can hang, and I can nerd out just as far as she can. I just don’t get paid to do it. I can advise without being involved. I would be very happy working for Lindsay’s organization in DC, but I wouldn’t have the relationship that I have with her if I took the job. Same with Supergrover. Better to listen to her than to think I can do a thing. Since they both suit up to play, it’s fun being the opposite side of them. That reminds them taking a minute to enjoy a nice meal and an expertly made cocktail is a good thing.

Lindsay and I have this great relationship where her interests and mine line up, so we get along like we’d just met yesterday. At the same time, when I look at her I see every iteration. I see her inner child and try to remind her of it when she’s stressed out from all the things it takes to be her. We have a very West Wing relationship in that she used to be Charlie, the body man, for Annise Parker and I would be great at being hers…… or I think I would. I would probably end up getting fired. I’m good at being the Charlie she only talks to over the phone. 😛

Explaining how I feel about Lindsay explains how I feel about Supergrover in a nutshell, and not because I mean my loving words less toward Lindsay. It’s that Lindsay and I don’t have a hard out, so I can use Lindsay’s concepts for feelings that are very much the same with both women. I already have three sisters, so it’s no hard leap to feel love that intense for Supergrover as well. I honestly don’t remember how my mind worked before she unlocked all my doors. It was like a scene from The Matrix. If I’m Neo, she’s The Oracle.

Those who think they know everything are annoying to those of us who do, which seems to be a mantra for all three of us depending on the situation. We are all in agreement that this applies to the orange gelatinous shitbag. We could all out-think and out-maneuver him easily.

I don’t really know anything about sports, and they do. They’d be better at answering this question than I am, but I do look to them for inspiration. I just don’t watch games that much. I absolutely love two things. The first is looking them up on YouTube to see what makes them great. I don’t want to be a bandwagon fan, I want to see them defy physics and decide on my own. The reason I have to look them up on YouTube is that I love the story of what it takes to be an elite athlete, so I’ll watch a documentary on ESPN about them and fall in love with their public character rather than their play. I can tell you about David Beckham’s early life and family ties better than I can tell you how he played.

I can tell you why it’s exciting and induces tears for me to watch Trinity Rodman play because since I’ve seen what a powerhouse her dad is, I imagine what a proud father he must be and it’s like a long distance commercial up in here.

Everyone loves Michael Jordan, but the “character” that resonated with me most in “The Last Dance” was Scottie Pippen. He was truly the unsung hero of the operation, its Ginger Rogers to Jordan’s Fred Astaire. They both made each other better, and I don’t think Jordan is appreciative. He comes off like a narcissist whether other people agree with me or not. Scottie has the heart of a journeyman cook who will occasionally blow your mind. Experimental, brave, crazy, also knows and copes with the fact that he’ll never be chef. So he’ll be the best damn sous this restaurant has ever seen.

We don’t have to talk about it. Just eat it. Scottie should have gotten loud in salary negotiations, and I’m not berating him. I’m just agreeing with him. His relationship with Michael was very much Aaron Rogers and Jordy Nelson. I’ll pick ’em up if you put ’em down. Shake……. and BAKE!

The trick is learning to be respected instead of famous. If you focus on the attention the star is getting instead of you, then you miss out on the best part of getting to be an elite athlete. The people who know the game will see you differently. It’s not the same as having millions of bandwagon fans.

It resonates with me because I’m a Scottie. I’d rather be a speechwriter on a campaign than a candidate. I’m Leo in that if I worked for a candidate, I would hope for the friendships that Lindsay got with Annise Parker, Nick Lampson, and Peter Brown (the Houston candidates Lindsay worked for before she started lobbying).

It takes an elite athlete’s courage to be Lindsay and Supergrover. Supergrover actually is an elite athlete, which I’m sure goes a lot into what she does because she’s been mentally preparing to the level she does now since she was all-State three years running in high school. Six letters and she even stopped to wonder why I wanted to wear that jacket. 😉 Now, our relationship feels the same as mine with Lindsay because I only want to drill down into policy.

I had to grow into that role with both women because I didn’t want to seem like a dumbass when they talked about their lives, because to them the things they say are completely normal and mundane. I stand there and feel like I didn’t get the assigned reading.

I do everything I can to combat that. I know for sure Lindsay is going to be in the newspaper no matter what job she has from here on out. She’s responsible for introducing a lot of legislation that makes people mad af and they pay her the big bucks not to back down. The Texas legislature is going insane regarding trans healthcare and its lack of support for it. And Supergrover would never be in the news on purpose. She’s the most private person I know, which is why it’s so unfortunate that our careers rub up against each other. It’s a constant source of ire to the point that she is the only person that could get me to tear it down and almost did to take care of the problem because she was worth it in a way no one else was. If she reamed me out for saying something sensitive, I wasn’t going to be the blogger that didn’t hear her. It was too important.

What was too important on my end was being able to use this space to process our relationship when I felt I couldn’t go directly to her…… but I could. It wouldn’t take long for her to get over what I said that she thought was negative because she loved the lines that were specifically crafted to adore her in public. To let her see how I talk about her behind her back. How every story is true to my limited knowledge and ability as a writer, but it is my superpower the way her work is to her. I just don’t think she realized that she was setting herself up to be a character when she befriended me and how her world would bleed over into mine.

In these pages is a magnificent story of two people who met by chance, one much more powerful than the other, which attracted us in a stranger on a train sort of way because nothing we said would get back to any of her friends or colleagues. This became the lie we told ourselves very quickly, because I could be honest with both her and Dana and say “this is a lot to manage and I need to work it out on my own.” The hard out made my decision for me in all kinds of ways, ranging from her not thinking about the consequences to me actively trying to destroy what we had built because she flipped me out mentally with her story and hasn’t really taken responsibility for hearing what it’s like to be me and adjusting to it, because she created a new reality for me. The disconnect between my real life and the one I present here is enormous, but it’s because I’m good at using small things to represent the big things. It’s just too much to handle for me if I slip up. I could accidentally ruin her life by accident, and the consequences would be dire no matter what happened as a result.

I don’t want to be that writer for her. I feel like I’ve done what Tony Mendez calls “falling in love with your asset” in “The Moscow Rules.” It’s an emotional shorthand for being so close to the subject that it takes away any impartiality, something we crafted by not normalizing everything by picking up the phone. Two sides to that coin. The first is that we would have stopped being as emotionally intimate with each other and that was the drug that kept us taking hits all those years. The second is that it really would have taken talking in real time, because I don’t know about her, but a few voicemails doesn’t convey everything that could have been avoided by hearing each other’s tones of voice.

Platonic love hit me harder than I’ve ever been hit in my life, and I’m sapiosexual and bipolar. One line bled into the other, and the butterflies in my stomach hit harder as well. Getting rid of them was enormous and had to be done to save our friendship, because I didn’t want to live without her unless I absolutely had to…. it just mixed me up so much inside because I’d lay out all these thoughts and feelings thinking she’s sitting there thinking I’m a judgmental dickhead when she’s just busy and needs more time. Then, at others, she really does treat me like a judgmental dickhead so there’s no way to know which person is going to show up. Is our situation dire enough to stay together at all costs, or do I only know random factoids about your life today? The highs and lows were too big because of the medium, and yet they were exciting. It was a thrill ride.

Because she’s Michael Jordan. She needs a Scottie Pippen. So, she got into my head and made me believe I could be that for her. If nothing else, because she was in my head, she taught me to think like an elite athlete as well. That if I was going to be Scottie Pippen, I was more than capable. I grew to be wildly impressed with me. To love me like I love her. It’s wild and wonderful because I am.

Six letters, though.

SMDH.

No, I Just Hurt

September 7, 2023 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Are you holding a grudge? About?

I am not a person that holds onto things. There’s a part of me that would love a day with any one person from my past whether they’ve wronged me or not, with one glaring exception that I wouldn’t have thought would come in my lifetime……….. but I’m not even holding onto anger regarding that situation. I’m just angry about it in my writing because I do not want her as the kind of fan who thinks she can reach out any time she wants, because that would destroy me…… for a bit. There’s no one alive who ever really gets over anything. It just moves from a place of pain to “this is something that has happened,” but if the situation comes back up, the feelings you had then are still stored in your body. Even if the same thing isn’t happening, it will feel the same way.

I would like to see the look on Supergrover’s face if and when we had to have we had that conversation, because my beautiful girl is a monster on a leash…… that she carries in her mouth and will let you hold if she thinks you are worthy of lifting Mjolnir. My mind bent like a pretzel when she decided I was. If you try to hurt me, you try to hurt us. It won’t go well for you whether it’s her or me that made your hackles go up. That one fan coming up into my yard would set us both off, I don’t care how pissed we are at each other, the enemy of my enemy is my friend and all that crap. It’s the same way on both sides. When someone comes after her, I want to jump between them. It’s just not possible, so I hope it’s the thought that counts.

There is such a thing as loving someone until you die while also knowing you aren’t good for each other, and either you need to correct the problem or move on. It might be hell in the moment, but love doesn’t go away. If I found out that something was going on with her I could actually fix, it would be done already. It doesn’t mean I should sit and wait around until she needs me. It means that no matter what happens between us, I’ve made promises that I intend to keep.

I think it’s cute that she’s a boss ass bitch and I’m basically “Player” from Carmen Sandiego. It makes our perspectives wildly different and thus easier for us to call out each other’s bullshit because we’re objective and uninvolved with any of the people the other might talk about.

That part I really did like about our relationship, and I’ve made other friends that way. I am not as close to them because it hasn’t been as long, but still the same feeling of two people in wildly different situations that can listen to the other because they don’t care about anyone but the person they’re talking to in the moment.

I don’t have to care what their husbands do, what their kids do, what their friends do because I am not trying to maintain a relationship with any of them, therefore I don’t have to balance my emotions because if I say something about one, it affects my relationship with the other. Conversations are sacred, and so is trust. I’ve learned everything about how to do virtual relationships the wrong way, so I’m adapting to make it better. I found someone that made me think so hard about myself that it was sink or swim. I could deal with the fact that me being in love with her was a pipe dream and move on, but nothing can be unsaid and I’m a writer. I don’t have the safety and security of knowing when I’m close to the hard out because I want to be seen as the loving friend I said I’d be….. after I was a total dick, of course. Rejection sucks, but it doesn’t last forever and I am not the kind of person that believes in the friend zone. There was never going to be a time where my ruminations meant that if she said no to me, her friendship didn’t mean anything to me. It would be the opposite. I know how we work. She’d fire me in a hot second, probably due to annoyance alone. But I’ve always wanted to know the things that don’t mean anything, like I said about Zac’s work colleagues the other day. She’s unique in a different way, but the concept is the same. I liken it to Cyrus and Olivia from Scandal, after hours, when it’s just them and wine and popcorn.

One of these days, she most certainly will wonder whatever happened to me and look it up. If the stars align, I hope it’s at a book table…….. where I’d gaze lovingly into her eyes, and ask her to sign my book.

I believe in fairy tales. I would never hold a grudge that meant we couldn’t fix it in the end. There’s a solid reason we should be friends, but she thinks I need too much when she hasn’t said what she needs from me and how we could establish boundaries that made us both happy. Believe it or not, I do not enjoy being ripped a new one for my crafted pages and having them called lectures by a judgmental dickhead. She never knew how my responses would have changed had she told me honestly how she was feeling and focused on the good things I was telling her, or asking me about things she thought were negative so that I could tell her if they weren’t.

Because our ways of showing love are so wildly different, neither one of us were getting what we needed from the other. I tried to correct that problem, and she bailed. But she didn’t take back her friendship. She said that nothing was ever going to change and the way she treated me blew sometimes and was incredible at others. I tried to love her in a way she could hear it, and sometimes she did. Sometimes she didn’t. It was very confusing for both of us and she didn’t have time to mull it over. I got tired of so often being responded to when she thought I was trying to fight her and not when I was telling her that I thought she was the greatest human being I’d ever met. Poll ten people that know her. We all agree, even if nine of them work for her.

I don’t dwell on my negative feelings because to me, the things that I’ve written about her combine to make a truly intimate portrait of our relationship all the way through, and it means something. Even now, I know it means something. Even if Michael and me are the only people who ever read it, it doesn’t matter. We’re the ones that will need it the most if she goes before we do, which I only say because now that my mother died so young, I can’t be sure of anything. The dice of the universe will roll one way or the other. I don’t have to focus on what might happen, I feel happy that I have prepared something that will last longer than all three of us. One of these days, WordPress will be an artifact. People will want to know how we lived, and a blog is a good example of writing about daily life. Sometimes I feel like I’m a column in a small town newspaper.

Not feeling guilt or remorse over any relationship once I feel enough time has moved forward to have closure is essential. I don’t want to be the type person that spends her life wishing things were different and not actively trying to fill my time with new opportunities.

But you guys have read every day what I’ve dealt with in all of this. How it’s painful and glorious, but there’s no problem that is not solvable if we both want to work on it. I’m just okay if she doesn’t, because my memories are enough. It’s pointless to hold a grudge, because it will do more to hurt you than they will ever care.

Just Come Pick Me Up

September 6, 2023 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 5 Comments

Bryn, the other author on this site, had to put one of her dogs down today. His name was Duncan, and he was deaf and blind. Despite his limitations, he could do tricks such as balancing on a ball. I can’t do that and I can hear and see. He was a marvel to watch, and he will be greatly missed by both of us. I haven’t lived in Portland for over a decade, but Duncan was part of my life back then, too. It’s hard to be in DC while she’s in Portland, but she’s not going through all this alone. Dave is with her and I’ll get to video call with her when she’s ready. I don’t want to intrude on her grief, and wanted to let you know what’s going on if you want to leave her a note. Having lost my mother, I do know that right now she’s probably not up for reaching out, but I’m trying to send her as much love as I can for when she’s ready to receive it.

I know that I’ve said that a woman irritated me because she said that she knew exactly how I felt about losing my mother because her cat had died. That was because I didn’t think the two things were comparable, not that I don’t have empathy for deep grief no matter what kind. I am not saying that it doesn’t hurt. I’m just saying that it’s different in scope, but the reaction is generally the same physically. Grief makes you weak, weepy, and lost in your own little world. That’s because trauma takes time to process and it’s a little while before the shock wears off.

When I get frustrated with a situation because I’m here and my friends are elsewhere, the line inside my head becomes “Jesus Christ. Just come pick me up.” I figure if anyone can displace time, space, and location he’s probably my best shot given the available options.

Right now I’m miserable because all I want is her- to comfort her and make sure she’s okay in the middle of a really hard situation. Most of the reason that I’m miserable is that I’m one of the people she’d turn to for love in a practical sense. Of course I can go to the grocery store. Of course I can sit here and listen for hours. Let it out. Of course we can sit next to each other and not say anything. Should I put on some relaxing banjo music so we can sit outside on the back porch and talk? I could install a swing…. probably the thing we both miss the most about The Big Yellow House because we had so many conversations there.

When Bryn and I have been at parties together, whether at The Big Yellow House or her parents,’ we become the social battery charging station, disappearing and generally making others wonder where we went. Because we are both ridiculously social right up until we aren’t, our conversations were a way to get away from all that having to be “on” bullshit. Not being introverted is a mask for both of us, and it’s because we are both Timeless Children. We live to please to avoid having to deal with conflict, so we call each other on conflict when we have it in a beautiful way. We are both re-parenting ourselves to be self-sustaining and it is beautiful to watch. We have a sweet, innocent, intense love that will never go away because our bond runs so deep. She was 14 and I was 19 when we met, so there’s pretty much nothing more pure than having someone you’ve known that long still in your life. I didn’t move to Portland to be with Bryn, but she was a large part of the package.

That’s because after I finished my first year of college, I left the day after classes ended to see what Portland had to offer. It was just a two week visit, but it was enough to convince me I’d be happy there and I went for two more summers to make sure. In ’97 was the More Light Conference (meeting of pro-queer Christians at Lewis & Clark), ’98 was billed as the “ordination of the century,” and ’99 was the wedding of the century. By then I was completely enmeshed. I just fit in without having to try so hard.

I met Kathleen shortly after, so I spent a couple summers with her instead of going to Portland, but we went together for an MLK holiday trip and it was a haul and a half from DC. We had a good time, and I wonder all the time what would have happened if Kathleen had gotten a job in the PNW…. and not for selfish reasons. Portland has a vibe where you really relax and she was wrapped way too tight. I also wonder all the time what would have happened if my beautiful girl had come to Portland, because when we were talking about it, she wanted to see Dana and me and drive down to Coos Bay. It’s a beautiful memory to create in my head with both of them. I love moonlit walks on the beach whether it’s romantic or not, and we’d be bundled up in sweatshirts and jeans even in August. Touching the water in the Pacific is not really advisable without a wet suit. I’ve lost the feeling in my feet every time. So, it would have been great in my mind to walk along with either one of them at a time where they could really let go and be themselves.

Even though it’s neither here nor there, those images make me happy. I don’t have bad feelings toward either one, and I often retcon the past with stories of what would have been nice so that I know what I want to do next time for the people in my life. Ways in which I can emotionally show up when I can’t afford to just book a plane ticket.

The other thing I really enjoy thinking about is the Pacific Ocean, because where I lived made me able to see Cape Disappointment and find my way back home.

To Duncan and Bryn.

Hell….. with Beads

September 6, 2023 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Share a story about the furthest you’ve ever traveled from home.

A friend said this about New Orleans, but this is how I feel about travel. It’s a full-on parade of thought; I’m excited until I’ve been away from home for an amount of time that’s never enough to settle. It’s why I’d like to do Air BnB. It would be great to spend a month in Paris rather than a few days in a hotel and at a better rate. Paris is a city that in order to understand it, you have to adapt. You’re from the United States. Your rhythm is not the same. That cognitive dissonance takes time to resolve, so I like trips that are long enough to make you forget your other reality and stop comparing things to it. When I’m in Mexico, what takes the longest is flipping my brain into Spanish. Having conversations where you are both processing thoughts and emotions while translating is exhausting, and Mexicans are so kind about it. The French are not, or at least not the ones I’ve met because I’ve only been to Paris. It has less to do with the fact that I only know a few words and they’re frustrated and more with the fact that Paris is like New York and London. They don’t have time for you not to know what you want, just like if you need something from someone on the tube in London, say the bare minimum and move on. Talking to strangers isn’t their thing in either city. It would take me a long time to adapt to Paris, but “my wife” says that when she reads me, she sees colors of David Sedaris.

That wasn’t flattering at all, JFC.

It makes me feel comfortable that David is the kind of person that if I ran into him in Paris, we might be able to strike up a friendship because I would remind him of the time we met in Frederick without hounding him for anything. I have so many creative friends in my life that fame doesn’t faze me. I just want to sit at the table if they think I’m worthy of it. Writers don’t give other people their time if they don’t think that person can keep up with them intellectually. They have so much fun and devastation on their own that it takes a lot to get through to them. You have to prove that your company is better than “the characters they keep.” Nothing is more important than complete isolation when you’re writing. For me, that looks very much like the classic image of a coder because I did web development for a long time. My favorite tools are text editors that color code and I type with all the lights off and my editor in dark mode. I’m just not doing the HTML because WordPress does that for me. I mention the way I work because it leads to the fact that the story of the farthest I’ve ever traveled includes times where I haven’t left my house.

I have lost myself in this world where I spill out everything in order to lead from the back, and it has fed me in every way that’s been missing. I love feeling confident in the fact that I can express myself, and don’t mind that my archetypes are Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, and Mr. Robot. I also have to accept that the virtual world is not the physical, and to be responsible with relationships. For instance, I don’t know if my new writer friend knew how I felt beforehand, but it made me feel good that when I asked to friend her, she really saw me as an actual friend because when she messaged me, she sent voice notes instead of typing. It just normalized everything, and she’s got a gorgeous voice Yes, we’ve sung for each other, and now I know a karaoke night would be in order if I was in the ATL or she was headed to Air and Space.

I have to remember the fact that other people don’t have the archetype of Mr. Robot and don’t write like they’re coding into the night, one thought pouring into the next at a frantic pace, made more urgent by the sound of their own typing. I get going and I say things that are over the line without truly thinking of the consequences. The separation of being virtual heightens everything, and I don’t want to feed into it.

I don’t want “my wife” to feel like I am wandering from who I really am, and she can be a better judge of that by hearing what I mean in the way I meant it. Her voice notes were just a good reminder to keep it real, and we’re having a good time. She’s not only an actress starring in a play right now, she’s a recovering attorney who went to school in the DMV and does conflict management in the ATL now. Endlessly fascinating and we haven’t found a lag in conversation yet. It’s what really examining how far from home I was willing to go has meant to me over the last 10 years. It’s been the journey to hell and back with someone because I caused the root of the conflict. Losing someone is one thing. Being responsible for it is another.

It’s why I’m glad there’s medication to help me cope with all my silly ruminations, and ironic that the more I spill them, the more you gather. My medication just introduces upper and lower limits. It guides the direction of my compass, the only thing that matters when sailing foreign seas.

Explaining Myself To………. Myself #shatnerellipsis

September 5, 2023September 5, 2023 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

If I hadn’t been trauma bonded to Supergrover and not to Dana, none of the last 10 years would have happened. I am not “goading and provoking.” I am talking about the things I understand to the best of my knowledge, knowing that my memory can’t always be correct and if I want a relationship now, being able to forgive and forget extraordinarily quickly because I’m using the power of my writing to lift me out of depression when I go back and read it.

This makes me self-sustaining to an enormous degree. This epistolary chapter is a “lecture” on how a relationship is affected by deep secrets that aren’t bad in any way at all. I am accepting the reality of the situation. I am acknowledging my humanness- being responsible and letting go of guilt, being mindful and carrying no shame. I believe the good news of the Gospels, that we are loved unconditionally by God. This is part of the creed from the UCC church I attended in Portland, written by my abuser’s partner. That’s how good I’ve become at letting go through my faith. I hope you’ll let go of yours by the end. This is because my relationship with God is not cute. Everything in these entries is me arguing with God like an old grumpy writer with the personality of an Evangelical Orthodox nut job who is an emotional dumpster fire a lot of the time.

I’m also neurodivergent, so I spiral out when everything is in writing and therefore hits harder because I’m making up their tones of voice and no way to correct things when a joke doesn’t land. No matter what starts a conflict, my anxiety rises to the level of The War Doctor, where I am the bomb and you are The Moment……… because that’s my definition of what God is and will always be. The moment you are abused, your reality breaks and you need a third party. That’s why being an addict and bipolar present the same. It’s how trauma affects you your whole life once it happens. I know that now because I met my emotional abuser when I was 12 years old. It didn’t get physical because it didn’t have to. We trauma dumped and handfasted because I intrigued her mentally whether it was intentional or not. I had to forgive her and move on, but I swear to God her world will fucking end if she trauma dumps with someone else that age. No one will kill her, but she might not hate it as a viable option. That’s because Dante’s Inferno is every bit as real in terms of the lens through which I see everything and so do you if you’ve had anything similar happen to you. That’s why I trauma bonded with Daniel and agreed to marry him so fucking fast. I didn’t go insane. I’m emotionally equipped to deal with a Doctor Who is a very bad patient (a turn of phrase from voice dictation on my iPhone in a letter to the absolute love of my life. She just doesn’t accept it because she thinks that her trauma is so much worse than mine and treats herself like shit because of it. If she only knew what kind of person I think she is and started to believe what I’m telling her the first time, she’d see a person who has no problems with worshipping the water she walks on while also being able to tell her that I think we’re headed for a train wreck.

She escalates because she doesn’t want to open up and so do I.

We could have had a love that lasted for all time in these pages, because our secrets married us the moment we said them. Words made it real. Real fast. I agreed to all of it. It was Oppenhemer, and Fallout 3 is entirely responsible for the allegory I saw in playing that game because it was Biblical. When I destroyed Zax with logical fallacy, that he was omnipotent because he was programmed to be omipotent, seeing the loop in the code for the first time, I saw my inner Vault-Tec for what it was and accepted that I was a Lone Wanderer- not only because I wanted it desperately. I also couldn’t get out of it, and that’s why both Supergrover and I think that no matter what, we have a past, a present, and a future.

I am not asking for her to be mine, I am asking her what our future looks like and my problem with her is now twofold. The first is that she only understands me to the level she understands her. I am not guilting her. There isn’t a human who doesn’t do this. I am saying that we cannot interact in the future if she can’t acknowledge her humanness as well. I don’t want the stakes to be so high in our relationship. I wanted to normalize everything, and it was up to her whether that was virtual or physical, but never in a way that she thought was inappropriate for reasons that span from she’s straight to us both acknowledging that if we did it, there’s more chance that we’d destroy each other afterwards than accepting a different reality and being happy in the long term. That if we fuck this up, it’s over for both of us. Just mutually assured destruction and I’m serious as a heart attack. I didn’t give her my whole heart because I wanted her inappropriately. It’s because our emotions made us Siamese twins.

It’s why I devour everything about intelligence. I crave it. I don’t know anyone at CIA and I don’t have to. The reason I love it is because they can blow shit up when things are actually wrong and I can’t. I’ve been emotionally laden like a pack horse since I was 12, a deep cover operation in which I got lost and forgot my real identity. That’s why I need David Webb to become Director of CiA by the end of the story. When he wins, so do I. That’s why I love the conflict in Black Panther. I am both T’Challa and Erik. When love wins, they have a Tolkien CIA agent. Now you know I’m actively trying to make Zac laugh. He is giving me what served me in relationships I’ve had previously, without taking on the baggage of what didn’t. That way, I can love him with my whole heart while also not being bothered to care about absolutely anything he wants to do when we aren’t being the most obnoxious couple you’ve ever met in your life. Really. Talk to us together and you’ll throw up in your mouth a little bit. I’m not bothered about finding someone else because I am not desperately seeking attention and validation……… as people who are sick from trauma do when they don’t get well. Boldly keeping all your emotions hidden in order to be what other people want will kill you, and I mean that literally.

The best sermon I’ve ever heard came from one of the people I’ve been emotionally intimate in an extremely healthy way right up until it wasn’t because we reverted to who we are- neurodivergent and unaccepting of each other’s humanness while both being ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. It’s why I think things could be perfect between my beautiful girl if she’d let it happen. Our professions are compatible and we chose them for a reason, which makes us literally perfect for each other when we aren’t complete assholes.

The first line was “the day my father died, my brother was in jail.” She gave an unpacking of what it’s like for a church to hold on to that level of trauma and I’m a fucking PK. You have no idea what kind of trauma I was dealing with and not because of their inner demons trying to hurt me. I was bleeding out in empathy because I didn’t have any clinical separation. That’s how my trauma bond presents, and it is as ironclad as a marriage in the Holy Roman church………….. and you have two wolves inside you. You decide which one you feed. I express that by talking to a God in which I can stand up and say “I AM BAPTIZED.”

That’s a whole story in and of itself. When you’re a PK, if you pee on the person doing your baptism, you’ve just peed on your dad’s boss. Given how the UMC treated my father, I have embraced their inner Aziraphale and Crowley. The bishop who baptized me served a predominantly gay church after he baptized me, so clearly I was baptizing him as well. I love the idea that he made me a queer person loved unconditionally by God, and he is the YouTube video of Supergrover waking up Superqueer after an organ transplant with me. When I resolve trauma, I get funnier. That’s because Jesus is hilarious to me when he’s not struggling with his own demons. But what I’ve never done is go straight to Golgotha and looked away. I am Emmit Till’s mother. I want you to see what that man went through and how I view his story as a trauma survivor. He didn’t need to be bodily resurrected for me to believe that because his religious leaders gave him hell. He went straight to Golgotha without looking away and while he was on the cross he emotionally blessed and released everything by forgiving the people who murdered him. Doesn’t mean he didn’t want to murder them with words. But in order to forgive everyone on the cross, he had to walk through his own valleys of vulnerability. He had to get as mad at God as he possibly could in order to go to the mountaintop. To me, the importance of the crucifixion is a negative amount, because the resurrection didn’t happen on the cross.

He resurrected himself when he was ready to leave the garden and face death. if I could translate the scriptures written to account for his time there into line cook, it would look a lot like “fuck you. How could you do this to me?” He raged until the Red Sea parted in his mind, and if I know him as well as I think I do, he made that connection while he was still alive…………

because he was a rabbi, and I was born to upper management.

I’ll Have to Ask My “Wife”

September 5, 2023September 5, 2023 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

What does your ideal home look like?

I may have accidentally gotten myself married off this weekend. Of course it’s all in jest, but I did make a genuine friend. It all started with an in-group chat re: a woman saying that she had just been on her first date with a woman, and was already sweating bullets over what to do next. Here’s my reply:

She’s a woman. She’s on pins and needles. Text her right now before she has a heart attack. And yes, I’m kidding. But trust me when I say that most women who date women are not direct and it’s confusing AF. You’re lucky you knew you were on a date and so did she.

And then I said, “and if you post in two weeks that you’re getting married, SO HELP ME GOD.”

It was then that the real conversation started, because I hit a nerve I knew I would. It’s just too easy, because what I’m talking about is fairly unique to women loving women and common in every country/culture. It has become a joke over the years, so much so that I’m surprised U-Haul hasn’t built an entire ad campaign around it.

So, anyway, a woman replied to me with a gif of a woman driving a U-Haul and I said “we need to focus on her right now. Stop flirting with me.” She thinks that’s funny and we keep talking. We have someone ask for a wedding invitation and someone offer to plan it for us- in “colors that are bold, yet somehow neutral.” I don’t think I’ve laughed harder in months.

We ended up friending each other because of a different part of the conversation. She says she’s an introvert. I said, “I was going to tell you I’m an introvert, but it’s so much worse than that. I’m a writer. And if you really need an excuse to poke your eyeball with a fork, I’m also a novelist.” Her reply? “Omg. So am I. Jesus. We’re already married.”

It was then that I knew she was a keeper. 😉

Well, in terms of a professional contact. I really don’t have many writer friends, so I asked her if I could friend her to talk shop. What started out as a joke turned into a genuine connection in the span of a few hours…. even if we don’t end up getting married in two weeks.

Here’s how my old life influenced my new one. For the last 10 years, I have had a boss ass bitch in my head giving me confidence. I am no longer one of those women who can’t be direct and just goes with the flow right up until they can’t. I wasn’t treating women like I had to be afraid of their opinions. It is not my job to be likable. It is my job to be myself and to let the right people gravitate toward me. It’s not being mean. It’s being in charge of my own vibration and making it loud enough that people either boost the signal or walk away. They have control over the amps, not my volume control.

So now, when I think of the perfect house, the only thing I require is a space that is totally and completely mine. Reflection is what I need to decide whether a problem does or does not go to 11.

As for decor, I haven’t even finished planning my “wedding” yet. Give me another two weeks. 😉

A Lot More Than People Think

September 4, 2023 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 4 Comments

What brings a tear of joy to your eye?

I cry a lot.

I’m the most tenderheart bear you will ever meet in your entire life if you could, because first of all most of you aren’t American, much less close enough to see me in real life. Secondly, I said I cried a lot. I didn’t say that anyone saw me do it.

To be honest, most of my tears fall when we’re talking, because your side of the conversation isn’t in the room.

I wasn’t always this way. I used to cry in front of people all the time… mostly because I’m a musician and there are certain chord structures that control my tear ducts. If a dissonance resolves by dropping the bass so that the resolution expands deep into your chest, my physical reaction often includes tears. If it is a choir singing a capella, I can pretty much guarantee it.

I have even fallen apart in rehearsal.

There is really nothing like a basso profundo standing behind you, projecting a low E into the center of your back. I’m a soprano, yet basses make me happy. There have been moments I’ve wanted to cry during a performance, and luckily not because it was a train wreck (usually). Sometimes, the beauty of a moment descends upon you and you really don’t have a choice.

I had a conductor speak to this once, and it changed my life by helping me put on a game face. When we (the choir) are singing, it’s not our job to have a reaction. It’s the audience’s turn to have a reaction.

After that, touching moments during a concert were not for me to enjoy. I hadn’t paid for a ticket.

Writing brings tears of joy as much as music does, because I’ve already said that I cry when I’m writing to you. But there are television writers that can flatten me way faster than I can destroy myself. I have cried at long distance commercials, Hallmark movies, and knives “made for my family by a Boston silver smith named Paul Revere.”

The tears of joy started falling while typing out the last line.

To Emote -or- The Letter of the Law

September 3, 2023September 3, 2023 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 19 Comments

Why do you blog?

Being raised as a preacher’s kid caused me to alternate between carrying my heart on my sleeve and shutting down so that my real emotions remained hidden. This is due in a small way to my dad’s congregation and trying constantly to be the one who doesn’t need anything from anyone. I was actively trying for perfection in this area, because according to my mother, I needed to be the perfect child. But she didn’t say that in words. It was more that we had a job to do. Stiff upper lip and all that. It was bonkers, because my dad was the one with the actual job and he never expected any of that crap. My mother was the puppet master, and I don’t know that she knew that, but we did. We all lived in fear of rocking the boat.

This is going to sound horrible, but you’ve never known me to do anything but tell the truth. I never told my mother to shut the hell up and get with the program, and I desperately needed to do it for my own sanity. And, of course, she’s not here to defend herself, but on this one, she really can’t. It’s the one time in my life where I thought, “I will never forgive her ever in my lifetime.” I was just angry, of course. I did indeed get over it. But it took a very, very, very, very, very long time.

When I came out, my mother cornered me in my room and told me “I will not embarrass this family that way.” There’s more to it than that, but thankfully I’ve blocked it out. Only that one line remains, a scar on my skin healed over with time, but never forgotten.

Here’s what she never really took in:

Everyone already knew and talked shit behind her back. They knew before I DID. People with eyes recognize baby queers, even if their parents don’t. When I was 14, they thought I was being molested and at least two people cornered her and told her she needed to get me the hell out of that situation. It was too late, because I was already gone. It was a Supergrover kind of love at the wrong place and wrong time. However, if that hadn’t been a factor, I do think I would have been stuck in a miserable relationship considering how I think marriage is working out for her partner. I wouldn’t be her for cold hard cash. I am sure that she professes her love to everyone no matter the case…… because she has more in common with my mother than she would ever admit. She’s the puppet master, and I don’t know that she knew that, but we did.

Actually, that’s bullshit. Of course she fucking knew. I had all the rights and responsibilities of a partner, listening to all the crap going on in her life that was wildly inappropriate for a teenager. But I didn’t have her. She wanted me to be the one that wanted her while she played blissfully ignorant. I didn’t get laid, but I was well and truly fucked. The situation didn’t have to be romantic for it to be terrible. Supergrover is actually a tiny, tiny bit older than this woman, and I’m picturing her at her age when I was 14, and that was my BAZINGA! moment. I couldn’t picture her telling me jack shit for anything in the world….. to protect me, the very thing that I thought was happening and it turns out it, in fact, was not.

At some point, I’m going to go see about a boy. He’s already married, so it’s not like that. It”s that he was my boyfriend before Ryan, so, seventh grade, the one that was there every single Sunday and could probably tell me a lot more than I could tell him about what was going on if he remembers at all. It’s not that I was insignificant to him, it’s that it’s been 31 years now.

If he doesn’t remember, his dad could have written the dissertation. He was one of the ones that really saw through the bullshit, and he didn’t stop anything, but he was really the first person that made me absolutely lock down.

Unfortunately, the F is no longer with us.

Contrast my mother’s reaction to everyone else’s, including the actual pastor in the family.. My dad told the United Methodist Annual Confereence to shut the hell up and get with the program. Very politely, of course. He went to the floor, where there were hundreds of his colleagues gathered to vote on whether “homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching.” You could wake up a Methodist in the middle of the night and the only thing they know from The Discipline is that one line.

I would have been an incredible Methodist pastor. The best, really, because I learned from the best. I would have brought something new and completely different to them if they hadn’t taken me out like it was Trash Day in Harris County.

Here is a paraphrase of what he said, made all the more brave, crazy, and stupid because it was 1995. The other thing you should know is he did not tell me what he was going to do beforehand. He didn’t tell anyone. He stepped out on a ledge, and he flew:

“It’s really easy to say that homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching…. to group everyone together and call them ‘the homosexuals.’ But it looks different when it’s Carol’s niece. Bob’s nephew. David’s daughter.”

The vote did indeed pass, but it was closer than it had ever been.

I went to the church that day seeking God. They weren’t there until my dad finished.

The Bible says in Matthew 18:20 “where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there in the midst of them.” In that moment, no one else was in the room except my dad and me. It wasn’t the first time I had a spiritual experience. Life is full of them. But that’s the moment “Jesus wept” became extremely loud and incredibly close. The church itself was just an expensive building….. as if no one had bothered to invite him. He wept in sorrow for some of his followers, and elation for others.

Jesus wasn’t crying because I’m queer and therefore bad or unworthy. He was crying because these supposed “fishers of men” were trying to lift the net after they got into it. But they will certainly spend queer money……. because they love you…….. when you tithe. Otherwise, good luck. You can belong to a church for 30 years and give them millions, but they still won’t do your wedding or ordain you.

When I could have been a “contenduh.” I know I talk a lot of shit, but not about this. When I’m on fire, I’m unstoppable. It just doesn’t happen all the time…… but that’s not being a bad preacher/pastor. That’s being a perfect human.

My dad didn’t quit his job because of me. He acknowledged his divinity and his humanity. It is both too complicated to explain and above your pay grade to know why. But on the way out, he raised hell in front of THE PEOPLE WHO FUCKING DESERVED IT.

Not me.

But everything was fine.

You can completely ignore me and I will be totally fine until I explode, angry at the world because NO ONE IS PAYING ATTENTION TO ME. It seems so ridiculous on my part to feel like a toddler, but sometimes I do. It’s okay for no one to notice that I’m sad or hurt or depressed or whatever… but if they love me, what should happen when I fade into the woodwork and am not noticed for years? I can keep it up flawlessly right up until I can’t.

How I have turned needing other people into not needing them at all is knowing that everything in the world would disappear and it would take a lot for me to notice if I was in the middle of an entry. I am now in charge of taking care of me, and I am much better about expressing a full range of emotions, especially when I am sitting alone and writing here, because nothing is directed. It is not my job to have a reaction when I’m finished.

Again, I don’t need friends. I want them. I cannot be dependent on them for validation, however.

It is to acknowledge that writing itself is a spiritual experience, and you (plural) becomes you (singular) in my mind…………

Where two or three are gathered, and Christ walks into the room.

If I know Christ as well as I think I do, here’s what Jesus would have said to the Annual Conference that day, actually the words of “Paul” in the second letter to the Corinthians:

You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts. known and read by everyone. You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the Living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.

Such confidence we have through Christ before God. Not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything for ourselves, but our competence comes from God. He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant- not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.

Homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching.

The letter of the law killed me…….. and resurrection happens in the middle of the mess.

There is nothing more responsible for that rebirth than you are.

Thanks be to God.

Amen.

Coffee and doughnuts will be served in the Fellowship Hall. 😉

Midvale School for the Gifted -or- Push/Pull

September 2, 2023September 2, 2023 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Today’s writing prompt was a waste. Something about interviewing someone. I am not calling someone at 0700 on a Saturday for anything, a lot of the time because my friends live in other time zones.

I call my dad too early a lot of the time because I’m high energy in the morning and it just does not compute sometimes that not only is it early, it’s an hour earlier for him. I do not feel as bad about it as I probably should, because when I lived two hours behind him, he had no problem calling me at the ass crack of dawn. I wish he’d call me at dawn here, because as a restaurant employee I was not as flexible about it as I could be now. 😉

Making an interview a daily writing prompt is just not that great because I am looking for a jumping off point inside my own head without making me dependent upon waiting for other people’s input. It’s standing there in front of the “pull” door and pushing with all your might. I mean, this prompt does have some barrier to entry, anyway. In order to get it done, I need two things. The first is the courage to ask people if they’d be willing to be interviewed. The second is waiting for them to have time. I need this blog to run on my schedule, which is why I turned it around on my audience. The comments section will eventually become the entry, because maybe someone won’t comment for five minutes or five years, but it will be *something.*

I am sure that Bryn would have picked up if she heard the phone in her sleep, and she’s on vacation so she could just roll over and go back to sleep once we’re done, but it’s 0415 in Oregon. I am going to go out on a limb here and saying that moving on to a different thing to write about is actually saving our relationship. 😛 However, she will attest that among our mutual friends, she would have the least offensive reaction to being woken up. I’m the best friend, and she has priorities. I don’t think I’m the be all and end all for her, I’m just glad to be 1 or 2 on the call sheet, depending on the situation. If the problem is with me, she calls Dave. If the problem is with him, she calls me. Dave and I are all good. I love him because she loves him and that will never change. However, make no mistake. If Bryn decides Dave is out, he’s out. It’s not that I don’t value him as a person, we just haven’t known each other since 1997, so that boundary is pretty firm. Besides, Dave is a good guy and I don’t see it happening. I’m just saying Bryn is my ride or die and Dave gets a seat in the car as long as she’s navigating and controlling the music.. 😉

(In olden times, children, the passengers looked up directions for the driver. It was very 20th century of us.)

If I was really going to turn this entry up to stupid o’clock, it would be contacting Supergrover after many months and being all like, “hey, I know you’re probably mad af, but inquiring minds want to know.” She has absolutely no idea how much people love her, because even if she doesn’t think I write her in 3D, no one else does. That’s because they aren’t taking anything personally.

I think if there’s anything I could ask her, it’s “could you speak more to being written as “Flat Stanley?” This is because what she has said already is that I alternate between lifting her up for being her and excoriating her for being her. I honestly laughed at that slightly, because I thought, “what does she think being written in 3D actually is?”

I think that she thinks me acknowledging there’s a problem means I think less of her when the opposite is true. My love for her runs deeper within me than any river. When we met, she immediately got under my skin. Just made me explode into growth after years of being an arrested teenager. My response was to blow up my whole life because I could not stop vomiting emotions about someone else and say married. This is not limited to emotions about the friendship/relationship in this thing we’ve created and managed (now that I’m over it, “this thing we’ve created and managed” has become stupid funny. If it’s funny once, it will still be funny a hundred times later. Welcome to the Lanagan family, where our motto is “if it’s funny, run it into the ground.”). I was recovering from emotional abuse as a teenager, and picking out all that shrapnel was best done on my own. I should have recognized that and got out of my marriage quicker, because I needed to be introspective and it naturally pushed everyone away, anyway. I could have avoided all of that, and I didn’t.

I don’t expect anyone to forgive me, but I forgive me. If I can’t have compassion from others, I will have compassion for myself. It’s the only thing that matters, in the end. They don’t have to live with me, but I do.

It was really difficult forgiving myself for something entirely relatable when you live in my body, not so much to people who can’t see the thought processes zinging around in my mind. I was too green in a situation I didn’t understand and didn’t handle it well….. immediately. Within a couple years, everything was back to normal on my end, but not hers. She emotionally shut down and blamed me for painting my feelings as fact. I was not trying to be an arbiter/dictator. I was trying to reach common ground and I got tired of doing it all by myself.

I shut it all down for my own sanity, but at the same time, a decade of love tilted at a hundred and crazy percent doesn’t calm down overnight. She is my personal forest fire, and cleaned my clock with it. But it didn’t burn everything down for malice. No. By the time the fire ended, the slap bracelet was an empty field of ash enriched earth. Ripe for planting something self-sustaining when previously the growth stopped in its tracks when I felt anxious and overwhelmed.I also didn’t have any love or forgiveness to give myself before it happened, and afterward it became my mission. My beautiful girl said many times “why do you expect everyone else to fix you?” Two things about that. The first is she was right. I did need to develop inner strength. The flip side of the coin is that if she needed me to step up, there wouldn’t even be two seconds between “I have a problem” and “what can I do?”

If it were in my power to do so, I would wrap her in foam rubber and make everyone keep a six foot distance. That’s not your badass out there in the world.

That’s mine.

People get tripped up on love when there are problems/issues because I am trying to be objective and they think it’s a referendum on them. I’m actually saying that I would love them like a house on fire no matter how many issues there are. We are too old not to believe everything will be perfect for all time. We just have to make our quirks line up. I can do that because she is a 3D character.

As I told her, “Flat Stanley” has a history of exquisite topography.

It reminds me of a scene from “my so-called life.” Rayanne’s mom is talking to Angela’s, and Angela’s mother is not so sure about Rayanne. She literally looks perturbed when Rayanne’s mother says that for Rayanne, the world is black and white. Angela is the only one in color. It’s such a good line that I’ve remembered it since it aired. This is because if you have an emotional connection with me, you become the only ones in color.

Years and years ago, before my handwriting turned into a carpal tunnel pile of garbage, I collected fountain pens. It was never about the pens. It was about bottles of ink from black and espresso to peacock (favorite) and purple. Green, never red. When I changed moods, I changed colors.

But I didn’t change muses.

She is black, espresso, peacock, purple, and pink. Green, never red. She lives in every color.

I just decided to stop pushing on the pull door.

Doesn’t mean she fades to gray.

Making My Own Space

August 31, 2023 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

What daily habit do you do that improves your quality of life?

What really helps me is a place of my own. I think about it all day, every day. About how in this house I have one. It is my space and no one is allowed in without permission. There is no social expectation on me to share my bed with anyone.

When Dana and I moved to Houston, not long after I realized that our house was huge enough for Dana and me each to have our own rooms, and I set it up that way. It didn’t have anything to do with my relationship with Dana. It had to do with the fact that we seemed to be exceptional at everything except sleeping next to each other. When I moved into my own room, I slept deeper than I had in years, and it made me a convert. One of the things you can do to make your relationship better is to sleep in separate beds as long as neither one of you are taking it personally. Dana definitely did take it more personally than I did, but also rolled with it, so at this point, I don’t know if my needing space was good for both of us or not. If It was too selfish, I apologize. Cosleeping is just not going to be a part of my life going forward. I have to take care of me in this way or I do not function well.

If Zac and I were on a relationship escalator, the thing that would work in his favor is that he has a huge house with many bedrooms and absolutely no expectation for me to be in his. I am betting that neither one would turn down the other’s invitation, however…….

That’s the difference. Right there. Even in a couple, you need to carve out room to still be the two individuals you used to be.When I could sleep better, I could handle having the rest of my identity being leslieanddana. It wasn’t the relationship I objected to. It was the cultural norm, thinking that there was something wrong with me because I didn’t want to sleep next to her every single night. So, I looked it up. Lots of couples suck at sleeping together, and sleep is too precious to waste.

Not cosleeping is dating energy. It’s as fresh and as hot as you want it to be… But that is my answer. It is not everyone’s. I’m not saying it’s the right way, just my way. At this point in time. I am both too young and too old not to know what’s coming down the pike. If I say never again, the next person I date is going to have a toddler that likes to sleep with his ass glued to my face. Never say never.

It has nothing to do with the way I feel about my current life… and everything to do with the way I sleep. I get night terrors, and I’d rather be alone. They don’t happen often, short and intense. I don’t think I’ve been with Zac long enough for him to see one, because if he did, he would have said something. That’s because I see him so rarely that sleeping next to him is a treat, not an obligation. If we were closer, the novelty would wear off. I can make it work for a night here and there, but in negotiating living with another partner, I need to know it is not demanded of me unless there are extenuating circumstances like a toddler sleeping with his ass glued to my face.

Although now I’m getting old enough that my partner’s kids would be teens/20s or there would be an age gap between us. Not that I am complaining about either thing. It’s just reality. The only thing of which I am certain is that if I do have children, I will not birth them. I know I am physically capable of carrying a child at 45 or 46, but I have no desire at all. Just put it in the negative numbers.

Thinking about the one thing I do every day- being safe in a space of my own- lets me branch out to an enormous degree. My thoughts can run wild because there’s no one to interrupt them (although interruption can be a good thing when I’m going down the wrong road). Being alone allows me to be a better writer because I am living in shifts. I am reacting and reflecting. To take away a space of my own limits rumination, certainly, but it also curbs creativity. I don’t just bitch in these sessions. I’m trying to figure out what’s signal and what’s noise.

For instance, I got a Facebook meme THIS MORNING bitching about the U2 album Apple put on their phones once. That was in 2013. As if that is the worst problem in your world….. to get FREE MUSIC (and if you didn’t want it, you could just delete it).

When I listened to that album, I found one of my favorite songs, “Every Breaking Wave.” Of course my favorite song of 2013 came from that album, but knowing why is above your pay grade. That’s an inside joke, and I know who will laugh when they get here. People who have real problems just roll their eyes at stuff like this, and that’s a large part of the joke.

I remember the conversation surrounding it- not funny until we ran the conversation into the ground a hundred times. Basically it was all about perspective. There’s conflict all over the globe, as well as hunger and a thousand other problems, but you’re cranked up because you lost maybe 150 MB on a 16 GB phone. What the fuck ever.

I have two paths of thought regarding this. The first is that there are so many problems in the world. Why is this something they remember over 10 years later? Alternatively, most people don’t like to get vulnerable. Bitching about U2 is infinitely easier than walking into your own valleys of vulnerability. Even then, I said something along the lines of “honey, I get it. The world is fucked up. But more today than yesterday?” Said person was also using the surface level to express fear and doubt about much bigger problems.

At the time, I was sort of going through a thing vicariously through someone else. A friend of a friend had been murdered. So, of course the U2 album was going to set them off. It was the right thing at the right time to blow off some steam.

It wasn’t that the world had become worse. Ours had.

I think about those kinds of memories all the time in the name of putting them down. I wake up every morning and reassess the day before, and it has been habit for 20 years. Although I haven’t always posted daily. I’m on my 61st or 62nd day of that, trying to get it ingrained as a habit. I was going to talk about writing every day vs. cosleeping, but two things about that. The first is sleeping alone informs everything else. I could not do what I do without rolling over and accessing my tablet first thing. The second is that I already have an entry called “This,” It asked about my collections, and these entries are it for me.

They don’t take up space. In my room.

And now, without further ado, the best thing that came out of the worst thing that Apple has ever done, apparently:

Making Connections

August 30, 2023 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I was just thinking about how I said that the Bible was an ancient blog at best, because there is no argument for God. There is an argument over people’s reactions to God. My ruminations are just as important as theirs because reaction to the divine is individual. You talk about how it influences your life, and it either attracts or repels people upon execution. I hope I act like I’m in touch with my divinity, and lead them to believe that it guides me in a way that atheists would never find offensive. That’s because most atheists don’t actually hate God. They hate what Christianity has become and they’re mad af about it because we keep forcing something down their throats that they’ve thought about for years and decided enough is enough. White supremacy Jesus can only be justified so much.

It would be so much more if Christians hadn’t been overtaken by the Republican party that their set of beliefs is the first thing that comes up in an atheist’s mind. There’s sometimes no room for me in that crowd, because they don’t believe I exist. It’s my job to just keep being me and not judging anyone for anything. Anyone who thinks otherwise isn’t really listening. Zac is. He gets to stay. 😉 All atheists who aren’t offended I’m not are welcome. I love debates between Christopher Hitchens and Rowan Williams. I think he would have loved Michael Curry as well.

Michael Curry added a depth to the Anglican church that they didn’t even know they needed, even after electing Katherine Jefferts Shori as bishop. That was important, but being black is unique in a singular way. White people do not support the black perspective as much as they should, but when they did, Michael Curry brought James Cone with him. Liberation theology hits different, and it is one thing to always preach to a black audience. He got a chance to direct that message exactly where it needed to go. He preached one of the most famous sermons in the entire world- Harry and Megan’s wedding. He said that we could set the world on fire with love if we only tapped into it.

I’m trying to explore what’s stopping me. I have a talent for self destructing. It’s brilliant, really. It’s also not all my fault as I am set up to fail six ways from Sunday. I am learning how to deal with my limitations realistically instead of having the pipe dream of getting better as a cook. There are things I just cannot do that able-bodied people can. It didn’t work out. Doesn’t mean I can’t 100% miss the thing that makes me the happiest in life.

Just like Anthony Bourdain (I know people call him Tony, but he said once that he only likes it when his friends call him that), writing is the thing I love most in the world that can give me the highs and lows of cooking. Just like him, intelligence and cooking are woven together, his in fiction. Mine is real in the sense that I write about my life and I’ve taken the time to listen to Zac and really take in what he’s saying because I’ve been interested in it since childhood, everything I didn’t get to ask my great uncle because he was taken from us when I was too young to understand. And he might not have been taken from us the way it went down, but no one will ever know. It just adds to the mystery, the legend in my family. I could get the public version through a FOIA request, but I don’t think I want to know what really happened. I’ll find it on my own eventually if I keep researching the era of C/DIA I’m studying for dialogue and accounts of real events.

It’s not that the people of the Bible hold authority over our lives. It’s to show that a group of people trying to write a story can succeed. Christians continue to write that story, but more of us write it like we’re in it for ourselves rather than our betterment in order to be in community. You cannot take on more than you can handle, and you cannot expect everyone to catch you all the time. Recognize the hell out of the people who do, because they’re the ones to which you owe the biggest honors and favors.

If you don’t act like a connection matters, it won’t- depending on your tolerance for not being able to fix a problem. Sometimes your rope is very short and you have to apologize for being quick to jump to conclusions. Sometimes it’s enormous because it takes time for a problem to simmer to the surface. The honeymoon phase of any relationship is addicting. Bromance is almost as instantaneous as it was in Stepbrothers. Because of this, it’s really hard to break into a group of guy friends and feel like a regular. That’s because they have five friends from fifth grade so you’ll be FNG until you die. 😉

I’m the same way. I value time and effort. That’s why I value input so much. When I talk about my response to God, you can talk back because I speak in a universal language to express something ineffable (thanks, Neil). Everything comes down to secular humanism, because no one has a lock on what God is or isn’t, but everyone knows how they feel in the Blue Ridge mountains or on a plane with the possibility of going down. I am betting that Zac can describe this fear more than most because I cannot imagine the feeling of being trapped on a ship or a sub during conflict. Even if you love it normally, you’re going to react like a goalie. Most of the time, the play is on the other end of the pitch, but when it comes down to you, it really, really counts. Being a goalie can actually come down to 89:53 of nothing followed by a stunning amount of terror.

It was getting quiet in here, so I put on my latest mindworm. It’s jazz, “RFK in the Land of Apartheid” by Jason Moran and the Bandwagon. It’s inspiring because it’s mathematically complicated, but I’ve been listening to it on repeat for years to get it out of the way. Now the bass is a life blood.

It is another thing that puts me in the correct frame to write because I also hear people dealing with white people Jesus. Apartheid Jesus wrecked South Africa. Every time we talk about it, we reinforce why that stuff should never happen again. Americans need to face the reality that all minorities fear being put under that kind of system. Hopefully it will never be a dictator who think white lives matter just a little bit more. A lot of Americans have proved that’s what they’re looking for in a leader, and it’s our right and responsibility to write it down, but not to add to the fire. To be there as a witness. People are doing it with their cameras, I choose to do it in words.

You cannot always feel a divine presence, but it’s up to you to nurture it in the way you know best. It’s not that atheists don’t experience those feelings of wonder. They just don’t attribute it to God because they don’t see that thread of divinity that comes with acknowledging someone’s humanity. They see it mostly as a grandfather in the sky, because that’s what the church has represented for thousands of years. I, like they do, see morals and relativity through the lens of other people’s behavior. I, like Arundati Roy’s brilliant title, believe in the God of Small Things.

I choose to correlate that to the message in the book of Acts, that resurrection happens in the middle of the mess, or in this case, when you least expect it. It takes work to get down to the smallest part of yourself, not just to be able to acknowledge your feelings but to tell another person as well. Just like the historical Jesus, the message is here if you want it. I’m just never going to say that your way of viewing the divine is invalid and that it’ll land you in hell. I don’t even know whether I’m going or not and I am nowhere near 94% correct as to how God works. Neither were the people in the Bible.

Old Testament is all of us on a bad day. New Testament is all of us on a good day apologizing for it. Feeling saved by God/Jesus is the same feeling as being saved by friends or family when you’re in the shit. God is not the grandfather in the sky. It’s the audience I talk to when I’m alone, because especially when I’m writing here, I can’t be sure that God is listening, but I can be sure that you are.

It also helps my friends understand me better because they see me talking about both them and others when I can’t be sure they’re listening or care. They, in effect, see the way I talk about them behind their backs, but not for malice. Because both good and bad reactions are valid. It takes work to resolve a conflict without either party feeling slighted. Depending on who’s in office, we’re better at it or worse. Some administrations, frankly, just like the dollar signs that come with being pro-war and don’t want to be smart about intelligence keeping conflict down because it’s “good for the economy.” Whose, exactly?

Because when we stop thinking as a worldwide people instead of Americans first, we open the door to being oppressors instead of support police. We end up staying longer than we need because we’re making good money. Who cares what it does to them? And then when their countries have been ransacked, we pull a lot of racist bullshit when we have plenty of room. There are even states that are basically empty.

The huge problem we have in Texas is that when Greg Abbot sends a busload of people to Washington, his supporters cheer. He keeps doing it whether it’s legal or not because it’s popular. You can’t stop that problem from this end without federal intervention.

The problem is twofold. The first is that people don’t actually come together to fix the problem. They sort of kick the can down the road rather than hiring enough people to handle that kind of influx. Meanwhile, if you don’t know anyone here, you could get a higher priority if you’re willing to settle where we put you. That way, we have more infrastructure and tax base in places that need it to survive.

No requirement to stay, of course. Just that it might give you a better chance if you were willing to live in a smaller city.

We fail ourselves by telling us that we are so much better apart than together. Being apart creates separation from God, because we make God in our own image. If people are displeased by us, so is the divine. It’s the only thing that can inspire true change in behavior, because you have to want change to come and you cannot process it properly without looking at it from a third person perspective. It doesn’t matter to me whether people have access to that concept through running or prayer. It’s not the semantics, it’s the protein.

Speaking of which, I need some.

It’s a connection I made.

I Would Have To Pretend to Make it Interesting

August 30, 2023August 30, 2023 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 2 Comments

What was the last thing you searched for online? Why were you looking for it?

I Google very little. I absorb news, and expect my audience to look things up if they’re confused. It’s work easily done and taken off me, because I can just refer to a story instead of trying to find the link again amongst thousands I skim. Therefore, most of my Google searches are in support of my very random brain trying to process what it’s hearing. I am also not writing a part of my book that requires things like “please God NSA this is for a novel how fast does someone die with cyanide?

I don’t even have to look that up. It’s seconds, thanks to “The Moscow Rules” by Tony and Jonna Mendez. We had a Russian asset take one by biting into a pen. He was dead before he hit the floor. It’s a completely tragic end, but better than Russian torture and death.

I feel I should say that I am not being gloom and doom here. My dad is all good so far and there’s nothing to worry about. If there was, I’d know it with accuracy.

Because I retain so much information, it’s like I cook. I forget everything I know in relying on recipes and just look at the ingredients I have. When I write, I have Googled ahead of time rather than working toward a point. Clearly. 😉

I have not once Googled myself to see what other people are saying about me. I get enough of that in my own life. Besides, I don’t think anyone is saying much of anything. Life is long, though. Maybe something I write will go truly viral like Dooce, but even if it doesn’t, I am happy with my life right now. I write because I cannot stop, not based on its worth to other people. It’s my outlet, not theirs.

I don’t even care if Bryn and Zac read, because sometimes it’s really nice to have a conversation that’s not based on what I wrote that day. That people aren’t anticipating what I’ll say based on what they understand before our next interaction. I can and often do change my mind between entries, and when I do, I will explain it here.

I figured out why it bothered me so much when my beautiful girl is upset that I write her as flat. It’s that she’s a part of me, and if I’m writing her flat, then I’m coming across as that, too. I march to the beat of my own drum, but the rhythm has changed over the years. Life is in the rests.

That’s got to stop, obviously. However, it won’t change unless we do. We will see each other as part of ourselves because our conversations are not out loud. They resonate deeply because of lack of tone of voice. It’s a lot different when you’re always making up your own and it doesn’t match up.

I could not say the things I say about anyone out loud (unless I was working a crowd and it was innocuous enough not to be offensive) because my neurodivergent urge is to just run and hide, but be clear in my communication when I don’t want to be in front of people. My social battery varies from Oprah to Harper Lee.

I take a lot of things people say way too seriously because I want them to know that what they’ve said has resonated and I’m listening. That’s because most of the time their words are echoing through my filters and I’m hearing something different than they’re saying. We do it to each other all the time in conversation, it’s just quicker to correct a mistake.

Even Zac and I are good at this- saving up conversations for in person face time. The reason I say we’re good at it is that tabling a discussion doesn’t make it go away. He’s better at circling back around than I am.

It’s a balance because sometimes I feel I express myself better in writing, sometimes in speaking. Either way, I am better at connecting with people in a public forum than one on one. That’s because if people hear you speak live, they are less likely to take anything personally because I have good boundaries and they know I won’t embarrass them. I’m a good person to ask when you need someone to speak at a wedding reception or a funeral. I’m really funny, I promise. I’m just a grump of a writer. We all are to some extent. Hard exterior from years of self abuse because not only do we think we’re not that great, neither does anyone else. People say that they respect authors. Most of the time, they respect fame.

I find it easier to express conflict in writing and love in person, so if you only know me in one arena, you’re getting more of me in one area and less of me in others. I don’t mean that I am always on fire about everything, it’s that I can be conflict avoidant in person, but tell them how I feel under no pressure to respond. I will tell you how long I think is reasonable to keep checking in to see if you are listening, but I am not goading you to respond, I am telling you my boundaries. I will disconnect, but I will express unhappiness easier because I’m not taking it personally. I focus on the people who show up.

It’s the only healthy thing to do, because you know for sure that you’re in the right relationship when you don’t feel like you have to do anything to get love. That you won’t always get when you need, but you’re allowed to be you and bitch about it until we can agree. Nothing is worse than feeling more lonely in a relationship than actually by yourself.

Show up for the family and friends who don’t make you feel lonely because they accept all of who you are. Who alternate between lifting you up and not making you the main character in every story so that you can see I accept you no matter what. That there’s nothing on earth that would make me run from something feeding both of us.

The last thing I Googled something that really meant a lot to me was stories about losing your female friends. One was a reddit thread, one was a book I bought called “Your Other Ex.” I thought it was so hard to explain our bond when there are legit millions telling this same story. Some of it goes back to childhood. I think it really is as hard as a breakup because losing Supergrover was losing the two things that mean the most to me about our relationship. The first is that she’s the bridge between my old life and my new one, and she’s been that for two moves now, not just one. Her feelings are probably about the same given that she’s now offered to hide several bodies under her pool. But it would be nice to hear it out loud. I’m not so much of a judgmental dickhead when that’s the energy I feel coming off you. I pick up on aggression just as easily as she does, but she did not like me trying to work it through or de-escalate. It came off as condescending when I was trying to not be “that guy.” The one who tells you to calm down. I thought I was telling her that I heard her rage and to have it out, but don’t run when that makes me feel rage, either. Sometimes I can keep my lid on. Sometimes I am not smart enough to take the high road.

We used to be great at taking care of each other, but then we both told each other things we cannot take back ever at all. Instead of continuing to take care of each other, we turned away. We shouldn’t have done what we did for all sorts of reasons because it made logistics complicated. I needed to have a real life that accommodated time travel, basically. Meeting her was like gaining a dual processor, and not even a basic ARM. I mean top of the line Threadripper.

That has way more than two physical cores, but you get the picture.

You have to give room for lag given our senior citizen appearance in tone of voice.

But it’s also a complicated construct, because our issues aged both of us in different ways, and yet it feels no different than fighting with another little girl when I was eight. Still that primal scream when you lose someone really important at that age. No one tells you that it’s just as hard having a friend from toddlerhood to junior high disappear as much as it is from age 35 to 45. On the young end of the spectrum, she saved me in a way that I will never pay back. On the end, she ignored my attempts to try. Our relationship got so fucked up from not changing mediums when we didn’t trust each other that it was great she was here if she wanted more, but it’s better for me that she doesn’t. Because here’s what could happen if she’d let it. We could forgive ourselves and each other and accept this new reality rather than slamming each other to the ground when there’s a problem.

I regret everything I’ve done to make myself seem like an untrustworthy friend, and find it useless to jump up and down trying to prove it now…. that DC has been home in my head since I was 23, not because we met. That I was correcting a mistake instead of trying to get to her, because I was writing down all the ways it changed me. I didn’t think it would ever change her mind about anything. I just love it here. I went to the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington on a whim from a text. That kind of thing doesn’t happen in Houston.

I don’t think any of that came through as clearly as I needed it to- that I was leaving for DC to be a better friend and not a worse one, because if I’d stayed in DC and regretted moving to Portland, I would have missed meeting her at all. The opposite was true. I liked having the TARDIS land on my lawn. Who wouldn’t?

It does affect the way I think, though. I am hesitant to have a relationship that is all virtual again. There are too many traps to fall into, mostly that I think I’m not asking a lot when I write to someone in order to be heard and it fails. Then what do you do? You start fighting tot distance yourselves when it’s not really possible.

Whether I’ll consider being a virtual friend to her is based on whether the internet is helpful or hurtful, whether I can capture real feelings and so can she without sacrificing humanity and focusing on individual divinity.

If there’s anyone I don’t want to write flat, it’s the voice I hear when I type. It’s just a shame I made it up.

Because I don’t Google normally.

TV Time

August 29, 2023August 29, 2023 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

What TV shows did you watch as a kid?

I started this entry by just writing a list of the things I watched when I was a kid, and now I need to go back and fill it in. If I didn’t put the list first, I would talk about one show for five pages and then remembered I could add multiples. 😉

Snorks- I cannot say that I remember much about this show now. Then, I was absolutely obsessed. Mostly because they looked like underwater sea creatures and I have always been fascinated by animation of oceans, rivers, etc.

Garfield- There’s one line from the Garfield Christmas special from the 80s (I have a good memory) that reminds me of my unique kinship with my beautiful girl, and I’ve attached it to her for years without her even knowing it. “If the sky were made of parchment and the sea made of ink, I sill wouldn’t have enough to write my love for you…” or something like that, but it’s very touching and you should all look it up, because that one line and the way it’s delivered by Grandma made me cry for like four years running. Now, Pluto TV has an entire Garfield channel, and let’s face it. Garfield was The Dude before The Dude was The Dude.

Doogie Howser, MD- This show absolutely rocked my world, and is actually pretty influential to the way I live my life now. My blog as an idea goes all the way back to the last three minutes of this show. Knowing that Neil Patrick Harris is queer makes the show mean more to me, because it meant that while I was struggling in real life, he was struggling in front of the whole world. But I don’t think I’m that much like Neil. I do, however, think I am very much like Doogie. I know this because now there’s a reboot of Doogie Howser set in Hawaii with a female protagonist. I am very much like her, too.

M*A*S*H*= to be frank, I don’t remember watching M*A*S*H* as a kid. It was on a little bit past my bedtime. I do watch it now, but in the early 80s, what I remember about M*A*S*H* is falling asleep in my room and hearing my dad laughing so loud I thought he was going to burst. I wanted to know what he was laughing about, and now I’ve watched all of it thanks to Netflix.

Young & the Restless- If you have a mother and grandmother who like soap operas, you watch them by osmosis. You get hooked because you’re not allowed to watch anything else. I knew who Michael Damian was way before he hit it big as a pop star. THAT IS CRICKET’S BOYFRIEND MA’AM.

Guiding Light- Young & the Restless was my favorite when I was in the 4-8 range. For some reason, I liked Guiding Light more when I was older. My mom was fanatical about both, but I liked the actress that played “Reva” because she reminded me of a friend. Then she played evil twins or something like that and I really, really loved her. Big shout-out to Cynthia Watros for making my childhood so entertaining with her portrayal of “Annie Dutton.” If you remember Annie, you’ll know why Cynthia got a lot of umbrellas shaken at her in airports. She was so bad it was good.

Jonny Quest- Jonny Quest was part of a Sunday morning line-up, but I don’t remember what channel. What I did know is that it was the one show I had time to watch before it was time to leave for Sunday school, and even then I couldn’t see the end. I have never faked getting out of church to watch Jonny Quest, but don’t think I didn’t think about it.

Davey and Goliath- part of the same Sunday morning bloc as “Jonny Quest.” It’s the one Christian-based television show that didn’t drive me up the wall as a child. Very much like Pokey and Gumby, not too preachy, etc. I don’t think it would stand up to a rewatch, but I definitely loved it when I was a shorty.

The Smurfs- I loved The Smurfs, but I was way more interested in Gargamel and Azriel than I was to any of the little blue people. Azriel owned that show, let’s face it.

Inspector Gadget- I have always been the Penny looking for my Inspector. I could not love a TV show any more than I loved Inspector Gadget when I was a child (with an honorable mention going to Danger Mouse). It was Alias before Alias existed, and I think JJ Abrams knows it. 😉

Sesame Street- Sesame Street has always been SNL for kids, and I still have scenes run through my mind occasionally. My dad and I both love “Put Down the Duckie.” It is well established that as a Muppet, I am Bert, and representation on television is vastly important. See? There I am, monobrow and all. I felt close to Mr. Hooper, Maria, Louis, Susan, and Bob. I also thought it was hilarious when they did spoofs like “Sally Messy Raphael” and “Placido Flamingo.” And now we come to another truth. Kermit the Frog is one of the loves of my life. The Sesame Street News reporter was the first character I loved, but of course I also love The Muppet Show. It’s just the inanity, like reporting live at the scene with Old King Cole.

This Old House- The only show I watch consistently now that I did then. Back then, I was home sick from school and it was the only thing on. Bob Villa felt like a warm, close, personal friend. Now, Kevin O’Connor feels just as solid. In particular, I like “Ask This Old House,” because you write to them and if you get lucky, they just show up and help you fix it. I am sure that this brings hope to many, many people.

I am sure that this list will be different in other countries. Now I want to go explore what other people have said. 🙂

A Stroke, Hopefully of Luck

August 28, 2023 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 2 Comments

I just received word that my dad has had a stroke, but there’s a lucky aspect in all of this. That’s that one of his medications is likely to have caused it and the symptoms should go away. He’s having a bit of trouble speaking and moving, but his brain is fully intact. Therefore, it is less o a worry because he’s been like that for a few hours and nothing has gotten worse. The reason he has not already been through an MRI today is because you can’t have a pacemaker on while you’re in the machine, so they have to wait for a technician to turn it off. So far, the brain is clear. What you have to fear is not what you can see, it’s what you can’t. When you’re looking at brain activity from the top down, it spiders outward and one layer might cover up another.

I am hoping it is just a side effect, because I have a different reality now that my mother is dead. I know how serious all of this is, and to pay more attention. At this point, it’s not time to go home. And yet, I understand and have empathy for myself because there’s not a lot I could do if I was there. Everyone right now is just sitting around waiting, and I can do that from here.

Although I do have those moments of “Jesus Christ, just come pick me up.” I’m not airing a grievance with my family, it’s just an expression I’ve picked up over the years when a situation is bad. It’s especially apt in this one because I don’t say it much when going in this direction. Most of the time it’s directed at Southern oppression and am phoning home to Maryland. It’s a coping mechanism, and it’s a good one.

It doesn’t take me long to get tired of living in the Bible belt, but I would return in a heartbeat if my dad needed me, and he knows that. It hits different when the universe knocks you on your ass by your losing one parent, because it makes you paranoid about the other one. It has nothing to do with how my dad is- all signs are good at this point. It’s a waiting game. It has everything to do with my frame of reference for the world being completely smashed to bits. When your parent dies, you are not the same person. Not even close. It rewires everything.

Knowing how much it changes you changes how you feel about other people’s deaths. You know it’s important to celebrate people’s lives and the time they had with you rather than desperately wishing for more. The universe has dice, and it is good at them.

Although I will say that in my grief over my mother, it was very much loss of the future we were building together because dying at 65 is nowhere near long enough to enjoy being retired. She retired in May and died in October. Her husband was 12 years older than her, and it never occurred to her that she would die first. It didn’t occur to him, really, either I don’t think. We were all shocked, therefore death cannot frighten me any more than it already has.

Your parent dying changes you more than it changes them, mostly because once you’ve been through that level of grief, you don’t want to go through it ever again. The main thing is acknowledging that my dad is just unwell right now, and we don’t know anything. I am not making things more serious than they are, just saying where I am emotionally.

When my dad gets sick, it’s natural to worry. It’s just not natural to think that him being unwell means he’s going to die immediately, because that’s my own echo chamber regarding my mother, not anything regarding his health. My mother had an embolism that wasn’t caught in time. She was almost DOA from the time that my stepdad called the ambulance. There were maybe 35 minutes between calls from Lindsay that my mom was being rushed to the hospital and the one where she was dead and I needed to come home. 35 minutes to process what happened with my grandfather’s death, which is that he lived so long he was ready to go. My mother died years ago, and he was fine until a few months ago. He died right before his 93rd birthday. There is no rhyme or reason with illness or death. You’ve just got to dance with them what brung you.

I’m glad I have a place to go when I’m internally freaking out and you know it’s not reality, because I’m not telling you the emotions of everyone in the room. It’s how everything is coming across to me, which is not objective truth. The only objective truth that I know is that before my mother died, I was not prepared for the reality of either one of my parents getting sick.

I am not spiraling out because my dad is sick. I’m rambling because I don’t have the blinders I did then. I do not have to worry that there are things left unsaid or anything like that, it’s just the natural thing a daughter does, just like he always does the things that dads do.

If he could speak properly, it would have been him who called me to tell me his complete history, physical, chief complaint, what is being done, what will be done, and three links describing the procedure and the protocol. We’re kinda different from other families, but we’ve all worked at the practice long enough we can hang.

It wasn’t child labor. We got paid. 😉

It’s also a completely different situation with my dad because he has one of the best doctors in the world watching over him, so she can translate from doctor to idiot quite fluently. That would be talking to people like me, if you were wondering…….

I pretend to know a lot more than I do, which is why if I am sent links, I will read them. They won’t be articles written by Joe from college, they’ll be official prescribing information or JAMA articles. If my stepmom doesn’t think he’ll get the proper care, she’ll move him until she does. His defibrillator is actually controlled by a company out of Boston.

Therefore, my worries are nothing more than my own. I just know you guys will worry with me, and I take all those good feelings in just as easily as I overexplain incessantly while waiting for news.

So far, I have to assume all is good, because if it was bad, someone would tell me to be worried and they’d be accurate about it.

But Jesus Christ, just come pick me up.