Tag: storytelling

Preacher’s Kids

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

If you are an empath and a preacher’s kid, you will hear everything they ever say about anything going on at work; you will take on the entire congregation’s pain as your own. How generally depends on which parent is the pastor, because of the way our filters for each parent are used to create a picture of what’s really going on. I have never done a day’s work as a pastor, and I never will in some sense. That’s because I did it by proxy for 17 years. I worried about every single one of you all the time. I listened in on every single conversation I possibly could to run it through the heuristics created by listening to my father’s end of talking someone through trauma in the moment. It was a manual on what to do when other people are in trouble. It’s the reason he got into medicine, that he was frustrated at not being able to fix people. That thoughts and prayers weren’t enough. He was that phrase before it was cool.

So, I’ve approached every church and every pastor I’ve ever known with the same recognition that part of them is totally full of crap. There’s only so much of your real self you can show in front of other people before your weird gets on them and the church crashes and burns. I have watched it happen over and over because I’ve stayed active in different churches as an observer to the same behavior I experienced in all the others. I could often predict how a church would vote on something because I’d been a preacher’s kid in a system with a Bishop and active in Congregational churches, seeing both systems and knowing the inherent advantages and disadvantages.

In a church, I’m generally the person that knows what’s about to happen and I don’t say anything because it isn’t worth it. People on committees get all up in their feelings when everything starts going down and it’s too much emotion to take on from too many people when I am standing in the room, absorbing it all and unable to shake it off. I also don’t think there’s a pastor alive that likes getting notes, so I’m much better off in every area if I pretend that no sausage is being made.

It’s why there are things that irritate the shit out of me about going to church and also why I still do it a little bit. It’s not shame or regret. It’s “been there, done that, bought the t-shirt.” I made a conscious decision to step away from ministry so that my crazy spatter doesn’t get on anyone else. I feel that way about belonging to a congregation sometimes, too, because I can’t turn off that tape that I don’t deserve pastoral care, like doctors don’t often take care of themselves. They think they can take care of themselves and they’re the best doctor they’ve got. It’s the difference between surviving and thriving. Power with rather than power over. Not only that, being the best doctor you’ve got isn’t a ringing endorsement sometimes, because you won’t call for a consult (get a second opinion from the patient’s perspective).

I have heard a lot of my stepmom’s conversations with patients and because I was also bound to HIPPA (I worked there at times and didn’t retain the information otherwise. I basically just called your pharmacy, don’t freak.), I learned how to take care of a patient population as well, not from a clinical standpoint, but emotional. Here’s how you tell someone they have something. Here’s how you take a history and physical. Here are the questions that are above your pay grade.

I never stopped being a preacher’s kid, it just added a different dimension reinforcing the same thing. It’s like INFJ on the job training. Just bleed out emotionally for everyone because they deserve it so much more than you. It’s knowing you need to protect your energy; that will save you from a lot of harm, not knowing you can’t literally pour everything out for other people and expect to maintain normalcy in your own world. I have a very live and let live with this. Stay in my life or go, because I’ll handle it whether you take five minutes for me to grieve or decades. I am strong enough to know that no matter what, I’ll be okay. I have an emotional toolbox and the willpower to use it.

I only need to focus on what I have to write that day to understand me. I can’t think of anyone else who needs it more, on both the medical and pastoral spectrum. Comprehension of another person is key, so why am I not giving this kindness to myself? I have myself permission to stand up. To at least apologize if I couldn’t do more to ask for forgiveness, and at the same time, knowing when it was wasted energy. People only hear you through the filter of what they understand, so if the same fight keeps coming up over and over and over, you know that the person isn’t hearing you and you need to change gears or it will never resolve.

I think of every relationship I have in that pastoral way, which is why my gift is helping other people. I have had an example of what to say when people are in crisis since I could talk. I am often not as gentle as I could be about it because I am not a patient person after a certain amount of time. I give much, and keep my hopes up, It serves neither of us in a relationship…. because you constantly waffle between asking for things and apologizing for your existence. Only the words “I’m sorry” mean that someone is. Adding or subtracting anything, as well as never saying them, are both issues. I do not mean that you do not mean an apology. It’s that people don’t naturally infer them. Saying that you’re not perfect isn’t the same as I’m sorry even if you mean it that way. It makes the other person do too much work trying to figure out what is even happening.

There’s also a difference between “I’m sorry I behaved that way” and “I’m sorry your reaction was so large.” There are very few problems in the universe that are black and white. The former is a genuine apology. The latter is caring more about how you felt in the moment than they did. It doesn’t make the other person feel acknowledged, like you recognize the gravity of the situation even if you can’t change a thing.

With preacher’s kids, they hear these patterns described so they see them coming a mile off because their sample size for heuristics is the size of the congregation. My father’s last church was approximately 1600-2000 people depending on whether it was Ordinary Time, Christmas, or Easter.

It helps when I’m in any relaxed group to know how they work, because church is more relaxed than the office right up until someone’s in trouble. The larger the congregation, the more times this can happen. It was hell week at my dad’s largest church, but it didn’t affect me as much as the people involved. Seriously, the week we got there, a teenage boy’s father (also a member) died in a boating accident, another teenager found out her father was keeping her away from his other family, and the youth group had been caught at camp playing strip poker. That’s what I was walking into as a preacher’s kid. An intruder on all kinds of grief, especially if they didn’t know my dad and thought the last one was better until proven otherwise. He had no trust capital, so neither did I.

I carried that around with me, too. People think preacher’s kids are supposed to somehow be better than everyone else, judging them harshly for falling from any height at all. There’s very little gray area between perfectly perfect and “the one we don’t talk about.”

There’s not really a point to this except character study. To show why I do understand people and groups because I’ve been doing it the whole time, even when I wasn’t actively looking.

The Five

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

What are 5 everyday things that bring you happiness?

Most of the things that make me happy aren’t the thing itself. It’s the circumstances around the thing.

The first thing that makes me happy is CIA swag. Zac has gotten me a baseball cap, a t-shirt, and a beautiful cocktail glass… smoked with 1947 etched in the glass all over and the seal affixed on the front. Again, it is not the thing. It is the thoughtfulness of knowing I like CIA swag and seeing something you know I’ll love at Langley. It is seeing an atheist’s divinity every single day.

Secondly, my tablet brings me happiness, a blanket statement because I have an old iPad Pro 10.5 inch and the newest version of the HD Fire 10+ (and a Fire 8 Plus for the road). I use the two largest as “desktops.” My iPad Pro is basically “The Ted Lasso Machine,” and my Fire has my whole life in it… sometimes a little too literally. I put a HUGE SD card on it, and I download everything at top quality. OF COURSE I need Jack Reacher and Jack Ryan and it’s going to take up 30GB. Please.

I write to people all over the world and carry them with me. This blog is written almost exclusively from one tablet to another. If you want to know the difference as to which one I’m using, the iPad knows how to spell Beyoncé and corrects to a special character when I’m typing. The Fire does not, and is poorer for it. Now you know that I’m on my iPad.

Thirdly, fizzy water. I am surprised and delighted by it, because carbonation is one of life’s great mysteries. Of course the science can be explained. I am not sure I could do a great job of describing what it feels like to drink something carbonated. Every single time, I’m all like “how do they DO that? How do they literally put joy into water as if it is excited to be drunk by you?”

Fourth, my watch. I have an Apple Watch now, but I am not specifically talking about it. I am talking about every watch I’ve ever worn and feel naked without. Here is the one thing about me that has always been true. I love classic Mickey Mouse watches. I have worn them since I was four. Now, I put Mickey Mouse as the face on my Apple Watch and have a red leather band. My Apple Watch was a gift from my dad because it will alert the authorities if I fall and black out. I have a mild case of cerebral palsy, so this feature on a smart watch is comforting, if not happy. There’s no way I could get in a situation so bad no one would come find me.

Lastly, every day my web stats make me happy. I don’t care about numbers, I care about flags. I have now been visited by every single country in the world, including Vatican City. I like to pretend that Pope Francis is dying laughing that I called Jesus a judgmental dickhead, because he knows him. They’ve met. He just can’t tell me. 😛

The fact that you show up whether I’m happy or angry or morose or delightful means something to me, and it doesn’t matter how many there are…. In fact, it especially doesn’t matter how many there are, because if I thought about the fact that so many strangers know all my flaws and failures, it would create such fear in me that I would never post anything. I just have to remember the little girl I’m writing it for, and just how much she looks like the rest of them.

I Am…

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Describe something you learned in high school.

Here’s the link to the audio. You might have to download it into your own media player or the Mega app. SoundCloud wants me to pay because I “upload a lot,” and I get it. I just didn’t know the space limit was so incredibly low. I’m searching around for options, and most of them rely on using my desktop, of which I am not a fan… mostly because I’m not really using SoudCloud to increase the popularity of my blog. The audio is just a convenience.

High school is divided up for me in two segments. The first is that I spent my freshman and sophomore years at High School for Performing and Visual Arts as a trumpet player. The second is that my junior and senior years, I didn’t. I went to a regular American high school. I was still in the music program, though. My junior year I was in varsity choir and varsity band at the same time, the first in the history of the school to do so. I learned how to be in a marching band. My symphonic band was better than the one at ‘PVA (no judgment, it’s just true).

Then, my counselor suggested that I drop one of my music classes because if I took Microcomputer Applications, I could get what was called an “Advanced Diploma.” The band was gearing up to go on all these trips my family couldn’t afford, and it was an easy out to drop band because I knew I couldn’t sell enough fertilizer to pay my own way. Yes. Really. They asked us to sell shit to people.

I dropped choir because I didn’t like the new director coming in, because I knew other people that had her and it wasn’t my bag. I was not a “show choir” person. I do not think that if you can sing, you should automatically be capable of dance as well. I liked great repertory, and pop music wasn’t it (for me). If that sounds persnickety for a teenager, remember that I was a classically trained singer from being in an adult church choir since I was 13.

I didn’t care about Britney Spears. I loved Bach and it showed.

For the record, I care about Britney as a listener. She’s great. I just wouldn’t sing her stuff unless I was doing it as a joke, because I couldn’t pull it off where people would take it seriously. It’s a totally different type of training.

I think I’ve said before that Beyoncé left HSPVA because she didn’t want to be classically trained, and that I continue to be devastated that it did not work out for her. But same vibe, we’re just opposite. She didn’t want to learn everything I’d been taught about being able to blend into a choir, breath control specific to that kind of music, etc. It’s a lot. By the same token, I didn’t want to learn the proper breath control to sing whatever it is the Star Spangled Banner is now in professional football. Whitney Houston doing it in four was the high point. ::looks pointedly at other pop stars:: No one will ever be her, and I knew that I’d only be a cheap imitation. I don’t want that for me, or anyone else. Do what you do and make it count.

Since my dad had left the church, I also got a job in hopes of getting my own spending money. I was 16, so no one thought anything of screwing me over to save themselves, like making me pay things back when I was short on the register when they’d been stealing from the drawer. I’m bad at math, so of course it was all my fault when the drawer was missing $50 at the end of the night. Of course it should come out of my paycheck. It’s what a teenager owes a national corporation, right?

I would never sue them over lost wages, but I would get a kick out of it if they sent me a product and swag box if someone is reading who thinks such a thing could happen at the company. I once proposed to Zyrtec on Twitter and told them they were paying. Then, they later kidded me about forgetting our anniversary and I said, “how do you think I feel? You didn’t get me anything.” The proposal rocked, though….. that I had 99 problems but a itch ain’t one.

I worked for SuperCuts, and in this instance I am not talking about the company. I am talking about the sleight of hand with my own team, not every employee who ever worked there. I mean, I was great at my job in retrospect. They had me, so you’re definitely safe in giving them as much money as you want. I still look back on my time as magical because things that are commonplace today were introduced while I was an employee, most notably, American Crew (for which I am grateful… white people pomade). I think the Paul Mitchell Tea Tree line came out then, too, a total game changer. It was also amazing learning the jargon of how to tell people I want my hair cut so that there’s less room for a mistake.

It doesn’t always work, but it helps.

By the time I graduated from high school, I had set myself up for life in terms of my opinions on everything that is still true about me today. The only thing that’s changed is that I call myself out as I am, bisexual, instead of telling the world I’m a lesbian while not thinking that way, because that label wasn’t something I gave myself. I just have to be louder about being bisexual in a heterosexual relationship than I would if I was actively partnered with a woman, because you can see it with every kiss.

The one thing I didn’t see coming that I didn’t know I needed was dating a bisexual man. That way, we still have all the same cultural references, though I’m older and have more insurance. He doesn’t care whether I look high femme or butch because in one outing, we’d look depressingly heterosexual and in another, it’s a whole bear/twink mood without all the lights, drum & bass, and Ecstasy.

To stop joking, we’ve both been bullied for being queer. That trauma for him is a different playing field, because mine is rooted in embarrassment. I’m either gross and wrong or a plaything given to men, because why wouldn’t women being with women be nothing but a male fantasy? Why would women have agency in this society? Straight women don’t even have it.

Men harass me by seeing me with my then-wife (Kat, in this example) and asking us to kiss in front of them, or come home with us, or any number of things that hurt way more than they would have if it was original. Those examples aren’t all Kat, when it was 2000, or even Meag, when it was 1996. It’s all picking at the same scar every day of my life, because I heard about it before I experienced it. Being an empath made me experience that trauma before it was direct. I felt it on my skin when it happened to my friends.

For men, it’s horrible that they want to be female, their tormentors’ perception and not reality….. but seriously…. As if being female was the worst thing that could happen to a person…… hello…. All connected. Except men don’t stop with horrible comments with other men. It often leads to outright violence and death. I only say this because it happens to men more frequently, but violence against lesbians exists.

It’s a shared understanding, a shared library of images that create empathy. To me, it is especially important because the one thing I really hated about dating Matthew had nothing to do with him at all. It was gaining heterosexual privilege for the first time and rebelling against it hardcore. I remember one instance we’d gone to meet some of his friends, and someone did that thing where they looked around before they told a gay joke, and I wasn’t the picture of volatility you see here.

I said nothing, and just felt all of it. I know now that I should have ripped the dude a new one, but I didn’t want to upset the apple cart when I was meeting my boy’s friends the very first time. I was also like, 24, maybe 25. I was older than Matt, but still a child in my eyes now. I didn’t know what to do, and I was scared.

So now I can look at that and say I’m in a better place because Zac has probably been there. He’s just as out and proud as me. On Wednesday, I noticed right off that his nails were painted teal and he was wearing flowy pants. He’s the head of the queer group at his intelligence agency. I don’t know how he sees himself, but I see him as George Smiley if he had grown up like us. (Smiley is the protagonist in John Le Carre’s most famous series about MI-6.) I showed up in a black t-shirt, jeans, and tie-dyed pattern Crocs. I later put on a navy hoodie and my CIA baseball cap- some of you will remember that was a gift from Zac because he has the badge that allows you into Langley, but not the capability to escort visitors. I wear it almost every day like I’m pitching the afternoon game. Now do you see how we’ve inverted the binary? From the outside, I’m the butch and he’s the femme…. And no one would ever guess that we were into each other unless we weren’t holding hands or being cute to the point of nausea (our MO most of the time).

Editor’s Note: I learned that it was important on the train Thursday, when a young girl at the Franconia Springfield Metro said, “I want to be CIA, too.” I told her that I wasn’t CIA, I just had cool friends, and to call me when she got there. 😛

“Grown up like us” is emotional shorthand for Zac and I having to deal with the perils of being queer from a very, very young age. Zac entered the military under “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” At the same time, I’m not dating a gay man and he’s not dating a lesbian just for kicks. We’re not playing at anything, just being the most authentic versions of ourselves.

I have always been that in some capacity, but I have graduated. You don’t learn that you are brave and unique until someone tells you. In the moment, you’re just doing what you have to do to survive.

In high school, I learned that I would HAVE TO be unique.

My freshman year, I told one person I was gay and by the end of the day, everyone knew. In retrospect, it was the best decision I ever made, because any bullying that came my way was tiresome. They couldn’t blackmail me anymore, and they couldn’t get away with anything more original because they weren’t that clever.

Because I was moving out of the gay neighborhood in Houston to a suburb where everyone knew each other, I went back in the closet…. To save my father’s job according to my mother. My father didn’t care. He knew me. We’d met. But guess which message I heard?

Being in the closet for a school year was amazing and gave me the worst panic attack of my life. Both of those things were true. I would not have wanted to miss the chance of being in marching band, would not have traded my conductors (Mr. Matysiak and Mrs. Bueller [really]) for anything in the world. I would never have wanted to miss learning that I was not only a singer, I was damn good at it. I stood on the shoulders of giants, and my mother accompanied me through it all, literally.

She played the piano for my solos no matter what she was doing, and in seventh and eighth grade, she played for all my friends, too. This was not a small feat, as most piano accompaniments for solos are orchestra reductions. So, my mom hurt me a lot, and she also came through in equal measure. Not only was the piano our lighthouse when we were ships passing in the night, she left it to me in her will. She didn’t give me a setting. She gave me the main character.

In terms of hurting me, all of the panic I’d been feeling that year came to a head when my senior best friend asked me to come with him to his prom. He was literally on the way to pick me up, my hair and makeup done to perfection, when I melted down physically. It caused a monster reaction, a rash, shortness of breath, everything- so the doc came over and gave me a shot of Depomedrol and off we went.

That was the first time that I learned everything can be fixed before school, you’re going. It only backfired once. I had the flu, and Tamiflu was YEARS ahead in the making. If it had, I would have been going to school without spreading it. To be perfectly fair, I’d woken up feeling a little miserable and bloomed at school. It wasn’t a big deal right up until it was.

Actually, that leads to a really funny story. One of our parishioners while I was at HSPVA was a Republican judge, so I went to their convention in like, ‘92, before they were complete nut jobs. While I was there, I bought a button down that was made of real American flag material, and the colors were very dark. It looked sharp…. Or so I thought. I was really sick on my birthday, and nothing would have stopped me from going to school that day in my new threads. I get there and first period was band…. And if Jack Lucas had been there, he would have been SO PROUD OF HIS STUDENTS.

Editor’s Note: I also went to St. Martin’s Episcopal as a teen, where I was unimpressed with President George H.W. Bush….. and thrilled to meet a former Director of CIA (of course). Therefore, it always thrills me that Jonna Mendez managed to fool him, because of course now I know we have mutual friends…. And I am laughing so hard that I can’t even breathe right now.

Those motherfuckers broke out in four part harmony, because they were musicians. They could sing their parts blind. Then, they get to “free,” and Dan Kovaly hits the fucking *cymbals.* I was just as self-deprecating then as I am now, so I thought it was absolutely hilarious while still mortifying. Later, my mom and dad brought me my favorite food, cherry chicken from Ruggles. We got to eat lunch together in the commons, and it was sad that there wasn’t a Happening that day.

Happenings at HSPVA are code for what would now be called a flash mob, probably. You never knew when they were coming, and it was always unique no matter which art area was on showcase. It’s one of the core memories that made me who I am.

Back in high school.

Anything Anywhere All at Once

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

What job would you do for free?

Link to audio.

I will do anything for the experience of having done it, because I am a firm believer that you don’t say something is bad if you’ve never eaten it…. and that statement has many transitive properties.

Most writers work for free while they’re doing something else for money, and everything I do for money feeds this web site in more ways than one. So whether I’m in Global Information Services or trying to be a cook, I’m still me. To really understand me, you’ll have to read “The Sol Majestic,” which explores the idea of ivory tower vs. hard work. I am both sides of the equation. I am blue collar and an academic because one feeds the other. I do not need a job that captures any more of my attention than is necessary to feed myself, because I don’t live on earth most of the time. My head is in the clouds, and I am constantly wandering for a foothold.

In the clouds, there are no footholds. Blue collar work is an anchor to keep me from flying too close to the sun. Brandon Sanderson says that if you want to be a writer, lay brick or similar, because you need something that your body can do independently of your mind. I agree, because you can get into a rhythm while at the same time giving your characters room to play. I only have two fiction projects in the works and trade off between them, and it’s slow going because I’m a blogger. It’s not that I’m a bad writer, it’s that I’m so inexperienced with style and structure.

At some point I will have to borrow structure from Jonna Mendez, former Chief of Disguise at CIA and in my opinion, the best non-fiction writer that ever lived tied with her husband. Here’s why. Jonna and Tony have the ability to capture what fiction does without writing it. Their books present like spy capers and you get lost in their movies, internal videos that play as you’re reading. I didn’t just read about trying not to get caught in Tehran and Moscow. For the length of the book, I lived it.

Then I met her in person and the books changed yet again, because not only could I picture her more completely in her stories, they were scarier because I really, really liked her. It’s one thing to read about strangers in peril… quite another when you have an emotional attachment to the story. It made me a bigger fan, though. I have two copies of each book by Team Mendez, autographed paper and Kindle.

If it seems weird that I have both, it’s that the Kindle versions came first and the autographs are keepsakes. Plus, I don’t like to write in the margins of my books and it’s not because I’m a purist and think writing in books is bad. It’s that if I want to make a note about something, I want data I can use. If I write a note by hand, I then have to type it. Wasted energy when I can just attach a keyboard to my tablet or Kindle (yes, Kindles support them). I wouldn’t have thought of this unless I’d reviewed so many books that it was necessary. So much easier to copy and paste text from my notes, and it syncs with Goodreads and a few other programs so I can access everything on every device I own.

I would like to say that I love reviewing books, but I don’t. I’m a voracious reader and therefore, my standards are extraordinarily high. I also don’t want to hurt any writer’s chance of making more money. Even if you’re a shitty writer, you still deserve to eat. It’s a different perspective for me because I am also a shitty writer who deserves to eat, so I probably empathize too much when I should be ruthless.

Speaking of which, I still owe Finn Bell a couple of reviews, because he’s one of my favorite writers in the entire world…. mostly because he writes characters and mysteries that you don’t want to end and there are too many questions running through my mind as to what happened after the story ended. I asked him about that, and he said he couldn’t tell me anything because he was keeping things tight for future stories.

I get it, and at the same time, “AAAAAAAAGH! WHAT HAPPENED TO THE PRIEST, FINN?!?!?!?!”

Speaking of priests, preaching is another job I’d do for free as long as I didn’t have to do anything else. It is ultimately the reason I changed my mind about starting a church. I realized that I was too immobilized by grief over my mother’s death to do things like pastoral care when I was the one that needed it so badly. You can become a wounded healer, but only up and to a point. It’s a balancing act of being empathetic and not getting your own crazy spatter all over your congregation. Don’t think it doesn’t happen. I have watched it on many an occasion and didn’t want that for myself.

It was hard enough coming unglued with no one watching except readers who weren’t in the room where I type. I could say what I liked and process “verbally” without feeling like I had a responsibility to keep it together for everyone else.

Here’s what you don’t know before your mother dies that you sure as hell know afterward. If you are the oldest, you are the new matriarch of the family and it might not be because your family wants or needs that. It’s your own mother lion protection mechanism because you were the one your mother trusted with “the rest of them.” You aren’t prepared for that kind of responsibility and if your siblings are also adults, they didn’t give it to you. You took it because that’s what you’ve always done… sacrificing self to take care of everyone that came behind you.

You feel alone in a way you never have, because now it’s all on you…. even when no one needs you and the responsibility is an illusion.

The phrase “even if no one needs you” is not wiping the blood off my cross or anything. It’s that at adult age, “need” is relative. For instance, I want people to want me, not fall apart because they think they can’t function without me. So many people confuse desire with need, and it ate my lunch for a while as I walked toward the new normal. The pace never accelerates. I have run toward nothing.

I’m not sure there’s ever been a sense of loss as great as continuing my own life afterward, because it was so painful. I didn’t want to die, and I didn’t want to live because who cares? That’s the other part no one will tell you. When the person who brought you into the world leaves, a huge part of your tether develops a rip and you aren’t carrying a needle and thread.

Of course this is magnified by my bipolar disorder, but I do know these feelings are also universal. Specificity is measured in tiny increments.

I’d be a grief counselor for free. Nothing fills my soul faster than a mutual stitch and bitch, because if you haven’t lost a parent, there’s no way to understand. I am not being pedantic. You just don’t even know until you get there. It will hit you like a head on collision where you’re driving a Trabant into an oncoming train, and this is true whether you liked said parent or not, because those two people made you. I am not speaking literally. Adopted kids go through the same stuff.

It’s that the core personality is set by six years old, according to Erik Erickson, and generally your parents are there for that. Even your facial expressions and mannerisms take on new meaning when you realize that you are indeed looking at your mother (in my case) and you aren’t offended that she’s staring back, because you’re not a copy anymore. You’re what’s left.

If you haven’t lost a parent, you can empathize with me, but don’t you dare say you know how I feel. I wouldn’t even say that to another person who lost a parent. Just because their parent died doesn’t mean they’re having the same experience.

The one thing we have in common is that “hell is other people.” They don’t know what to say and you can’t get mad because you know they mean well…. even though when they say “I would fall apart if my mother died” you want to scream “WELL IT’S A GOOD THING I’M GOING THROUGH IT AND NOT YOU, JACKASS.” Don’t get me started. It isn’t helpful to get angry, just to say to people the best thing they *can* say to someone grieving is “I’m so sorry.” Don’t add anything. Let those words be humble and enough because they are….. and let me explain why.

When MY mother dies, it’s not your turn to have emotion. It will be your turn, but it is not in that instant. To focus on how you would feel if it happened to you is bullshit to someone to whom it has happened. It will come across as “God, I am so glad I’m not you.” It’s also frustrating for people to say that they don’t know what to say and avoid you when you are literally handing them a script with only two or three words.

When I was in the thick of it, just deep, deep grief, I needed people to do things for me. Two problems with that. I didn’t know what I needed and couldn’t ask for help because it was too much energy… both in the figuring it out and in the asking. I was alone in my room for months because no one is prepared to have their mom die. No one. At the same time, I wasn’t prepared in the slightest. It’s not like anyone could have predicted an embolism because the doctors didn’t know they needed to look for one. I can imagine the notes:

Patient is a 65 year old white female presenting with moderate pain and limited mobility in her left leg. Waiting for x-ray to confirm fractOH MY GOD SHE’S DEAD.

Speaking of “white female,” I’m laughing because one of the doctors I work with decided to create a macro in a word processor that would automatically change “if” into Indian female. Hilarity ensued. EVERYTHING in medicine depends on “if” and “it depends.”

My analogy for this is that all doctors are half programmer, half waitress. All of them. Doesn’t matter the specialty. It’s soft skills and “if, then.” So many medical problems are just spaghetti code (everything loops back around into a tangled mess).

And then you look at psychologists/licensed counselors and the spaghetti code analogy gets even stronger. People aren’t machines, and logic isn’t emotion.

It’s honestly why I’d cook for free, and I proved it when I was willing to do it for eight bucks an hour. I needed a logical job so that my emotions were a separate part of me. The place I kept to myself because I already had a place to vent and a partner to help carry the financial load (absolutely the most important reason to keep Dana in the back of my mind if and when I start making real money).

So if you ask me what I’ll do for free, I have touched on so many subjects that the answer is anything, as long as it serves a purpose. I think it’s good advice. You can have it.

Free.

So I Don’t Have To…

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And I just figured that out by writing.

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

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

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

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

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

Go Tell the Bees…

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 1 Comment

Link to Audio

She is gone.

If it seems like I’m breaking apart for no reason, I’m a part of her brain and she’s a part of my soul and we’ve been wrapped tight for almost ten years. Being connected is as autonomic a reflex as I’ve got in this world. The hardest part of this whole thing is that we were going to have an occasion on our hands pretty soon and I didn’t want to make it. I was wrecked inside because I tried so hard every single day after I broke trust and she hardly ever talked to me in my own love language so that when she said she was impressed, I could hear it. When she said she trusted me, it was real.

I was all Maury Povitch on that shit. I have spent countless hours with my thoughts and they have all given indications “that was a lie.” The worst part is that I couldn’t tell her how I felt in a way she could hear me and vice versa, because I really couldn’t tell that she couldn’t tell that I wasn’t guilting her. I was raking myself over the coals and she was listening to it. I was prostrate with grief and shame. Sounds came out of me that were wounded animal for days. I may never get over it, and she did nothing. I helped myself to this train wreck and smiled through the devastation because I knew that I could blame her for absolutely nothing. That I was going to fall on my sword for all eternity because I couldn’t look myself in the mirror for years. She was the one who put light in my eyes after a long day’s journey into night…. And take that for every turn of phrase you want.

I also don’t think she ever took in all the ways I just wanted to be in her sunshine. I created a tape in her that said I only wanted her body and she’s dealt with that shit her whole life. I’m certain that I made a mistake where hearing “I’ll take on everything” didn’t mean anything. You’d just have to know how big everything is, equivalent to a month of mea culpa that didn’t have to happen. I could have stayed silent and not acknowledged guilt, shame, and remorse. I suppose I wanted everyone else to see it when she couldn’t.

Because this is all my own doing, I’m not mourning her nearly as much as I’m feeling terrible about the way I acted and not being able to communicate where she was open to listening and hearing. In my opinion, when we were e-mailing, she frequently responded so quickly that I knew it was going to be a reaction and not a response. When I called her on it, another huge fight when I even said I wasn’t basing my words on anything but timestamps. The reason I think that is her responses didn’t change to empathy very often. So much more you’re just trying to provoke me. Seriously? Get bent. If you really think that, it’s why I’ll leave you behind. As if I don’t have just as much going on that would prevent me from having the time or need to goad you into anything. I am 45 years old. Just because she’s chronologically older doesn’t mean shit, I assure you.

We’re both children when we fight (when we both tap into our inner eight year olds, that’s the moment when all the color drains from our fire and God help both of us because we have no problem absolutely destroying each other and we’re way too fucking good at it. There’s also no way in hell it would have turned into this if she’d ever bothered to get off her keyboard warrior high horse or ask me to get off mine when it was my turn to be champion at “Let’s Be an Asshole,” and ironically the score is love when we’re the most furious.

We would have been different friends altogether had we ever hugged and I can point to the exact moment we chose the wrong fork in the road. It was agreeing to Skype and then not making it happen. Not normalizing everything killed us, and it was all my fault. The phone, even on VoIP, goes both ways. It was a series of unfortunate events for me that started right there, because I know me. We’ve met.

Every single thing in our lives felt bigger because there were only operatic swells of emotion on the page… the emotional equivalent of freebasing cocaine, not the measured conversation of two people who love each other and want to solve all our shit together. I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that I am just as loved as she is because it would be impossible for it not to be true. My signature is sewn into her heart and it has been for too long for it not to count.

I remember from one of our first conversations telling work to shove it and drinking wine together in the sunshine, a daydream to put myelin back on each other’s nerves. I had just sent her a copy of a piece I was working on for church, and I am so much more impressive to people who have no natural ability for music than I am to people who actually know what they’re doing, just mutual admiration because her comfort was thinking about getting away from her actual life for a hot second and mine was thinking she was the sun in the whole equation. I’ve always thought that, and I have told her on multiple occasions. I hope someday she’ll believe it.

What is also just as true is I’m telling you it hurts because I would hope you love me enough to stop. If you are trying to tell me the same thing after years of me being butt hurt that I’ve been talking and nothing has ever changed? Get out of here with your bullshit. You may have time commitments, but I will be patient for years on end…. Not even a pediconference to make sure we were on the same page. She doesn’t owe me anything, but if I tell someone day after day after day that they are safe and loved and they still hold me at arm’s length? How long do I have to hold onto a relationship that isn’t really there? It’s not on her to get to decide how I spend my energy, either. I’m not going to keep my calendar dates open for Godot over there… and still, she’s the only one that can light me up from the inside at Such Great Heights while The District Sleeps Alone Tonight, waiting for The Postal Service.

Which is why I’m willing to say this relationship is dead in the first place, and why my faith tells me that it will actually never be over because resurrection happens in the middle of the mess. If it seems like I can tie this relationship to Easter really easily, it’s because we’ve blown each other to bits this time of year more than we haven’t. I think it’s body memory. So much happened in March and April of several years running, and now that pain is intrinsic. We feel it underneath and react, again, like butt hurt little girls. It will never be any different because she’s the person in my life outside my biological family where it’s easy to regress. She’s got my hot buttons on speed dial. It would change if it could, but I don’t think it will. If she accuses me of trying to get her attention, I’ll get offended and say so.

Pain ensues, usually with her anger and me taking it lying down because I have to. I feel like I owe it to her to make up for past mistakes. I’m Roy Kent asking Ted Lasso to scream at me in every fight, but she won’t fight about that. She’ll fight about everything else under the sun, just not that. Is it any wonder that her big line about me is that I can’t be counted on for anything but constantly saying we’re done and not done when I am waffling between feeling worthless and standing up for myself every single day, without fail, for seven years? I just got to a place where not wanting to feel that miserable every day sounded better than continuing my campaign for self harm.

God, so much goes into love that attraction is the least of my worries. It was never about that, and I fucked myself in every sense of the phrase. I just wanted to be hers, in whatever way that meant, and now I am, or I hope so. I hope that my words run through her mind when she needs them the most, like asking God to live in the parts of her that tell her she is right and good, and when she’s telling herself that she’s not, to yell at her… a lot. She’s an atheist. That doesn’t mean my prayers don’t matter. She has always called me her pinch hitter, and sports mean so much more to her than they do to me. It’s a compliment I take very, very seriously.

BUT.

If I need something, and you’re not even hearing me and just assuming that I’m trying to hurt you, we’re done. This one is just a hundred times worse because my term of endearment for her came from Sesame Street and hers for me was a goddess once upon a time, but it sure as hell wasn’t later on. There was never a different one, just constantly telling me through thought, word, and deed that judgmental dickhead was all I’d ever get. That I sat in judgment of everything instead of pleading for relief. There is nothing in this universe that is less true than me wanting to hurt anyone, least of all the one I love the most. I am working through my trauma reflexes, picking them apart one by one, trying to turn them off so that I am even less capable of being rattled so that when her tail goes off I can get out of the way before she strikes. I have managed it to do it before, and I was looking forward to more of the same… but she caught me on a very bad day and I exploded. I didn’t even give her time to blink when I told her to take a right, and I am still shaking with such anger that I can’t tell from one day to the next what my end goal is here. I really don’t have one. My get up and go got up and left. It’s ok. She’ll never know what she lost because she refused to believe it existed, because how could it? I fucked her up, and there’s no way she would attribute that to my own trauma reflexes and not actual ire… even though that’s been my excuse for why it’s okay for her to hurt me, because of course she has the right to be furious. I just felt like time was up, and I’d suffered enough. She accused me of constantly creating the narrative that I’m a victim. If she’d ever bothered to look for it, there would be this amount of mea culpa a thousand times over. But if the story you’re telling yourself is that I live to be a victim, it ceases to be my problem what you think of me…. Especially when I send multiple page essays on why I think you are so much more deserving of love than I am in objective, not subjective manners… and have for almost ten years, seven of which I knew you wouldn’t grasp my meaning because you weren’t looking for it. You wanted someone to tell you that you didn’t deserve love, so that’s what you heard no matter how much I talked.

It became a time warp. Assuming that I deserved all the punishment I gave myself made it where I didn’t notice that I’d been doing it for seven years. I apologized without ceasing, through every fight, and after a while, I was the only one that ever did… another severe crack in our foundation.

But what a beautiful foundation. It even came with mascara and a tote bag.

And that’s why I was crying as I explained to the bees that La Dame Blanche had gone back to Paris, but they still have all of me. My light isn’t as bright yet. They still have time to watch my hair turn white in the sunshine, long after the storm has faded.

I won’t remember her as anything but my muse, and I just have to hope to God that she remembers who she is. If she does, I’ll be thankful. If she doesn’t, I will still be thankful because the relationship was too turbulent to continue unchecked. I can’t focus on processing a thunderstorm without looking at the strength of my boat….

Another Lenten/Easter reference because if you look at Lake Kinnaret, you can tell that the Sea of Galilee was no great feat to cross. The amount of danger wasn’t equal to the strength of the storm, but the worthiness of the craft. I can only control one of those things.

It’s what the bees have told me, anyway.

I Haven’t

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

How have you adapted to the changes brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic?

I never needed to do anything for the pandemic. I’m an introvert homebody by nature. I also didn’t like wearing masks, so staying home was more comfortable, anyway. Everyone in my family has had it but me, and I still don’t have the last booster because it was too much energy to schedule when my risk factor was so damn low. I have the first three, though, and they did come in handy when my friend Robert Glasper (sat behind me in history in high school) came to DC and played “The Reach” (an addition to the Kennedy Center that focuses on hip-hop). It’s so fabulous. If I were to plan the perfect date, I’d want to go see Robert. Romantic, platonic, whatever. It’s a great place to sit outside and have a drink before or after the show, because the garden patio is just as much fun as looking at the art indoors. My last trip was incredible because it was one of my favorite artists on my actual birthday.

I also really, really like seeing Robert alone so that no one talks to me and I can just take pictures of him and the band. Last time he was on tour with Yasiin Bey. It was funny, I told Robert to tell him he was my favorite alien (he played Ford Prefect in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy), then walked away and thought, “I’m a friggin’ Doctor Who fan. I’m an idiot.” The only person that he plays with that I’m desperate to see is Jason Moran, because I was actually closer to Jason than Robert. I get to see Jason more because he actually works here (still lives in NYC, but is also jazz director at the KenCen). I’ve just never seen both my guys outside of the High School for Performing and Visual Arts bubble.

I would even get the last booster for that one.

Seeing Robert was definitely the highlight interruption in my otherwise quiet existence, because I’d rather play with my characters or talk to all y’all than do much else. If you knew the main characters I was working with, you’d spend time with them, too, and there are only five people on earth who know the answer to that question. If any one of them talks, it will do an enormous amount of damage. This is it. This is my magnum opus, and I can’t think of anyone who would figure it out faster than my chef of an ex-wife. I’ve left breadcrumbs all through this friggin’ web site in hopes that she gets the hint. She just looms so large in my memory that if I succeed here, I’ll be able to trace it all the way back to “hi, I’m Dana.”

God, don’t you wish you knew which breadcrumbs were only for her? I bet you do. Maybe in 20 years, because I swear to Christ if the idea is executed properly, it’s worth millions. I can take that check to the bank and cash it, because three of the five are subject matter experts. Dana could guess all three with only three guesses given if she picks up what I’m putting down.

I’ve already put it in writing to The Five that if I get rich, so do they. So does Dana. So does pretty much everyone I ever knew because there’s no such thing as a self-made millionaire, even if it was just sacrificing giving gifts to your friends even when you really, really want to because they’ve been so kind to you.

For instance, one of the huge gifts that Zac has given me is his time. We’ve been dating casually for months (I only see him every few weeks and that’s fine with me because again, characters.), and his gift is not only his time, but his house as well. If I need a different office once in a while because I’m going stir crazy, he’ll leave for his office and “leave me in mine.” I’m not sure he sees it as a gift, but it’s more precious than gold. I think the one true thing I’ve said about this novel over and over is “it’s got spies in it.”

Zac is an SME because he works in a smaller agency than CIA, but collects raw data from all the intelligence bureaus we have. He’s not a spy, but spy adjacent (I think……….. you never friggin’ know in this town). That way, he can at least teach me unclassified jargon, because if he doesn’t know it, he can at least point me in the right direction. Neither one of my characters *start* as intelligence officers or assets/agents. I’m borrowing structure from Steve Martin’s Picasso at the Lapin Agile, an alternate history in which Picasso and Einstein meet at the Lapin Agile, a cafe in Paris. The book is their conversation.

It opens up all kinds of possibilities for me as a writer, because my story actually does start in Paris. As I’ve been telling Daniel, I’ll go with you everywhere, it’s just that the only places I have to live for a while are Paris and Ho Chi Minh City. The majority of the story takes place in Viet Nam, so I want to go there first on a 90 day visa. I’ve found a range of apartments, and there are huge ones in the middle of the city for $4-600/mo. I could get by on a studio for $200, but it’s better for me to have a separate office. If I’m going to have a work in progress that’s worth this much, I want a friggin’ door that locks when people come over. If you think I’m being paranoid, ideas are my currency. I’m the product. If this isn’t the right idea for me, it’s the right idea for someone, and Joe Hack is not going to decide to take a stab at it.

I’d sell it to “The Daniels” rather than keep it on my home computer if it was unsecured (speaking of which, they’re one of the few directors I’d even attempt to trust). Yes, I know that Daniel and Daniel are separate people, but if I can live with being “the girls” for almost a decade, they can roll with it or don’t).

Now do you see why the pandemic didn’t affect me at all? I’ve just rambled on for like 15 minutes and not even looked up.

And for my Ted Lasso fans, I didn’t even know I wanted Trent Crimm, Independent to be a Diamond Dog until he wasn’t. And yes, I’m just as much of a train wreck as Ted, and I’m proud of him because he’s doing the work.

We kept each other company during the pandemic, Ted doing work at his house and me doing work in mine.

The Story I Told Me

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I just can’t with me sometimes. I’m so tired of being an Idealist. I am tired of constantly living in the story that INFJs tell themselves, that the world will be utopia if we just do x and y to climb toward z. We all do it. We all take on the pain of the world and analyze it until we understand. My trauma reflexes make me nitpick and I often don’t realize I’m doing it. I’m sure it makes me, too, sound like a hardass. I’m just the type person that will hug and kiss you while saying “I know you’re a mess. Let’s get you back together.”

I will only do that for the people I love the most, because that’s how much energy I can dedicate to staying with someone until the process is complete. I’ve always thought I would be an excellent executive assistant for that reason… dedicated to helping one person succeed and hopefully becoming so focused that it’s not possible for that energy to leak toward everyone in the room; I feel their pain even when I’m supposed to be partying. I have a glass of wine and the feeling intensifies, which is probably why I only have one drinking buddy. Therefore, we’re sitting and talking to each other and my energy is only on him. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been at a party, engrossed in a conversation, and solving a marital problem in my head. It wasn’t mine. It was across the room.

I joke about only supporting gay marriage if both chicks are hot, but I swear, some days………

It’s not that I hate myself all the time. It’s that I hate not being able to see what’s in front of me. I am an Idealist with no self-regulatory mechanisms. I can tell within a handshake or two whether I want to have your babies. Doesn’t mean it’ll happen. I can just see it.

What I can’t do is simply focus on shaking your hand. The pictures start flying across my mind within a few minutes of talking. Generally, I know whether I love people within a day or so, and it’s not meant to be frightening to hear it. More like Philia/Eros. Context matters, but it’s not generally up to me as to which one it will be, neither is it quantifiable or binary. It is a feeling that encompasses so much, and we will choose our own adventure. Lust is felt in a hot second. Love takes time to figure itself out, because it is a hard working verb. Everything from “here’s where it’s safe to leave a mark” to “of course I’ll pick you up at Dulles.” I would venture to say that the latter means more, because no one wants to pick up anyone at Dulles.

I am intimidated that as an Idealist, with a framework in place, I can see everything from here to the airport within a very short period of time. I’ll tell you where I’m going and invite you, but if I’ve made the effort to assure you that you are safe and loved, then don’t be surprised if I am unhappy you’re no longer with us. I hate it when anyone separates from the company. I’m just not very good at it. I’m like The Doctor when he’s traveled alone too long. I’m just Twelve all the time and wish I was Eleven.

It would not be unlike me to have a companion called a carer because they care so I don’t have to.

In fact, it would be great to be able to delegate. I can to a certain extent because my sister doesn’t build futures the way I do, but she does understand people and often brings me back down to earth. I know I say things that are too deep too early, and part of it is natural. Part of it is that after I’ve said it, it’s a “separating the men from the boys” exercise. If you can’t tell me what you’re feeling or you run from large emotions, duly noted. That’s the kind of stuff that really makes me feel unloved and I won’t stand for it, especially since I will absolutely pour my everything into helping you succeed, because it’s filling my own purpose in life.

Sometimes I wish I had a secretary that would warn me when “that pretty lady is causing all kinds of hell,” even when it’s me.

I think it would help me to stay on track, not get lost in the world I’m building instead of navigating the one where I live. I think the phrase I’ve heard more in my life than any other is “God, Leslie. Chill.” I don’t have much chill. I am Leslieserious about everything until someone reminds me to not.

I look up and realize I’ve been lost in the story I’m telling myself. Maybe it’s time for more sleep. Maybe it’s time for a beer and a chat with friends at a pub. Maybe it’s turning off the news and not reading so many biographies.

I am certain I would be more lovable that way, more appealing to other people. I am just uncertain that I would love me through it.

When We Are Amused

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

What makes you laugh?

I laugh so easily, and shake when it happens. Being happy changes my whole posture, and the dumbest jokes will do it. Most embarrassingly it’s when I’ve made a “dad joke” and no one else is there. When I make myself laugh, I tend to make others wonder if there’s something wrong. It seems so conceited when it’s really the laughter of knowing I’ve thought of something you’ll read later.

My audience is always with me, not as a monolith, but a whisper. The person to whom I am continually speaking whether or not you are present. It’s a one-way conversation. Making you laugh is a great part of my day, because I might not get a laugh at that joke this year, but I might in three.

In terms of types of humor, I love wordplay. It makes me laugh harder when I realize something is a double entendre, or a joke due to convenient homophones. Moments like that live in my memory a long time, and I bring them back to life upon remembering. Truly rare writing craft with a joke is something to be shared and nurtured.

Beauty makes me laugh, because that is my response when something is too big emotionally to take in… the difference between hearing someone say that they are Puerto Rican and Ukrainian and receiving a photograph of them. One is a random factoid brushed off by small talk. One is a pair of eyes staring back at you, begging to be seen.

I laugh with intrinsic joy… happiness so bright it can’t help but escape upon remembrance of the thousand smiles before it. Memories age like fine wine, and Southerners get drunk with pleasure. Some of the biggest laughs I’ve had in recent memory are talking about my childhood with The War Daniel, because we slip back into NE Texas-isms and he remembers things that I don’t and vice versa.

Editor’s Note: If you have to get married, make sure it’s the person who remembers you had a Black Moor goldfish in third grade and when you can’t remember what you named it they know it’s Othello and you know they’re not bullshitting you because it’s so on-brand. It also matters that Daniel actually came to my house and talked to my fish in third grade. He didn’t know I kept fish as a kid. He knew THAT FISH SPECIFICALLY.

The sheer amount of bullshit I will not get away with if I marry Daniel is what’s currently making me laugh, and it has nothing to do with Daniel being male, because the women I’ve dated/married (save Dana) were just like him in terms of reacting with their minds. What is different about Daniel and the other women is that he is constantly in touch with his feelings. Full stop. I am not in touch with my logic. I never have been…. So between having a better logical/emotional toolbox than me and being big enough to pick me up, put me on a shelf, and walk away tears are streaming down my cheeks with laughter.

Comedy equals tragedy plus time.

Now we’re cooking with gas, aren’t we? I love dark humor because I was never raped or molested, but something happened. I didn’t make sense of it for a long time, and becoming a cook finally gave me access to a library of images that would actually make me feel something. It takes a lot to make me laugh at times because stupid doesn’t always cut it. I am not a cutter physically because my keyboard is the extension of my mind just like my right arm ends in a chef’s knife when I’m cooking. Sometimes when it seems like I am the most selfish person you’ve ever met, I’m actually trying to protect my energy. I am such an introvert that I protect my energy in order to be able to laugh.

This is less weird than it seems. When I am in public, whether that’s with one person or several, I want to be present and in the moment. If my social battery is charged, I’ll often come off as hyper because I haven’t had any social interaction with anyone in days. If it is drained, I will fall into trauma reflex mode, and that’s when I’m just a delish and a delight, I assure you.

Trauma reflex mode is a direct result of meds being off and/or not getting enough sleep. Sleeping actually puts myelin back on my nerves in a way that Starbucks will never capture. I also take medication to ensure I sleep deeply so that I can laugh more at myself… being irritated by everything I do generally means I’ve tried to replace sleep with caffeine and my body is noticing.

When I make the commitment to sleep, it changes what I think is funny and the way I write about it. When I’m feeling safe and secure, I don’t interrupt that vibe much with jokes about trauma or podcasts about crime. I can always tell when I need to re-dedicate myself to sleep when I’ve listened to more than three Crime Junkies in a day.

When I’m dreaming, I build things. I process information with my feelings, so generally I build relationships. I think about how they could get better. So much of my humor is informed by the dream I had about you last night, and I don’t mean that in a shady way in the slightest. Sleeping is a playground for my characters, whether I’m working on the book or my real life issues.

I love that there’s so much humor inside me that no one will ever see, because it belongs to someone. I am more situationally funny than I am “joke funny.” I mean, I do have comedic timing, all preacher’s kids ought to by 45, but the thing I value the most in a relationship are callbacks. It makes me laugh when I tell a joke from ten years ago and you spike one over the net with a riposte like you’re sitting in that memory with me.

That’s the golden ticket. That’s winning at life, especially if I am lovingly the butt of said joke.

I’m also very clever at wordplay, and will probably make fun of me better than you.

En garde.

Happily Ever After

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

When you were five, what did you want to be when you grew up?

When I was five, I wanted to be a mother. My mom was a stay at home mom, and I wanted to be like her. She was always busy with 1,001 projects whether it was for our house or church. She always had time for Lindsay and me, plus a rotating cast of characters. She was an incredible musician that could step in at the drop of a hat. So comfortable in a jack of all trades role, which to me is the absolute delight of knowing a little bit about everything.

I thought I’d be the one with one or two kids, and yet 15 because their friends wouldn’t leave. I am not sure when that dream changed, but it wasn’t when my mother died. It was when I realized I loved women. It was the early ‘90s, and there was no model for the life of a lesbian Kool-Aid mom. Dana and I were both in our 30s before we realized that going to an OB/GYN and talking to a doc about getting pregnant was a thing we could do. Things worked out the way they were supposed to, but I cannot even imagine what a mess our kid would have been… and I mean that in the Texas sense. A mess is a good thing. A kid with both Dana’s and my mannerisms and expressions makes me keel over laughing even now. We shared a brain, and I will always wonder what it would have looked like in thirds, fourths, and fifths.

I think I was onto something. I think even then I knew that my purpose wasn’t to be the story, it was to record it. My mother’s job was tied into telling my father’s story, and I think that’s the path I thought my life held as well. That’s because I’m comfortable when I’m not the story. I like being the “go-fer” on a project. I like being someone’s Girl Friday. It gives me time to create and reflect, which I do all day every day with blogging.

THe first time I knew I was a writer, I was in fifth grade. My teacher had us write a response paper to a story about adult illiteracy. I called it “I Forgot My Reading Glasses.” It was a huge hit.

The second was English 101. Prof wanted to see where we were in terms of writing, so the first day she had us write a couple hundred words on nothing. The professor said it was so good that she wanted me to read it in front of the class. I wasn’t well-liked after that, but the prof was smokin.’ I’m always going to go with the hot Indian professor, fuck yo’ bell curve.

I started my first blog, Clever Title Goes Here, while I was in that class. It was 20 times more popular than this one, and I lost a lot of capital when I tanked it. At the time, I was tired of the blowback and it wasn’t worth it. Pretty sure I screwed myself out of being able to blog for a living with my short-sightedness, but I’ve never known a person with ADHD and Bipolar II disorder that could futureproof more than five minutes ahead- even with a map and directions.

I laughed my ass off in the movie “Contagion,” where blogging is called “graffiti with punctuation.” It’s true. And at the same time, it’s also writing by osmosis. You’re letting everything in your environment touch your skin, some of which you use that day and some words burrow deeper for later.

For instance, I was on the phone with Zac and he said that the military asked him to make “a list of everything that’s wrong with me and why.” I didn’t even breathe before I was like, “can I use that as a writing prompt?”

I am not constantly down on myself. I know that there is also a list called “everything that’s right with me and why.” It’s just time to take an inventory, and happiness writes white. The ink isn’t dark enough to be memorable, or hasn’t been yet. I think that’s because I tend to write about what happens when it’s negative in order to process it out and leave it behind. Not carrying it around with me all day is paramount to success “in real life.”

And I never would have thought about it this way until now, but I’ve been doing it since I was five- this thing where I make a coloring book or a wide ruled notebook the evidence I have a soul and it lives on the page.

For better or for worse, I’ve known since I was five that I was going to be a writer…. Because if you think about it, aren’t all stay at home moms the keeper of the memories? Mine was, and I feel the job has been bequeathed to me. It’s my turn to have adventures and make memories, putting them here so that they are safe.

By saving the memories here, I’ve let you into a sacred space and given you institutional memory. You know my story and it will live on long after me. I couldn’t have predicted I’d have an audience at five, but I definitely knew that I wanted someone to hear my stories.

…..and some of them actually happened.

Callbacks

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

What’s something most people don’t understand?

I have an international audience, so trying to think about this question on a global scale is intimidating. I’m not sure there’s anything I would say “most people don’t understand” with a sample size that large. So maybe bring it down a little?

Or perhaps make a large, sweeping generalization?

Neither seems like a good idea. In terms of a writing prompt, though, I’ll “dance with them what brung me.” I will say something that I think is true, and then in the comments you can tell me I’m wrong. There’s no way I won’t be, because again, too many people to think I have much to say on this subject.

Most people don’t understand their personal history and just how much it informs their present and future. There are callbacks of enormous proportion, themes that run through your life, even thoughts in your head. I was reminded of this in “Spare,” by Prince Harry, just in the way it was written. He’d explain something, and there would be a line in it that would connect to something else, and when that memory came up, he’d use the same words.

The most touching was “I will keep you safe.”

The funniest was, “a Biro… wow….”

Now that I’m 45 and my friends are all over the map, older and younger, these callbacks occur daily. With some, it’s recalling things with people who were there at the time the words/thoughts occurred. With others, it’s that they weren’t there and saying those words is a way of including them in an inside joke… especially the stories that aren’t really letting them into something funny. It’s explaining a piece of history, local or global.

So many things in life follow you, whether as friend or enemy.

For me, a big one is homophobia. If you say something homophobic, you didn’t just say it to me in that moment. You’ve unleashed the holy hell of every time it has ever happened, no matter how benign or traumatic. You are tapping into my memories personal and institutional.

Most people don’t recognize the patterns their family uses to cope. They’re not all dysfunctional, and I would never say that all patterns are bad. It’s just hard to do a thing and see its effects later and want a different outcome while also not changing any of your behavior because it will rock the boat. So people don’t think about their families in the third person omniscient. They don’t rise above the minutiae and look at the larger picture.

I am making a generalization about the world, but through my own experience of being the interrupter of those patterns, whether I wanted to be or not. I’m just the girlfriend/wife. I am automatically the problem because I’ve asked questions that interrupt the thing they’ve been doing for 25 years…. And it is deeply problematic because it doesn’t matter whether those patterns are hurtful to me or not. I’m not “really a part of their family,” so what if I’m hurt?

After all this time, I can say that homophobia and “not really being a part of their family” was inextricably interrelated. I didn’t have the clout of a husband. If you’ve ever dated me, this still doesn’t out your family in the slightest, because it’s happened every time I’ve ever dated a woman for more than a month.

I see what happens when other spouses in the family speak up, and realize that my position is secure. Nothing is ever going to change because I said something. Fathers and mothers in law will respect their daughter’s husband a hell of a lot more than they’ll ever respect me. That’s because they view our relationship as a continual sleepover…. But of course, that’s not what they’d say in public, because that would be homophobic.

In private, it’s things like “you guys can stay at our house now. We have a room with two twin beds.” This was from a father that was very concerned that we weren’t married and didn’t want us sleeping in the same bed because of it…. Even though we were domestic partners- at the time, the closest you could get to marriage. It was a slight we didn’t deserve for something we couldn’t change.

So, after I’d stuffed all that down for years and years, I went off at said parent because I’d tried everything else. It wasn’t my finest moment, but it wasn’t theirs, either.

This has also happened more than once. With one, my wife was in lockstep with me. With the other, it was their whole family against me… even though my problem with them was how they treated their daughter and I was trying to stand up and protect her.

Sometimes people don’t recognize patterns.

I am not Jewish or Catholic. I don’t try to guilt people into anything. If you’re reading something I’ve written and you feel guilt, that’s on you. I lay it out there and I’m not shy in doing so. What you do with “my intel” is up to you. I have what I hope will happen, and the solid knowledge that people rarely react the way I think they will.

Homophobia and family dynamics conspired to make me want to be quiet about everything. It was probably the whole goal, to make me scared enough that I’d ruin a relationship… when in reality, a relationship that makes you constantly afraid to be who you are doesn’t deserve to survive.

My callbacks are now making me stronger. I am old enough to have an opinion, and mine is just as important as yours. I will not let people tell me to do less, think less, feel less. I’m just not capable. I have to find friends who just live and let live. They don’t feel the need to save me from being me, and aren’t threatened by large emotions coming at them.

There’s also something to be said for relationships being work, but not like sticking a round hole in a square peg and hoping it will miraculously fit if you just beat at it long enough.

You step outside The Matrix when you realize that not wanting to give that much energy to a problem is valid. For instance, floating above the argument and watching it, seeing if the same one comes up over and over and over, and how many of your solutions work and how many are a stopgap to kick the can down the road a little further.

Not wanting to give energy to fixing a problem, for me, is seeing that the other person is either minimizing a problem or refusing to acknowledge there is one. I am also the person that gives a relationship time to grow and mature. Not giving energy to a problem is not something I’d say about a relationship that was a few weeks old. But if you’ve had the same issues for ten years, that’s a different thing altogether.

I also don’t start a relationship seeing red flags, ever. This is because all people have problems, large ones. Why should I expect you to be different from me in that regard? The thing I love so damn much about Daniel is that he knows he’s a mess. He laid it all out there. The only thing I count as a red flag is what people don’t tell me and I’ve had to find out on my own, worse when it’s a conversation that we needed to have in private and another sprung it on me at a party.

If a person is open, honest, and willing to learn, there are no red flags. There’s only a set of problems we need to deal with together. But that’s my perspective, perhaps not yours. Some people do want to weed out what they think is troublesome ahead of time. It’s valid for them. To me, no person is irredeemable if they are aware that they have huge flaws and are willing to do something about them.

If you are certain that getting help won’t do anything for you, then that’s when I’m out. It’s not my job to fix you. It’s my job to hear you say you need help and to support you while you’re getting it.

In effect, exactly what Daniel did.

He knows USG (United States Government) fucked him up, and to an extent can point to exact dates and times. He gets my respect for being that self-aware. He doesn’t have red flags. He has trauma reflexes that people see as red flags.

I suppose if there’s anything I could posit as “something most people don’t understand,” it’s them. Most people aren’t willing to sit in the discomfort of self-discovery. It’s not comfortable learning that you are judgmental, selfish, angry, or capable of hurting others. It’s not comfortable thinking about how and why you do it so that it doesn’t happen anymore.

It’s the whole reason why people ignore their callbacks.

Without Tears

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I am not sure that this entry will be written without tears, because I’m thinking about so many things that my emotions might leak. I might let the audio sit for a day or two, just to get some emotional distance. It helps the narration if I don’t have to blow my nose. Also, I’m sorry if the audio is poor. I have five housemates and I don’t have an “on air” light, nor would they pay attention to it. I am, however, surprised at just how much my Bluetooth mic picks up. The mic is literally in my ear, and it still picks up noise from all over the second floor. It helps me, though, because it keeps me from flooding out…. So that I can record an entry without tears…. 98% of the time.

I am positive that some people were confused at me crying over the death of Tony Mendez, but let me tell you why. I wrote about it, but it’s been long enough and I haven’t mentioned the connection more than once so it’s time for a rehash.

I wasn’t finished with grieving my mother when Tony died. Grief compounds. Therefore, I knew innately what his widow, Jonna, was going through in terms of having to tough out a public event all armored up while dying inside. My mirror neurons went off like crazy. My grief mixed with hers even though we didn’t talk about it. I took all of that grief home with me and mourned Tony and my mother simultaneously. Therefore, years later, when I think about grief, Tony and my mother both come to mind.

Mourning my mother was so great a loss that I put it deep down inside, hardly ever talked about it unless the other person in the conversation had already lost a parent. This is because the chance was too great that I would open myself up to further injury, because people have no idea what to say and often make it worse.

I will tell you right now that the only thing I actually wanted said was “I’m sorry.” I loved people that showed up and were willing to sit in the silence until I could emote.

Digging that deep was so incredibly hard that I still hadn’t cried as much as I needed to. Crying about Tony was only partially about Tony. The loss of a new book from him ever again really was devastating. But mostly it’s that the grief I felt regarding him was so much bigger than that. Grieving over him allowed me to process my mother’s death, because it was the entrance to a deep, dark cave, ripe for excavation. I just didn’t have any spelunking equipment.

Meeting Jonna was at least the hat with the light.

She broke me open in just the right way, at just the right time. Her armor was my armor laid out in front of me where I could take it in… where I could see my own actions in the third person omniscient.

So, when I talk about Tony Mendez, I can’t do it without tears.

Going through a breakup with a friend has been devastating, and yet not at all. It just depends on the day. Some days I think “no one is her,” and some days I just can’t. What has helped is a book called “My Other Ex,” stories of women who’ve lost their best friends and why “no one is her.” One thing they expressed universally is that with other women, you get so close you can speak without words, but there is no recognition of that type of grief.

I am an INFJ. I feel emotions so deeply that they’re capable of overtaking common sense, and I could write a seven volume book series on my dumbass attacks. Not only do I understand, I grok.

I understand so completely that their grief is my grief. Grief compounds. I cannot talk about that relationship ending without tears. So I compartmentalize, and armor up. No one is trying to see me cry in line at Whole Foods.

Armoring up is necessary only because if I don’t, I will just bleed out emotionally. In the moments where I am not capable of armoring up, it means the grief is too deep. So even though no one was trying to see me cry at a Whole Foods, they must have thought that them being out of the veggie dogs I like was being taken way too seriously.

Although I will say that it was legit a problem. If veggie dogs, vegan cream cheese, and hot sauce didn’t exist, I’d probably be dead by now. I eat them all the time. It’s my favorite lunch, because it takes about a minute to make. Yes, I am a very good cook, but I eat prepared foods most of the time. This is because I don’t want to devote the time and energy to prep. If you come over to eat, I will pull out my good knife. Left to my own devices, I run on sandwiches and Crystal Light.

I believe in Crystal Light, because Crystal Light has always believed in me. Also, not going to lie- finding out there are flavors with caffeine in them has made my whole life easier. I cannot talk about Crystal Light Energy without tears. 😛

“Spare” is a rough read, and I cannot do it without tears, either. Prince Harry and I have so much in common. My platform as preacher’s kid was so much smaller, but I can empathize with his pain. I’ve cried over the loss of Princess Diana, being different than everyone else because he wants to speak his truth, and the list goes on.

And then he went to Afghanistan, and I went from tears to the full-on sob.

I have said over and over that The War Daniel is my primary partner, and that if he changes his mind about marrying me, it’s over for anyone else. The reason that they don’t stand a chance is that we have a trauma bond, which is like a regular bond on steroids.

He’s the only person ever to make me feel better about the emotional abuse handed down to me over the years. I couldn’t listen to him without tears of relief. He said, “your trauma is so much worse than mine, because my enemies in Afghanistan were clearly defined. Yours were the ones closest to you, turncoats all.” If he is willing to walk in my inner landscape, I am willing to walk in his.

In fact, I am hoping to God I didn’t just reject a call from him.

The area code on my phone was his, but the name was “Telemarketer.” They didn’t leave a message, so I hope that means it really was an auto dial. Someone in rehab feeling rejected is not my MO, especially because I need him to know that I love him, honestly and completely.

The only reason I’m even saying that it’s up in the air is because I’m willing to date people casually until January. At that point, it’s a different ball game. I need to know if he still feels the same way after the fog has cleared from his brain. Again, I am trying to think logically through rehab and its aftermath, experience I’ve gotten from being a friend and a coworker.

But even though I’ve dealt with addicts my entire cooking life, that doesn’t mean I can do it without tears. What if he doesn’t come back? What if I’m waiting for nothing? I only think that in my smallest moments, though, because I’m not ready for a serious relationship, anyway. Even the relationship that Daniel and I created previously wasn’t serious. He didn’t tell me to break up with Zac, and thinks he’s adorable (because he is). I didn’t tell him I needed him to be faithful, either. He was going to be off doing his own thing. The best I hoped for this year was letters, calls, perhaps a short visit since he can fly here so easily and without money. The only constraint that the military would put on him is time…. Being flexible about his departure and arrival depending on how many standby seats were available.

The only part that was serious is dreaming of the life I wanted to create with him once he was capable of doing so. It fits my purposes nicely that he doesn’t drink, because I so rarely indulge. Zac likes cocktails, and so do I, especially if it’s something I’ve never tasted before. Therefore, I will always take a drink if Zac is bartending, but I don’t even keep alcohol at my house. I would rather drink Crystal Light. I think we have covered this. 😛

Right now, I am not communicating with Doc. It’s not because I don’t love him more than life itself. I need him to get well, and I don’t want to be a distraction in any way. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if he thought I needed help more than him and decided to come to my rescue at the expense of his own. The best thing I could possibly do is let rehab have him, and he’ll be done in May.

On the surface, it looks like I am batshit crazy and I realize this. Combat vet and alcoholic. Leslie, are you insane?

Yes, and that’s the point.

Daniel was HM2 in the Navy. That is the equivalent of a civilian nurse practitioner. Therefore, I feel safe with him because me being bipolar would never be an issue. I trust his judgment. If Doc says he can tell whether I’m up or down, I will take that check to the bank and cash it.

On the flip side, is it any wonder that I know how to support a Doc? My family is all medicine, all the time.

A really funny conversation between Doc and me ran thusly:

“I think I’m getting hypomania.” “And what are your qualifications to make this diagnosis?” “I went to medical school in the backseat of a Lexus.”

I am good at standing (sitting) behind people and listening closely.

I have been listening to Doc closely, and trying to understand his pain. Most of the time, I cannot do it without tears. If I start down the road of Doc doing this brave thing and how it was his worst day, I will collapse in a heap. It’s why I’m wiling to forgive him, and struggling through it. I have to forgive him whether he reappears or not. The forgiveness isn’t for him. It’s for me. I won’t be myself until all of this is resolved, even if it’s just getting my own closure.

The only reason I haven’t closed the door is that I can’t think of him going through rehab without tears, either. I know what that’s like, not from a first-person perspective, but from having a best friend back in the day who went through what Doc is going through now. I remember that I gave her a ring that looked like leaves encircling her finger, in honor of turning over her new leaf.

I wear my skeleton claddagh with pride on my right hand, or I did until the silver wore off and it turned my finger green. That’s not Doc’s fault. It wasn’t a gift. I bought it as a placeholder and told Doc where to find my favorite jewelry.

I should call around and see if I can find a maker who does plating. Even nickel would protect the metal. The only reason it’s worth plating a ring that cost $3.00 is that it’s so unique. Doc is a death metal fan. Skeleton claddagh is not my style, it’s his. Even after he broke up with me, I still wore it like a #livestrong bracelet. It didn’t mean we were still together, just that I hope to God that sending support would help, even if he never knew about it. I mean, he knows I have it and I have sent him a picture, but it might surprise him to know that the ring turned my finger green a few days ago. I didn’t give up on the ring, it gave up on me.

Perhaps it’s for the best that I’m not constantly looking down at my right hand, longing for a dream that might never come. I just don’t want to be certain about anything regarding him, because rehab is hard work and your emotions are all over the place. Again, Cora has said that she doesn’t think my faith in her father is misplaced, so I’m choosing to believe her. Keeping my own strength up is what’s important, because my faith in her father is important to me being who I am through all of this, too.

What kind of partner would I be if I gave up on him while he needed so much compassion? I know what it’s like to push someone away because you’re traumatized, and his trauma goes to eleven. Our pain isn’t even on the same playing field.

….and I can’t think about that without tears.

Music and Silence

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Here’s a SoundCloud link so you can listen rather than read.

One of my favorite pieces of music is “4’33” by John Cage. People think that it is four minutes and 33 seconds of silence, and that’s minimizing its power. It probably doesn’t make sense on a recording, but live, it’s incredible. The piece is not written so that the silence is the point. No. The music is the environment of the room in which it’s being performed. Every time it’s programmed, it looks a little different.

It also puts classical music on its head. Other pieces require you to be quiet. You still shouldn’t talk, but the music is in movement- dropped pens, unwrapping a cough drop, patting a toddler on the back. I’m generally cold, so my contribution is generally rubbing my hands like it’s the start of Toto’s “Africa.” Admittedly, it is “cheating,” because I am the rhythm section of something that’s supposed to be completely random. I feel like the ringer in the crowd. Again, silence is not the point. I have had people tell me to stop. The problem is that I am not a ringer on purpose. I really am that cold. More than once have I been called “Leslie No-Blood.”

Cold, though, is relative.

I will take being physically cold a lot better than someone being emotionally cold to me. For instance, caring about your reaction to my feelings more than you care that what you’re doing is hurting me. At that point, I don’t care what anyone thinks. It isn’t right for me to keep saying I’ll go along with thinking that your feelings are more important than mine. Then, it’s not a relationship. Healthy ones mean that sometimes my problem is more important than yours, and sometimes your problem is more important than mine… but no matter, we’ll attack either and it’s easier when both minds are on it.

However, if one person puts the other in the position of “your feelings don’t matter,” the relationship doesn’t deserve to survive. Until now, I have been the person who already thinks her feelings don’t matter. I will never again let it be reinforced by another. I have let people (particularly women) emotionally vampire me for years. They use me as their dumping ground because I’m willing to listen. I seemingly have a jackass magnet on my forehead, because nearly everyone I’ve ever met has wanted to tell me their life story whether I was interested or not.

One of my friends told me that I should be CIA because I was good at gleaning information. I’m really not. I’m just empathetic to the point of losing myself and people naturally let it spill because they feel safe. I don’t create an environment to be The Little Gray Man. I’m just capable of saying “there, there.” I have a feeling that if I *was* CIA, it would be under Napoleon’s instructions: “never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.” Why go out of my way to get information out of people when they’ll just give it to me?

20-30% of the time, it’s great. The rest of the time, people are quite invasive of my space and have no problem stealing my emotional energy without thinking I might want it back. People allow me to refill when I can talk to them in the same way. It’s just that most of the people who have talked to me (generally on the bus or train when I’m in public, anyway) have no idea that it’s been 20 minutes and I haven’t said a word. Not only that, they haven’t even taken a breath long enough to give me an opening. It’s “hello,” big emotional dump, walk away. I allowed it because that’s what I’ve always been taught. Being good was not needing anything. Taking up so little space was a bad thing.

Now, I feel like there have been some instances of overcorrection, but I have learned something important. Extremely important. The only people that will test you on needing anything are the people who have benefitted from your silence. If they were getting something out of you being a friend, yet never speaking up, they’ll be so mad. Let them be mad. They’ll either get over it or they won’t, and that’s not up to you.

Brene Brown says that vulnerability is showing up to a conversation without being able to control the outcome. I haven’t allowed many of those people in my life because I didn’t think I deserved them. It was natural for my feelings not to matter, so why wouldn’t I let people steamroll over me as if I don’t exist?

I “all of the sudden” seem very selfish for needing anything at all. It’s not that. It’s that when you ignore me, I’ll get louder because your ears are clogged. If you don’t listen even then, it’s time to pack up. I can only do what I can do. The one thing I have never been able to do before now is stop the bleeding. I would just let other people use up every emotional resource I needed to use for myself because obviously, they were more deserving of it.

I am not saying that I am always blameless for everything. It’s impossible. At times, I’m excellent at being the world’s biggest asshole with a God complex. My only point here is that I come by it honestly. If I tell you in plain voice how I’m feeling and it’s ignored, if you don’t mean anything to me, I’ll walk away. If you do, I will repeat what I said until you acknowledge. At this point, no matter how much I care about you, I’m out. If I am putting myself out there as someone who is taking care of you, I will go to extraordinary lengths to make sure we have equal airtime. If your idea of equal airtime is that we both spend the majority of the time thinking about you, I will call it early.

Before, I would just stuff everything down. I would spend years being unhappy because that’s what I thought I deserved. With the set of relationships I’ve been talking about in the last few entries, they are all people to whom I have spilled my guts. It wasn’t that I didn’t have a place to go with my feelings. The entire problem with all of them is that when I expressed the fact that there was a problem in our relationship, they wanted to minimize, move past it, or institute a monster avoidance policy.

It’s just not worth it to go into the minutiae of who did what to whom, but I will say that all of them benefitted from me listening to their problems, but when I spilled mine, there couldn’t be a discussion. All the time they spent talking about their problems was good and wanting them to talk about our problems was bad.

All of the music would get sucked out of the room, leaving me in absolute quiet. I could think about our problems on my own. Laying them out was also problematic. Most people are intimidated by the depths to which I feel emotion. Most people don’t know how they feel as easily as I do, and are not capable of putting it into words off the cuff. I have compassion for that, because INFJ personalities are only 9-15% of the world’s population. Very few people deal in emotions the way I do…. Meaning I am not arrogant enough to think that I am more emotionally intelligent than others. I can bring the receipts, but you wouldn’t know it unless you’re asking for them. People do think I’m arrogant, though, just for being me. I know how I feel and express it well. I am also female, which lends itself to my arrogant reputation whether it is true or not.

….because men are visionaries whether they have the letters to prove it or not. I just have resting bitch face. Best not interrupt a man who can’t tell shit from Shinola. He needs all the brainpower he can get.

Speaking of my arrogant reputation, it is non-existent to everyone except the people I’ve let have power over me and now want to be an equal…. Especially those who don’t feel there’s a balance of power issue at all. Why would there be? If you already have it all, why would you give it up? Why would you complain when there’s not a problem for you. Both of us love you to pieces.

Women taking back their power always looks like arrogance, even to other women, because they’ve all been programmed to think we shouldn’t need anything. Someone breaking out of that mold is not to be trusted. I think it’s a large part of the problem in female leadership. Men aren’t used to women demanding things, especially when their performance is poor. They’re not bad at their jobs, you are a threat. It’s amazing how often HR thinks the same way.

I think the reason women in lesbian relationships are less willing to play is that they don’t have to deal with men’s shit at home. They are all at once the problem and woefully unprepared to deal with it on two levels. The first is that they don’t understand why things are the way they are. The second is that they are powerless to do anything about it.

Even if I was the CEO, some of my male employees would think I was worthless at it because I got it through some type of nepotism, whether from my husband or the collection of men I had to sleep with to get the job. I like the second option better, because I’ve had so many relationships with women that the idea of “sleeping my way to the top” is just too ridiculous not to laugh. They don’t put enough women loving women in power for that to be an achievable goal whether I was interested or not (I’m not).

Speaking of women loving women, someone called me out on my straight girl crush when I said, “don’t think I don’t know what I lost” by saying, “she’s straight. You were never in the game.” I’m glad they called me out, because that’s not what I meant. I didn’t mean that I lost a romantic relationship, because it was clear from the start that was never going to happen. I meant the complete idiocy it was to lay it out there in the first place, because then I was an untrusted entity and all the work we’d done previously was down the drain. You would have to know how important friendship is to me to know how seriously I mean that. My platonic relationships aren’t less important than my romantic ones. I feel deeply no matter what, which is why I only have two or three friends. I don’t have the emotional capacity to lay out that kind of energy for everyone, so I don’t.

What happens is, in effect, putting on a recording of 4’33 and grabbing onto the music in the room. It’s always there, humming, pulsating, rhythm on fire…. But fire is quiet when couched between music and silence. I have to find it, though. Else I’ll just rub my hands in the cold.

Texas Questionnaire

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Notes on Being a Texan According to Me

BBQ brisket or ribs:

Neither. Turkey and sausage with white bread, pickles, raw onion, and an iced tea on the side because I like the spicy barbecue sauce best. Now that I live in another part of the south, I hate to say it, but I like this barbecue better. Pork and vinegar are such good friends.

Big Red or Dr. Pepper:

Neither. Diet Wild Red from HEB. Why is Big Red even on this? Wild Red is the GOAT. I am positive that HEB would like to hear this. Please tell them the next time you shop.

Tacos or Tamales:

Combination plate. Let’s not get stupid.

I like all kinds of tamales, but the green chile chicken at Pappasitos is my go-to. I also have said for years that “I like crunchy tacos because chips are a part of the meal.” You only lose points with me if the chicken is too clean. I want it to look like it’s been in the oven for hours and just prepped (pulled)…. And if you’re wondering what I mean by “clean,” it’s stuffing canned chicken with no seasoning into anything that’s supposed to be Mexican food.

Texans or Cowboys:

I don’t watch American football much. I am likely to be seen at a Dynamo or a Dash game. Watching sports on TV is kind of boring to me, but I do like going on YouTube to see 30 second clips of really elite golf shots, points on goal, etc. I used to have two friends that were obsessed with golf, and thanks to them, I got a free beer. Jordan Spieth was the answer to a question at pub trivia, and I never would have pulled out that answer unless I’d heard someone else talking about it.

UT or A&M:

Texas, because nobody is trying to upset Matt McConaughey here.

Sixth Street or Riverwalk:

I have never been to Sixth Street, so I can’t really say. What I can say is that my favorite restaurant on the Riverwalk is “Paloma del Rio.” Keep in mind it’s been a long time, so it might not be there. If it is, give it a shot and tell me if it’s still good. 😛

Houston or Dallas:

I don’t know Dallas well enough to really have an opinion here. I just hate Dallas because I’m from Houston and that’s what we do.

Ever drove across TX:

East to West a few times, but not South to North.

Been to the Alamo:

Yes. It’s basically the only field trip that anyone likes. The IMAX movie is also amazing, and it’s near the mission.

Crossed the border:

Several times. I went with a group from my church and attempted to preach in Spanish. Hilarity ensued.

Floated the Frio:

I don’t know. Is it near San Marcos? I’ve done most of them.

Been to the State Fair:

Yes. It’s one of my favorite childhood memories. One year we also saw “Cats,” which is much better if you’re seven.

Killed a snake:

No, but my dad has. We came home to a huge snake in our garage when I was a kid. We didn’t stop to check if it was venomous or not. My experience with Texas wildlife is limited to trash pandas (raccoons).

Saw a rodeo:

So many, yes. The Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo is one of the most famous in the world. I know I’ve been to a couple of cool concerts as well, but I’ve slept since then and can’t remember the acts.

Two stepped at a dance hall:

Very, very poorly.

Rode a mechanical bull:

Absolutely not. Have fun tho.

Own boots and cowboy hat:

I have owned boots, but I just don’t like those kinds of hats on my own head. It’s not that they don’t look great on other people.

Drove a tractor:

I would, but no one has ever asked me.

Shot something:

Yes, but I wasn’t living in Texas at the time. I went to an outdoor range in Estacada, Oregon and proceded to waste a trashed Dell computer. As an “IT Guy” it was cathartic in a way I didn’t know I needed.

Willie or George

Neither. Chicks for life…. although I would like to meet Willie.

My “Autogeography”

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

What is your favorite type of weather?

This meanders because one story leads into another. Good luck. God bless. Here’s the audio if you’d rather stream/download.

The weather I enjoy the most depends on where I’m located. In Portland, it’s the summer, because it’s not always hot. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve sat on the banks of the Willamette on July 4, absolutely freezing, and once I even drove down from Government Camp in a blizzard (Government Camp is the small town at the base of Mt. Hood where you rent your skis or snowboard). That being said, I have a place in my heart for dark and gloomy weather. It’s just that I need it much less often. When it is dark and gloomy here, I just tell people it’s “Portlanding.”

Willamette Week makes fun of Portland all the time, and it’s so snarky, which in my book means hilarious, generally. Things like “welcome to Portland, home of the eight month November.” “Welcome to Portland, where even our black people are pasty.” Portland being cold and wet was a given, and it was really, really nice to be out of Houston for most of the hottest days there. The weather is so different you really can’t even compare it. Even the rain falls differently. In Houston and DC, we have rain showers that we call “toad stranglers.” It floods. Lightning strikes down trees. There might be a hurricane offshore, like on Galveston or South Padre. Rain comes down in tight bursts, like the clouds are holding the drops hostage and they’re struggling to get out.

In Portland, the rain is a blanket. It covers you, and for an introvert, we’re all about having a cover. If you don’t like socializing because it’s loud and noisy, that’s not its vibe. Its vibe is coffee or beer with friends in a pub or cafe with a little music to drown out things you’re not trying to hear. I think it’s because it takes so much time and energy to get out of the house in the first place. I did take my sister to “Way Bitchin’ 80’s Night” at the Fez Ballroom, but that was an exception, not the rule. It’s also not just my personality. It’s seasonal affective disorder working on everyone you meet. Everything feels heavier in the winter, from emotional problems to saving enough energy to do something after work. Most of the time, the weather didn’t clear up or get more intense. Just this constant drumbeat of sorrow because to my mind, it looked like God was going through a breakup 280 days a year.

In Houston, it’s winter. It doesn’t get cold enough for me most days, but between Christmas and New Year’s is lovely. I remember when I was in 7th grade, my friend Jess and I went swimming in Galveston. It was November. The water really wasn’t warm enough, but I assure you that the Gulf of Mexico in the winter is still warmer than the Pacific Ocean in the summer. I have never been swimming in the Pacific. I have waded into the water until I couldn’t feel my feet…. which means I lasted about 20 seconds before I was doing the full body convulsing shiver.

Sometimes I wish I’d just laid out the money for a wet suit, because I love the ocean. In fact, when I was thinking about moving to Houston back in 2013, I thought of living on Galveston first. I changed my mind when I realized the commute wasn’t worth it. Having the ocean a few blocks from my house was worthless if I was driving an hour each way to my job. I wouldn’t have time to go there. However, the setting and characters call to me occasionally, and maybe someday I’ll listen.

This is because my dad was an associate pastor at Moody Methodist, so I lived there for kindergarten and first grade. Some of my favorite childhood memories come from that church, that parsonage, and those parishioners. Plus, Lindsay had just been born, so it was my last gig as a solo act. Let me tell you about that, too. Preacher’s kids come in two kinds. I am one, Lindsay is the other. The first type totally gets into it, loves it. The other rebels and develops a wild hair. I’ll give you a hint. The first time I met my then-wife’s parents, I was wearing a t-shirt that said, “I’m with the band.” Guess who was *in* the band? I’ll give you another hint. It wasn’t me. I have always stood behind Lindsay, literally and figuratively. She’s the outgoing, bubbly one. I’m also a lot shorter than she is, and that is a blessing on its own, because I can hide behind her and glean information. She knows I’m not going to talk about what she’s working on, I just like Knowing Stuff…. especially since the demographic she serves is the entire population of SE Texas queers.

I am getting to the age where I can’t really help her much, because I’m stuck in 1990 queer, where it was a slur. I still get angry when straight people say it, and said as much when I thought it had happened on NPR. When it turned out that the woman who said it was a lesbian (Neda Ulaby), my response was “call me. For now, she is just my corporeally challenged celebrity girlfriend on the radio (you’re welcome, Dana).

Editor’s Note: That’s what Dana used to call Alison Frost of Oregon Public Broadcasting,  with whom I had two dates, but we joked about it for YEARS ON END. I have never met Neda Ulaby, but she lives in DC, so it’s not impossible that we’d run into each other. Also, one of the funniest conversations we’ve ever had is “if you weren’t married to me, would you be a Fanagan?” She said, and I quote, “Yes. Of course. But I am married to you so I don’t have to be.” I laughed so hard that tears and snot rolled down my face. Well played.

Things have changed too much for me to see everything clearly, because I cannot see them without the filter of how I was treated and why it hurt. I do love that Galveston has a pride parade, though, because I can’t think of a better day than the parade, then swimming, then drinks on the beach. Speaking of which, I also love Capital Pride, because not everything centers around the parade. There’s also an outdoor market and all kinds of activities- like a coloring tent for littles. That’s the kind of stuff I never saw as a teen, and the first time I did, I started crying.

I am an earth sign, tied to the land…. Setting matters. Context matters. Why would it make me cry to see little kids coloring at a Pride event? Because when I was a kid, I didn’t know any lesbians with children. I didn’t ever think I’d be able to have a child, because it just wasn’t done. My frame of reference was having someone everyone else called my roommate for a hundred years and pretended to notice I didn’t have a boyfriend. Setting and context are also extremely important to a novel, so being able to recreate places I’ve lived, worked, cooked, and eaten are stored in my memory. Just like Harry Windsor, I don’t remember dates, but I will “recreate a setting down to the carpet tacks” (I’m reading “Spare,” and I’m about 10 percent into it. My heart has already broken at least six times. It went from TBR to mandatory when I found out that Harry had been in Kandahar when The War Daniel was embedded with his Marines.)

I could not finish my work in progress without going to Vietnam. For me, writing about a thing has to come from experience. The book just won’t be as good if I don’t actually touch the plants, feel the grass under my feet, hopefully go fishing or something else that lends itself to writing (my idea of fishing is putting the pole on the boat and waiting for something to bite while my notebook is in my lap). I don’t know what my favorite season is in Asia. I’m just going to have to find out for myself.

In The District, it is all Spring all the time. I love the cherry blossoms, I love the Tidal Basin, and next time Lindsay visits, we’re going to have to recreate a photo of us that we don’t have anymore from 2001. We’re holding hands and pushing on the columns because we are SO INCREDIBLY STRONG we can hold up the Jefferson monument.

Any gift shop you go to in DC will have trinkets with cherry blossoms on it, whether it’s Spring or not. It is one of the things that defines the city that has nothing to do with politics. The trees were a gift from Japan.

Spring is also where it starts getting warm, but not all at once. It’s incredible sweater weather in March, perhaps a bit of April. It’s when DC is at its finest, where you can take a long walk in all that beauty without your face melting off. There are some days in the summer that DC is actually hotter than Houston, and that’s a mean feat.

I have been to New York, London, and Paris. None of them hold a candle to DC, but that’s an unpopular opinion because the people that don’t live here don’t know its beauty, and the people who live here forget to take it in. For instance, the approach into DCA at night leaves me in tears every single time. That’s because you can see The Washington Monument, the Pentagon, The Lincoln Memorial, and The Jefferson Monument all at once. It’s overwhelming…. especially because I only named about 10% of what you can pick out.

I have a favorite drive here, though I haven’t owned a car in years (with public transit and Uber, I don’t need one).

It is going from my old house (803 N. Van Dorn) into DC. You *start* at the Pentagon, and there is no such thing as Philip Johnson’s sense of restrained monumentality. We don’t do restrained monumentality here. It is full-on pageantry. Even if you drive an Econoline, your van will still feel small. I feel small when I walk downtown (shut it), but not in a way that makes me feel small inside. I am awed by everything, the same sense of excitement I felt when my parents took me to The White House when I was Leslie Lanagan, Age 8. It feels amazing that I am just as in love with it now as I was when I first landed 37 years ago. That trip is the reason I moved here in the first place.

In 2000, when Kathleen graduated from UH, she got a job at ExxonMobil and they asked her if she wanted to start in Houston or Fairfax. I’m not sure that Kat had a preference, but I sure did. 😛 We were here for Sept. 11, and that changed me forever, but it’s not why I left. If anything, it made me want to come back because there is an institutional memory here that soothes me. I am at peace with all of it now, but I didn’t just hear about it. I heard it happen. The Pentagon wasn’t far enough away from my house not to have the paintings rattle. Seriously. It was so loud that I thought there had been a construction accident across the street. I was disabused of that notion when our neighbors came over. So many people were affected with deep grief, and I didn’t lose anyone I really knew. I am not here to say that I had the same experience as someone who lost a loved one. I am here to say it was scary AF. We had fighter jets flying over our house for several days afterward, just watching federal airspace, and I was grateful even though it was very, very loud.

I only remember the date because it’s been drilled into my head so many times, but here is what I remember on my own. The sun was brilliant that day, nothing but blue skies for miles. The leaves were beginning to turn in “our front yard,” in quotes because it was a rowhouse and the lawns weren’t divided.

I was sitting in my office, chatting with my friend Jim (former boss)…. then….. BAM!

Because I thought it was a construction accident, I barely looked up. Then Jim told me to turn on the TV. He had to tell me to turn on the TV because I was home sick from work that day. Kathleen had taken me to a tapas bar for my birthday (10 Sept.), wherein I ate bad mussels and spent the night after we got home in the bathroom. I slept in, then threw up some more. When the first set of fighter jets took off, I realized how alone I was.

I see DC now and am glad that I am part of the institutional memory it holds, because that was my first time in deep grief. I didn’t lose anyone except a passing acquaintance. The loss was not personal, it was my mirror neurons going off and feeling the pain of the city, stepping into its river and taking drink after drink. The beauty still arrived that Spring, as much as I don’t think we were ready for it. Beauty and grief don’t make friends in the beginning.

Since my mother died, I have learned to love picnics in cemeteries because they’re always quiet, serene, and a great reminder that there are more people grieving than just me. Gore Vidal is buried here, and I haven’t been to pay my respects. I intend to make change by hopefully stealing some of his talent since he is not currently using it.

Because Congressional Cemetery is lovely in my favorite weather here.