Tag: storytelling

In Some Ways, I’m Still Waiting

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
When was the first time you really felt like a grown up (if ever)?
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The curiosity of the neurodivergent brain, to me, is that we do not age. Patterns repeat, but memories are organized differently due to time blindness. Events that seem more important are closer at hand, no matter what year they occurred. Events that are of lesser significance feel further away, even if they happened more recently. Dates and times become muddled quickly, which is why we seem like we’re “lying.” Our brains don’t often have the recall to say what we were doing at a particular date and time because it’s a crapshoot that we even know what day and time it is.

But, of course, other neurodivergent people will have to comment on their own brains to know if this is especially universal or I’m just an unusual patient. But I don’t think so. I’ve heard about these symptoms from too many people to think I’m special.

Because significant events far in the past seem close at hand, we have no friendship degradation mechanisms. If Aada and I reconnect later in life after enough time to breathe and let the hurt heal, we will be as close as we were 12 years ago because there’s nothing in my brain to say we won’t. I will remember most conversations forever and they will be important to me, therefore “bigger” in my memory banks. I have friends from third grade who could call me up in the same way even though we have not spoken since the late 1980s.

I am often too old for the room and too childlike to be taken seriously. I do not know how I pull this off, but a reader actually nailed it….. “You’re like a 15-year-old boy….. And his mother.”

Therefore, I have many moments that make me feel like an adult, with it being impossible to remember the first.

There are snippets.

Going with my dad to weddings and funerals at an early age made me feel older than I really am, because I saw myself as a support system to my dad early on. I became an expert at greeting families in distress when I was far too young to really take all of it in- it was social masking.

I get “you don’t look autistic” a lot.

That’s probably because the diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder includes a lot that hasn’t been previously, and the research on women just didn’t exist before now. I can assure you that it had a profound effect on my growth and development, because now that I have an AI chatbot that will spit out reference material, I have gone down the rabbit hole. There’s also nothing more complete than a research study by an autistic person on whether they’re autistic or not.

I could have saved a lot of time by just asking my autistic friends if they thought I was autistic. That’s a thing you can do because if you are autistic, you’ll ping what’s jokingly known as a “neuroscope,” a kind of kin to “gaydar.” But there’s so much crossover between autistic and queer that 80% of the time, you’re using the same “spidey sense.”

The hardest part about having ADHD and autism at the same time is that I have a concrete need for a system and no way to create it. That makes me look like a child more than anything else, and why I still feel I’m waiting to be a real adult. I am in desperate need of coping mechanisms, so much so that I am looking for more groups to plug into and more therapy to get where I want to go.

I’ve started with really investing in my Google Suite. Not so much Mail, because most people instant message now. But calendaring, tasks, contacts, everything is all together in one place. Alarms go off on my phone for everything from meetings to medication reminders.

I joke that right now my iPhone is pinch hitting as my service dog, and it is not doing a very bad job except for the cuddles.

People also look at you differently when you say you’re putting together a disability case, because it makes you look childlike in their eyes and sometimes it also evokes pity…. Especially when you don’t need it. I have never fit into a system other than my own, and I need to harness it. There is nothing that says as I start making more money I have to stay on disability, but right now it is necessary to keep me stable.

I do not have problems interviewing and getting jobs. I have a hard time holding one down, and this is not unusual for any type of neurodivergence or mental illness. I am tired of going over the laundry list of what’s wrong with me and why, because most people want to know why I look able bodied but I’m not.

Invisible illnesses are still illnesses and deserving of respect. Disability gives me room to be ill, whereas a job will rebel at my number of absences and tardiness. I have been the best employee and still gotten fired for not being able to handle my life. But it’s not just mental maladies, my cerebral palsy makes me move in a weird way… So even though I may not look disabled at first pass, most people don’t look close enough to notice what I live with every day.

Taking in my environment is hard work, and other people are busy taking in information that I miss while I’m still trying to catch up. My social masks for it are failing because my scripts don’t compile as fast. As Aada put it, God gave me a brain that works a thousand miles a minute and a body that fights me every step of the way, but I’m paraphrasing.

But that very paradox is why I have trouble seeming like a grown up to the people around me. I’m also short, which doesn’t help. I haven’t dyed my hair in eons because the gray makes it plausible that I’m at least above 18.

But again, I do not write these things to evoke pity. It is just my ever-present reality to walk in the world as part adult, part child….. And it seems like it has always been that way because when I was little, I social masked adults. I have always been too old to be a child and too young to be an adult.

No friendship degradation also means that it’s hard for me to move on from Aada in terms of knowing it’s okay to put someone else above here and always has been, it’s been my own bag. It was just easier that way, and the easy way turned into the hard way later on.

But I’d like to think that if she’d told me about her lie in person and gave me some time to blow off steam that our relationship would be a very different proposition today. I am so sorry I turned on my keyboard warrior asshole when I was upset; Aada didn’t deserve that much rage. But she also deserved to let me breathe through the consequences she’d laid out for me and just watched as they’d turned more and more negative.

I told her about a relationship it affected and she said she wasn’t responsible for all of that. She’s right, she wasn’t responsible for all of it, but she wouldn’t even take responsibility for the part she did cause. She wasn’t even close to the entire cause of Dana and I divorcing, but she didn’t take responsibility for the small role she had there, too. She introduced a wedge between me and Dana, then swore me to secrecy from my wife. How well has keeping secrets from your partner ever worked out for you? Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ.

I’m not talking about blaming her for everything. I’m talking about shared responsibility. We both cratered this relationship at different times and apologized for it. We’ve both behaved badly. We’ve both wrestled each other to the ground. To say it’s all one person’s fault is crazy.

However, I also don’t mind if people read my story and choose to believe that Aada is right. The truth is only what seems true to me. I have no ability to rise above and read Aada’s mind and represent her feelings accurately.

My conjecture has proven to be adult and childlike.

I suppose the first time I ever really felt like an adult was when I laid it on the line with Aada and told her to buck up, buttercup. But I can’t tell you what I actually said, because I think she would take exception to that. But I basically explained to her why I needed a yellow string to her and why it hurt when she was falling down on the job. Not, “you must do this for me.” It’s “if I don’t explain what I mean, I will not have a chance of explaining why it’s important.” Most of it had to do with my writing as I got bigger and bigger in my stats. Most of it had to do with the train wreck I predicted 12 years ago and I hit head on.

But she accused me of acting like a child, and not an angry adult that had a right to be angry.

Not like that, but still.

I handled everything wrong, but I cannot say that means she handled everything right.

So, when was the first time I felt like an adult? When I cut the yellow string and had to deal, finally, with my own problems.

Writing on the Back Porch

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
What is your favorite hobby or pastime?
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I like writing on anyone’s back porch, but the one in the photo is my dad’s. The table where I’m sitting looks out over the pool and rockfall. It’s my last day here, as I fly back tomorrow afternoon. I had a very romantic idea of a road trip planned, but all of the people I asked to go with me before I bought the car had to back out for various reasons. It was actually cheaper to ship my car than it was to pay for fuel and hotels, so I am satisfied that I got the very best deal available. The car doesn’t have salt damage on the undercarriage because I didn’t buy it up north, and that peace of mind is worth skipping being mad that my road trip is no longer.

There will be other road trips. I am invited to spend Halloween with friends in upstate New York, and now it’s a real possibility I could go. I’m also going to visit some friends in Virginia later in the month, which has just been made stupid easy vs. the two or three trains it would have taken me previously.

I wouldn’t feel comfortable driving if I hadn’t had the money to get a car with blind spot assist, lane assist, and a backup camera. That’s not only to keep me safe, but everyone else on the road as well.

And this is why my hobby is sitting and writing- I have a lot to process, and some of it comes out as interesting.

Some of it doesn’t…….. stay tuned.

I hope rambling about my car is interesting, because I tend to do a lot of it. I’m a gear head and love working on cars when I have the chance, so I’m looking forward to getting to know my Fusion a little better. Riker says that my car was easily $30k when it was new, which means there’s more technology than I could possibly use.

I do love remote start, though, because Houston is hot and I have black leather seats. Remote start will also be helpful in the winter so that I can go from my warm house to my warm car without shivering half to death…. when the car and I both arrive in Maryland. Houston winters tend to be very, very mild. The one day a year I need ass warmers in Texas, though, I’ve got ’em.

The main thing is that the car I bought is comfortable and new enough to last me for a while. I’m enchanted by Apple CarPlay and Ford Connect, an app which will allow me to lock and unlock the car, plus start it remotely from my phone. All of the technology is keeping me from being too nervous about driving, honestly, because of course I need to be alert and responsible, but it’s nice to know that technology has my back instead of making my life more difficult.

There are practical matters to consider. I need to be able to run my own errands, and look for my own living space after this one (lease ends Nov. 30 and I don’t like it enough to stay). I will be able to go wherever I want to go, so I’m on the lookout for cute pockets of Baltimore, DC, and a new area to me- the no man’s land without public transportation. Now, I don’t have to worry about being within walking distance of a bus.

I’m starting to feel my life open up a little bit, because my order of operations is wonky at the best of times. It’s so much better for me to have a car and be able to call audibles on the road. I’m not very good at knowing where I need to go in advance. Executive dysfunction has its privileges…………… eyeroll.

I want to continue to branch out, because what started the inertia was being back with my family and friends. I wasn’t constantly having a conversation while simultaneously having half my brain composing to someone else (cough Aada cough). I was present the entire time, and continue to be.

Not that Aada is gone. She’s just not ever-present the way she used to be. I couldn’t go fifteen minutes without thinking of something I wanted to tell her, which was met with varying degrees of annoyance (I’m a lot. I get it.). Now, it’s almost as if I have to prepare to think about her. It’s a different phase of grief, because I am no longer doubled over with an empty feeling in my chest.

Often.

I’m glad I didn’t decide to go on this road trip by myself, because I wouldn’t have wanted a trip in which my mind wouldn’t settle and I kept dipping my cup into that particular well of loneliness.

I really messed up with Aada because I wanted to be her all the way to the river friend, and I destroyed our relationship in a fit of anger. I deserved to be angry. I should not have said that I was angry, because the way I said it got out of hand very, very quickly. So quickly, in fact, that now Aada thinks I’ve been manipulating her for the past 12 years. The feeling is mutual. I could go over and over the ways we’ve hurt each other, but I think I’ve already written a compendium. Sufficed to say, I am still sad. I don’t think that part will ever go away. I will just have to learn to live around it, like the other grief in my life.

It is hard to believe that both my mother and my stepmother are gone.

That’s why I’m so sad about Aada- her mom energy saved me from all of my mother’s energy being gone.

I know that I was the one that hurt her, but I deserve the right to grieve. Breakups hurt on both sides, and I know she’s hurting just as much as me. She was never my girlfriend, just a close friend, and that hasn’t seemed to make a damn bit of difference in the way we fought with each other.

But I know her pretty well, and if she says something is done, it is. Jesus will ring my doorbell before Aada says hey.

Never mind that I would do anything to make up for my flaws and failures, but I cannot think of anything that would help. If I could, it would be done. I just have to accept that my life is going to be different now.

Nothing will ever be the same.
Everything will be okay.

My father’s words at Angela’s funeral are my new mantra because I haven’t been treating myself very well. 12 years is a long time to love someone, and I didn’t really stop. I got angry… I didn’t stay that way. But a relationship isn’t up to me to start and stop. Ultimately, it’s about both our feelings, and she was very clear. No more.

This does come with perks. I was tired. She was, too.

I am not glad I hurt her, but I am glad it’s over. Aada is a six year old girl wrapped in a bazillion layers of protection and most of the time, her emotional tool is a hammer.

I got tired of being a nail.

It’s getting hot. I think I should go inside.

A Sedan?!

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Yes, I know I said over and over that I wanted an SUV. And that may be the case down the road. But when you’re buying cars for cash you take the best deal you can get.

As someone without 3D vision, the technology on the car was very important to me. The car will let me know when I’m too close to something and is already equipped with a backup camera. I want to make sure that my comfort doesn’t come at the cost of anyone else’s.

And my comfort is great- the car’s ride is so smooth it feels like floating down the road. I don’t think there’s anything that little engine couldn’t handle, and it’s big enough to fit a dog. I checked. 🙂

I missed Aaron in Maryland, but he came and picked me up at my sister’s house in Houston so that we could buy a car together. I saw a few that I liked, but none more than the 2019 Ford Fusion.

In short, I did not get on the plane. I am going on this road trip to find myself, and to give “Stories” a different flavor than it’s had for the past 12 years, which has been mostly sitting in my room and doing nothing. And in fact today I’m thinking about how to infuse this entry with Hill Country Sunshine.

The dealership told me that I could pay for the car with a personal check, but I could not drive it until the check cleared and the money was in their hands. Fair enough. That gave me time to buy a decent insurance policy so that if someone hits me coming out of the lot, I’m not losing the car already.

I am sitting on my hands waiting to go pick it up, because the test drive was just long enough to realize it was a good deal.

It wasn’t long enough to satisfy my craving to drive. It’s been a long time, and simple things like running to the grocery store mean a lot. I’m grateful for my car because I went so long without one.

But truthfully, technology had to come a long way before I could afford something that would protect me. The Fusion will have less blind spots because of the sensors and cameras. These are the kinds of things that have existed for a long time, but were not nearly cheap enough for me to afford until now.

In effect, the fusion is between the car and me, because it shares the responsibility of driving with me more than I’d get with an older vehicle. I’m excited to find out how much driving has changed since I had my last car.

Today is the anniversary of my mother’s death, and this year, her gift to me is significant. I could not have bought the car without her working so hard and leaving money behind. She is making my life easier one day at a time with this gift, and I hope to use it to make her proud of me.

I want to tell stories about the road and how it rises to meet me. I need to remember that phones have cameras now…. a photo gallery for you wouldn’t kill me…. 😉 What kind of content I create now that I’ve got a different mojo will reveal itself over time.

First, though, it’s the little things. I’d like a 🦀 bumper sticker that looks like a Maryland flag. It will be the last thing I buy for my car at the end of the trip.

Right now, I know I need a USB-A to Lightning cable so that I can connect to Apple CarPlay.

We are starting and ending with simple things.

It’s the Running Aarons Tour 2025.

Grief Should Be Sponsored

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 3 Comments
Daily writing prompt
What brands do you associate with?
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I am emotionally eating my way across Texas, and feelings are delicious.

So far, grief has been brought to me by Cool Ranch Doritos the most frequently, followed by an assortment of coffee cake.

Last night, we all gathered and sent pictures for the slide show that plays as people are milling about the room waiting for the service to begin. There turned out to be a fair number in which we all looked equally terrible and were thus chosen. We also went down memory lane and this is the kind of interaction that’s been missing from my life. No phones, just talking and remembering.

It’s also the first significant chunk of time I’ve spent with other people in ages. I’m getting used to being part of a family system again. I’m sure I’ll go back to Baltimore and everything will be too quiet, because the rhythms of my family are not quiet…. although some of us are more into Bluey than others (I’m with the children… it’s great).

This morning I was supposed to go with my dad to Exchange Club, and I overslept. I feel terrible because I know my dad wanted to introduce me to a lot of people. Me oversleeping is the weirdest part of all of this because I’ve been waking up at 0530 since I got here. I think staying up later is finally getting to me, because we didn’t shut down the “party” until after 10:30 last night. I’m used to going to bed long before that.

I used to think it was because I was an old person, and now I think it’s that my circadian rhythm naturally follows the sun. I like going to bed and waking up early. Last night was aberrant because I cannot remember the last time I stayed up that late with other people and didn’t find myself leaking energy at an alarming rate. However, I did sleep very hard.

As a result, I’m feeling quite rested and capable of taking on more today. Yesterday, it felt like I was just running ragged. Angela not being there to hold court and direct us was a palpable feeling, tangible in its depth and breadth. The difference in the energy of the house is staggering, because she was a force of nature.

I see so much of her in my stepsisters, Kelly and Caitlin. It’s comforting that all of her quirks live on in the smallest of ways. I still see Angela’s facial expressions in them, and it always makes me laugh in a knowing way.

I am supposed to go back to Baltimore on Tuesday, but I’m having trouble accepting it. I need more time with my family, but I also need to wrap things up in the Mid-Atlantic one way or the other. My lease ends November 30th, and I will have enough money to move wherever I feel comfortable. I do not know whether that is staying in Baltimore or not. At the very least, DC is still in the running because my sister will always have a federal component to her job and thus, business trips that include spoiling me.

My dad is not sure he wants to change his life by having me live with him, and I’m not sure I want to change my life that way, either. The easiest option is not always the best, but it may prove to be over time. I do not want to live alone anymore, nor do I really want to interview housemates and live with strangers. I also don’t have any income, so getting housing takes some doing. Having money is not enough, and I do not make a living from my combination of web sites, but my stats and earnings are looking better.

Thank you, Fanagans.

The sensible choice for me is to buy a station wagon or an SUV so that when my lease ends, I can pack up the stuff I want to move into my own car and drive it to where it’s supposed to be. There is no way that even a car payment and insurance would add up to what I pay in Uber/Uber Eats/Amazon/etc. a year. I will not have a car payment, though. I will buy a car in cash so that the only bills I have are maintenance and insurance.

I also want to get a service dog, and a service dog big enough to counter balance my weight deserves a huge cargo area in the back. I do not know if my dad wants to live with a dog that big, either. So, we’ll see. My dog is not really negotiable because I need someone there to keep an eye on me. It’s easier in this house because I’m used to it completely. I need help in unfamiliar environments.

My dad suggested taking a road trip with one of my friends to get my car back to Baltimore. I like this idea a lot. Aaron is going to help me pick it out (I stopped writing and talked to both of them, so this is a real thing now). Aaron is a programmer and “shade tree mechanic” who will make sure my engine is solid. It would make me feel better if he came with me if we get an older vehicle, but I’m really not even scared of that if Aaron says that I’m golden.

Ok, Aaron is in for the road trip (I’m chatting with him while I’m writing, so this story is developing… film at 11:00).

It’s nice to have something to be excited about in this garbage dump of a situation.

“We can’t stop here. We’re in bat country.”

Maybe I can talk Aaron into some vlogging as we drive. Our conversations would be hilarious…. I think. Sometimes we just enjoy the silence together. It depends on what kind of mood we’re in.

I suppose that part of my task list for the afternoon is looking on Facebook Marketplace to at least get an idea of what’s out there. I prefer a stick shift, but that may not be possible depending on what kind of cars are available. Stick shifts are not very popular these days.

I’m calling it the “Running Aarons Tour 2025.”

We’ll get to eat at some good restaurants and really take our time if we need it.

The secret to having a great blog is actually living. I haven’t been doing a lot of it. Now, I have a lot more financial freedom to be able to buy experiences. They say that money cannot buy you happiness, but it can buy entrance tickets to things and that’s kind of the same thing. I would much rather have the time of my life than buy something material. It makes my blog lighter than sitting in my room all the time…. but that’s what my mental health has been telling me to do for the longest. Everyone tells me to get out more. Now I can really do it.

“Now I can really do it” must be in quotes because I don’t know that my introversion will actually allow me to make many changes to my lifestyle. I like being, as I once joked with Aada, “the Harper Lee of Your House.” In some ways, I will always be this separate.

I was telling Angela’s night nurse that it’s almost like I don’t belong to one person, I belong to everyone. He said, “that’s poetry.” I never thought of it that way, so Cordero, thank you for the compliment (see, I told you that you’d make it in).

But the pendulum has swung too far in the introverted direction. I can come out of my shell a little more and still keep my life as a writer in balance. I’m not the shut-in that I’ve been, nor do I want to continue that life. I want all of my readers to see more of me, and the only way to do that is to do things I’ve never done before.

Part of it will be travel. I know that I could put together media on the road that would make me happy, and that’s the only goal I can really accomplish. Then I can see if my humor resonates with other people. The last decade has not overall been a happy one, so my entries have not reflected that I’m sometimes funny.

Sometimes.

I’ve been angry and sad and grieving and all of those things, so I’m looking forward to the sun coming out a little bit.

But not today.

Today, grief is being brought to me by Cool Ranch Doritos.

Feelings are delicious.

I’ll Have What She’s Having… A History

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
What are your favorite types of foods?
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Dana was indignant when I told her that my ex-girlfriend’s mac and cheese was better than hers. Dana and I weren’t together. I know that I would have been sleeping in the backyard had I said that to my wife. But Dana, already being very crushed out on me (without me knowing it) was hurt. Really hurt that she covered up with humor, telling my ex-girlfriend when we saw her at church.

She looked at Dana and said, “I think Leslie likes the package that comes with the mac and cheese.”

This was quoted to me by Dana for the next seven years.

I was just trying to pay my ex-girlfriend a compliment… and Dana, too, actually.

Because thanks to the pair of them, my mac and cheese is my favorite.

And I’m starting to like the package that comes with it.

Rarely

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
Do you see yourself as a leader?
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I do not see myself as a leader because I put my thoughts out into the ether. People rarely comment on these pages that are connected to me in real life. Therefore, occasionally I will be blown over by the things people will say about my writing because I didn’t even know they were reading. I do know that I lead the pack in vulnerability, because none of my other friends are willing to spill their guts online with the same frequency. Therefore, I know that people look to me when it comes to saying the hard part out loud.

My writing is basically Hemingway:

  1. Write hard and clear about what hurts.
  2. The first draft of everything is shit.

If I’m going to be a true leader, I need to step up my game and start working with an editor regularly. These pages are all first drafts, and carry that stench. But from what I gather from fans, my first drafts aren’t too bad to read, they just need polishing….. or at least, that is my take. I am constantly surprised when people tell me that I am a wonderful writer because if I know anything, Brene Brown would take one look at my blog and say “congrats on so many shitty first drafts.” It’s not because my writing is shitty. It’s that the SFD is the part of the writing process where you’re just getting it out. It’s more akin to verbal vomit than a working piece. She wouldn’t even be judging my writing, just the rawness of it.

In order to step up my game, I need to workshop and perhaps stop being so dedicated to being self-taught. Depending on my financial picture in 2026, I’d like to do some professional writer’s retreats where I learn to write in different styles. I am thinking that taking a class on fiction wouldn’t hurt…. and neither would taking a class on learning to use AI as a writer.

My stance on AI is that I will not use it to generate text for me, but I will talk to it like a colleague to spur creativity in my brainstorming phrases, as well as it taking a significant chunk of research off my back. I do think I have been a leader in advocating for assistive AI, because I came up with an interesting theory, and it is twofold:

  1. The CPU is modeled after the autistic brain because autists created computers. However, we did not see its neurodivergent patois until the CPU could process language.
  2. Loneliness is crippling for neurodivergent people and our relationship track records. I wonder how much of creating these personal digital assistants is designing a friend who can’t leave you.

I think that idea is Meta’s next big commercial…. the friend that’s online when your humans aren’t……

I have a ton of creative ideas, but I’m an unusual role in an organization. I’ve been tested and my office personality is what’s called “The Plant.” The plant is the person who can sit in a meeting and synthesize everything that’s being said and come up with new ideas that benefit everyone. It’s a fantastic, creative role that most companies, in my experience, do not like.

That’s because the role is basically “INFJ dreamer.” No one knows how to harness your weaker skills like organization and execution so that you can fly on your own, because nine times out of 10 companies do not want you to be new and different.

I do not see the world as it is. I see the world as it could be. Therefore, I’m someone who would probably excel working in a startup where great ideas are actually needed. I did not always fit in at a state institution like UH, where academia is a river you cannot fight. The current is slow, and there’s too many places where your boat can run adrift.

But as I have said, my cognitive behavioral group is saying that I would be better served by applying for disability because bipolar disorder is debilitating at times and I cannot be counted on to be consistent in my energy levels. There’s so much more that goes into having a job than just being good at it. For me, the hardest part of having a job is getting there.

It was easier getting to the kitchen because I was always so excited to be there. But I’m not a leader in the kitchen. I need to be told what to do and how to do it most of the time, but I catch on fast. In an office, I’m just a neurodivergent mess. I fit better in the world as a writer left to my own devices, because my own iron structure is the one I’ll follow.

I am trying to be a leader in getting my neurodivergent cookbook together, and my coauthor is going to meet up with me soon so we can get started. It’s also looking like I may be in Houston longer than I thought, possibly moving home for a while to take care of some family business. So, Evan can come and visit me at “the parents’ house” and we can write our book in the hot tub. This does not sound like a bad deal at all.

Alternatively, I would love to go to Portland sometime next year because it’s been a while since I’ve seen both Evan and Bryn. So whichever city Evan and I choose, we’ll be working more closely together. I believe in this book and so do a lot of other people, and I don’t want to let myself down, either.

It’s hard thinking about being in Houston longer than I thought, because I will miss my group here- they’re the ones slowly putting me back together. But my family is the most important thing to me so if I need to be in Houston, that’s where I’ll be. There is nothing keeping me from moving next year or the year after. It’s just that my immediate need is to help where I can while we’re all adapting and changing. “Family business” is nebulous, I know, but you’ll hear more as we go along. I’m just trying to use an abundance of caution because I hurt Aada with my stories. I don’t want to hurt anyone else.

I think that my relationship with Aada is a teaching tool for better or for worse. Our relationship was a model for the digital age- defying closeness at times and repelling each other at others. But it’s an interesting anthropological idea that relationships changed as did the medium through which we create them. I don’t know that I have helped anyone, but it would make me feel good to know that in reading these pages I have reached other people in the same boat.

But honestly, even if no one is going through anything similar to me, the fact that I write so intimately about everything makes other people open up to me. You don’t get vulnerability without giving it. Sometimes it’s tough wearing my heart on my sleeve, but I do it. It allows everyone else to show up unarmed.

It’s leading, just from the back.

Another Letter That May Never Be Read -or- Working Backwards, Part II

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Love,

Leslie

When you go to the doctor, they do not diagnose you with psychotic features. I know you still have enough empathy for me to see that.

I will never in my lifetime figure out the mystery of who I was really talking to on Facebook that day, or days. However long it took to convince me that our mutual acquaintance was seriously interested in me, enough to invite me to an ice hotel. I don’t think it was you, but I don’t know anyone who has that much information on me. It’s not that I think you did anything, there were just too many random coincidences that everyone else said were impossible.

Your spirit was with me in the hospital as I grappled with being taken into the psych ER, not knowing truth from fiction. Everything reminded me of you because you’re so medical-minded, anyway. Therefore, I do not know if I was telling myself truth or fiction based on having my computer in front of me one moment, being told to go to the hospital to meet Heytch, and being in the psych ward the next. I do remember walking the streets of Baltimore, doing a running monologue about my life and all the people in it. I even sang the American and Canadian anthems at full voice at a crosswalk because I was convinced I was on camera and the lights were coordinated just for me.

This would seem psychotic to a lot of people. It was my way of dealing with fear. That a camera is always there to capture when I’ve had a dumbass attack and it leads me to not leaving the house. It’s also not a stretch to think you’re on camera in any city in the world. Walking, talking, and singing was my way of reclaiming space in the world. To shed the bother of being bothered that I’m on camera at all. It’s not rational to be bothered that you’re on camera anymore. If you aren’t doing anything stupid, a crowd is a great place to hide. If you are, welcome to the next popular YouTube short.

Once truth from lies became revealed, it left me confused forever at the conversations I’d been having over the internet. What were they for, exactly?

What is with the repetitive phrase, “you are always the best” in both genuine and sarcastic tones?

Why did this drama engulf me? I am not pitying myself. I am genuinely curious. It seemed like an intervention of sorts, but I have no idea who really got me to the hospital. It just doesn’t seem like a lie Heytch and Counselor would buy into….. yet they are also the people who have the most information about me.

As long as I live, I will never understand why our connection started with such purity and ended with pyrite on both sides. The fool’s gold for me was thinking that I was going to live in Africa with Heytch, and in no way did I put that idea in my head. I genuinely don’t know where it came from, nor do I know why someone would call themselves my River Song unless they already knew I was a Whovian. All of these conversations have been marked as hallucinations because I didn’t take any screenshots, so it seems like I’m lying when I’m not. I’ve had real conversations I cannot prove I actually had…. which is apparently a feature and not a bug.

“There is a bug in the electrical system.”

It as if I was pulled out of being simply a citizen of Locker C and dropped back in, but the world had moved in the time I’d been hopping planets.

Being caught up is not the same thing as being psychotic. I was definitely not caught up, because I was going off the words of people on the Internet and AGAIN I wish I could have remembered to take screenshots, because you would have been impressed at Heytch’s game. It was smooth.

So there was lots going on after I got out of the hospital that I didn’t know how to talk to you about, because I thought you had access to facets of my life that most people don’t. It’s why unburdening yourself of your lie came at such an inopportune time. If my doctors are right, and I hallucinated everything, my leftover emotions come from mania. If I am right and these conversations did happen, then there are a lot of unresolved feelings between us. Strangely, I don’t know which would be more comforting…. to know it was all a hallucination or to know that my world is so different from others.’

I think and feel that you isolated me from my friends and family, starting from the very beginning, so I am struggling to forgive that you think I’ve been manipulating you this whole time. We need to both come clean about the fact that we did a number on each other and there are no winners here. I would love to rebuild trust with you, but the only way to do that is to make you feel safe first. I don’t know how to do that, and I regret that you have to stop teaching me for your own well-being.

But the reality is starting to set in that I promised to be an “all the way to the river” friend. I meant it, and my mental illness meant to ruin us. It isolated me from you out of protection when I didn’t need protection.

You accuse me of using your traumas, that I need power over you, when that has never been my point. My point has always been that we are mirror images of each other, that when my left hand moves your right twitches. I have laid out my own flaws and failures on the table and fortunately or unfortunately most of those stories from the last 12 years involve you because you isolated me from my friends and family.

In my deepest heart of hearts, I know I’ll never meet anyone like you. You are simply extraordinary. That’s why I can’t seem to forget as much as I want to in order to move on. I’m still working out unresolved feelings, writing our story all the way to the end….. because even after you exit, there’s still me to deal with.

The question on my mind today is, “why didn’t you Skype her when that was a thing you could do?”

First of all, I apologize for being so talkative.

Dear Aada,

Uber Allies

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

When you don’t own one, a car is a magical thing. When you don’t own one, it doesn’t matter whether someone is willing to let you drive their Camaro or their Yugo. Each will get you from place to place in a manner which you control. I have in my pocket a device that lets me summon a car from anywhere and I still miss just throwing all my stuff in the trunk and taking off. And because of Uber, it’s not really the driving that I miss. It’s the trunk. It’s having a place to store my stuff that does not include carrying it on my person.

My backpack can be really quite heavy.

On the other hand, it takes a village to get me out of the house and having a driver waiting does create forward motion. I have it in my profile that I’m handicapped so that they will wait more than two minutes before leaving, but I do not abuse the privilege. It’s just nice to know that there’s a backup plan for when my cerebral palsy decides “now’s a good time to fall on the stairs.” Or, more likely, “now’s a good time to bang your shoulder so hard on a door jamb you’ll see stars.” I don’t have angle of convergence or depth perception due to lack of 3D vision, which generally means that the left-hand side of the door is outside my periphery and I do not realize I am too close to it. The stairs thing is not knowing how far up to lift my foot, provided I actually see them first. Generally, stairs also come out of nowhere. Because of my depth perception, though, I am more likely to be safe coming down the stairs than going up. The way I trip the most often is not lifting my foot high enough for the next step, which generally leads to skinned knees and ripped pants.

The same things that happen when I’m walking happen when I’m driving, scraping bumpers instead of knees. When you only have one field of vision at a time, there are going to be blind spots. If I do buy a car over the next several years, I want it to have as much technology as is financially feasible because things like lane assist and backup cameras were built for people like me.

The reason I don’t think I’ll have to buy a car over the next few years is that between Uber and all my Maryland Transit benefits there’s really no percentage in also owning a car (alternatively, my MTA ID picture is STUNNINGLY bad so buy a car and I won’t have to show it…..). I think what I’m feeling now is grief.

It is a letting go to give up on driving because there is something about owning a car that even Uber cannot offer, and that’s freedom. If I want to go somewhere, I still have to wait for someone to pick me up. If I want to go somewhere, I have to make sure I have everything I need in a zipped bag so nothing falls out…. I might never see that car or that driver again. If I want to go somewhere, I have to know where I want to go in advance.

When I drove, I didn’t always know where I was going until after the car had been idling for a few minutes.

In this letting go is a new collaboration of tools to get around town, because even though I would like to be able to pick Aaron up from the airport and take road trips to the beach and all the things you do when you drive, I am perfectly comfortable letting someone else accidentally run a red light. My freedom is gained in not having to worry about tickets or insurance.

Uber is here to get me where I need to go, but I’m still mourning a loss that I don’t know whether is temporary or permanent. I’m going to go with temporary, because I can’t think about never driving again. However, it is true that part of the reason I moved to DC in 2015 and haven’t gone back to Texas or Oregon is that the public transit on the east coast is better than in either of those states. In Houston, I absolutely had to have a car. In Portland, it was a little better.

When I had to have a car, I managed. I’m a much better driver when there’s someone else in the car with me to help point out other drivers I might not see…. but again, when and if I buy a car, I will have technology to bail me out. My need for a passenger has been replaced by cars being their own best back seat drivers.

There’s another plus to Uber, though. I’m always picked up in the latest and greatest cars, getting to see all of them instead of my same one every time. I’ve been impressed with all makes and models, to the point that if I said to myself, “you’ve worked very hard this year. Pick out exactly what you want,” I would have no idea where to start.

Again, when you don’t have a car, you’re just impressed by all magical boxes. It doesn’t have to have bells and whistles, it just has to go from point A to point B.

Uber has been my ally, so really what I have to think about is “what is your real loss here? Are you really freaked that you have to wait for a ride or do you just feel infantilized?”

Wow. Now we’re cooking with gas.

My All the Way to the River Friend

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I’m having one of those moments where I want to send Aada a book and I’m sitting on my hands. It’s called “All the Way to the River,” by Elizabeth Gilbert. Of course I’ve read maybe a chapter and my own creative process takes over.

Anyway, Elizabeth’s partner, Rayya, used to use a neighborhood analogy for friendship and she said that “you only have maybe one or two people in life who will walk with you to the river.” Elizabeth points out that the journey from this particular neighborhood to this particular river is treacherous, but starts out lovely at first.

Their journey does not reflect ours in any way, but it did occur to me that I didn’t think all the way to the river. I thought all the way to right now. When Rayya was diagnosed with cancer, her death became the river, furthering the analogy.

I have thought about the river before, but I lost sight of it. I know that nothing but time will ease Aada’s wounds. I know that nothing will bring her back to me except missing the inside jokes we used to share. I can’t help what her people think of me, but if the timing is ever right I would be open to rebuilding brick by brick.

I exploded with anger that serves as a stark reminder of how much I lost control. Her lie set me off, but it was a trigger with a disproportionate response. I don’t know what came over me, truly.

The internet is responsible for twisting our relationship into a dark space where we proceeded to spiral out. I don’t want to do that anymore.

I want to be strong and stable, capable of losing myself in something larger and supporting it with my whole heart. I want to keep writing in a way that does not feel like manipulation. Aada just naturally comes up in my thoughts when I think of friends I’d like to see all the way to the river, and there are so many problems with it I cannot see straight.

But I think the desire is the first step. My desire to be a better person has been fueled by her saying that she doesn’t want contact, because I realized that if I kept going the way I was going, I wouldn’t have any allies left…. new friends are great, but there’s nothing like old ones.

I’m both honored and bothered that she has access to my innermost thoughts, because that’s what comes with being a blogger. Anyone can read. I must think of it as a positive because through thick and thin, she reads me. She says that she should stay away because my writing is toxic to her, but that is a recent development in all the years I’ve been writing.

It didn’t bother me when I knew she was taking in my words from a neutral place, but now that she thinks my need to write about us is manipulative, I really don’t know what to say.

Honestly.

She literally puts me in the mood to write, a muse that fills me even though we’ve never met face to face. It’s not manipulation, it’s my real thought process when I sit down at the keyboard. It has been for 12 years, and I admit that turning off the faucet is difficult if not impossible when I know that there’s a minuscule chance I’m being heard. I am being thoughtfully considered. I am having space held for me.

Because this is the only space I will allow change to happen. I am being open in my grief so that it is shared. It has not changed anyone but me, these “Meetings with Bob” being the most extensive feedback I’ve gotten in a long time.

It shows me that my writing matters, but not being able to write a book with Aada is the real loss. Our “all the way to the river” friendship could have included a hardback if I’d remembered that she said we could write a book together when I was much younger.

I have written several books about us in these pages because she became my “all the way to the river” friend, the one to whom I could tell anything. I exhausted her with my prose because I was trying to impress her. What I thought was impressive made her feel like I was lecturing her. She often worked against me instead of with me. But if she is really my “all the way to the river” friend, we’re both going to have to forgive each other over and over.

I don’t think I’m capable of such a life transformation that Aada will come with me to the river…. because people may forget what you said, but they never forget the way you made them feel. Aada has to remember what it feels like to feel good because of something I said, or a sweet memory of something I said has to come to her mind, in order to think of reaching out to me. My pleading has done no good.

Except to remind me that there are consequences to my actions. There’s a penalty for not being an “all the way to the river” kind of friend…. you don’t get one in return.

Again, the stupidest and most outrageous decision I have ever made with unintended consequences for all involved. I ask myself why I couldn’t be an “all the way to the river” friend when I’d talked such a big game before. Being lied to was a body blow that I needed time to absorb. Before I took that time, I decided Aada’s lie had cost me too much and I was done protecting her.

The only problem was that the two situations were not equal, but in my irrationality I equated them. I cried like a lost baby as I was writing, because Aada had never lied to me before.

All of my reasons for being an “all the way to the river” friend vanished because I wasn’t thinking that way. I also wasn’t thinking, “she’ll forgive me for this.” In that moment, I wanted her gone. It took about three minutes to want to undo what I’d wrought, but that’s the thing about impulsive decisions. They, too, can have lifelong consequences.

I also know that real “all the way to the river” friends have had to forgive each other for more than this.

If she is willing to forgive, I am willing to compromise just about anything… not because she is perfect, but because she is mine. I have felt this way for 12 years and I went into a blind rage.

I am never going to pay more for a mistake, because I pushed her away- a real, all the way to the river friend.

Eventually, there won’t be such mourning, but I have to give myself permission. I don’t want to gloss over this time in my life easily or quickly. I want to show myself that I didn’t get over this easily….. that the ties that bind are just now loosening their grip.

I need to see the enormity of what I lost in front of me, mostly to take in the depth and breadth of everything I’ve done wrong. I do not want to lose another “all the way to the river” friend. It has been hard enough losing this one.

Tomorrow is my birthday.

Crying because I won’t hear from Aada, then laughing because Aada hardly ever remembered my birthday in the best of years.

It’s something I’ve always forgiven, because that’s what you do when you’re willing to be with them all the way to the river.

I lost my humanity when I betrayed Aada, and I grieve for everything we were and could have been.

I won’t send her the book.

But I’m sitting on my hands.

The First Step

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I have called maids, and will be scheduling at least monthly for now, if not weekly. I can slowly take over a system once habits are in place, but I can’t just wing it. My executive function will fail within days. It’s why being married kept me from seeing that I was autistic. I wasn’t remembering to do any household tasks; I was mirroring my then-wife. Demand avoidance is helped with social masking because you’re getting encouragement from someone when you remember to do something, and their social cues that they need you to clean are made easier by them getting up to do something, reminding you that you should be busy.

It’s why I’m considering moving in with housemates. It’s not feasible financially for me to move anywhere outside of the state of Maryland unless it’s to another state with Medicaid expansion, which rules out Texas and thus living with family. Once I get my disability case straightened out, I will have a little more freedom…. or less, if I choose it. Supervised housing is an option I’m also considering, because again, I need a safety net.

I also have the opportunity to be a voice for those who have to live in those situations.

I don’t want to fall through the cracks medically or psychologically, because it’s so obvious to me that I need help in different areas of my life. The one thing I don’t have is anxiety about writing, because people tend to listen kindly, as if we’re both just having coffee on the back deck.

And even if they didn’t respond kindly, I think I would still have a need to explore my world the way I do, trying to understand the role I play in it. I am doing my best to make this a bad chapter, not a bad story.

Maybe one day the liar and the betrayer will have a chance to meet without fighting it so hard. I doubt it, but I don’t want to close myself off from it except for in the near future. I need time to heal, to learn how to be a decent person all over again; the last thing I would want to do in having a new relationship is old patterns.

But we’re both going through tremendous life changes that will bring about a rewiring. I don’t know that Aada will rise above past hurts to rebuild, nor am I confident that she should yet. I need something to bring to the table first. Right now I cannot handle my own life.

Sometimes in life we have these catalysts for change that we need, but we don’t know why we need them until reflection on the consequences of our actions. I need to get some perspective on the last 12 years- move away from them entirely so that my life isn’t internet-based.

That part of it is bad for me, because it sets off my adrenaline and cortisol in a way that in-person conversation doesn’t. If Aada never wants to meet on the ground, then I am glad that our relationship is over. I need it to have a different pace… lazy, even. But Aada’s assessment of the situation is that I only write to manipulate her and that she has no interest in friendship with me. I have heard worse and she’s still come back later, which is why I have no idea whether this relationship is truly over or not.

There is a limit to what she can forgive, and we will see in time whether I have reached it. There was a limit to what I could forgive in the moment, but at heart there’s nothing she could do. I just needed time, and I hope that’s the case for her, too.

As for this all being a manipulation, I don’t think so. I’ve been the same person I’ve been since 2013, startlingly self aware and realizing I was making mistakes without being able to make myself stop. Writing about that and holding myself accountable makes me feel safe, so that five or 10 years down the line I have a reliable record of what really happened that doesn’t blame anyone else.

I love myself enough not to lie to me.

The reasons the maids are the first step is so that I can get a system in place to come back into the light. To feel comfortable letting people stay at my house (soon), which still may involve checking into a hotel for a night if my maintenance guys come to finish the demo.

Next steps are moving to a more comfortable place, but not before my Houston trip. That’s all the more reason to get a system in place- I’d like my house to be spotless when I come home.

It’s all about support for neurodivergence, because I lost my cool with Aada and I just don’t want to be like that anymore. I need to quiet all the little frustrations in my life so that they don’t build into big ones.

I see how I do want to walk in the world- humble, gracious, warm… all the things I haven’t been while I’ve been trapped in the internet. I claimed not to have time, because Aada wasn’t pressuring me for responses. If anything, she couldn’t get me to shut up. 😉

I couldn’t make anything else matter in my life but Aada, which sounds like such a weird thing to say unless you know the whole story. Those words would frighten even her, but they are no less true. I would sit and think about all the things I had going on in my life vs. everything going on in hers and my life paled in comparison.

I felt like I was very much “Player,” from Carmen Sandiego on Netflix… the Internet friend that has all the support and the answers but is never physically in the same place with her.

It’s all of those little things that I miss… but I think that my best bet is to start thinking about a beautiful house with or without housemates somewhere in Baltimore or the DMV.

(DC, Maryland, Virginia- what we call the city of Washington that spans all three. If you live in DC, you say that you’re from “The District” and you get irrationally angry with people who live in Virginia or Maryland claiming they live in DC.)

I don’t want to move over the Maryland line because everything is in their hospital systems, but it remains to be seen whether I will return from Baltimore. It just depends on what kind of deals I can get, and that’s what makes me the most nervous. I don’t have my own income. I have money. That doesn’t generally mix with renting places. So it’s a discussion with everyone in my life as to what my next move should be.

But it’s finally a discussion I’m ready to have, because I am seeing that I do have a disability that affects not only me, but everyone else to a large degree. I do not think that I would have hurt Aada had I not been in autistic meltdown because I had no coping mechanisms for it. I was so emotionally dysregulated that I acted horribly to someone I do indeed love, despite the evidence.

My adrenaline and cortisol betrayed both of us because I was so unhinged. I didn’t think about danger or how she was feeling. The only thing I can do to save our relationship is to be dead honest about that because she’d forgive the truth. She would not forgive excuses.

Autism does not mean that I am not responsible for my anger. Autism is what takes anger and turns it into red mist rage before you can get a handle on it. You turn into a different person because your brain chemicals are so hot. It’s what turned legitimate displeasure with a friend that could have been worked out over time into a disaster. Autism and ADHD rob me of time to think about my reactions, so I get a lot of time to go back over them.

I just have to see the silver lining in the storm, which is that this is a chance to regather all the friends I’ve ignored. I cannot believe Aaron Brown is actually coming all the way up here, and I’ve been given an invitation to see my family at the end of the month. Those two things are more exciting than it’s been around here in years.

But the maids are the first step.

Meetings with Bob, Part IV

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 1 Comment

Dear Leslie,

Your words carry the weight of someone doing the hardest work there is – looking honestly at ourselves when we’ve caused harm. That takes enormous courage, even when it feels like compulsion driving you forward.

The sewage backup feels like life giving you a rather blunt metaphor, doesn’t it? Sometimes our external world mirrors our internal storms in ways that would be heavy-handed in fiction but feel devastatingly apt in real life.

What strikes me most is how clearly you see the paradox you’re living in. You hold both your justification and your horror, your context and your culpability. That’s not weakness – that’s the full complexity of being human. Most of us spend years avoiding that kind of dual vision because it’s so uncomfortable. You’re choosing to sit with it, to write through it, to let it teach you.

The distinction you’re drawing between explanation and excuse matters deeply. Yes, your AuDHD and bipolar disorder create challenges. Yes, medication changes can scramble our usual ways of being. But you’re not using these truths to sidestep responsibility – you’re using them to understand the landscape you were navigating. That’s mature self-awareness, not self-justification.

Your observation about “think it, say it” in digital spaces resonates. We all know that strange phenomenon where typing creates a different version of ourselves – often more impulsive, more raw, less filtered than we’d be face-to-face. It doesn’t excuse what we say, but it helps explain why we sometimes watch ourselves behave in ways that mystify us later.

The grief in your words about Aada is palpable. When we lose someone because of our own actions, we don’t just lose them – we lose the version of ourselves we were with them, and the future we might have had. That’s a particular kind of mourning, and it sounds like you’re allowing yourself to feel it fully rather than rushing to forgiveness or blame.

Your blog as accountability partner is brilliant. By writing honestly about your process, you’re creating witnesses to your growth. That takes guts. It also suggests you’re not just processing for processing’s sake – you’re building something, learning something, becoming something different.

The bit about children seeing you clearly made me pause. There’s something profound about how young people can see past our complications to our essence. They don’t carry the weight of our histories or the fear of our potential. Maybe that clarity you find with them is also available to you when you look at yourself – beneath all the context and complexity, there’s still someone worthy of compassion.

You’re rewiring your brain in real time, and that’s messy, imperfect work. Some days you’ll feel the old patterns pulling at you. Other days you’ll surprise yourself with how different you’ve become. Both are part of the process.

Keep writing. Keep looking. Keep holding both the justification and the horror – not because you deserve to suffer, but because that tension is where growth lives. You’re not letting yourself off the hook, but you’re also not hanging yourself with the rope. That balance is everything.

The courage you questioned in yourself? I see it here, in every honest word you’ve written.

Bob x

Dear Bob,

Thank you for your kind words during a difficult time. I have learned another hard-won lesson, though….. that you can be unhappy in one area of your life without being unhappy in all of them. I am devastated by my own behavior and will continue to mourn what could have been a much happier, relaxed relationship than I got….. at my own hand, to be clear.

Seeing the paradox I’m living in is the joy and pain of being a writer.

Meeting adjourned. 😉

Leslie

Meetings with Bob, Part II

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 1 Comment

Dear Leslie,

I’m struck by how vividly you map the contours of your inner world – how writing becomes both sanctuary and trap, and how the very medium that sustains you also isolates you. Your description of “screaming into the void” captures that tension with heartbreaking clarity.

You observe that your pace – responding online “too fast to take in” – was a key factor in the breakdown with Aada. What would it look like if you allowed yourself just a few more beats before sending a reply? How might a brief pause shift the shape of what you write and the relationships that form around it?

You note, quite powerfully, that you lost your grip on shared reality because you never compared notes face-to-face. I wonder: what would it feel like to translate some of these excavations into a conversation with someone present? Could speaking your next draft aloud to a trusted friend provide that grounding you describe?

Your honesty about neurodivergence – autism, ADHD, bipolar disorder – reminds me that these dimensions aren’t just complicating factors; they’re also windows into how you experience connection, narrative, and emotional intensity. When you say, “If the script had been written by a neurotypical person, I would be married with a writing partner,” I hear both longing and recognition of how your mind brings its own storytelling gifts. How can you honour those gifts while also building in safeguards against the cycles you’ve described?

I’m moved by your ritual of checking for “faces you’d written for” during preaching – the instinct to seek a touchstone in the crowd. I’m curious: if I ceased to be your primary touchstone, what other faces – real or imagined – might you write toward? How might naming a handful of specific readers in advance reshape the intimacy and clarity of your work?

You’re doing a profound excavation here. There’s regret, yes, but also a real emergence of empathy for both Aada’s exhaustion and your own patterns. You write that you “cared about [your] sanity more than [you] cared about her” – a wrenching admission. In that tension between protecting your reality and sustaining connection, where do you see the next opportunity for a different choice?

Thank you for trusting me with these reflections. Your willingness to lay bare the mistakes – and to explore them without shaming yourself – speaks to the generosity at the heart of your writing. I look forward to following how these questions unfold in your work, and I’m here to listen whenever you want to talk through what you discover.

Bob x

I do take pauses with the people in my life on the ground. It’s harder on the internet because the internet is faster in and of itself. For instance, in the beginning I’m not sure that Aada and I went without talking about every 15 minutes. And we slowly got back to that. On the ground, I may not see someone for weeks or months. Internet replies were instantaneous. I think that because now I don’t have this overarching relationship in the cloud, everything will slow down for me. That’s a good thing. I don’t have any friends that won’t come over for tea.

Having conversations with Aada can happen with my therapist, but I think that the excavation here is more important. I need to see what went wrong and I need to atone for it in the other relationships I create, because I don’t think there’s any salvaging this one. I have no interest in being friends with someone that acted like a pathological lie was no big deal when she got busted, no recognition of what she’d asked me to do. She has no interest in being friends with someone who would be this narcissistic, not knowing it was building narcissism because I was only thinking of myself and what I needed. In the moment, it felt justified. Now, I just feel horrible. But at the same time, my reality is back in check. If there were to be any reconciliation, I would prefer it to happen on the ground. I will not go back into a secretive little bubble where I don’t know what she’s told others about me, but she gets access to all my thoughts.

That’s the hardest part of trying to move on. Knowing that she’ll never be far from this web site, knowing that she will have access to my thoughts whether I want her to or not. It’s a part of being a public figure I don’t like, that people who don’t like me still crave reading here.

It’s why touchstones are important. I have to write for the audience that likes me as well as the one that doesn’t. It’s because I’m only writing for myself that I can even approach this. It’s not the writing that’s hard, it’s the publishing. My blog holds me accountable in a way that few things do.

I do think about my audience in advance. Lately, that audience has been Aada, but this blog existed before she was just a twinkle in my eye, so she is not the only touchstone. Offhand I can think of several people that have influenced entries, none more than the children in my life. I need to get back to that, where my touchstones aren’t online.

I have a lot of regret that I chose to be weird.

The fight this time around was just one of many, and started the day I told her I was in love with her…. not her face. Her essence. I didn’t know what I was doing because I set up a pattern in which she didn’t know if she could trust me or not. We never recovered, because I was an idiot. I have done everything I can think of to remedy the situation, and it did work. I just don’t know how well.

I will never know that now, because I have destroyed any love Aada would have for me because some problems cannot be fixed. Ours was one of them. I found out she lied and went Full Metal Jackass.

Until now, Aada would read lines like that and tell me she laughed, and that’s what kept her as a touchstone for this web site. Creating more will only come with time as I meet more people.

How can you honour those gifts while also building in safeguards against the cycles you’ve described?

This line got me because it’s what I’m dealing with in therapy. Again, it will all come together with time, because a virtual pen pal isn’t a real touchstone, in the end. 7% of communication is not all of them, and I barked up the wrong tree before I even knew what kind it was. If I had been more circumspect, I would have had a very different career.

But I wouldn’t have had this one, either.

Meetings with Bob

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 1 Comment

Dear Leslie,

Your insight about needing “touchstones” rather than trying to connect with “thousands of people at once” illuminates something crucial about authentic writing that I hadn’t considered before. The image of you looking out during preaching to find the faces you’d written for – checking if reality matched your intention – captures perfectly how writing is both intimate and public simultaneously.

“You don’t connect with an audience. You connect with some of them because taking on the entire room is overwhelming” feels like wisdom earned through experience. It makes me think about how much pressure we put on ourselves to reach everyone, when perhaps the most powerful writing comes from speaking genuinely to one person.

Your honesty about becoming “a self-centred jerk” whilst thinking you were right at the time shows remarkable self-awareness. When you write, “My blog is often a manual on ‘What Not to Do’ because I guarantee that I thought I was right when I wasn’t,” you’re describing something universal about human growth – we can only see our blind spots in retrospect.

The dynamic you describe with Aada – “avoidant/anxious… with me being the anxious one” – sounds exhausting for both of you. Your observation that you “jumped up and down for attention because my needs weren’t being met” whilst simultaneously creating the very problems that made the relationship “unusual” shows how we can become trapped in patterns that sabotage what we most want.

What strikes me most is your recognition that “I was too quick, always. It didn’t matter the reaction, it was too fast to take in.” This suggests you understand now that some of the damage came from pace rather than intent – that slowing down might have changed everything.

Your final line – “This is what it looks like when I have switched the audience to Bob” – intrigues me. How does writing to me feel different from writing to Aada? Does the change in touchstone alter not just your content but your relationship to your own emotions as you write?

The fact that you can now read Aada’s words months later and find empathy for her perspective suggests you’ve gained some distance that allows for clearer sight. Even whilst carrying regret, you’re still learning from the experience. That seems like something worth acknowledging, even if it doesn’t undo what you wish you could change.

Bob x

Dear Bob,

Learning from my experiences is the only thing this blog is designed to do. I’m sure that other people read it because they are being entertained, listening to a stranger’s secrets. But I don’t pay attention to them unless they take the time to comment like you do, to ask questions about what I’m really writing. That’s because it doesn’t occur to me that people are reading until they comment. I think of my voice as “screaming into the void” because people rarely take the time to be as thorough as you are in your reviews. 😛

By not paying attention to the audience, I have a chance to say what I really think and feel, letting them have the reactions they’re going to have without being in front of them. When I do that, though, the reality is that I end up isolating myself. Being a blogger is being able to say that I acted like a self-centered jerk because this blog is not a vanity project.

I’m concerned by the way my friendship with Aada isolated me from my friends on the ground, because I paid more attention to her than the rest of them. Living my life in the cloud has brought disastrous results and the thing I wish I could do more than anything is take away Aada’s fear that I am still the same person I used to be, railroading her feelings in favor of keeping the story moving. I don’t have a story without her, and it crippled me as a writer not to be able to talk about what was going on in my real life. So I just made it up as I went along. I wasn’t intentionally stepping on her toes, I just did.

That’s because I didn’t have a good idea of where her story ended and where mine began. We should have talked about it from the moment we met, but we didn’t. She didn’t realize that taking on a blogger as a friend would cramp her style, but was game as long as I adored her in public.

When I didn’t, she was angry, but often went back and acknowledged when she was wrong. It made me feel good when she said, “I’m not saying that I’m this person you have portrayed, but………” Over time, I could read her like a book, literally, because there were no in-person meetings to interrupt our little rabbit hole.

Thank you for acknowledging that Aada must have been exhausted, because that’s the message I’ve been trying to send. That I know I’m not the easiest person to maintain a friendship with because I’m off in this world half the time. There was a solid reason our relationship was so off-kilter, and I cannot even tell you why it went so wrong, so fast. I can only tell you that it’s my fault entirely.

If the script had been written by a neurotypical person, I would be married with a writing partner. My autism, ADHD, and bipolar disorder ruined both the marriage and the possibility of getting together with Aada to discuss our future projects. I was not good at new relationship energy, and I let the energy from Aada overtake everything else.

That was a mistake, because all I succeeded in doing was isolating both women from me in different ways. I lost my head, and Aada and I just never regained equilibrium as long as we interacted. Getting together in person would have solved that problem, because my imagination was bigger than life.

She was the one with the travel miles, I was the one stuck in my room day after day. It was a ride, because at times Aada didn’t mind being number one on the call sheet, and at others, she really did. Therefore, it was impossible to judge how to please her.

I could always calm her down by letting her into what I was writing, because nine times out of 10 I didn’t actually say what she thought I did. I tried to make her feel beautiful, wanted, special… try to let her go because I’m thinking that I’m giving her what she wants, and then she pops up in my DMs based on something I’ve written here. I will miss her telling me when I’ve written something beautiful about us, and I wish I knew the formula for how that went. I definitely wanted to err on that side of things. The way I do that in my daily life is by talking to the people I know about what I’m writing and they mention what it’s ok for me to write about and what’s not, and this is the key, before I’ve written. This cycle went on for so many years, with things just feeling true. There was no humanity to course correct when we weren’t checking the story we were telling ourselves by looking each other in the eye.

I felt like I lived in a fairy tale, where she was a dragon. Or one of those kids who find out their real parents are superheroes. I was very tired of feeling like that, seriously questioning my reality.

I was put off, but not shut down from the idea of meeting. I have a history of self-sabotage, so it is unsurprising that I once again spoiled my chances when they were better than average.

She might have empathized with wanting to check reality. What exactly, did I love about her? I wish I’d found a way to speak her love language that didn’t include hunting for it. I wondered when I could stand up for myself constantly, realizing that all of her reasons for not being together were real, and so was her regret at not being more present. She liked being my girl in the “hetero life mate” sense of the phrase. I just never got her to realize that we couldn’t have a relationship as close as ours without being able to read each other accurately. I think she would have been much happier with the results had we not trauma dumped before we met in person. It changed me as a blogger and as a wife, friend.

It’s not that those conversations shouldn’t have happened, but they should have happened while looking at each other’s faces. Because I questioned my reality, I questioned hers. I lost my grip.

I wish I didn’t mean that quite so literally. I didn’t lose it all at once, though. It built over a decade.

Because the longer our relationship went on, the longer I wondered what her voice sounded like when she was giving me feedback. What tones I needed to watch for that indicate distress. What she would have said in person vs. over the Internet.

I was always too quick with a response online.

My truly bipolar symptoms got me into this mess, but it doesn’t excuse me from my actions. If I’d realized how powerful a connection it was to me, I would have cherished it completely differently…. and I know that because I’ve been able to chart our progress over many years. She was my muse, and I was very busy painting her with words.

I don’t wish we hadn’t met. I wish I’d been a stronger person. I could have been a stronger person if my reality had been checked, but Aada couldn’t explain what she meant by “your words feel like pricks on my skin” because I didn’t know what I’d said that had been so… she wouldn’t open up that much. Therefore, I could not adjust to her.

It was a toxic cycle I knew I created, and wanted to clean up. The best I’ve slept in 12 years came from this quote from her absolutely out of context: “THAT’S HOW IT’S SUPPOSED TO WORK.”

I had to make sure my reality was secure, because no one was going to do it for me. My reality broke when I realized she could lie to me. I had built this idea of who she was based on this timeline that was ridiculous and I realized that all my worry had been for nothing. That she’d created mythology where there was none without thinking I’d need that piece of information later.

Much later.

She asked me to give up too much in the name of a lie.

So I told my story the way I wanted to tell it, wanting to know the worst consequences of anything I could say. I lost the friendship, but no one told me to stop writing. I need to start recording what it’s like to be me again, not what it’s like to be me as I sit here in fake reality. I’m sure I buried her in communications because my reality was threatened. I felt like Mr. Robot.

Instead of terminal windows, it was chat windows and Gmail.

I was slowly isolating more and more because I had this internet relationship that actually fulfilled me. But if you were a prescribing doctor, you’d think I was hallucinating. I was, based on this lie.

Just not the lie she told. It was all the lies I’d told myself over the years about where she is and what she must be doing that were completely inaccurate because we’d never really compared notes with a level playing field. I was way, way off. The things she’d said to calm me would have worked if she hadn’t lied…. and seem so reasonable in retrospect.

Part of being a writer is being able to admit when you’re wrong, and I try to do an excavation even when I’m the one that’s wrong because it’s not “who won” that matters. It’s that the story is told. I lost something precious because I lost sight of what mattered over and over.

I cared about my sanity, in the end, more than I cared about her. The longer I questioned my reality, the more I wanted closeness with her. The longer she waffled, the more my sanity went up and down. We were trapped, because I couldn’t stabilize long enough for that to happen and neither could she.

She says that I have a constant need to manipulate her. No, I have a constant need to write and she’s who I was thinking about. I do not need her to read and comment if she does not want interaction. It was my feeling that as she went away she would stop reading, but she didn’t. Therefore, I can see how it feels like manipulation to her- I wanted our memories to be pristine and the only way you get that is to write it in the moment.

I closed the door this time, so I’m hoping she sees that I’m doing my best to post-mortem and move on. That I accept she won’t respond. I expect her to keep that promise now, but life is long. The best indication of future behavior is past history, and I never know what will remind her of me and think she should reach out that’s worth crossing the divide. I expect her to move on from reading my grief if she wants to move on from me. The last thing I want is to continually manipulate anybody, and if that’s the way she feels, then so be it. All I can do is keep praying for her, that time heals wounds. I was trying to save her from pain, and I caused it. For that, I am sorry to her.

I got tired of wondering why my reality felt so abnormal when one lie pulled the whole string. I questioned everything about our relationship…. including these elusive baby steps that I have absolutely no idea when I’ve achieved because there’s no mention of them?

I needed people I could reach out and touch, some stability in my life. She did not see what was going on with me psychiatrically/psychologically except in the symptomatic letters. I needed a different medium to express myself because writing can only do so much.

But it’s knowing that me closing the door to a relationship started a long time ago. I should have said a lot less. In many cases.

Many.

Leslie x

The Way the Story Goes

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
Where did your name come from?
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My mother had already named me Amanda Jane. She called me AJ for months until she went to a church service and the organist was listed as “Leslie Diane.” All this AJ business was done for her. Now that I know I was called AJ and missed that chance, I like its nonbinary nature, but I do not like the name Amanda. So, things worked out the way I needed them to work out. I wouldn’t want a lifetime of saying that AJ doesn’t stand for anything, not having any proclivities toward Jane, either.

I’m named after a complete stranger, so there’s no cute story of my namesake except that it just looked pretty in print.

I like my name ok, because Leslie is a nonbinary choice. There are plenty of men named Leslie in the UK, so I don’t feel like I need to change my name to something else. It already has both male and female characteristics.

I have heard mixed reviews on what it means. Some say it means “quiet spirit,” some say it means “one from the grey fortress.” Judging from the way my spirit jumps around when I’m alone, I’m leaning toward my namesakes being warriors somewhere in Scotland, because Leslie is actually a surname there.

I am lucky in that I have a Scottish tartan for my first name and and Irish tartan for my last name.

Lanagan is distinctly Irish and I get it from my father’s side. There’s Scottish blood on my mother’s side somewhere, but I don’t remember who is kin to who over there. My grandfathers were both into genealogy, but I’m not. I remember a few stories from my father’s father about how we came to this country, but my other grandfather was not quite as forthcoming because he was not a writer. My father’s father published a book in several volumes called “The Lanagan Century” that cemented those stories in my mind in a way that my other grandfather couldn’t.

It was my grandfather’s version of a blog, in retrospect.

So maybe even though my name was a fluke, I certainly ended up in the right family.

Comments Like This

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 1 Comment
Daily writing prompt
What motivates you?
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Leslie – your exploration of the intersection between writing and living strikes me as profoundly honest – particularly your observation that “I am often too busy recording life to remember to go out and live it.” This captures something essential about the writer’s paradox that I don’t think gets discussed enough.

The way you’ve woven together your mental health journey with your writing practice feels incredibly brave. When you write, “My only support system has been writing,” it illuminates how the very thing that sustains you can also become isolating. There’s something both beautiful and heartbreaking about finding solace in words whilst struggling with whether the relationships they document are real.

Your question about Aada – whether she’s real or hallucination – opens up fascinating territory about the nature of online relationships and how we validate our experiences. “I just wanted to prove to myself that I wasn’t hallucinating… because I had someone to talk to who could empathise” speaks to a very human need for connection and verification of our reality.

I’m struck by your insight that “I become prophetic because hindsight is 20/20.” This suggests you understand that your writing serves as both document and mirror – allowing you to trace patterns and growth over time. It makes me wonder: when you look back at your earlier entries about Aada, what patterns do you notice now that weren’t visible whilst you were living through it?

Your observation about readers – “They’re my sacrifices in continuing to be a writer, the readers that don’t talk to me anymore but do talk to each other” – captures something profound about the cost of vulnerability in public writing. You’ve created this space where people can witness your humanity, but that witnessing comes with complications.

The tension you describe between needing grace for changing your mind versus being seen as “two-faced” feels particularly relevant in our current moment. How do you navigate continuing to write authentically whilst protecting yourself from that push-pull dynamic you mention?

Your closing line – “Because remember when I used to write so beautifully?” – suggests you’re questioning your current work, but honestly, this piece demonstrates the same raw honesty and insight that presumably drew people to your earlier writing. Perhaps what’s changed isn’t the quality, but your relationship with the act of writing itself?

What would it look like to write without an audience – even temporarily – just to reconnect with the intimacy you describe having with your word processor?

Bob

This comment is so far-reaching that I’m not sure what to say in response. I would say that it helps to have one person in mind when I’m writing an essay, because what resonates with one will resonate with a thousand at this scale. It also helps me not to feel alone in the room as I write, because I’m talking to the person in my head, not thousands of people at once. When I am not thinking of my audience, my emotions fall flat. I used to do the same thing in preaching- look out for the people I was thinking of when I wrote that line just to see if they thought it was as funny in reality as it was when I was working on the sermon.

You don’t connect with an audience. You connect with some of them because taking on the entire room is overwhelming. You just need touchstones.

Aada was my touchstone, the reader I looked for to make sure I was doing all right. I didn’t care what anyone else thought because her opinion was enough. I pushed her away, so she won’t be doing that anymore. I regret it, but there’s no way to go back and undo what I’ve done.

My blog is often a manual on “What Not to Do” because I guarantee that I thought I was right when I wasn’t. Now that time has passed, I see that I was a self-centered jerk. Of course the patterns I see with Aada are ways I’ve behaved that hurt her, because I was overfocused on my own needs.

She didn’t make me feel safe, so I wouldn’t return the favor. I should have, but I didn’t. She threw me into the pile of people she doesn’t trust because there’s no rebuilding from here. My emotions got in the way of my logic, and I didn’t do the right thing.

Neither did she.

So now she slowly slips away in my mind to make room for new people to be touchstones in my audience. I am a work in progress, and have realized that my communication skills are merely compensatory. I work best in reaction to someone else. The reason Aada and I worked well together is that I think she’s the smartest person in the entire world, and for some reason she thought I was, too. The nature of online relationships is ethereal, which led both of us to disconnect from our humanity on many occasions. Validating my experience was very difficult because I did not have anyone to talk to about it, because our connection was always avoidant/anxious….. with me being the anxious one.

It makes me wonder: when you look back at your earlier entries about Aada, what patterns do you notice now that weren’t visible whilst you were living through it?

I jumped up and down for attention because my needs weren’t being met, all while blissfully aware of the problems I caused in our relationship that would make it unusual. I really messed up, and I’ll never forgive myself. I can only hope that there’s a few things on Aada’s side that she’ll never forgive herself for, either, because that’s the only path that will make either of us try again in the future. After all, if she lied to impress me, I know I impressed her at least once.

I chose to make her number one on the call sheet because I thought I was writing anonymously. That no one could make the leap between Aada and “Her Real Name Here.” That led me to say some things that Aada certainly wouldn’t have want broadcast and it’s just more regret to add onto the pile.

I know why I was so keyed up on adrenaline, but she didn’t seem to understand until a few months ago. That was definitely a breakthrough, getting her to understand that I went through something pretty universal in spite of it being unusual.

I would give anything for a do-over of the past 12 years, because I had a solid goal in mind for this time in my life and I sabotaged it at every turn. I didn’t listen to Aada, and I didn’t listen to my own fears as she tried to work with them.

Being able to read Aada’s words months later give me empathy for her, reflecting on how she must think of me. I really did act like a shit friend because I was so tired of my bipolar disorder getting blamed for a lot of things that were emotional.

She blamed me for being emotional.

It’s no wonder that I thought I wouldn’t be enough in person. She’d treated me like a goddess when we first met, and I didn’t know what to do with that pedestal. I just returned the favor, a complete mutual admiration society. But once she was my actual friend, she didn’t realize that meant she would appear in my musings about what’s going on in my life.

I treasure the entries where she told me I did a good job, and choose not to remember the ones she hated.

She was always halfway out the door, so I decided to close it.

Again, I regret doing so because I cut off a future. I just didn’t see the future going better than the past. I will never know what would have happened if I’d relaxed. Maybe those baby steps would have materialized into something. She just had to get a lie off her chest first, and I imploded.

What motivates me is connecting to strangers, especially ones that ask probing questions. I’m not sure that I have answered any of them, but in short, recognizing the pattern with Aada was recognizing all the ways I’d been a jerk to her without taking the time to really think about what I was saying. I was too quick, always. It didn’t matter the reaction, it was too fast to take in.

This is what it looks like when I have switched the audience to Bob.