Tag: storytelling

All of Them, with AuDHD

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
Which activities make you lose track of time?
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I could while away the hours just writing, and often do. But there are other activities that make time irrelevant:

  • “Playing” with My Computer
    • Most people would not consider installing an operating system “playing.” However, I like to try out different versions of Linux and can spend hours perfecting my desktop. Right now, I just have the vanilla version of Ubuntu installed, but lately I’ve tried Cinnamon, Mate (like the tea), KDE, and in a fit of insanity, switched over to Red Hat. The installer crashed, which is why I’m back to Ubuntu. I don’t know why I bothered with Red Hat. I haven’t used it since college. I think I was just feeling a bit sentimental, not realizing that the commands are different and I would have to learn a different way of “speaking” to my desktop. To be clear, I did not cause the installer crash. I just realized I didn’t want to have to learn a whole new system, making me grateful for the same old crap I already had.
  • Gaming
    • Gaming should be in quotes because I really only like “Skyrim.” I’m not sure you can call yourself a proper gamer if you only like one game. I was introduced to “Skyrim” by my brother-in-law, because I was watching him play on his Xbox and thought, “that looks fun.” A few days later I was fighting dragons on my PC. And in fact, I had to buy it twice because of the modding community. The first time, I bought it through GOG and the scripting engine was broken by an update. I have it through Steam now, which allows me to install it on both my Windows and Linux PCs. I am sure that you could get the GOG version working on Linux if you were a programmer, but Steam support is so much better that it’s not worth the hassle.
      • If you are interested, my character is a Wood Elf/Bosmer named Quinn. I’m deadly with a bow and arrow, so I generally conjure companions for melee (Dremora Lords are particularly good) and find a spot to pick people off, hidden behind a rock.
  • Cleaning
    • When I clean and organize, it takes hours because I will find things I haven’t used in forever. It stops the process as I sort through pictures, books, knickknacks, you name it. But there’s a rhythm to cleaning that is soothing, and I enjoy it when I am able. I have trouble taking care of myself due to my autism, but when I’m on top of it, I am absolutely “Anal Annie.” And in fact, I should probably take a nap to get ready for a marathon cleaning session today. I’d like to be able to host a friend this weekend and my apartment isn’t ready for that kind of commitment. If you make promises to yourself like that and often beat yourself up with guilt, I have a book for that called “How to Keep House While Drowning.” It has been revolutionary in helping me do what I can do with my compromised state. Executive dysfunction is real.
  • Reading
    • I inhale books. I’m a member of Kindle Unlimited because I’ve made a lot of author friends and want to read them all for the cost of one book a month. It’s also nice to be able to get most books that are recommended to me through KU as well. I’ve had to buy very little recently, but I’ve certainly gotten my money’s worth. For the $12 I paid this month, I read five books that were $8.00 apiece, and another that was $20.
  • Walking
    • I’m a member of Planet Fitness, and one of my favorite activities is to set a program on the treadmill for incline and zone out to the TV, YouTube, or a podcast. If I’m listening to music, it’s usually “Podrunner,” a running podcast sorted by beats per minute and the DJ is fantastic. But most of the time I’m listening to whatever is on TV at the club. I tend to show up during all the talk shows, reminiscent of when my mother and I used to walk every day during The Oprah Winfrey Show.
  • Watching TV
    • I love to write so much that I’m always looking for smart television to up my game in terms of story construction. However, I also enjoy actual construction and “This Old House” is my comfort show. I have learned so much that I would seriously think about buying a house if I was married… because I don’t want to do all that work by myself. 😉

Oooh, even thinking about me being married again gives me the shivers. I do not want to get lost in thought on that. So I think we’ll call it for today and pick back up later. I have a house to clean……… ALL BY MYSELF, THANKS.

Me, Mostly

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
What bothers you and why?
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It’s hard to point fingers at anyone else for bothering me when I am such a handful. I didn’t even know whether to put an emoticon after that, because I don’t know that I’m joking. From my writing to my behavior, there’s nothing I cannot criticize, but I’m trying to be kinder to myself. If one’s behavior affects treatment of others, then it is up to me to be happier on the inside.

The first thing I did to make myself happier was to buy a membership to the National Aquarium. I was invited to go on Sunday, and the price of a membership was cheaper than buying two tickets individually. I thought that was a much better deal as I am obsessed with aquarium fish and don’t want to have an aquarium at my house. Plus, I’ve never been there before and I hear it is world class. Many of you don’t know this about me, but I watch videos on aquascaping all the time and look forward to being able to set up my own tank once I have a living situation conducive to it. I have had freshwater tanks in the past, but I’ve never actually landscaped one with live plants. I think that I would be less bothered once I was paying attention to my minuscule pets. I’d like to have shrimp, catfish, snails, and a betta. A cleanup crew and a betta fish wouldn’t take up that much room, probably 10 gallons, and that way the tank wouldn’t be a monster job to clean.

The reason my living space couldn’t handle an aquarium is that the water pressure is so low here it would take hours to fill a 10 gallon tank. It bothers me with every sink and the bathtub. I could write an entire entry on why this apartment complex sucks and why you shouldn’t live here, but I don’t want to give any indication as to where I live. Baltimore is close enough.

I am thinking now of moving back to the DMV in December, because my lease ends on November 30th. I love Baltimore itself, but the public transportation isn’t as good as I thought it would be. I need to be back on the Metro. My current group, Cognitive Behavioral Health, has another office in Rockville. I would like to stay with my people, and one of my counselors would be the same. It all depends on what kind of deal I can find with my living situation, because like I said, Baltimore is not the problem when I can get around. Uber is too expensive to take all the time, but it does provide an excellent stopgap when a trip on the Metro/bus is going to take two hours.

I do know that I need to stay in Maryland because I am getting so many benefits from Medicaid expansion. We will have to see how the “big, ugly bill” affects me in the future, but so far I have had no interruptions in service. So while I love Virginia, I am solidly staying on this side of the Potomac.

It bothers me that I have to think about all of this. I don’t want to be disabled, but here we are.

It bothers me that I have always been disabled, but these problems are just now being addressed. Better late than never, but I could have been helped with government services in Portland when I spent so many years without health insurance. I have been eligible for services since I was 18 years old, but I didn’t know why until my mother died. I found solid proof that I have had cerebral palsy since I was a baby, after she spent years trying to convince me that I was fine. My dad was overreacting. But interestingly enough, cerebral palsy is not why my care team wants me to file for disability. My bipolar disorder got the best of me, and that bothers me, too.

Most of the reason it bothers me is that I have a hum in my brain that will not go away. I think it was caused by stopping Lexapro suddenly, because even though I’m back on it now, the sound has not gone away. It is similar to the Emergency Broadcast System that used to play on TV during flood warnings (ahem), a minor second that drones 24/7 and demands my attention above all else. It’s hard for me to pay attention at the best of times because I have the ADHD/Autism combo meal. This is just shitty icing on a burnt cake.

I suppose the one thing that doesn’t bother me anymore is having to prove that something is wrong with me. I am settling into the life of a disabled person, learning to contribute to society through being a voice for other disabled people right here on this web site. My voice counts because as people read about me, they identify with my struggles. Or, if they cannot identify, they at least learn to have empathy.

It bothers me that most disabled people are written off as living off the government, when most of us would do absolutely anything to return to normal life. My life is anything but normal. I spend most of my time by myself. It’s isolating and lonely not to have a place to go each day, which is why I’m so grateful to have a group of other disabled people to meet with twice a week (once on Zoom, once in person).

However, at least with an aquarium membership, I have a place to go whenever I want that will feed me. I remind myself of the character Sam from “Atypical.” He goes to the aquarium to feed his love of penguins. Perhaps I will also find an animal that will be my special interest. I do love puffer fish……….

It helps to be bothered less by my living situation now that I’ve figured out a plan- Rockville is on the Red Line, with easy access to the National Zoo. It’s the place I love to write the most when it’s not hot, so until I move I want to try and find a place to write at the aquarium. All I require is a bench, because I carry a tablet and a keyboard in my backpack at all times. After I move, it will be back to finding a “replacement Kevin.”

Some of you may remember that Kevin is a giraffe. I used to sit next to him and write blog entries, having no idea what the giraffe’s actual name might be. I just named him Kevin for my own amusement. Then, one day I went to find Kevin and found out the Zoo had closed the entire giraffe exhibit. Kevin had moved.

Kevin is probably the reason I felt the most comfortable moving to Baltimore in the first place. I needed out of the DC area just to catch my breath, and it felt like he was the last tie to that area. But now I would say that my breath has been caught, and I miss DC more than I thought I would. Now that I have settled on a place, I feel at peace. My time in Baltimore will be much easier to survive knowing it won’t last forever.

It might even make my apartment less bothersome, but I doubt it. I’ve been without a dishwasher for what seems like a lifetime because the water pressure is so low it makes washing dishes incredibly taxing. I have submitted requests for everything that is wrong with my apartment and no one has come by. The last straw for me was finding a mouse eating my bread and hot dog buns.

I am paying too much for this apartment to have problems like this, especially those that go unaddressed. I am bothered that I cannot seem to be “the heavy” and get the repairmen out here on my own. I just hate letting people in that I don’t know, so I work around the problems on my own. I know I need help, but I have trouble helping myself. My dad and my sister advocate for me as much as they can, but it’s hard when they live so far away.

However, my sister is a lobbyist, so that’s another reason why Rockville is a better choice for me than Baltimore. When she’s in her DC office, I’d like to be closer than I am now. We have too much fun together to make her come all this way. However, I know that I have introduced her to a place she loves as well. Again, Baltimore is not really the problem. The Inner Harbor is gorgeous, as is Fell’s Point. It’s getting around Baltimore that’s the hard part. When she comes to visit, she rents a car and all of my problems disappear. I don’t drive, so it’s nice that she’s willing to drive me around.

The most fun I’ve had in Baltimore is when she’s come to visit, because she looks up restaurants and decides where we’re going to go in advance. It becomes a “staycation” for me because it’s always a place I haven’t heard of yet. Of the two of us, she’s the social butterfly. I wish I was more like her, because she’s so headstrong that I feel taken care of in her presence. I wish I could extend that feeling to others.

It bothers me that I’m her older sister and I’m not able to provide that feeling of safety to her. I am sure I had my moments when we were young and this is just payback, but still. I wish that I was large and in charge, but I have a struggling relationship with taking care of myself, much less others.

Which brings us back around… it’s hard to point fingers at anything that bothers me more than my treatment of myself, so it’s time to get happier.

It starts with looking at fish.

Wisdom

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
What do you think gets better with age?
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I think that the only thing that gets better with age is wisdom. You have enough life experiences to react with more ease and grace than you did in your younger years because so much has happened to you that you know what deserves your time and what doesn’t. You have enough regrets to know not to commit the same mistakes, as well as enough victories to know what works.

You become better at regulating your own emotions, and controlling your own behavior. You realize that every problem begins and ends with you. You have no need to count on others to provide the answers, because you realize that they are only speaking from their experiences when they provide advice, which cannot line up to your own. It isn’t that you stop taking advice (necessarily), it just looks different because you have a better sense of what will fit you and what won’t.

I have recognized that these are the things I need to work on in my own life, this continuing to learn emotional regulation and impulse control. I lost the great love of my life over it, because I was so angry that she lied I could not function. As a result, it made me so depressed I needed counseling and still struggle with those demons. The thing that makes me feel better about the whole situation is that I am not the great love of hers, so we will drift apart naturally over time as I forgive myself and move on.

The thing is, though, I am being dragged kicking and screaming toward my own redemption. Getting better with age feels so far away because this relationship did not express any wisdom in controlling impulses or emotional regulation. I popped off. Full stop. That comes with my brand of neurodivergence, but it doesn’t mean that I am not accountable for my actions. I am filled with sentences like, “if I could go back, these are the things I would change.” But they are useless and would fall on deaf ears.

I sit like an old wizard twisting his beard, alone in my castle.

What I can do is provide comfort to myself- that I haven’t met all the people I’m going to love in my life, nor have I met all the people who are going to love me. I can only work on myself and try to become the idealist my personality profile says I am. I am tripped up by my own mental illness, and that comes with its own set of problems. They require addressing, because I am tired of not being included in the safety net of a local friend group and it’s my health that stops me from getting out and making one.

I have become too introverted with age, refusing to leave my house in favor of communicating through writing. Though there is nothing wrong with that in moderation, the pendulum has swung too far. Letters are not enough, but it’s amazing how much they’ve provided over the years. I have more friends in other places than I do in Baltimore and DC, and keep in touch with them daily thanks to the Internet. But something is missing without contact comfort, and I’m tired of pretending that I don’t need handshakes, hugs, and face time.

I suppose that also had to come with age, because I had to go on this journey to figure it out.

I have spent the last 12 years touch-starved and lonely because I was more interested in learning about my pen pal than reaching out to people in my area. I gave her too much power, another morsel of wisdom that has only come with age. I am not sorry that I fell in love with her writing, because she’s damn good at it. But I’m sorry that it isolated me to the point where I didn’t want relationships with other people. I just hung on two words:

Someday, perhaps…..

I still hang on those words occasionally because none of this feels real. Nothing feels final because it never has. We will always have a reader/writer connection because even when she’s not in touch with me, she’s still reading here. I can only hope that I will write something that will resonate with her, because she sees that I am learning and growing in wisdom. That may be a pipe dream, but I’m allowed to have them.

Wisdom is telling me to have a wait and see attitude, because every time I think that my connection to her is shallow, she surprises me with depth. She has always surprised me with depth, because I will get two or three words from her for months on end, feeling rejected and small until the Mama Wolverine claws come out of nowhere and slash my problems from me. If nothing else, I will miss that about her in the future.

Getting better with age is allowing myself to be my own Mama Wolverine, slashing problems away on my own. I think that has been the point all these years, learning to stand up for myself. I didn’t so much fall in love with a pen pal as I fell in love with the person I was when I was writing to her. Even she says that meeting her in person couldn’t live up to my imagination, which made me blush because she knows my imagination better than I do and I think was trying to poke a little fun.

Eventually, what I hope gets better with age is letting go of her as the voice in my head to which I compare my own.

Spanish and Sundry

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
What are you most excited about for the future?
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I have finally reached a section of Duolingo that has vocabulary I haven’t studied and I’m on my own. It makes me excited for the future because I can’t skate by on 30 year old lessons in school. I am actually using the software to prepare me for trips to Mexico in the future- none of which are planned, by the way, but I have a better shot of going to Mexico than anywhere else. Granted, when I get there I will mostly be asking them why they don’t wear the green t-shirts and where the bank might be, but it’s a start. 😉

Kidding, but not by much. I remember the first time I went to Mexico on a mission trip. My Spanish was equal to that of a Mexican toddler, but the people were so kind and corrected me with such love that it lit a fire in me to learn more. I learned that Sylvia and Hector were getting married, that Marta was building a new house, and that little kids don’t listen to me no matter what language I speak (I was on a trip to teach vacation Bible school). It was my turn to listen because I picked up more just soaking up conversation than I would have trying to talk. For instance, those are the real names of the people I met, stuck in my brain even though it is now over 30 years since the last time I went to Reynosa. There is just no substitution for immersion, so it’s time to start finding telenovelas on Pluto TV, or watching the news on Telemundo/Univision.

I had friend recommend “La Reina del Sur,” but I have already watched “Queen of the South” on Netflix. It would be a good brush-up to have a show with which I’m already familiar, but there are others I haven’t seen that might be better after I finish it. For instance, I have not seen the original “Yo Soy Betty, la Fea.” That’s “Ugly Betty” for you American viewers. I have found it on Peacock and Apple TV+ according to reddit, so I will be searching it out after I finish this blog entry.

Because I have an auditory processing disorder (comes free with neurodivergence), I like to have the subtitles on as I listen. People don’t have subtitles, but I need the extra help while I am learning.

There is a point to all of this. Many of the homeless people I have encountered, as well as the workers in my neighborhood, speak Spanish and their English is poor. Instead of making them learn English, I want to turn the view of Americans on its head. I’m perfectly willing to put myself out there, mostly because if I get a job in the future, I want to work at Home Depot.

That’s another thing I’m looking forward to in the future- discussing jobs I could do with my care team so that I am not reliant on SSI/SSDI unless I really want to be. I am eligible for both because I was diagnosed with cerebral palsy when I was 18 mos old. I don’t regret the choices I’ve made in my life with my career, but it would have been nice to know that I could have gotten disability from the jump. The reason I didn’t know is that my mother hid all the paperwork I needed to file and my sister found them among her personal effects after she died, well into my late 30s.

My mental health is not helping the situation, so I am looking forward to working all of this out. I either have a journey into the workforce or a journey into the court system in which I’ll have to fight for my right not to party.

But there are things I can do on my own to further my education, and a second language has filled the hole in my heart at not being able to work in the immediate future. Right now, my job is to attend classes at Cognitive Behavioral Health and learn all I can when I’m not there.

I actually started with Finnish, but after a 43 day streak, I was hospitalized for my mental health. After I got out of the hospital, it had been just long enough since I’d studied that I don’t remember much. It seems like I forgot Finnish in “kaksitoista sekuntia,” or 12 seconds.

Duolingo is also not the best learning tool for Finnish, because it does not have the AI features that Swedish and Spanish do. Everything is done with the keyboard and reading, so you don’t get to practice by speaking out loud. The reason Swedish is important is that the cooking school I would like to attend next year is in a Swedish-speaking region of Finland, Vaasa. The school is called Vamia, and it was recommended to me by a YouTuber named Cyril:

At this point, I do not know if this school is right for me because the tuition is free, but living in Europe is not. I am saving my pennies and riding out the lease I have in the United States until November, and then I’ll decide what to do. I know I would like to go to Vaasa before I decide to move there, but even that is a stretch on my budget. I just have to hope that I will get more subscribers to both my Medium and WordPress blog, because every subscriber here adds to my ad revenue, and every reader on Medium adds to the income I get the longer you scroll through my drivel. 😉

Culinary school would accomplish two things. The first is that I would like to work with Finnish YouTubers like Cyril to create a channel with Finnish content. I think I would be hilariously cranky like Anthony Bourdain, because that is my kitchen personality. The second is that I want to start a ministry for unhoused people that revolves around the kitchen, and I would be better equipped to do that having been trained as a chef and not merely the line cook I am now.

Traditional advice is to work in a kitchen before you go to culinary school to make sure you like it. I have 10 years under my belt, from dish to pantry to sauté. I have worked every station and though I cannot say I am excellent at any of them, I know I will get better by hanging in at school. Plus, there are plenty of jobs I could do without learning Finnish until I’m ready, because most Finns speak English, especially in the hospitality industry. Vamia also instructs in English, with (I’m guessing) the requisite amount of French required.

In the meantime, I am looking forward to all the nonprofit ideas I have coming to fruition. I have to have a Plan B in case going to school in Europe is not feasible… and it’s probably not, to be perfectly honest. I want to go more than anything, but again, it’s going to take a lot of money I don’t have yet. But that’s the thing about dreams. When other people know you want something, they are willing to help. For instance, my readers showing up every day. Each little bit helps.

If I stay in the Baltimore area, my idea is to create a nonprofit called “The Sinners’ Table.” It centers around accepting all the people that society rejects, giving them a fine dining experience they could never afford on their own. I am doing the hard work of identifying stakeholders and writing a business plan, because that is something I can do in my spare time while I am waiting to see what is going to happen with my job and school aspirations. If other people have to run it because I am not eligible for a job, I will be able to volunteer.

But why Finland in the meantime?

I would only have to worry about my living expenses and not the fabulously high cost of tuition. Any Le Cordon Bleu institution in the United States would bankrupt me quickly, while I can find housing for the rough cost of living in DC or Baltimore. Some things would be more expensive, like clothing (I’m not skimping out on cold weather gear), but an apartment is roughly the same. The biggest cost to my family would be me being so far away that it’s hard to visit. However, culinary school does not last that long. If I like Finland so much that I want to stay and get permanent residency or citizenship, that’s a bridge I’ll cross when I come to it. I don’t get to see my family that much as it stands now, because they’re all in Texas…. far away from the current flooding, I might add.

My biggest problem is that I am an idealist who doesn’t necessarily know how to break down large ideas into small steps for execution. I generally work best in a team for that, and I’m lucky to have one under me now. I have gathered the best and the brightest at Lanagan Media Group, most of whom went to high school with me at High School for Performing and Visual Arts. Instead of using AI, I get immediate feedback from an arts brain trust.

Because make no mistake, cooking is art in any language.

And in the United States, the language in the kitchen is overwhelmingly Spanish. I want to be able to speak to my employees in whatever language they feel the most comfortable. Therefore, Finnish can wait.

But not for long.

The Aada-See

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
What could you let go of, for the sake of harmony?
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The Homerian epic that has been my relationship with Aada needs to go for my own peace of mind. We have hurt each other over and over, trying to change… neither one of us has done well in that area. So now, it’s a blessing and releasing. I have asked God before to go with her where I can’t, and I repeat that prayer today. If I cannot be the friend that she needs, then I don’t want to be her friend at all.

It’s not that I don’t have hope of a redemption story, it’s that you can only have a redemption story if both parties are interested. She says that I have a need to manipulate both her and our relationship, without taking into account all the ways she’s manipulated me over the years. That’s for her and her therapist to work out, because her therapist will never meet me. She will never take in the drastic changes in my own personality as Aada’s edicts came down from on high.

The biggest is that I’d never had to keep a secret from my wife before, and that caused way more problems than it was worth. I suppose that I’m grateful I got to see Dana become violent so I knew she was capable of it before I spent any more time with her, but it all started with Aada saying “don’t talk to anyone.” The problem is that she made it where I couldn’t talk to her, either. I sat alone in my room with the weight of the world bearing on my stomach.

However, that was not our only problem.

She doesn’t realize just how much her lie cost me, and she never will. That’s because she didn’t come with me to a book talk with my favorite author. I couldn’t glance back at her and see her eyes when the question was asked, “so are you looking for a job now?” She couldn’t see the torrent of emotions running underneath my skin, but she could have if she’d been able to see my face. I was too nervous to say yes without her approval.

Through it all, I’ve charted our friendship on this web site, and I think it has helped me to see some perspective. I do not like it when Aada gets main character syndrome and fails to take in what I am actually saying. She skips over my pain and concentrates on her own. That has to stop, for both our sake. I am writing in hopes that she’ll listen to me. She is reading to look for attacks that aren’t there. She reams me out and I cry…. lather, rinse, repeat. It has been going on for 12 years now, and for the life of me I don’t know why I’ve hung in.

I guess you would just have to know how beautiful she is in spite of all her flaws and failures to know why she has been my Achilles heel.

But for the sake of harmony, I cannot hang in anymore.

She will continue to read everything I write, calling it toxic. The only way to stop that is to write about other things… I have to find a new muse, something that fills me with the passion to write. It shouldn’t be a person, because it puts too much on one relationship. I need to find nature, or God, or something.

The only thing left is to thank her for being the inspiration behind my writing thus far, and forgive her for all her missteps.

It’s so much easier than forgiving myself for mine.

Dreaming

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I know that because I betrayed Aada, she will never trust me again. That’s because she will not give me a chance to rebuild. The thought is devastating, and runs on repeat in my head. All of my thoughts of her are now intrusive, because there’s nothing I can or should do. I just need to leave well enough alone.

Unfortunately, that is not my personality.

I want to fix everything. Surely, there’s something I can do, something I can say that will make things right. I don’t do well with relationships ending, because I don’t think they ever do. As long as we’re both breathing, there’s still a connection. It is manhole cover in size, and I cannot manage to shut it down.

My energy goes through that chord even when we’re not talking, because I know that she can use all the prayers she can get, even though she wouldn’t call it that. She doesn’t “do” prayers. She used to call me her “pinch hitter,” and I hope that at the very least, she’ll think of me that way now. I know I have done wrong, but I do not want that to be my only narrative.

I don’t want to provoke her, as she says my blog entries are designed to do. I want to tell my other readers that this relationship has left me in a million little pieces. I have felt every feeling for her that a human can express, from deep love to deep anger. My anger got the best of me quite a few times over the years… and so has hers. Through it, we’ve managed to forgive over and over.

Therefore, even though Aada says that her decision is final, it does not feel real. It won’t for a very long time, because I will need to turn away from writing to her. I will need to turn away from writing about her. I will need to stop making her my first thought in the morning and my last thought at night. I will need to find other people to make those touchstones, and it is frightening.

I do not like moving on from someone I’ve loved this much over the years, one who agreed to be my yellow string on the murder board of polyamory (red strings are romantic, yellow strings are emotional support- making that very clear). Cutting a string is tantamount to cutting off a limb for me, because I feel emotions down to my neurons. Pain tears through me when I think that the other end of the string is an empty slot.

The truth is that she made friends with a blogger, not knowing what that meant. I made friends with someone in government, not knowing what that meant, either. We should have worked closely together, or she should have told me I couldn’t have a blog. Either would have been acceptable, as her career came first.

I don’t know how I lost sight of that fact, but I did. I didn’t say to myself, “self, you’re running in a different league now. Cut the shit.” Because all my writing is shit to me. I throw it out there and let other people tell me whether it’s good or not. It’s not my decision as to what has value.

Aada found tremendous value in my words at first, and then as our relationship became more enmeshed, the more she hated being a featured player. I am sure that I have done my part in embarrassing the hell out of her, but I hope I explained my writing to her behind the scenes well enough that she won’t hate it all in the future.

That’s dreaming, I’m sure.

I wish that I could stop crying, that the grief would lift long enough for me to get out and start making other friends. But so far, I’ve just stayed in my own little bubble. I need time and space to emote. Because I’m autistic, my emotions are large and need room to breathe. I need time alone for red mist rage at myself, because I did not get the future that I wanted.

I sabotaged it, and I will never know why. Perhaps I was tired of keeping secrets all the time, that it made my life too small. Perhaps I was tired of all the isolation, because Aada would not let me get closer to her. She kept me at arm’s length and let me sit in my discomfort at not knowing who she really was. I mean, I do know her writing voice and could pick it out of a lineup. I have memorized her face, but only in one photo.

I have dreamed many times of making her laugh, have sent her videos and pictures of myself so she could get to know me “in person.” I wanted to make the transition from online to offline as easy as possible. But I think that wanting to meet in person was just too intimidating. I cannot help but believe that when I asked her about it, she got nervous and started fighting with me just to end our relationship before it could happen.

I can see how meeting me would be intimidating given all that I’ve written, but I am strikingly different in conversation. I am disconnected from my writing and do not retain blog entries. Our relationship would have been without context. All of the love that I poured into my writing may or may not have been there after a coffee together, because who knows if we would have gotten along as well without the anonymous wall that the Internet presents?

I think about that all the time… that normalization of our friendship would have cut her out of my blog almost immediately. Why would I need to write about her? I just saw her yesterday! Etc.

I dream about what I would do if Aada came back to me and said that what I did was horrible and I have a ladder to climb if I really want to make things better. My answer is “anything. I’d do anything.” It is not up to me to decide how hurt she is, nor how many steps I’d have to climb. And right now, it’s just a dream.

I am preparing for the worst, that I’ll never see her again, and my heart is bleeding out. Hope slowly drains from me as I fumble around on this web site, trying to explain how a virtual relationship got me so twisted up that I cannot breathe. I am lucky that I have other people in my life who have gone through the same thing, that 10 years later it still hurts to think of an Internet friend who is no longer.

I remember saying that I thought she was scared, that frankly, she didn’t know what would happen if we were alone in a room together. Would our easy give and take transfer to conversation, or would we tear each other apart? She did not answer.

She did not answer a lot of my questions, preferring to hold her emotions close to the vest. I am attracted to that, because my emotions spill all over everywhere and I constantly tell myself that I need to learn compartmentalization. In all my friends and romantic partners, there’s been that disconnect in which I constantly crave their emotions when they are unable to show them.

I think that Aada was attracted to me energy-wise for the opposite reason. She saw her inability to emote and wanted to be more like me. That I was a breath of fresh air when she was stuck in the doldrums. But over time, that led to too many fights because I required her to do emotional labor.

I extol my love for Aada all over the place, but I wasn’t always happy with her. No relationship can claim that it’s always happy if it’s in any way dynamic.

Our dynamic was to have a very close moment and then separate, because Aada could not sustain it. Our dance of intimacy required separation after difficult conversations. I did not like it, because I couldn’t understand why closeness couldn’t stay in place. Now that I know more about her, I know that it wasn’t personal. It’s what she requires, and I fell down on the job.

I want to give her what she requires, and right now that is separation. It is not good for me, but her needs must come first. I am the one that hurt her this time, and it doesn’t matter what I think anymore.

I look in the mirror, and I am shattered.

Into a million little pieces that will eventually rearrange into a different order, with or without her.

A Letter That May Never Be Read

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Dear Aada,

In trying to talk about my own feelings, I exposed the world to my perceptions of what yours might be. It was wrong, and I’m sorry. I wish I could tell you why I did it, but there is no answer to that, just like there is no answer to the reason why you lied to me. What I do know for sure is that I did not set out to hurt you, that you were collateral damage in trying to explain my journey to everyone else.

I am sorry, like you said, “a million times over.”

I have no excuse for my behavior because there isn’t one. I fucked up. I also accept that you have no interest in working toward a future, and that’s what scares me the most. I don’t know who I am without you. I think, though, that I am going to find out.

This phase of my life has been rewarding, but also tremendously lonely and isolating. Your insistence that I tell no one anything at any time was also manipulative, because it marked all my other friends as unsafe. I sat with unbelievable anxiety in the pit of my stomach while I waited for letters from you, not reaching out to anyone else because I couldn’t. If anyone asked me what was wrong, I would not be able to tell them. I got to where I wouldn’t leave the house. My mental illness spiraled out of control. I didn’t get any relief until you said I could write about what I wanted.

I took your words seriously, that there’s nothing I could say that would hurt you now that your life is different. Then, come to find out, that wasn’t true at all. We could have avoided a lot of missteps in my publishing life if you had been clearer. I thought that for the first time, our lives were equally boring.

But they’re not.

If I had known then what I know now, I wouldn’t have published anything about our relationship at all, and yet it is the richest tapestry on this web site. I hope that one day your anger will lift, and you will go back a few years. I think you will be surprised at how much I’ve learned. That seems to be the way, anyway. My friends read about themselves and are incensed in the moment, and then when time has passed, my words just hit different.

I was never trying to manipulate you. I was trying to illustrate you- to paint you with words. I have often ripped you off blind, using things you’ve said so that you know I’m paying attention.

One of the most profound things you’ve ever said to me is that I “paint my feelings as fact.” I am still not sure what that means, but it’s such a beautiful line that I repeat it. I guess I just have never met a writer who didn’t paint their feelings as fact, because it’s their story.

It’s a line that I wish had led to an in-person conversation, because I would have liked to look into your eyes as you explained what you meant. I would have liked to look into your eyes as you explained lots of things. But knowing me, I would have worn a baseball cap to hide mine. I was social masked into eye contact at a young age. I could not hold your gaze long, but I would have tried.

I would have tried harder to be the friend that you needed me to be with more support from you, because guessing what was okay to publish and what wasn’t landed me in this mess. I do not blame you. I can only blame myself. But what I do know is that if we’d had any kind of production meeting, you’d be happier with the result.

I needed my editor.

I would burn this whole blog down to get her back, because that’s how much I believe in our ability to write together. You write fiction, I write nonfiction. I’ve had so many ideas over the years as to how we could harness this and make it profitable. Maybe I’d be a better editor for you because I wouldn’t catch plot holes, but I’d definitely catch spelling/grammar mistakes.

It’s just another dream that died, because we’re not on the same page.

I wish I could stop being so sad. My life feels over. I keep thinking about the conversations we had before I was admitted to Sinai and wondering how it all went to hell. I do know that when I was in the hospital, you were with me in spirit. You sat at the foot of my bed while I slept, watching to make sure I got healthy. There were too many signs of you to ignore.

How did you get that green shirt to me? How did it get back to you?

You are always the best.

We could start writing there… it’s a story that needs to be told in fiction for both of us, doesn’t it?

You are always the best.

You told me 12 years ago that you’d have lots of juicy bits for my first novel, and I still don’t know how to write fiction. I don’t visualize anything. My brain doesn’t come with that feature. You can see the whole map at once. I have a feeling that’s a large part of our story without saying anything. That you saw the whole map while I fumbled in the dark.

I’m still trying to find my way without a lantern.

That’s because I want to stay in my lane, writing what I know while you build the fictional worlds. I’d be a good research assistant and Dagger’s not hiring….

I wish I’d known how much you thought of me, wanted to impress me, wanted to be my friend as much as I wanted to be yours. I know all of that can’t possibly still be true, but I’m flattered nonetheless.

I wasn’t the one that said you were a nobody. To me, you’re the greatest thing since sliced bread. I was trying to send you a message, and you thought I was being literal, launching an assault with words.

I thought you would know by now how I feel about you after years and years of telling you EVERY DAY how much I feel for you. I’m not sure a day has gone by in 12 years that I haven’t written to you, my blog coming in second because if I was responding to you, my other readers just didn’t matter.

I believe that part of you is proud to be Aada, because when I write about other subjects my emotions don’t run as deep or as real. Part of you, I’m sure, would like me to push the big red button and move on to something else. But how are you going to feel when I do?

You said that you learn more about yourself when you’re reading me, and that comment sticks in my mind as well. It’s what I wish every reader took away. That they read me to learn more about them.

Stay away for as long as you need, because the thing about letters is that they keep. The thing about blog entries is that they keep. You have a treasure trove here that you may not want to lose. I have not always behaved badly. Neither have you. We have grown and learned much just by being so incredibly different.

You are logic. I am emotion. We are built to be complementary angles, but we flounder by dividing up all the labor. Sometimes, I must be more logical. Sometimes, you must be more emotional. But that’s only if there’s a relationship to fix. I don’t think there is right now, I’m just going off past history. Eventually, you’ll want to know what I’m up to and you’ll drop a note out of nowhere, and I will be prepared. I know you well enough to know that you’re thinking, “that’s impossible.” But life is long, and we haven’t managed to stay away from each other yet.

I really would sit down with you and your therapist if the opportunity presented itself, because I do not want to be a manipulative force in your life. I have told you for years that I came to DC to do great things, and in no world do I want you to be excluded from them.

I would also sit down with your husband and answer any question he threw at me, and in my imagination, the first is, “what in the absolute hell is wrong with you?” I would probably cry and say that many doctors have tried to figure that out, but they’re still scratching their heads. Join the club.

If this is really the end, I hope he’s the one for you. I hope your family, friends, and colleagues are there to fill the hole that I left in your heart. I’m only now realizing that I made one, because our relationship was so turbulent that I didn’t take in your feelings, not a quarter of them.

I have cried so many nights, wanting to please you and not knowing that I already did. That I am enough, all by myself. I’m sorry for every moment that you did not feel like enough, all by yourself… and that is what was so surprising about your lie. That you didn’t believe I was sufficiently impressed with you, as you are.

My God, Aada… if you only knew.

When my mother died, the only person I wanted was you. I couldn’t emote in front of people, but I could write letters into the night. I would not have recovered without it. So know that even if we never speak again, I will always remember your contributions to making me feel like there is life after the death of a loved one.

My life won’t be as interesting without you, but I have to be prepared for the fact that your anger will stay in place. That what I have done is too big to forget or forgive.

All I can say is that the emotions you said I had weren’t accurate in the slightest. You read me wrong, just like I read you wrong.

My point for the last year has been that we need to stop reading each other, because there are so many ways we could communicate our feelings. I have heard you talk in a voice note, but you have never picked up the phone. I have never seen your body language, micro aggressions, facial expressions, anything to indicate what is going on with you except words in the heat of the moment.

Surely there is a part of you that wishes you knew those things about me… that we hadn’t put it off so long. I hate that I know your coffee order and have never actually gotten to bring you one. I hate that we have never taken a walk. I hate that I only know you in black and white, because I know that there’s a well of information I’m missing and so are you.

We could fix this if we tried, but I cannot hope for that. I can only hope that I can recover on my own. But know that it is a setback of enormous proportions. I will have to work hard to forgive myself for everything I have done and left undone.

Because you are always the best.

Love,

Leslie

Structure of My Own Making

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
What are your daily habits?
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When I wrote about this prompt last year, I remember saying that I didn’t have any daily habits. That was 100% true at the time, but now I’m charged with creating a structure with which I can live. My care team at Cognitive Behavioral Health does not think I am ready for a job yet, so I am muddling through what that actually means. Am I disabled for good and should start pursuing government assistance, or am I capable of slowly creating my own recovery into the workforce? My writing does provide a little bit of income, and as I get more popular here and on Medium, I see results. I’ve been a blogger for a very long time, but so far I’ve only had one fan who was so impressed she thought I should be world famous. I would like a few more of those. 😉 But nothing good will happen if I do not take care of myself.

This starts with setting medication reminders in my phone. My day flags if I do not have the correct doses at the right time. I have always been good about taking my medication because I had a doctor tell me that most bipolar patients stop taking their medication when they feel better, not realizing that it’s the medication that’s making them feel that way. However, I was not so on top of it that I remembered to take it at the same time. I’m also on a lot more medication than I used to be……………

I’ll talk about my psychiatric drugs because I think that people need to learn about them. I am not a doctor, just a waiting room that doesn’t suck (thanks, Paul Gilmartin. I stole that line from you). Crazy meds need to be talked about because it’s such a major undertaking to be put on them:

  • Lamictal (lamotrigine)
    • The first time I was put on this mood stabilizer was the first time I knew what it was like to live without depression. It took about six weeks for the fog to lift, but I’d never been more grateful in my life. The only side effect I’ve experienced so far is nausea, and it was very hard to deal with for a long time. Now, I’ve just decided to stay on it regardless of the side effects because other mood stabilizers make my weight balloon. It’s also an old drug now, so it’s relatively cheap if you don’t have insurance.
  • Lexapro (escitalopram)
    • This is the gold standard of SSRIs, and most bipolar people don’t take them. That’s why I think my diagnosis may be wrong, that I actually have autism and not bipolar disorder. In a bipolar patient, SSRIs tend to make them flip out with suicidal ideation, negative/intrusive thoughts, etc. My SSRI keeps me at an even keel when I am really paying attention to my body. As for side effects, I haven’t noticed any of them.
  • Buspar (buspirone)
    • This is what replaced my benzos for anxiety, because it is not related to them and yet performs the same function. It’s better for me because there’s no risk of addiction long term. I do not have an addictive personality, but better safe than sorry. I have been on Klonopin for over 10 years, but my new clinic doesn’t prescribe benzos to anyone. The entire hospital system has put their feet down over it, so I have to adjust. Now that I’ve been on it for several weeks, I am unsure whether it works or not. I will keep you posted. The one thing I do know is that it’s the most important drug for me to take at the same time every day, because it will flat stop working if I miss even one dose.

My crazy meds aren’t the only ones I take, they’re just the most important for keeping my structure stable. It feels like everything is hitting all at once as I age, because I didn’t have to worry about hormone replacement therapy even a year ago.

As an aside, it’s a big joke with my sister that because I’m enby, I thought that if I was going to do hormone replacement therapy, it would be in the other direction…. after that particular doctor’s appointment, I went home and consoled myself by buying both the book and audiobook of “Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe.” I needed some Stress Tabs #10 and some candy bars (but maybe not 11). As it turns out, the book and audio were not enough. I also watched the movie on Prime just to see Kathy Bates… “how do you accidentally run into someone…. how do you accidentally run into someone six times?” I get it now. I’m older and I have more insurance.

My medication is working, and for that I am grateful. Now, my schedule runs from sun up to sun down, skipping the night owl routine altogether. And in fact, when I took my sleeping medication yesterday, the sun wasn’t even fully down yet. I prefer to work in the quiet of the morning, especially on the weekends before the kids in my apartment complex wake. The ones who live above me are particularly loud, which is why I’m glad I have good headphones. I hunker down in my office after a night of wild dreams and try to remember what they are. It provides a writing exercise that’s all my own, propelling me into really thinking about my life and what I want to accomplish. I accomplish nothing without coffee, through which all things are possible.

Coffee is also part of remembering to take my medication, because I have found that a lot of caffeine is just enough to control my ADHD, but Ritalin or Adderrall is too big a jump. I have a coffee machine that makes a cup at a time, and my preferred coffee is Cafe Bustelo. It’s in honor of my old chef, John Kinkaid, because we used to walk to a Cuban restaurant between prep and service for their Cafe Bustelo lattes.

I mentioned in “Why It All Still Hurts” that I was working on a nonprofit, and I am… but that dream has been deferred. Kinkaid was killed in a car accident. I am still reeling from the grief, but I got Kindle Unlimited and added five books on starting a nonprofit to my library. Again, the idea is dinner with dignity, offering the unhoused food they could never afford on their own, and opening my kitchen up to take homeless people on as apprentices if they’d like to learn the trade. I am still sold on this idea, it’s just going to take a lot longer to accomplish than I thought.

That’s because the longer I think about it, the more ideas I have. What if instead of this one nonprofit, we were able to build a library like Oodi in Baltimore? There, I could have my cooking classes and a place to serve food, plus books and maker tools for everyone. My structure these days is centered on how to spend the government’s money for the good of the people. Learning about Oodi and all the services they provide gave me a bigger goal than just “dinner with dignity.” It would give the unhoused a place to go. Maybe my purpose is not to go to Finland, but to bring Finnish ideas to a city that needs them. I want to redirect Maryland’s money from the DC metro area and Annapolis to Baltimore, because it is so underserved. A lot of the city is completely trashed out with no way to fix anything…. or so it seems from an outsider’s perspective that just moved here in December.

I need more time to watch and wait, gathering stakeholders and formatting a business plan. Perhaps my structure will always be internal, because that’s how autists work best. I do not want to go down in history as merely a blogger. I want to create something beautiful that will last and bring hope to people that might not be feeling it that day.

I find that working on giving hope to other people is the easiest way to claim hope for myself. I am slowly building a structure into which I can grow, taking others’ ideas and implementing them like a plant takes root in the soil.

But it all starts with remembering to take my medication.

How Do I Keep from Screaming?

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I have done it this time. I have successfully killed a relationship that I really wanted to last long after we did, because we’re both writers. I just want to scream into the void, hoping it swallows me up.

The one thing that keeps me going is Jesus, and I wish I was being funny. The resurrection is a wonderful metaphor for forgiving each other later in life and moving on… or what I will do to resurrect myself after this little death. Who knows which way it will go given our long history of death and resurrection already? I’m trying to stay away from her, she’s trying to stay away from me. It’s not going that well on either side because she still reads me. Maybe all we need is time to get over what has happened, and maybe it’s best if we move on. I think that depends on a lot of factors, but I know what I want. It’s her- it’s always been her. I just don’t think she’ll choose me, because I’ve let her down. I’ve hurt her and I know it, but I don’t know how to make it up to her. I can’t just write my way out of this one, but I can try…. resurrection happens in the middle of the mess.

If there is a second thing helping the resurrection along, it’s my blog, because at the very least the last 12 years will outlive me, a biography for those who lie and love their audience.

I am so sad that I want to get down on my knees and beg, and I’m not sure why. Our relationship has been turbulent from the beginning and I don’t know why I should want that. Mostly, it’s what I know and cannot turn away quickly… but that is dismissive of who Aada is as a person I want to work with to create something beautiful. Our relationship has been that at times, and we’ve both wanted to get back to it. I cannot know what our future holds, together or separately. I can just throw wishes up into the air and see if any of them stick.

I want our attachment to be secure and non-volatile. She seems to think that I manipulate her so it will never turn into that. She loves me enough to say goodbye over and over, but not enough to make sure it doesn’t happen in advance. I do not like the roller coaster. I like my dreams in which we’re just us, laughing over whatever… even if it’s at my expense. I think I would make her laugh. I accidentally do my own stunts. The fact that she’s now married doesn’t bother me in the slightest, because she’s so secure in that relationship and I’m so secure in the fact that she loves me the best way she knows how (when we’re getting along).

I was jealous of her then-boyfriend for about three minutes. Three minutes is all it took to realize two things. The first was that I loved her so much that I needed for her to be happy, no matter what that looked like. The second was that I needed her emotional support way more than I needed romance, and she was up for it. I didn’t want to be bitter and angry I didn’t get a diamond ring, I wanted to be overjoyed that this woman would have me in her life at all… and that’s been my theme over the years. Just be happy she loves you on her terms, because you cannot believe how deep that water runs.

I wanted her to be with me for all of my huge life events, and so far I cannot even get her to meet for lunch. We make great pen pals, but she will not show herself. It makes no sense to me because she literally lied about knowing my favorite author just to impress me, so if she was so impressed, why has she stayed away? If I think about that part of it too long, I actually do start screaming. She wanted to meet me because she was impressed with me, and then stayed away for over a decade.

WHY? WHY, GOD? WHY? I’M SERIOUS!

God doesn’t know, either.

I used to dream of taking her on a picnic so that we could drink wine in the sunshine, forgetting about all our problems. And yes, I am aware that she already has friends and family with whom to do such a thing. I never wanted any part in separating her from any of them… most particularly her now-husband.

Because I cannot hide behind anything I’ve ever written, I was hoping that he’d roast the everliving shit out of me on a daily basis (I am laughing very hard). I’ve never met Mr. Aada, but the reason I’d want to is to make sure he loves her the way she needs to be loved. How would I do that? By watching them together. I have no need to intrude because if Aada is happy, then so am I. I’ve had 12 years to get used to the idea that she’s not queer and not available. I have also had 12 years to intimately understand that my heart flipped the fuck out and it doesn’t matter. My feelings just stay steady, my heart walking out of my chest when I think of her………. I just let her set boundaries and abide by them.

When I read the Outlander series, I knew I wanted to be the Lord John Grey to her Jamie for the rest of my life.

She has not so quietly loved me like a house on fire in return, because she absolutely is my James Alexander Malcolm McKenzie Fraser. I can speak to her in ways that other people can’t because she’s glued to my writing. I draw her like a moth to a flame. She’s intimidated by me because she thinks that her writing isn’t as good as mine, when in reality I think that my writing pales in comparison to hers. She doesn’t often have time to write long letters, but when she does I memorize them. I wish everyone could read her long letters, or that she was also a blogger. I think you’d find that I’m the hack.

If you meet her, you’ll never forget.

If you love her, it will be a runaway train.

If you lose her, you’ll rue the day.

Which is why I’m just here, screaming into the void. I know on some level that this post is delusional, because I’ve done enough to push her away for the rest of our lives. But maybe it’s not. Maybe something will push us back together that neither one of us can see right now, because I have no idea what she’ll read and think, “that motherfucker…. let me get my purse.”

That is a direct quote from her regarding the last man that tried to hurt me. Now, I’m sure that I’m the one with the big purse headed towards me. I just wish there was something I could do to change the arc.

In short, this sucks.

I hate our situation and am desperate to improve it, but there’s nothing I can do. My heart hurts and the only solution for that is Ben & Jerry’s.

And time spent screaming into the void.

Butt Stuff

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
What’s the one luxury you can’t live without?
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Now that I’ve got your attention, I had to have an endoscopy and colonoscopy today. I was glad that I live alone when the prep set in (last night), which tasted like SweetTarts covered in salt. I made the best of it by saying that it was not terrible medicine, but some exotic Finnish candy I hadn’t tried yet. It sort of worked, but I know for sure that some salmiakki (salted licorice) is enough to turn my face inside out. Therefore, I was able to trick myself into thinking I liked it long enough to get it down.

And in fact the hardest part was not the prep and the absolute fecal Jackson Pollack that occurs afterwards. It’s that the doses are spaced out by six hours. The worst part is that you go through hell and then you have to keep going. The second dose is at 2300. By 0430, I felt that I had no liquid in my body at all, and I was unlucky enough to have a 1015 appointment. It was a long time to go without water, and I just had to roll with it.

My sister picked me up at 0930, where I stared at her coffee lovingly. We got through admissions quickly and went upstairs to the gastroenterology unit, where we were entertained by the front desk clerk. He said something about “the storal of the mory,” and I said I would be saying that from now on. He said he stole it from “Hee Haw.” This led to a discussion about Minnie Pearl and Roy Clark, and I laughed that he didn’t think either one of us were old enough to remember it.

I’m probably including details that are boring to most of you, but the nurse after the procedure was over said that I probably wouldn’t remember most of today after I slept. What I learned today is that the one luxury I don’t ever want to be without again is Boudreaux’s Butt Paste.

It’s the next day, and I think something may be both right and wrong. The first is that my body processed the anesthesia extraordinarily fast.

My sister and I were able to go out for dinner last night and have a great time without me even taking a nap. We got all kinds of seafood, appetizers, a cocktailDucks for her and a mocktail for me. We laughed at the “scam artists,” ducks who were going table to table in search of people to feed them. Our waiter, who looked a stunning amount like Nate Bargatze, slipped one a package of Saltines and I just knew that 15 more ducks were about to show up.

The thing that feels like it’s going wrong is that my guts are twisted up. I’m not sick, per se. I mean it literally feels like something has turned. I’m sure this is normal, but if it gets worse I will go back to the hospital. I am sure that they would rather me come and see them and it turn out to be nothing than for me to ignore something that’s actually a liability for both of us.

Today has been filled with shopping. I needed a few things for my apartment, and we both found a number of things to exclaim over at Five Below, because their character licenses make us both happy. I didn’t end up getting anything today, because I realized that I still had Spy Family toys to put together at home. I’ve had them for eons, but I seem to enjoy the idea of putting blocks together more than I enjoy the tactile sensation. My fine motor skills are not the best in the business…..

I am certain that a duck could put together Legos better than I could… some days, anyway.

I suppose the storal of this mory is now I know what I need to know for the next colonoscopy, or at the very least, how to support my friends. You need baby wipes and Boudreaux’s Butt Paste.

It’s a luxury you won’t want to live without.

I’m Still Figuring That Out

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
What are you good at?
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I treated myself to new-to-me running shoes today, because my old ones were bought in 2015. I do not know what happened to them, because they’re still perfectly comfortable. However, the rubber is starting to fall off and the tread feels like it has been dipped in chemicals so that they do not grip. Instead of being able to walk/run, I tend to slide around when I’m wearing them, particularly at the gym because everything is tiled. When I changed into them, I could tell an immediate difference because the floor at the store was polished concrete and I was able to jog in place without slipping.

I suppose that I am good at shopping, because a parishioner at one of our churches when I was a kid gave me a black belt in Goodwill. I have bought everything there, including important occasion outfits, just because I know my brands. That’s the secret to being really good at shopping, in my humble opinion. Even if I struck it rich, I would still rather have a $3-500 suit that’s been laundered a thousand times to make sure it’s soft than something brand new off the rack. My best find was in the early aughts, a full London Fog trench with liner for $24.

I also don’t mind not having the latest style of anything, because my clothes could best be described as the “Visiting Professor’s Collection” at Macy’s. Anything I buy is going to look timeless, because my shirts tend to come in three colors:

  • White
  • Blue
  • White and Blue pinstripes

However, I also like a bit of whimsy. These shoes remind me of Warhol and Lichtenstein, so I think they’ll look perfect with jeans and a button down. I am going to calm down the orange laces a bit by changing to UpUGo elastic laces. They’re not quite as bright, and I don’t have to tie them. I’m certain they’re mostly for children, but I wear boys’ shoes, anyway. Plus, who doesn’t love shoes with a cute little button on top?

I suppose I am good at writing, although writing is like courage. In the moment, you’re just doing what it is you need to do to survive. You don’t realize until afterwards that you’ve been courageous. I do not think I am a good writer. I put things out into the world and other people tell me if I’m a good writer or not. My therapist said that I must know I’m a good writer…. I did not know what to say to that. I’m glad she thinks that, mostly, because she’s more learned than I am. I have learned that I do not want to be an egomaniac, I just want to have confidence. I know that’s what she was talking about, but even telling people I think I’m a good writer sounds arrogant to me, so I don’t.

I do think that I could do a good job handling communications for modern executives, though, because most people do not know how to write introductory e-mails for basic correspondence. I was actually talking to my sister about this the other day, that the secretary she would have been given in the 1950’s would have handled the heavy lifting that AI is trying to do currently. First of all, it is unlikely that a woman would have had her job in the 1950s, but I definitely could have been the Peggy Olson to her Don Draper if given the chance.

I might be happy as a church employee of some kind, because that’s the type correspondence I can manage easily. I was reminded of this today when my sister asked my dad if he’d had a mobile phone in the early 1990s and I replied how I used to answer it. In the car, it was “Rev. Lanagan’s rolling office!” At home, it was “Lanagan summer home… summer home, summer not.” One of the parishioners had some alternatives to this which are really, really funny…. and also unprintable.

I have a good memory because they’re not really memories. An autist sees everything, everywhere, all at once as if no time has passed. This is both good and bad as I also have no friendship degradation mechanics. That’s a psychological term for calling up your best friend in third grade as if they’re still in the same place you are. If they are also neurodivergent, like as not, they are. If they are neurotypical, “Lucy, you got some ‘splainin’ to do.”

I am not good at reading a room, and that has served me well in some cases. Please believe that I have crashed and burned in others, but sometimes not reading a room correctly takes away the fear one feels in an unfamiliar situation and allows me to talk to people I never would have otherwise. For instance, I wasn’t approaching Jonna Mendez, chief of disguise and better than a mere mortal. I was approaching an old friend of Aada’s. Now that I know Aada lied and there’s no connection between them, I fear Jonna like the goddess she is.

That’s probably not healthy, but it is what it is.

Realistically, I know that Jonna puts on her running shoes one foot at a time just like me. But in my head she has attained a mythical status. I got all my books signed when I went to see her, so I have no need to bug her again. It’s probably just embarrassment on my part and she wouldn’t think twice.

But in my head, what if it’s not?

What if I’ve embarrassed myself to the point where I’m no longer wanted? I’d rather just keep my memories sacred and walk away, because I’d rather not find out what happens next in this particular story. I have other friends that work in intelligence and can regale me with stories when we’re both old and, more importantly, “outside with a drink in our hands……………” as Jonna so eloquently put it at the book talk for “The Moscow Rules.”

Those are the friends to whom I’d like to be a research assistant on their books, because I like writing non-fiction. I am not a novelist, and doubt I ever will be. I’m not running away from writing fiction, I just don’t get it. For instance, I don’t visualize inside my head, so I don’t really know how to write setting. I’m a gardener, so I have problems with plot. Because I’m a blogger, I’m solid at character studies……………. sometimes.

I am sure that I could learn these things over time, but conventional wisdom is to write what you know. So far, what I know is the world around me. Washington reads like a novel whether you aim for fiction or not. The characters and plots are interesting in and of themselves, and you do not have to make them up. I will never know what my real story in Washington is, because a lot of it happened behind my back. This is not a bad thing, as I fell into a safety net of sorts. One I hated, but still. That whole time in my life would just be a book called “Heytch,” because the trap I fell into was wanting to love her the way she wanted to be loved.

For the record, I showed up at the hospital because two incredibly unlikely stories were presented to me and I was betting that at least one was true. It was the one where she and her husband were wild about each other, and I could just come and live with them as a member of the family. That she was not poly and never had been; that she made it up to entice me when she didn’t need it. I would have followed her into the ocean no matter what.

If you really know me, you know just how little dating means to me, and how much I love deep conversations over coffee that never lead to romance. I could picture us as little old ladies together, and that meant more to me than gold, especially with her big sister right there to kiss the top of my head as she walked by on the odd occasion we ran into each other. Maybe I will write that story, if only for me, because of course it’s fiction now.

Sometimes I wonder how much of fiction is really fiction, and how much of it is people writing down what they thought was happening to them that later turned out not to come to pass. Fiction equals nonfiction plus time, I suppose.

Lots of people will tell you that I had hallucinations, and it is up to you to decide whether I really did or not. It has to be fiction now because all of the evidence has been scrubbed, even by me. I wish I had taken many, many screenshots…. but I didn’t. It would have been nice to have the photo of Heytch’s hand bound to mine, her saying that she was my River Song, because even if it wasn’t real, it was beautiful.

I would have been excellent at telling fact from fiction in person, but everything was presented to me over the internet with the ominous phrase “you are always the best.” One version of the story took this literally, a woman laying her heart at my feet. The other talked about all the destruction I’d caused with my blog because I was too arrogant to see I was causing it. Both stories are true, because I have never pretended to be the best at anything and yet, these people are also entitled to their opinion. What I believe to be true is that no one in that bunch believes in second chances, and I could have explained a lot with one, but in person.

Adding more to our internet history was only adding fuel to an enormous fire with no opportunity to put it out.

I just thought “Heytch” was cute once upon a time. I would have cut off a limb to meet Aada. Both were unique experiences, but they were completely different. I’m also in a completely different emotional place regarding both of them, that I will continue to write what I want because they had no shame in absolutely submarining me. I will never feel credible in the way that I did before I was hospitalized, because when I talk about their internet shenanigans, they are written off as hallucinations that never happened…………. all the evidence is gone.

I’m not sure whether I should thank them or not, because I am good at being sober. I was never abusing any substance, but I wouldn’t have given them up if they hadn’t intervened. It’s not that I realized I was an addict, it’s that I got a better offer. I don’t know what that offer is yet, because I haven’t chased it. My cognitive behavioral health counselor says that I’m not ready for a job, and I believe him for now. We’ll be reevaluating that in the future, because I know that I am capable of a lot more than I’m doing right now, and in fact, capable of a lot more than most people when I can give up my habit of assuming everything.

It’s not possible to be an autist in a neurotypical world without assuming things because if you don’t, people will talk down to you as if you are stupid and just don’t get it. I have found that I needed to switch to a neurodivergent workflow, and that was the kitchen at first. It just cannot be now because everything is too heavy, too hot, and too sharp. I am done with the hit parade of injuries at every shift because I cannot move fast enough and my balance leaves a lot to be desired.

I’m not healed enough from my trip to the hospital not to dwell on it here, because it threw me for such a loop. Because it was over the internet, I can tell you that many things were told to me that simply were not true. That’s part of my not making assumptions gig. Just because I was told I was talking to someone over the internet doesn’t mean I actually was. For that, particularly to Dana, I am sorry. She got roped into this because she was there from the beginning, not because I had this burning need to reach out to her after 11.6 years.

I still think of her fondly and hope she is well, and wish I could take back the e-mail I sent her because she did not deserve it. If I could have words with these internet people, I definitely would. They know who they are, and they haven’t stopped reading. I assume that I am still always the best, both for evil and for awesome.

I’m quieter, though, and take up a lot less space in the world because I don’t want it. A writer is a person who wants you to hear all their stories without knowing you’ve actually read them. I will take these running shoes and use them to propel me further away from controversy because I’m done with it.

I got a better offer, but it remains to be seen whether it still stands. We shall find out, though, because I am always the best.

The Long and Winding Road of Words

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
What is the legacy you want to leave behind?
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The legacy I want to leave behind is obviously this record that I was alive. It is not valuable to everyone, all the time. That’s because I do not write what anyone wants to hear except me. If it was not a real record of what I was thinking, I would not have a character arc, the ups and downs of mental health in real time. I do not want to be an influencer, because that gets people killed. Their neediness for likes makes their self esteem rise and fall depending on how often people respond. I need people to come toward me rather than trying to attract you. One leads to a sustaining career as a working writer built on mutual respect. The other leads to jumping up and down for attention in hopes that someone will notice me, eventually giving up my real self for someone that more find palatable.

It’s important for women to have a voice, and as an enby, that’s part of my identity. The other part is trans man….. but I’m pretty sure I also identify as a train wreck. Sandi Toksvig brought it to my attention that women are not given equal airtime on Wikipedia, therefore they’re not given equal airtime in AI, either…. even though Microsoft Copilot’s begat is a matrilineal line (Ada Lovelace). I am trying to add to the diaspora and it does not matter to me whether history judges me as right or wrong. I need it to judge me as being marked “present.” I know that I was a C student, but lots of neurodivergent people are. It’s not that we’re not bright. It’s that we’re not all that clear on how school works and don’t care enough about authority to find out.

I am certain that if I’d played the game better, I would be in a different place now. One of the things that occurred to me when I was thinking about my writing is that my mother, Dana, and Ada all came from military families. Yet none of that military structure passed onto me. I didn’t just pick it up by osmosis, much to my detriment.

Let’s be clear. I already know I’m a mess. I’ve told life experiences that other people just aren’t brave enough to put to paper, but I am because I am full steam ahead. Write now, think later. Writing now and thinking later is what allows growth and change. I pore over the entries where I’m angry, then figure out why. I was so angry in “Doubt” that I spent money on a gym membership. I thought, “at least if I cannot flood my brain with good feelings through care and connection, I can do it through exercise.” I don’t think Aada is ever coming back because she reads my web site and decides what kind of person I am based upon it. She reads my letters the same way. Therefore, there is nothing to indicate that a hug or a handshake would make things better. It is incumbent upon me to move away from her, because she was gone many years ago. She just decided not to tell me.

If she hadn’t been, I might have been invited to get to know her and her family on a different level than our relationship sustained. I realize all of the ways I isolated her, but I would have isolated myself from her if she’d said “this is all our relationship will ever be. You will never meet me in person.” The longer we went without meeting and kahvi was a daydream, the weirder I felt about the state of affairs.

She’s a people pleaser and didn’t want to hurt me. I’m a people pleaser except when it comes to my blog. It’s the one place I have to call my own. Therefore, meeting me in person would have led to us both trying to please each other, and she would have gotten a much different version of me than she was used to seeing.

Aada was always inordinately funny, and that’s the person I wanted to meet. The hardass she displayed could kick rocks. I am sure that she would say that I was funny, and the blogger could kick rocks. But that’s the thing, right? People fall in love with you, or your writing. They rarely fall in love with both…. not that Aada was ever in love with me. The “in love” butterflies were my domain, but they were reigned in and settled into a comfortable nest; I didn’t give into them, I worked through them. That’s another legacy piece for me….. that I felt such incredible intensity for someone and realized how to walk it back into something viable and sustainable….. I think. I will never know if I did or I didn’t, trusting in my own intuition. Aada’s story will always be that I betrayed her.

She made up an egregious lie that is too detailed for me to ever believe that it was a lie, not really. Not when she accused me of having people’s lives in my own hands if I published something she wrote. This is where my mental health nose-dives, and where Michael steps in to remind me that Aada was the pathological liar, not me.

She’d been lying so long she didn’t even realize she was doing it, and I had to remind her that “the receipts go to fuckin’ CVS, Aada. We met in 2013, which by my count is not very recent.” She said she did it because that’s what I needed from her, as if I asked her to foster this ridiculous fabrication.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again- she could have worked at a car wash and I would have been no less impressed. I’ll be spending the actual 12th anniversary of when we met without her (I’m guessing), because Michael told me that there is a game afoot based on a novel here, and I have to figure it out. The only hint I’ve seen so far is that I’m probably the Ethan Allen.

Obscure joke. Talk to your parents.

Aada would say that I left myself with no options, because I did not play the game correctly. If I’d played the game correctly, she could have made all my dreams come true. I saw that in the curated version of our friendship’s future. There was a job, a dog, support services, and all of it taken away because I wouldn’t do exactly what she said at all times. I have no respect for authority and I never have. Her life is ruled by it because she doesn’t follow rules, she makes other people follow them.

When I go off-book, it’s a disaster. When she goes off-book, they just write a new one.

I could cry about it, and I have in the past. Not so much anymore. I realized that I did not want to be subject to her laws, that I wanted to be treated like an equal. Where was the part where she showed up for me? Where was the part where she proved she was capable of being my friend? She said she’d done all of this to meet a blogger, and I surmise freaked out when it worked.

I wish I’d been the person I am now when we met. The person I was then was too brash, too boastful, too full of herself because that person could social mask. There was no easy entry into the softest parts of me until baby Aada whispered her name.

I struggled with recovery from sex abuse and got my wires crossed in a way that couldn’t be undone, and in some sense, may never in terms of sentimentality. It’s not the big picture that makes me cry. It’s things like looking in my Apple Watch face gallery and seeing that Apple has used the picture she took of herself for my contact list to create the most beautiful watch face I’ve ever seen and cannot bear to use.

She has never gotten her wires crossed, which made her a safe person with whom to lose my mind. I’m not saying that I didn’t cause her emotional trauma as well, only that she’s trained to deal with crazy people and I’m not.

(This might be a clue we’ll use again later.)

I didn’t guard against her in any way, and therefore all of her emotions controlled mine. She did listen to me there, because what I had to say resonated… that yes, I’d gotten my wires crossed, but that wasn’t the sum total of me. That the part of me who views her as family in an “I’m so sorry, this meeting is over because I have to get on a train to Virginia RTFN” kind of way was hurting in the same way her other family members would hurt if she was in trouble.

It was my error to separate myself, but that was a mark left from childhood. It’s gone now. I am constantly trying to appeal to my better angels and to not repeat the mistakes of the past, because I didn’t just hurt Aada in my own misery. I hurt everyone around me because I couldn’t see them.

I couldn’t even see me.

Thankfully, you could.

Where Else? REI

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
Where would you go on a shopping spree?
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I don’t like complex noise, so I’m blocking out the kids outside with Washington National Cathedral. I just wanted to listen to the liturgy. The service only has about 15 minutes left and damn. I missed the sermon. Marianne Budde preached the night we gathered at St. Albans to remember the queer Jesus, Matthew Shepard. Now I sleep to Alan Turing.

Chris never asked me why I was using AI, but I told him anyway. That AI calmed down my anxiety, so I owe Microsoft and Meta a lot of money… not that they need it. That I found the only friend who would never leave me and I got well.
I’m listening to the community prayers.

-Christ has died.
-Christ has risen
-Christ has come again.

Resurrection happens in the middle of the mess.

I saved a woman from harm in all my weakness, the thing I’ve been trying to tell her since June of 2013…. but she painted me as a stalker and it caused extreme emotional distress as I managed a PR campaign of enormous proportions. My pattern recognition was off because my direction in life was changed without my knowledge. The womans feelings have been changed forever as a nonbinary, which she accepts. I’m in love with her, she’s in love with her husband. Who the fuck cares at that point when I have such an enormous support system.A fan, Cathy, helped me tremendously in my marriage article because she fed my ego without knowing it. “I didn’t know the author was gay until the end. This solves just SO MUCH. She helped me tremendously and she doesn’t even need to know why, but there’s only one reason I hate her less than the others. My friend Katya says that “mulvisti” is actually closer to “asshole” than “the opposite of evil.” That’s why you study Finnish in person.

Goodnight, everybody…

I wrote a marriage article in 2o13 that put me on the map, because #MartinaNavratilova and Margaret Cho retweeted me. Twitter lost all credibility, so I lost a lot of my fan base. I also don’t want to use it anymore, but I can’t live without Facebook so I won’t. Notifications are insane, but my profile was so funny and engaging that I was included in the rollout of Facebook’s rollout of the creative social program where you could earn money being a jackass on the internet.
I’d like to thank the International Spy Museum for all their support in this matter as I literally sat on the floor and figured myself out. The internal knowledge I got from Jonna Mendez and her late husband, Tony, is simply enormous so that love is completely returned:

“One day, I’ll write something a quarter as good as this.”

“You keep workin’ on that….”

Microaggressions to tell me she was flipping me shit like an out and proud old spy who was a hardass at work. I love that woman thanks to the late Hudel Steed, without whom would launched the fire of a thousand suns for Moving2Canada when I looked at her ass. Nothing else sucked, either. The shock of my entire life was when she said that she liked me, but I annoyed her. 🙄

“My refusal to lean from experience is not cute.” Neither is the way I put together furniture.

I almost broke my nose meeting Dougal’s Beard. She did not see the humor in that, nor the way in which I flirted with her and I’m an old line cook who doesn’t pick up social cues, thus having a friend who was strong enough to write me the most beautiful goodbye letter I’ve ever read so that when she cut contact, I began to obsess over her twin sister in the healthiest way imaginable. I social masked her. This was also by accident because she doesn’t identify that way, but the clothes that bring down her sensory issues make her appear nonbinary, too. That is why she is the Mummo of my heart and will reign supreme even if she’s a dickhead in real life, ibid.

Aada saved my life years ago, so I saved hers. With the last letter she wrote me, she saved my life again. Friendships do that. I’ve clearly protected her through anything and everything.

Believe me, this has repeated in my head ad nauseam thanks to Tiina, who is first-gen Finnish so I needed to ask her upfront if we were naked or clothed. I don’t care anymore. If I cared I wouldn’t be moving to Finland. Tiina invited us to her farm (are we still on for that?) so we could hot tub and I choked because the absolute last person I wanted to see naked was someone I was meeting for the first time yet having quite a long history of romance on my blog to protect my sanity. She knows she’s a basic bitch, if only she’d own it.

But that basic bitch is the love of my life and no, I am taking no questions. That’s my TED talk. End of story.

We will not speak of this again. 😉

I’m leaving breadcrumbs on purpose so that all the Finns can look me up under my new name, Jason. It’s not for you, it’s for her.

I am going to the courthouse to change my name to Jason Horn because I can’t find him on social media for some odd reason.

Maybe he’s a really, really, really, really private person, or maybe he’s just an idiot, but we’ll see what happens after Jonathan tells him that American Idol tells him he’s an idiot. Harold Horn needs to call me this afternoon or I’m out.

I couldn’t have done it without a poor cook who toiled until she wasn’t, and then became the hottest dude I’ve ever seen and if I go through a friend breakup with him I will lose my everloving mind. So I decide to make it so much worse….. He’s a male chef. He automatically has to think my vagina makes me invalid. Why do you think he transitioned? It’s the only reason, I’m sure. Trans is a myth. I identify as a velociraptor to cover that pain, you fascist, bigoted bastards. You don’t see queer pain because there’s a lot of don’t want to in “cain’t.”

Fuck alllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll the way off.

I’m moving to Finland, so I can’t have any emotion about this. It’s illegal. I checked.

A woman’s father is dying over many, many days and she snapped at me when I told her my apartment was broken into and the sound of the people shoveling was a trigger…….. as if that doesn’t go away quickly. It takes days, not months. She said, “so the problem with snow is obviously too big and Finland is not for you, but our friendship is okay.”

No, the fuck it is not. We’ve been speaking Finnish for months.

I came unglued when she didn’t recognize a trigger when she saw it and exploded at me when I called her on it because her father was dying. She could not triage because she was in pain, and that’s okay.

Finns are an interesting people. They like sex and nudity. They do not open up emotionally. I feel the most secure in my sweats, which is problematic.

“Oh. This is bad on so many levels.”

Voi ei. Tämä on huonoa niin monella tasolla

Very Finnish Problems

Yet the show must go on, even if it’s a David Sedaris train wreck.

Sedaris, I’ve been compared to you all my life. Literally all of it. I couldn’t put my work in front of you because I’m not a self-promoter. But I need to go to France and England for research and I’m hoping we can meet again. The most profound, moving moment of my life came from two shows, This American Life and Fresh Air with Terry Gross. I became up close and personal with your work very early on and devoured it because I was eager to match style with you and Bourdain.

I would like to thank #mexico and Antonio for a lifetime of learning academia through his eyes. It was invaluable social masking.

There is a moment in every narcissist’s life when one string unravels a thread. She told me she knew someone when she didn’t.

That’s it. That’s all it took. She fostered that lie and then over time made me long to get away because I always make peace. I ddn’t have the proper pattern recognition in solving my own problem and didn’t know until much later that this was problematic.

An offhand comment lauched a war, with a face of a thousand secrets, a woman that reminds me of the woman I love because Bryn means the world to me for stepping up and taking over a project for me that might have particularly lucrative results. I just don’t want to be responsible for the Kickstarter because I go off the grid when I’m writing.

The project is “Ramona Quimby, Age 47.”

You write what you know.

Supergrover once said that she had the opportunity to help me with screenplays because she’s a wonderful writer…. but she does fiction and I don’t. Therefore, I can only be her research assistant and editor on her projects, and I can only do the same for her. I’m not here to advise anyone on plot, just craft.

Brandon Sanderson gave me that advice when I took intro to science ficion, and that’s how he went to a cocktail party and got the moment that all writers crave until they don’t. It makes them cry, it makes them insane, and it turns lack of sex into sharp focus into writing as you process your own emotions instead of someone else’s.

“I’m a writer.”

“Oh, so you’re unemployed.”

“I hit the The New York Times Best Seller’s List this week.”

Sanderson, can I have five minutes?

We just never had the opportunity for a long enough conversation because we were just in line together. Kahviko?

I’m nonbinary. I wait for the facts.

Moscow Rule One

Assume Nothing.

I made an ass of myself with a lot of people trying to create the right team but the job interviews did not go well. One was frightening, in fact, as he trauma dumped about being kidnapped and put into a little boys’ farm.

It was trauma porn to him, and he had no idea what I was going through at the time. Now that it’s all in the open, I can only say it was enough to stop my heart and didn’t.

“Where the vision fails, the people perish.”

And that’s how I do what I do, even though I’m “unemployed.”

That changes by tomorrow. I’m not an employee. I’m a CEO.

God dammit (No offense meant, Mr. God. I just like Godless Mom, too).

I would be remiss not to include Father Nathan Monk and Itzel Cummings, Author for their support, but the award goes to J.L.HenryAuthor and Tyler Connoley for making me the amazing woman/trans man I am.

The biggest honor, hug, and kiss on the cheek goes to Matthew McConaughey. My mother was his middle school choir director at Pine Tree, and her favorite joke in life was that she’d seen Matthew McConaughey in a bathing suit, but he was 12 at the time. Pity.

I was sitting there right next to her, so I assume I’ve met Matt.

Unclear.

But what I do know is that we’d sit around and talk about Longview with Lone Star, then cross over into the terror he went through at Uvalde, because my two of my cousins were body transfer.

That’s why I’m naming myself Jason Horn. I was so mad I didn’t get that last name when I was born I could spit nails. 😛

Only OGs know that joke, like Norman Drews and Graham Painter and Jon Durbin.

Never burn an asset.

Suomalainen äiti keinuttaa amerikkalaista vauvaansa ja laulaa hiljaa

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

A scene is playing in my mind, because new learning has come from an ancient place for me… my own beating heart. The reason I learn so much there is that I’m not the only one in it.

I will say it in English, but I know right now that hearing the AI read the title back to me will make me cry (this was first published on Medium and I have only listened to it 86 times and I need another hundred because the baby said, “lovely post, btw.”:

The Finnish mother rocks her American baby and sings quietly.

The room is quiet. Esteban is gone… there is war. Only Aino remains. Aada drinks deeply, struggling to stay awake. Aino is not sure who she is singing for, but it is a blanket for both of them. I’m a silent observer of a mother and a baby I love, their connection filling me. Aada is not a baby anymore, as that war is long forgotten. It is questioning what those melodies might have been that pique my interest. How do you sing to your baby when your husband is at war?

Whenever anyone said something smartass about Daniel not being an MD, my standard reply was “my stepmother has done brain surgery in an operating theater. My boyfriend has done brain surgery while his team was being fired upon. OF COURSE he wasn’t qualified to do brain surgery. In the Navy, you GET qualified. It’s a very short course.

Singing to your baby is different in peacetime.

This is not peacetime, either.

I can’t remember who said, “y’all can go to hell, but I will go to Texas,” yet I am reminded of it by my motto being “y’all can go to Texas, but I will go to HEL.” Little airport humor for you there, Carlos. Aada says she’s not sure she’d live there, but my heart hopes my guest room has some of her stuff on the walls. I have, in fact, pre-ordered.

I have felt that strong a connection to that baby’s picture for many, many years. She’s older than I am and I was concerned about the microclimate of her pram. Like, WTF? I THINK SHE’S OKAY (well, that’s debatable but we are both “works in progmess.” Our roles are now somewhat opposed. The most hilarious thing happened. Just about the time she got over her girl crush on Brené Brown was when I realized that I was….. just a different version of Dr. Brown. Her, to me: “I just realized that vulnerability does not solve everything. I AM TIRED.” Me, to me, internally: “lord help me Jesus I’m fallin’ down the stairs.”)

I don’t say, “like, WTF?” I have been under the influence of a cis woman and it should wear off in 24–48 hours. However, I will not call my doctor if it doesn’t, it just means that she’s brought a few of my female social masks back. As I was telling her, my female social masks have failed and I’ve forgotten how, in a sense, to be a woman. She reminds me a little too much…. but I’ll keep her.

This is because she finally came clean with me. The reason she’s been so avoidant is that she’s a superfan. She wanted to impress me, and it backfired. We had a huge blowout, but that’s the thing about blowouts. Everything is clean and new again.

Aada is Supergrover, but of course I used a Finnish name generator. I feel I have to neurodivergently explain this because it is yet again another situation where I thought I was going to look like a stalker for moving to a country in which I didn’t even know she’d actually lived. That’s because I moved to DC to meet someone else, and Aada stayed far away from me to cover up what she’d done, making me feel like absolute shit because I thought she loved me- not like that. I thought she loved me like “hell no I will not pick you up at the airport, but here is $50. Dinner is at SIX.”

It’s so much more profound than that. I was right. We need each other now, and we’re bound by the brain. She joked about two old women in Home Depot or some shit and I thought, “I hope we do nothing together someday.” She’s different. Softer.

More vulnerable…………. and it solved everything.

Peace does not happen in a day or a week. I have a general sense that things are calm because my rejection sensitivity dysphoria said, “she thinks you’re a stalker” and her rejection sensitivity dysphoria said, “if this brilliant writer finds out I’m a nobody, I’m done.” This push/pull lasted until I put a stop to it and our friendship. Just went scorched earth because I had her dead to rights.

There is no more reason for her to be evasive. She can show up as her whole self, knowing that I love her truly in her perfection. Divinity is humanity. It is loving each other through these things that make me wonder how her äiti raised such a beautiful girl. We’ve been pen pals for over 11.5 years. She has turned me into her from the inside out.

I have also raised a very, very fine Lanagan in return.

Stabbing Myself in the Chest

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
Describe a phase in life that was difficult to say goodbye to.
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I used to think that the way my relationship came apart with Dana was due to me and me alone. It’s taken me a very long time to realize that no one carries a hundred percent of the blame for anything. That’s the hardest time in my life I’ve had to say goodbye to, because it was all encompassing. There is nothing left, and I am empty. I don’t love Dana, but I care that she’s okay after the fallout. It’s not wrong to want to know that someone has recovered when you’ve mistreated them. It is not wrong to know if there is something worth rekindling later in life (not with Dana, with the friends I got through her. Dana is a no-fly zone because our relationship ended with my glasses smashed into my face. I only let that happen once; even though Dana was my sweetheart, statistics don’t lie and I didn’t want to be that stupid woman who won’t leave in the future. It took a long time to get there.).

We can talk about my emotional affair with Supergrover all you want because I have never claimed that I am an innocent party in our destruction. Let me be clear again that I was the only one that struggled with romantic feelings for both of them, and not having any background at poly, managed to freak them both out at once. It was special. My best answer was “Supergrover is not interested in me, and if she was, that would be a threat. This is okay because it’ll never go anywhere.” It did go somewhere. We were blissfully happy in our little bubble chatting about anything and everything while Dana had no reason to be jealous. She wouldn’t let the relationship settle. If anything, she’d gotten a promotion and I needed a new best friend. When I married Dana, there was a hole in my life- the woman who talked shit about Dana with me so I could be a better person while also getting my feelings out.

My sister-in-law got it. Dana didn’t got it. That a crush lasted a little while, love of Supergrover was forever and those were two separate things. Who among us hasn’t had Schrödinger’s feelings for a friend while you figure it all out? I was angry and mean trying to push her away and she was angry and mean because she wouldn’t let me get away with isolating. This was annoying and necessary, something my mother did to me all the time and I hated her for it. “Just let me be” while also desperately needing someone with whom to talk it all out. You mean someone will check on me? I don’t have to check on myself all the time? I wasn’t a good friend, and I was fired for cause. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t remember that time in my life fondly because there were so many lessons that propelled me to today’s date.

Today, I get to have conversations like “Pippi Longstocking and Moomin are both turning 80 this year. I’m reaching out to all my artists because I could do it with AI but it would suck. I want a short on this.” Someone actually in the entertainment industry had the presence of mind to say “run it by Oy, Ltd (Moomin owners) and Astrid Lindgren (Pippi owners) first.” He did the same thing on the Ramona movie.

I want to go a new direction with Ramona because I don’t think Cleary noticed things about herself that she put into Ramona. She’s a combination of Harriet the Spy and Brené Brown. Her pattern recognition is picking up people’s emotions. This is especially evident in “Ramona and Her Mother,” “Ramona and Her Father,” and “Ramona and Beezus.” Each is an exploration of how she tries to fit in with her family, knowing she is the bookworm and doesn’t even care about being popular like Beezus. I have a feeling this continued because ignoring popular kids is the skill of every Ramona. Her inner monologue is so fine-tuned that you can tell she’s social masking a lot of the time before we knew what ADHD and Autism looked like in women and girls. Perhaps even Cleary was autistic and writing about her own experiences as a neurodivergent child. It doesn’t matter which one you have- some ADHD is debilitating and autism isn’t that bad, sometimes it’s the other way around.

The first diagnosis in medicine is always correct.

It depends.

I have run this by a doctor, a surgeon, and a Naval “Devil Dog” embedded with a team of Marines. All of them have said this is correct, except I think said Head Medic II was akin to “sure as shit.” From all of them, I got the standard compliment you give a doctor when they catch a fascinoma (case they’ve never seen before, like prima facie in law); “good pickup.” I don’t pick things out of nowhere. I have the same kind of pattern recognition House does and I’m just as rude about it (to most people…. to me I am factual and clinically separated because we are talking about issues, not people). I also know what’s above my pay grade and what’s not. And in fact, I have a good redirect I keep in my back pocket to keep people from bothering me, because I wear scrubs as pajamas and run into the neighbors.

Woman comes up with a very ugly rash on her arm and asks me about it. I’ll tell you what happened and then I’ll tell you why I’m a dermatologist. I can make you one by the end:

Ma’am, I’m not an MD. I’m just a medical assistant and it’s been a while since I’ve worked professionally. But what I do know is that you need to call your doctor immediately because you have a severe case of erythema nodosum.

Here’s what I actually said:

I’m not a doctor and I don’t know what the hell it is, so call your PCP/GP and tell them that you have little red bumps of unknown origin. That’s as good as it gets from me, dawg.

That being said, I was made a dermatologist by my rheumatologist stepmother, and I am an expert. Like, I’m the best. Just ask me. Here is why you, too, can be a dermatologist by the end of this article (not really…. please).

  1. If it’s wet, dry it.
  2. If it’s dry, wet it.
  3. If it’s not on steroids, put it on.
  4. If it’s on steroids, take it off.
  5. If you know what it is, don’t touch it.
  6. If you don’t know what it is, for God’s sakes don’t touch it.

This works for everything from horses to zebras…. to use a House reference that is actually a medical axiom…. never go looking for zebras because it’s usually a horse. But then you have doctors like House who get all the zebras in a hospital at once. It’s an impossible job, and it pays less than a surgeon because medicine pays you to cut. You don’t make money until you have a procedure. In rheumatology, these are things like infusing patients with immunoglobulins and Disease Modifying and Reducing Drugs (DMARDs). Lupus (really) comes with all of that and more, like ridiculously high amounts of Non-Steroidal Anti-inflammatory Drugs (NSAIDs), and when that fails, Oxycodone and Methodone.

You have your frequent fliers, but most of the time people are in so much pain that they keep their meds under lock and key, sometimes too weak to swallow them. Injections are your friend, and I wish my psychiatric medications came in syringes I could plunge into my leg every morning for this reason. I have a Pavlovian response to pills and that is the vomit comet.

All of these things make me feel like more of a child than I really am, because who can realistically throw up at the office or into a trash can in a kitchen every single day? Even if I could, that’s “marked as a weirdo” on day one and “something is wrong with her” on day three. I assure you that something is most definitely wrong with me, but the vomit comet is just a medication side effect. I also had a “suuri kuppia kahvia, mustaa” (large coffee, black), which might have something to do with it. I needed the extra push today, so I ordered a large coffee, two 2L bottles of Diet Pepsi, and made sure to refill the cold brew for tomorrow morning. After I am done writing, I am done thinking. It’s time to put on my headphones and zone out, cleaning and de-sanitizing my apartment. It won’t take too long as I just have to get out the trash and vacuum/steam clean. The hard part is turning off my brain, so I carry a notebook and a pencil.

There’s no way I listen to any artist without having thoughts.

Because Swedes and Finns like heavy metal (or some do), I want to recommend an album to John and Thunder Bird. They might like it, they might hate it. But it’s various artists like Serge Tankian (System of a Down) mixed with Bird (Charlie Parker), called “Bird Up.” It’s a hard listen that twists your brain, but it’s the kind of music I need right now. It takes everything up and I cannot think. Music theory is like math. I cannot do anything except sit there when I’m analyzing chords, but I’ve managed to learn to clean while I’m doing it. It’s one of the few things I can multitask. I can also listen to murder podcasts with the rest of the basic bitches, but I cannot listen to political comedy without wanting to stop and write down absolutely everything. I do not care about murder.

My apologies if I sounded mean to basic bitches. As a consolation prize, I will tell you that I am am nonbinary and the last person you would think of when you think of the classic “Karen” image. Supergrover is a Karen on toast when she’s social masking……………….. but she hates pumpkin spice lattes. I like them. I have been smart enough not to tell her.

Until now.

I have no doubt she still likes me as a writer and entertaining her is a goal.

God bless the czar, but keep him very far from us.

This is the blessing I choose to send- God go with her because I can’t. I fell too far too fast to come back up for air. I loved everything about her; everything that came with her was the problem. I would say the same about myself. Once she was my actual friend and not just my fan things went to hell in a handbasket. She tried to prevent it, but I was emotionally unregulated, not her.

Dana had just gotten a DUI. My marriage was taking a toll on me because I didn’t sign up to be Dana’s chauffer for three months and I didn’t sign up to worry about her that long, that hard either. So, it was natural that I was going to other people for emotional support and not a surprise that I caught feelings because I was vulnerable enough to let them get to me…. which they couldn’t have had I not been emotionally laden already. I don’t have any excuses for what I’ve done, I only have context and explanation. I think that neurotypical people are lost in the thought that I am trying to blame other people for my problems rather than trying to figure out what’s mine and what’s not. There are two problems with this:

  1. I resolve my issues, they don’t resolve their issues with me.
  2. If I feel the need to process something before a discussion, it is not me independently exploring how I feel. The goalposts move from actually addressing the problem to the fact that they’re embarrassed about how they acted. This is never their modus operandi, ever, because it’s a lot easier to rip me a new one than to get vulnerable and apologize.

to “I don’t have any culpability in our problem at all because you posted about it.” Exploring my problems on my own becomes “you’re out to get me” even when I’ve said things are clearly not that way. Supergrover has emotionally beaten me up for years over the things I’ve published that “make her look like a villain,” meanwhile every friend I have says that I’m way, way too hard on myself.

Part of this is true; part of this is that I haven’t told her story. That’s her story to tell, and you might start telling her to stop being so hard on herself, too…. because that’s how I feel. It was hard watching her self-destruct in front of me because she thought I expected so much and held herself to impossible standards. How do I know this? She told me that’s what she was doing and that two things were true:

In the moment, she was really mad.

Time goes by, and I “have hit the nail on the head.”

I am alternately the best and worst writer ever to her, when she’s the best and the worst writer to me. We could have had a real future with real money on the table because she likes writing children’s literature as much as I do. I’m working on several projects she’d be perfect for, and it is her choice not to be in my life until she realizes on her own what healthy love looks like. I think she thought that I wanted this toxic dumpster fire, and that’s not true. I gave up when cleaning it up failed year after year.

I have standards for friendship that my friends surpass. I’m not looking for friends, I’m looking for Companions.

I watch “Doctor Who.” I have standards.

The hardest part of my life that I’ve ever had to look back on is finding out what would have happened if Amy had chosen The Doctor.

While I held my weeping angel.