Tag: truth

The Sunshine Blogger Award

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Today I was nominated for the Sunshine Blogger Award by Julie. Thank you, Julie, for knowing I could use a little sunshine. I hope I’ve done “write” by you……the-sunshine-blogger-award-2018

Here are the award’s rules:

  1. Thank the blogger who nominated you and link back to their blog. (Really? There are people who wouldn’t say, “Thanks!” if it weren’t a rule?)
  2. Answer the 11 questions your nominator asked you.
  3. Nominate 8 to 11 blogs, and ask them 11 new questions.
  4. List the rules and display the Sunshine Blogger Award logo in your post and/or on your blog.

1.) To-MAY-to or To-MAH-to?

I’m from Texas, so it generally comes out as “tuhmayda.”

2.) What fictional character would you like to meet in real life, and why?

I have several, but it’s all the same theme. I want to meet Harry Potter the day after he first talked to a snake. I want to meet Peter Parker the day after he was bitten by a radioactive spider. I want to meet Carrie Mathison the day after she was approached by The Agency.

I want to meet these people before they became larger than life- would like to know how they’re coping in the midst of enormous change. Harry Potter didn’t know he had magical powers. He thought the whole world had taken crazy pills. Peter Parker wasn’t handspringing off the Empire State Building on day one- he barely knew how to use his new body. Carrie Mathison wasn’t station chief in Kabul/The Drone Queen the first time she drove up to Langley. I’d like to know how those huge personalities incubated…. like meeting the non-fictional Oprah as a high school freshman.

3.) What music do you listen to while writing, or do you prefer silence?

I go back and forth. It’s the 80/20 rule. 80% of the time, I listen to the rhythm of my fingers on the keys. 20% of the time, I’m listening to jazz, classical, or film scores…. nothing with words, and nothing unfamiliar. If it’s new to me, I’m not really paying attention to my writing.

4.) Sunrise or sunset, and why?

I prefer the wee hours of the morning, starting between 4:00-5:00. I used to stay up all night just to get that kind of quiet, and then I learned about this new thing called “going to bed earlier.”

5.) What aspect(s) of blogging do you find most rewarding?

The single most rewarding thing about blogging is being able to go back and read my thoughts… the ones from the people I used to be. They should have been on the list of fictional people I’d like to meet now. On the other hand, what I could say to them without spoilers is it’s going to get so, so very much worse before it gets better, and I’m not sure that the “it gets better” would be the take home message. I would also advise myself to buy a lot of Finnish flags, because I couldn’t tell me why, but I could tell me they’d come in handy.

6.) What food is your guilty pleasure?

Rice Krispies. I swear to Christ I could eat an entire box in one sitting, preferably with whole milk.

7.) What advice would you give to younger you?

I think I’ve sort of covered this already, but I was such an introverted kid who made people laugh to cover up huge flaws and insecurities… so I would say that I couldn’t give myself any advice because I wouldn’t have listened. The younger me was lost in my own little world, and even an older version of me wouldn’t have known how to interrupt it. Other people were frightened by what an intense kid I was- why wouldn’t I looking back? I wouldn’t have any advice, just comforting knowledge. Teenage me couldn’t have conceived of federal gay marriage, or even the majority of the country not thinking I was mentally ill (well, I am, but not because of THAT).

8.) What is something other people seem to find important that you just don’t see the point of?

This is going to sound completely judgmental, but it is a personal choice. I don’t see the point in the emphasis on how much people need alcohol to get through their day. It’s not the drinking itself that bothers me, it’s the craze around Facebook/Twitter/Insta/etc. memes that make alcoholism look adorable.

I don’t know if it’s that I’ve had friends in AA who made me look at the issue differently, or whether culture itself has shifted. What I do know is that people look at me weird when I order a cherry Diet Coke in a bar, and I used to say I was driving or that I was taking medication or whatever. And then it occurred to me that there haven’t been very many times in my life where people haven’t looked at me like I was weird for some reason or another and to just stop caring what other people thought. Now people look at me weird when I do want a beer. I’ll never win, and that’s ok.

9.) Do you have any famous (or infamous) people in your family tree?

I seem to remember my mother’s father tracing our genealogy back to Zachary Taylor and James Madison… but my grandfather died when I was in middle school and I am WAY too lazy to redo all that research. I wouldn’t be if I was actually interested in genealogy, but it’s just not my bag.

10.) Which of your blog posts has had the most surprising response? (Comments you didn’t see coming, traffic that was unusually heavy/light compared to your averages, etc.)

My article on marriage had the most surprising response, because it was shared literally all over the world, and landed in both Martina Navratilova and Margaret Cho’s Twitter feeds. It wasn’t like I sat down that day and thought I MUST WRITE SOMETHING POPULAR. I’d gotten my nose out of joint by straight people thinking that gay marriage was this alien concept, so I was typing like a madman and hit “Post” fifteen minutes later. It astounded me that something I spent so little time on was a “hit,” and other things have taken hours and hours with no response at all… which is honestly how I prefer it. I write better when I don’t realize there’s an audience. I kind of picture my blog as an open dress rehearsal.

11.) What do you do when you get writers’ block?

I write about nothing. Literally, I just narrate the smallest things until an idea catches and I think, “well, there’s something.” Writer’s block comes from thinking you have to wait for an inspiration to write when it’s the other way around. In the process of writing, you find inspiration. It’s like waiting for a good mood. It rarely happens on its own- you usually have to put on loud music, go for a walk, etc. Your mood didn’t just lift on its own accord- you lifted it.

Here are my list of nominees:

Last, but not least, are the things I want to know about you……

  1. What is the smallest situation in which you’re embarrassed? For instance, even when I am wearing high tops and long pants, I am embarrassed when my socks don’t match.
  2. What do you do really well besides write?
  3. What do you do badly, but participate anyway?
  4. What is your favorite creative swear?
  5. How long can you go off the grid without twitching?
  6. What do you do professionally if writing is not your day job?
  7. What’s the best picture you’ve ever taken? Describe the landscape.
  8. Are you from a big city or a small town?
  9. What is your idea of home?
  10. Do you like your current haircut?
  11. What is the absolute funniest thing that has ever happened to you?

Now That Some Time Has Passed…

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I’m trying to take stock of the ways my life has changed since my mother died, because now that it’s been a little over two years, things look different than they did when it first happened. I have found a new version of normal, although I am emotionally bleeding out for my cousins because their father just died unexpectedly. Additionally, this is the second sibling my aunt and uncle have lost in a very short time (the uncle that died was the second of four children on my mother’s side). So, we are all trying to find a new version of normal, trying to wrap our brains around two people in our family that have died very young. My mother was only 65, and my uncle died the day before his 64th birthday.

This is crushing because as people in grief know, birthdays and anniversaries are the hardest to get through. I cannot imagine having those two days so close together, yet another thing that makes grief as individual as a fingerprint, because even though my cousins and I share the pain of losing a parent, no situation is the same. I would not presume that they’re feeling the same thing I am (or even did), particularly because I am further along in my process of finding Option B.

I do remember how terrible those first few days were, because I saw everything through a deep and penetrating fog. People would say things to me and I would forget one second later what they said, or not even reply because I would go deaf and dumb to the world around me. I completely fell apart. For months, I would forget where I was going, or even the way out of my own neighborhood. For even longer, I wouldn’t interact. For instance, one day I’d think getting together with friends or going to church would make me feel better, then not only regret that decision, but drop off the face of the earth and people would wonder where the hell I went. Ummm, I went home. And not only did I go home, I didn’t even take up space in the house. I confined myself to my room for far longer than anyone thought I could or should.

I would (and still do) bounce between zero and what seems like 50,000 calories in a day. Grief took away hunger and thirst until I couldn’t ignore it anymore. It also occurred to me that drinking alcohol is often a trap when someone close to you dies, so being completely sober was a good and bad thing. There was no social lubricant for anxiety at being around people, and when I felt my feelings, I really, really felt them.

I am normally a little bit socially anxious, for which I take medication. But social anxiety is different in deep grief. People notice when you look like crap, and will tell you, not knowing the bomb you’re about to drop on them. See, the reason I look like a hot mess is that my mother just died…. and that’s when you can literally hear the whistle with Doppler effect. You desperately don’t want it to, but the conversation goes from zero to weird in 2.5 seconds and you regret you said anything. The hardest part about telling people someone close to you died is that the air in the room changes, and people start treating you differently.

Some people know exactly what to do, which is either say they’re sorry and leave it at that, or say nothing and just give you a hug. With others, it is a litany of I know just how you feel, and then tell a story that legit has nothing to do with what you’re going through.

30704001_1986837498021611_1417297838002122399_nThis is the Facebook meme I found today that made me laugh and cringe, because for the grieving, it describes our experience perfectly. I really don’t fucking care how sad you were when your cat died and how it relates to my grief that I’ll never see my mother again. I also don’t care how you’ll feel when your mother dies, because first of all, you have no idea how you’ll feel when your mother/father/spouse dies, because thinking about it ahead of time is so much different than when reality punches you in the face. Secondly, my smart ass response is always going to be, well, it’s a good thing I’m going through it instead of you. However, that part generally seethes inside me because I know no one is trying to elicit that response. They just have no idea what to say, so what they think they’re saying is good and what they’re really saying hurts.

The other thing that happens is that your mother/father/spouse’s death becomes a subject no one wants to touch, so they stop bringing up the person altogether, as if remembrance is the worst thing ever. Say her name. Tell me funny stories about what you remember, especially if you knew her at a time when I didn’t.

I learned this lesson initially through divorce, that people thought bringing up Dana was somehow verboten, when it would have meant the world to me to laugh about the funny things that happened to us…. and at first, it really hurt that Dana and my mom have the same birthday, but now it feeds me because I think about celebrating Dana instead of being mired in grief…. mostly the old joke about how since she’s two years older than me, she’s just that much closer to death than I am. 😛

Yes, divorces are terrible. Yes, deaths are terrible. But it doesn’t render my great memories invalid. Just because it’s over doesn’t mean I don’t want to remember.

Speaking of “over,” I don’t view my relationship with my mother as such. I have a long history of writing letters to people or entities who are unlikely to respond. It doesn’t seem weird to me at all that we still “talk.” Maybe other people have trouble bringing up the topic of my mom, but I don’t. During the day, I basically narrate to her in my head, and in my dreams, she responds.

She thinks Dan and Pri Diddy are good for me. We agree on so much.

Staying Awake

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 8 Comments

I thought seriously about boycotting Starbucks until I realized that I still had money on my gift cards. I reasoned that my coffee had already been purchased, and if the boycott persisted beyond that, I wouldn’t spend my own money there.philadelphia_sbux Thanks to social media wisdom, though, I realized something important. There are thousands of black baristas, and this one shop in Philly was the problem, not Starbucks as a whole. If that sounds callous and racist, I am very sorry. But the truth is that I live in a neighborhood with lots of black people. Some are African-American. Others are immigrants, mostly from Cameroon, Nigeria, and Eritrea. Boycotting my local store might lead to cutting down on employees as they get less busy, and I am not about to contribute to it.

The plain truth is that this is not a Starbucks problem. It is the top-down system of oppression that has been in power for hundreds of years. For instance, why didn’t the police officers just laugh in the barista’s face? Why, after explaining the situation, were the men still cuffed?

There is blame to be had all the way around, and when the police were called, they had absolutely no reason to follow through. What about the barista’s story made any damn sense except the police being as racist as the barista? I don’t even have a jacket as nice as the one the man on the left is wearing, and I guarantee you I’ve looked worse in a hoodie and jeans stumbling into a coffee shop than the man on the right. This is not to say that every black person who walks into a Starbucks must be dressed a certain way. I am only making the observation that if the barista and the police were looking for people making trouble, these men weren’t it.

Memorize their faces. Memorize the man on the left looking down with his hands in his pockets. Memorize the man on the right making a pained face as if this is not the first time this bullshit has happened to him. I can’t think of any situation that makes me feel more helpless and angry…. but I have to think it through. I have to think about all the ways I, as a white woman, can use the platform I’ve been given, both here and out in the world. I am generally not assertive when things happen to me personally (like truly repulsive comments regarding watching lesbians by men, for instance), but it’s a whole other thing when my mother lion gets engaged.

I am one of those hopeful people who’s been crushed by the amount of racism in my area, because DC is overwhelmingly black (a little under 50% of the population). I mistakenly thought things like that couldn’t happen here, or at least, more rarely than they actually do. I’ve cut way down on the optimism lately, anxiety rising like bile in the back of my throat.

I am no expert on race relations in DC, but it seems as if racially mixed neighborhoods have existed forever, even before gentrification…. keeping in mind that this is not every neighborhood’s case, but more often than in, say, the rest of the South. Technically, DC and Maryland are still the South because they’re under the Mason-Dixon line, but God help you if you mention it. No one around here wants to be compared with Alabama. We’d like to think we’re more progressive than that. Racial makeup of the neighborhood ceases to matter when you’re just trying to find a place you can afford.

In some ways, we are that progressive. In others, we’re not any better; we’d like to think of ourselves as liberal and inclusive, sweeping the incidents where we’re not way, way, way under the rug. If it doesn’t fit with the image we have of ourselves, it didn’t happen, definitely not a two-way street. White people just can’t be afraid of black people in the same way. I will never be afraid that a black person is going to call the police on me for anything…. ever.

Moreover, people of color absolutely cannot be racist, because racism, again, is a top-down entrenched system of oppression. They can, however, be prejudiced, stereotyping white people because they have to. They don’t know ahead of time if a friend or foe is approaching. Prejudice exists for a reason, and for people of color, it is self-preservation…. a fear that, as white people, we are absolutely responsible for creating.

For the most part, though, when we’re all on the Metro together, the racism and prejudice is left at the station. For instance, once I was waiting for the Orange Line back to Metro Center from Landover, and one of the WMATA employees came up to me and asked me if he could give me a hug, because I had a Black Lives Matter button pinned to my jacket. We just stood there and held each other, healing energy running between both of us.

While I have trouble believing that racism will be solved in my lifetime, I definitely hope.  Interestingly enough, I think Marvel has taken it upon itself to help. Movies like Black Panther and Captain America: Civil War, and television shows like Luke Cage are challenging the status quo, because they portray black people in a way that few pieces of media do. Marvel can’t be responsible for solving every racial issue, but movies and TV shows that are popular can’t hurt. For instance, nothing did more to help the queer community be seen as regular people than Will & Grace, with Six Feet Under a close second. Progress is still slow, but it’s faster than it used to be with the help of visibility.

The difference is that I only have to be afraid for my life when I’m walking hand in hand with another woman. Alone, people can only guess that I’m a minority. There is no covering up every inch of your skin. However, I do empathize because I, too, look over my shoulder for unenlightened white people. We are definitely not in the same boat, but I often believe we’re in the same part of the ocean.

As I sip my coffee, I wonder if this entire essay is going to make me look like a basic bitch. I want my thoughts to go toward some good…. perhaps make some people think. I know it reaches me. I could spend an entire afternoon brainstorming about all the ways society needs to change and what I might be able to do in bringing it forward. The most concrete way I know for myself is challenging all the microaggressions I think I don’t have. Being white is just a series of privileges that run so far under your skin you don’t even realize you’re broadcasting it.

The one good thing I can say for myself right this moment is that I can say I have black friends without lip service. I have people to teach me when I’m being a jackass without any awareness. I am lucky that my friends are willing to attribute my flaws to idiocy and not malice, because I guarantee that in terms of staying woke, I need to pay more attention when I become “sleepy.” I am lucky to have friends that have no problem calling me out on the carpet about it, even when it’s hard…. because sometimes you want to fix the whole world, and are at a complete loss as to what would help.

Although I know that at least my infinitely small part of the world will change, as long as I’m paying attention.

Coffee helps in keeping my mind busy and my eyes open. However, I cannot stay awake forever. That’s where you come in, batting relief.

[_])

Refill?

Crazy on a Cracker

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 2 Comments

Tonight I am going to meet a new friend who I hope will one day become my old friend… a great pen pal becoming real. Religion major in college, writes, and reads more in a day than I do in a week… which is very hard.

Speaking of which, I am engrossed in a new novel for review called The 11:05 Murders, by Brian O’Hare. It’s another one I thought was deserving of more than a few words written about it, and again e-mailed it to my editor… and not even selfishly because reviews might be easier when she’s also read it. Just because the book was so great I wanted to share. It is a very, very cheap way to show someone you care- and are genuinely excited to be able to provide great entertainment through e-books even when the person lives thousands of miles away.

It’s also nice to get a book that I’m genuinely jazzed to review by a polished author. That doesn’t happen very often. I’m also glad that when I’m finished with this novel, there are two others.

It’s also a nice thing that when I shop at Amazon, a small percentage of my purchase goes to Doctors Without Borders, my charity through Smile. I try to donate to them personally when I have a chance, but it’s not always possible. It makes me feel good that I can get my needs met and contribute to theirs. So much is going on in the world today that’s negative… cheering on their efforts is just one way I hope to combat it.

Not only am I thinking globally about negativity, but personally. I am still messed up over the last four years, and in some ways, I think that loss will never get better. It will become a shallower well of injury, or something that hurts more and more sporadically, but nothing will ever be the same. This is because dealing with grief over the alive and well is different than grieving the dead. Each hurts in its own special way. I am struck by the fact that other people’s lives will go on without me, and brought to my knees that I will never see my mother again.

If in saying that Barbara Bush’s death wasn’t that sad, I didn’t mean to be callous. It’s just a whole other thing when someone dies naturally after living an incredible amount of time vs. the shock of losing someone in the blink of an eye when their lives were cut short by at least 15-20 years. Some days I actually forget time has passed and am just struck dumb with the immediacy of it all. A parent dying suddenly and younger than you thought is like being in a car accident repeatedly, with the same amount of haze-inducing shock. The worst part is that I didn’t agree to this (as if one would, but stay with me, Jimbo). It just happens unexpectedly, a truly unwanted side effect. I am just blindsided all the time. I go into a space where I can’t remember anything, I can’t move, I can’t think clearly. I am just walking through life trying to nail Jell-o to a tree.

What is truly heartbreaking is knowing that my mother would never have wanted this for me. She was always so self-sacrificing that she would have done anything not to die if she could help it, and not out of self-preservation. What keeps my heart from stitching is that for most of my adult life, I lived out of state… so there are days when I regret that fact and others where I completely forget she’s dead because I’m not used to talking to her every day, anyway. I’ll reach for the phone to call her and absolutely freak. Grief then becomes extremely loud and incredibly close. What helps is not thinking about my own situation, but the thousands of other people that have also had this experience and that even when I feel like it, I am never alone. Someone on earth has felt what I’m feeling at any given moment.

There’s also the two-sided coin of losing someone suddenly. It is the combined feeling of joy that they felt no pain and the anger that comes with not being able to say goodbye. Let me be clear, though. I am not angry at her. I am angry at the situation.

It is the same with divorce… more angry at the situation and myself than I ever will be at Dana. In fact, I would go so far as to say I’m not angry with Dana at all. Everything is forgiven on that end. It’s me that needs work. I got started praying for her health and happiness early and often. It gives me something to give to her, even when it’s just sending energy into the universe. Because we’re not in contact, the chord between us (as I’ve said before) becomes a loopback, feeding me. It gives me the feeling of peace and calm that I’m somehow contributing, I guess. At this point, guessing regarding the nature of karma and the universe is about as much control as I’m allowed to have. Surprisingly, it is more than enough.

I feel like I should get into that space quickly, the one of sending good thoughts into the universe, because I am more downcast today than usual. It’s grey and awful outside, which only contributes to the storm within. Everything is making me sad, and I just feel like a disappointing excuse for a human being. Now, logically I know this is not true. I just can’t seem to make it happen emotionally. I am sure that things will look different 30 minutes after I take my anxiety medication, for which I need to make a pharmacy run. I don’t want to show up to a first impression feeling like crazy on a cracker.

Because unfortunately, that’s what grief does. It causes anxiety about just damn everything, even the things you never thought about before said loved one died. There’s so many new depths to plumb. Even the fact that people die young is something you used to know and now smacks you in the face. It’s one thing to know it, quite another to feel.

As far as I know, besides Dan, I am the first of my friends to lose their mothers. It is a comfort you would not believe that although I am incredibly sad for her, I have a person who understands implicitly the hand that I’ve been dealt. I have someone who can tell with one look that I need a hug or an arm around my shoulder. Not only am I perpetually bereft in some respects, single people do not get nearly enough contact comfort. It is such a blessing to have someone in my life who gives really great hugs without a hint of romance, because it’s not about that and never will be. I just give friendship its full due, that chosen family is everything.

The reason I believe in chosen family so wholeheartedly is that I don’t think it’s fair to the person I would date to drag them into the sideshow that is my current life. I would much rather wait until things calm down, when I am much less angry at me for the way I treated Dana and much less overwhelmed at the state of my world. The one good thing I remember about being divorced is that not only did I behave badly then and am grateful I don’t now hurt her repeatedly, I never would have wanted to subject Dana to the person I’ve become in the aftermath of grief…. and not because I think she couldn’t have handled it. I just think that it’s a pain for which she would have no frame of reference, and therefore, would not have been impressed with my need to isolate, to the point that I would have isolated myself from her, too. I can’t imagine how short I would have become with her, snippy not because she did anything wrong but because her mother is still alive. It’s a helpless place when someone is mad at you for seemingly no reason, unable to take it in that you shouldn’t take it personally- that person is mad at the whole damn world. For me, it was a lucky thing to be on my own, so that when I was literally unable to function, no one had to deal with me. I’m so much better now, but it was a long row to hoe. My entire garden just died.

And though most of the plants are still dead, at least I see shoots of green.

Thanks, Y’all

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Lately I’ve noticed that my stats and followers are going way, way up. The Board of Directors (donors that set me up years ago) is going to be pleased. Not that I’m counting on you to give them stock dividends or anything, but it’s good to be able to say to them that their contributions didn’t go to waste. No one has been more surprised than me to learn that my writing is actually worth something, that people are willing to pay when they come to a site they can read in the bathroom at work with no ads (don’t think I don’t know that last part is fo’real). I’m starting to feel more comfortable with telling you how I feel about issues as opposed to just running commentary on my life, going from personal to global. Not every entry will be about politics and the weather, but it’s nice to know it’s possible. You’ve just made a lot of my friends more comfortable, that’s for damn sure…. well, except the ones that are genuinely excited when they appear and search for their names.  ::squinting at James::

Hopefully in the running commentary department, you’ll get to hear more about “my babies,” the three new characters I’ll be adding to Stories in the coming year. The twins (boys) were born a few days ago, and the little girl whose face I already love will be born in the next few months. Rooting for her to be a not-too-early preemie so one of my best friends doesn’t have to be gigantic pregnant in the South in the dead of summer. I’ll never give up writing about my life, because this site will first and foremost be the repository where my memories go so that a hundred years from now, genealogy on me won’t be hard. Here’s everything you never wanted to know about me, kids. Sometimes it’s comforting that writing on the Internet is as permanent as a tattoo on the face, because even if WordPress doesn’t exist, Wayback Machines that archive everything on the net certainly will. I know because I can still access Clever Title Goes Here, the popular blog I impulsively tanked because I had a much thinner skin then.

It was a #dumbass attack, because I was in on the ground floor, when Heather Armstrong, Anil Dash, Wil Wheaton, Jason Kottke, Eden Kennedy, Ernie Hsuing, et al were also coming up. It felt amazing to be part of such rareified air, especially w/ Wil, because I met him at a reading at Powell’s and he knew exactly who I was, signing a copy of Just a Geek with:

Dear Leslie,

Clever Inscription Goes Here…

Love,
Wil

Writing has never been about money, but respect. I’ve never gotten rich off it, but it was nice to walk in those circles. The difference now is that my entries are generally much longer, with more to chew on. Hopefully you’ve picked up nuggets of wisdom along the way by me laying out all that I’ve done wrong AND right, rather than thinking I pimp out my friends.

Believe me when I say that they notice, all alert to the fact that they never know when an entry will pop up about them, and within limits, I will not give them the luxury of taking things down, because it’s not about them. It’s about my reaction to them, however untrue they think my statements are… there’s a reason for this. I am aware that I have huge flaws and get things wrong a lot. I change my mind on a weekly, if not daily basis. I am not waffling, it’s that every entry is full of my revelations to myself and what I think about what happens. I can only hope that when I write about my life, it is the good and the bad, so that you see a full picture instead of only amazing and horrible with no grey area. Something that was true for me on Monday is not true by Thursday. Evolution of thought happens, as does cognitive dissonance with relationships. Sometimes, disparate ends of the spectrum are both true.

For instance, I will never give up loving my friends and myself, even in those moments where I’m not altogether pleased with them/me. Just like you, I love them even when I can’t like their actions whole lot. But fortunately, not being happy about what they do in reaction to me is extremely infrequent, and I have no problem with not excusing how I behave, because I don’t often come away from a situation looking like a hero…. more often than not, I’m the antagonist and the protagonist in my own story. Through this web site, I have learned not to always be the one that throws the first match. I see up close in black and white how I could have done something differently, and I do. I look back and say to myself, well, that could have gone better.

Stories is basically a chronicle of learning to get out of my own way. I try to gather intel on how not to sabotage the good things that come my way. Also, I am a person in 3D. You don’t get to know everything, and often when people meet me in real life that have only known my writing, they comment on how different I seem (I thought you’d be taller. #dead).

The weirdest and most fulfilling is hearing people quote me to me, because it just feeds my self-esteem that there are indeed lines that stick with people.

On the flip side, it’s excruciating to meet readers who try and prove to me that they know me better than me because of the silly thoughts I write down, not allowing for the fact that my thoughts evolve. This has happened on several occasions because I put my URL in my OKCupid profile. I don’t use it for much except finding local friends, but I will never be friends with a fan who’s impressed and/or throws things I’ve written back in my face because it holds me to my past instead of allowing for the future. If they knew me well, throwing things I’ve written back in my face wouldn’t matter, because I know that they’re not trying to hurt me, just showing me old patterns of behavior and wondering if I might be repeating them. A first meeting is not that emotional place.

I will not take my URL off my profile, though, because it’s a separating the women from the girls sort of thing. If someone can’t deal with the fact that I write so publicly, the relationship won’t last for more than about five minutes.

I feel like I should buy five or 10 t-shirts with the words I’m blogging this and just wear them daily. This is because I’ve had several non-romantic relationships end over not knowing and caring a little too much when the mirror I hold up to the world points toward them. Often these are the same people that say I have great insights regarding everyone else, and those insights don’t translate to them. I can write about everyone in the world amazingly well except for them.

I get it. It’s not a big deal until it’s personal.

My heart is heavy thinking about the lives I’ve interrupted out of idiocy and not malice, often presenting as headaches or stomachaches. It’s the entire reason CTGH doesn’t exist. I got tired of this whole idea, forsaking the thousands of people who genuinely loved my writing and my excoriation of myself in the quest to make me a better person. No one should ever think that being a personal blogger is easy, because it comes with…….. consequences.

With Stories, I constantly adjust the limits to which my writing matters more than my friends, because in some ways, my on the ground relationships take precedence. In others, I have to look at what matters more, my ideas or theirs. It’s an inner landscape, and I should be allowed to have it. I often choose between being self and other-aware.

….because a lot of my inner landscape is me emotionally bleeding out to find others who’ve had similar experiences and say, I know how that feels. I have worn that scar on my skin…. because maybe someone in my real life has never had my experience, but someone in China has… and can look at my situation more objectively than I can because they’re not in it or of it.

I need people that disagree with me, call me on my bullshit… to gently argue with me to get me to see something they do.

Personal blogging is a mixed bag, just like me.

Splitting Up (But Not Together)

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Last night I watched Ellen Degeneres’ new show, Splitting Up Together. She’s not in it, she’s the producer. So, I expected a comedy about a family struggling to keep it together despite divorcing and trading off kid care. Every week, mom and dad switch places. One lives in the house, one lives in the garage. I laughed a lot, and I will definitely keep watching. What I didn’t count on, however, is crying so hard I wanted to curl up into the fetal position and eat an entire package of Oreos™ while mainlining Diet Coke.™ For the record, I did not. It was This is Us-level stabbing into emotional wounds, but perhaps it’s for the best. It does feel amazingly cathartic.

As most of you know, I am estranged from my wife, and have been for years now, but we still have a domestic partnership in Oregon that says we aren’t. The recording of our entire relationship plays in my head constantly, and not because I ever want to reconcile. That part of my life is over, and I am looking forward to the chapters that are coming and excited I got a fresh start in a new city. That part is solid, and I don’t feel like I’m still in love with her, or pining, or any of those things. But I do feel empathy for her and all that went wrong, all the things I should have taken responsibility for and didn’t, and all the things I thought at the time were her fault and absolutely weren’t. I can’t live in regret, and most of the time, I don’t. What is true for me is that I am absolutely split myself. I don’t regret the actions I took to completely get away from her, because I know myself. I would have kept trying to make things work whether they were wanted or not for years upon years. I’m an empath. I feel my own and others’ pain so deeply that it’s like walking around with an open wound. But at least it’s clean. So, therefore, the split comes from wishing things could have been different and being utterly amazed at how they really are. Both of those things are true, and I can live with cognitive dissonance for the rest of my life if the past is any indication.

I can’t speak for Dana, but what I believe happened is that both of us took our eyes off the ball, because we had been taking care of each other for so long that it never occurred to either of us that something could happen that would make us not. That fact does not make us special. I think it’s universal for half the population. The television show just reminded me of it by playing Ben Folds’ The Luckiest while the husband reexamined something he’d done to wound his wife, realizing that he’d lost her even though she was right there. I’ve had that feeling since, oh, about fifteen seconds after we broke up. I know for certain that I might find someone else, or I might stay ridiculously happy as a single person, because either way, life is what I make it. That being said, there will never be another relationship like Dana’s and mine. It will be quite different, hopefully for the better, because I won’t settle for less. I think it’s okay to realize how incredible something was and love it without wishing time would go backward. I think it’s okay to think, wow. I really messed things up without wishing to make the amends necessary to put a relationship right. Sometimes, you just have to let relationships rest in peace, but rumination is necessary to keep from making the same mistake twice. I also treasure just about every memory I have with Dana, but don’t wish to make new ones.

Originally, I really hoped that our separation would be so good for us because it would ultimately lead us back to each other. Now, I think that what was meant to happen did. After some time had passed, I realized that there were fundamental issues we’d never solve, especially if I continued to write, and absolutely no amount of threatening me would have ever (EVER, not in my five dollar life. Die mad about it.) made me give up the relationship with Argo. I could redirect a lot of energy, but my boundary was don’t make me stop talking to her altogether. I am still continually proud that I stood up for myself, not an easy task for someone so Type B I’m the poster child.

I hardly have hard lines at all, but that was one of them. Just an absolute deal breaker. I wouldn’t let her isolate me from a life line, because at that time in my life, she was. Especially because she wasn’t geographically close to me, she could listen more objectively than anyone else in my life. Two things about that…. the first is that I loved her because she had no horse in the race. The second is that she was my safe place, not ours, but I am absolutely certain that she would have been had Dana put in the effort. She either didn’t or wouldn’t, a mystery that I can’t and won’t solve. I am sure it is my fault in a lot of ways, but in others, it’s a choice she made and I had nothing to do with it.

For me, it was like Stedman saying to Oprah, I will lose my shit perpetually if you don’t stop talking to Gayle…. maybe not a fair comparison because it’s not like Argo and I had ever taken a road trip, or even shaken hands, but letters go a long way (literally and figuratively). It’s not exactly logical, but it’s how I felt and I take nothing away from it. Logic is not emotion and vice versa. Trying to make it so (see what I did there?) has never worked in the history of the world.

I needed them both in different ways, as is how it should be. I never should have had to think about giving up one for the other, but Dana lost. You don’t get to say truly shitty things to me and then not give me a place to vent about it to get perspective, perhaps even realizing that it wasn’t that shitty, just a piece of reality that I needed to check. Argo was no stranger to calling me out on my bullshit, which is exactly why you need THAT friend in the first place. Who else would I have let get away with calling me a judgmental dickhead and laugh my ass off about it rather than sulking in a corner?

I know me. We’ve met.

Of course there were other issues that led to our demise, but I don’t want to talk about them, because they were problems that stemmed from what I believe was on Dana, and that isn’t mine to dissect.

What is mine is what I own, what I did to make things fall apart.

I can’t heal the split between us, I can only heal the split in me. But that won’t ever mean forgetting how much I absolutely adore Dana’s spirit, because my love for every one of my relationships is written in marble, and my anger is written in sand.

It has done me well to remember that……………..

I don’t get many things right the first time,
In fact, I am told that a lot.

I was The Luckiest.

The Next One, Cont.

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

My review of Pancake Money did get published, and I couldn’t be happier. I also got some great feedback from the editorial board for next time. It was about organization and flow, but they also said your review was well-written, thought-provoking, and insightful. I’ll take it.

As I told my editor, I think I was just too careful in a lot of ways, because I didn’t want to spoil anything. Writing a plot summary seemed like a bad idea, only because you never know which string you pull will unravel the whole sweater. It’s not that plot summaries are bad for any book…. just this one, and other thrillers like it. Something I think of as innocuous might lead the reader to figure out “whodunit” by chapter 2…. and Finn Bell did such a great job of intricately weaving this mystery that I’d be mortified to ruin it for someone else. See, what happens is…………………

The best part about the book is that pretty much anyone could be the murderer. There are clues that point you in all kinds of directions unless you are critically thinking and just trying to spoil it for yourself before the end; this is something I definitely do not recommend. As I said in the review, just enjoy the ride. You’ll know soon enough. Even then, you won’t want it to end. It’s a cool little world Bell has created.

I will say that the priests being murdered are killed with exquisite detail. It is quite grisly if you’re not used to reading these types of novels. I remember that I almost threw up while reading Dan Brown’s Angels and Demons, because one of the murdered had earth shoved down his esophagus. Or, at least, I think it was A&D. Dan Brown’s novels all run together for me. It’s a formula that’s made him millions, though.

I’ve read so many thrillers by now that the queasiness is not the issue here, Dude.

It feels good to have another one under my belt. I’ve already got the next book picked, but I want to finish Dead Lemons (another by Finn Bell) first. It’s another thriller, so I’m thinking it will only take me a couple of hours to read it. When you are so high on adrenaline, pages turn themselves. The protagonist/narrator in Pancake Money makes an appearance, and I can’t wait to find it. Apparently, he’s had quite the career change, going from Detective Bobby Ress to Father Bobby Ress. How this happens, I’m not sure, and that’s part of the fun.

Please, please, please buy these books. I MUST BE ABLE TO TALK TO SOMEONE WHO ALREADY KNOWS WHO KILLED WHOM!!!! My editor hasn’t started reading, and I want to be all like, “CHRIST, WHY HAVEN’T YOU FINISHED IT YET! I HAVE NEEDS, WOMAN!”

But I won’t. I’ll just spend that time pining for a screenplay, because Pancake Money would be a very good movie if it was done right, and by that I mean the exact interpretation I have in my own head, and if it is not that, it will be a bad movie.

I have needs.

The Next One

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I just submitted my review for Pancake Money. My editor and I reworked it a bunch, so I’m pretty sure it will be published. I am less interested in impressing the review board than I am my own editor, and not because I don’t care about them. It’s that my editor’s standards are much higher than theirs. If I can make her say this one looks good, then that’s a pretty solid guarantee I’m golden. I liken it to the law- going with the state that has the most conservative interpretation so it passes a liberal one easily. However, that does not mean that when I hit “Submit” my heart doesn’t drop into my stomach. It’s not that I’m worried. I just hate waiting. TELL ME NOW! I’m not so much with the patience.

I’ve also chosen the next book, a YA sci-fi in which a kid is thought to be autistic because he’s hearing voices…. but those voices are supernatural and end up giving him powers through touch. I’m really trying to choose a different genre each time, because I don’t want to get good at only reviewing one type of book.

I also like being introduced to a wide variety of authors. Finn Bell, the author of Pancake Money, is not only the best author I’ve read out of the books I’ve reviewed, but the best one I’ve read in probably a year.

I got in touch with him through his web site and told him that the book was so incredible, I thought getting it for free just because I was about to write a few measly words about it was stealing, so I bought it for my editor as well. He responded by saying he’d give me the next one in the series free for an Amazon review, and damn if I’m not completely hooked on that one, too.

It starts off at a Murderball game with a paraplegic protagonist. For the measly sum of six dollars, you too can have both of these books. I highly recommend dropping everything and buying them RIGHT NOW….. mostly because I want to discuss it with you and not worry about spoiling it….. LIKE I DID TO MY EDITOR in a complete #dumbassattack. I was so excited to talk to Finn that I forwarded her the conversation. What followed was a heart attack of an e-mail with a subject line in all caps that read “DO NOT READ THE CONVERSATION WITH FINN YET!” Luckily, I got to her before she opened it. Or, at the very least, she put my heart back into rhythm by lying to me. Whatever.

I’m having a bit of a hard time today, because I don’t think about the divorce that often, but today it’s eating my lunch. Dana and I worked together at an Irish pub for just long enough for me to know that our dance in the kitchen worked wonders. Every second in the kitchen counts, and we could have entire conversations with our eyes. Thus, St. Patrick’s Day is just a goat-ropin’ clusterfuck of memories that invade my conscious mind, when most of the time, everything that has to do with that relationship is buried. I need it that way. I’m not trying to disengage from my memories because I don’t care; it is quite the opposite. I care too much. I am reminded of Passover…. Why is this night different from all other nights? In a way, that answer is simple. I should be at “our old familiar place, you and I, face to face…”

What is it with me and Billy Joel references?

The part that’s complicated is “our” pub is 3,000 miles away. There’s no way I’d be there, anyway. It’s a moot point, so bothering to think about it is just taking away from being in the present. It, like all the other thoughts that drag me into the past, will pass. I just have to wait it out, time accelerated by the busyness of reading.

Onto the next one…….

 

 

Maxwell House Max

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

This morning I am sitting in the sun room with a large cup of Maxwell House™ Max, a new product that has 1.75x the amount of caffeine as a regular cup of coffee. I have some errands to run and chores to do, so I don’t feel bad about front loading a lot of chemical fortitude. If I had to take a wild guess, brewed coffee is getting its ass kicked by energy drinks, and this is basically “shots fired.” I like it black with a good amount of Splenda,™ because there are a lot of chocolate undertones you miss if you add creamer.

Plus, it’s not very expensive. Coffee can just be a beverage again instead of a lifestyle choice. Even I can’t pinpoint the percentage of my income that has gone to outrageously expensive beans, but I guarantee that it’s astronomical. That being said, I do save a lot of money even with buying expensive beans, because it’s still cheaper than going to a coffee shop and paying for one cup at a time.

Sometimes I marvel at how we got here- that the market will bear $3 for a plain cup of coffee. I save a little bit at Starbucks, because people give me gift cards all the time, and because I’m a Gold Member, I get free refills on coffee & tea. Because of this, I have learned that Venti is Italian for “too lazy to get up.” Also, pro tip- SBUX coffee is so much better if you buy the beans and brew them in your own coffee pot… two reasons. You can make it to your own taste, and you know exactly how long it’s been sitting there.

I’d like to support my local indie coffee shops, but since I get gift cards to Starbucks, free coffee is too good to pass up. One $15 gift card will keep me in coffee for two weeks.

However, I am guessing that you don’t come to this web site to hear me extol the virtues of coffee… well, at least, not all of you. You want to know what’s been going on in my life, and I haven’t updated you in a while.

Samantha has signed up for cosmetology school at the Aveda Institute, which is 223 feet from the Gallery Place/Chinatown Metro stop. She’d never taken public transit before, so she wanted me to go with her on a “dry run” to make sure she knew where she was going on the first day. It was absolutely adorable, really. I don’t know anyone who is better at “winning friends and influencing people,” so not only did we get where we were going fairly fast, on the way back we made friends with the bus driver… well, she did, anyway. I just sat back and interjected into the conversation, as I am wont to do. He told us that he was from Haiti, and he was about my age, so I asked him, you don’t have to answer this if you don’t want to, but did you come here to escape Baby Doc? He said, and this is a direct quote, how the fuck did you know that? Get off this bus. He made a big show of opening the door. It was a Slumdog Millionaire moment as I remembered that my dad was a missionary in Haiti in the ’80s.

Then, a couple of days later, we had a wind storm that sounded like a freight train, blowing the side door open at our house and blowing debris and branches all over the ciy. So far, I only know of one person that died, a six-year-old who was hit by a branch in just the right spot to cause his mortality. In terms of history, one of the trees that President Washington planted at Mount Vernon was knocked over, as well.

Everyone in our household stayed safe, and we didn’t lose electricity… even though the wind at National Airport reached 70mph. As Ron White so eloquently put it, it’s not that the wind is blowing, it’s what the wind is blowing. He was talking about a tornado, but the point is the same. You might be able to outrun the wind itself, but not the car bumper it’s carrying.

I am now reading my second book for review, an advance copy that’s not even on Amazon yet… I suppose you would say that I’m a beta reader, because this is far past first draft work. I’m not far enough along in the book to tell you if the story is better than The Reel Sisters, but I can tell you that the writing style is much more advanced and closer to the fiction I’ve enjoyed before I started reviewing professionally.

I’m hoping my editor sticks with me, because even though I can’t send her a copy of the book (I’m sworn to secrecy), she can at least tell me if the review is good enough for publication or to go back to the drawing board.

As I told her, no one in formal writing makes it on their own…. or they lie. When my first review got published, my e-mail to her said, we did it.

This web site is absolutely not formal writing. It’s just whatever I’m thinking that day… and the very next day, I might say the exact opposite. Sometimes I’ve changed my mind. Sometimes it’s just cognitive dissonance in which each idea is true to me and I carry them both.

I don’t have a problem with thinking two opposite things at once. It’s like love. You never forget that your partner is an amazing part of your world, but that doesn’t mean that you don’t occasionally fantasize about smothering them in their sleep and collecting the insurance money when they haven’t taken out the garbage like you asked them to do two days ago.

Because I’m single, I get the pleasure of being annoyed at myself for those things. I can’t decide if that’s better or worse. Probably better, because I haven’t broken up with me yet…. even on the days I wish I could, like when I’m really mean to me before I’ve had my coffee.

The FDB

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Fanagans’ Daily Briefing

Getting into the spirit of living in DC………

  • I can’t decide if I am more or less afraid of Donald Trump being impeached. There are just too many people we’d have to get rid of in the line of succession before we reached the legal definition of “a reasonable person.” The news that Mike Pence thinks we can end abortion in America is what did it for me, because he’s not going to make it happen by creating a social safety net for poor mothers. If Republicans were actually pro-life, they’d be lined up around the block with bottles and blankets for the children living in poverty right now. The classic line about not creating a government safety net is “that stuff should be taken care of by private charities.” It won’t, because charity donations are dependent on a good economy, and even then, there’s no guarantee that people will donate enough.
  • Jared Kushner having his security clearances revoked is the best news I’ve heard in a long time, because he never should have gotten them in the first place. That being said, it literally makes no difference because the president has no qualms about saying whatever he wants without a filter. Well, I guess it does make one difference. Bad things happen to people who leak Top Secret information to ordinary citizens, and it only has to happen once to get on intel’s radar. Additionally, I didn’t mean to or I didn’t know is completely invalid. Idiocy and malice are treated exactly the same way.
  • Since the idea of arming teachers has been tossed around, one has accidentally shot themselves in the classroom, and one has barricaded themselves into a classroom, waving a gun to keep the children out. This is obviously a brilliant idea, as is Florida’s idea to budget $67 million to give teachers hand guns. Thinking they should probably start with pens & pencils….. maybe some Crayons. If they want to get really crazy, why not raise teachers’ salaries to six figures, because without them, we can’t do anything else. Before you can run a Fortune 500 company, my guess is (and I’m just spit balling here…) you have to learn how to read at some point.
  • I’m starting to hope that Eli Pope and Jake Ballard exist.

Fallout 3 -or- Blowing it Away

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment
washington_monument_fallout3
View from the top of the Washington Monument of the Capital Wasteland

This morning I woke up with a headache and nausea, how my depression and anxiety present. I was a psychosomatic ball of nerves because I couldn’t put my finger on the problem. That’s always the worst part- feeling crappy and not knowing why.

I didn’t have to wait long, because Facebook always sends me notifications that there are memories on which I might like to look back. Today is the memory I’m calling “Fallout 3.” Three years ago, Dana and I announced our separation, literally blowing our entire world away, the one we’d spent seven years building.

If you’re going to build a life with someone, it wasn’t a bad one. Today I am not mistaking the part for the whole. I’m employing the 80/20 rule. 80% of the time, we got the marriage we both needed & deserved. It’s the 20% that curled my hair. I think what’s making me ill today is that the divorce was the second worst thing that has ever happened to me (my mother died in Oct. of 2016), mostly because a lot of it happened at my own hand and is therefore also the worst thing I’ve ever done. It takes two to tango.

There are so many things I know now because of reminiscence that I didn’t think of then. Some of them would have helped us navigate not breaking up. Others presented facts that I’d absolutely made the right choice to let the past lie. For instance, I wish I’d apologized more for my behavior and made more efforts to change it. Also, I didn’t realize how much Dana’s DUI affected me- just how angry and miserable I was that it happened, and how I covered it all up because I thought Dana needed more support and not less… not realizing that I needed someone to support me. It was a serious lapse in judgement on her part, because it would have been so easy to take the bus or get a taxi. You can take a taxi through the drive-thru at Taco Bell. I’m sure of it. I would never in a million years say that this #dumbass attack meant that Dana had a drinking problem. Everyone has those moments they wish they could take back. She was just being cocky about driving, which happened every single day. It made my life a little bit harder, because when Dana had her license taken away, she was working graveyard at the airport and I drove her for three months straight. Being completely sleep deprived made me awfully cranky at the driver ed football coach in the front seat.

I think that was the first time a fissure happened without words to articulate it. It was under my skin, but not apparent to me or anyone else that it was happening. Later, we moved to Houston so that Dana could get an alternative certification to teach, because in Oregon, all teachers need a Master’s degree. There is definitely more than one program out there, but Dana got rejected from the one she wanted, and took no steps to either find another one or get a different job. She didn’t need one. I made enough money that I could afford to keep her in the lifestyle to which she’d become accustomed. 😛 It’s just that the problem was bigger than that. Sitting in isolation prevented her from building a life outside of our little world…. and my support system was no help. My boss told me that I should get Dana pregnant so at least she’d have something to do…. which turned into fantasies of kicking him… hard. My work life suffered because of everything that was happening at home, because I am terrible at compartmentalization. And there we have fissure number three.

I skipped over fissure number two, because the third one started in Portland and carried over. The second one was all Houston, all the time. Remember in my marriage article when I said that the cardinal rule of marriage is to say to the world that you are creating your own family, forsaking all others, and not to let your partner get hung out to dry with your first family? Well, two things about that. I got hung out to dry with both of our first families. With Dana’s, it was hard for her parents to conceive that we were married in the first place. With mine, I specifically asked Dana to keep a confidence for me at about 5:00 PM. By 9:00 AM the next day, she’d met with my family without me and spilled said confidence all over the place. Breaking rule #1 was almost it for me. I broke up with her on the spot, and told her she had enough money to do whatever she wanted to do- get her own place, go back to Virginia, whatever. Just get out.

Then, I couldn’t make it stick. I couldn’t throw away our long history of taking care of each other, and we were back together within two hours. However, I’d already had it UP TO HERE, and we were never able to regain all the ground that was lost.

At the same time all of this was happening, my truly emotionally destructive side started to show in a major way. I am excellent at making horrible choices, especially when they seem like great ideas at the time. I desperately needed a wine-and-yoga-pants girlfriend, and I found her…. it was wonderful right up until it wasn’t. Because of my abused nature, wires got crossed- I’d never been so intricately tied up in someone who was all the sweetness and light I could ever want, because I did not understand the nature of friendship between women. Over a short amount of time, I became more and more starry-eyed when I thought of her, and it wigged her the fuck out…. because even though I didn’t understand, she certainly did…. that women’s friendships were deep and close, and why would there ever need to be romance involved? Because it’s “how I was raised.”

I told her flat out that the reason I was giving her this information was because I wanted her to be sensitive to it- to hold me at arm’s length because I was having trouble with true sensory overload. I didn’t expect anything from her- I expected me to manage me. It would just take time. There was no reason to act, not ever, because I was wired for monogamy and she was wired for men. Because I was so down, the tiny bit of dopamine that “new relationship” provided was enough, because even in friendship, there’s that explosion of “oh my God you’re the coolest person ever.”

I wanted to be absolutely transparent about all of this with Dana, and I still can’t decide whether it was the right thing to do. It was all my stuff to deal with, and I felt like Jimmy Carter, not Bill Clinton. But she was a rock star, saying, when it comes to Argo, I am not threatened. I feel like I have more than proved my worth. It was so true I could have taken it to the bank and cashed it…. and, of course, because she presented herself as being so cool about it, I told her a lot more than I ever should’ve. Argo became a threat with which she thought she couldn’t compete, but there was never a game in which either one was going to win or lose.

Even so, Dana’s self-confidence slowly began to deteriorate because of this perceived slight, and I take that all on myself. It was my responsibility to work on myself, and I thought I could handle it on my own. In short, I couldn’t. Jeannie did not go back to the circle couch. It got so bad that Dana was convinced that Argo was in love with me, she just couldn’t say so… that over time, she’d eventually bend to my will. It was crazymaking. While I can be absolutely charming and adorable, I’ve never been powerful enough to change someone else’s sexual orientation. By that point, I was writing these absolutely desperate e-mails, such as could you send Dana a 12-page report with graphs and pictures on how much you like dick? It would help. Thanks. I was trying to inject humor into an awful situation, because that’s how I deal…. and then I laughed until I farted when Argo changed the subject line to “Bullet Points.” One of them was I am not a threat to your relationship. I knew that, but Dana didn’t.

We couldn’t even deal with the simple problems we were having without Dana launching the RPG of Argo somehow…. because everything came down to the fact that I was already out the door, because “Argo and I loved each other.” It brought new meaning to the word “bullshit.” Every single discussion that could have been resolved in five minutes became sulking that lasted for days.

I kick myself every single time I remember that in one fight, Dana broke the physical barrier between us by pushing me over, and I just went off like a chihuahua with a God complex. It ended with Dana’s substantial fist smashing my glasses into my face, which left a bruise under my eye and phantom pain for weeks, because again, it wasn’t just physical, but psychosomatic as well.

Berating myself doesn’t just come from my role in our physical fight, but the fact that I was STILL willing to stay married after that. It was insane. I just thought to myself that after the flood comes the rainbow, and eventually we’d get our happy ending.

Not so much, actually.

It’s not an accident that I moved to DC afterward. Our divorce ceased to weigh on me, but the loss of her friendship certainly did. I figured that even if our paths weren’t parallel, eventually they might be perpendicular, because running into each other a couple times a year was completely different than trying to rebuild what we’d lost.

In the end, it didn’t matter. I was butt-hurt that she didn’t reach out to me over Christmas break after posting on my parents’ Facebook pages until I realized that e-mail goes both ways, and told her that if she wanted to see me, I wanted to see her…. that if she didn’t, it was fine with me, because I had my own stuff to work on. It’d just be nice to catch up…. or something to that effect. I’m paraphrasing.

I did not get an e-mail back from her. I got one from her attack cat, who said not to contact Dana at all through any means…. and that was that. If this was the kind of behavior I could expect from her, I didn’t want her in my life, anyway. It was nice to receive a clear message to let go, and not be held by emotional strings. I celebrated quietly and patted myself on the back. Everything was going to be all right.

It was time to go back to my house in Megaton, while the waters of life washed over me…. knowing for sure I purified that water myself.

Feisty Cherry Diet Coke

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Feisty Cherry Diet Coke is my least favorite so far. It’s really good because it tastes more like the cherry in Wild Diet Pepsi, but there’s a black pepper tasting note that makes me cough. It’s hideous, truly.

It’s kind of like falling in love and realizing too late that you’re dating a meth addict.

In other news, I now have a new roommate. I haven’t met her yet, but I have heard that she has a cat. I have also heard that she’s crazy in a good way. Sounds right up my alley. I might not love her- that remains to be seen- but I can love a cat…. especially one in which I don’t have to feed or change litter. That’s just God right there.

Dana did me a solid by keeping Dodger for two reasons. The first is that I didn’t want to wander around DC trying to find an apartment that took cats. The second is that he was already bonded to Dana’s cat, Minerva, and splitting them up didn’t seem right to me, either. The only thing I regret is that Dodger was a gift from my mother, and I’d do anything to have him back just based on that fact. However, I’m still not in a place to have a pet, and Dana’s is the best place for him in all the world. I am sure that he is spoiled beyond all measure, and in more ways than I would ever think to or care.

Dana is a cat mom. I’m all like, it’s a cat.

I have always joked that the reason our relationship didn’t work out is that there are only two types of people in the world… pet parents and pet owners, and they do not mix. I take laughs where I can get them, okkkkkkk……..

The funny story about myself that I have for today is that I applied for a job with the APA, the American Psychiatry Association. However, they did not explain the acronym on the job posting until the exit page for the application, so I told them that I was a good writer and thought it would come in handy for research and summarization. I can only hope that they don’t think that’s weird, because I thought I was applying to the style manual. #dumbassattack It brings tears of laughter to my eyes every time I think of it. I just have to remind myself that there are plenty of times I’ve felt dumber.

I’m also coming up with ideas for my novel, Fish Ralph, because an idea dawned on me last night that had me really excited. But, of course, I am not going to tell you what it is…. just that it is a truly unexpected turn of events. I’m probably not going to win a Newberry award, but I’m having fun with it.

For the writers in the crowd, I’ve switched over from Microsoft Word to Storybook, which has sections for character development and dividing chapters. It’s brilliant because of its organization, and I highly recommend it for novelists… not so much for non-fiction. It also has the ability to switch between different writing projects so that if I come up with an idea for -frog.- or have a wild hair for even newer works, I can jot it down quickly.

I am also a big fan of Google Keep for ideas on the go, and on my phone, I can dictate instead of type. My handwriting, as I’ve said before, is a carpal tunnel pile of garbage even I can’t read if I put it down and come back to it later… and it’s a bummer having to retype ideas if I hand write them, anyway. I’d rather have the text in a format I can use.

In trying to find the link to -frog.-, which I wrote long ago, my search results returned entries I hadn’t thought about in years. I read them all. Some of it was truly touching, because enough time has passed that I feel like I’m reading someone else’s work. It doesn’t feel like bragging when you don’t even recognize the work as your own. It’s more akin to thinking, “wow. I wish I could write like that….” and a true feeling of humility that I’m the one that has been given this gift. I’m also astounded at the measure of truth I’ve been willing to put to “paper.” It is only mine, not universal, but I know for sure that it does resonate with a few who’ve stood in my shoes. In other ways, I am dumbfounded that I was ever so stupid to publish how I felt about that. That is an x-factor.

I have learned that my love for Argo knows no bounds, but is no match for the hatred I have of myself (at times). I am proud to be who I am, but that has come along relatively recently in the ebb & flow. My self-esteem has been rebuilt after disaster, and for that, I am grateful. It is amazing what forgiveness and mercy can achieve, both internally and externally. The fire in my lantern has returned, hopefully strong enough to light the paths of others, because they gave me strength when I could not return it.

I edited that paragraph above, because it originally said Dana & Argo. Now, it doesn’t. That’s because I read about a phone call between Dana and her mother, and Dana and the younger brother of a friend. One was about “appeasing the crazy,” the other about “not taking on projects.” It brought everything back regarding how little she thought of me and what I would do with my life while not exactly being the model of achievement herself. She was in no place to judge, and she did, both harshly and without remorse.

I also saw Argo’s loving words…… I don’t believe in God, but I do believe in you.

I put both of those perspectives in my pipe and smoked them, and by the end of staring into space trying to decide what I thought, I decided that Argo’s words are and always would be worth more, because who doesn’t love someone who thinks that about you? Who, in this world, can’t? And, of course, by love I mean that I would run to Walgreen’s for her in the middle of the night without complaining once. I am sure that she already has people to do that for her, but it is my definition of friends who love you. I might even be willing to throw in some chocolate, depending on how generous I’m feeling that day. 😛

I know for sure I’d be willing to throw in some Diet Coke, just for the love of God, not Feisty Cherry.

Twisted Mango Diet Coke

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

It works. I don’t know how it works, but it does. These are not two flavors that would seemingly go together. Perhaps it’s the fruit and the cinnamon/ginger combo of cola. Maybe I’m just high on antihistamines and decongestants. Whatever it may be, I would definitely buy it again. Keep in mind, though, that my palate is different than most and I like a wide variety of weird sodas no one else will drink. You have been warned, so don’t @ me, bro.

Speaking of drugs, I’m not sick, per se. I just have to take Zyrtec and Sudafed every day because my allergies are that terrible. It seems as if no matter where I live, it’s the worst possible place I could’ve moved in terms of ever-present spring fever, even in the dead of winter. Maybe one day I’ll move to Vegas or Phoenix to settle my “stuffed up doze” (no, I won’t).

Tino, our handyman, is painting the bathroom and the bedroom next to mine, so perhaps I should splash water on my face in the kitchen. Water is the absolute best home remedy for allergic reactions, because it at least removes what’s bothering me from my skin, even without soap. I also take ibuprofen to relieve the pressure in my “mask,” although it probably wouldn’t hurt to get allergy shots and eat local honey. The honey trick is that your body naturally builds up antihistamines over time to whatever pollen is used to make it. Of course, the real miracle is finding someone who has local honey for sale.

A new person is coming to look at the bedroom we have for rent this evening, so I’m hoping for good things. Between the pathological liar, the heroin addict who overdosed (and is fine now), and the psychological torture of hearing The Beatles sung loudly and off-key at all hours of the night, I am looking forward to pretty much anyone else. Actually, it wasn’t just The Beatles, it was screaming obscenities and having my other roommate record it. The .mp3 was as clear as a bell, and the recording was made from the room next to mine on the other side of the hallway. All this is to say that finding roommates who are relatively normal has been rough going. Anyone can put on a good face for an hour, so an interview isn’t necessarily the best indication… but it’s what we’ve got.

I’ve lived here for almost three years now, and it’s becoming amazing how many people I’ve seen come and go in that short a time. I feel very lucky that I’ve seriously found a home and fit in very well. I’d like to continue living here as long as my landlords will have me, because it truly is like having a second family. As Sam has said, I’ve been upgraded.

My living situation is absolutely a miracle. The Nassers were the first people I called after doing some research on where I wanted to live, and I took the room sight unseen after talking to my landlord for an hour and a half on the phone from Houston. I figured that I could live anywhere for a month if it didn’t work out, so I wasn’t terribly worried about showing up at the Metro station in a new city and just rolling with the punches. DC wasn’t new to me, but Maryland certainly was. Alexandria felt like I’d never left Houston- roughly the same politics… city is liberal, state is conservative. Maryland is overwhelmingly blue. Even the conservatives aren’t that conservative. They might have fiscal responsibility issues, but they’ve moved past the politics of kindness. There is much more in the way of statewide health care, both mentally and physically. Being able to get health insurance the moment I moved here without a job was a hug from Jesus. Though I didn’t move here to sponge off the state, having a safety net until I landed on my feet was legit #blessed.

That being said, when I switched to insurance through my employer, my deductible and copays went up dramatically. Anything would be from all free, all the time and drugs at a dollar a bottle. It has just reinforced my belief that universal health care does indeed work, and nothing gets me on my soapbox faster than thinking about the millions of people bitching about government insurance while on Medicare. Seriously, people. Connect the dots. Not realizing this makes you look one French fry short of a Happy Meal.

In terms of needing insurance, I keep myself healthy, albeit in horrible shape. My weight is under control, but I couldn’t run up two flights of stairs at gunpoint. I’m getting better through walking everywhere, but it’s not enough. I’m not getting my heart rate high enough for true cardio, and I’m not lifting weights to strengthen my muscles….. and everyone knows by now that cardio is rule number one. 😛

However, I do need to go to the doctor once a month for psych med checks and to a therapist four or five times a month. With state-run health care, all of that is free. Private insurance has a copay for drugs and generally offers 13 therapy sessions a year. I am steadily making progress on old trauma, but still need help with visioning, values, and coping mechanisms. It’s not just about where I’ve been, but making sure I get where I want to go. Everyone needs that to some degree. Most people don’t think of therapy when it comes to reaching out for more than they’re currently achieving, but I liken it to sports psychology. Ambition and drive go by the wayside when I feel terrible about myself, because I am a perfectionist to a crippling degree. If I can’t do it perfectly the first time around, obviously I am a straight up failure, no matter how many people I love provide evidence to the contrary. I hear it, but it doesn’t sink in…. I think to myself that they’re just being nice. I know how and what I truly am, which is a disaster. Therapy helps keep things in perspective, that my disorder knows the very best lies to use against me so that they are incredibly vivid and believable. Every negative thing that has ever been said about me is my true nature; everything positive is just humoring me.

Anxiety, especially socially, has a huge impact on my life. I know from past experience that if I am not paying attention, I could really hurt somebody emotionally, so I hide. I only get together with the people I love when I’m feeling up to it, which is always a quarter to sometimes. The hardest is social contact needed to maintain isolation, like shopping. I’m not even friends with these people and won’t have in-depth conversations, anyway, but cocooning in this one is strong. I have taken self-reliance to an extreme, whereas previously, I was entirely too dependent on what everyone else thought. Because I still can be, I just avoid those situations so that I am always listening to my inner landscape of thoughts and feelings. It is not necessarily a bad thing, but no man is an island… from what I’ve heard.

When I am in my right mind about things, I know that I have incredible gifts to offer the world, and indeed, have. But there are days when I just need to back off the nerve that says I’m worthless and just have a Diet Coke and a smile.

The Pursuit of Happiness

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Lately it seems as if I am regaining the life energy that has eluded me for so long. It has nothing to do with taking care of the things I must, but those that are optional. Part of it has to do with the passage of time. I believe that it is true that in some ways, time heals wounds, but not in others. This is because for every year that passes, there are still flashes of memory that take me back to that time and place in my life. Grief rushes like a river, and there is nothing, even the passage of time, that will erase it. The best example of this is when I have a momentary brain lapse and forget my mother has died and pick up the phone to call her when I have good news, or feel bad and just need her to give me some of that absolutely unconditional love that mothers feel. For my mother, and I’m sure this is universal, no matter how much I’ve done wrong in my life, it isn’t my fault, and everyone is hurting her baby. This is not true, of course, but having that one person in your life who thinks it at least boosts the ego so that it rises from toilet level. No amount of time will heal the moment when realization hits that she’s gone so permanently.

What time does heal is jealousy of people who still have their mothers and the want to isolate because you just don’t want to talk about anything with anyone, because you can’t stop yourself from any conversation coming back around to how sorry you feel for yourself. You don’t say it in words, but the axiom is always there in the spaces between them. As a musician, I feel that emotion rides on the rests. As a writer, emotion lives in the elipses………. and thus, the reason I use #prayingonthespaces so often.

As time goes by, the emotions change with it.

Life energy returning, for me, has been amplified by simple joys, like going to bed early and rising before the sun. I have always been a morning person, and life is harder for me when I ignore that fact. It’s not that I necessarily enjoy waking before dawn, it’s that my natural circadian rhythm requires it. I thought for years that I was a night owl, because I worked in restaurants and my “happy hour” was 0200. When I really examined myself, I found that the most energy for me arrived around 0500, especially when I got a full eight hours of sleep beforehand. Waking fully rested at dawn is now my favorite thing, because I still get the quiet of the night without having to stay awake for it. My eyes open and I smile, as well as laughing easier and more often.

It also makes my mental health manageable, both from the correct amount of sleep and following what my body says I need. Along with medication, I avoid the ups and downs between carpet-sucking depression and hypomania. If I do feel hypomania coming on, the best treatment I’ve found is diphenhydramine (Benadryl™). I sleep deeply despite feeling “up,” and Bipolar II ceases to be as much of a thing, for which I am sure everyone around me is grateful.

For me, returning to sunshine (or at least, partly cloudy) has been a series of cognitive behavioral life hacks which allow for post-traumatic growth, instead of perpetuating rainy days. The life hack I use most often is lowering my expectations to make simplicity complex. A cup of coffee with the right amount of creamer and Splenda can light up my whole day. A one line e-mail asking how I am makes me feel like a million dollars. A friend inviting me for lunch brings excitement to my eyes and the wrinkles around them turn upward. My muscles release tension when I’m paying attention.

Life energy has returned in full force because I’ve made myself happy without waiting for it to arrive.

#prayingonthespaces

Highs and Lows

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

During self-imposed exile to the basement, I watched a couple of movies that I’d wanted to see for a while but just hadn’t put forth the time and expense to go to the theater. The first was Baby Driver, which is one that I will watch over and over, running the first 20 minutes on repeat. I recommend that whatever you’re watching right now, ditch it and see this movie. You’re welcome.

The second is Call Me By Your Name, and I have issues.

In Italy in 1983, the age difference of the two young men was completely legal… but it sent shockwaves of anxiety through me because it just didn’t seem ethical. It wasn’t the age difference that bothered me. Seven years isn’t noticeable at all when one partner is 30 and the other is 37. It was the timing. The younger of the two men was 17. The older, 24.

Keeping in mind that I have no leg to stand on when it comes to talking about ethics, the movie tapped into some of my deepest and most memorable scars. If you’re post-college, no matter what the age of consent may be, I’m still not sure you have the right to mess with a teenager’s feelings, much less have a short summer fling with them and leave them in tears… then call back a few years later only to say “I’m getting married… is that okay with you?”

If I had known that’s what the movie was about, I wouldn’t have watched it in the first place. I’m trying to get those pieces of scar tissue stronger than they’ve ever been. Therefore, I would never intentionally trigger myself back into that place, because it’s dark and twisty there.

The thing I’m so much better about now than I have been in previous years is snapping myself out of it. I have learned tips and tricks for changing my own mood, and I use them. The axiom is true that hurt people hurt people, so even though I am not entirely rid of pain, it’s at least manageable. What I Know for Sure™ is that I never want to be in a position where I’m speaking from a place of pain to people that don’t deserve it. I’ll never be able to get mad at the one who does, so my work to do is making a thunderstorm back off to rain, then sprinkles, then partly cloudy. I don’t think that anyone whose been hurt in a similar manner to me would say that we ever get to sunshine, because even with all the coping mechanisms in the world, there are still triggers that make moving pictures dance across our minds as if no time has passed at all. Then, the moment passes, and all is right again.

I can’t speak for anyone else, but for me it’s an indication that I need to change course mentally when I feel it physically. A knee-jerk reaction to a trigger is generally a headache or feeling like I’m going to vomit. It’s so attractive.

The thing that is altogether different now is that I recognize what is happening rather than wondering what it could possibly be. A major part of being angry and, in turn, stuffing it down into my socks is that I couldn’t articulate what was going on.

It was legal. But it wasn’t ethical.

I had issues.