Moving Parts

April 8, 2024 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Leaving my home is starting to get daunting, but not in a way that’s leading to shutdown. I’m packing up all my stuff just fine. It’s more the change emotionally, which it always is with an INFJ. I often feel like I am just one giant walking nerve in society. My work is to direct the positive energy coming toward me, because I pick up on all the things people are going through and it weighs me down. That is not said to guilt anyone, just to say that some people are built to soak up emotions like a sponge and some people are built to be afraid of that. My empathy leads me to a dark view of the world, because I’m the person that’s safe to use as a stranger on a train.

So, people will think nothing of a five minute conversation in which I learn they’ve been raped, kidnapped, beaten by their parents, they’ve just lost a spouse/parent, or whatever the biggest secret they have might be. I hear “I’ve never said this to anyone” a lot. It is mine to manage, because since these are random interactions, it’s not like we’re going to work this out in therapy. I assure you that the people of the DC Metro lead amazing lives for all they’ve been through in childhood….. and this is limited to no particular line. Though I will say that I am on the Red and Blue most often.

I have that face that says “tell me anything,” which I often think of as the jackass magnet on my forehead. I used to think it was their responsibility to know that their story has power and what it would do to me to hear it.

Now I realize most people don’t even know they have a story.

So, it’s my responsibility to wash the negative energy off of me. I do that in many ways, mostly cooking. I try not to cook without listening to something, because I don’t want to feel someone else’s emotions while I’m trying to concentrate. I feel other people’s emotions all the time, because in public, I pick up on the energy around me. At home, I read the news.

The world is suffering. How much more or less today is of no consequence. I just mean that the stories of the people on the ground in Palestine, Lebanon, and Israel are just as important to me as the couples I hear arguing in the grocery store. As an INFJ, I am often thinking about other people’s marriages in the checkout line. I would never, ever talk to anyone about this, like “hi! I have some excellent points to make!” It’s just the personality of an INFJ to try and solve everyone’s problems all the time because we want everyone to live in a utopia that we think we can drag into being all by ourselves.

We are a deluded people by nature, because our eyes aren’t on the present, but on the what could be…… that “what could be” is often more idealistic than most people can process, and because of my autism, never in a way that makes sense to a neurotypical mind. Being a writer is the only way I know where I can lay my thought processes out as they are, without filtering. Because what happens then is that people become interested in the way I think, and it seems cool/foreign/brilliant to them. When I am trying to fit into every day society, I do not get the chance to lay out my thoughts the way I need for clarity and let other people judge for themselves what’s important and what’s not.

People who don’t know me as a writer have never seen me at full strength, because it takes so much more energy for me to fit into someone else’s order than it does for me to create my own. My alone-ness doesn’t translate to loneliness, because I think of my audience as the other half of a conversation. If I run out of things to think about that are rolling around in my own brain, I have a shit ton of fiction prompts and I’m not afraid to use them. I am not using my strength as a writer to avoid people, I communicate easier in writing than I do in person. I feel like more of my real self when I’m at my keyboard, because it takes away all my shyness and hesitation at having a conversation. Because of catfishing, I know there’s an equal chance that you’re giving me the real picture of who you are, or you could literally be anyone. I have to trust that you are who you say you are, therefore I treat everyone the same. The Internet is the great equalizer.

For instance, it would not be unusual for someone to pretend that they were the president of the United States online. I’m sure people do it every day. So how do you know when you’re talking to the real Joseph R. Biden?

You don’t.

In the beginning, none of us were smart enough to catfish. I mean, I’m sure there was some of that, but we were all so excited to be on the Internet that it wouldn’t have occurred to us to have elaborate schemes for it yet. I cannot tell you how many heads of Fortune 500 companies I’ve met, how many famous musicians, etc.

It could have all been bullshit.

But what if it wasn’t?

Do you know what I mean? I completely suspend disbelief when I talk to people online and just join their reality, because I have absolutely no way of verifying whether what they’re saying is true or not. I just have to accept it. I know that I have met some very powerful people, but I couldn’t tell you who was telling me the truth or not.

So, the answer is to treat all people who tell me they’re powerful that they’re not lying…. it would make me a shitty friend to assume they were lying, and an asshole if I was later proved wrong. There are examples all over the Internet of people being the kind of idiot I don’t want to be, like people who criticize Stephen King’s analysis of his own books.

It is only when I think our lives are going to cross over that I start requiring any proof of any kind. If you’re just some rando who wants to shoot the shit with a friend at the end of the night, that’s one thing. If you want to start coming to my house, that is a completely different relationship and I am vetting you a different way. For instance, taking an interest in their field so that I have a detailed story of what they do (the more they drop details a propos of nothing, the more they’re telling the truth…… and truth doesn’t come on the Internet by asking for it, but by talking about other things. For instance, if someone has told me they work for a government agency, I won’t look it up. I’ll just listen to how they talk about it over the years.

It also matters who they are at home, whether I think I’d get along with them in a social setting, and how fluid they are with inviting me into their lives after they’ve already told me so much about themselves. Sometimes, the reason that people don’t want to get together in real life is that they can’t remember everything they’ve told you and they haven’t, so they’re afraid to burst your bubble. I won’t let it get that far off if the end goal is in-person.

I start asking for pictures right away, asking for a meetup quickly as well. It’s too easy to go too far down the wrong road with writing, and different when there’s absolutely no chance of you meeting on the ground because of the distance. It would take an astronomical sum of money for me to visit my friends, because most of them don’t even live in the US. Having friendships with other people who like to chat on the Internet isn’t time-based. All of our chat rooms were filled with “good mornings” and “good evenings” at every hour of the day.

You know intimately that you’re probably not going to meet anyone in Australia because that would require time and money, etc. So, the fantasy stays intact, no matter what it is. Most people don’t completely cover up their lives, they just massage it so that it looks better. I have never truly been catfished in which nothing was what it seemed, and I feel sorry for the people who have, particularly the women for whom it was dangerous.

Supergrover is by far the longest internet-only friendship I’ve had in terms of people who are integrated into my daily life. In the beginning, I’m not sure that either one of us went an hour without talking, and I’m not sure I ever really slowed down. 😉 Over time, it became as if I hadn’t felt something until I’d written about it to her, first.

That’s the most painful part of this whole process, to be honest. I am slowly making other things my touchstone, so that it doesn’t feel like something in me is missing if I haven’t talked to her. If you’ve had a relationship in plain text, it often feels as if the person is constantly talking inside of you.

I hate that she stopped. I’m allowed to hate it, and I do, with a driving passion. What I can’t do is reengage. That has to come from her, because we’ve reached our peace. She says that she does not want to get into a cat and mouse game with me, but I cannot see for her that this is not a cat and mouse game. I also cannot get her to see that she was the one playing games, because when she came clean with me, I celebrated it. Even though she was angrier at me than she’d ever been in her life, I celebrated the fact that she finally told me the words I needed to hear after straight up avoiding them and hoping I’d just figure it out on my own. The games stopped when she stopped hiding, and now I won’t accept anything else. Letting a relationship limp along under its own weight instead of putting it out of its misery is not my style. So, in essence, I resigned from her cat and mouse game, not the other way around. Not putting any more on her plate for her to be angry about was of the utmost importance to me, why I always felt so small around her. She didn’t tell me to take up less room, I just did and resented it because she got used to me taking up very little room and liked it that way. When I emoted, I was not allowed to take up any more room……. but nothing was wrong. All of that is now over, but I don’t hope for a future.

Next steps would be actually working toward something new, and I don’t think either of us is there…. maybe not now, maybe not ever. But what I do know is that like I’ve said before, it’s a strange feeling when your inner monologue is also someone else’s external monologue. That’s not guilting her, that’s not wishing for anything she doesn’t want to give. Those are just my feelings about the situation- that it would be hard to reconcile, but when it balanced we’d be rich.

Again, though, my way is to talk through everything. Her way is to avoid things and tell me I’m demanding, along with telling me that I’m the only one of her friends who ever has a problem with her. And I’m thinking, “how fake are your other friends, then? No one ever has a problem? Ever?” Meanwhile, she has plenty of problems with me, she just doesn’t want to talk about them and doesn’t want to let me go, either, because she knows she’d hurt my feelings either way.

I’m the one whose feelings she’s allowed to hurt, because I care that I hurt hers. She’s not just screaming into a void. For as many problems as I have with her, there is an equal annotated list on the other side, and if she’s talked to Michael or her other friends about me, I am sure there are several PowerPoint presentations on her desk entitled, “Why Leslie’s an Asshole, Part One.” Relationships are hard, and we’ve proven to the other that we don’t run. We hide, but we don’t run.

Otherwise, she would have stopped answering my Thu’um long ago.

The Postcard

April 7, 2024 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 2 Comments

Twice now Zac has traveled and sent me postcards from wherever he is. I am pleased by this, because he often writes messages that I’m embarrassed the whole house can see, but it’s all in good fun. At this point, I think it’s more for shock value…. or he doesn’t know that he’s sending a postcard to six people.

However, it’s always touching that he remembers me when he travels. He asked me what I wanted, and I told him a football jersey or a scarf from wherever. It’s my standard answer, because even if I don’t wear all my scarves at one time, I hang them up as decoration. I also asked him to bring me a specific brand of candy that I had the last time I was in Paris, which is not where Zac was, but in Europe you can find them quite easily. They’re sour gummy Smurfs. My dad and I had a couple of hours to wait where we were just sitting in a French hotel lobby. There are gummy Smurfs on the table. By the end of the wait, there were gummy Smurfs on the table. Anywho, if Zac forgot, it’s no sweat off my nose. I can find nearly everything I want off Amazon, and with American prices, getting things imported is really not that much more expensive.

For instance, red bush or honey bush caffeine free tea is one of my favorites. Locally grown is about $9.00. Imported directly from South Africa? $11.00. Locally grown and sourced is great unless you are changing the fundamental nature of how something is supposed to taste. Red tea grown in American soil just doesn’t taste right.

It’s the same with licorice allsorts. I’ll eat any brand because it’s available, but Bassett’s is the gold standard and again, maybe a dollar more than Gustav’s. I also like British hard candy, because Americans don’t like currants as much as I do (delicious in pancakes, btw, and they’re on the raisin/Craisin/nuts/salad toppers aisle at the grocery store (in little Sunmaid boxes).

I’m not really in the mood for fall food right now, but I might experiment because fall pancakes are so delightful. I make mine with pumpkin spice or apple pie spice, cranberries, pumpkin seeds, and lots of salted butter. I don’t need syrup. I eat them as soon as they’re ready. I stand over the stove when I eat most of the time, because that’s how cooks do it. I don’t need to save up pancakes to serve to other people, so I just make a few and start cleaning up the kitchen. They don’t have to stay hot to be delicious with that much butter.

Last night, Joshua Weissman taught me how to make popcorn properly, and it’s not something I would have thought of. Fry your popcorn seeds in ghee, because the water in the butter will turn the popcorn soggy. You can make your own or buy it, but the outcome is the same.

When I’m not looking specifically for movie corn, I bring it down a notch. I put popcorn seeds in a paper bag and pop them in a microwave (you don’t need to buy the pre-made packets. Popcorn seeds and a kids’ lunch bag are sufficient). Then, I just spray Pam or butter-flavored Pam on it to get my spices to stick. So far, I like Old Bay and Tony Chachere’s best.

Slap Ya Mama is even better, but you have to be careful with it because heat builds, and if you don’t specifically make a choice to miss you lips, the pain of capsaicin on your face will remind you not to do it again.

Speaking of which, this is why when I’m making a very hot marininara, more of a Diablo sauce, I use penne. Less chance for the chili flake to drag on your lips, like with spaghetti.

You also have to be careful and wash the oil off your hands with Dawn before you go to the bathroom. At least one of Dana’s culinary school mates did it to himself.

The only time I like capsaicin on my skin is when my arthritis is acting up. It relieves the pain in my hands quite nicely.

Cooking is therapy, particularly marinades or dry rubs with lots of cayenne and no gloves. I would stick my hand into a vat of Carolina Reaper sauce if I could. It was the easiest and cheapest way to stay sane on the line, because your hands effectively “get high” and you can function again, because the pain and strain feels like it’s much further away.

It feels like the pain is floating on your skin, rather than of it.

My rheumatoid factor is normal, so I think I can blame the kitchen for this much pain. But it’s not narcotics bad. It’s Aleve bad. Nothing sharp, just persistent. I have found that I’d rather take ibuprofen because a fresh dose more often is a lot better than your pain medication running out and you’ve hit the limit.

Take the limit on Tylenol seriously. It would not be approved today due to liver function issues. So, I’m careful, but I’m always on something for pain.

My official diagnosis, and I’ll have to get a second opinion on this….. but I’m damned clever…. is that I’m 46 and YMMV (your mileage may vary for those who haven’t been on the net since ’99). In my very humble opinion, no more diagnosis is needed, because by this age, some things work. Some don’t. I have not broken down, I have merely failed to proceed.

And I just have to Rolls with it.

Ok, so speaking of Rolls Royce, the reason they’re so unreliable is that they were never meant to be driven the way Americans drive them. England is tiny. They don’t put clicks on their cars the way we put on miles. OF COURSE a car is going to last longer the fewer miles you put on it.

I feel like I have lived my life putting more clicks on me than I can handle at any one time, and I’m at a crossroads as to how to accomplish that. It was important to me to be a military dependent so that my family could travel together, not that a relationship is made valid by a stupid piece of paper I couldn’t have til 2001, and even that was only in Vermont.

Editor’s Note:

When Kathleen and I got married, we planned a whole trip around it. We went from DC to Woodstock to the first town over the Vermont border we could find. Why did we have to drive all the way from DC to Woodstock, you might ask? We had tickets for Rent on September 14th, 2001. By the time we left DC, there were no hotels for MILES AND MILES. We were driven by 9/11 to take the trip anyway, and just circumvent NYC because we needed our benefits so bad. We knew everything would be booked. We did not realize that Woodstock would be the first town we’d even find a room. It was 0400. People keep saying “never forget,” but living in Alexandria and hearing the plane hit the Pentagon, knowing that we had Broadway tickets in New York that would take years to redeem…. it was all too much, and yet, we kept going. It’s one of the true “nevertheless, she persisted” moments of my life.

To say that Kathleen and I didn’t want to marry each other and did, anyway is not accurate, I don’t think. I think September 11th scared us enough that we realized we couldn’t be without legal documentation now that it was available. We didn’t rush into it as much as 9/11 forced our hands. In that respect, neither of us did anything wrong. We were not fools rushing in (by and large). We were fucking terrified and we earned that right. We couldn’t even talk to our parents for three days, and when I asked my dad if he thought we’d be safer coming home, he said, “no. Stay where the fighter jets are. They could hit Houston next.” It doesn’t seem like a logical target until you start thinking about crippling the “all bidness.” If Pasadena and Deer Park were bombed, it would take years and years to recover.

It’s fun to shit on those areas because it’s full of rednecks that fit the white male Texas archetype to a T. Unless they’re being really offensive, I enjoy good ol’ boys because it is exactly like standing out by the fence with Hank Hill. I’m such a writer that it’s not about cars or construction or whatever traditionally male topic is being discussed. It’s learning about those things while watching how men interact. I can honestly say that the reason I am so proficient with Linux today is not because I enjoyed Linux. I mean, I did, but that was secondary to sitting and talking with Luke and Joe while they worked. Joe was the system administrator. Luke and I were the content creators.

That’s how this blog started, in a roundabout way. I learned about web design and blogging in those early days- “Clever Title Goes Here” premiered in 2001 or 2, now that I think of it.

When I thought of the reason I’d put my blog start in 2003, it’s because I blocked out 2001-2002. It’s not because Kathleen and I were a train wreck. It’s that I gave my coworkers my URL, and this one guy at XOM decided he was the authority on homosexuality because he goes to church and all that, and would be passive-aggressively irritating at work, then leave comments on my web site that I should have reported to HR, but what the fuck would they have done in that day and time?

It really fucked with my head, which is why I don’t talk about writing at work anymore unless I know the person really well. And even then, just the barest minimum to introduce my audience to them. For instance, I doubt that Jaz from Alert Logic cares that you know she called me “prehistoric,” and I said, “why do you think there are so many dinosaurs on my t-shirts?”

“T-Rex Hates Pull-Ups” is my favorite.

I also don’t think that my coworker Jesse told me I couldn’t have any more candy because “you haven’t blinked since you got here.”

I hope that Aaron and Michael realize what soft spots I have for them, how we’ll always be connected because of our time together. Interestingly enough, Michael was Navy cryptography, so apparently personal and professional intelligence is a recurring theme in my life. 😉

It’s good to have a constant that’s so interesting, because people that write really good spy fiction have often been spies themselves. It’s not just John le Carré. There are lots of spies who choose to make their livings as a writer after they get out. For instance, Jonna Mendez and Tracy Walder write non-fiction. Alma Katsu and Ian Fleming are the general go-to in popular fiction. le Carré is not for beginners.

Again, reading le Carré is about actively wanting to know a TOM CLANCY AMOUNT about intelligence. I’ve said that before, and it makes Tom Clancy fans laugh. They know he’s going to be accurate down to a right and left wing nut. He’s like the Tolkien of DoD, and I have found that applies to le Carré as well. However, to me that’s adrenaline. For some people, it’s tangents that stop the story from progressing.

I like it when authors I genuinely enjoy do things that make the page count longer. Doesn’t mean it’s on purpose, as if longer means better. I just mean that if I find a world I like, I tend to want to stay in it for a long time.

For instance, I really like this world we’ve got going on between us. It’s not just fun for me to write, it’s fun for me to read. I lose the sense that I’m me once time has passed. The more I start to see the person I was rather than the person I am, patterns emerge and I can see them more clearly. It’s what made me see that I was better off with raising friends to partners rather than spending all my time looking for that one perfect person who completes me. I honestly got tired of waiting, because every time I’ve tried to have that fairy tale with someone, it has been busted for one reason or another. Whether it was their fault or mine is irrelevant. I didn’t try to understand all this to place blame. I’ve changed over the last decade because I saw that the perfect dream was unattainable because of my neurodivergent mind, and “you’ve got to dance with them what brung you” (title of a Molly Ivins book).

I adjusted my life to fit me, rather than trying to fit into others’ expectations of me, because they were built on a lie. It is not a lie that I have been consciously telling to myself so much as the impression I give to others and gets reflected back to me. It’s that my disabilities are not real. I am perfectly able, physically, mentally, spiritually, ecumenically……… grammatically.

Editor’s Note:

I often think of this meme in my head…. “you’re a terrible writer.” “Ahhhh…. but you have heard of me.”

I think what I’ve learned through my relationship with Supergrover is twofold now. The first is that if you are moved by some entries and infuriated by others, I am doing my job correctly. I am recording real life as it is, not trying to curate anything so that we all look like people that should be admired.

I stab the knife into my own chest harder than anyone else’s, because I will tell you all day how flawed I am, how I’m subject to red mist rage, how that kind of meltdown leads me into burnout, etc. I am not putting myself over as a paragon of anything, and that’s one of the things I asked Bryn, FLAT OUT. “Am I painting other people more harshly than I paint myself?” I check with her on this a lot because I don’t want it to seem like I just “go after people.” She said, “no. If anything, I think you go overboard in telling everyone every way in which this could possibly be your fault.” I laughed, because it’s always funny when it’s true.

I will analyze a problem six ways from Sunday, trying to figure out what it is that drove both our motivations in an interaction, because when I am interested in someone, I am interested in not only their problems, but keeping our relationship healthy as well. So, I love those friends that come to me with their problems, but also acknowledge that they are capable of being a problem, because they’re not always convinced they’re right, and they know them. They’ve met.

And even if I don’t like the person that they’re talking about, I will give objective advice, because you know what divides a friendship? Telling someone they shouldn’t love someone else. For instance, if Dave is being a twat to Bryn, I wouldn’t tell her to leave him because that’s not my call…. if I did, she might get defensive and that would be counterproductive to my PowerPoint presentation on why she should break up with him.

I’m only using Bryn as an example. Replace Dave with Michael and it’s how I feel about Supergrover as well. It’s not my job to make their calls for them, just to support them in whatever they do. And in fact, in the 10 years that I’ve loved Supergrover, I’ve realized that the most devastating news I could hear is if Michael didn’t want to be married anymore. I think they’re rock solid, I’m just saying that even though I was sorry I couldn’t be her everything, that didn’t make me stop wanting her to find him.

That’s the thing you learn about polyamory that you don’t know until it happens to you. When your definition of love stretches to include red and yellow strings, all the jealousy stops and you begin to enjoy hearing your partner’s stories with their other partners. One of the things that I did with both Kathleen and Dana that stopped us from really growing as a couple is that I both lived and worked with them. I am not making a case for poly here. I am making the case that when we spent that much time together, we didn’t really have any differing experiences with which to converse. A lot of conversations were repetitive because so were our days.

There are ways to fix it if you’re mono, the repetitiveness, but I find that I’m happier when Zac says something like “let me tell you about this cool thing I did.” I want him to be happy in his other relationships, and to console him if they end. It’s the same with Bryn. They both have the capacity to be whomever they want to be, because I’m not going anywhere.

All I ask them to respect is that this is my slice of life, and they do- graciously I might add, because the three of us do manage it. They don’t have editorial control over anything, but I do discuss boundaries on what I can and can’t publish. My rule with every relationship is not to report hearsay. So, conversations between Zac and I are valid. Conversations between Zac and his partners are private, because I wasn’t there.

I only want to write about the ways in which our lives overlap, and hope that everyone knows that when a relationship is painful to me, I’ll say so. But I also won’t let that stand as we progress back together. I am not attacking anyone if you take everything as a tapestry, all the weaving of my own opinions as to how life is treating me….. and how I’m treating it. It’s how I make people come alive- I chart day to day and then everything looks different. My entries from five years ago are not the entries I write now. Not even close.

That’s because in real life, everyone contracts and expands depending on their self-esteem. Mixing your self-esteem and someone else’s opinion is a toxic mess. It deregulates your emotions to an enormous degree. I’ve made that mistake several times in my life, and I think that’s what’s different about me now. My self-esteem doesn’t go up and down every time someone talks to me. If someone doesn’t care what I think, I definitely don’t return the favor. But I’ll remember everything about the interactions between us that I both loved and hated.

That’s how you fall in love with a writer. They don’t remember dates, but they remember how the air smelled the first time they met you. How a picture struck them just right. How a smile becomes a lifetime. They can portray you as you; they can make you laugh, scream, and cry in a way that no other person can because they’re not just your lover or your friend, but your favorite book as well.

It is said that the two worst days in a person’s life are when someone starts writing about them…………. and the moment one realizes they’ve stopped. I know this is true because people will be angry as SHIT at me, and because they only want me to paint them as angels, swear they’ll never speak to me again. Then, a few years later, they’ll be mad that I used to write so beautifully about them, and why don’t I write about them anymore? This comes with absolutely no recognition of the fact that they emotionally destroyed me the last time I did, so why would I be eager to repeat the experience?

I wouldn’t be so connected with Supergrover if the relationship hadn’t been necessary to both our mental health. That there’s a reason I didn’t just block her and move on my merry way as if nothing had happened. But her refusal to talk about any of that is not my problem, because I’ve offered. That’s all I can do.

She doesn’t come off in my blog entries like a villain, or at least, I hope that’s not what you pick up. The truth is that people have problems, and I only own half. I am constantly trying to figure out how much I am responsible for a problem, not trying to cast blame on someone else. I am deciding what is mine and what is yours, and it comes across as judgmental because it is. First of all, I think like a judge. I am trying to balance everything, not trying to guilt people. I am trying to find out the facts to be able to make a decision, and yet it comes across as an attack even though I am extraordinarily precise with language.

My pet peeve is “you made me.” I have never made anyone do anything in the history of their lives. Therefore, I make a conscious effort to say “this is how your words made me feel,” because that is casting judgment on how they’re treating me in the moment, not who they are as a human being. Weighing facts, not people’s worth.

I’m a line cook. Therefore, lots of my friends have been mentally ill or substance addicted, and/or have been to jail. I’ve found more in common with them than I’ve ever had in common with someone who does everything right. A person’s value is not kept in holding them to the worst mistake they’ve ever made.

I’d rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints. The sinners are much more fun.

Resigning from the Game

April 4, 2024 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I should have known that this is exactly how things were going to turn out with Daniel, but I felt like it was important to keep the promise to myself- to see whether rehab had indeed cleared his mind and whether we could make the plans we made fit a future now. I did not want to be the person that abandoned their partner while they were in the worst part of their lives. I couldn’t be that person to my partner, and I wasn’t. I can be proud of that.

But in retrospect, there was a red flag on day one that I couldn’t ignore, and I ran from it, because I knew that I had made a horrible, horrible mistake unless Daniel was telling the absolute truth, and there was no way of knowing whether he was telling the absolute truth from this many miles away. He said that he was still drinking, but it was night and day now. It’s not the thing you want to hear from someone that’s been to inpatient if you know even a couple of things about alcohol and the brain. It’s not that they’re not telling the truth. It’s “are you willing to gamble?” Because maybe they are. Maybe one or two beers every once in a while is their new normal. But I’m not willing to gamble.

I was for a few days. Seriously. I wanted to know how Daniel thought, whether any of his thought processes had changed over the year we were apart, how he treated me now vs. how he treated me then, etc. Absolutely nothing has changed. At no time did he consider my feelings before he went right back to saying that we were starting over while also treating me like a fiancée, so which is it? Do you want to pretend that we don’t know each other or do you want the intimacy that comes with being a partner? I don’t share all my thoughts and feelings with just anyone, and I found out that he cannot handle them.

Even after having a talk about the way I process emotions and the difference in the autistic brain, it was still all about how I’m just so mean to him and “putting all this stuff on him.” Meanwhile, he does not have any answers for my questions and no indication as to what “putting all this stuff on him” even means.

I told him that no person worthy of me would ever spend a minute trying to make me think that my feelings don’t matter, and then I blocked him and walked away, while also telling him that I wouldn’t be back. I already have two people in my life that are willing to open up to me and share with me. I don’t need to fight through to be heard, and I have discovered I won’t.

I wanted a partner to build a life with, because Bryn and Zac already have life partners, and that’s unlikely to change. And by that, I do mean that Bryn is also my life partner, but with best friends, it’s a little different. I mean that she’s my off site document repository, because she knows my files better than I do.

Also, I know this sounds crazy, but the idea of marrying your best friend is starting to seem so much more sane than marrying your romantic partner. Like, why would you place something as important as marriage on a relationship that’s dependent on sexual attraction? It doesn’t make sense to me, but that’s how it’s done….. for most people.

Daniel told me that he wanted to be my favorite person, and I told him that he was…. because I didn’t have the heart to tell him that the position had been filled in 1997 and 2013, when my heart expanded to give huge palaces in my head to three women, not shoving Bryn and Dana away in favor of anyone else. When my definition of love got bigger, I did.

There are so many follow up questions that Daniel never asked, just treated me like the classic sitcom nagging wife. I have never been in a relationship with gender roles before, so I made no attempt to understand any of that. If he wants to marry a nonbinary mind, he’s got to understand that I am his equal. He can’t just dismiss my concerns; I will walk and I did, because I will not learn gender roles for anyone.

It was easy for the world to revolve around him, because only I had to respect his time. We had one conversation where we were actually focused on each other, and that was on the phone. The rest of the time, I sat and waited because he said he had time to talk and then everything that could possibly get in the way made it where our responses were 10 minutes apart. I couldn’t focus on anything because I was caught between thinking that we were having a conversation and not knowing whether I should wait for a reply or not. When I said this was irritating, he jumped all over me about that, too, when what I wanted was “sure- I’ll tell you when I’m doing something else because I also value your time.” If I have someone’s divided attention, I’d rather you finish what you were doing and come focus on me. Because it means that you won’t really focus on me. My words won’t resonate because you’re too lost in something else, like having a conversation with someone who is listening to a podcast with the TV on in the background.

I told him that I was excited about the future, but that didn’t mean that there weren’t things to talk about. That throwing problems out on the table and seeing what they look like in the light wasn’t a bad thing. He said, “you’re right, of course.” Then he proceeded to berate me for acknowledging our problems.

In the past, this would have made me start trying to learn all the ways I can move in a relationship that won’t piss someone off, giving up the parts of myself that make me unique to please someone else. I’ve been there so many times, and it doesn’t help anyone. I’d rather keep finding other people who have also gone through that transformation. It says “I am not threatened by another person having feelings.”

One of the things that really got me was the incredible double standard. Daniel told me that he gets so busy with his writing that he disappears for days, so I thought nothing of it when I was in shutdown/burnout mode; I didn’t contact anyone. I can’t think of a single person who has ever chastised me for that except Daniel, as if I should have somehow divined that he was not okay with going a day without contact from me. Although I probably would have said something to the effect of “what I hear you saying is that it’s ok for you to dissociate, but when I do it I’m a bad partner.” What’s good for the gander has to be good for the goose, because again, I am not into being the classic definition of a wife.

He said something about “trying our best,” and I thought, “that’s not what I’m going to remember about you. So far, you’ve taken every problem we need to work out in order to be together and shut down like a steel trap when I wanted to talk about it. You see me as blaming you…. so until you see me as a partner that wants to work with you instead of someone who’s ‘laying all of this on you,’ I can’t help you.” I cannot live with someone who’s in Fantasyland right now, and it seems like he’s changed his mind about moving to Maryland, because originally, we were all going to find a place somewhere between DC and Baltimore, because Daniel is overqualified to work at Johns Hopkins. It’s fine that he doesn’t want to move anymore, but he could have said that instead of just invalidating my feelings. I was talking about Avery moving in with us or something like that…. I can’t remember what. But I said something about DC and Baltimore and he said, “or Dallas or Austin.” I never want to have that conversation again, because it was like he was doorknobbing me. I would never seriously think about moving back to Texas unless the circumstances were dire.

Plus, I don’t like Austin. I just don’t. It looks like Portland, because they wanted to be all weird and stole all their slogans, then just like Portland, big industry moved in and it wasn’t the same place to live anymore. But in the end, to me it just feels like a city full of bumper stickers that say Keep ~~Portland~~ Austin Weird, and The People’s Republic of ~~Portland~~ Austin.

They were also the first Texas city to get a Voodoo Donut, but you will never in your life know how weird it really was. The FDA shut them down for making doughnuts with NyQuil and Pepto Bismol in them, as well as caffeine. You aren’t OG Voodoo Donut unless you’ve been drunk at 3AM on Burnside….. before the second location, before the hype, before the notoriety.

That’s how I feel about Portland and Austin. The donuts will never taste the same, but Austin can imitate the feeling of those donuts………. poorly.

There are better donuts out there that have taken the place of Voodoo in PDX, but for a while Voodoo was this enigma.

I also don’t like moving at all. It was great when Daniel was headed up here already, that we’d talked about him moving here about this time last year. I realized that his PhD put us in the way of that, but I wasn’t daunted. However, I did think that it was very unfair of him to change plans without me and not let me know up front that in order for us to be together, he’d also like me to “come home.” I could have saved him a lot of trouble. That’s not a doorknob conversation. That’s a conversation you have to be up front about, and that’s my whole problem with Daniel and the many other emotionally unavailable people in my life. They call me demanding when I lay my feelings on the table and expect them to do the same so that I know what problems I need to work on in our relationship, too. But, if you think that the problem is always me, it’s not a relationship anymore.

I have always been the unseen child. I do not have to be the unseen adult, unless I just want that. I thought I did. Turns out, I had to let go of a lot of things to make me realize who I was. My destiny is not to belong to one person, but to belong to many so that I never have to put all my eggs in one basket ever again. I don’t want my husband or any of my partners to feel less important than the others, because they’re all a part of my family.

It is cooking, where we all make each other’s lives more interesting. For instance, I love hearing about Bryn’s journey through all her relationships. I love opening up to Zac and knowing that he’s capable of going toe to toe with me. I didn’t reach out to Daniel in a time of need, but abundance.

Daniel had been in a poly relationship before, so it wasn’t like I was springing anything new on him. But he didn’t want to talk about his own boundaries, only that he never wanted me to pit him against anyone else. There’s no way I would or could do that. It would be comparing bananas and oranges and giving up one rather than realizing that they’re both great in different recipes.

I didn’t want a relationship where Daniel lived in Fantasyland, thinking I’d wait around for him all the time while he did whatever he wanted while also wanting to be married while also not wanting to compromise on anything while also saving things up and exploding.

You have been reading about that relationship with someone else on this web site, which made me especially gunshy when I saw that shit coming towards me again. Blame the person for bringing up a problem, find a way to turn it back around on them, and be extremely stubborn about being vulnerable so now I always feel bad about bringing up this problem because I know this is how you’ll react every single time.

So many women learn the land mines because they feel they need a partner worse than they need to stand on their own two feet. I’m not that person, and I never will be.

I know you have your shit. I know I have mine. The difference between us is that I’m willing to tell people the truth as I see it. As in, “this is how your words are making me feel.” Then, they choose how they respond. When it is immediately defensive, I know they’re not ready to compromise on shit. They can’t even be open and honest with themselves, so why would they be with you?

When you know yourself really well, you don’t feel the need to get defensive all the time, because you know that you’re just as fallible as the other person. It’s always a matter of working out compromises with other people if you want a relationship with them. But if your reaction to another person telling you what they need from you is “there’s absolutely nothing wrong with me; how dare you,” then you’re in for a world of hurt. That kind of defensiveness takes years to work through in therapy, and you’re not a hospital for broken people. It’s too much to take on, because you’re either walking on eggshells or “starting fights,” with absolutely no in between.

Again, it took two hours for Daniel to go from “I’m having a bad day” to “you know what? This isn’t worth it.” It took him two hours to blame everything on me in my sleep because I just wasn’t attentive enough. I wasn’t attentive because neither was he. He showed me how to act. I wasn’t going to give him anything he wasn’t willing to give me.

Also, Zac and Bryn and I don’t talk every day, so it wouldn’t occur to me to treat Daniel differently unless he asked me to, and even then, I’d feel like a fuckup when I didn’t want to engage because my autism was struggling that day.

For all Daniel’s talk about understanding autism, it didn’t translate to actually improving communication, because I told him how I don’t social mask and he continued to treat me exactly the same…….. while also saying he got it.

In short, it was too much of a roller coaster, and it was easier to cut him loose and move on, knowing that I am the person I said I would be, and I will never have to play these childish games again.

Every Day Blogging

April 1, 2024 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

It’s starting to stress me out that you can’t answer a blog prompt against, because I don’t really have a topic to start from each morning. Today wouldn’t have been a good one, anyway, because I don’t have any more morning/night rituals now than I did the first time around. The point still stands, though, that it was night to have a jumping off point and a tag everyone starts with every day, #dailyprompt and #dailyprompt-x, the number advancing every day. Well, since I have both tags for all of the prompts from last year, that’s why they already look like they’ve been answered this year. I’m sorry I’m on about this, it was just the main thing that kept me from being lazy and not posting something that day.

But yesterday wasn’t about laziness. I skipped yesterday because I was in burnout mode. I was more overstimulated than I’d been in a long time, because my schedule was all messed up. I needed time to recover and I took it. I slept, mostly. I am not as young as I continue to think I am.

If I have learned nothing from going to psychiatrists and psychologists over the years, it’s that medicine and therapy absolutely work and are valuable……… but so are sleep and sobriety. I don’t practice total abstinence from alcohol, because it’s okay to enjoy it once in a while. It’s just that if I am taking an antidepressant and drinking a depressant, I have not made any forward motion.

When I was in the restaurant business, I drank a lot more because that’s what we did after work. But, then after Dana got her DUI, we went to all these classes on medicine and alcohol (legally required for her, I just drove). It sent MY brain on fire. When I realized what was actually going on in my brain when I drank, I had a light bulb moment. It just didn’t feel like an every day sort of thing anymore.

Therefore, when I worked in a pub here in Silver Spring, I rarely drank. Occasionally I took them up on a beer, but they also had Maine Root Mexican Cola. That won nearly every night. It was a pub. None of the drinks we served had ice except for soda. With the choice of a room temperature beer or a cold soda with ice after a 12 hour shift on grill, it was a quick and easy decision. Give me the cold one.

I have shifted my focus into accommodating who I actually am instead of who everyone told me I was. Whoever I thought Leslie Lanagan was, I cannot say from before. I can only say that I saw the expectations in front of me and found all of them easy for a short period of time, and all of them untenable long term. I learned who my real friends were when I stopped social masking, and Doc was the first person who recognized it before I said it. “Do you think the authoritative part of yourself comes from you feeling more confident in confiding in me?” Yes, 100%. The more you allow me to be me without social masking, the more I want to talk to you. The more I want to open up to you.

I can only speak to the fact that the more I get to know myself, the more I learn how wrong I’ve been. Treating myself as perfectly mentally stable and perfectly physically able, just lazy and a drain on society has nearly killed me several times. I know that because I can only treat myself that way so long without realizing it’s not producing results.

Once I started being kind to myself, I could be softer, as well. That’s because I was living under everyone else’s expectations of what I should be able to do. I was not raised to be neurodivergent, and in some respects, not raised to even be fallible, either, because that is opening the kimono. The parish doesn’t get to live in the pastor’s house.

I didn’t “choose to air all of this out on my web site” re: Supergrover. I decided she wasn’t worthy of listening to my story anymore, because she’d told me she was tired of it. That did not mean there was no more story to tell. She just asked to stop listening to it. There’s so much context she’s missing, and what bothers me is that she told me that I’d aired some things she wanted to keep private, and in no way did I know any of that. When I started explaining, I went by the timeline of her e-mails, especially the ones where they said that her stories weren’t mine to carry anymore, that everyone already knew. She didn’t tell me any of it- no anger, no disappointment, no hurt, no anything. She just let it fester and wandered further from me. The thing I needed most was intimacy, but she didn’t want to give it to me. Not my call. It’s perfectly valid. But so is my hurt if that is her response. I am not saying that she did anything wrong. I am only saying that it is not her responsibility to have my reactions for me. If she wants distance, it’s just a different way of ending the game than I would have done it, but I get the same result and cannot be angry about that.

She says it’s a lot, that every letter is so dense. And at the same time, I don’t think she’d be as obsessed with reading my letters if they weren’t so deep and chewy. What brought us together has driven us apart.

Therefore, I went to my only other safe space in writing….. the part where it’s just me in my room, thinking to myself. I am writing these as letters to me in the future, which is why I cultivate this web site as what my friend Kristie called “my pensieve.” I am a really rare breed, I think….. someone who’s willing to let another person read their autistic mind in real time. I think it’s important, because generally, autistic people aren’t raised to be autistic. They know how their neurotypical adults handle the world, but they have no clue how an autistic person does it. And then add to that the large number of older women who are getting diagnosed now because it was entirely missed in their childhood due to having social masking beaten into them early. That social masking, those expectations, are what make an autistic person feel like an alien.

That’s because I am an aggressive taskmaster with myself, authoritative and stern without love because in addition to not giving myself empathy, I am a relentless perfectionist who doesn’t give a fuck about my feelings. I haven’t cared how bad I’ve made myself feel for not being perfect since I was born, because that’s how the outside world has treated me for years as well.

With autism/ADHD, you never “get it together.”

Hopefully Not a Darwin Award

March 30, 2024 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

If you could have something named after you, what would it be?

Generally, things are named after you posthumously, and I don’t want to be given an award for the most original way to die, like accidentally rocking a Coke machine onto myself….. that’s a classic. In DC, I basically have the option of a museum, a statue, or a gravestone. However, the plots around Gore Vidal are already taken at Congressional cemetery, and I don’t live in The District proper. I’m not sure there are any other requirements to live there. But it wouldn’t matter. I’d rather be cremated because I don’t see anyone needing my body after the doctors with it (I am an organ, skin, and donor). I also don’t have a special attachment to one place, but a lot of them.

I’d like to become one with the Columbia River Gorge, because no one is going to rename that after me, but it’s where I’d like to spend eternity. And if you put me on the Washington side, I WILL KNOW. I don’t know how I will know that, but I do know that I’d take a lot of chances with ghosts, but I’m not one of them. I could outsmart me easily, because I create the logic. I don’t have to follow it. I am sure it is something that seems like a joke to me and yet is the source of all my real problems. I don’t have to follow what I say because I know what I think. I forget about the translation layer between neurodivergent and neurotypical people that makes me automatically sound immature and a little bit crazy because I haven’t thought it out. I’m like “The Doctor” in that way. People spend time with me and wonder how I get so far on half plans. It’s because I’m not threatened when they don’t work out or change. I just assimilate the new information into whatever the plan was before.

I realized I was struggling without Daniel because there wasn’t someone to social mask in the mornings. There was nothing to build anything with if we didn’t take the raw materials with which we started and put in the work. I don’t want to throw raw ingredients into a stock pot and hope for the best.

He told me that some of the things I said made him not want to engage. I said, “that’s fine and we can table it, but these are the important conversations to have and we can’t ignore them. Problems keep revisiting you.” He agreed with me and we moved on. I am not trying to make anyone feel bad, I’m saying, “this is the problem. What do you want to do about it?” Most people do not think of it as a problem unless it affects them. They rarely care when their actions affect you. What’s good enough for them is good enough for you in all cases, regardless of how their first family communicated.

I’m guilty of the same thing, but I’m trying to learn from my mistakes. I do not need everything to be doom and gloom all the time, but I do need for people to be emotionally mature and tell me how they feel instead of attacking me for bringing something up. It’s an easy and cheap shot that I will never let anyone get away with ever again. It’s the equivalent of “it’s not that bad. You’re imagining it. You’re dwelling on the past.” No, I’m telling you the feelings that are coming up for me now because of what happened in the past, and we can either deal with it now, or we can deal with it forever, because if this is always a one-sided conversation and it is important to me, it becomes a dealbreaker.

Yesterday, Daniel asked me how he could show me the most amount of love. My answer to that was twofold. The first is that if he really loves me, he’ll want a housekeeper before I move in…. one of those jokes that’s not meant to come off as a joke because I’m autistic/ADHD and I don’t remember anything going anywhere and I don’t create messes, I maintain them. They are piles, but it is my emotional support detritus.

Here’s why “emotional support detritus” is a thing. The first is that few houses come with built-ins where you can see anything inside. Every cabinet has a door. The neurodivergent brain has to have everything out in front of them all the time, because they do not create memories of where they place things. It’s a need for iron structure and an inability to create it with ADHD. I am a Virgo. Back to school has excited me since the 80s. I have bought every planning system known to God and man. The thing that has worked best is my original Palm Pilot with Graffiti 1. I never got the hang of Graffiti 2, and I am still butt hurt about it.

I might look on E-bay to see if I can find a Palm Pilot and a dock, because the form factor is so much smaller than my iPad and “Scribble” is harder to get used to than I thought it would be.

Interestingly enough, Graffiti 1 works really well on the Apple Watch, but it would be better if the Apple Watch supported the Apple Pencil because it’s so much easier to hand write with a stylus than it is with your finger, especially one as touch sensitive as the Apple Pencil.

I write like it’s Graffiti 1 anyway, because it’s easier than having to get all my letters perfect. It knows what I mean…… except for voice dictation. I have better luck when I’m on Bluetooth headphones, and I cannot be very far from my phone, because I think the voice files are actually processed on your phone rather than your watch.

I want an Apple Watch version named after me, because I have some good ideas. What if CIA gave us those batteries that lasted months without a recharge, and a chip that would fit inside a watch and be so powerful that you don’t need your phone for anything. I have a feeling that would involve creating a larger memory ROM, but surely if they have enough room for as much as they do now, they can put more RAM on the board. The biggest problem would be overheating, but if they can make tiles for a space shuttle to guard against heat, they can probably design something like that to absorb heat in an Apple Watch.

The battery is the main thing, because Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and a 5g connection all take a lot of battery at once, and that’s before it starts processing apps. The one I use the most is “Find My iPhone,” because I can make it make noise from my watch….. unless my phone is dead…. then I’m on my own and that’s not a pretty sight. Although because of the Apple ecosystem, as long as I have a wi-fi connection, I’ll still get iMessage on my iPad. I will still get iMessage on my phone, as well as SMS.

Although I think if I ever get a new Android tablet, I’ll want it to have a slot for a SIM card because I won’t use anything for texting on an Android but Signal, Wix Secure Messenger, and WhatsApp. I use Facebook Messenger because it’s easy, but it’s not encrypted, either. If you want to chat with me on either of those platforms and already have my phone number, please do.

On my author page at Facebook, you can leave all kinds of comments, and the more engagement I have, the closer I am to being paid. It also makes it where anyone can message me, you don’t have to be a follower (although it would be cool, no lie). Sometimes I wonder if I should do an FAQ on Facebook as an introduction, but I don’t know what people would ask. I’ll answer anything, you just have to respect that “no” and “that’s too private” are valid answers.

Anyone is welcome to contribute, from my biggest fans to my biggest detractors. I do not think I am the expert on anything but myself, and your stories are your stories. I often get so many likes on a post that I don’t know what triggered the reception. Is it the time of day, is it my content, is it my characters, etc.?

The biggest surprise is being more popular in other countries than I am here. I have a huge following in India and the UK. Plus, I have flags all over the world where I know who they are. If you don’t want me to know who you are based on geography, I would suggest a VPN. 🙂 I have so many people addicted to this web site that know me in real life, because they’re in the position where they don’t want to be written about, but they inhale everything I’ve written as truth because it is interesting and presented in a way that hopefully everyone can understand it. That I try as often as I can to use universal examples so that I’m not attacking anyone. I am laying down the facts as I see them.

Very few people are willing to stand by and let themselves be written as a villain, because that’s how they see themselves in my writing- not that I intentionally portray them that way. I have made it a point to record every up and down in every relationship, so that you don’t see me as paining anyone as perfect, not even Jesus.

Speaking of which, I am watching a docudrama on Netflix called “Testament,” and it’s all about Moses, starting with the story from when he was a child. The documentary part is interviewing all kinds of scholars from the Abrahmic tradition because he’s the only “character” that appears in all three holy books. There is a lot more information about him that way, and the Jews in the conversation have been very enlightening, because Jesus was a Jew. It’s fun learning about the traditions he would have been taught as a child, before he started branching out……. because in order to understand the future, you have to understand the past.

I can absolutely believe that as a historically known INFJ that his divinity started the moment he started arguing with the rabbis in the temple when he was 12 years old. That his divinity does not come from resurrection, but about being able to go toe to toe with the best theological minds in the world when he wasn’t even a man yet. His bar mitzvah was still a year away.

To me, I believe as Pete Rollins has said, that “a/theism is the greatest love story ever told, and the truth is in the slash.” To me, theology is not the end goal, whether there is a heaven and a hell, whether there is an afterlife at all. It is the ritual and the argument.

I got sidetracked when I was talking about Gordon Atkinson, who used to blog as “The Real Live Preacher,” as if he was a carnival act. I have never related more to anything in my life. He really opened up to me in those essays, and I understood myself so much better after reading him. I didn’t grow up to be a pastor, but I grew up with a pastor dad. It was hard not to feel like “The Real Life Preacher’s Kid,” because when you are a public figure’s family, you’re all in the fish bowl together……. and sometimes, two things happen…… severally or jointly. The first is that people think preacher’s kids are somehow better than everyone else. I mean, I am, but let’s not talk about Lindsay. (KIDDING)

I only say that because I really bought in. Lindsay was a walking wild hair, and I envied her for half my life because of it. Still do on days when she has to be “on” and I’m in burnout mode. I do my best work by standing behind her and just listening.

I did not have the strength (and sometimes still don’t) to have equal relationships with people by calling them on their bullshit. She learned it at three. I learned it at 45. There is a slight difference between those two ages, and I have to say that it probably comes from birth order. I was almost six when she was born, because her birthday is in June and mine is in September.

Therefore, I don’t have a lot of memories of what it was like to be an only child, but I do have quite a bit more than someone whose younger sibling was born when they were a toddler. I was blessed to have a sibling, because I was that kid. I talked about different stuff than most kids. I had the vocabulary of some adults by the time I was two or three because no one ever talked down to me. I was expected to keep up, and I did. Before Lindsay was born, I didn’t have that mostly neurotypical kid to intervene on my behalf. My main interest and what served me all through school was finding an outcast and sitting next to them, because I only wanted to talk to one person at a time.

Everyone thought it was because I was a preacher’s kid, and I’m sure that’s definitely part of it, but it’s not the whole story. I hate small talk, and if I was only sitting with one person, it wasn’t a good bet that we’d be doing small talk for very long.

That’s how Daniel became my boyfriend in 2nd/3rd grade. We were both “that kid.” We had more to talk about than basic 2nd grade shit, because we were both way beyond our peers with reading and music.

I will say something again that is meaningful to me about choosing Daniel. Not only did he know my mother, she taught him music for at least a year. So, that meant that Daniel was in some of my school plays with me, and my mother trained his voice. I can’t wait until we have our own house that will fit a piano, because I want to hear Daniel play my mother’s piano, as well. I am sure that it will become four-handed duets in no time, because I can’t keep the left and right rhythms going at the same time. If he doesn’t already play piano, I can at least teach him “All Blues” by Miles Davis.

Yes, Jason Moran. I know you’re terribly impressed right now. It is almost like I’m the savant you missed in taking on students. A pity, really (it’s got an easy bass line and like two or three chords). Although I’m pretty sure I’ve heard him play keyboards in his music, so I might get an accompanist out of this deal. 😉

I might get an accompanist, anyway, if Colin wants me to lay down some tracks for his band. I think we’d have a great time together since he plays guitar and I sing, plus he has professional recording equipment in his attic. I can’t wait to show Lindsay that room, because I think it would be her heaven. Maybe for once we could be in the same band. 🙂

Lindsay was in a band in college that I really liked called “The Cosmonauts,” and my favorite t-shirt at that time was “I’m with the band.” It went over really well with my in-laws…….. because I was wearing a nice sweater and when I took it off, it sort of amused and horrified them. I explained that it was my sister in the rock band, and I can’t tell whether that impressed or horrified them, either.

I have never been in a family that was really accepting of me, because I always felt like I had no right to take up room. When I felt like I had enough clout with Dana’s family to have my say, Dana was horrified because I was changing her family dynamics. Well, of course I was. You are introducing a whole new person.

With Kathleen, I think she really bought into the fact that she only wanted to have babies with men. And, to be honest, I think she was afraid of me becoming even more psychiatrically unstable because the research on taking antidepressants while pregnant suggested it would be dicey. But I didn’t care if Kathleen was the biological mom. I would have been happy either way. We just didn’t have enough money to swing it, or blamed it on that, anyway.

I think eventually I realized that I didn’t want to have kids with her, because even if I wasn’t the extra kid, she’d always treat me like that because that’s how she treated me currently.

My biological clock went CRAZY when I got together with Dana, because she was the right person to have kids with, even in retrospect. I would have preferred her to carry the baby, but she wasn’t buying it. She said she’d do it as a last resort. But by the time wee got to the OB/GYN, the phrase “geriatric pregnancy” did not sound appealing and we just kind of put the idea away.

I don’t think either one of us were actually capable of integrating an infant into our schedules without major changes, most notably getting out of cooking because Dana would never make enough money to support housing for both of us if we were depending on me to make all the money. My job history isn’t that stable with all the medical conditions I have, and it’s hard to integrate just how many doctors’ appointments I have without a cooking job, because my days off weren’t generally Saturday and Sunday. I could schedule my appointments in the morning and still be on time for work.

However, I have IT to fall back on, and as far as I know, Dana doesn’t. I didn’t pressure her to go into it at all, Aaron just noticed she was a great coder. She wanted to be a teacher, but didn’t make that a reality, either. We moved to Houston so that she could teach, because you didn’t need a Master’s there. She was rejected by one program and didn’t try to get into any others. It’s a shame. She would have been a marvelous teacher. I just don’t think she was in any shape to be a teacher by the time we arrived in Houston.

I don’t blame her in any way, shape, or form. The only appropriate reaction to an abnormal situation is an abnormal reaction. She was very depressed and I understood intimately. The problem was that I was also very depressed, and I couldn’t handle Dana’s depression at the same time.

Then, I got an influx of “new relationship energy” that was supposed to be clean, light, and fun. Well, since I was a jackass and told her my feelings were starting to change, she started not telling me things, as if that would make the situation better. I was guessing too much of the time as to what would make her happy, all the while making her ridiculously angry and not knowing why.

Enter Daniel.

“Oh, wait. You’re autistic. That changes EVERYTHING. If you’ve told me this before, I don’t mean to make you rehash, but tell me again how your autism affects you.”

It was the end of all the feeling like he was being bombarded by questions, because he’s a Doc. He saw which way that train was going and hopped on.

As we were talking, he said, “do you think the authoritative part of your personality is that way because you feel safer to express what you feel to me?” That was a lightbulb moment for me, because it’s exactly the thing I’ve been trying to explain to everyone for all time. If I don’t think you can handle my feelings, I won’t tell you what they are. If you don’t like my tone, you can tell me to rephrase something. But the more I don’t feel like I have to social mask around you, the more I let my guard down and I start writing like I’m blogging- to an international audience and not an audience of one. So, even if it’s not a personal attack, it comes across like one because I am not running what I say through every filter ever. I want those closest to me, especially someone I want to build a life with, to be able to take me at full strength. Daniel has agreed that he’s just as intense as I am, but the thing that was the most valuable about this conversation was feeling seen. And not just seen by Daniel as my partner, but seen by Daniel the doctor as well.

Otherwise, he wouldn’t have said, “oh, shit. This changes everything.”

It does, and I’m looking forward to every fucking minute.

Thankfully, Things Have Calmed Down

March 29, 2024 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I feel a sense of peace this morning that I haven’t felt in a long time. I found a great house, and I’m moving in roughly two weeks. I think Colin is okay with our first plan of me moving in on the 13th, but he needs some time on his end to get my room ready, too. The only thing I was trying to avoid was being home while my landlords show their house, but it won’t be the end of the world if I have to wait.

In the meantime, I’m on pins and needles waiting to see Zac, because it’s been a while. Nothing is wrong between us, just jacked up schedules right now for both of us. But again, we’re going to see Jason Moran on the 10th, and then that weekend is drill for him, so he’s going to help me after work both days (if needed). I told him if he wanted he could stay at my house on the Saturday, because drill weekend is at Ft. Meade, which is 20 minutes from my house and quite a bit further to his (Zac lives out in Virginia at the end of the blue line). I’m hoping we can get it all done in a few hours, and I don’t think that’s impossible as long as I have everything boxed. I only have four pieces of furniture.

Other than that, I think I have everything I need. My dad sent me some canvas moving boxes, and I think I’m just going to fold everything as opposed to trying to find a hanging box for all my button-downs. I hate packing. Anything to make it easier. Thank God I don’t have many dishes.

Speaking of dishes, I’m out of coffee and I’m a bit peeved about that. The only reason I’m not a full-on maniac is that I have Stash English Breakfast tea if I get desperate. I wonder if I could go door to door begging for someone to take pity on me. It’s 0551. Surely someone is up.

They are.

I could get coffee from Hayat, but I’m lazy and upstairs. Hayat (and the coffee) are downstairs. Don’t you see it would take ALL THAT WORK? 😉 Hayat has gotten up at 0400 since the day I arrived, and I started waking up early because of her. Originally, I was such a light sleeper that her coffee grinder would wake me up, so I just started going to bed earlier and earlier.

Now, I’m on my own schedule, which seems to be “be lazy. Sleep in until 0500.” So, if you get a message from me in what seems like “the middle of the night,” I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. I just write things when I think of them and forget about things like notifications. I’ve gotten good about asking people if they leave their notifications on at night or if my texting them is going to bother them- leaving notes rather than expecting a reply.

This gets problematic because people are programmed to respond right away. So, they’ll say that the notifications don’t bother them, but they weren’t serious. And now they don’t want to hurt my feelings. PLEASE hurt my feelings, because if you tell me that I can text you at any time, because you have your phone on “Do Not Disturb” or whatever, I’m going to believe you. If you change your mind and it is indeed annoying, then don’t let me think it’s fine when it’s not, because I will not pick up on your subtle cues to stop.

I mean, sometimes I will. But not if you only text me back and I can’t read your voice and it’s too polite to really tell anything. I have problems with polite, because I take things literally.

Well, when I’m not being sarcastic. Sarcasm I can do. One of the many services I offer (that tends to get me in trouble). I’ve thought I’ve been weird a lot of my life, but as it turns out the autistic sense of humor is often dark to deal with the pressure. I’m not weird in a crowd of autistic people, because someone is likely to make a darker joke than me, and that’s hard to do. It’s always a slow clap moment for me when someone manages to out-dark me.

I will be taking no further questions. 😉

Making things right with The War Daniel needed to happen, even if we never get further than we are right now. Our future plans don’t matter so much as being friends again, and being able to be there in lockstep for Daniel’s daughter, Cora. I think that’s been the hardest part of this whole separation from Daniel, because Cora is 25 years old. Trying to judge the parent dynamic from the friend dynamic is tough, because I didn’t want her to know how I feel about Daniel at all (she does now, I’m talking about when we weren’t speaking). It wouldn’t have been fair or sane to make her “monkey in the middle,” and I am definitely sane/brave enough not to do that. It’s basically the only piece of our relationship that does fall under parent/child dynamic, because no matter what happens between Daniel and me, Cora is already an ironclad member of my family. I’m never going to walk out on that kid, so all I ask from Daniel is that he just let me.

No matter what his relationship with me is, just let us be, because my relationship with Cora cannot be dependent on him. I know she’s my kid, not just my rainbow kid, because I don’t believe I’m going to get out of this without becoming her stepmother, even though we’re all adults, because she already sees me that way. That’s how she was introduced, and was overwhelmed that I am bisexual, because all of the sudden she had an ally in the house. Trust me that her parents are doing the best they can, but it’s one thing to be in the queer cultural zeitgeist and to be standing outside of it.

Daniel and I are already talking about getting married again, but on the delayed timeline of his doctorate. This is because we both want to travel, possibly live overseas, and the easiest way to do that is to fly standby on military bases, which Cora and I can do as long as we’re military dependents. The only time we would have to fly commercial is if Daniel wasn’t with us. You cannot fly unaccompanied using the service member’s benefits.

Last night, we were talking about places to move where we’d be able to get back easily, like Manila. We were trying to think of places it’s less expensive to live, but still has protections for Cora.

Daniel and I had the sweetest conversation last night. He was telling me how much cheaper UAE is than the US, and I said that I was great with going to UAE and seeing if we liked it enough to stay, but that I didn’t think it was safe for Cora or me. That I could pass as straight, but that’s not me and I’m not down for it.

He said, “sweetheart, why would you ever want to pass as straight?”

I was very touched, but I said, “to get by in a Middle Eastern country, no other reason.” Instantly, his tone changed into the English professor he is and he said, “I’m not moving ANYWHERE my women aren’t welcome.” He’s on board.

I love him. I really do. If the stars line up, we’re going to go back to Caldwell Zoo in Tyler to take pictures, hopefully recreating a few. I remember one that we need to do, and it just flashed into my memory (Achievement Unlocked, MASSIVE XP). I don’t know if it’s still there, but they used to have a playground. My mother took a shot that day of Daniel and me sitting under the play structure. I have no idea what we were talking about.

Probably Sartre or Proust, who knows. But we were definitely THAT KID.

I’ll get to show him where I was born- in Tyler, at Mother Frances Hospital, with “the statue of Jesus directing traffic.” I could see how things are going at my grandfather’s house.

It’s interesting, my grandfather gave his house to my cousin Jason, because his whole job is refurbishing homes. The plan is that once Jason is done overhauling the place, it will serve as a lake house for all of us. It’s out on Starlight Lake in Lone Star, where interestingly enough, my mother’s sister also has a house. So, we can go back and forth between relatives like we used to do when we were kids in NE Texas as well. My grandparents lived at most five miles from each other, if that.

I honestly stayed at one house til I got bored, then called my other grandmother to come and get me. I can say that because they’re no longer with us……. but they saw what I did. 😉

The vibes of the houses were so different, because my dad’s parents were Anglophiles and have a million video tapes I’d love to get my hands on with a video production server. They have stuff that Mike’s Movie Magic doesn’t have, and I swear it. Old PBS showings of BBC plays and TV shows that no one would ever find again. If those tapes still exist and I have room for them, I’l put them on a server and give access to my family.

At Christmas we usually watched “A Child’s Christmas in Wales” or Gene Wilder’s Willy Wonka, who was terrifying…. yet not as terrifying to me as “The Wizard of Oz.” Never again if I can help it (I do like “Wicked,” though, minus all the stage theatrics that really made me jump. However, I think the age at which I saw it is directly responsible. Three or four is too young for flying monkeys.

In this case, anyway.

I am terrified of Oz on some days, and some days it’s all Glinda, all the time.

Answered

March 28, 2024 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I’m getting tired of the daily blog prompts saying I’ve already answered them, because I often have new ideas the second time the prompt comes around. Today, though, I’m glad I got nothin,’ because there’s been a change, and I really can’t tell you why. Magda decided that she didn’t want to move with me, and told Colin she wasn’t coming. I don’t know why. So, I was very scared that all of the sudden, I didn’t have a place to go, either, because I couldn’t afford to pay for both rooms all by myself. Colin said not to worry, that I could still move in, and my body relaxed. I think he hopes Magda will change her mind, but I have never seen it happen. I feel bad, that maybe we’ve done something to alienate her? But that’s impossible because neither one of us have had conversations since the last one we had together.

So, I have to stop worrying about all of that and just be glad that when my boyfriend arrives to be the muscle in the operation, I still have an address to point him.

That struck me as funny all of the sudden…… that if you never really thought you’d ever have a boyfriend, God laughs and you wind up with two. 😉 Two that know about each other, and aren’t threatened by each other………. very much like I wasn’t threatened by the idea of Michael for Supergrover even at the height of feeling absolutely waylaid by an arrow to my Achilles’ heel. We had two completely separate roles in her life, and I was incredibly far away. He was on the ground. It’s the same now. Daniel is incredibly far away. Zac is on the ground. Neither of us should expect the other to be monks for years on end, and that’s not what poly is, anyway. It’s not being able to divide love up between more people, but to love multiple people 100%. That gets tricky in terms of time, but not feelings.

I have never told Bryn that I loved her INSTEAD OF Supergrover (nor told Dana I loved her INSTEAD of Supergrover, or vice versa), so I wouldn’t do it to anyone else. Bryn doesn’t tell me she loves me INSTEAD OF Dave, and I’m glad because again, two completely separate roles in Bryn’s life. W

e’ve been through so much together, more than I’ve been through with either guy, she’s been through more than she’s been through with Dave. I just don’t care whether it’s a yellow string or a red one, if you’re connected to me, you’re important. My time is just as sacred for my close friends, and always will be.

It helps that The War Daniel is in the Navy, because since his classes are online that does open us up to him being able to visit on standby. As long as I have a way for him to watch wrestling on Wednesday nights (God help us all).

Colin has cable, but he’s interested in cutting the cord. I wish I still had my old computer. I’d have a media center set up for him within the week, because I already know how to cut the cord effectively. You can have everything, including a DVR, for the cost of a cheap computer. Well, I suppose the DVR also depends on how good the signal is from your antenna, but the point stands. I can also install Kodi (media center software) on my FireStick with a little bit of hackage.

And yet, all of that is a story for another day because for right now, it’s about how to fit all of my stuff into my new moving boxes. I want to pack everything except for the sheets/blankets and some clothes. Boxes stacked in here will be easier to keep clean and neat should we have visitors. The visitors are by appointment only, but I’d like to mitigate my ability to be me as much as possible.

No one was here to rescue me on this one. I had to do it all by myself. I had to reach out to people and tell them I was interested in looking. I had to be brave and make phone calls, which seems ridiculous and yet Gen Z just went, “oh my GOD, are you okay?” I ended up in a wonderful situation with more space than I thought I would get (at first, I’m sure someone will move in). The other thing is that I get to stay in my neighborhood, and it turns out that’s pretty important to me, too. I’m a Marylander now.

That may not always be the case, as I love Virginia, too. I just feel that it’s easier for me to own my space up here. I will never run into anyone I don’t want to see, and that covers a hell of a lot of ground. You cannot imagine how relieved I was to learn that there’s a Waffle House on my side of the river, as poorly as that trip turned out.

It is definitely time for a change, but not one so big that I meltdown and burnout in a cycle until I relearn my surroundings. I wanted to avoid all of it, and I think I’ve managed successfully…….. because did I mention that Colin lives two major stoplights from my current house?

Wrestling, though? WHAT WAS I THINKING?

Pickpocketing

March 24, 2024 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

What’s a secret skill or ability you have or wish you had?

I love Skyrim. When you pickpocket someone, you get to see the inventory of their pants.

For me, pickpocketing would be about magic, not stealing. It would have been a hit at parties if I set it up in advance…. that someone will lose their wallet, and can claim it later.

I will have all the wallets in five to seven minutes, because that’s how long I’ve got. Take longer than that, the easier it is to catch you in action.

In real life, I’m not comfortable racing against the clock, even in a video game. The exception is the kitchen, because I’m not solo. This is unacceptable to my ADHD. I thrive on ironclad structure and the other half of my brain hates my fuckin’ guts. This is because when I create iron structure, I cannot maintain it. I am happy for a little while with rigidity, but the longer it goes on the more my ADHD can’t handle it. That’s why my energy levels for tasks are different all the time. My ADHD makes it its mission in life to ensure my autism is miserable.

I have demand avoidance down to taking care of myself. Yet, at other times I can be the life of a party. I’m sure depression and hypomania play a role in my energy levels, but now that I know so much about ADHD and Autism (through endless panels and lectures on YouTube), I am finding that maybe I’m not depressed. Maybe I have been mistaking depression for autism. Every one of my symptoms of depression and hypomania feel like what the psychiatrists and psychologists are trying to explain about how AuDHD works. To me, it’s a reframing, because it doesn’t feel like depression and hypomania all the time. Sometimes, I am very stable and still have demand avoidance down to taking a shower.

I am fairly certain that I have pathological demand avoidance syndrome, because it takes a Mt. Everest amount of energy for me to do anything. I’ll know once I go through the autism diagnosis process. Basically, they treat you and if it doesn’t work, then it’s pathological. “Pathological” is a scary word, but yet it’s not. It just means it can’t be treated. It’s more scary to tell someone you have something pathological because they don’t think “pathologist,” they think “serial killer.” Not a good look.

Yet, that’s still the name of the condition, and it’s already on the spectrum, just a major part of some people’s cases of autism. If you’ve met an autistic person, you have met one autistic person. For instance, I’ll talk your ear off about The Cold War, but I don’t have food issues and I don’t have too many sensory issues. I don’t have emotions like neurotypical people, but I do have them. I just process them quite a bit differently, and writing gives me an outlet to do it.

So, honestly, I don’t need some mythical power to be a “Super.” I’ve got my superpower right here.

The Calm Before the Storm

March 17, 2024 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Today or tomorrow I am meeting another potential roommate that lives in my neighborhood. My landlord referred me to him via NextDoor, so hopefully I’ll be able to secure something fairly quickly. As we told each other, it’s at least worth a meeting to see if we get along, and he has a dog.

The funniest thing he said was that he was saying he lived alone, and I said, “I’m autistic and ADHD. It would probably work out better for me because of less sensory input.” He said, and it was so cute…… “I am somewhat neurodivergent.” I told him I laughed out loud at that one. We’re both introverts. He works for a government agency and his house is cute as a button, plus updated on the inside. I looked at some pictures online, but it was from the sale of the house. I have no idea what it looks like furnished yet, but I’m eager to see.

He’s a little older than me, the same age as Supergrover. It’s how I know he’s young enough to vibe with me and not too old to think of me as a constant annoyance because our age difference is too great. My worst nightmare was getting stuck in a group house with five 20 year old interns on Capitol Hill. It wouldn’t have been bad. I would have connected with a lot of Washington elite that way, but it wouldn’t have been the right vibe. If it works out that I move in with (let’s call him) Colin, I feel that I could go the distance with him, because I moved my entire childhood. The only place I have lived longer than DC is Portland, and even that was broken up into two chunks. The first was going to see my family, and at that time, I really meant it.

The second time, I had to go see about a girl. I had it bad, but I didn’t realize it until we drove from Portland to Houston together. That woman helped me move into my apartment in fucking August (I repeat….. in HOUSTON, TEXAS) and I let her get on the plane back to Oregon. What in the actual fuck was wrong with me?

If I have any regrets in life, it’s not taking Dana seriously at six weeks when she told me she had a crush on me. It took me three or three and a half years to accept that I had a crush on her, too. That’s because I don’t know what possessed her to tell me she had a crush on me, except yes, I do.

Carol, Dana’s then-wife, was not threatened by Dana having a crush……… and oh my fucking God.

Oh my God.

I did to Dana what Dana did to Carol. It just so happened that my new relationship energy was never going to go anywhere, therefore my pie in the sky ideas for a romance with a straight woman were grounded until my mental health went off the rails. That’s what I mean about the hurt being unintentional. I take responsibility for my behavior, because it happened no matter what my mental health might have been at the time. It is more about forgiving myself for not having the right tools to deal with my feelings, my medication, or my mental state while my medication was, in a few words, completely fucked up.

Again, I learned I was poly because I never lost any love for Dana, I only gained it for SG! Dana and I went down the tubes of our own accord, but not exactly. There was no preconceived plan on Supergrover’s part to institute a divide and conquer move. As she says, our relationship happened organically despite a whole bunch of things (which meant more to me than platinum, beautiful girl).

I can’t tell you how Supergrover is feeling except hurt and tired, because that is what I know for sure, and it’s probably going to make me cry.

Whenever I feel anxious that she’s distancing herself from me, she surprises me with all the love that comes through in black & white. Every. Single. Time. As I have said, she doesn’t say “I love you” in words. She does it by showing up. Consistently. No matter how mad we are at each other. No matter how bad the fight is, there has been nothing in 10 years that has ever torn us apart. Somehow, we keep the yellow string going even when we’re out of pocket. When I get the most anxious is generally about the time that she swoops in and reminds me what’s up. The Mama Wolverine claws are coming out, she will go Alduin on their asses, etc. We have that part down.
Keeping out of each other’s lives has been a mixed bag, because having context and not creates two different sets of problems. There’s the problems we have with telling our story together, and the problems we have with telling our stories apart. Lancing the boil was getting back on the same page. Again, I don’t know what will happen, but she said that she didn’t want to get into a cat and mouse game. It’s not if she shows up. Not being honest about your true intentions is a cat and mouse game. I love her enough to struggle all the way until we’re ridiculously happy again, whether there’s a context to our relationship or not. I’m ready for a different kind of honeymoon phase because I’m tired of putting each other through the wringer for no good reason.
I have loved her so much for a decade, and I feel like she has returned those feelings to the best of her ability. That she couldn’t be a better friend than she is right now in terms of being the kind of person that sends birthday and Christmas presents because we have such a long history together, and it’s so intense.
I don’t want to put anyone above her ever again, which is why I say that I’m as settled as I want to be. I am never going to get in another fight over emotional affairs because never once when I got married did I think I was going to go blind. I thought Dana and I had enough strength in our relationship to get through it, but I underestimated the pull I felt toward SG! The wave went over my head, and I’ve never been the same. But it’s all for good- I love my life, and I wish I could convince my beautiful girl of that instead of always thinking I’m saying “this is all your fault.”
I’m not sure why she thinkgs this is all her fault, because she laid out all the times she’s been a dick and the times I have as well. That means “Things Fell Apart” at both our hands. It is both our faults and neither.
Despite not having enough context, I think this is the relationship that reflects me the most deeply because since I’m reading her, I pick up her words and phrases all the time.
- Painting my feelings as fact
- Pricks on my skin I just couldn’t close anymore
- It’s not “very” anymore, it’s “to an enormous degree.”
- “I love his takedowns of the orange gelatinous shitbag.”
- Me: How’s your day going? Her: picture of dumpster fire…. this has been especially useful lately
- “Pick up my toys and go home,” which she got from me and now says all the time- at least to me. I don’t know how much I affect her speech at work/home/etc. If so, I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. 😉
- When she edits me, she’s very rough. I like it. I’ll get notes like “WHO TF IS PANCHO?”
- Her husband had a thing and I asked her if she needed help (med assistant- she travels). She said no, but how kind of me to ask. I said, “it seemed nicer than asking how you broke him.” Later that day, I got an e-mail that said, “I keep laughing at this.” I smiled at that for three weeks straight. I got her. ❤ Maybe grasshopper is not as far away from satori as I think. So, because it tickled me to get a note later in the day that I was still laughing at something she said, I send them to others.
- It was a door I never should have opened, but I used to love flirting with her because she was so fucking quick. I got in over my head fast, and I couldn’t take it back. Again, I knew I was fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuucked. I won’t tell you what she said, but I told her that all she needed to do was realize that my feelings were valid and real, and to be sensitive to them. That there was no reason to act, just to know they’re there. It was not to encourage, but for her to have empathy because I knew it couldn’t go anywhere and I was flipping out anyway. I can’t believe how much it meant to me when I said, “surely you spent longer than you wanted getting over someone who turned your head when it was a bad idea?” She said, “yes, surely I have.” She really saw me, and I will remember it forever. She has also never once invalidated my feelings, and been moved at the things I’ve written about her. She makes me happy without even trying, makes me proud just by breathing. The fact that she’s not my romantic partner means both jack and shit. She’s just always the one at the back of my mind, the one I quote all the time while she doesn’t know it…….. and I am sure that is a two way street even if she doesn’t say it out loud, because over ten years of writing, we have a million word associations between us……. most notably, “influencer.”
  - It was her brain that made me absolutely crazy about her (this is the part where you don’t get her reply that was so perfect it made my desk chair sag, I was laughing so hard). I joked, “besides, can I really make a decision on whether I’m in love with you or not if I haven’t seen your rack? What kind of idiot do you take me for, woman?” That was the moment *she* came in Kings full over Aces and I thought, “Christ. This needs to last my whole life, no matter what it looks like. I will never find her anywhere else in a million zillion years.” In fact, I actually told her this. That I wanted to fix us because I couldn’t go to the Supergrover store and pick out a new one. She’s the Vera Wang you can’t afford.
I realize by writing all of this down, it just seems like I’m begging her to come back. It’s just not true. That’s because if she does come back, it will be a great day in my life….. because she knows that I don’t want the surface level of her. I want the brain that made me crazy about her in the first place. I feel that if she lets me into that space, the way I let her into mine, what used to be a “cat and mouse game” will once again be stable, because in a lot of ways, we’ll be discovering each other again for the first time. Just because we’ve had a weird and hard road in the past 10 years doesn’t mean it always has to be as difficult as it has been. I’m just tired of covering up feelings with gifts, because I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel when I get them. What emotions are behind them when her e-mails say so little? No, these entries are not begging. They are the precious things I will want to read 10 and 20 and 30 years from now…… because she’s the best thing that ever happened to me and thinks she isn’t. I can’t fix that for her, but it’s not for lack of trying.
I will always love her with this much depth, because she gave me too much over the last 10 years to hold any bitterness or anger anymore. She has said that some of the things I’ve said are incredibly hurtful, and I’d like to talk about them. But again, I do not know whether she needs to separate from me, or whether she’ll be back after some time, space, peace, and grace. She has it coming from me in spades, because “surely grace and mercy will carry me all the days of my life” (Don’t call me Shirley!). As I have said before, it is not my job to talk now. I have talked enough. She knows how I feel, and she does not need to hear me again.

No, all of these memories are for me…. the ones that Oliver, who is a dog, has already heard.

How It Really Ended, Because This is Hopefully My Fault

March 15, 2024 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I gave my Facebook subscribers the inside story, before the video came out. Now, the video is up and I was right…. so you get to hear the real story, too. I am not sure why the Q&A was cut off, but I have two very good guesses….. Jonna & Leslie.

So, I feel like I started it by saying that in another video, I’d heard she was “a real hardass” at CIA. It’s like I broke the surface tension on top of a glass of cool water…… because later on, she talked about a young female colleague who got tired of her boss’s bullshit and said, “Bill, fuck off.”

I laughed a lot harder than I needed to at that joke.

Anyway, we reverted into line cook and spy, which both speak profanity and irreverence as a first language. The black humor on “Homeland” is very real. Lives are on the line, and you sure as shit want to know who’s on your six. If you’re going to step in front of a bus for them, you have to know they’d do the same for you. People think of the military as being rough and tumble, but I’ve been around enough spies by now to know that they mostly run on coffee and hatred. Hearing Zac’s friends’ old war stories was great, because you learn quickly that it’s like being a goalie. You have those Bond moments, but you’re still a government wonk that does paperwork, mostly getting your raw data to the analysts.

Though CIA does not normally carry guns when they’re on intelligence missions, they do when they’re embedded in the armed services. I mean, they’d probably normally carry guns if they were DIA, but people like Jonna usually didn’t, though she’s trained on just about everything. So- note to self. That’s why spies can pick up most guns and know how to use them instantly. They don’t have to carry, they can pick up someone else’s if they’re in trouble.

So, the movies aren’t all bad. Except for this one….. where I got Jonna Mendez censored at her own museum……..

Even though this event was all about Jonna, I can’t think of anything to say except “Argo fuck yourself.” Because what do you say when you notice the other museum employees about to swallow their teeth because they’re so shocked that someone like Jonna would throw an f-bomb. What does she have to prove anymore?

She’s owned herself.

I think she’d agree, and so would Tony Mendez.

Well, There’s This

March 14, 2024March 14, 2024 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

What activities do you lose yourself in?

For $5.00, I can get lost for years. This is because $5.00 is about how much it takes to by “Droid Edit,” a full-featured coding notepad for Android. The free version of “Koder” on iOS seems to fit the bill nicely, but I would get the pro version if it was more like Notepad++ and Microsoft Visual Studio Code (my personal favorite because now it runs bare metal on all operating systems, even Fedora and Ubuntu. It should also be able to run on Android with those specs. Get your shit together, Microsoft. Do you think I like coding without the Dracula Official Theme? Monokai is not going to cut it, my friend.).

I use the term coding loosely, because really the only things I do in my HTML files are add italics and special characters, maybe a link. For some reason, if I do more than that, WordPress will scrub out the HTML and tell me it can’t recover the block. I need a real solution that’s completely open source, but I like WordPress. I made the decision 20 years ago to stop coding and only be known as a writer…. why my setup is simple and hopefully easy to read.

I end up using the WordPress reader included in the Jetpack app because it’s in dark mode. I rarely read my own work on my blog itself. I like dark mode. My fans don’t. They’re older and they have more insurance.

And in fact, the most sweet and vulnerable moments between Supergrover and me are when I need my Jessica Tandy, and Supergrover is absolutely as beautiful as she always was. It is not lost on me that I’m a preacher’s kid and she’s a Bee Charmer. In effect, we are “Fried Green Tomatoes,” because that movie showed deep companionate love without showing romance because of the time. Because they held down the madness with the romance, it actually fits Supergrover and me better than if they had. Of course Idgie and Ruth were best friends who ran a business together and not this torrid love affair that lasted a million years, which it absolutely was in “Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café.” Just devoted and never stopped loving each other until they died.

But female friendship is absolutely that strong and resilient, so both the book and the movie are priceless to me. In short, I felt like Idgie when she was young, with Supergrover being every bit the power,grace, and style of a young, married Southern woman. I was absolutely just a lovesick puppy dog for a couple of years, and then I realized my place in the world. “Love her anyway. Help her anyway. She may not accept you in person, but she’ll always come back here.” I am not writing for her. I am not writing to her. These are all the memories I want to be able to read when I am 70 and nothing more. I want her with me, helping to craft the narrative, but it is not necessary. It is the process of letting go and letting God, my words for going into deep discernment. My personality divides and I argue it out with my rabbi, essentially. However, I know that it is me talking back. I do not think of a relationship with God as external, but the omnipotent third eye present in so many Eastern religions.

It’s why I don’t care about semantics, I just want the protein.

I feel like in a way, all of this has been me trying to explain to her why we need to open the Whistle Stop and move on, rather than her always feeling guilty. Just start working together and having fun rather than both of us being up shit creek all the time.

Without a paddle, obvs.

So many messages that didn’t get through. Me thinking about the future and throwing ideas out there to remind myself that this was grounded and real came across as being unwilling to accept the demands on her time. This is categorically untrue. I have dealt with the boundaries on her time since day one, and our relationship has lasted over 10 years now. If I really had problems with her priorities, I wouldn’t have stuck around this long. I also don’t think that I’m all that and a bag of chips, but 10 years is a long time to feel like this relationship is fake with her insisting that it’s not.

Now, I really believe it wasn’t. It was as real as a heart attack. But that’s because I’m not going to get that message through placation. I’m going to get that message through truth. The longer you put off telling the truth, the angrier I get. I don’t want to handle someone else’s avoidance, I want them to realize they’re being avoidant because I’m not an entitled prick who wants to tell you how to run your life until you’ve stomped on my feelings so hard that we’re going to have to have it out. Go drive someone else up the wall because I am struggling.

It’s one thing to be on the bottom of the totem pole for a year- two or three. But after 10 wouldn’t you be furious that you never got airtime? Especially when we have this strong pull towards each other that also has its limits? It’s a dramatic tension that could be solved in an afternoon. I don’t understand keeping that weirdness in place all these years. I think I could solve a lot of her problems with me in one beer….. most notably that our relationship might not translate.

We are not guaranteed to bond just because we like the same Instagram influencer. But thinking we are both sides of Fried Green tomatoes, the Idgie and Ruth and the Idgie and Evelyn is the journey we’ve taken. I don’t know what compelled her to come, but I think it was my thu’um. When a dragon hears its name, it is not bound to respond, but always will out of curiosity and competition. I should give her a word of power, but Snow Wing Hunter is better than anything I could come up with on my own, and she has definitely carried me to Skuldafn many times to meet my Alduins.

I get lost in the flight.

I only get lost in the fight when the adrenaline comes down. It’s not her responsibility to keep it up. I would like it if she’d take on the responsibility of telling me up front the timeframe with which I’m dealing so it calms my anxiety that she’s not always mad at me. It’s hard to feel secure on three words.

What I loved about her letter the other day was twofold. I fell in love with her prose about her family, the everyday life she leads while also being powerful, the dynamic that Lindsay and I have so I could relate on a spiritual level. What it takes to be superhuman at staying awake, because she’s on call a lot of the time (as is Lindsay- news breaks). What it takes to be a big sister in her family. Or, what she wants it to take and I can feel her emotions regarding it from a million miles away. I know the particular pain of losing a mother and finding yourself as the new matriarch suddenly….. especially not being prepared in any way to do so because I feel like it’s my responsibility to be providing for her. She’s the little sister that could. She’s just so sweet about giving me experiences I never would have had otherwise while totally cheering me on as a writer.

That’s been Supergrover’s role in my life as well. I think one of the pricks on my skin that won’t heal is saying that I portray her as a villain as often as I do a friend and rages about it……. while also raging that I paint her as a “Flat Stanley.” I feel that the ups and downs make her a 3D character. Everything she sends me that shows me a real feeling, I include it, because since it’s her real feeling, it’s my real feeling, too. I have said this line before, but I will remember it forever. I didn’t know who “Flat Stanley” was, but I told her that “Flat Stanley has a history of amazing topography.” She is a 3D character, but she isn’t if you take every entry individually instead of reading me like a book. Start in January of last year and read forwards and a 3D character will emerge no matter who it is in my life.

Most people trade the forest for the trees. As I have told her, I feel like my years are so much more important than my days. No one has ever loved her the way I have, and not in terms of depth. In the way that love is executed every day. I became a journalist from the day we met, tasked with telling my own story while not revealing my source. Any misstep on my part feels like a little betrayal, and Supergrover doesn’t talk to me about my writing, so I have no idea how close to the line I am or how I can protect her more in the future. She said that I mentioned something she wanted to keep quiet, but I have no idea what it was that she wanted to keep private, for instance, so I couldn’t go back and fix it.

I want to know what touches her, because everything I write about her is something I’ve gotten lost in, because it was kind of like meeting The Oracle and finding out I’m Neo. My mind went into hyperdrive, and I began to think differently, and on as big a scale as possible because all of the sudden I knew I was capable of it. I’ve realized that I would be happy in a think tank if that were a thing that could happen, mostly because I’m a “plant,” the employee who comes up with great ideas by synthesizing information in the room and building off what other people have said until there’s a consensus.

But I never would have believed that I belonged at that particular table until Supergrover told me I was too smart for my own good.

I get that a lot, but I didn’t believe it until 2013 (a typo when I said that the Argo message came in 2003, I remember). She’s not the president, nor elected to anything, nor can I tell you whether she’s private or public industry (except that she and Zac both speak “acronym.”). What I can tell you is that her compliment had a lot of power behind it. Her CV makes me constantly wonder who she’s met all over the world, especially movie stars.

I miss her pithy comments on my entries, because when she was an e-mail subscriber, instead of commenting here, she’d just forward me the e-mail and flip me shit. She can say so much in so few words, even better when they’re teasing directed at me or our favorite Instagram influencer. Speaking of which, we need to talk about that, too, beautiful girl. It’s probably nothing, but it’s a “how dead am I?” sort of question. Another thing that whether this makes her land on my desk to my thu’um is up for grabs. What is important is that I will remember exactly what this means for a hundred years because all of these feelings are burned into my brain.

The rhythm has calmed, but we still have to dance. I’m not trying to be her partner, I’m trying to be her co-author unless her husband also writes. Maybe she’d rather collaborate with him if that’s the case, and I don’t have any ill will toward that. And it’s not that I have this desperate need to write about her because she’s a powerful person. It’s not. It’s that she became a big part of my story personally, and not of her big shot mess ever mattered.

I love the absolute smallest part of her, because that’s the part I love about everyone. I like vulnerability because I can make accurate decisions on how to behave next. The only reason I spiraled out with her is that I was medically falling apart and I want to throw up every time I think of that time in my life because it cost us so much trust and time. To think that she thinks all of this is her fault is horrible because I’ve been trying to make amends for so many years and it has come across as accusation.

She did indeed throw a bomb over her shoulder and walk away. The truth hurts. But it wasn’t the bomb that hurt. It was walking away and not dealing with the fallout. It showed the ultimate disrespect to me because it was like “I get to tell you whatever I want and then not care how it makes you feel.” She says she’s not responsible for my reactions. No, she’s not, but if she wants to stay my friend she better well be willing to clean up her own mess, because I didn’t ask for it. I’m not guilting you (universal), I am holding you to the standard of being a good friend. How is it anyone’s right to leave the other person so much worse than they found them by listening so closely at first that we were breathing in the right direction……… then holding a wrong over my head for so long that we never moved back into safe space for her? She lost the ability to be a decent friend, her words, not mine.

Then she opened up and told me that my guesses about her behavior were right on target and also that it was too late while also saying “story for another day” while also writing me something so beautiful I’m still chewing on it days later. I don’t know what to think, but I know what I see, and it is a spectrum. We’re better writers as a team than we are alone.

It just depends on whether writing means as much to her as it does to me. It doesn’t have to be blog entries because I’m an audience of one, and the same goes for me- the safe space where I sandbox.

She’s not the love of my life where I get lost in her beauty, wishing like a lovesick puppy for just one hug or what the fuck ever. She’s the love of my life due to writing being the only real partner I have. And she’s the brain that comes with that package, because I feel like she whipped my ass into shape by editing me and giving me feedback on letters as well. I miss that relationship, because it exists outside of time and space. I’d be happy if it always did, but my mind sees so many futures that it’s hard to decide and I’m grateful to also have enough closure to let go. Just because she let her walls down once doesn’t mean she has the strength to do it all the time, and that’s what I need from her if she doesn’t want to meet me in person. I will never be able to pick up subtext if I don’t because I won’t be able to read it in her voice.

I take everything literally, and I’m a “get off my lawn” personality. I rarely apologize for it, but it’s an important flaw in my character in this relationship. But I’m not “get off my lawn” years old on purpose. I’m autistic and lecture as such. I become an overexplainer to avoid awkward silence, of which there has been a lot.

It’s not awkward silence anymore, because she told me she loved me in two different ways. The first was “if I hear your call, I will always come…. because I love my girl.” It was the ending of my letter to Michael writ large. I was right on the money, dear reader. I cannot believe it. Seriously. She swooped in with all the big sister badass no bullshit love I’ve come to know. She doesn’t have to say a word. She said that she was constantly overwhelmed because I was demanding, when I was dreaming. The second was letting me know she things about me all the time, the thing that would have calmed me the most.

I don’t want to be around anyone who doesn’t want to be around me, and I got my answer. Maybe. As it has been for 10 years…… and where I get lost.

Perceptions and Reflections -or- Waiting for Mendez, Part II: In Which She Shows Up

March 6, 2024March 6, 2024 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

What is one question you hate to be asked? Explain.

I wrote this last night and hit the wrong button. You’ll get today’s writing prompt later. 😉

This evening I find myself caught between reading and writing, because I just got home from hearing Jonna Mendez talk about her new autobiography, “In True Face.” I think this is my new favorite story in life, thus why I wanted to write it down right away.

As I’ve said before, Jonna and I know each other a little bit, and she was bummed she didn’t get to invite me herself- glad I got the message because “you usually come to these things.” But we didn’t speak beforehand, I just gave her a nod; she smiled as I sat down.

She talked about living in Kansas, growing up in her sister’s shadow. Marrying two case officers and living in their shadows, somewhat. I don’t think she would think of herself as living in Tony’s shadow if he wasn’t known the world over as Ben Affleck on screen. a

It’s one thing to see your life, well, in real life. Quite another to see it reflected back to you in media. I have no idea who Tony really was, but here is what I do know.

In all the time that I’ve known her, she’s never called him “Tony” when we were in the same room. I noticed it right away. The telltale sign that she’s hiding something. There has to be something left for her, that only she gets. She has to talk about him publicly. Tony Mendez is as much as she can handle during speaking engagements. That’s because she’s not talking about her husband. She’s talking about his trademark and his tradecraft.

I can’t imagine how hard that is, but I can empathize with the idea of it. I haven’t lost a partner, but I have lost a mother. Talking about what my mother did professionally is indeed the easy part. I see and understand it deeply because I have been there so many times. It gets easier, and it looked to me that she was doing okay. You’re never the same, but it’s only been since 2019. Therefore, we could both feel his presence in the room…. because I moved to DC after Tony stopped doing public appearances (he got Parkinson’s Disease), but have been one of the Mendez’ biggest fans for years. The writer/reader connection is unbreakable, especially for writers like Jonna, Tony, and me. I write every day about my life and they saved theirs up for publication, but at the end of the day it’s all us spilling our guts and trying to make sense of a lot of shit that will never reconcile.

I wonder what was going on in her head when, during the Q&A, a man asked how she responded to (and I’m paraphrasing, here) all the horrible shit that CIA has done worldwide since 1947…. like MK Ultra (my first thought? “Look here, you little shit…”). She disposed of him as quickly as I’ve been taught by my dad. How to de-escalate? Tell the absolute truth.

She said, “you know, MK Ultra came out of my office and it went horribly, horribly wrong. We didn’t want to get caught with our pants down and we didn’t use anyone who didn’t sign up. But we didn’t know all the things about x, y, and z that we do now (I am only giving the gist, I don’t want to speak for her), and that she felt CIA had already owned up to it.

Then we moved on.

Another guy asked her how long there was between John and Tony or some other dumbfuckery. It was like there was a test with some sort of “gotcha” that wasn’t there. I’m guessing those people were from magazines or something, because if you were there tonight, you were a fan. Amanda (Education and Outreach) told us that we were the fan club, and I believe it. Want to know how I know that? I talked the guy’s ear off in front of me and by the time he got to the checkout he also bought “The Moscow Rules.”

Everywhere I go, Jonna Mendez sells books. I don’t know what it is about me. I have never been able to sell anyone on anything else, but my excitement about watching real spies vs. the hyped up bullshit normally on TV seems to resonate with people. The truth is that people believe CIA is associated with all that Bond hero shit, and that’s fine. I’m not here to take away their fantasy.

But I am here to tell you that through Jonna Mendez telling her own story, I know what it feels like to be eye to eye with Bin Laden… or at least, that high value a target. She wasn’t specific. Probably won’t be, because I don’t think those ops will be completely declassified for a long time.

I wondered what it had been like to carry that burden. What it had been like not to be able to talk about what she’d been through, because I’ve been interested in psychology since university. What does it do to the brain to carry information like that long term?

If we are not doing a very good job at taking care of the military when they come home, I doubt the government is pulling out all the stops for CIA. I am not saying that there aren’t as many resources for case officers as there are for the military. I just don’t know any people in the military that aren’t allowed to tell people they joined. Your husbands and wives absolutely are doing the dangerous shit you think they are if you have even the slightest hint that they’re C/DIA.

What if you had to be next to Putin in disguise so you could take a picture of the document he was about to sign? You have three seconds and it has to be perfect because this won’t ever happen again. Would your hands shake?

Jonna Mendez has never existed at CIA. Ever. I know that while she worked there, her first name was “Faith,” but she did not reveal her middle and last names. But even if she had, it wouldn’t have mattered. I’m sure “Faith” is just one of the many lives she led.

One of her fears was that she would die overseas under her CIA name and no one would ever hear from her again. I would think that someone has found a way to fix this fundamental issue electronically, but I do not know for sure. In the era of printed tickets?

There are many unnamed stars on the wall at Langley, and I wonder how many more there are you can’t count. Again, because I don’t want to worry the mothers or whatever, there’s no way this problem cannot be solved already. I felt it, though, because she talked me through it on the train home as she wrestled it out. How she got to “this is it. I’m going to die alone.” It was not an unreasonable assumption. The terrorist across from her had armed guards. They didn’t make her. The terrorist did. To be clear, he also made three or four others. This was not a mistake in tradecraft on her part. Everyone came prepared for that meeting, except their guys had AKs.

I’ve heard that story from her before, but in the books it is not made as clear as it was to me tonight that who she met was absolutely no joke. It was her reaction. The way she said pure evil. There was a bit of trying to demonstrate how powerful this person was while also trying to keep out a deeper response from surfacing. I know that her purpose is educating the audience, not scaring them so bad they won’t come back. She just described the look in his eyes so perfectly that I knew she was standing in that memory for a nanosecond and stepping out of the pool.

The nanosecond is scarier than anything she could say out loud. No contest. Her real face is the one you’ve wanted to see all along.

What I haven’t said is about my participation in the whole thing. At “The Moscow Rules,” the line for questions was really long. So, I stand up, and not only is there no line, I can’t even find the microphone at first. So, I pretend like this is absolutely nothing at all and not the most embarrassing thing I have done all day and just go stand by the mic and wait. I did not think that this would happen, however.

Someone said, “the first question…” and she finished “is from Leslie.” I get to the mic and she says, “hi Leslie.” I said, “hi, Jonna.” She said, “how ya been?” It was like this unplanned “bit.” So, I thought… a spy wants to bust my identity on YouTube? She’ll do it. I said, “to the extent that you are able, will you play ball with me for YouTube? She looked at me questioningly, yet cautiously optimistic. I said, “I have seen you in another video describing yourself as ‘a real hardass’ at CIA. You talk about things that were done to you (she says she doesn’t want it to seem like a feminist rant)…. but what’s the funniest thing you’ve ever done to your staff? She said, “the only thing I can think of is that I married Tony Mendez. They thought I was insane.” It was the perfect end to a perfect talk for me, and I got exactly what I wanted.

At the book signing, she told me she saw my dad’s stuff, but she didn’t see mine. I told her that I’d gotten a professional author’s page, so you might see her lurking around the Facebook version of Stories, you might not. She asked for it, but when you write it down on a Post-It note, you never know if the person is going to remember or not. The funniest thing about Jonna’s Facebook profile is that it lists her profession as “photographer,” which is, I think, drastically burying the lead.

Oh, and I have never felt a more sick burn. Like, Supergrover sick burn it was so good. I laughed so hard I died for a second, then almost made her spit out her water because she didn’t know I spoke “microaggression.” I told her that some day I’d write something as good as hers, and she said “it’s good you’re still workin’ on that.” I said, “I’m going to laugh about that for three years.” It was to lighten the moment.

I saw her. In true face, I saw her. I said, “congratulations on owning yourself.” I’ll remember that smile forever. When you own yourself, you see others doing the same. Themes repeat themselves in my life and it was the only thing I thought would be in any way eloquent enough for the occasion.

She knew what I meant. Her bottom lip twitched in recognition of what I’d said while the rest of her face didn’t say anything at all.

I will post the video when it comes out.

Every Day Carry

March 3, 2024 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

What are three objects you couldn’t live without?

I wear my CIA baseball cap most days. Zac knows this. First of all, it was a present from him. Second of all, it’s my comfort item in his absence. It’s a great baseball cap, too, but also it reminds me of him. We don’t get together that often, but I think of him all the time and vice versa. I love that he sends me pictures of himself every morning, pictures of Oliver (who is a dog), and random memes (mostly regarding making fun of religion or linux or both). All of those things are important, and yet not a sensory thing like a piece of clothing.

I wrap up in my Outlander plaid at night. Bryn knows this. It’s not branded, it’s just what I call it because Bryn sent me a Scottish plaid when we were both in the middle of inhaling the book series (I like reading, she likes audiobooks). It’s green and meant to remind me I’m loved- it does, and it has for many years because it was in the box of the first things Bryn sent me when I got here.

I like iced coffee better than hot, so I brew the coffee at night and pour it into a cup with ice in the morning. I got the cup when Supergrover sent me a large gift certificate and told me to have some fun on her. That was long ago, and it’s an every day carry.

Supergrover does not know this.

I was thinking about “choosing to air all this” afterward, and all that really made sense to me is that she was okay with step one, but forgot about steps two through ten. As in, if she started being aggressive in step one, then why would I think she would want to know steps two through 10?

It’s a weird dichotomy, because I think she really did want/need to hear the things I said after we parted, but because every conversation between us made me think she wasn’t interested, I picked up my toys and went home. I tried to take up as little room as I possibly could, because if I tried to emote, I was met with either “I’m too busy” or “you’re too needy.”

She thinks that all of this is her fault, that I have said all of this is her fault. Then, she copped to everything I said she did and apologized for it, then reamed me out for telling the world I was unhappy about her doing exactly what she was doing.

wtf kind of bullshit is that? 😉

So, when her response to me was as angry as I’d ever seen her, I met her with joy. When you get the gift that you’ve been asking for for SEVEN YEARS, you don’t complain about the wrapping. She emoted. She broke down and told me what was really going on. That’s what I wanted. If I had responded with more anger, it would have been moving the goalposts and saying her response wasn’t happy enough. She doesn’t need to be happy with me. She needs to tell me the truth.

But I want her to be happy with me. I just don’t want to be the only arbiter of our relationship. I need her to take up space by telling me how she’s feeling and not covering it up, running away from her emotions, making me do a lot of emotional guesswork that makes me set off land mines I never knew were there.

She’s never opened up about the tender places in her that I couldn’t see, that I really wanted to….. for instance, she said that she has had the chance, countless times, to stop what she was doing and respond. She didn’t, and takes responsibility for that. I could have been an asshole and said “how dare she?,” but the take home message was “I think about you all the time.”

If she’s willing to show up like she did the other day, she’s welcome every day. I don’t want to hide anymore. I don’t want to feel like a secret anymore. It doesn’t feel like a secret anymore, because when she gave me a clear picture, I could see for miles.

I told her it felt like she owned herself, and I loved her. None of this is all her fault. There was no preconceived plan, just fools rushing in. I’m just not the only fool, for very different reasons.

So, she may not have known that “her” Starbucks cup is the one I every day carry…….. because it’s just one of the things I would have told her if I thought she’d wanted to hear it.

That’s what this has all been about. When did we both just stop taking up space and trying not to offend each other?

It is, as she says, a story for another day.

So Many… Just Roll With Me Today

March 2, 2024 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

What experiences in life helped you grow the most?

Last night, I was rereading the long letter from Supergrover (having so much to read helps when she’s out of pocket because of course the second time I read something, a different aspect will jump out), and she was talking about one of her kids’ partners. She told me that the kid’s partner had told the kid that the turning point for them in their journey with alcohol was losing her kid. A tear came to my eye and I thought, “alcohol and bipolar present the same. I am this kid.” Apparently the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Her kid is her, and I have no doubt they have the same type affect on people. It wasn’t the point of the letter, but the things that affect me that she’s written are mostly the things that connect to something deep inside me.

I felt more relaxed than I’d felt in years. Supergrover didn’t understand our pattern, didn’t understand why I didn’t accept certain things about our relationship, me surprised at how conscientious and dedicated she really is at being a friend, and how because I didn’t believe her, I missed out on a lot of things. But the reason I didn’t believe her is that she wasn’t showing up. She wasn’t laying her true feelings on the table. When she got so angry she couldn’t see straight, finally she had the strength to say what she’d been hiding for a very long time. That’s what I mean by “breaking her open.” I don’t care that she was angry. Her tone wasn’t the point. Her offering was…. and that offering was “I’m hurt and tired.”

Now, it’s her job to decide whether she wants to ask me about what I’ve written, or if she’d like her pre-conceived notions as to why I’d write what I’d write stand. She thinks that I continually paint her as a villain and the times I paint her as my friend are somehow invalid. It does not make sense to her that I can love her and be angry at the same time, but yes it does. When she got into full swing, she sounded exactly like me, picking up style and structure, painting her feelings as fact (about other people, but same style)….. and I wondered what the difference was in her tone and mine. What is she reacting to that I’m not reacting to in her?

We often hate the things in others that we hate about ourselves. She learned that I’m sometimes just as private as she is because I don’t want to rock the boat, either…. and didn’t like that I chose to talk about it here because she thought I was attacking her. No, I was reflecting on a long and hard road, which looks different if you think it is at an end. In effect, she was offended by the grieving process, because I think I’ve done my fair share of denial, anger, and bargaining- to name a few. I have said a lot of things that weren’t favorable to her when she wasn’t being any more favorable to me. She called my blog a “Get Out of Jail Free” card to be shitty to her, and I didn’t know how to explain that if she really wanted me to let her go, it was going to be ugly inside myself. That I had a million different feelings to process and none of them had to do with the last 15 minutes.

I had to process 10 years, all without ever really having the input I needed. However, I’ve always gotten what I needed when we were tracking together, and I can’t hope for much, but I can hope that we’re at least back at the same starting gate. Or perhaps we’re on different sides of the concourse, but still both seeing the Nats…. and that’s something.

She said she was furious beyond belief at some entries, and moved by others. I would cut off any one of my limbs to know which entries moved her, because I have heard all about the ones that make her furious.

I had to process the time I wanted to be the partner, to when I knew she had a partner, and going from the friend who would have come to the wedding to the person that would have officiated if I’d been asked. But she didn’t give me the strength for that.

By the time Bryn got married, she was done with our church, so she asked me to marry her instead of her pastor. The wedding went off with a hitch. 😉

In fact, the thing that meant the most to me is that the groom, whom I had maybe all of two days with before the wedding, congratulated me on a job well done, and he said, “I had a lot of trepidation when Bryn said that she had this friend who wanted to do the wedding, because I wanted it to be perfect. And it was.” I don’t think he knew my back story- that I had prepared for this moment unintentionally by learning how to do weddings from the age of five. As I have said, the joke is that no one in my group of friends wanted to wait until I was done with grad school to perform a ceremony I had memorized by nine.

Although the wedding was taken directly out of the Book of Common Prayer; we just took all the religious references out because Bryn absolutely believes in the power of the universe, but I don’t know whether she would translate that to “relationship with God,” as many people do.

The thing my dad taught me that stuck with me is to go through the wedding at the rehearsal without saying the vows. Unless it was just the three of us, if they’d said the vows at the wedding rehearsal, they would have been married AT THE REHEARSAL because there were witnesses. This presented as funny only once. I got confused for a second as the vows started because I didn’t look down at my portfolio and said the groom’s name where the bride’s should have been. Bryn corrected me because she caught it and I didn’t- brain fart- and we laughed and moved on.

The thing that my dad also taught me is that brides and grooms get very nervous at their weddings, and you can coach them to the extent that you can with something like that. If someone gets tongue-tied, I say, “if so, your answer is ‘I do.'” I have never met a couple where if they hesitated during their vows, it meant they had cold feet. Most people are anxious at being in front of public.

In terms of the wedding itself, I missed Dana terribly for two reasons. The first is that I cannot imagine how much fun we would have had visiting our old haunts, and I know she would have loved being a preacher’s wife for a day. It was so fucking weird going to Burgerville without her. Yet, I did not call her and tell her to meet me there because I couldn’t. I never want to get back together with her, but I also really miss being her best friend, the part where we never, ever got angry enough to be physically violent. There was not that kind of emotion tension to create that kind of fight.

I know that this is still, in part, true for her as well because of what she said when my mother died. I hadn’t talked to her in months, maybe a year or a year and a half. The first thing I said was “thank you for picking up. I wouldn’t have called unless it was important.” She said that she would never not pick up because she figured that if I was calling her, it must be important. That is a long way of healing from standing me up at the bank, literally. So, even if she didn’t want to be a preacher’s wife in person, she definitely was the strength I chose to lean on that day. It was like she was my phantom limb the whole time, and I never felt alone, because we were every bit as much of a team as our then-pastor, as Dana, Bryn, and I all met at the same church, and we both folded into Bryn’s family…… even though because I had dated Matt, I could tell he was in a pissing match with Dana and she didn’t notice….. whether she was blind or not is debatable, because someone can present a game to you and you can say, “I’m better off pretending this doesn’t exist because it’s not worth my time to care.”

All of this is to say that Dana, Bryn, and I have a very long history, and it’s why I jumped on a plane to Portland and felt sick when I landed. I could feel my anxiety melting the further we went down 99W, because Bryn lives in Newberg, the 100% insurance I wouldn’t run into anyone I didn’t like. I don’t think we went into the city except karaoke night. I did my usual, “I Feel Lucky,” by Mary-Chapin Carpenter. It fits my voice and after I’ve had a beer my accent gets stronger. If that is true of another Southerner I know up here, it wouldn’t be a bad thing to hear that out of her, either. It’s a more rolling lilt than mine, because for some reason which I will certainly look up on YouTube (linguistics lectures are fire), the Southern accent gets softer during the drive from Texas to Mississippi.

And yes, when I spelled Mississippi, I did say in my head “M. I. SSI. SSI. Crooked letter Crooked letter i.” And I’m a music nerd, so my slowed so I could do the rhythm with my fingers as well. I love that language is music whether or not it comes with notes. It’s why I’m a hard core gangster rap fan, as well as lighter stuff like hip-hop. I am learning to write dialogue, just like I’m learning plot and character from Issa Rae on Netflix.

The reason that I want to learn dialogue like this is think about Amy Sherman-Palladino and Aaron Sorkin. They’ve both made their careers by speeding up dialogue to 33o bpm, and because the rhythm is faster, your brain contains it because you have to strain to keep up not to miss anything….. and the rhythm reinforces it.

For instance, who doesn’t remember the way Alan Arkin said, “How’d you cut your hand, Josh?” They may not remember the rhythm, but it will certainly bring up feelings…… because Yo-Yo Ma was also there.

I asked you to roll with me, and got off on a tangent as per my normal.

I have no doubt that said pastor was mad as FUCK, but I hope that she understood it wasn’t about trying to keep them out, but to keep us in. We are not saying fuck you to that world. We are making our peace with it so we can leave it behind. We are processing feelings that go back to 1997…. about our friendship, about who we are and always have been to each other, and how “for all our mutual experiences, our separate conclusions are the same.”

I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that Supergrover would love to meet Bryn, perhaps even more than she wanted to meet me, because Bryn has a story she needs to hear…………. because Bryn has been my friend since 1997, when she was a teenager (and so was I, but I was 19 and Bryn was maybe 14). I am not saying it would ever happen, but I know that Supergrover would roll her eyes at some of what Bryn had to say because it will just seem so very familiar to her, as if Bryn and I are speaking with one voice.

I can’t get them together, because Supergrover and I aren’t there yet. But what I can do is say on my blog that Bryn is coming to visit me in May, do with that information what you will.

One of the sweetest things about Supergrover’s letter was that she said my words felt like “pricks on her skin that grew into big holes she couldn’t close anymore.” What I thought was happening was happening. Instead of asking me why I’d write what I’d write, she saved it all up until she was so mad she couldn’t see straight, and tell me she was busy. I could tell, and I wasn’t angry that she wasn’t responding to me fast enough. She couldn’t see that what I wanted was for her to open up to me and tell me all the times I’d hurt her rather than kicking the can down the road. I’ve said so many heavy, scary things that I cannot count them. It is why I said that I’ve been naked in front of her so many more times than I have with a lover. It is a different voice for me, that my internal monologue was also, in fact, her external monologue. It is a weird feeling to know someone so intimately through reading their work and not giving that person a hug. It begins to feel like a rock concert, and I mean this on a deep and spiritual level.

Yesterday, I told you that she’s my tuba, or vocally the basso profundo in my life. Not the lead trumpet player, the top note. The base of the chord upon which everything is built. Who hasn’t gotten close to the woofers at Third Eye Blind. Who hasn’t felt the way your chest expands and your skin buzzes? That’s how it feels to have another person (especially one like her, the rock part) inside me, because she’s never been separate from me and we’ve never learned to pick up the other’s social cues. Incidentally, as an autistic person, if we did have a day to day relationship she’d be the perfect person to social mask when my sister wasn’t with me. She doesn’t have time for that, I’m just telling you that the way she has her shit together is what I want.

The worst part is that she thinks she doesn’t.

It’s understandable. She lives on no sleep. I’m not sure she’s had myelin on her nerves since the Reagan administration….. and I can’t tell you the line that told me that, but it was funny.

Again, reading her words, her true feelings, relaxes me and I read to the rhythm of Dave Grusin, because I like the theme to “Three Days of the Condor……. among many, many others. St. Elsewhere is probably at the top, followed by Doogie Howser, M.D. The reason I like the theme is that I’ve never seen the end of the movie. It got weird (like the misogyny in old Bond movies). I think this is fair play because the novel is called “Six Days of the Condor,” so it seems they only filmed half of it and gave up. The difference between our relationship now and our relationship at first was that in the first few weeks, the rhythm was “Your Love is My Drug,” because she’d said some very exciting things. New relationship energy ate my lunch. I have no compunction about confronting people on problems before they happen to establish boundaries, and neither does she. I warned her that this could turn into an emotional affair because of two things. Internet chat creates a sense of intimacy that may or may not be there in real life. That you become disconnected from your body, so sexuality and gender become irrelevant. This is what I meant about saying that I hoped she was going to be Cynthia Nixon, and self-deprecating that it’s because I’m not that good a writer. I was not saying that my writing is my way into her heart and therefore I thought I could change her like when we used to quote Ellen Degeneres about “winning a toaster.” I thought that reading me would change her, because women don’t fall in love with other people’s private parts all the time. This is because sexual relationships with women are built on emotional connection, just like they are with straight women. You can break up a marriage faster than you can break up two women who’ve flipped each other shit since high school.

But I can tell you the exact moment her feelings stayed the same and mine went haywire. I was telling her that her story felt like a drug, and she said, “I’m sure I’ll drink your liquor, too.” Not meant to be a pass or a flirt, but so smooth af that my knees knocked. If you’re lesbian or bi, did I make you do the thing…….. Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ. Her gender and sexuality didn’t fly out the window, mine did. It didn’t matter what she looked like, I wanted more and I was in.

If I could describe our relationship in one sentence that would resonate with my generation, it would be that our relationship on the surface seems like it’s “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.” It’s really “Bel-Air.” I feel that way all the time, every day. If you are not familiar with both shows, because “Bel-Air” is so new, let me catch you up.

“The Fresh Prince” is cute, and everyone knows the intro….. which is the scariest event that happens in the whole show (so far) portrayed as comedy. In “Bel-Air,” you find out what happened that day, how he really met Jazz, etc. It’s violent, and even in California you see the real problems in their family. Carlton is an addict because he’s a perfectionist and has anxiety. I identify with him on two levels, because I am both versions of Carlton on the shows, and the actor is from my neighborhood (I don’t know him, he was born after I left).

What I have noticed is that if you want to learn anything from powerful people, you don’t try to be a gladiator trying to impress them. You become the Olivia to their Cyrus, but not when they’re working. When they’re sitting on the couch drinking wine and eating popcorn after having fought gloves off all day. Because the fighting isn’t personal and those moments don’t matter as much as a conversation with a good friend about What Kind of Day Has It Been?

When that involved snuggling in my dreams, I knew I was fuccccccccccked, because I knew my dreams would go deeper than that while I found homeostasis. It was hell on earth, because she wasn’t going through those physical changes and I was. When you know your heart has barked up the wrong tree, you can’t tell your heart just to “snap out of it.”If I could write what really happened between us, you’d read it to the tune of a billion dollars, especially if she was my co-author. It would become a ~~franchise~~ series on Netflix, because our story has never been told before. It is an original idea, one that hasn’t been represented on screen much, if ever. It’s why I hope that those 10 seasons are all here. I don’t want to turn my blog into a Netflix series, I just hope that much story has been told.

That I am at least a good enough writer for that. I want our story to be quiet, yet enormous. There are so many differences between us that make us interesting, yet nothing can tear us apart for a moment of any day.

Let me tell you the day I knew what kind of situation my situation was in. How I fell in love with her the second time. First of all, Ifigured out how that woman who’s loved her friend for 10 years and nothing could tear them apart actually worked, so I was more capable than I was in the beginning. Secondly, it was something she said. She said that once marriage was marriage, it was for life. That it existed great sex, no sex, whatever. That’s how lesbian marriages work every single day. I finally had some words and context I really understood because it was written in my language. Everyone knows that couple that’s been together a hundred years, but they lost interest in each other during about year 12.

So, I know why she was angry I blocked her on Facebook, but I wasn’t. I needed to stop seeing her picture in my feed all day. She blocked me on instagram, and I was so grateful because I can’t see her profile unless I’m logged out. The only time I saw them is when they were referer stats on my blog, because I wasn’t logged in on all web broswers. It gave me some room to breathe, and our entire relationship was based on e-mail, not getting to know each other in person or in a group, which created different outcomes. Our relationship existed in text only between us, and it broke my personality in half. That’s why I couldn’t stay with Dana. I had grown past her and we were on separate paths no matter where in the world Supergrover and I were because Internet. She’s handfasted as my yellow string, and it runs between us. I used to call it a chord, because it worked in both our first languages.

The pleasure of my life was when we returned to them. It’s the life experience that helped me grow the most, by far…….

But what I need you to remember is that though it’s Three Days of the Condor visually, the other three days are in the book.

I just haven’t noticed all the ways not speaking each other’s love language has harmed us, because I could see what she was doing to show me love, but I couldn’t see that she was receiving what I was saying with love. She’s hurt beyond belief at some of the things I’ve written and painted it as fact that I’m out to get her when she doesn’t know the first thing about what I have to say, because I’m not talking about our real issues here. She thinks she’s the villain in the story when I’m saying that we tumble and roll. I am often the villain in this story, and have said as much. She sees how much I try to explain how her choices affect me and chooses to believe I’m being nefarious. I’m being INFJ autistic Doctor Who Malcolm Tucker.

In my head, she could be amazing in both roles.

Oh My God What a Perfect Prompt

March 1, 2024 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Do you believe in fate/destiny?

What does deep and abiding joy feel like to you? I want you to feel mine, because yesterday a broken heart was sewn.

I sent Supergrover a message because I literally couldn’t think of anyone else because I was going through a thing she’d also gone through. I needed strength to go through this thing with another friend, and I’m sorry I can’t be specific. It’s just complicated and not my story to tell or own, which is why I’m not writing about it. Just my reaction to it.

For whatever reason, I broke her open like a coconut, and not only did she help me with my problems, she opened up about our relationship and told me what was really going on………….. which broke me open like a coconut.

She was exactly the velvet hammer I needed when I needed her the most. She’s the biggest badass I’ve ever known, and the most pragmatic. And then she gave me the sweet side of her, the one that’s open and vulnerable and has the same little girl reactions that I do. She was running because she was hurt. I couldn’t help her because I didn’t know she was hurt.

Because I never knew how much I meant to her. I only knew how much she meant to me. Our relationship will hopefully be strong and comfortable in 20 years, just as she said hopefully we’d be 10 years ago.

I am falling over with laughter…….

We’re halfway therrrrrrrrreeeee. WWWWWoooooooaaaah! Livin’ on a prayer………..

Even though she was fucking furious, she was honest to a fault, and as I told her, all I’ve ever really wanted from anyone- the truth, why and how.

She said that she predicted that my response would be angry, and my response was “this is the healthiest e-mail I’ve gotten from you in 10 years. You couldn’t make my day any better, because this morning was a shitshow and now I’m grinning like an idiot.” The reason I was so goddamn happy is that she opened up to me. She told me her side of the story, and hopefully she’ll realize she’s been as wrong as I have and we’ll move on from it.

I was so overwhelmed I shut down completely, because it’s not every day that you get everything you want handed to you on a silver platter….. and I’m bad at transitions. The reason I was in shutdown mode is that it was too much joy to take in all at once, and this is the first time in 10 years that I’ve felt this safe and secure with her. I hope that I can assure her of my feeling of safety and security so that she receives it as well.

Because we both knew it was our fate. Months ago, she said “no matter what happens, we’ll always have a past, present, and future.” We got to a place where it wasn’t good for either of us, but yesterday instead of attacking she joined me in cleaning up our toxic mess. It was glorious. Her letter made me cry so hard I couldn’t move, because I was so moved. It was the longest, most beautiful, most insightful thing she’s written in a very long time.

Even in her anger at me, the way she phrased it was so well-crafted that it made me feel like I can’t keep up with her. Sometimes I stare at her in wonder (her e-mail or her pic, occasionally), thinking “Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ. Is there anything in the world I’m better at than you?” I know it’s true, and that’s what makes me crave her e-mails. Talking to her feels exactly like I felt the first day of 8th grade band…….. which I got into in 7th grade. When you meet better musicians than you, you tend to stick with them because they up your game.

Supergrover is the brain that ups my game instead of the low brass under me……. and yet, she’s my tuba, and I don’t mean that as a joke. Vocally, she’s the basso profundo of my life. Not the top of the chord, the note on which everything else is built.

I hope she at least knows that, both because of the love and work we share. Being able to say “we share” is the most amazing phrase I’ve ever been able to write on this blog. It’s a more important occasion in my life than the time Margaret Cho and Martina Navratilova retweeted me (they liked the marriage article, btw). Supergrover doesn’t say “I love you” in words. She does it by despite everything, still showing up. It may even be begrudgingly at times, but she’s fucking THERE.

She heard the distress in my voice, and she came right to me, just like I knew she would. What I did not expect is for her to explain her radio silence, essentially writing me a blog entry back.

It’s not that hard to imagine why I’d want to marry that, is it? Someone that opened up to me the way I open up here? Getting all the feelings back into our relationship is what turned the tide, because I told her that “my way is to work through things, and your way is to avoid or lightly move past things. The reason we’re joined at the spine is because our trauma is similar, but we have different reactions to it. We’ll deal with it the rest of our lives, and I’ll do it happily because I accepted her warts and all 15 minutes into our relationship. Or it seemed that way, anyway. That she could have however much of me she wanted, because I trusted her more than I’ve ever trusted anyone. She called me on some bullshit lies I was telling myself back in the day, that I was blaming myself for something that wasn’t my fault and I needed to stop seeing it that way.

It was all transference. I fell in love with my therapist because I’m queer and Will Hunting isn’t. The reason I trust her with my very life is that I’ve never had Robin Williams as a doctor.

And that’s the real story.