Highs and Lows

January 25, 2018January 25, 2018 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It was legal. But it wasn’t ethical.

I had issues.

All-Stars

January 18, 2018 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I technically live in Maryland, but if anyone asks, I live in DC. Fewer people know where Silver Spring is than the nation’s capital, and my house is 11 miles from the White House. If I was very industrious, I could walk there on the Sligo Creek trail. My Metro station is the first Maryland stop outside the district, so I can pretty much get anywhere in the city in 40 minutes. It might seem like I’m bragging, and that’s because I am.

I love where I live, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world… especially since I don’t drive, and every other city where I’ve lived has lacked true mass transit infrastructure.

I don’t know if I’ll ever start driving again, but it’s nice to have the option to not. Parking is expensive because there is more demand than supply, and it will always be that way in a city that’s only 60 sq. miles. There’s barely enough room for the cars that already “live there.” If you’re not used to walking, DC will have you up and at ’em in no time, because unless you have copious amounts of disposable income, you’ll most likely be dropped off between .2 and one mile from where you want to go. It’s the easiest workout routine ever, because you’re incorporating movement into your day rather than having to make time. Carry a backpack with everything you’re going to need for the day and you’ve got weightlifting AND cardio. For maximum hard core workouts, there’s always the years we are in full Snowpocalypse mode, and you have to lift your knees up to your chest in order to get forward motion.

If you’re going to be a tourist here, it helps to learn a little about the city before you arrive. For instance, in every Metro station there are escalators. Stand on the right, climb on the left. Break this rule and not only will we know you’re a tourist, we’re going to hate you a little bit. Also, most people on the Metro will not be friendly if you make them take off their headphones… and if they are, they’re still seething on the inside because you’ve interrupted their Metro mojo. We all have it, whether it’s getting settled with games, podcasts, or music. But Metro is a time of transition between work and play, and the zoning out is the beautiful part. We don’t want to be “on.” You’re better off talking to other tourists or using Google Maps. I’ve been using the walking directions for three years now, and they’ve never let me down.

Additionally, the federal government is here, but it’s not really indicative of the feel of the city. We are liberal loudmouths (well, most of the time, anyway) who will protest almost anything. Political activism doubles as leisure, because if we get fired up about something, we’re taking a group of friends and making a day of it. At the women’s march last year, there were so many people at Braddock station that when I got on the train with my friends, I leaned over to my friend Lindsay and said, man… if they squeeze us in any tighter we’re going to have to get married. I was riffing on Dorothy Parker, who said that her first office with E.B. White was so small that if it was any smaller, they’d have to call it adultery. If you come to DC during a major march weekend, be prepared to have to wait in line to get on the train AND to stand so close to someone that all personal space becomes null & void.

Washington reminds me a lot of Portland, Oregon for two reasons. The first is that the emphasis on political activism as leisure is about the same. The second is that the Potomac runs through the city, making it look very much like the division the Willamette provides. It’s kind of interesting that the neighborhoods are similar as well, groupings that felt like home the moment I arrived.

For those just joining us, I am originally from Houston, but have spent a lot of time in Portland, to the point where I identify both of them as my “home towns.” That means I don’t feel particularly at home in either, because they are so night and day different that I never felt settled. To my great pleasure, here I feel no wanderlust at all. Yes, it’s cheaper to live elsewhere, but why would I want to?

And, it has to be said, DC is one of the gayest places on earth, and because of the emphasis on politics, filled with the type people that make my heart beat a little faster because they’re so incredibly intelligent. I haven’t found romantic love here, but that’s because I’ve never gone looking for it, and probably won’t for a long time. I am smart enough not to wish a relationship with me on anyone right now. It’s a rebuilding year, as they say in sportsball. But when I do feel ready, I will have no shortage of ridiculously attractive choices. The hardest part is finding women who are single, because why would they be? If I think they’re star-spangled awesome, chances are, someone else does, too.

For all you southern gays out there that are looking for a place to relocate because your red state politics make your head explode, I can’t recommend DC highly enough. I think the best thing about living here is that it successfully mixes northern and southern culture… as JFK so eloquently put it, Washington is a city with Southern efficiency and Northern charm. This comment is absolutely tongue-in-cheek, and yet, right on the money. Some of us are suit and tie, some of us are all fleece, all the time. I remember a few years ago, I got the comment, we can tell you don’t work on The Hill. You’re wearing brown pants.

What, you mean the Converse All-Stars didn’t give it away?

Caffeine and Football

January 16, 2018 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

This morning I’m drinking Turkish coffee, actually a product of Lebanon. It’s spiced with cardamom, cinnamon, and turmeric… I think. I threw out the bag in favor of refilling a coffee can with a tight lid. I’m not drinking it the way the Lebanese do, though. I just put it in a regular cone filter so that there’s not “mud” at the end of every cup. It’s just as strong, though. Of that I made sure. I’m sure someone will either comment or @ me about it, that the “mud” is an essential part of the experience, I’m bucking a thousand years of tradition, etc. While all that may be true, I don’t need the pomp and circumstance every morning. I got it on Thanksgiving in tiny Redskins cups. I have no idea where one would purchase a Redskins Turkish coffee set, but they exist, apparently. Nothin’ says lovin’ like caffeine and football.

I’m gearing up to go out in the cold because I have a couple errands to run and I’m dragging ass this morning. Don’t ask me why, because I don’t have an answer…. oh, wait. Yes, I do. I’m 40. I think I’m officially “I’m going to drag ass every morning for the rest of my life” years old. Insert platitude about how every sunrise is a gift here.

I am sipping frequently as I write because snow is supposed to start falling during afternoon drive, and I want to get home before it starts so I can sit next to the picture window and watch. Snow in DC is magnificent, truly. I mean, not all the time. Sometimes it just looks dirty and gross like an ice rink when the Zamboni driver gets fired…. but newfallen snow on the monuments is the closest version of heaven on earth I’ll ever reach. I wait until the active snowing has stopped, then get outside as soon as I can. Then I just photograph everything…. from the houses in the neighborhood to the Supreme Court. It’s all magic to someone who’s spent most of their lives in a subtropical climate.

It just dawned on me that I am almost old enough to have spent more time out of Texas than in. Wow, that’s a sobering thought, especially since I haven’t drunk any alcohol since Christmas vacation. Is there such a thing as being more than sober? You know, like infamous? I wish I could remember what it was that I drank, because it tasted expensive.

I know it was whiskey or bourbon- I wouldn’t have thought anything else was worth it… and by “worth it,” I mean worth losing brain power. I don’t drink that much because I’m not a 100-watt bulb to begin with. Plus, if I drink more than one shot of something, if I do something stupid I won’t remember it well enough to embarrass myself properly on this web site…. because out of stupid things comes great writing. I have a good time with self-deprecating humor. It’s one of my specialties, because if I didn’t laugh at myself, I would continually cry. There’s just so much material to work with. If my medium was visual art, I’d have enough for three museums.

….with coffee shops.

18th and Potomac

January 7, 2018 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I think it’s a good thing and bad that I don’t write as much as I used to. On one hand, sites that aren’t updated don’t get traffic. On the other, I used to have a lot of shit to process, and it helped to write about it. Now that things are constantly calming down, there’s no conflict to endlessly discuss until I come to a resolution. I am sure that I could dig up something, but it would probably be something I’ve already dissected, and now would just seem like beating a dead horse. I do have a memorable quote from that time in my life, though. The setup is that Argo accused me of not listening. I said, sometimes what you think of as a function of not listening is not understanding and I’m beating the wrong dead horse instead of the right one. I got a point well taken for that one, so I’m assuming it was a good line. But what I think of as “a good line” isn’t saying something just to say it. I mean that I think of it as containing a truth that I should remember. I do listen, deeply, but if I’m on a different elevator, I will take what I think you mean and talk a bloody essay about it, essentially traveling up a building in Baltimore before you’ve even crossed the Potomac.

So, now I tend to get awfully “therapied” about conversation without even realizing how douchy it sounds, even though it works. I’ve gotten a lot of mileage out of what I think you’re saying is…. and speak more to that. It’s not like I’m trying to use my completed psychology minor to sound like I’ve got a PhD. It’s that I don’t want there to be a chasm between what both of us are trying to say to each other. Miscommunication, for me, is the root of all evil. Keep in mind, though, that you’ll never have a great, enlightening conversation with a person determined to misunderstand you. It’s easy to keep an argument alive if one person has a bias against the other and refuses to find anything positive about the other when it’s not that they can’t, they just don’t want to. For instance, missing the content and telling me I just ended that sentence with a preposition. 😛

Being on the same page takes a lot of work and dedication, because sometimes it takes more than one pass to try and explain what you really mean so that the other person understands it in their language. I liken it to being a child and having teachers that only know how to teach one way, so you just don’t get it and fail… not because you’re not smart enough to understand, but again, on a different elevator.

In relationships, no matter what kind, we all tend to ignore first family dynamics. For instance, say you grew up with a family that gets mad at each other in the moment and the other person grew up with a family that holds everything in as not to cause conflict. Getting angry at them is going to be terrifying for them and you’re going to hate it when everything you’ve done wrong for the past five weeks rains down on your head when you accidentally put a fork in the wrong drawer. In your family, when people get mad, when they calm down, it’s over. In their family, you never know when the Mento is going to drop over the Diet Coke…. so, in essence, you’re both living in fear.

It’s a conundrum to which I offer no answers, because it takes a trained professional to bring these two communication styles together. I just do the best I can, which is sometimes a success and sometimes a disaster. The hardest part is that all people are moving targets of emotion to some degree, and it’s difficult to score a double bullseye every time. If we all could, world peace would have been achieved long ago.

What I can say about conflicts, all of them, is that I want them to burn slower. To be passionate, but not to the point where I can’t hear anymore. And by “burning slower,” I don’t mean “fester.” I mean proceeding with caution as not to cause damage in either direction. Not everything has to be solved in one day, or even one conversation.

I could offer a hundred examples of all this, but you’ve heard them already if you’ve been even a casual reader over the years.

Just know that when I’m traveling up a building in Baltimore and you haven’t even crossed the Potomac, remind me that DC is still a thing, and we can meet there.

#prayingonthespaces

Seventeen Cents, Part II

January 1, 2018January 1, 2018 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Here is Part I. It is not necessary to read it to understand this entry, but recommended.

Fires cause emotional distress as well as physical damage. They threaten life and property and are unpredictable, uncontrollable, and terrifying. Children often are affected by what they see during and after a fire, whether or not they are physically injured. The best predictor of postfire distress in children appears to be how frightening the experience of the fire was and the extent of the loss.

-National Child Traumatic Stress Network

Ever since I saw the three gravestones of the children who were burned up in a house fire at my mom’s cemetery, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about what happened in the aftermath of our own. I don’t remember what the symbols on the other graves were (Tigger? Marie from Aristocats?), but one stuck out. It was a GIANT R2-D2. While it is certainly what the child would have wanted (and I take nothing away from that fact), it is a punch in the gut to walk past, because you instantly know you are not walking past the grave of an old adult who died of natural causes. For instance, no one who dies at 98 is going to have people gathering around the casket at the visitation saying, dear God… they took her too soon. R2-D2 gravestones subvert the natural order of things, for me presenting with stomach-churning, bile-inducing nausea. Those graves tapped into every scar they could find that was still covered in the lightest of scabs.

I was 12, and my sister was seven; it was late enough on the calendar that we were only five years apart instead of six. As is often the case, Lindsay’s reaction was delayed, because we’d spent the first few nights at our mother’s parents’ house, a short while in a borrowed lake house, and then settled into our own home… at which point the bishop told us to move. There was not really enough time to settle before another enormous change happened, and though it was difficult for me, I met Diane the first Sunday in my new church, and the world was never the same after that. I was too busy to bother with the house fire anymore.

It wasn’t all her- it was discovering a part of me I didn’t know was there… only inklings and worry that I was an abnormal psych case waiting to happen, not knowing that it was healthy and just plain average to have same-sex attractions. It’s even sort of average to have the bipolar depression, anxiety, and ADHD combo meal (I think that’s a number 11, if you’re ordering). One in four people get depression at some point in their lives, but it isn’t all the same. For some, it’s situational. For others, it’s not. But the fact that so many people might not be in the same boat with me, but certainly navigating the same waters makes feeling normal despite not feeling normal comforting & safe.

I can honestly say without reservation that something has been wrong since childhood- nothing I’ve been through has changed the fact that I’ve had a chemical imbalance far longer than I’ve been taking medication for it, and it took years to find the right protocol because no one suspected I was on the bipolar spectrum until college, when I went back to University of Houston in 2006. Therefore, upping seratonin didn’t do a whole lot for me. It wasn’t until I was put on a mood stabilizer that I knew what it felt like to live without depression at all.

The hardest part was hearing my doctor tell me that he thought I was bipolar, because the images it brought to mind were nothing close to my reality. As I told Dana on the phone, “I don’t want to be Sally Field from ER!” Bipolar disorder, like Autism, is a sliding scale of challenges, and I’m on the end where my lows are so low that my highs are barely noticeable, but there. When I’m on a high, I act virtually the same, I just can’t sleep. There’s a line drawn in the sand between what I deal with every day and the complete sensory overload flipout I had three years ago, because it wasn’t due to being bipolar. It was completely psychological, not psychiatric. A med change helped, but I was vomiting up old trauma that I’d boxed up and put away, and when it was unearthed from deep within, I could not even. Psychotherapy and medication have to go hand in hand for true relief, and unfortunately for me, I didn’t think there was anything psychologically wrong with me right up until I found my emotional baggage hold. There was a pilot case for the fire, a hanging bag for internalized homophobia/emotional abuse, and a Samsonite 29 inch spinner for pent-up rage about just damn everything. I spill fun secrets. Ugly ones were eating me alive.

Now that I have made significant changes to my life, starting over in a new city without any triggers, eating good things, and nearly cutting alcohol out of my diet because it makes my medication work better, I am back to the same boring, average person I was before. Still working the combo meal, but blessedly stable. I would have become a teetotaler if that’s what my doctor said would work, but he said that every once in a while, it was okay. Especially when I was working in a pub, I’d have a drink every night after work, using the free “shift drink” to try everything in the bar at least once. It didn’t undo me, by any means, but I am going for maximum efficacy. Plus, over time I have noticed that since my tolerance is in the toilet, it takes one drink for my brain to feel a little fuzzy, and as a writer, that makes me (more) crazy. I spend most of the time after drinking a cocktail wondering when it’s going to wear off. It’s just not relaxing to me unless I’m being social.

Wondering is useless, but I do it. I wonder who I would have been without emotional trauma, because that was the shitty icing on the burnt cake. I wonder what my life would have been like had I only been through a house fire, and that was the beginning and the end of childhood emotional malady. I had enough family support that I rebounded quickly from it, but then fell headlong into another disaster. Or perhaps it was one continuous disaster without a break, and I just felt like I was over one before the other started because frankly, the second disaster was exciting. You never know when a relationship is going to turn out to be a train wreck, because everyone‘s nice in the beginning.

If there’s a good thing to letting it all out, it’s that the healing process can begin in earnest. In my wandering/wondering state, I project that without so much emotional burden, I would have been a doctor by now (of divinity or psychology, maybe higher mathematics [If you don’t know me, let me ASSURE you “higher mathematics” was a hilarious joke.]). But the bright side is that I only just turned 40. Lots and lots of people achieve doctoral degrees way after that…… Hope and time are on my side…. mostly because as Elizabeth Gilbert so eloquently said, I’ve never seen any life transformation that didn’t begin with the person in question finally getting sick of their own bullshit. I’m still not done blaming my emotional trauma for where my life has taken weird twists and turns, but I would had I been a responsible adult when it happened. It’s different when you’re an adult, because you have no one to blame for poor life choices except yourself, because you actively choose them.

I’m not over the ways emotional abuse changed me that I’d never have chosen on my own. I’m not over how long I didn’t understand why I couldn’t get it together, not realizing that tissue is stronger after it is scarred and took a much bigger knife to find the original wound. As Jonathan Kellerman says in The Murderer’s Daughter, and I’m paraphrasing, The Haunted need a surgeon, not a barber. Now that time has passed, though, and the poison is out, I’m on my own… which doesn’t render the previous sentences about not being done invalid. These things are both true, both equally valid. There’s a reason it’s called recovery, and there is only healing, never a cure.

So, tl;dr…. I saved up all the feels until I couldn’t anymore and exploded. I’m okay now. The end.

Lindsay had a much rougher time than me after we moved, because she did not have systemic euphoria to turn her head. She did not want to go to school. I do not remember this happening before we left Naples, only after we moved to Houston, because again, I think it was too much change, too fast. In the Methodist Church, everyone moves on the same day so no church is left pastorless (under normal circumstances). It was summer, so we were all together for a few months before Lindsay’s PTSD surfaced. Not going to school was her way of trying to control whether our new house burned down or not. I attribute this to a truly dick move on the part of one of the firemen, who didn’t look around when he started speaking and said that the fire started over Lindsay’s room, and if she’d been sleeping in it, she’d be dead. That one phrase repeated in Lindsay’s mind over and over and over to the point of paralysis, until second grade seemed impossible to contemplate. If she wasn’t home, she was helpless should anything happen…. interesting because not being home kept her from danger in the first place.

I can’t remember whether my parents talked to a psychologist or to her teachers, but someone came up with the idea that there should be a routine each and every day. My dad started out by walking her into class and staying for a little bit until she got settled. He gave her a “slap bracelet,” all the rage then, so that she’d know he was always with her.

Editor’s Note: My God. My God! Dan. Argo. Lindsay. Slap bracelet. Click.

Additionally, before he left her classroom, and later, before she got out of the car, he said the same words Every. Single. Day. Lindsay would say them with him:

Lucky Day…..
Gonna Getta E Today
Like I Say….

Wave to me!

An E was for excellence, I believe in conduct. Lindsay has what would be called “leadership skills” now, but then rendered her to a table with three other people also named The Bossy Girls. Perhaps feeling so out of control during the fire made her want more control over her environment later. Conjecture, but probably an educated guess.

It’s interesting how Lindsay’s trauma turned her outward, making her able to achieve incredible things at a very young age. Now that she’s a lobbyist (the good kind- things like helping people with cancer and getting money for state-run programs), I want to take a picture of her in the Willard Hotel and get it framed for my room.

The reason it’s so very interesting to me is that my trauma turned me inward, unable to stop the rumination until the puzzle was solved. Once I was out of high school and early college, focused on the college courses that piqued my interest rather than the have-tos, learning turned me on, made my internal flame burn white. But all of the rest of my available time was dedicated to this mystery. Even in the face of enormous interest, I’d find a way to let my mind wander away from it, especially when textbook passages got dry.

I am only now beginning to compartmentalize, marking cases resolved. I want to be a bossy girl, too.

The Last Little Bit

December 31, 2017 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

With all of the holiday craziness, it has been nearly impossible to find time to write. Now that I am back home in DC, I am getting in one last entry before the new year starts. It’s probably not going to be Hemingway, but good writing has never been the focal point of this site. It’s always nice when it happens, but the true nature is just to catalogue what has happened so I have a written record. You matter, but not as much as I do. I’m not even going to ask if that’s okay, because I can be codependent enough without asking “international television” their opinion (if you’re just joining us, that’s my nickname for all the “Fanagans-” it’s funny #crickets).

It has not been a good year, but it hasn’t been a bad one, either. I continue to learn more about myself every day, as well as escaping grief through copious amounts of reading. Through novels, I have traveled overseas, mostly to the Middle East. I read a ton on fictional intelligence (both govvie and non), because it is the one thing that will get me completely “out of my element, Donnie.” I don’t think as fast on my feet as Jane Whitefield, Atticus Kodiak, or Kathy Mallory… but thanks to them, I can at least rip them off verbatim should I ever get into a bit of a situation. For instance, I have learned that hair dye and different glasses (possibly a hat) are enough to fool nearly everyone in the world. 😛

For Christmas, I got a new novel called The Murderer’s Daughter, which I was told to read by the fire in my pajamas. I followed those directions explicitly, and enjoyed the hell out of myself after the hard-yet-amazing experience of decorating my mother’s grave for Christmas. My sister even found treble clef ornaments for “Fred,” my name for the tree that sits in front of her headstone.

Last year, when my mother had just died in October, I did not allow Christmas to happen. I did not wait for the baby, I did not count on new hope, I did not see magic in any form. I, in fact, went to sleep on Christmas Eve and did not wake up until Christmas Day was almost over. I didn’t get together with friends, and opened my presents alone in my room. In my devastation, I didn’t know what else to do, and nothing else felt right. I’d have ideas, and then think, “nah.” I didn’t sleep because I was tired. I slept because nothing else lifted me out of my pain. In retrospect, I should have gone to help the homeless or to Arlington National Cemetery, because if there is anything I have learned this year, a reminder that I’m not the only one who has ever experienced tragedy is powerful. But, again, I learned that this year. Last year, I was barely strong enough to go downstairs, much less leave the house… and by this year, I mean over Christmas at home, in the cemetery where my mother is buried, I found a set of three gravestones. They were all children who’d been burned up in a house fire.

Not only did it remind me not to be so egocentric, Lindsay reminded me that when our house caught fire, my mother could not find me, because I’d run to the neighbors’ house to call 911. Without even thinking about it, she sprinted into the burning house, because that’s what mothers do.

In our house fire, no one was hurt physically, but we all carry different sorts of psychological trauma from it. How could we not? It has faded mightily since December 20th, 1990, but there are certain things that stick with me, like my parents scrambling to buy new Christmas presents and thinking that all my birthday presents, my computer, and my clothes were gone. In fact, that last one knocked me out…. I didn’t have any clothes.

But like all tragedies, there were positive lessons, too. For instance, I do not give a rat’s ass about any of my property. My treasure lies in my relationships, which I often mess up for a whole host of reasons, but I keep trying to get them right, because I know a laptop won’t love me back.

2017 was all about learning to love again, after completely shutting down and refusing to emote unless I was writing. I could love as an idea, but I could not as a verb. Many people reached out to me which resulted in a lot of unanswered calls, texts, and e-mails. The only person I’d get back to immediately (or as immediately as I could) was my dad, because I felt so guilty that I’d shut out my mom in my depression that I absolutely could not alienate another parent. But everyone else just got the short end of the stick, because I didn’t have anything to give. Everything in my cup was the dregs from Pandora’s box.

Slowly, surely, things have changed… are changing.

This year, I got to wait for four babies, the eternal living Christ and three new characters to “Stories” as yet unnamed…. they’re still living in their first apartments, and won’t be evicted til Spring. I can’t name their parents because the news isn’t public, but I can tell you that two of them are sharing the same “bedroom.”

2018 is looking better and better every day, because there is no greater news than birth after dealing with death. I am now more and more excited to live my own life, rather than through the fictional pictures novels create.

It’s time.

#prayingonthespaces

Cheese!

December 23, 2017December 23, 2017 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Today was long and fruitful. About 13 years ago, I was so poor I didn’t have two nickels to rub together and didn’t want to ask anyone for help. I thought I had something stuck to my front tooth, and with no money for dentistry, tried to pop it off with a knife. In my infinite wisdom, I realized right after I’d done it that I’d actually knocked off a piece of plaque and most of the enamel. I’ve been walking around with the nerve exposed, worrying hysterically that it was going to fall out, every day since… until now.

My dad looked at my teeth and did some research, finding out that not only had my in-home surgery fucked up that one tooth, taking Lamictal this long was making my whole mouth worse, and it would continue to deteriorate, because I do not have the luxury to stop the medication that keeps me as sane as I can achieve.

He got on the phone and found a dentist that was open today, and she filled all my cavities, closed the open nerve on my front tooth, and rendered me into a puddle as I genuinely smiled for the first time in years without hatred of it. Her work is beautiful, and I feel almost glamorous. I say “almost” because I’m not sure that tomboys ever get all the way there. I suppose I am closer to dapper, what with my nerdy black Ira Glasses and black leather shoes, which I had shined at DCA.

I actually love to shine my own shoes, I was just running short on time. I asked the woman how much it would be, and she didn’t speak any English, so I flipped into Spanish. “Ocho,” she replied. The man in the chair next to me said, “how much did she say it would be?” Out loud, I said, “eight.” My inner monologue said, it’s been a long time since SOMEBODY’s watched Sesame Street. Additionally, this experience was my first in DC as a white person where a Spanish speaker didn’t look at me like I had three heads when they heard Spanish coming out of my mouth. It makes sense. In an airport, lots of people are going to be able to speak lots of languages. When I’ve been in shops that cater to the Hispanic community or, once, talking to a janitor in a mall, the surprise has been almost tangible. I get the feeling that Maryland, DC, and Virginia are more segregated that way. In Texas, it’s so much easier to get by if you at least know a few basics.

I took two years of Spanish in school, but that’s not really where I learned it. When my father was a pastor, there were people in the church who’d been organizing mission trips to Reynosa for years, and I went with them three times… two summers in a row and a winter break in between them. Nothing helped me more than immersion. After that, I began shopping in stores and eating in restaurants in heavily Hispanic neighborhoods, because otherwise, I didn’t have anywhere to practice. Because of these mission trips, I’m one of the few people in my Houston crew that can order at a taqueria without using the number next to the picture. 😛

One of the funniest things that’s happened to me recently regarding speaking Spanish is that I was chatting online in a room that wouldn’t allow special characters….. so I told someone that I’d studied two anuses of Spanish in school and now had 40 anuses…. that’s because in Spanish, you don’t say “I’m 40 years old,” you say, “I have 40 years.” So, for future reference, grammar nazis, ano means “anus.” Año means year. The difference in pronunciation is “ano” and “anyo.” Tengo cuarenta años, pero tengo solamente uno ano…. luckily. No one has ever managed to literally rip me a new one.

Having a family that lives in Texas is a beautiful thing, because even though I don’t live here, I still get opportunities occasionally to flex my Spanish-speaking mind. I actually prefer it to English, it’s just that I’m not fluent in Spanish and have to resort to English. If you are wondering why I’d say something like “I prefer Spanish” as a native English speaker, it’s that it’s so much simpler. All verbs are conjugated the same way, so the conjugation of the verb also contains about whom you are speaking as well, whether it’s yourself or others. Everything is pronounced exactly like it’s spelled- there are no silent letters or any of the other oddities we put up with in a language that comes from everywhere else. For instance, Honore de Balzac said that “60 percent of English is French badly pronounced.” And even though I prefer Spanish, I thank God I was born an English speaker, because I cannot imagine how difficult it must be to figure it out later. I’d stare at a word like “knife” for hours before throwing up my hands and screaming.

It’s a life goal to become fluent in Spanish, because I’ve often thought about retiring with the 17,000 other gringos in Enseñada. But that was before I moved to DC, and haven’t thought about moving anywhere since. As a poli sci major, it means something to me to be in the same city as the original Supreme Court. In terms of the United States, I live where Eddie Izzard would say “the history comes from.” It means something to me to live inside the national news.

I do, however, enjoy Houston in small doses. Being a Texan is, for me, akin to having brown eyes or being gay. It defines part of who I am…. and not quite the same as just being Southern. Texas was once its own country, and we have never forgotten it. For instance, I doubt you ever really have to ask someone if they’re from Texas. It’ll come up in conversation quickly.

This trip, I haven’t done anything uniquely Texan except drink soda from H-E-B. Oh, I take that back. I did remember the Alamo yesterday.

Today, after my hours of dental work were done, I went with my dad, stepmom, and one of their friends to see The Last Jedi. I’m going to have to see it again, because I honestly have no idea how I feel about it. I was high on pain meds and distracted by all the activity around me because we were in one of those theaters that serve food, so there were literally waiters walking in front of me while I was trying to concentrate… and the couple next to me just WOULD NOT SHUT UP. They were just aggressively white, treating the theater like they were in their living room. People like this are the main reason I go to movies when no one else is going to be there and don’t take anyone with me. I like to watch movies in complete silence…. and just like my mother, I will grin and bear it in full theaters right up until I just cannot even, trying in vain to get people to stop talking with an authoritative stare. The reason I try The Look™ first is that sometimes actually saying to people that you wished they’d stop talking is more trouble than it’s worth. They’ll start talking louder just because they know it annoys you, they’ll get confrontational, etc. Very few people, in my experience, are humble about realizing they’ve inconvenienced someone else.

As I get older, I find more and more things that make me feel like I’m turning into my mother, which was mortifying while she was still alive and priceless now.

Speaking of my mother, my father is taking me to meet my sister at the cemetery tomorrow morning, both because I don’t have a rental car and because he’s never seen her grave site. Lindsay wants to decorate Fred (the tree next to her headstone) for Christmas, and then we’re going to go see a movie or something. Death and grief don’t seem so bad in the cemetery, because it really does make me feel closer to my mother to be there, and the place itself is soothing and serene.

Then, at some point, I need to wrap the presents I bought. Because there are so many kids in my family (four of us, all with spouses except me), we do secret Santa. I got Mathew, Lindsay’s husband, and he is hopefully going to flip his shit. I am so excited to give him his gift that it will take every bit of strength I have not to shove it at him as he walks through the door. Giving presents is my favorite thing in the whole world. I love it 20 times more than getting them. I enjoy the hunt, the thing that will make people say, “how did you know?” or “this is totally me.” Though I realize how useful Amazon Wish Lists can be, especially because you might get someone something they already have, I sometimes think it takes away from the moment someone else realizes that you actually do listen to them, know them, etc.

I also really enjoy giving books now, because e-books always arrive on time and you can buy them the day of. Plus, you don’t have to have a physical Kindle. Kindle is also an app for every mobile device.

Sometimes I give people books I haven’t read, but have read the synopsis and think it would be something they would like. Sometimes I give a copy of my favorite book of the moment, just to be able to share it with someone else.

Alternatively, Kindle is the most dangerous of all shopping experiences, because in a lot of cases, a book series starts with a free “dime bag” and when you’re in the moment of “OH MY GOD! WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?!” a pop-up will appear saying that you can buy the next one for $4.99. There are two series I’ve binged that way this year- The Face on the Milk Carton and Fat Vampire. I am sure they won’t be the last in the coming years…. although right now I am really into documentaries and it’s taking away a lot of my time from reading. It goes in cycles. Sometimes I need the TV on for “company” and sometimes I crave complete silence. I just don’t want to watch junk TV. I want to learn something, because I like Knowing Stuff.™

It makes me smile, the kind where my beautiful teeth show.

A40

December 21, 2017December 21, 2017 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

A 38 and A 40 were my seat assignments- the first from National to Midway, the second from Midway to Hobby. I did not expect this in the slightest. Unbeknownst to me, my dad had added Early Bird check-in to my ticket. On the first flight, I sat in the bulkhead for the extra legroom. The guy next to me coughed on me twice. By the time we landed in Chicago, I was coughing, too. Apparently, germs are a thing.

I mean, of course I know they exist. I just didn’t know how fast they could spread. But then again, it might not have been that guy’s fault at all. It could have been anyone on the plane and all that recycled air.I could also be incorrect in that germs don’t spread that fast, and I was already getting sick before I boarded the plane, anyway, and I just noticed it when a big dude coughed down on my head. If that is the case, I indeed apologize to everyone on board.

On the second flight, I sat on the second row- less legroom, but I did not like having to stow my backpack in the overhead bin and the lack of a tray table. Luckily, that flight was short. In fact, in true Southwest fashion, the announcements were hilarious….. Chicago is our home city and we’re done for the day after this, so you’re officially on the fastest flight in the fleet.

My plane to Hobby was delayed by about an hour and a half, so I did what most people do when they have extra time in Chicago. I went looking for pizza. I did not find classic Chicago style, but it was delicious. I hadn’t had anything but three cups of coffee up to that point, and a simple margherita was the perfect antidote.

I would also like to say that even though I went to Chicago, I am still alive and mostly well (you’re welcome, five readers who get that joke).

I landed at Hobby about 9:30, but by the time I collected my bags, it was closer to 10:00 before my dad and I left for Sugar Land. He took me through downtown and showed me all the Christmas lights, the new additions to the hospital where Angela works, and the performing arts center that’s basically on our street. So much has changed since the last time I was here. When I came to Houston in October, I didn’t come to Sugar Land at all. It’s nice to see how much the city has grown and changed- I hardly recognized it.

When we got to the house, my dad showed me my room. It is painted 18% grey, the only color that’s completely neutral in photographs, because it’s Angela’s office/studio… or, at least, it used to be. I seem to remember a few years ago Angela saying that the dogs were jumping out the window in her studio, and I was very confused, hoping they weren’t injured. I didn’t know that since the studio had moved, the window she was talking about was a foot off the floor. I thought they were jumping out the second story.

The paint is very close to my favorite color, which is also grey, but a bit darker. I don’t know the percentage, but it’s #333333 for HTML purposes and you can Google it, because I’m typing on a tablet and it’s a pain in the ass to look it up for you. 😛

My dad was so sweet- he put a coffee machine and a refrigerator in my room, stocked with HEB Diet Wild Red, one of the things I actually miss about living here. If HEB existed in the DMV, I think the region would be closer to divinity than it already is. Technically, I just want a Central Market within walking distance of my house. That’s probably too much to ask, but a girl can dream.

In addition to having my favorite sodas cold, my dad made sure that I had a Roku that tapped into the cable so I have Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, and………. wait for it……… BBC AMERICA!!!!!! There’s a Doctor Who marathon running right now, which I have turned off and am sitting in the quiet. Otherwise, I will just watch it all night…. Just one more episode…. one more….. one more…. oh, look… now the sun’s up. I made sure that either my dad or Lindsay had BBCA because I cannot miss the Christmas special. They’re always good, but this year’s has a regeneration. I have a very good feeling that Jodie Whitaker isn’t going to pop onto the screen with Alex Kingston saying, “hello, sweetie,” but again, a girl can dream.

River Song is one of my favorite characters because I’ve had a celebrity crush on Alex Kingston since ER. I don’t know whether I’ll end up feeling the same way about Jodie or not- in Broadchurch, she was in grief the whole time, and though my heart bled watching her on screen, I tend to crush out on people who’ve got that humor thing down. There’s just not a whole lot of room for funny when your son dies in the first episode. She was, however, brilliant in the role, and because of that pain, I can totally see The Doctor’s history weighing on her already. I want to say for the record that I have high hopes for Jodie as The Doctor, not The First Female Doctor. That’s cool and all, but I don’t think it’s the radical change people think it’s going to be, because I’d be very surprised if The Doctor’s new gender, and, by extension, sexual orientation, is even made an issue. Doctor Who is about adventure, and hardly ever romance, anyway. It is more about deep and loyal friendships, and those happen with any combination of genders.

I would, however, like to see The Doctor as a wife. But that’s just my own personal taste. There may not be a way to bring River Song back, but with a time travel show, who knows? I just think it’s important to show that when you fall in love with a personality, outward appearance ceases to matter.

There are things that matter so much more, like a coffee machine in my room.

A38

December 19, 2017 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 4 Comments

Though Dana and I are divorced now, there are still hilarious stories that run through my mind all the time when I think of her. Today it was Southwest Airlines.

I am sure that you are all familiar with the Southwest cattle car boarding process. You have to check in 24 hours before your flight time, and the closer you are to that exact period, the closer to the front you are in line. Every. Single. Time. Dana and I flew anywhere, she would sit at the computer with her hand on the mouse watching the seconds tick down…. Travel was literally the only time I ever saw her become a Type A personality. By the time it was ten seconds til, she was practically borderline diarrhea trying to outmaneuver the other 200 or so passengers. She’d hit that button like she was playing Call of Duty….. and God help us if she forgot and we were in the C group. But I think in the entire 7 years and change we lived together, she forgot once. Or maybe I was in charge and I’m ALWAYS Type B, so it could have been ALL. MY. FAULT….. the more likely scenario.

I am laughing so hard that tears are coming to my eyes remembering every time I had to “walk” through an airport with Dana, because it was more like trying to keep up with a hurricane.

I just want to get there early enough to go through security, and outside of that, I don’t care. I don’t care who sits next to me, I don’t care what boarding group I’m in, I don’t care if I end up in a middle seat, I don’t care how early I get to the gate, because boarding takes forfriggingever anyway……….. Especially after having worked in an airport (I was a prep/line cook in a pub at PDX), my objective is just to be the most laid back, friendly passenger ever.

The story that has stuck with me the most from that time is the woman that missed three flights in a row from being too drunk. Eventually, security came and got her, and probably sent her home. As far as I’m aware, there’s not a drunk tank in that airport, although there is good coffee. In my experience, however, coffee does not make one sober up. Coffee makes one make stupid decisions much faster. It’s very effective.

Dana and I actually both worked in the same pub, because it had two locations in different terminals. I think we worked together once or twice, but mostly it was comparing notes at the end of the day… and a competition on how many famous people we’d met, which Dana always won.

When Grimm was at the height of its popularity, the stars would come through a lot. Silas Weir Mitchell (Monroe) made an appearance in Dana’s terminal, and the conversation ran thusly:

Dana: My wife wanted me to tell you that she punches me every time she sees your car.
Silas: ……………
Silas: OH! BECAUSE IT’S A YELLOW BUG!!!!

Diane and Susan worked with Thomas Lauderdale from Pink Martini for years- Diane because of music, Susan because when Thomas was young, he worked with her at the ACLU. I begged Diane to introduce me, and she didn’t.

One day this guy walks into my pub and tries to buy two San Pellegrinos. I don’t have access to the cash register, so I tell him that the waitstaff will be right with him. While I’m standing there, the conversation runs thusly:

Leslie: Do people ever tell you that you look like Thomas Lauderdale from Pink Martini?
Random Dude: ………………
Leslie: Oh my God. You are Thomas Lauderdale, aren’t you?
Thomas: ::wink:: ::blush::

As he walked away, I realized that duh, of course it was Thomas just because of the way he was dressed, which is completely unique and sassy. I didn’t beat myself up too bad- I’ve felt dumber.

The other story I remember as if it were yesterday was actually a conversation between one of the waitresses and me. I didn’t cry in the moment, but I did in the debriefing. The setup is that in our restaurant, there’s a mother/daughter team who live together, work together, and are seriously glued at the hip….. The conversation runs thusly:

Waitress: So, my mother and I were driving home yesterday and she asked me if I’d heard about some sort of explosion overseas. I don’t remember what country. I looked at her like she had three heads. When did my mother get interested in current events? I asked her about it, and she said, “oh, Leslie listens to NPR in the back all day.”
Leslie: (laughing) It’s true. I do.
Waitress: (tears in her eyes) Leslie, thank you for educating my mother.

I didn’t even know what to say, I was so touched. I was just doing my own thing, being all me, all the time. Most of the time, I worked on weekends, and I preferred Wait, Wait to music while I was slicing five pounds of tomatoes (oh, GOD. The acid burns…..).

One of the other cooks made me laugh when she said, well, it beats the hell out of Tejano. My answer to that was to start singing No Te Vayas….. LOUDLY. Hey, you work in a kitchen long enough, you memorize these things, because just like English megastations, they play the hits 68 times a week. Of course, as a Texan who speaks only passable “Spanglish,” I only know about half of what it’s saying, but I get the gist. The only part I really understand is the refrain.

But no, do not go!
Do not leave me without your love!
I need to feel again
The fire of your passion.

But no, do not go!
Do not be cruel with my heart!
But no, do not go!
Do not leave me a sad goodbye!

I can just picture him running through an airport, trying to keep up with a hurricane.

Surprise!

December 17, 2017 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 1 Comment

Last night I went to Dan & Autumn’s White Elephant Holiday Party. It was great to be back on Leslie Ave., and don’t think I haven’t thought about stealing a street sign more than once. If I win the lottery (it would help if I played), I’m buying that house right from under them (watch your backs, dear hearts……). The only thing that would keep me from doing so, and this is big, is that I love Maryland so much. It’s a bit more liberal without Richmond to deal with…….. but Del Rey is just so damn cool.

25438828_10155716438840272_5761970691560350761_o Not only is it a funky neighborhood reminiscent of Hawthorne in Portland, Oregon, Dan, Autumn, and my cousins, Nathan and Emily, all live there. It’s nice to have so many people I adore at one Metro stop (Braddock, in case you’re wondering… one past National Airport on the Yellow Line…. as if I will ever get used to calling it “Reagan” instead). I took this picture at about 12:30 AM as I was on my way home, and the lights just spoke to me. I remembered my first day in DC, when Dana and I patched our relationship up just enough that I called her just to laugh about the fact that I’d gotten on the train going the wrong way and ended up at Braddock instead of Ft. Totten, where I generally transfer to the Red Line, even though it’s faster at other stops. This is because I am just lazy enough to want a longer trip on one line…. Don’t make me get up…. I’m playing Zen Koi here, man……. WMATA is changing things up a bit, though. You can’t transfer to the Red Line right now because it’s closed for maintenance from Rhode Island all the way to Silver Spring. You either have to take a shuttle bus, or Uber when you’re running short on time. The shuttle buses take twice to three times as long. By the time I got to Silver Spring station, the bus home had stopped running. I got an Uber, and then my phone died. My driver couldn’t find me, and canceled the trip. I ended up at Dave & Buster’s, where the bar has USB plugs, and after about ten minutes, tried for another ride home. This time, it worked. I didn’t get home until after 2:00, but it was completely worth it.

25438879_10155716165570272_5618868711594337185_o Here’s a picture of what I brought to the White Elephant party, which got a big response. I picked it out weeks ago, and the excitement was killing me. It was so hard not to just blab all over everywhere what I was taking, but I didn’t until after it was opened. I am generally not very good at keeping secrets. One of the funniest things that happened between Kathleen and me is that when we lived in Alexandria, for our third anniversary I booked us one of those cruises down the Potomac where you can look at all the monuments at night. I kept the secret for three months, and then, the day we were supposed to go, Kathleen asked me if there was anything she needed to bring, having no idea where we were going. I said, well, you might want to bring a jacket. It’s going to be cold on the boat. I clapped my hand over my mouth and we both fell out laughing. Since that particular dumbass attack, I have had to try a lot harder to hide my nefarious-yet-generous activities, because it just slipped out. I didn’t mean to spoil the surprise, I was just on the “think it, say it” plan, which often leads to very heavy face palms. Although I did spill to my dad and Lindsay, because there was no way it would make it back to DC. Friends and family that are so far away come in handy.

So, I open the present I picked, and tears came to my eyes. From the moment I opened it, I knew it was the perfect present for me. I valiantly tried to stay neutral because the reality was that it could have gotten stolen at any point. I did, however, hide the bag behind my back, hoping that everyone would forget it was there. I don’t know whether it was the tears that did it, or whether my plan worked, but after the gift exchange I told the people who brought the gift why it meant so much to me. Busboys & Poets is my favorite restaurant here, and one of the last meals I shared with my mother was at the Takoma Park location, where I am fairly sure the gift was bought because that’s where they live. In addition, the restaurant gets its name from one of the most famous writers in American history, Langston Hughes, who was the busboy poet. 25398107_10155716200820272_144966618721340104_o

As you can see, not only is the gift a coffee mug with the logo, it came with a Langston Hughes finger puppet with a magnet in his hat so you can hang it on the refrigerator, or in my case, the mirror above my dresser. My stepsister, Caitlin, will be happy to know that it holds much less coffee than the Doctor Who tankard she gave me a couple of years ago. I told her that I loved that mug because it holds four cups of coffee at once, and she said, isn’t that a bit much? Well, probably, but between the depression and ADHD, coffee acts as the right amount of stimulant to get me out into the world and give me some modicum of concentration without having to resort to Ritalin, Adderall, Stratera, et al. If I accidentally drink too much, too late, I just take a Tylenol PM. However, I rarely have to resort to that, because in a person with ADHD, stimulants have the opposite effect. They actually make me calmer…. well, as long as it’s just plain cups of coffee and not a Starbucks monstrosity of shots. I don’t need those kinds of highs and lows…. I just have to keep the bus from going under 50 (wow, that reference just aged me). It does not, however, stop the stream-of-consciousness in my head where tangents lead to tangents which lead to tangents and possibly the loss of the original point… but I’ll get back there eventually.

With presents like this, it feels like the universe is telling me that my mother is still right here, with her own nefarious generosity. Who knew that a White Elephant gift would tap into my emotions so deeply? I went to the party expecting to surprise everyone else, but the real surprise was mine alone.

But one more surprise before I go. Dan’s birthday is coming up, and I asked for a minute alone with her to give her a present. When it happened, before I took out the gift, I said, because you travel a lot, I’m giving you jewelry appropriate for a friend. I figure that wherever you go, when you look at it, you’ll think about where you got it and smile… and for that moment, I’ll be with you on your journey. If that sounds too practiced to be off the cuff, it’s because I made the exact same speech to Argo years ago, because was also one of my “dames on a plane.” But just because it was the same speech, that doesn’t mean that the sentiment was any less heartfelt. I don’t know if Argo still wears hers because of our blowouts, but I’d like to think so. I won’t tell you what hers was, only because it might identify her in some way. But I will tell you that Dan’s is a beaded bracelet that looks too fancy for an old school “friendship bracelet,” but it’s the same idea. They’re Tibetan prayer beads, which, to me, represented prayers without wax…. and as I joked with her, “no homo.”

In Michelangelo’s day, sculptors who made mistakes often filled them with wax to cover the impurities. A complete sculpture without doing so were called “sin cera,” Latin for without wax. It is the origin of the word sincere. “Prayers without wax” is code for the deeply felt message of thanks for being that friend who understands me the most since we’ve both lost our mothers, which are different conversations than the ones I have with people who haven’t. It has been amazing to have someone who knows how to catch me when I pitch forward in the haze of loss.

It is just as miraculous to have a gift I will look at every day in order to smile through pain… a sign to me that God moments happen in the most unexpected places.

A surprise, as it were.

In Retrospect…

December 16, 2017December 16, 2017 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 4 Comments

I’ve thought a lot about what I wrote yesterday, and having my mother die while I was trying to pull myself out of my own head was the best worst thing that could have happened. I got to see up close what it would have done to my family had I succeeded in my quest to get off the grid. I got to see the turmoil, the tears, & all of the absolute misery. I got to see how long it would have taken them to recover, if at all. Moreover, I wouldn’t wish anything I’ve felt on anyone else. It was learning everything I didn’t know I didn’t know.

There are some things that are impossible to experience until they happen. Thinking doesn’t prepare you for even a quarter of the ups and downs of grief. It doesn’t prepare you for either sleepless nights or, for better or for worse, dreaming. Sometimes I see my mother in her casket. At others, we are having the greatest time ever, in future fantasy or in past remembrance.

The first few days are just shock that strikes one dumb and deaf to the world around you… or perhaps it’s more dumb than deaf, because you can hear things, but you cannot comprehend or respond.

It is a delayed response. Everything you’ve heard builds up over time and you explode with the emotions seething under the anesthesia. Even people who are extraordinarily in touch with their emotions cannot possibly process all of it in the moment. And by “it,” I mean the most comforting things people around you have done, and the most stupid. But you can’t really get angry at people who say and do stupid things, because it’s never out of malice.

Very few people really know what to say, or worse, the people you thought would be there for you because you’re supposedly so close disappear, and the ones you never thought you’d hear from are johnny-on-the-spot. But you can’t get angry at that, either, because people tend to retreat out of fear. It takes bravery to confront the grieving…. to show up and say anything, even if it’s “wrong.”

In my own case, I didn’t really want anyone to say anything. I wanted silence and contact comfort. The behaviors I liked the most were friends simply saying, I’m sorry, and then just sitting there with me, an arm around my shoulder, and it being ok when companionable silence replaced conversation.

Everything about the situation was something I couldn’t explain, though through blogging, I tried. I did not have the capacity to reach out to people who would talk back. I only had the ability to write things out into the ether to try and capture how I felt so I could read it later. It didn’t matter to me if it made logical sense; I didn’t care what anyone else thought. Everything I felt about my mother’s death was my own story, and no one could tell it for me. I wrote even when I thought I couldn’t, because I believed in preserving that time in my life for posterity. I put in all of the crying jags, all of the private, angry, “fuck you” moments in my head because I couldn’t stand comments like “she’s in a better place.” Ummmm… I think her better place is with me. I had to bite my tongue through a shit ton of bad theology, and sometimes, still do. It’s also a horrible experience to handle pity. I feel sorry enough for myself without other people drawing attention to it.

I don’t feel sorry for anything in the past, because that’s useless. I feel sorry for everything I won’t get in the future. Actually, I take that back. The one thing I feel sorry about from my past is not being able to say goodbye…. like, what would I have said if I had known it would be our last conversation? Would I have said anything differently? I sort of doubt it. Black humor was never my mom’s thing, and it would have been my natural go-to. Although perhaps it would have become so, because what else can you do about knowing you’re dying but laugh? Sometimes the sadness is just too much. There has to be a release valve somewhere.

For me, that release valve was letting the Mento drop over the Diet Coke here, and for that, I am extremely grateful. Not only do I appreciate my own pensieve, I know this has gone far beyond me, reaching others who’ve lost their own parents. I know for certain that hearing how I navigated grief tapped into the way they did…. and nothing has ever been right or wrong…. just extraordinarily personal.

The one strange thing I’ve noticed in all my ruminations about what getting off the grid would have meant, I have never thought about what it would have been like to lose me. As an introverted writer, I am my own best friend, my own best company. Now I know that I would have lost someone close to me, too. I didn’t put that together until right this moment…. probably because I would have lost my best friend without even knowing it.

I wouldn’t even have thought to say goodbye.

Cold

December 15, 2017December 15, 2017 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 1 Comment

Today is the first I’ve taken a shower and put on real clothes in, like, four days. You’d think that this is because I suffer from depression, but no. It has been in the 20s and 30s this week; when I went to bed last night, it was 25 (that’s in Farenheit, all y’all :P). There is absolutely no part of me that wants to take off clothing for any reason whatsoever. Also, my hair never looks better than after three or four days of bedhead with strong wax in my hair, and it chafes me that my best hair days come when I’m just about to wreck them.

Now, once I am in the shower with screaming hot water pouring down, I’m ok. But those few moments in the cold bathroom are not just dreadful, they’re more than dreadful. I would rather wear my skiing silks, my flannel pajamas, a t-shirt, a long sleeve t-shirt, a double-weight hoodie, and three pairs of socks. During the day, I also put on my snow boots (mainly because they’re warm, but also keep me from sliding down the stairs in wool socks). It’s a look.

Yes, we do have heat at our house, in case you’re wondering. I just get cold easily, and it’s hard for any heater to keep up with DC winter. Besides, the electric company has never charged me for putting on a sweater.

When I had my own place, I never heated it very much- maybe to 50 or 60- because with all the winter clothing I own and an electric blanket, I didn’t need it. I would rather have it cold and be bundled up on my own… except for when I have to change clothes.

I do, however, feel better now that I’m clean and smell really good… but it’s not just that. Laying out all my frustrations yesterday really put things in perspective, because depression and anxiety feel so real, but in reality, it is your brain lying to your face… and as my friend Phil so eloquently said, they know the very best lies to use against you. Going back over and reading what I wrote let me see those lies up close.

I am indeed so much stronger than I usually think. No one that digs a hole as deep as I did and then has a parent die while trying to dig themselves out isn’t. You can either get stronger, or you wither away. I’ve already gone the “withering away” route, and it didn’t do anything for me. I got stronger because there wasn’t a choice… anymore.

The lies my brain used on me at that time in my life were that I was a burden to everyone I knew and it was better to just disappear off the grid. It did not seem like a permanent solution to a temporary problem, because there was nothing about my illness (I’m bipolar, for those just joining us.) that said this is manageable, and you will improve. Everything in my life pointed to getting progressively worse, akin to terminal cancer but closer to alcoholism due to the strange and self-destructive behavior it presents. To me, the worst thing in the world was to have my loved ones watch the roller coaster, knowing it would never end.

It was during one of our legendary blowouts that Argo saved my life, and I mean this quite literally. My response to feeling that ill was to talk about it to my friends, hoping that they’d safety net me until I could function again. It seemed reasonable at the time, but it was leaving out a crucial piece- responsibility & self-reliance. We were talking (well, arguing) about everything that was going wrong and she said, can’t you see the common denominator is you? Why do you expect everyone else to fix you? It got through to me that I wasn’t moving under my own power, and within minutes I was on the phone to my insurance company and checked myself into the psych ward at Methodist Hospital. I wouldn’t have done that had it not been a real emergency. I didn’t have a psychiatrist and couldn’t get a new patient appointment for three more weeks, and I absolutely needed help that day, right then. My depression was telling me I wasn’t going to make it three more weeks.

So, if you ask me what really saved me from myself, it was a friend who was willing to kick my ass when it needed kicking. The treatment did not work overnight- it was not a miracle cure- but it definitely pointed me in a better direction. That being said, the group therapy I experienced made me vomit up even darker emotions than usual and the better direction came from everything getting a lot worse before it got better. The biggest regret of my life is the way I treated those around me during that time, because everything spewed at them was a direct reflection of how I felt about myself. The old axiom is true- hurt people hurt people.

By then, Dana wanted out and I needed a sounding board more than ever, but I’d used up every “get out of jail free” card I had with Argo and I didn’t trust anyone else. But panic attacks that presented as rage burned that bridge butt-quick. I feel more guilt about pushing Argo away than I ever will about Dana and I breaking up because Dana was in the room with me. She participated in 3D. Argo was just on the receiving end of words she didn’t deserve without my ability to see her eyes, her reactions, and know when to back the fuck up. There could only be so much in the way of damage control because of it… because I know the first time I saw her eyes flash in anger or sadness, I would have become a sobbing mess on the floor, all the fight taken out of me because I couldn’t just hear about the damage. I could experience it. I could see up close and personal what I’d wrought.

With Dana, I saw everything.

It’s not worth revisiting, but the picture was bleak. All the color in our world just bled out on the floor, and I ran. We were way past the point of reconciliation, and I knew within myself that if I didn’t run, I’d spend way too much time trying. We were past the point of no return, having alienated each other with mutually assured destruction….. robbing me of all but the deepest regrets. Yes, there were (and are) things I still have to get over, but it was also extraordinarily freeing to be able to walk away knowing that I’d made the absolute best decision I could make with the information I had.

When I arrived in DC, it was April and there was still snow on the ground. The weather matched my mood.

It was cold…. like those few seconds in a cold bathroom, angry in the moment and yet, knowing that warmth will eventually arrive.

The Snowman Cometh (with Apologies to Eugene O’Neill)

December 9, 2017December 9, 2017 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I know it’s hard to tell with a still picture, but it’s really coming down out there… and forecasted to continue. We may actually get some accumulation. I am excited about this, because there is nothing I love more than newfallen snow (when I’m dressed for it). Walking around in the pristine white brings me so much joy. I only hate snow after it’s been on the ground for a few days and ranges from grey to black with tire tracks and dripping oil. Although, if I had to choose, I believe the dogs love it more than me… which reminds me of an old Sam story………….

My roommate, Samantha, has parents where one is Methodist and one is Druze, but does not claim any religion for herself. So, a couple of years ago when the snow was very deep, Sam shouted at her dog, “come on, Daisy. Time to part it like Jesus.” I started laughing so hard that tears came to my eyes and said, “ummm, that was Moses.” She just laughed and said, “whatever.” Of course, this is the same person that when, years ago, I got a “Share a Coke with Mark” bottle and joked that all I needed now were Matthew, Luke, and John, has been calling me Mark ever since. In fact, I think that since then she’s forgotten my actual name. I dig it. Fits in with the theme….. Auna calls me “Hipster Jesus.” Being nicknamed after a Gospel writer doesn’t seem like much of a demotion. After all, he was a writer. 😛

I am caught between two ideas right now. One is that I am still in my jammies- cute ones, so that I at least look marginally dressed- and I have two shows to catch up on. The first is Doc Martin, and the second is The Crown. I was going to start with The Crown, but Doc Martin is just so damn funny, and I could use some funny in my life.

The other idea is that there’s just so much to do and see in the snow, and I have the clothes to be very, very, very warm while I’m out. I could go to downtown Silver Spring and ice skate, or I could go to Zoo Lights, or I could just walk around my neighborhood and see who’s already on the ball with the Christmas decorations. The one drawback to this is that it is actively snowing, and when snow gets on my glasses, I can’t see anything, anyway. You would think that an umbrella would help. Not so much. Snow generally blows sideways. Before I make my decision, I will check and see if Zoo Lights is a recurring thing, or if it is only today. The best time to do all this stuff is after the snow has stopped, there’s a satisfying crunch under your feet, and the weather is cold & clear…. perhaps not clear, because it’s usually overcast even when it’s not snowing, but you get my drift (see what I did there?). I am waiting with baited breath to see what happens this winter, because sometimes we get a few inches a couple of times, and sometimes the heavens open up and dump everything they’ve got. Winter before last, it was over a foot and a half deep. Everyone had a different name for it:

Snowpocalypse Now
Snowtorious B.I.G.
Thanks, Snowbama
Enforced Captivity
Working Without Pants -or- Working Under the Covers (IT doesn’t DO snow days.)

If we do get The Big One,™ I will work out more than I have all year, because it’s more strenuous to lift your knees that high while walking…. because you can either walk on the unplowed sidewalks, or take your chances on the street. I choose knee/ass deep snow rather than getting hit by a driver who thinks they have this snow driving thing down (they don’t). Everyone thinks they’re a friggin’ expert until they spin out, because thinking you’re an expert generally leads to driving way too fast for the condition at hand…. and I have yet to see anyone chain up on a back road. My general rule is “go around me, moron.” I’ll either see them further down the road fishtailed into a snowdrift or being told by the police that maybe they should control their speed. Of course you can get a speeding ticket while going the speed limit when snow is blowing sideways…. or worse, the snow has melted and it’s still cold AF, so there’s black ice everywhere.

The safest way to get around in all this mess is public transportation, because generally, if you’re going to be in an accident, the city bus is going to “win….” and a good bit of the Metro is inside, which is even safer. Plus, with everyone wanting to run their own heaters in their own cars on their way at every possible opportunity, parking is even harder than normal.

Speaking of driving, though, I had a funny Uber moment yesterday. The Uber driver always checks to make sure he/she has the right destination, and I told him I was going to the mall. He said, “in DC? With all the monuments?” I laughed and said, “no… I’m not going to The Mall, I’m going to a mall.” I was in an Uber pool, and the teens in the back laughed and said, “No! In Silver Spring!” I bought all my clothes, got my bag of coffee (finally) and managed to get out of Whole Foods for less than $50. Beat that with a stick.

I even remembered to get more eggnog….. because I’m in my jammies.

Cute ones.

Flights of Fancy

November 22, 2017 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

The life of a writer generally means that we look lazy on the outside, but our minds are running a thousand miles a minute. I have great contempt for people who think writers aren’t doing anything when they’re staring into space. For bloggers, how do you think we dig deep enough to remember stories from our past? For fiction writers, how do you think those exotic worlds we create form themselves? For non-fiction writers, how do you think all that information synthesizes from something only a niche market would read into a consumable for the general public?

We just sit there.

Additionally, there are only certain personality types that think writing is a real job to begin with, because they don’t think about what it takes to write and market something that might be successful… especially the books they’ve already bought and loved. Books that are already on the bestseller list mean that the writer is respected. Writers who haven’t published anything there are dreamers with blind ambition, head in the clouds, with no respect for the real world.

When are you going to get a real job? and it must be nice to have a partner that supports you so that you can just do your little writing hobby are constant issues brought up in my writers’ group on Facebook. It makes me angry on their behalf, because as primarily a blogger, I have to have a real job, because it gets me out of the house enough to have experiences about which to write…. and I don’t mean writing about work (Dooced…. look into it). It’s just that once I leave the house, I am more likely to do outside activities after work than I am when I am homebound, stuck in my own head. It leads to being relegated to writing about the past, rather than the “character” changes that come over time as I do.

Sometimes, though…. just sometimes…. I stop thinking about the past and start imagining the future. Most often, it’s about actually following through on finishing my Bachelor of Arts and going on for my M.Div. Thinking about my own dreams is infinitely more satisfying than the other fantasies that run through my head. My Bachelor’s is a political science major and a psychology minor, because even when I started college, I was thinking about what it would take to pastor a modern church. It is not up to me to encourage my congregation as to how to vote- that crosses all sorts of lines- but regardless of party affiliation, there is plenty of legislation that is right or wrong in a black and white sort of way… like minority treatment in America, immigration, the constant battle between giving the queer community rights and threatening to take them away, ridiculous ideas like killing gays or putting them in concentration camps that thankfully don’t come up that often and yet, are ideas in the current marketplace. There are all sorts of ideas that the legal definition of a reasonable person should not support, and I could care less whether any of them identify as Democrat or Republican. These are not party issues, they are human ones. I have said that my dream is to go to historically black Howard University. This is because I have gone to majority white schools my entire life, and if I am to understand anything at all about the minority experience, I have to observe it.

There is nothing within me that says I will ever fully understand, because I will never have black skin. I will never wear those problems. My aim is just to listen and soak up everything there is to learn.

But that’s not all there is to the dream. A lot of my career has been spent in academic technology, so I have applied to every college within a 50 mile radius in the hopes of working there, because generally a university staff position comes with tuition waivers. If I get a job at Howard, for which I have an application pending right now, that would be my ideal dream. But if American, Georgetown, or University of DC get back to me first, I’ll have to consider them.

But that is only where my mind goes when I’m thinking about myself. I also live in the clouds at times over where my life would have gone had I not reached a boiling point and exploded “crazy spatter” all over people I love dearly.

Argo

The most consistent message I get from my friends about this relationship is to just let it lie. Stop thinking about it, stop wishing it were different, just… stop. I followed through on stopping contact, but there is a part of me that cannot help going back over it in my mind, thinking about dialogues it would have been nice to have. Susan fills this hole in my heart quite nicely, but as I know for sure and have read from others, no one is her. It took me a long time to realize that the teenage blushing butterflies were love for an idea, not a person, and once that connection was made, it was over… meaning that for me, I could look at her as a ride-or-die without seeing stars, and for her, it was a little too little too late. I understand this more than she knows, so there is no residual anger. I behaved poorly; I do not deserve her. But we often go for coffee in my dreams. Those conversations are hilarious and heartwarming. It is and has to be enough.

Dana

God (literally), where do I begin? When I think of everything I’ve lost over the last three years, the only reason Argo comes up first is that our relationship was the shortest. She got under my skin in the only way someone else besides Dana could… her words. Therefore, I have never had a shortage of them regarding her, because the connection was so cerebral. It may not be fair to start a paragraph about Dana talking about Argo, but I do it to illustrate the inversely proportionate nature of the grief. Dana is not just under my skin, so close I can access those emotions at a moment’s notice. She is the river that runs through me, emotions so deep that they stay buried most of the time so I do not drown. Having been married to each other for so long is akin to having phantom limb pain. As time goes on, it gets less and less intense….. sometimes. But then I’ll remember something touching and time erases itself instantly. We just broke up yesterday. Additionally, there were so many years where we weren’t married, just very close friends, and that weighs on me, too. I initially thought that we’d be able to put our relationship back together to the point where it wouldn’t be weird to talk and laugh. I can say for sure that was the case when my mother died, and Dana kept me company as I was waiting for my flight out of BWI. But we hadn’t talked for months before, and I haven’t heard from her since…. and yet, that’s ok. Again, there is no anger. In a lot of ways, I got exactly what I deserved. Behavior always has consequences.

One of the behaviors I sincerely regret, even though there were a lot of reasons for it (context, never excuses) is that I stopped being a true partner. I was there, but I wasn’t present. I was in the midst of discovering just how bad emotional abuse as a teenager had rewired my actions/reactions as an adult, and all the unhealthy patterns played out with the people I love most. I couldn’t give much, because I was reduced to survival mode. I was trying to let her in, and at the same time, not realizing how repetitive it sounded, especially since it probably didn’t feel like there was a whole lot of room for me to listen to her (because I cannot and will not speak for her). The truth is that I did care, deeply, about her thoughts and feelings…. especially the ones I was engendering in her. I didn’t want to be a bad partner. I just was. When it got to the point where it was clear Dana didn’t want to listen to me regarding my constant rumination, I went looking for dopamine wherever I could find it…. yet another series of terrible decisions (see above).

In my dreams, she knows me now. She knows who I’ve become, and not who I was. Recovery takes time and backbreaking effort, and she has not been along for the ride unless I’ve been asleep. I often don’t want to live in a world where I cannot hear her laugh, so I close my eyes and it becomes clear as a bell. My regrets fall by the wayside because we have moved on. They cannot torture me because they cannot touch me. I am only getting the conversations I want when I am playing both sides.

When I am awake, the thing I think about the most is that in February, we’ll have been married ten years, virtually estranged for a little over two, but the paperwork is no less valid. It’s been a long time since Dana told me that she would take care of the dissolution, and I waffle every day between wanting her to come through on a promise and getting tired of waiting and taking care of it myself. The rumination is endless… does she just forget, or is getting divorced too painful and she’s waiting for something to happen for it to be less so? I know that feeling. Anxiety makes me wait for a day when I feel stronger on some things; it was not until I put it together that I had to change my own mood that I realized waiting until I felt stronger was pointless.

Another thing I know for sure is that if and when I have a partner again, they’re just going to have to accept that I have a past (like we all do), and I do not want them to be a jealous ball of spazzbasket if stories about her come up. I don’t want to tell the painful ones. I want it to be okay to laugh about the funny things that could only have happened to us. I want it to be okay that I will love her for the rest of my life without being in love with her, because there is too much shared friend history to just forget.

I refuse to be bitter. I refuse to think that there will never be another love for me. I refuse to think that the mistakes of the past will haunt my future unless I let them. To me, the whole point of life is that you cannot avoid making mistakes, but you can certainly avoid making old ones.

You just keep making new ones until eventually, you die…. which brings us forward….

My Mother (Carolyn)

I have five old voice mails saved from her that are so painful to listen to that I want to erase them, but I can’t, because then I’d never hear her voice again. The most recent was three or four days before she died, because I wanted her advice on whether I should drive to Houston to spend time with both her and my dad, because she had broken her foot and he was going through multiple facial reconstruction surgeries after a tumor the size of a quarter was found in his nose. I sent my mom a text message in the morning that said get back to me ASAP, because I wanted to know if I should get going soon. Well, she didn’t have her phone on her and didn’t return the call until about 2:00 PM, and in classic tiger mom fashion, the voice mail was full of anxiety saying that I had scared her, not my intent but her perception was that I was in danger…. and then, of course, I didn’t hear my phone go off so I couldn’t relieve that anxiety immediately.

The rest of them are pleas to call her, because my mental health was not good and I wasn’t in a place to talk to anyone. It was not personal in any way, shape, or form. It is the most guilt-inducing feeling I’ve ever had in my life…. how many more conversations we would have had if I’d just picked up the damn phone? Because here’s the thing. I couldn’t always take off the mask and just be small-l leslie with her. Picking up her phone calls, for me, required a certain amount of being “on.” It’s sad and terrible and no less true. At the time, it felt like altruism. I didn’t want her to feel my pain, because she had shown me over and over that she couldn’t take it. She would bleed out for me, and I was unable to take it in because I didn’t want someone who was only on my side. I wanted someone to tell me that I was right in knowing I was wrong. Her empathetic nature was to feel sorry for me, when I didn’t feel sorry for me at all. It was hard to listen to, hard to accept as valid when I’d made so many errors in judgment. Therefore, just about every conversation was between my mom and Leslie Lanagan.™ I suited up so I could act happier than I really was- the conversations were light and fun. But in my worst moments, I couldn’t even muster that.

I just have to remember that before she died, we had a two and a half hour conversation in which there was nothing left unsaid, no unfinished business. Those voicemails are just an echo of the past, and not representative of what really happened before she died. The conundrum is wanting to hear her voice in any way I can, and knowing that if I listen to it, all I will take away from it is what crappy moments I made in our timeline.

In my dreams, none of that ever happened. We’re at Starbucks, we’re in her classroom, we’re at the teacher’s center laminating ALL THE THINGS. I’m helping her with bulletin boards and fixing her computer and trying to teach her how to use Netflix on a smart TV. We’re waiting in line for the new iPhone. We’re literally next in the queue, and my alarm goes off…. and any flight of fancy in which I’ve been enmeshed touches down at DCA.

Free Beer!

November 18, 2017November 18, 2017 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Really?

No, not really. But I got you to click on the link, amiright?

In reality, today is just another day in the life of a writer. The sky is grey, the light is fading, and I need to go to the pharmacy and I just can’t bring myself to leave the house. Two reasons- the first is that everything takes longer when you’re sad. You move under the weight of the world. The second is that the weather does not lend itself to wanting to go anywhere.

I have an appointment for platelet donation tomorrow, so I figure I’ll just get to the Metro station early and walk across to the pharmacy and, of course, Starbucks. I took a Tylenol PM™ last night, which is code for “I slept longer than I wanted to today.” Therefore, I don’t actually need another Lexapro until about noon. I will arrive at the pharmacy no later than 9:30, because if I don’t take it before it’s due, bad things will happen.

It is a common experience with this medication that I watch for meticulously. Withdrawal makes my entire brain vibrate to a minor second, kind of like a test of the Emergency Broadcast System. I also get chills & shake uncontrollably while sweating and crying. It is very attractive. I can fight it off with Klonopin, ibuprofen, and an amazing amount of coffee… but it is a stopgap measure and only helps so much. The bitch of it is that withdrawal is almost instantaneous. The clock starts ticking with every minute I don’t take it as soon as I need it.

The last time this happened, I was at work and had to fight through it until lunch, because thankfully, there was a CVS within two minutes of my office and I got my prescription transferred. I can honestly say that those four hours were among the worst of my life, because I had important projects in the air and all I wanted to do was crawl under my desk into the fetal position. I started carrying an entire day’s worth of medication on my key chain after that, but #dumbassattack, I left my keys in my car and they are lost to history. I should have bought a new pill carrier by now, but if you know me at all, I can procrastinate on just about anything if no one else is expecting it to be on deadline.

Additionally, you cannot take any NSAIDS (aspirin, ibuprofen, naproxen sodium…. Non-steroidal anti-inflammation drugs) for two to three days depending on state law before you go for apheresis. [Editor’s Note: I prefer ibuprofen to naproxen sodium because you can take a fresh dose more often.] I also can’t drink too much coffee, either, because I don’t want to be dehydrated. It makes the process much slower.

So, basically, if I don’t get to the pharmacy tomorrow morning, I will be up shit creek without a paddle. #motivation

The crying comes because I’m in pain, and because withdrawal makes me incredibly weepy. Most of the time, if I can’t remember whether I’ve taken my psych meds that day, I’ll watch a sad/touching commercial and if I cannot hold it together, there’s my answer. For instance, the commercial in the link is basically everything I didn’t tell my mom enough.

Jesus’ message of walking in the light while you have it destroys me now. He’s basically telling the Disciples that they’re going to be on their own very soon, and they need to listen closely to his teachings because he’s not always going to be around to answer questions.

And, just like me, the Disciples took that message for granted and basically the Book of Acts is that end of the rope and it’s fraying and we’re barely holding it together prayer…. shit, God. They’re grieving and trying to remember every conversation, every parable, every direction.

They muddle through, walking with the weight of the world, for they were not the smartest guys in the room…. just the most dedicated.

I could say the same. Most days, my life is just one White Stripes’ song on repeat…. I Just Don’t Know What to Do with Myself. I didn’t walk with the light while I had it, and I greatly underestimated/took for granted the messages that were being imparted. Now I am just fumbling in the dark, big dreams- so big I can live in them, with no concrete staircase upward. I have always been a big picture person, able to synthesize ideas quickly and summarize. I am not so good in the weeds…. I have no idea how to get there from here, and the thought is overwhelming to an enormous degree. Other people have gone to college and grad school. It can’t be that hard. I mean, it is. I just mean the steps to get in before any course work has started.

I have run around in circles for almost 20 years. It started with promising my then-partner that I’d get her through her senior year of college, if, when we moved, she’d get me through mine. Two things happened after that. The first is that we could not afford to live on one income while I was a student. DC was just out of our price range for that. The second is that within a year and change of the move, she left me, and took her part of the bargain with her.

My parents paid for some of school, but once I was on my own, I was on my own. Therefore, it’s been a neverending tail-chase as I get a job to get money to pay for school and then either can’t save up enough to quit or can’t manage a full-time job and school. It seems lame to say that out loud, because people do it all the time. Being single, it might be more achievable because I have no family commitments and few social engagements/distractions. Being there for everyone else has cost me taking care of myself. But the last time I was in school and working, I was living in southwest Houston, working in Sugar Land, and going to school at the main campus at UH. School at UH only lasts until 9:00. There were two class times that “fit my schedule-” 5:30 to 7:00 and 7:30-9:00. My job ended at 5:00. With the commute, I rarely, if ever, made it to my 5:30 class- and not for lack of trying. I passed by the skin of my teeth by watching all the lectures online, but since I got a D, I don’t think those hours will transfer to another school. I could stay at UH via distance education, but there’s something about showing up to class. It may be a better option to stay at UH, anyway, because I might have to add extra classes to get the hours needed in residence to graduate. But all these thoughts are for naught right now, because I need a way to pay for tuition, first.

I really thought that my mother would leave Lindsay and me some money in her will, but she didn’t. This is not a slam against her in any way, because that’s how wills are normally done- everything goes to the spouse. I thought the one good thing that might come out of my mother dying was allowing myself to finish my education, but that is not to be. So it’s back to the drawing board, easy because I never counted on that money in the first place, because I never expected my mother to die so young. In short, I’ve got what I’ve always had- a conundrum.

The thing that’s different this time around is that I am a fiend about saving money. Even when I make a lot, I live on nothing. I saved up $4,000 in less than a year during 2016. I’ll do it again, so that worry is taken off my shoulders. It would be damned convenient to still have that money, but I was so destroyed by my mother’s death that I couldn’t think about going to work right away. My mind was never in the present, lost in the past. I would spend entire days doing tasks, seeing them done and having no memory of how they got that way.

My biggest mistake was underestimating how long it would take me to find a new job, because it takes longer to find those companies that will take 20 years of work experience over a newly minted degree. Plus, with no work experience and just a degree, employees are cheaper, and labor dollars matter.

I am also starting to believe that because my resume is full, employers have some idea of how old I am, and that isn’t attractive to them, either. I could be totally wrong about this, but 40 is just the age where not being 25 matters. What doesn’t is that I take care of myself, and in terms of energy, I still feel 25. When I dye my hair, I barely pass for 18/21, because I get carded ALL THE TIME, even when buying cigarettes. I don’t smoke, but my roommates used to, and when I was the one that would run into the convenience store to buy everything for everyone, I’d get so flattered. One clerk thought I had a fake ID. What doesn’t feel young about me are cultural references and my sometimes internal monologue of “they’re so young I’m not even sure how they manage to tie their shoes in the morning.” I also don’t want to do anything fun with young people after work, or at least, not often, because I can’t party like that anymore. Right now my average is two alcoholic drinks a month, which means my tolerance is through the floor. I can’t “hang” and make it to work in the morning.

It’s nice to have the built-in excuse of, “I’m sorry, I have to get to class,” or “I’m sorry, I have to go and write.” It seems that going for a run is also an acceptable excuse, but you wouldn’t catch me running unless there’s an ice cream truck involved…….

or free beer.