My life didn’t get interesting until I was 30, and just got more interesting from there. I wouldn’t want to give my teenage self any advice that would alter the events that led me to DC, to Zac, and to Oliver, who is a dog.
That’s because in order to get here, I had to go through some really rough stuff- and yet none of it is anything I would give away or trade. I found my place, even at 23, but I had to go and come back. I don’t know why. I really liked it here. I just didn’t think I could make it on my own. I do not have that capability, to take on the 1,001 things it takes to move in 30 days and also find a roommate. To be fair, though, I didn’t know about Craig’s List back then. Perhaps if I had, I wouldn’t have met the people I needed to meet, and that’s the one thing I wouldn’t want to change for the kid inside me.
So, in order not to change anything:
I’m sorry mom doesn’t understand. Don’t spend your life worrying about it because there’s nothing you can do to make her change. There will be small steps, but no giant leaps. Stay as close to her as you can, but admit to yourself when spending time with her makes you feel unloved.
Lindsay is going to be big one day. I just won’t tell you how. You could learn a thing or two from her if you’d let yourself.
You’re ADHD, Autistic, and Bipolar. That’s something I will tell you right now, because when you get older it’s going to be harder to get tested for autism, and you need to get on meds stat. You’re struggling in school and you don’t know why. Your doctors might not, either, because there’s not a lot of research in the year you live on women and autism. But give yourself at least that head start on life. I know hearing those things is intimidating. Go to a psychiatrist, anyway.
You need to practice gratitude and mindfulness because when I was your age I took some kind of Scantron quiz that inventoried my personality. My psychiatrist said that I had the lowest self-esteem of anyone who’d ever taken the test. Write every day. Go back and look to see if what you wrote is still true. Give yourself a chance to see yourself as you are, not how you feel in the moment.
In every relationship, you need to ask yourself what the other person is bringing to the table, and when you feel ignored or sad or hurt or whatever your emotions might be, listen to how people respond. If it feels like they can’t hear you, they probably can’t…… and there’s a lot of don’t want to in “can’t.” Find people who can hear you.
There is no such thing as a 50/50 relationship. It will often look like 60/40 or even 70/30 because of confirmation bias. But notice when you feel like you can’t get a break, can’t do anything right. You’re not stupid. I won’t tell you what they are, either, but stupid isn’t on the list.
Because of the autism, you’re going to meltdown a lot. Find appropriate outlets for your rage. There are going to be many inappropriate outlets, and I will tell you that you find most of them. But not all. Because you have all of these disorders, you are going to have to learn to be more patient, thinking longer before you speak, because there are so many words that can’t be taken back which you realize just after you’ve already said them. Even when you’re on fire, you can’t take that out on someone else. And yes, I know that your nerves are on fire, that you go into a red mist rage with every physical symptom imaginable. It’s going to hurt you if you don’t take care of it.
The nerve endings on your thumb that you sliced into while trying to cut a lime will never grow back. I’m 46, so I will update you if the situation changes (not a chance, we’re stuck).
You will love soda your whole life because that’s one of the things you and mom will talk about on the phone. There’s not a lot you can do to keep her talking if you talk about your own life, but she’ll tell you all about her job, her friends, her husband, etc. It’s annoying that she never has any questions for you about your life, because she really doesn’t want to know. Do it, anyway. Find things you can talk about. Find a lot of them.
Mothers don’t generally last as long as you want them to; Lindsay and I will never be the same. I figured it might give you some perspective to know how few years you have left with her. Find different ways to bridge the gap. But don’t miss a chance to leave Houston, ever. You’ll get along better with her when you don’t live in the same city and a visit is special.
You’ll want a passport very soon. Might want to start on that. She’s cute.
My life would be a lot easier if I became a novelist. That way, at least I can blame blowback on my editor…. “no, that’s not you. My editor added those details in post.” If you’re a novelist, you probably just laughed.
I am sure there are quite a few “fictional” characters out there, but to be honest, I’m not that good at writing “voice” yet, so most of my characters in fiction tend to be me. However, I am a 46-year-old with female parts who doesn’t necessarily think “girl” in reference to herself, but it doesn’t bother me either way. Like, I could see transitioning, but I don’t feel passionate about it. I figured if I had a real, burning desire I would know it. For instance, being queer kicked in immediately. I knew what I wanted, and liked what I got. I figure that if I was trans, I would know it in the same way. But nonbinary as a label isn’t threatening. I’m just too lazy to care about pronouns. I’ll take them all. The reason I’m too lazy to care about pronouns is that I’ve been saying “she” all my life. If I can’t remember my pronouns, why should I expect that of someone else? I like things geared at younger people because I feel that in order to explain an adult idea to a child, you are most probably a better writer than I am. This is a lot of words to say that even though my characters are all me, it’s not always a problem because I’m a lot of people already.
I am testing my mettle in fiction, but not every day. I am taking it slowly because I have a tremendous idea, but I’m at the bottom of a staircase. It is akin to hearing the third movement of the Hummel Concerto when you have just been given your first Arban book. It’s something you want to play, but you’re not there yet.
It’s the same way with my alternate history. It’s big in scope and has the potential to be very popular, because lit about the food industry sells, as well as lit about spies. These two things are inextricably interrelated, two men in a platonic love story as in “The Courier.” They’re from the same world, but different countries. Therefore, they have different governments.
This is why when you see waitstaff and cooks playing assets in movies, that’s real. You can take that to the bank and cash it. CIA (and all intelligence agencies) want “the little gray man,” someone who will not be noticed in any way. Is there anyone less noticed in society than waitstaff? The service industry loves books about cooks and waitstaff who become spies, serial killers, homicidal maniacs, etc. because we’re all just trying to hold down the madness. Art that can express it is rare, which is why Anthony Bourdain is my patron saint. I have two of his prayer candles, because one wasn’t enough.
In terms of what I could do differently, I could review TV shows about kitchens and tell you what’s good and what’s not. However, I will not be doing that until I can turn down my sensitivity to those sounds. I lasted 10 minutes into “The Bear,” and not because I wasn’t interested in the story. It was the ticket machine. Just trigger, trigger, trigger.
So, now I’m just trying to reflect everything I take in. I played the intro/tutorial to Fallout 4 the other day, and I did not realize that my Vault 111 jumpsuit was not equipped and ran out into the street in my underwear. Despite that wardrobe malfunction, I can say that the intro is great. Terrifyingly great.
War. War never changes.
People keep telling me I’d love Starfield, too, but I haven’t gotten it because the full install is over 100GB, and I just don’t have that kind of storage space right now with Fallout 4 and Skyrim on an SSD. I have a mechanical hard drive that’s 6 TB, but it doesn’t work with my current computer as a game drive because only a 2.5 in drive will fit in the bay. That 6TB will have to be media, because I don’t think running games off a USB drive is the best thing ever. I’ve ordered a small screwdriver set so that I can open the case and add another drive, but originally that drive was going to be Ubuntu. Now that I’ve learned Windows 11 isn’t obnoxious (but I’d still kill for a .bat file that turned off all the upsell), I’ve realized that I can use the other drive for games as well, but I just don’t game enough to justify it right now. It will take me five years to finish Fallout 4 at this rate.
For me, doing something differently is using Windows 11 at all. I cannot tell you how much I hate OneDrive popping up to ask me if I want storage space, how likely I am to recommend Windows to a friend, and asking me if I want to buy Office like a random dick pic.
Meanwhile, I have all the open source applications I could ever want or need. LibreOffice is the love of my life. Seriously, I love it a WordPerfect amount. Microsoft Word has blown except in one instance. I liked the version on my Mac SE, which was probably version one.
Then, I thought WordPerfect was where it was at, and then it got Linux’ed. Microsoft bought out the market share, so you had to have Word. Still mad about it, but mostly because Corel bought WordPerfect and they didn’t even get enough interest to keep the product going. So, basically, LibreOffice has become the jack of all trades. You can change the user interface to look like whatever word processor you came from previously.
I have a version of The GIMP (Gnu Image Manipulation Program) called “GIMPshop,” which is basically just The GIMP with a .bat file for Windows that changes all the keyboard shortcuts to Adobe Photoshop. I could do things differently by becoming an expert on The GIMP instead, but I’ve slept since then and am taking the easy route.
In terms of doing audio differently, I really should think more about recording things, or just talking to the camera. I’ve done it before, but putting myself out there on video is sometimes difficult. My voice triggers me, and grief isn’t a straight line. However, over time it’s just become normal to be mute at home. It’s probably babying a wound, but at the same time, I talk plenty by writing. I’m not shutting anyone out. I am only asking them to switch to my preferred means of communication. I’m also not inflexible about that. “Preferred” doesn’t mean that I’m not capable of recognizing that I don’t always get what I want.
Speaking causes different kinds of grief. I don’t like grieving my mother when I am unprepared, and the fastest way is to hear her through talking. I don’t like grieving the woman who emotionally abused me when I’m unprepared for it, either, and the shortest way to get there is talking or singing. Especially in conversation with people I don’t know well, I fall back on tried and true stories. Some of them are her punchlines. I do it so naturally that I’ll get right up to the punchline before I realize what I’ve said and I have to keep going even though I have reached my breaking point….
So, what I could do differently is be more effusive about speaking. What I have noticed, though, is that in a digital society, we’re all moving in this direction. My sister and I both agree that the energy required for a phone call and the energy required for an e-mail are not the same. It does not diminish our want to connect, just the mode in which we do it.
Perhaps it’s generational, but not necessarily because the pandemic hit everyone in the same way. We all retreated to the quiet and safety of our homes and got used to writing a lot more than we did. Then, we found that we were just as productive at home as we were at the office, and isolated from each other even more. I know people who had coworkers they never met the entire pandemic- a couple that had never even heard the other’s voices and they’d been best friends for years.
I have said this before, but I’ll say it again. The pandemic silver lining was saving my ass. I didn’t have to prove to anyone anymore why I felt the way I felt about someone I’d never met in person, but had heard their voice and it charmed me even more.
But one thing I would have done differently is not made it a relationship where we’d never met in person. It was one of those things we were planning and then we both wigged each other out and it just didn’t happen. The best I got was “someday, perhaps.” If being busy is really all it is, she would have revisited the conversation. I didn’t, because her history is that when I bring up something more than once, I’m nagging her.
But, if I’d known then what I know now, I would have been on a plane the next day. I would have had that first conversation in person, because it was one that needed to be in person and we were stupid enough to believe that writing was enough. It is, if you already know the person. We only knew random factoids about each other and then both laid emotional guns on the table.
I would have gone to her long before that ever happened and said, “want to go for a walk?”
If I could do things differently, I would have said I was tired of feeling like she was wired in and I was somewhere off in the bathroom. She is the Chandler of my friends, but I needed to understand a little more nuance than that in order to be a good writer….. and I wouldn’t if I’d started in fiction. It’s only because we are real-life friends that it’s a problem.
If I could do things differently, I wish I could convince her that she doesn’t need to feel guilty about not replying. I’ve tried to convince her of that for years. I know that she will write back when she has time, and she doesn’t often have it. So, when I was angry about something, it actually worked in both of our favors to let it lie for a bit. Neither one of us are very good at that. Both adept writers, with epees for pens.
All of that being said, I couldn’t make a fictional character out of her, but someone else could. The way I write, she’s more beautiful just as she is.
Stories That Are All True 