Drama Slowing Down

Tim got out of the hospital Wednesday noontime and promptly, per Squeaky, disappeared. Throughout the six days he was hospitalized, I listened to Squeaky making it HER ordeal. SHE had it bad because SHE missed him. She essentially came out and said something to the effect of "I mean, he's locked up, but it's just as bad for ME because he's not here!" So she was just rabid to have him come "home" on Wednesday and be all domestic and worshipful with her.

So Wednesday night, for the entire night, she called me repeatedly to ask if I'd heard from him. I hadn't; I'd left one calm message on his voicemail and gone about my business, figuring he'd call when he was ready to call.

Not Squeaky. She called me about four or five times, each time calling to tell me he hadn't answered her calls, or her text messages, or her voice mails--and worse yet, when he stopped back at the house right after he'd been released--rather than putting on his smoking jacket, picking up his pipe, slipping into his slippers, and patting Wally and the Beav on the head before settling down to the evening paper--you know, like a dutiful boyfriend would--he'd just taken a shower, changed clothes, and left. The nerve.

So--fine, whatever, he's a Great Big Meanie and everyone's out to get poor Squeaky. Each of Wednesday's calls ended the same way. "I'll call you right away if I hear from him," I told her. "And if YOU hear from him, please let me know, okay?" "Oh, I will," she said.

I didn't really care what he was doing or who he was with; I was worried, though, that either a) he'd ended up back in the hospital, after trying to finish what he'd started; or b)(far more likely, in my opinion) he'd ended up in jail for some type of drunken idiocy, or for running his mouth at a police officer, or whatever. I wasn't hovering over him--I was WORRIED about him.

Wednesday night slipped by without a word from Tim. Thursday, I tried to call him around lunchtime, figuring he'd be awake by then, wherever he was. No answer. I was getting more and more worried. Finally, at about 8:00 Thursday night, I called Squeaky.

"Have you heard from Tim?" I asked.

"Oh, yeah...he's right here!!" she bubbled.

That was when my head completely exploded.

Let's try this again, shall we?

Hypothetical situation, Squeak: Your recently-suicidal boyfriend is missing. You call his friend, asking if she has information. She has no information. She promises to call if she hears anything. She asks you to call if YOU hear anything, and you agree.

YOU want to know where he is so you can feel slighted that he's not with YOU, worshipping YOU and hanging on YOUR every word and just BASKING in how much you supposedly love him. (This despite the facts: the main reason he was hospitalized in the first place is that his living situation--including you--has become so toxic that he sees no other way out.) His friend, however, is concerned about his safety, and wondering if there is anything that she can do, or needs to do, to preserve his well-being and freedom.

So eventually, the Prodigal Boyfriend comes home. Even though he has been there for several hours, and even though you promised to do so, YOU DON'T CALL TO TELL HIS FRIEND that you've found him??? When, had the tables been turned and the friend was the one who heard from him first, not calling you would have been a MONSTROUS, UNFORGIVABLE SIN????

I simply cannot STAND this girl. From talking to Tim, it's become apparent that a goodly portion of what I was told during his hospitalization--about things he said, about the "threatening" phone calls from Betty "for no reason", and so on and so forth--were either greatly exaggerated, deliberately misinterpreted, or flat-out invented. (He did, however, admit that I had done the right thing by calling 911, even if the source of the information that led to the call was....faulty. "Honestly--not exaggerating?" he said. "I had about...50, 60 pills in me. I took a LOT of narcotics that night--I pretty much took some out of every bottle they had in the house. So yeah...I WOULD have been dead," he said. That, for him, is a hell of an admission; in the past, he's minimized any and all of his self-harming behavior, so for him to acknowledge the likely outcome of his actions...well, that's big.)

He's worked out a plan for himself, which seems like a good one, at least in the short term: he's going to rotate staying with various friends who have expressed a willingness to let him stay for a day or two. He'll end up at Squeaky's maybe one or two days a week; he'll be here a couple of nights, and with other friends the rest of the week. Then, he said, as soon as they can make arrangements, he and Betty are going to move out of state; he's got two friends out East, each of whom has offered him a place to stay and leads on a few jobs, and who don't have an issue with a tag-along. (Betty, of course, was who he was with on Wednesday when he wasn't calling Squeaky or me; actually, he said, he was ignoring Squeaky's calls and mine was just collateral damage. Anyhow, he said, he and Betty had what he referred to as "a 'moment'...or actually, a couple of 'moments'." And then he went on to wax rhapsodic about all of Betty's wonderfulnesses, to the point that I was actually feeling a wee bit jealous. Not of the "girlfriend" thing--Tim and I are NOT meant for that--but because he makes her sound like the most awesome person in his life, the one who keeps him together, and having heard all that, I feel a bit...unappreciated. Ignored. Dismissed. Like he's so willing to sing her praises for changing his whole life just by existing, but I, who have done quite a bit for him in terms of concrete, quantifiable actions, am nowhere near as lauded. I'm sure he doesn't mean it like that, but ::::snarl:::: anyway.)

I'm glad he's seriously considering moving away. I'll miss him, but I think it would be the best thing he could do for himself. Betty's inclusion...well, if it makes him happy and gives him something to strive towards, so much the better. I hope the jobs work out, wherever he goes, and that he takes the opportunity to turn over a new leaf in regard to his drinking.

Mostly, though, I hope that Squeaky won't take his eventual departure--if in fact he DOES decide to move away--as an excuse to call me and get all dramatic about his absence and her consequent misery...because if she does, my personal balance will shift from "well-intentioned-if-slightly-pitying polite dissimulation" to "complete, damn-the-torpedoes honesty"--and THAT transition will not be a pleasant one. Not for her, not for me, not for anyone. And it will very likely end with an equation of the form "I'll call you sometime,"--where the value of "sometime" is roughly equal to "towards the beginning of the next Blagojevich administration" (or, for non-Illinoisans, "when Jessica Simpson wins the Nobel Prize for Physics".)