This Is Why I Don't...

This is why I don't post about exciting news until after it's an accomplished fact.

For the past two weeks, Squeaky has been over the moon about an old friend of hers and how this girl was "saving her life", how she now "has (her) life together" and all the rest. The source of all this excitement was to happen on Monday, when she and Tim were to board a bus to the southern part of the state, where said friend lives. There, she had been assured, there were jobs, cheap housing, assistance for poor pregnant families, and the rest--a veritable land of milk and honey (or Cheetos and barbeque sauce, if you're Tim and Squeak.) They had been assured that the wait for public housing was negligible--less than a month--and that in the meantime, they could stay at the house of this friend of Squeaky's, who she hadn't seen in a while but who she'd run into on Facebook and reconnected with.

And so for the past two weeks I have been subjected to hours upon hours of "Is Tim going or isn't he?" and "I can't wait to get there" and "Should we take Megabus or Amtrak or should my friend come up and get us, or...?" Hours and hours and hours. And yes, I have been INTENSELY interested in the outcome--not so much the planning, just the point on Monday night when, for the first time since EARLY APRIL, I would come through the front door to a home that belonged--entirely and completely--to ONLY ME. I was looking forward to that. I was looking forward to a large number of things at least partially contingent upon that, as well. (Yes, CR figures in a couple of them. I'm only human, for god's sake.)

Well, as of about noon today, all of them are dust. Squeaky sent me a message on Facebook: "I just got fucked over again. My friend totally backed out on me."

I called her at home and talked to her for about half an hour about this. Apparently, the friend's boyfriend something something her brother, whose girlfriend was crazy and wanted to kill him but is now also staying there with her kids, something something not enough space blah blah sorry. ("So what did you write back?" I asked. "Nothing--I was just totally in shock," she said. I don't normally interfere in other people's friendships, but I would give my right pinkie-finger right about now for that woman's e-mail addy. Even if Squeaky doesn't have the ability to say anything in the face of this situation, please feel free to bet your ENTIRE GLUTEAL REGION on the fact that I would retain no such compunction. Squeaky's life is not the ONLY one that's been fucked with by this decision.)

"I'm not talking to any of these people anymore," says Squeaky tearfully, then goes on to enumerate all the other friends she's going to call to see if she can get housing space from them. "Or we could get an apartment"--the "we" in this case does not include me, as I've already signed my lease for the year and I have no intention of leaving. That ship has sailed--"I only need a co-signer," she says, "since I don't make enough money." Or have a job, or have a man with a job, or have anyone giving you any sort of financial assistance whatsoever... so where this mythical apartment-for-free is coming from is a whole 'nother question.

In the meantime: Squeaky is "depressed". Up until yesterday, Tim had not spoken more than three words to me over the previous ten days; he "just doesn't feel like talking", evidently, and this apparently includes talking to the person who has been giving him free floor space nearly full-time since 2008. Civility is a BITCH, I tell ya. So that's two in the "depressed" column.

Meanwhile, my job has given me a right-proper screwing--wait, let's find a better metaphor, since "a right-proper screwing" would be on the short list of things that might actually IMPROVE my temperament. (There's a CR story that fits in here, but in the interest of "not jinxing it", I'll forbear. However: man, if 10% of what he says is valid, real, anything--if he really means even 10% of what he says, I will have found the biggest turnaround of a human life since I quit heroin in '99. Seriously. I've got so much to tell on this subject, but in some ways I'm reluctant to expose it to skeptics. Not because skepticism will change my opinion of him, or of what he's claiming--only time and experience could do that, and if they do, it will officially mark the end of my belief that people really can change--but because every possible thing anyone could say against him is something I've already said to him directly, or thought to myself--mostly said to him directly, really. The first day he called me after being gone for six years, I promised myself that the days of staying silent and choking on my rage were over. If I had anything to say to him I was going to say it, all guns blazing if necessary. So far, we've talked on and off for a year, and there's not been any time I've broken that promise to myself. It's been his reactions which have startled me--acceptance, apology, a total lack of defensiveness or excuses or ANYTHING. "I did that. I was wrong, and I realize now what the consequences were." That's been the bulk of his reactions....I'm going off track here, but...Yeah.Short form: I am ready to be hurt again, or not to. Neither of these outcomes will upscuttle my life in any serious way; if it goes bad, then it's just a case of the leopard not changing his spots. In fact, it might actually upheave me more if it DOES work out well.)

Anyway, as I was saying: Job. So in the last post I told you about my new, "temporary" location...well, I've finished my first week there, and the verdict is in: please, send help, for I am dying here. The trip to the new place now adds 2 hours of commuting time to my day, each day, and changes my schedule drastically. Where before, I could get up at 9:15 and be at work at 10:00 as scheduled, I now start work at 8:30 and need to get out the door by 7:00 or risk lateness. And I arrive home only half an hour earlier, despite getting off work a full 90 minutes sooner each day. Supposedly, it's just temporary, but--and I don't know if I have ever mentioned this?--I am not a morning person. At. All. Not even a little bit. So getting up at that hour--admittedly not quite the ass-crack of dawn, but definitely beneath dawn's waist somewhere--It's not improving me, is what I'm saying. And then today--admittedly, a day I'd be working anyhow--I had to catch the bus early, and it was really crowded but I was lucky enough to get a seat--but then an old guy sat next to me and like, LEANED on me the whole ride, which wouldn't have been NEARLY as awful if he'd showered or changed his shirt since 1982. So all day long I have been smelling--whether it's real or imagined--Old Man Funk. I have actually been going out of my way to stand away from civilized folk so they can't smell what I smell. I believe I shall BURN this shirt when I get home.

Later:
It's hard to be here and know they're not going anywhere any time soon. I've been reading back over the past couple of years, and I've realized: this is not the first time I've had quite enough of these two, or even just of Tim himself. (He DID, however, manage a conversation when I got home; later translation from Squeaky explained that he really hadn't wanted to move, that he was happy they weren't moving because he knew he'd hate it, and thus his silence for the last...whenever.) I think this friendship is effectively over, once they leave; I really don't want that to be the case, but it really has been one-sided for quite a while now. And then I wonder if I'm really being fair; after all, I -am- the one who has the resources, the education and the easy employability; maybe this is just my role in this friendship, to be the one who's there for Tim when he needs me. But all the same, there's something wrong; I could live with the financial unbalance in our friendship, but lately he's just been a butthead, and the butthead differential can be a killer in ANY friendship. I don't know; time will tell. But in a year or two, when Tim comes back at me with a list of Ways In Which Gladys Failed As A Friend: Squeaky's Pregnancy Edition, I don't think I'll be as willing to accept the blame as I have been in the past.