So Tim and Squeaky, still broken up (I guess) are still cohabiting--if "when one walks in the other hands them the baby and walks out, often for days at a time" can be referred to as "cohabitation". Tim called me last night (at 11:30, 12:45, and 4 AM...on a work-night....before my earliest morning of the week....) and, among other things, told me that Squeaky had not been home for four days, and that a week or two ago she turned to him and told him that she was "sick of LittleMan". The kid isn't even four months old yet, and already his mother is leaving him at home with his father and staying out for days. Tim, who is not at his peak for many reasons, threatened last night to drop the baby off at DCFS and tell them the mother abandoned her child--and then walk out on both of them.
I would normally want to strangle him for at least ten reasons in just those sentences alone, but I am cutting him the most infinitesimal bit of slack for a crucial reason: Cassidy, his 15-year-old cat who has been with Tim for as long as I've known him, is dying, and Tim can't even do anything about it. When Tim told me the details, at the end of one of the phone calls--I'll spare you all from them--but when I hung up the phone, I cried for literally an hour. Poor Cassidy; he was such a good boy, and it breaks my heart that he's hurting. (I told Tim to take him to the vet not TERRIBLY far from where he lives, and I'd call in and take care of the bill for having Cass put down; but of course, Tim can't leave til Squeaky returns, and there's some drama involving Squeaky's phone, and blah blah blah--because Squeaky wants to be an immature little brat, Cassidy gets to hurt for another day, and Tim gets to hurt as he watches his beloved cat waste away. I really want to punch Squeaky right now.
And then there's Deb; the thing we were most afraid of has pretty much happened, and she's in a bad case of postpartum depression. I'm so worried for her--she sounds so sad, even though she can explain from an intellectual standpoint exactly what she's feeling and why. And her husband is NOT helping; he's choosing to stay out later than he has to; when he WAS home, he had the flu and was acting like a whiny baby the whole time. I do not understand certain men.
I understand CR a little better, though; he's been amazing, incredible, wonderful--and the only thing he HASN'T done is make it into town. If the snow would maybe manage to stop happening every three days alternating between here and there, perhaps progress would be made in this area as well. But we talk via IM every night, and we've pretty much worked out everything in the past that went wrong.
But right now, honestly, I'm just pretty glad to be me. Compared to all the things my friends and loved ones are going through at the moment, a messy house and a pile of laundry the size of Mount McKinley are practically comforting. And if I needed anything to confirm my judgement, both Tim and Squeaky with their cabin fever, and Deb with her hormones kicking her ass and her stitches in a Really Bad Place, have reminded me how much I really do NOT want to go through the whole having-a-baby thing. I guess from a philosophical/dream world standpoint, I'll always wonder what might have been; but from a practical, about-to-turn-40-and-none-too-stable-my-damn-self perspective, I've made the best decision for me.
Showing posts with label Squeaky. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Squeaky. Show all posts
Saturday, February 20, 2010
Thursday, February 4, 2010
4 AM Updates
For the third time tonight, I just got off the phone with Tim.
Call #1 was a two-hour catching-up call, with the occasional Squeaky-related complaint, but no signs of anything critical.
(Anyone got a guess on where this might be heading?)
Call #2, at midnight, waking me from a sound sleep, was to ask me what I thought about the following: Squeaky had called early today asking Tim if he minded if she went to her friend Malia's for a while. Then a bit later, she had called to tell him that she wasn't going to be home at 6 after all, that she and Malia were going to an 8:00 movie. And as of midnight, Squeaky STILL wasn't home, and wasn't answering her phone, and was he right to be annoyed? And did I think she was okay, or was he worrying about nothing??
Call #3, at 3 AM: "G? Squeaky just came in with the cops and took the baby and left."
I asked him, in about four different ways, what had led up to that point, and each time I got the same answer: when the phone was finally answered, it was Malia who answered, and of course Tim doesn't like Malia and was not exactly polite, but when he talked to Squeaky he had not (per him) said anything that would be construed as threatening. (Now frankly, I don't care who said what to whom; Squeaky knows Tim well enough to know that there are two, and only two, excuses for her to involve the cops: either a) he ACTUALLY puts his hands on her (not "threatens to" because the two of them threaten horrible murder ten times a day and both of them know better) or b) he ACTUALLY sets about injuring himself. (Questions of safety involving the baby are past consideration; he loves that child beyond imagination.)
Tim is now threatening his own life--though he's promised not to act on that til at least tomorrow night, and most likely will alert authorities beforehand if he DOES have such intentions--I've been down this road with him before, and right now I can tell that all he really wants are an answer as to WHY, and his baby back in his custody. The threats of self-harm are right now just Tim's shorthand for "I am miserable and sad and I don't understand what just happened to me, and I'm scared that history is repeating itself."
Well, -I- don't understand either, and though I'd like to be more optimistic, I'm afraid that history is doing exactly what he thinks it's doing. But next time Squeaky logs into her Facebook account, she's got a letter from me that would melt paint off the walls. Tim may be most-upset about this, but in the who's-most-upset arms-race, I am DEFINITELY in second place tonight.
Call #1 was a two-hour catching-up call, with the occasional Squeaky-related complaint, but no signs of anything critical.
(Anyone got a guess on where this might be heading?)
Call #2, at midnight, waking me from a sound sleep, was to ask me what I thought about the following: Squeaky had called early today asking Tim if he minded if she went to her friend Malia's for a while. Then a bit later, she had called to tell him that she wasn't going to be home at 6 after all, that she and Malia were going to an 8:00 movie. And as of midnight, Squeaky STILL wasn't home, and wasn't answering her phone, and was he right to be annoyed? And did I think she was okay, or was he worrying about nothing??
Call #3, at 3 AM: "G? Squeaky just came in with the cops and took the baby and left."
I asked him, in about four different ways, what had led up to that point, and each time I got the same answer: when the phone was finally answered, it was Malia who answered, and of course Tim doesn't like Malia and was not exactly polite, but when he talked to Squeaky he had not (per him) said anything that would be construed as threatening. (Now frankly, I don't care who said what to whom; Squeaky knows Tim well enough to know that there are two, and only two, excuses for her to involve the cops: either a) he ACTUALLY puts his hands on her (not "threatens to" because the two of them threaten horrible murder ten times a day and both of them know better) or b) he ACTUALLY sets about injuring himself. (Questions of safety involving the baby are past consideration; he loves that child beyond imagination.)
Tim is now threatening his own life--though he's promised not to act on that til at least tomorrow night, and most likely will alert authorities beforehand if he DOES have such intentions--I've been down this road with him before, and right now I can tell that all he really wants are an answer as to WHY, and his baby back in his custody. The threats of self-harm are right now just Tim's shorthand for "I am miserable and sad and I don't understand what just happened to me, and I'm scared that history is repeating itself."
Well, -I- don't understand either, and though I'd like to be more optimistic, I'm afraid that history is doing exactly what he thinks it's doing. But next time Squeaky logs into her Facebook account, she's got a letter from me that would melt paint off the walls. Tim may be most-upset about this, but in the who's-most-upset arms-race, I am DEFINITELY in second place tonight.
Saturday, August 15, 2009
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.
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.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Important Facts, June 2009
1. Birthdays are alternately sucky and awesome. The "pondering the passage of time, the wasted years and my own eventual death" part = sucky. The "really awesome present from Mom, upon which this blog entry is being written from the privacy of my own room AND wirelessly" = awesome. Also, not being in the hospital for my birthday, a la 2005 = also awesome.
2. My boss is a....no, don't want to be QUITE that profane.
My boss is a....no, I'd probably get sent straight to hell just for TYPING that.
My boss is...Okay, look. My boss is a FU----G B---H, is the point I'm heading towards here. (In fact, I'll even go back and redact the middle letters there, just so no one can go tut-tut at me. But she IS that, and worse, to the uttermost degree.) Today was the Office Picnic. It was moved inside due to an infestation of mud in the usual picnic ground; otherwise, though, it was a repeat of last year...in all aspects but one. See, last year, the picnic ended at 2, and afterwards everyone could go home. THIS year, however, Ms BossLady decided to buttonhole a departing Help Desk staffer and question his decision to leave. When my immediate boss objected, saying "that's not what happened last year," she insisted that it WAS. So while EVERY DEPARTMENT BUT OURS left to go home for the day, my colleagues and I labored on--even though we are a technical-support department and there was no one to support but ourselves! AND--to add icing to this crapcake--Ms BossLady left at 5, my immediate boss left at 4:15, and I? Had to stay til 6:30, just like every day. What a crock of crap.
3. I am not moving in November. I have told Tim this; I am not moving. It is not in my best interests to move. He and Squeaky are welcome to stay and work out what they're doing next, but the baby will not be brought "home" to here in December. We all have limits. Tim understands this and thinks it's fine, and he says he's grateful for my straightforwardness. Despite his many flaws, I will not be shaken from my opinion: Tim is a good guy, with bad judgement and worse luck, who's gotten himself in waaaaaaaaaaaaay over his head in life. He isn't trying to take advantage; if it does come out that way sometimes, it's unintentional. I fully expect that Tim and I will end up as roomies in the old-age home, if his liver makes it that long.
4. Squeaky, though, I can take or leave, and would prefer to leave. She spent Mother's Day with me at my mom's house--a last-minute invite for dinner, since Tim had gone all Asshole-Boy and went off to hang with his friends--and even my MOM said Squeak is extremely self-centered. Every conversation came back around to "I'm pregnant!" She's not a bad person--in fact, I think the thing that disturbs me most about her is that I see in her a lot of who I might have easily become, had my life not turned in the direction that it had. If I had continued on the pampered-darling path I was heading down when I was 18 or 19 or 20, I could very well have remained unconscious, invested my entire energy, heart, and soul into a Man, and been somebody's little shadow, someone's mouthpiece, for the rest of my days. I can't pinpoint the moment my life turned--it was before I met JP, probably, but not LONG before--but I thank X every day for it.
4a. "You thank WHO? Who's 'X'?" Okay, look. I know some of you might be religious, and I begrudge no one their deity, but seriously: if people do not stop whacking me upside the head with their Lord and Savior, I'm gonna get REAL heathenish, REAL quick. Yesterday I left work early with a bad stomach; before I left, my cubemate PUT HIS HAND ON MY SHOULDER (big no-no--I'm practically Asperger-y about unsolicited touch) and PRAYED that I would be HEALED in the name of JESUS. (And no, there was NO irony intended at all--he was dead serious.) Today, when he brought his wife and kids in for the picnic, he announced to them "I prayed for Gladys yesterday when she was sick, and she got better." I WANTED to say, "I was gonna get better ANYWAY, nimbot--this happens pretty much EVERY month for a day or two," but I figured, if it made him happy to believe that he'd "cured" my monthly case of premenstrual bubbleguts, who was I to harsh his God-buzz? But seriously: between him, Mom, and random kindly strangers who take entirely too much interest in the condition of my alleged immortal soul, I am distancing myself ENTIRELY from this whole Judeo-Christian-normativity complex. In other words: please remove your higher power from my grill. He is not happy there; it's not the kind of 'hood He wants to inhabit. K, thx, BAI!!!
5. Summary: I'm good. Not great--sometimes not even functioning, alas--but taking things on the balance, I'm doing okay. A few improvements could be made, but that will come in time, I hope.
(but my boss is still a bitch...)
2. My boss is a....no, don't want to be QUITE that profane.
My boss is a....no, I'd probably get sent straight to hell just for TYPING that.
My boss is...Okay, look. My boss is a FU----G B---H, is the point I'm heading towards here. (In fact, I'll even go back and redact the middle letters there, just so no one can go tut-tut at me. But she IS that, and worse, to the uttermost degree.) Today was the Office Picnic. It was moved inside due to an infestation of mud in the usual picnic ground; otherwise, though, it was a repeat of last year...in all aspects but one. See, last year, the picnic ended at 2, and afterwards everyone could go home. THIS year, however, Ms BossLady decided to buttonhole a departing Help Desk staffer and question his decision to leave. When my immediate boss objected, saying "that's not what happened last year," she insisted that it WAS. So while EVERY DEPARTMENT BUT OURS left to go home for the day, my colleagues and I labored on--even though we are a technical-support department and there was no one to support but ourselves! AND--to add icing to this crapcake--Ms BossLady left at 5, my immediate boss left at 4:15, and I? Had to stay til 6:30, just like every day. What a crock of crap.
3. I am not moving in November. I have told Tim this; I am not moving. It is not in my best interests to move. He and Squeaky are welcome to stay and work out what they're doing next, but the baby will not be brought "home" to here in December. We all have limits. Tim understands this and thinks it's fine, and he says he's grateful for my straightforwardness. Despite his many flaws, I will not be shaken from my opinion: Tim is a good guy, with bad judgement and worse luck, who's gotten himself in waaaaaaaaaaaaay over his head in life. He isn't trying to take advantage; if it does come out that way sometimes, it's unintentional. I fully expect that Tim and I will end up as roomies in the old-age home, if his liver makes it that long.
4. Squeaky, though, I can take or leave, and would prefer to leave. She spent Mother's Day with me at my mom's house--a last-minute invite for dinner, since Tim had gone all Asshole-Boy and went off to hang with his friends--and even my MOM said Squeak is extremely self-centered. Every conversation came back around to "I'm pregnant!" She's not a bad person--in fact, I think the thing that disturbs me most about her is that I see in her a lot of who I might have easily become, had my life not turned in the direction that it had. If I had continued on the pampered-darling path I was heading down when I was 18 or 19 or 20, I could very well have remained unconscious, invested my entire energy, heart, and soul into a Man, and been somebody's little shadow, someone's mouthpiece, for the rest of my days. I can't pinpoint the moment my life turned--it was before I met JP, probably, but not LONG before--but I thank X every day for it.
4a. "You thank WHO? Who's 'X'?" Okay, look. I know some of you might be religious, and I begrudge no one their deity, but seriously: if people do not stop whacking me upside the head with their Lord and Savior, I'm gonna get REAL heathenish, REAL quick. Yesterday I left work early with a bad stomach; before I left, my cubemate PUT HIS HAND ON MY SHOULDER (big no-no--I'm practically Asperger-y about unsolicited touch) and PRAYED that I would be HEALED in the name of JESUS. (And no, there was NO irony intended at all--he was dead serious.) Today, when he brought his wife and kids in for the picnic, he announced to them "I prayed for Gladys yesterday when she was sick, and she got better." I WANTED to say, "I was gonna get better ANYWAY, nimbot--this happens pretty much EVERY month for a day or two," but I figured, if it made him happy to believe that he'd "cured" my monthly case of premenstrual bubbleguts, who was I to harsh his God-buzz? But seriously: between him, Mom, and random kindly strangers who take entirely too much interest in the condition of my alleged immortal soul, I am distancing myself ENTIRELY from this whole Judeo-Christian-normativity complex. In other words: please remove your higher power from my grill. He is not happy there; it's not the kind of 'hood He wants to inhabit. K, thx, BAI!!!
5. Summary: I'm good. Not great--sometimes not even functioning, alas--but taking things on the balance, I'm doing okay. A few improvements could be made, but that will come in time, I hope.
(but my boss is still a bitch...)
Saturday, April 18, 2009
You Are Here. You Probably Ought To Think About That.
So, um....yeah.
WackyWackyWerld, aka Gladystopia, has done some of its expected and usual things. Tim has been playing Floor-Hopper, rotating between my living room floor, his friend Chuck's living room floor, and whatever it is he sleeps in at Squeaky's place-with-the-roommate. But that pool of potential stopping-grounds decreased by one the other day; apparently between the two of them, they decided that the remaining thirteen days on Squeaky's lease with the hell-roomie were just not worth the effort. (Apparently this woman--the roomie, not Squeak--is a wee bit of a beeyatch. I don't know her, and I've experienced enough time with Squeaky to be aaalmost inclined to give her the benefit of the doubt because: annoyy-ying!--but seriously, there are some birds that just don't fly, as in "you agreed on $400/month for rent on a room the size of a small pantry, but in mid-lease you demand $500/month instead, 'for utilities'." I cannot imagine how many appliances one would have to run to rack up $100/mo in utilities, but I'd be willing to bet they wouldn't all fit in Squeaky's room. It's pretty clear to all three of us--Tim, the Squeakster, and myself--that Wee Beeyatch is trying to use Squeaky's living situation to pay her OWN past-due bills. Which wouldn't be a problem if it had been agreed in the beginning, but you just can't change terms like that. So in this case, painful as it may be, I'm gonna have to side with Squeaky.)
They have been trying to find a place to live. They have been failing rather spectacularly, thanks to their combined lack of/abysmal state of credit. And last night, when I was on Facebook, Squeak IMed me to ask if she could just stay here for a while.
Now, who the hell would I be to turn a pregnant kid out on the street? (Yeah, yeah, I know--someone perfectly within her rights to do so. But sometimes just because it would be acceptable to do something doesn't make it seem right--and this, to me, is one of those cases.)
And I actually kinda like having Tim around, if we're being honest. He's a neat freak; he does housework; and when I'm not hiding out in my room (which I do when nobody's around, as well, so that can't be blamed on the two of them either) we have a lot of fun. It may not be the most equally-balanced friendship in the world, but...Look. It's fairly clear to me that there's a good chance I will spend my "golden years" having to look out for myself, in the absence of any husband or children or extended family to count on. I'm not as okay with that as I wish I was; I have to admit, seeing all my grade-school classmates on Facebook, married and procreating, with sisters-in-law and brothers-in-law and a string of family stretching out the door, I feel like a failure at living. Mostly I can combat it; after all, in the absence of JP, this is my choice. And if it's not my favorite choice to make, I do recognize that it is the fairest choice for everyone concerned; looking back over the past few years, the things I liked about everyone I dated have been the things that reminded me most of JP. I never thought I was comparing, but yeah--I was. And I still am; it's unfortunate, but there it is. Everyone's better off this way.
But anyway: if I'm not going to generate a family, and since I don't have an original family to speak of--there's me, there's Mom, there's my dad's sister-in-law and her sister, and my mom's youngest sister who lives a billion miles away--and that's the lot of them, unless I want to count my mom's other two sibs who send her anti-Obama wingnut e-mails ten times a week, and I abso-freaking-lutely do NOT wish to count THOSE two, nor their spouses nor their spawn... anyway, since THEY're not there for me, I've got to create my own family. And I guess this is what I'm doing. Tim is like the irresponsible little brother with a good heart and not much in the way of sense; Squeaky's the little brother's bedraggled girlfriend who shows up pregnant one day. There ARE less-fucked-up or not-fucked-up-at-all people in my life; Debbie, for one, and Firefly; Debbie being a wee bit more fucked-up than Firefly (okay, actually a lot LOT LOT more, but since it's not her fault and hasn't completely compromised her ability to make a good life for herself, it's not so bad.) And honestly--let's just get to where the bear crapped in the woods now--seriously, who the hell am I to judge someone else for their fucked-up life? My record for keeping a job is not-quite-five-years; I'm stuck in an entirely different decade than most people currently inhabit; I've got an incredibly warped perception of time, and thanks to the illustrious Ms. China White, there are large blocks of my late 20's of which I have no recollection. I am in DIRE need of a really excellent grief counselor; I'm constantly harassed by the thought of the afterlife, and wondering if I'm living right--constantly moving between "there is a heaven, so I better get my shit together" and "there's nothing, so believing in some grand reunion is foolish denial of the truth". I have no house; I have no car; my credit is fucked to a high degree (although at least THIS time I'm in good company, and can blame no one but myself....oh, and the subprime mortgage industry); I am now officially Completely Miserable in my job, but I've also come to realize that I will probably be Completely Miserable in ANY job which requires working for someone else, or accepting arbitrary orders, or acting in ways which don't make sense to me--in other words, any job anywhere at all. I can't even start a relationship, let alone sustain one, and I've given up on the possibility of anyone ever finding me attractive again. So again, I ask: WHO the hell am I to judge anyone ELSE's life?? Mostly I want to run away and do exactly the things I want to do, nothing else; buy my little farm and put a "Baked Goods For Sale" sign out by the road, and spend my mornings baking and my afternoons in the barn doing all manner of art--pottery, and glasswork, and painting and quilting and writing and crochet (and maybe even learn to knit, even though I've never been able to get both hands working at once so far). And at night, just lay out in a hammock slung between two trees, and pull a sheet of mosquito net over me and go to sleep. It's not that I want a simpler time, exactly; I want a time that's MINE, where no one is controlling me but me, and where every action moves toward a goal; where rules make sense and exist for a REASON, and don't change randomly at someone else's whim. I want to live an orderly life--not a life without chaos, exactly, but a life where I UNDERSTAND the chaos. Honestly? Right now, Tim and Squeaky are the least of my worries.
And if from this you take the conclusion that my work is really screwing with me, please accept my applause for your excellent deductive skills. Last evening, upon walking into my apartment, I unleashed such a storm of profanity and invective regarding my boss--touching on issues including--but not limited to--her ancestry, her sexual practices, her hygiene, her mental state, and her predilection for inter-species mating--that even Tim, who has heard me at my peak, was surprised. It would have been one of my proudest moments of vulgar inventiveness, had I not been SO DAMN PISSED-OFF at the subhuman stinking pustulent piece of ....Oops....there I go again.
(Yeah, I know--what made me so mad, right? Let's just put it this way: When I am reprimanded for a violation of a policy --a violation which involved an interval of TWO MINUTES, against a policy which, although I was told in the beginning that it was perfectly acceptable to do what I did, has apparently changed, of which change neither I was EVER informed, nor were the two OTHER people who perform the same task...I do NOT remember EVER seeing, ANYFUCKINGWHERE in my job description, "reads minds/displays psychic ability". That was NOT in the qualifications, and so to be reprimanded for what is essentially my failure to read that crazy-ass whoreslut's degenerated parasite-raddled mind...
I am perfectly calm, now.)
Seriously, though, I am never going to accept a job working for another female boss. I told myself that when I left Other Place Where I Used To Work; my resolve was strengthened by Ill-Fated Short-Term Employment; but I needed a job so badly, and I thought there was going to be a buffer zone between myself and her (and there was, til they demoted Best Boss Ever--I should have started slamming out the resumes right there and then)...It's not a mistake I'm going to make again. I don't care HOW desperate I am...it's NEVER worth it.
Oh. And then, after all this--Squeaky asking for a place to stay, ElMo (which is what I have dubbed The Crazy--I have my reasons!) giving me nothing but shit because I couldn't read her mind, and a bunch of other crap into which I haven't even gone--after all that, last night the phone rang: After seven years, CR's been put out of the girlfriend's house. (Short form: She asked him if he loved her; he gave an honest answer. Next sentence: "Get out of my house!") He's trying to work out how to get a place of his own; even though apartments are SUPER-cheap there, so are wages, especially when he can only get 25 hours a week. I was really impressed, actually, with most of what he said; seems like all the things I said so long ago, about standing up and being a man and living on his own, may have sunk in after all. Seven years late, mind, but any progress is good progress.
And that, my friends--all those bits of wonder, and an exploding toilet too--is what my little life is made of, right about now. Strangely enough, I'm almost happy; there's something to be said for realizing that you are no longer willing to be crapped on for the privilege of drawing a paycheck. Obviously I've gotta hang on til the economy gets itself together, but that's okay; the important thing is KNOWING it's not forever, that I'm not going to let it be forever, and I'm not going to spend the rest of my life scared of some bitch's opinion of me. That's no way to live, and even if I have to do it temporarily, I do NOT have to do it permanently. I may not be able to see the light at the end, but at least now I recognize that it is, in fact, a tunnel I'm standing in.
WackyWackyWerld, aka Gladystopia, has done some of its expected and usual things. Tim has been playing Floor-Hopper, rotating between my living room floor, his friend Chuck's living room floor, and whatever it is he sleeps in at Squeaky's place-with-the-roommate. But that pool of potential stopping-grounds decreased by one the other day; apparently between the two of them, they decided that the remaining thirteen days on Squeaky's lease with the hell-roomie were just not worth the effort. (Apparently this woman--the roomie, not Squeak--is a wee bit of a beeyatch. I don't know her, and I've experienced enough time with Squeaky to be aaalmost inclined to give her the benefit of the doubt because: annoyy-ying!--but seriously, there are some birds that just don't fly, as in "you agreed on $400/month for rent on a room the size of a small pantry, but in mid-lease you demand $500/month instead, 'for utilities'." I cannot imagine how many appliances one would have to run to rack up $100/mo in utilities, but I'd be willing to bet they wouldn't all fit in Squeaky's room. It's pretty clear to all three of us--Tim, the Squeakster, and myself--that Wee Beeyatch is trying to use Squeaky's living situation to pay her OWN past-due bills. Which wouldn't be a problem if it had been agreed in the beginning, but you just can't change terms like that. So in this case, painful as it may be, I'm gonna have to side with Squeaky.)
They have been trying to find a place to live. They have been failing rather spectacularly, thanks to their combined lack of/abysmal state of credit. And last night, when I was on Facebook, Squeak IMed me to ask if she could just stay here for a while.
Now, who the hell would I be to turn a pregnant kid out on the street? (Yeah, yeah, I know--someone perfectly within her rights to do so. But sometimes just because it would be acceptable to do something doesn't make it seem right--and this, to me, is one of those cases.)
And I actually kinda like having Tim around, if we're being honest. He's a neat freak; he does housework; and when I'm not hiding out in my room (which I do when nobody's around, as well, so that can't be blamed on the two of them either) we have a lot of fun. It may not be the most equally-balanced friendship in the world, but...Look. It's fairly clear to me that there's a good chance I will spend my "golden years" having to look out for myself, in the absence of any husband or children or extended family to count on. I'm not as okay with that as I wish I was; I have to admit, seeing all my grade-school classmates on Facebook, married and procreating, with sisters-in-law and brothers-in-law and a string of family stretching out the door, I feel like a failure at living. Mostly I can combat it; after all, in the absence of JP, this is my choice. And if it's not my favorite choice to make, I do recognize that it is the fairest choice for everyone concerned; looking back over the past few years, the things I liked about everyone I dated have been the things that reminded me most of JP. I never thought I was comparing, but yeah--I was. And I still am; it's unfortunate, but there it is. Everyone's better off this way.
But anyway: if I'm not going to generate a family, and since I don't have an original family to speak of--there's me, there's Mom, there's my dad's sister-in-law and her sister, and my mom's youngest sister who lives a billion miles away--and that's the lot of them, unless I want to count my mom's other two sibs who send her anti-Obama wingnut e-mails ten times a week, and I abso-freaking-lutely do NOT wish to count THOSE two, nor their spouses nor their spawn... anyway, since THEY're not there for me, I've got to create my own family. And I guess this is what I'm doing. Tim is like the irresponsible little brother with a good heart and not much in the way of sense; Squeaky's the little brother's bedraggled girlfriend who shows up pregnant one day. There ARE less-fucked-up or not-fucked-up-at-all people in my life; Debbie, for one, and Firefly; Debbie being a wee bit more fucked-up than Firefly (okay, actually a lot LOT LOT more, but since it's not her fault and hasn't completely compromised her ability to make a good life for herself, it's not so bad.) And honestly--let's just get to where the bear crapped in the woods now--seriously, who the hell am I to judge someone else for their fucked-up life? My record for keeping a job is not-quite-five-years; I'm stuck in an entirely different decade than most people currently inhabit; I've got an incredibly warped perception of time, and thanks to the illustrious Ms. China White, there are large blocks of my late 20's of which I have no recollection. I am in DIRE need of a really excellent grief counselor; I'm constantly harassed by the thought of the afterlife, and wondering if I'm living right--constantly moving between "there is a heaven, so I better get my shit together" and "there's nothing, so believing in some grand reunion is foolish denial of the truth". I have no house; I have no car; my credit is fucked to a high degree (although at least THIS time I'm in good company, and can blame no one but myself....oh, and the subprime mortgage industry); I am now officially Completely Miserable in my job, but I've also come to realize that I will probably be Completely Miserable in ANY job which requires working for someone else, or accepting arbitrary orders, or acting in ways which don't make sense to me--in other words, any job anywhere at all. I can't even start a relationship, let alone sustain one, and I've given up on the possibility of anyone ever finding me attractive again. So again, I ask: WHO the hell am I to judge anyone ELSE's life?? Mostly I want to run away and do exactly the things I want to do, nothing else; buy my little farm and put a "Baked Goods For Sale" sign out by the road, and spend my mornings baking and my afternoons in the barn doing all manner of art--pottery, and glasswork, and painting and quilting and writing and crochet (and maybe even learn to knit, even though I've never been able to get both hands working at once so far). And at night, just lay out in a hammock slung between two trees, and pull a sheet of mosquito net over me and go to sleep. It's not that I want a simpler time, exactly; I want a time that's MINE, where no one is controlling me but me, and where every action moves toward a goal; where rules make sense and exist for a REASON, and don't change randomly at someone else's whim. I want to live an orderly life--not a life without chaos, exactly, but a life where I UNDERSTAND the chaos. Honestly? Right now, Tim and Squeaky are the least of my worries.
And if from this you take the conclusion that my work is really screwing with me, please accept my applause for your excellent deductive skills. Last evening, upon walking into my apartment, I unleashed such a storm of profanity and invective regarding my boss--touching on issues including--but not limited to--her ancestry, her sexual practices, her hygiene, her mental state, and her predilection for inter-species mating--that even Tim, who has heard me at my peak, was surprised. It would have been one of my proudest moments of vulgar inventiveness, had I not been SO DAMN PISSED-OFF at the subhuman stinking pustulent piece of ....Oops....there I go again.
(Yeah, I know--what made me so mad, right? Let's just put it this way: When I am reprimanded for a violation of a policy --a violation which involved an interval of TWO MINUTES, against a policy which, although I was told in the beginning that it was perfectly acceptable to do what I did, has apparently changed, of which change neither I was EVER informed, nor were the two OTHER people who perform the same task...I do NOT remember EVER seeing, ANYFUCKINGWHERE in my job description, "reads minds/displays psychic ability". That was NOT in the qualifications, and so to be reprimanded for what is essentially my failure to read that crazy-ass whoreslut's degenerated parasite-raddled mind...
I am perfectly calm, now.)
Seriously, though, I am never going to accept a job working for another female boss. I told myself that when I left Other Place Where I Used To Work; my resolve was strengthened by Ill-Fated Short-Term Employment; but I needed a job so badly, and I thought there was going to be a buffer zone between myself and her (and there was, til they demoted Best Boss Ever--I should have started slamming out the resumes right there and then)...It's not a mistake I'm going to make again. I don't care HOW desperate I am...it's NEVER worth it.
Oh. And then, after all this--Squeaky asking for a place to stay, ElMo (which is what I have dubbed The Crazy--I have my reasons!) giving me nothing but shit because I couldn't read her mind, and a bunch of other crap into which I haven't even gone--after all that, last night the phone rang: After seven years, CR's been put out of the girlfriend's house. (Short form: She asked him if he loved her; he gave an honest answer. Next sentence: "Get out of my house!") He's trying to work out how to get a place of his own; even though apartments are SUPER-cheap there, so are wages, especially when he can only get 25 hours a week. I was really impressed, actually, with most of what he said; seems like all the things I said so long ago, about standing up and being a man and living on his own, may have sunk in after all. Seven years late, mind, but any progress is good progress.
And that, my friends--all those bits of wonder, and an exploding toilet too--is what my little life is made of, right about now. Strangely enough, I'm almost happy; there's something to be said for realizing that you are no longer willing to be crapped on for the privilege of drawing a paycheck. Obviously I've gotta hang on til the economy gets itself together, but that's okay; the important thing is KNOWING it's not forever, that I'm not going to let it be forever, and I'm not going to spend the rest of my life scared of some bitch's opinion of me. That's no way to live, and even if I have to do it temporarily, I do NOT have to do it permanently. I may not be able to see the light at the end, but at least now I recognize that it is, in fact, a tunnel I'm standing in.
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Cartoon Sound Effects
I really need cartoon sound effects in this post, to give you a general idea of how insane things have been. Like the Wile E Coyote going-over-the-cliff noise--that would be ideal.
I was in the process of writing my post-inauguration post when Tim and Squeaky arrived. They are still here. (Well, "there", actually, as my current "here" is at work, and they are--mercifully--not "here". But they -are- at my apartment.) Everything went fairly-well for the first couple of days...and then there was Friday.
Friday morning Tim told me "I'm going up north to arrange my storage space, and then I'm gonna stop by and see Betty and Jay." Okay, says I--I really don't care what he does, since he's a grown man, as long as it doesn't bring drama into my world. "I'll be home pretty early," he said.
At 6:45 I walked in the door and was immediately enveloped in Typhoon Squeaky. "He was supposed to be home....I am so pissed...He's..." here, he's there, she's texted him, he's answered, she's called him, he hasn't answered, he hasn't answered, she's called him again, again, again, again, again...he's texted that he's leaving at 8:30...he's awful, a liar, a cheater, he's using her, she's called him again, again, again, again, again....he answered! She yells, then she's sorry, then after she hangs up she's yelling again, because he SAID he was coming home at....
At about 10, I went to my room--not because I was sleepy, but just to get away from the teenage angst. She knocked on my door three separate times--once because he was on the phone and wanted to talk to me, during which she listened in on the extension--and the other times because she'd texted him and he hadn't answered, she'd called him, she'd called him again, again, again...he's so mean, he lets his friends tell him what to do...he's such a jerk, she's going to leave him...she called him again..
At 3 AM I got up to go to the bathroom. When I stepped out of the bathroom--there she was. "I called him and he let BETTY answer his phone!!! I hate that bitch..." She hates that bitch. She's gonna kill her. She's gonna kill ALL his friends. She hates them all. How DARE she answer his phone. "And THEN she said I was AGGRAVATING him. Well, he lied about what time he was gonna come home--I have a RIGHT to aggravate him!"
I finally got back to bed.
I try to think back, sometimes, when I am at my peak of Squeaky-induced rage; I think back to my first boyfriend, how insecure I was sometimes, how there were times I thought I would literally fall to bits if he didn't call me RIGHT THAT MOMENT. I remember being jealous of his female friends; I remember him telling me I had no reason to be jealous, then later finding out that yes, I did have a reason. (That whole kerfuffle, as a matter of fact, set off the chain of events that led to me eventually meeting JP.) I try to remember myself objectively, and I ask myself: Was I THAT insecure? Was I THAT annoying? Was I as underhanded as Squeaky is? Did I have such a sense of entitlement?
I made a lot--a LOT--of mistakes in that first relationship; biggest of all, really, was breaking it off in the end. He's a CTO somewhere now; he married the girl he dated after me, a friend of a friend. He went on to bigger and better things and I...well, you know what happened to me. I'd like to think I wouldn't change much about my life, but when I look at the divergence of those two paths, I pretty much conclude: yep, kid, you really fucked THAT one up righteously. But when we were together....Yeah, I had my moments. I was way, way too dependent on him, on his approval; then again, I was way too dependent on EVERYONE's approval back then--it was the way I had been taught to be. I fight that even to this day; I'm still trying to convince myself that doing things just for the sake of doing them, because it makes me happy, is a perfectly-acceptable reason. I'm still trying to teach myself that an audience is OPTIONAL, not mandatory.
And when I was scared, or when I was sad, or when I wasn't sure if he loved me--yeah, I'm sure I was a monumental pain in the ass--both to him, and to those around me. (I remember one night in the cafeteria, when one of my friends basically told me she wasn't going to hang around with me because I was being too depressing. This was not long after I'd found out I was being cheated on; she was the independent woman who didn't need a man, the master of her own destiny. Funny thing--she was the first one of our little group to actually stay married, and the first one to have kids. She's got three, and she and her hubby and their brood live someplace awesome on their enormous salaries. And I...well, you know what happened to me.) I'm sure Firefly could probably tell stories for hours, about what a mess I was back then.
But: Would I have ever gone on and on, nonstop, for three hours, about it? Especially to someone who has said more than once that she really doesn't wanna hear it? Would I have lurked outside the bathroom door at 3 AM, just so I could be sure I'd get to vent my spleen, because someone else had answered his phone?
Highly unlikely, I think. In fact, bordering on "HELL no." But again--I'm looking back eighteen years, peeking over the giant brick wall of 1995 in my memory, that dividing line between "things I'm trying to forget" and "things I just don't remember". Trying to think back, about ANYTHING, is like juggling glass jars of nitroglycerin: it's better to focus on the effort itself, than on what the consequences will be if you don't do it right. So maybe I'm not being fair to her; maybe Squeaky is just a karmic payback for the way I was when I was twenty years old. Hell, maybe I'm just jealous; I would give anything at all to be that age again, at that point in your life when you've just figured out that you have wings, but have no idea yet of how they work. I was never meant for middle-age; a stable, quiet life with seemingly nothing left to discover. I'm beginning to believe that what's been diagnosed as "depression" may just be a realistic sense of my own limitations, of what's passed by and what I've lost.
Then again, one of the benefits of middle age: I'm only watching the teenage soap opera, not experiencing it again. I don't know if that's enough of a compensation for everything else, but after last night, I'll tell you--it's definitely better than the alternative!
I was in the process of writing my post-inauguration post when Tim and Squeaky arrived. They are still here. (Well, "there", actually, as my current "here" is at work, and they are--mercifully--not "here". But they -are- at my apartment.) Everything went fairly-well for the first couple of days...and then there was Friday.
Friday morning Tim told me "I'm going up north to arrange my storage space, and then I'm gonna stop by and see Betty and Jay." Okay, says I--I really don't care what he does, since he's a grown man, as long as it doesn't bring drama into my world. "I'll be home pretty early," he said.
At 6:45 I walked in the door and was immediately enveloped in Typhoon Squeaky. "He was supposed to be home....I am so pissed...He's..." here, he's there, she's texted him, he's answered, she's called him, he hasn't answered, he hasn't answered, she's called him again, again, again, again, again...he's texted that he's leaving at 8:30...he's awful, a liar, a cheater, he's using her, she's called him again, again, again, again, again....he answered! She yells, then she's sorry, then after she hangs up she's yelling again, because he SAID he was coming home at....
At about 10, I went to my room--not because I was sleepy, but just to get away from the teenage angst. She knocked on my door three separate times--once because he was on the phone and wanted to talk to me, during which she listened in on the extension--and the other times because she'd texted him and he hadn't answered, she'd called him, she'd called him again, again, again...he's so mean, he lets his friends tell him what to do...he's such a jerk, she's going to leave him...she called him again..
At 3 AM I got up to go to the bathroom. When I stepped out of the bathroom--there she was. "I called him and he let BETTY answer his phone!!! I hate that bitch..." She hates that bitch. She's gonna kill her. She's gonna kill ALL his friends. She hates them all. How DARE she answer his phone. "And THEN she said I was AGGRAVATING him. Well, he lied about what time he was gonna come home--I have a RIGHT to aggravate him!"
I finally got back to bed.
I try to think back, sometimes, when I am at my peak of Squeaky-induced rage; I think back to my first boyfriend, how insecure I was sometimes, how there were times I thought I would literally fall to bits if he didn't call me RIGHT THAT MOMENT. I remember being jealous of his female friends; I remember him telling me I had no reason to be jealous, then later finding out that yes, I did have a reason. (That whole kerfuffle, as a matter of fact, set off the chain of events that led to me eventually meeting JP.) I try to remember myself objectively, and I ask myself: Was I THAT insecure? Was I THAT annoying? Was I as underhanded as Squeaky is? Did I have such a sense of entitlement?
I made a lot--a LOT--of mistakes in that first relationship; biggest of all, really, was breaking it off in the end. He's a CTO somewhere now; he married the girl he dated after me, a friend of a friend. He went on to bigger and better things and I...well, you know what happened to me. I'd like to think I wouldn't change much about my life, but when I look at the divergence of those two paths, I pretty much conclude: yep, kid, you really fucked THAT one up righteously. But when we were together....Yeah, I had my moments. I was way, way too dependent on him, on his approval; then again, I was way too dependent on EVERYONE's approval back then--it was the way I had been taught to be. I fight that even to this day; I'm still trying to convince myself that doing things just for the sake of doing them, because it makes me happy, is a perfectly-acceptable reason. I'm still trying to teach myself that an audience is OPTIONAL, not mandatory.
And when I was scared, or when I was sad, or when I wasn't sure if he loved me--yeah, I'm sure I was a monumental pain in the ass--both to him, and to those around me. (I remember one night in the cafeteria, when one of my friends basically told me she wasn't going to hang around with me because I was being too depressing. This was not long after I'd found out I was being cheated on; she was the independent woman who didn't need a man, the master of her own destiny. Funny thing--she was the first one of our little group to actually stay married, and the first one to have kids. She's got three, and she and her hubby and their brood live someplace awesome on their enormous salaries. And I...well, you know what happened to me.) I'm sure Firefly could probably tell stories for hours, about what a mess I was back then.
But: Would I have ever gone on and on, nonstop, for three hours, about it? Especially to someone who has said more than once that she really doesn't wanna hear it? Would I have lurked outside the bathroom door at 3 AM, just so I could be sure I'd get to vent my spleen, because someone else had answered his phone?
Highly unlikely, I think. In fact, bordering on "HELL no." But again--I'm looking back eighteen years, peeking over the giant brick wall of 1995 in my memory, that dividing line between "things I'm trying to forget" and "things I just don't remember". Trying to think back, about ANYTHING, is like juggling glass jars of nitroglycerin: it's better to focus on the effort itself, than on what the consequences will be if you don't do it right. So maybe I'm not being fair to her; maybe Squeaky is just a karmic payback for the way I was when I was twenty years old. Hell, maybe I'm just jealous; I would give anything at all to be that age again, at that point in your life when you've just figured out that you have wings, but have no idea yet of how they work. I was never meant for middle-age; a stable, quiet life with seemingly nothing left to discover. I'm beginning to believe that what's been diagnosed as "depression" may just be a realistic sense of my own limitations, of what's passed by and what I've lost.
Then again, one of the benefits of middle age: I'm only watching the teenage soap opera, not experiencing it again. I don't know if that's enough of a compensation for everything else, but after last night, I'll tell you--it's definitely better than the alternative!
Saturday, January 10, 2009
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".)
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".)
Monday, January 5, 2009
Update: The Saga Continues
Tim gets out Wednesday.
Meanwhile, Squeaky is driving me Bonkers Q. Batcrap, calling me every...single...solitary...time she talks to Tim on the phone, or thinks she should talk to Tim on the phone, or wonders if she ought to CALL Tim, or wondering if Tim is going to call HER...and that's saying nothing of what she's doing to poor Tim. Apparently she's calling him when she has nothing to say.
Now, calling when you have nothing to say is an excusable thing when you're 13. Or 16. By the time you're 20, you should know when it is or is not appropriate. "Calling your 34-year-old ex-lover at the psych unit" is definitely on the "not appropriate" side of the checklist. And, predictably, he's getting snappish with her. Then she has to call me, in case I talked to him and he said something about her. Every conversation has to be dissected and analyzed and picked-over...(I realized at one point that I was feeling guilty, and wanting to look up my high-school boyfriend to drop an apology for when I used to do this....when I was 17, 18 years old. I refrained; believe me, I owe him about ten thousand times more apologies than for THAT.)
The maddening thing is, though: Squeaky is clearly Not With the Program regarding the significance of all that's happened. Her worry for Tim is couched largely in terms of "but does he love me?" "does he know I love him?" "Is he mad at me?" The issue at hand--Tim's health and welfare--she comprehensively fails to understand; she claims in one breath to want to do what's best for him, but then in the next she's talking about how she wants him to come back and live with her and Old Bastard again. Apparently, she and Old Bastard had a discussion, entirely without Tim's input, regarding what conditions Tim would be required to agree to in order to be allowed to live there again. The conditions are fairly insulting, first of all, and then there's this other small problem: Tim doesn't WANT to live there. He never did--the only reason he lived there in the first place was that she moved all his belongings there and told him it would be a stable place that he wouldn't be kicked out of! But he hates it there; he's said this a hundred times at least.
The best thing for Tim, I think, would be to take up the offer his friend in Ohio made. His friend offered to give him a room and line him up with a job, no questions asked. The reason Tim gave for not going when it was offered was that he didn't want to just turn up on the guy's doorstep in the middle of the holidays; well, the holidays are over now, so that barrier is removed. I'm going to offer to buy him the bus ticket, in fact, when he comes by on Wednesday; the way I see it, getting him out of this stress factory would probably be $40 well spent. Between me, Squeaky, and Betty the Bartender, I'm reasonably sure that I'm the one who has Tim's welfare most in mind, and who has the fewest ulterior motives. I just want him to be healthy (i.e. not constantly drunk off his butt and using "stress" as the excuse); happy (i.e. not constantly submerged in so much stress that he can USE it as an excuse); and self-supporting (because I think THAT will do more for his mental health than ANYTHING. I remember the old, self-reliant Tim, when he had a job; sure, nothing was perfect--he still drank, still did the occasional stupid thing--but he was in his 20's at the time, so that makes sense. And he was HAPPIER--that I know. He took pride in paying his rent and bills on time. I really think being in the socioeconomic dumps has hit him a lot harder than many people realize; then again, there aren't many people in his life who knew him back then, or who have seen him in circumstances besides the ones he's in.)
I wish Squeaky would leave him alone, or at least act like a grownup.
I wish Squeaky would leave ME alone. I'm a solitary person; I don't deal well with three phone calls a night, all from the same person (to whom I didn't want to talk anyway) and all of which say the same thing, to wit: nothing.
I'm reasonably sure neither of those wishes will come true.
Maybe if I changed my number and moved to Borneo....?
And of course, the person I feel worst for is Tim. -I- can just not-answer the phone; he doesn't have that option. I'm not trying to save him, mind you; I'm long past the time when I thought I even COULD save him or anybody else. But I still feel bad that he has to go through it, and if I can give him an avenue out--well, then, so much the better.
Meanwhile, Squeaky is driving me Bonkers Q. Batcrap, calling me every...single...solitary...time she talks to Tim on the phone, or thinks she should talk to Tim on the phone, or wonders if she ought to CALL Tim, or wondering if Tim is going to call HER...and that's saying nothing of what she's doing to poor Tim. Apparently she's calling him when she has nothing to say.
Now, calling when you have nothing to say is an excusable thing when you're 13. Or 16. By the time you're 20, you should know when it is or is not appropriate. "Calling your 34-year-old ex-lover at the psych unit" is definitely on the "not appropriate" side of the checklist. And, predictably, he's getting snappish with her. Then she has to call me, in case I talked to him and he said something about her. Every conversation has to be dissected and analyzed and picked-over...(I realized at one point that I was feeling guilty, and wanting to look up my high-school boyfriend to drop an apology for when I used to do this....when I was 17, 18 years old. I refrained; believe me, I owe him about ten thousand times more apologies than for THAT.)
The maddening thing is, though: Squeaky is clearly Not With the Program regarding the significance of all that's happened. Her worry for Tim is couched largely in terms of "but does he love me?" "does he know I love him?" "Is he mad at me?" The issue at hand--Tim's health and welfare--she comprehensively fails to understand; she claims in one breath to want to do what's best for him, but then in the next she's talking about how she wants him to come back and live with her and Old Bastard again. Apparently, she and Old Bastard had a discussion, entirely without Tim's input, regarding what conditions Tim would be required to agree to in order to be allowed to live there again. The conditions are fairly insulting, first of all, and then there's this other small problem: Tim doesn't WANT to live there. He never did--the only reason he lived there in the first place was that she moved all his belongings there and told him it would be a stable place that he wouldn't be kicked out of! But he hates it there; he's said this a hundred times at least.
The best thing for Tim, I think, would be to take up the offer his friend in Ohio made. His friend offered to give him a room and line him up with a job, no questions asked. The reason Tim gave for not going when it was offered was that he didn't want to just turn up on the guy's doorstep in the middle of the holidays; well, the holidays are over now, so that barrier is removed. I'm going to offer to buy him the bus ticket, in fact, when he comes by on Wednesday; the way I see it, getting him out of this stress factory would probably be $40 well spent. Between me, Squeaky, and Betty the Bartender, I'm reasonably sure that I'm the one who has Tim's welfare most in mind, and who has the fewest ulterior motives. I just want him to be healthy (i.e. not constantly drunk off his butt and using "stress" as the excuse); happy (i.e. not constantly submerged in so much stress that he can USE it as an excuse); and self-supporting (because I think THAT will do more for his mental health than ANYTHING. I remember the old, self-reliant Tim, when he had a job; sure, nothing was perfect--he still drank, still did the occasional stupid thing--but he was in his 20's at the time, so that makes sense. And he was HAPPIER--that I know. He took pride in paying his rent and bills on time. I really think being in the socioeconomic dumps has hit him a lot harder than many people realize; then again, there aren't many people in his life who knew him back then, or who have seen him in circumstances besides the ones he's in.)
I wish Squeaky would leave him alone, or at least act like a grownup.
I wish Squeaky would leave ME alone. I'm a solitary person; I don't deal well with three phone calls a night, all from the same person (to whom I didn't want to talk anyway) and all of which say the same thing, to wit: nothing.
I'm reasonably sure neither of those wishes will come true.
Maybe if I changed my number and moved to Borneo....?
And of course, the person I feel worst for is Tim. -I- can just not-answer the phone; he doesn't have that option. I'm not trying to save him, mind you; I'm long past the time when I thought I even COULD save him or anybody else. But I still feel bad that he has to go through it, and if I can give him an avenue out--well, then, so much the better.
Friday, January 2, 2009
Cross Off THAT Resolution...
Tim is in the substance-abuse unit at a local mental-health center. I just talked to Squeaky for an hour (and my respect for THAT little girl is ramped up to a fairly-amazing height, considering our history) and things are not looking too spectacular for Tim at the moment. Apparently, after having "the charcoal thing" (Squeaky's description) done to his stomach ("He wasn't real happy about that,") he "kinda freaked out" and was subsequently put in full-body restraints, with the kind assistance of "about 30 or 35 people", and once restrained, was pumped full of tranquilizers. No--I mean FULL of tranquilizers. Per Squeaky's description, they gave him a shot...then another...then another...."They seriously had to go back out to get more medicine about eight times," she said. "There was a doctor there who asked me 'Why isn't he asleep already?' I said 'I TOLD you--he's got a really high immunity for medication!'" (True; I've seen Tim take in quantities of this and that which would have incapacitated, like, ANYONE else.)
Eventually, after they transferred him from the regular hospital to the mental-health center (dumping ground of those who, like Tim, have no insurance) he DID fall asleep; they'd taken his restraints off after the shots started working enough to ensure he wasn't going to kick anyone's ass. (Squeaky told me that last night, when she called me, he had already beaten her up as she tried to get the pills away from him. That's the first time in the history of our friendship that I know of him hitting a woman. I'm not real pleased about it, but then again, he had to have been pretty far gone to even be able to do that.)
And with all the stuff Squeaky's going through with Tim, bullshit is now apparently coming from an unlikely source: Betty. Apparently Betty has decided that the reason Tim is in the condition he's in is traceable directly to Squeaky. "Why did you buy him beer??" Squeaky said Betty asked, during one of several increasingly-hostile phone calls. (Which, to me, is quite hilarious; Squeaky claims she bought him a six-pack, which I believe; whereas, when he's out with Betty, the festivities usually include pitchers of beer (plural) and shots of hard liquor, sometimes with other substances involved as well. Betty's not got a leg to stand on for THAT accusation, unfortunately; "Ms. Pot? I've got a kettle on line 1...something about colors?") Betty is blaming Squeaky, loudly and repeatedly, for every bad thing that's happened to Tim. Now, in the long dark days before Tim knew either Squeaky OR Betty, I have experienced a similar Tim-plosion; he drank himself senseless and started threatening self-harm, and somehow the police were called (I think that time, Tim did it himself) and he was taken to the same hospital. This was back when we were living with CR, so it's a good nearly-ten years ago--and I don't think Squeaky, at 10 years old and not even known to either of us, could be said to hold any responsibility for THAT. The fact of the matter is, Tim needs help; has needed it for a long time, if even only on the substance-abuse level; and right now, no matter how much he hates it, Squeaky hates it, Betty hates it, or I hate it, Tim is exactly where he needs to be. He certainly does NOT need to be in the roommate environment he was in--though that's apparently a moot point, since Old Bastard has told Squeaky that if Tim returns, they will BOTH be kicked out--and he does not need to be motel-hopping/sofa-hopping/whatever with Betty, Squeaky, or both. More than anything, I think, Tim needs some stability; a solid place to stay, and a solid job that he's not going to be "downsized" from, or shut out of when the place closes because of the economy, or whatever. He needs a routine (says the woman who herself is in dire need of a routine, but still).
Squeaky's in a bad way, as who wouldn't be after seeing the person they love put into full-body restraints and shot full of tranquilizers. She's still a kid, really; I have to remind myself of that. I couldn't have handled that when I was 20; then again, at 20, I was still kind of a sheltered, moderately-spoiled, unthinking little product of my upbringing. It wasn't til I met JP, when I was 21, that I started seeing the world through different eyes; even when we were just friends and verbal sparring-partners, he always made me THINK.
I went to the doctor today, and as I suspected she raised my dosage of Effexor. I'm a teeny bit concerned, because my legs seem itchier since I started taking it three weeks ago; but that could be just dry skin and healing from the old condition. The doctor said if it starts to get really bad, stop taking the meds, take Benadryl, and call her. I'm not going to cold-turkey STOP, though; I've heard the withdrawals from Effexor are rather unpleasant, and I don't do well with unpleasant withdrawals. The increase is definitely needed, though; my regular psychologist was worried enough after our last appointment that she scheduled me for another one in two weeks, rather than our usual four. Some of that's the holidays, I'm sure; and some of it isn't. I don't like being in a rut.
Of course, I'd rather be in a rut than be Tim, or Squeaky, or Betty right now.
And then, when I'd hung up with Squeaky (after promising to call her tomorrow), CR called. He hadn't called much recently; in fact, I hadn't heard from him for three months or so, til this morning. "I thought you weren't talking to me anymore," he said. "I thought the same thing!" I told him.
As I suspected from those pictures, he's not in a good way. He told me that within the last three weeks, he found out he has diabetes and high blood pressure (I THINK he got the numbers wrong, or he should be approximately dead--108/180?? Is that possible??) The doctors want him to lose 75 pounds (40 of which he's gained since leaving Chicago) and he's scheduled for a sleep study. (The whole fricking WORLD has sleep apnea, seems like.) And tonight, his best friend at work--an older woman who helped him immensely when he was starting there--the one who, when we first started talking again, he got so emotional when telling me about her influence on him that he actually choked up and cried, which is pretty major for him--anyway, she got fired today. Not only that, but she got fired for being a whistleblower--something about the way the staff was being treated. CR didn't go into detail about that--but basically this woman went to bat for the employees and lost her job for it. Between that, and the health problems, he's feeling really, really low just now. "Thanks for listening," he said, as he promised to call me tomorrow night. "No problem," I said.
I am a sad person surrounded by even sadder people. In one way, it's probably not ideal; in another way, it makes me realize how fortunate I am. I have a solid job, a stable place to live, no current substance-abuse issues; moderate mental-health issues, but none completely incapacitating; several minor-to-moderate health problems, but nothing currently at a critical stage; food in my fridge, two gorgeous cats, and a host of things I could do to change my life, even in small ways, were I only to make the choice to do so. So, although I am a sad person surrounded by even sadder people, I am also among the most-fortunate people I know. I AM in a rut; there is an astonishing lack of magic in my life right now; but under the circumstances and with my friends for comparison, I'm doing pretty well for myself.
I do wish I was happier about it, though.
I've got a phone number for where Tim is; Squeaky says it's a pay phone in the ward and it's often busy, but I'm going to try to call him tomorrow evening. I suspect he's probably very angry with me for calling 911--he always has been in the past--but as I said last night, and as I told Squeaky tonight, I will tell him tomorrow: I'd rather have a pissed-off live friend than a dead friend. He can be as angry as he wants, but it won't shake in the slightest my belief that Squeaky did the right thing by calling me, and I did the right thing by calling 911.
This year isn't starting out very auspiciously, though, is it.
Eventually, after they transferred him from the regular hospital to the mental-health center (dumping ground of those who, like Tim, have no insurance) he DID fall asleep; they'd taken his restraints off after the shots started working enough to ensure he wasn't going to kick anyone's ass. (Squeaky told me that last night, when she called me, he had already beaten her up as she tried to get the pills away from him. That's the first time in the history of our friendship that I know of him hitting a woman. I'm not real pleased about it, but then again, he had to have been pretty far gone to even be able to do that.)
And with all the stuff Squeaky's going through with Tim, bullshit is now apparently coming from an unlikely source: Betty. Apparently Betty has decided that the reason Tim is in the condition he's in is traceable directly to Squeaky. "Why did you buy him beer??" Squeaky said Betty asked, during one of several increasingly-hostile phone calls. (Which, to me, is quite hilarious; Squeaky claims she bought him a six-pack, which I believe; whereas, when he's out with Betty, the festivities usually include pitchers of beer (plural) and shots of hard liquor, sometimes with other substances involved as well. Betty's not got a leg to stand on for THAT accusation, unfortunately; "Ms. Pot? I've got a kettle on line 1...something about colors?") Betty is blaming Squeaky, loudly and repeatedly, for every bad thing that's happened to Tim. Now, in the long dark days before Tim knew either Squeaky OR Betty, I have experienced a similar Tim-plosion; he drank himself senseless and started threatening self-harm, and somehow the police were called (I think that time, Tim did it himself) and he was taken to the same hospital. This was back when we were living with CR, so it's a good nearly-ten years ago--and I don't think Squeaky, at 10 years old and not even known to either of us, could be said to hold any responsibility for THAT. The fact of the matter is, Tim needs help; has needed it for a long time, if even only on the substance-abuse level; and right now, no matter how much he hates it, Squeaky hates it, Betty hates it, or I hate it, Tim is exactly where he needs to be. He certainly does NOT need to be in the roommate environment he was in--though that's apparently a moot point, since Old Bastard has told Squeaky that if Tim returns, they will BOTH be kicked out--and he does not need to be motel-hopping/sofa-hopping/whatever with Betty, Squeaky, or both. More than anything, I think, Tim needs some stability; a solid place to stay, and a solid job that he's not going to be "downsized" from, or shut out of when the place closes because of the economy, or whatever. He needs a routine (says the woman who herself is in dire need of a routine, but still).
Squeaky's in a bad way, as who wouldn't be after seeing the person they love put into full-body restraints and shot full of tranquilizers. She's still a kid, really; I have to remind myself of that. I couldn't have handled that when I was 20; then again, at 20, I was still kind of a sheltered, moderately-spoiled, unthinking little product of my upbringing. It wasn't til I met JP, when I was 21, that I started seeing the world through different eyes; even when we were just friends and verbal sparring-partners, he always made me THINK.
I went to the doctor today, and as I suspected she raised my dosage of Effexor. I'm a teeny bit concerned, because my legs seem itchier since I started taking it three weeks ago; but that could be just dry skin and healing from the old condition. The doctor said if it starts to get really bad, stop taking the meds, take Benadryl, and call her. I'm not going to cold-turkey STOP, though; I've heard the withdrawals from Effexor are rather unpleasant, and I don't do well with unpleasant withdrawals. The increase is definitely needed, though; my regular psychologist was worried enough after our last appointment that she scheduled me for another one in two weeks, rather than our usual four. Some of that's the holidays, I'm sure; and some of it isn't. I don't like being in a rut.
Of course, I'd rather be in a rut than be Tim, or Squeaky, or Betty right now.
And then, when I'd hung up with Squeaky (after promising to call her tomorrow), CR called. He hadn't called much recently; in fact, I hadn't heard from him for three months or so, til this morning. "I thought you weren't talking to me anymore," he said. "I thought the same thing!" I told him.
As I suspected from those pictures, he's not in a good way. He told me that within the last three weeks, he found out he has diabetes and high blood pressure (I THINK he got the numbers wrong, or he should be approximately dead--108/180?? Is that possible??) The doctors want him to lose 75 pounds (40 of which he's gained since leaving Chicago) and he's scheduled for a sleep study. (The whole fricking WORLD has sleep apnea, seems like.) And tonight, his best friend at work--an older woman who helped him immensely when he was starting there--the one who, when we first started talking again, he got so emotional when telling me about her influence on him that he actually choked up and cried, which is pretty major for him--anyway, she got fired today. Not only that, but she got fired for being a whistleblower--something about the way the staff was being treated. CR didn't go into detail about that--but basically this woman went to bat for the employees and lost her job for it. Between that, and the health problems, he's feeling really, really low just now. "Thanks for listening," he said, as he promised to call me tomorrow night. "No problem," I said.
I am a sad person surrounded by even sadder people. In one way, it's probably not ideal; in another way, it makes me realize how fortunate I am. I have a solid job, a stable place to live, no current substance-abuse issues; moderate mental-health issues, but none completely incapacitating; several minor-to-moderate health problems, but nothing currently at a critical stage; food in my fridge, two gorgeous cats, and a host of things I could do to change my life, even in small ways, were I only to make the choice to do so. So, although I am a sad person surrounded by even sadder people, I am also among the most-fortunate people I know. I AM in a rut; there is an astonishing lack of magic in my life right now; but under the circumstances and with my friends for comparison, I'm doing pretty well for myself.
I do wish I was happier about it, though.
I've got a phone number for where Tim is; Squeaky says it's a pay phone in the ward and it's often busy, but I'm going to try to call him tomorrow evening. I suspect he's probably very angry with me for calling 911--he always has been in the past--but as I said last night, and as I told Squeaky tonight, I will tell him tomorrow: I'd rather have a pissed-off live friend than a dead friend. He can be as angry as he wants, but it won't shake in the slightest my belief that Squeaky did the right thing by calling me, and I did the right thing by calling 911.
This year isn't starting out very auspiciously, though, is it.
Resolution #1
My first resolution for 2009: No more drama.
It took me, granted, 27 hours of the new year to codify this one; actually, 26 hours and 48 minutes, which was how long after midnight on January 1 that Squeaky called me to tell me that Tim was "eating handfuls of pills"--Benadryls and Advils, before he started going through the OTHER roommate's pills (the 61-year-old guy, who I'm sure is on some heavy-duty stuff, and who will henceforth be known as Old Bastard). And when I told her to call 911, she claimed "I said I was going to, and he snapped at me and shit." Now, Tim, when drunk/whatever, is not always the nice guy he is when sober; he said the only time he ever hit a woman was during a drunken blackout several years ago, and so I wasn't in the mood to put Squeaky in that position. So I told her "Give me the address and I'LL call 911. I don't care HOW mad he gets at ME." (Which is true.) So she did, and I did, and I gave them the address and told them what she told me, and they said they were going to send somebody over there. Past that point, as I told Squeaky, I'm not terribly concerned. If he never speaks to me again...oh well. I would rather have a pissed-off ex-friend than a dead friend. And if he DOES speak to me again, he's going to get an earful; I've been down this road with him before, and I'm reasonably sure that it's a)alcohol-fueled; b)not an actual suicide attempt; c)calculated to get under SOMEONE's skin, probably Squeaky's. I know he's having a positively shitty time right now; he's still jobless, living in a place he hates with people he can't stand, and seeing no viable way out for quite some time. But what he's going to hear from me is: he's making it worse for himself, too. Squeaky and Old Bastard are NOT the only ones responsible for his misery; he's done a fair bit to further THAT himself. Not that I don't understand; but there's only so much I can do, and tonight he basically reached that limit.
This is NOT an auspicious beginning to the year.
It took me, granted, 27 hours of the new year to codify this one; actually, 26 hours and 48 minutes, which was how long after midnight on January 1 that Squeaky called me to tell me that Tim was "eating handfuls of pills"--Benadryls and Advils, before he started going through the OTHER roommate's pills (the 61-year-old guy, who I'm sure is on some heavy-duty stuff, and who will henceforth be known as Old Bastard). And when I told her to call 911, she claimed "I said I was going to, and he snapped at me and shit." Now, Tim, when drunk/whatever, is not always the nice guy he is when sober; he said the only time he ever hit a woman was during a drunken blackout several years ago, and so I wasn't in the mood to put Squeaky in that position. So I told her "Give me the address and I'LL call 911. I don't care HOW mad he gets at ME." (Which is true.) So she did, and I did, and I gave them the address and told them what she told me, and they said they were going to send somebody over there. Past that point, as I told Squeaky, I'm not terribly concerned. If he never speaks to me again...oh well. I would rather have a pissed-off ex-friend than a dead friend. And if he DOES speak to me again, he's going to get an earful; I've been down this road with him before, and I'm reasonably sure that it's a)alcohol-fueled; b)not an actual suicide attempt; c)calculated to get under SOMEONE's skin, probably Squeaky's. I know he's having a positively shitty time right now; he's still jobless, living in a place he hates with people he can't stand, and seeing no viable way out for quite some time. But what he's going to hear from me is: he's making it worse for himself, too. Squeaky and Old Bastard are NOT the only ones responsible for his misery; he's done a fair bit to further THAT himself. Not that I don't understand; but there's only so much I can do, and tonight he basically reached that limit.
This is NOT an auspicious beginning to the year.
Thursday, December 4, 2008
Oh, Yeah--I Forgot...
(See, this is what happens when I don't post in a long time. Things get overlooked.)
I didn't mention the BIG FREAKING DEVELOPMENT:
Tim and Squeaky are mostly-broken-up and (shocker) once again mostly-homeless. AND: Betty (Tim's friend who used to be a bartender at his favorite bar til she got fired several months ago) is apparently travelling with them.
The order of events, as I understand it, went something like this:
Tim and Squeaky had been living with Squeaky's dad for the past year. Squeaky's dad (hereafter abbreviated to SD) has his own issues; he's apparently schizophrenic, along with a bunch of other diagnoses, and so he lives in an apartment subsidized by some church group with which he's affiliated.
Meanwhile, Betty had been staying with her boyfriend, but they got into a huge fight and she left, and SD told Tim and Squeaky "sure, why not, what's another one?" So Betty was staying with Tim and Squeaky.
One night, after some trivial slight, Squeaky just basically flipped the fuck out. (I have this on the authority of both Tim, whose version of the story would be open to doubt, and Betty, who would have no reason to varnish the truth.) She started screaming at Tim "I'm gonna fucking kill you!" and pounced on him, scratching and clawing and strangling and just generally losing her mind. Betty, at the time, was sitting in the living room watching TV with SD, and SD said "What's she doing to him NOW???" (Both Tim and Betty claim that Squeaky's attacked Tim before. I don't entirely doubt it...in fact, I don't doubt it at all.) Betty ran in and pulled Squeaky off Tim, and the screaming and yelling and the rest continued.
Meanwhile, SD had had enough. Now, normally, when people have Had Enough, they yell and make ultimatums and so on. Not SD. SD, when he's Had Enough, checks himself into the hospital for a break. And that's what he did in this case--he left, and went to the hospital, and checked himself in as a psych patient.
Betty and Tim managed to calm Squeaky down, and Tim was of course properly pissed--as who wouldn't be...Anyway, Tim told Squeaky that he was pretty sure that they were all in serious trouble, now that SD had gone to the hospital, and that the next few days would be critical.
Enter the Church Guy. The Church Guy (now CG) is apparently SD's caseworker or whatever; anyway, CG showed up at the hospital and heard SD's story of why he was there, and CG--quite rightly--said "oh HELL no; out they go, the lot of them." And so there they were: Tim, Squeaky, Betty, and two cats, out on the streets two weeks before Thanksgiving.
The first I heard of it was the first day of my vacation, when Tim called. "Um, G?" he asked. "Could me and Betty maybe crash at your place for a day or two?" He told me the story, told me he had "suggested" that Squeaky find somebody else to stay with among HER friends (oh, wait, that's right--she didn't really HAVE any, but fortunately someone she knew from the old days was willing to let her crash there anyway) and emphasized that it was only for a couple of days, that they were working on several other options. That was at about 8 PM, and they said they were "on their way".
They arrived at 4 AM, after several stops and missed buses and pauses at bars and et cetera; they told me the full story, which lasted pretty well til sunrise. Throughout the story, and in fact through the next two days, every conversation was interrupted with the BEEP of either Tim's or Betty's phones, with text messages from Squeaky. She was DETERMINED to get back into their good graces, which--from what I was hearing--was totally NOT going to happen.
Anyway, they stayed three nights, at the end of which it was determined that they REALLY needed to get Betty out of my apartment before her entire head exploded--Betty is HIGHLY allergic to cats!--and so they actually left. They've since been staying here and there, and apparently Squeaky has some roommate situation developing, and though Tim is adamant that he and Squeaky are broken up, apparently they're going to be staying in the same place--all three of them, plus the cats (the cats had been living with SD, and getting fed by CG when he wasn't around--Tim was more worried about the cats than Squeaky, really, and I can't blame him) and Tim may have a job in the works, at last.
Mostly I'm just happy he and Squeaky broke up; I'm pretty sure it's for keeps, too. I have heard Tim at various points in most of his breakups, and I can pretty much tell when he means it and when he doesn't; then, too, Betty is a helpful reinforcement in several ways. One, she loathes Squeaky; two, Tim has had a crush on Betty for quite a while, though it's not reciprocated; three, Betty is pretty much an exemplar of all the qualities which Tim admires and which are completely lacking in Squeaky: Betty is down-to-earth, has street-smarts, is self-sufficent (well, when she has a job!), has a life outside her relationship...I would say "isn't annoying" but...well, Betty is kinda loud and brash, but in a fun way, and she has enough other good qualities that it can be forgiven. And she's smart, too. She actually READS--in fact, she left here with a couple of my books, and when I talked to Tim a couple of days ago I heard her in the background saying "Tell her I need more books!" It's been so long since I've had people around me who READ...like, at least ten years, maybe more. I don't think Tim and Betty will end up together, but it wouldn't be a bad match, if they did.
Really, I'm just glad they're figuring this out on their own, for the most part. Tim, when they were here, made some remarks about how much I've done already, and how he doesn't feel comfortable asking me for any more, in the face of all that; not that I mind helping him, but I'm impressed that he seems to want to handle it without asking me for help. That--like dumping the Squeakster--is a step in the right direction.
I didn't mention the BIG FREAKING DEVELOPMENT:
Tim and Squeaky are mostly-broken-up and (shocker) once again mostly-homeless. AND: Betty (Tim's friend who used to be a bartender at his favorite bar til she got fired several months ago) is apparently travelling with them.
The order of events, as I understand it, went something like this:
Tim and Squeaky had been living with Squeaky's dad for the past year. Squeaky's dad (hereafter abbreviated to SD) has his own issues; he's apparently schizophrenic, along with a bunch of other diagnoses, and so he lives in an apartment subsidized by some church group with which he's affiliated.
Meanwhile, Betty had been staying with her boyfriend, but they got into a huge fight and she left, and SD told Tim and Squeaky "sure, why not, what's another one?" So Betty was staying with Tim and Squeaky.
One night, after some trivial slight, Squeaky just basically flipped the fuck out. (I have this on the authority of both Tim, whose version of the story would be open to doubt, and Betty, who would have no reason to varnish the truth.) She started screaming at Tim "I'm gonna fucking kill you!" and pounced on him, scratching and clawing and strangling and just generally losing her mind. Betty, at the time, was sitting in the living room watching TV with SD, and SD said "What's she doing to him NOW???" (Both Tim and Betty claim that Squeaky's attacked Tim before. I don't entirely doubt it...in fact, I don't doubt it at all.) Betty ran in and pulled Squeaky off Tim, and the screaming and yelling and the rest continued.
Meanwhile, SD had had enough. Now, normally, when people have Had Enough, they yell and make ultimatums and so on. Not SD. SD, when he's Had Enough, checks himself into the hospital for a break. And that's what he did in this case--he left, and went to the hospital, and checked himself in as a psych patient.
Betty and Tim managed to calm Squeaky down, and Tim was of course properly pissed--as who wouldn't be...Anyway, Tim told Squeaky that he was pretty sure that they were all in serious trouble, now that SD had gone to the hospital, and that the next few days would be critical.
Enter the Church Guy. The Church Guy (now CG) is apparently SD's caseworker or whatever; anyway, CG showed up at the hospital and heard SD's story of why he was there, and CG--quite rightly--said "oh HELL no; out they go, the lot of them." And so there they were: Tim, Squeaky, Betty, and two cats, out on the streets two weeks before Thanksgiving.
The first I heard of it was the first day of my vacation, when Tim called. "Um, G?" he asked. "Could me and Betty maybe crash at your place for a day or two?" He told me the story, told me he had "suggested" that Squeaky find somebody else to stay with among HER friends (oh, wait, that's right--she didn't really HAVE any, but fortunately someone she knew from the old days was willing to let her crash there anyway) and emphasized that it was only for a couple of days, that they were working on several other options. That was at about 8 PM, and they said they were "on their way".
They arrived at 4 AM, after several stops and missed buses and pauses at bars and et cetera; they told me the full story, which lasted pretty well til sunrise. Throughout the story, and in fact through the next two days, every conversation was interrupted with the BEEP of either Tim's or Betty's phones, with text messages from Squeaky. She was DETERMINED to get back into their good graces, which--from what I was hearing--was totally NOT going to happen.
Anyway, they stayed three nights, at the end of which it was determined that they REALLY needed to get Betty out of my apartment before her entire head exploded--Betty is HIGHLY allergic to cats!--and so they actually left. They've since been staying here and there, and apparently Squeaky has some roommate situation developing, and though Tim is adamant that he and Squeaky are broken up, apparently they're going to be staying in the same place--all three of them, plus the cats (the cats had been living with SD, and getting fed by CG when he wasn't around--Tim was more worried about the cats than Squeaky, really, and I can't blame him) and Tim may have a job in the works, at last.
Mostly I'm just happy he and Squeaky broke up; I'm pretty sure it's for keeps, too. I have heard Tim at various points in most of his breakups, and I can pretty much tell when he means it and when he doesn't; then, too, Betty is a helpful reinforcement in several ways. One, she loathes Squeaky; two, Tim has had a crush on Betty for quite a while, though it's not reciprocated; three, Betty is pretty much an exemplar of all the qualities which Tim admires and which are completely lacking in Squeaky: Betty is down-to-earth, has street-smarts, is self-sufficent (well, when she has a job!), has a life outside her relationship...I would say "isn't annoying" but...well, Betty is kinda loud and brash, but in a fun way, and she has enough other good qualities that it can be forgiven. And she's smart, too. She actually READS--in fact, she left here with a couple of my books, and when I talked to Tim a couple of days ago I heard her in the background saying "Tell her I need more books!" It's been so long since I've had people around me who READ...like, at least ten years, maybe more. I don't think Tim and Betty will end up together, but it wouldn't be a bad match, if they did.
Really, I'm just glad they're figuring this out on their own, for the most part. Tim, when they were here, made some remarks about how much I've done already, and how he doesn't feel comfortable asking me for any more, in the face of all that; not that I mind helping him, but I'm impressed that he seems to want to handle it without asking me for help. That--like dumping the Squeakster--is a step in the right direction.
Sunday, August 17, 2008
"Oy," Also "Vey".
2 PM, voice mail left on my cell phone:
"Hey, G, it's me. Listen, call me when you get this message because I've been having a REALLY BAD past couple of days and I know it's not your problem but I really need somebody to speak to."
4 PM, same:
"G..." (to someone in background: "Shut the fuck up,") "Hey, G, call me as soon as you get this message, okay?"
Now, Tim knows what my cell-phone situation is, so it was my measured opinion that if it was REALLY important, he would call the HOUSE phone. But the second message, with its background argument, made me curious enough to call him.
He answered on the fourth ring: "G--hey. Listen, I'm on my way up there," he told me, "because I can't be around this crazy motherfucker ANY MORE." And then there ensued about fifteen minutes of that I'm-talking-to-the-person-on-the-phone-but-really-I'm-talking-to-the-person-in-the-room-with-me-who-is-the-real-target-of-what-I'm-saying kind of thing. In fact--once the practical outcome of the conversation had been achieved--I just took my ear away from the phone. He wasn't telling me anything I didn't know already (Squeaky's dad is a semi-crazy, extremely-lazy, parasitical welfare-cheat) and frankly, I wasn't that interested. As I said, the main outcome had been arrived at; Tim's on his way over and will most likely be spending a couple of days--at least--on my floor.
This is going to be interesting.
Curiously, I'm not complaining. I'm learning things about myself, these past few months, and one of the things I've learned is: the neat and quiet life isn't all it's cracked up to be. I need a little messiness, a little (okay, a LOT) of stuff going on; not so much cleaning up after everyone around me, but at least having all their stuff play out in my vicinity. Otherwise I get lonely and bored and BORED and depressed, and grossly uncreative. (Speaking of which--I'm taking my REAL computer in this week, and once it's fixed I'm going to scan in a crapload of my artwork. I've been doing a lot of work in colored pencils, pastels, and conte crayons; I wouldn't call it groundbreaking, by any stretch, but it's surely fun, and some of it is quite pretty. In fact, my next step is to buy some mat-board and start decorating.)
I don't necessarily like this new development--and the minute Tim starts with "Squeaky has no place to stay," my attitude will change 180 degrees, to "And Out You Go Too!!"--but for the moment, hey, what the hell--I'll take care of the world for a while longer.
I mean, SOMEBODY's got to, right?
"Hey, G, it's me. Listen, call me when you get this message because I've been having a REALLY BAD past couple of days and I know it's not your problem but I really need somebody to speak to."
4 PM, same:
"G..." (to someone in background: "Shut the fuck up,") "Hey, G, call me as soon as you get this message, okay?"
Now, Tim knows what my cell-phone situation is, so it was my measured opinion that if it was REALLY important, he would call the HOUSE phone. But the second message, with its background argument, made me curious enough to call him.
He answered on the fourth ring: "G--hey. Listen, I'm on my way up there," he told me, "because I can't be around this crazy motherfucker ANY MORE." And then there ensued about fifteen minutes of that I'm-talking-to-the-person-on-the-phone-but-really-I'm-talking-to-the-person-in-the-room-with-me-who-is-the-real-target-of-what-I'm-saying kind of thing. In fact--once the practical outcome of the conversation had been achieved--I just took my ear away from the phone. He wasn't telling me anything I didn't know already (Squeaky's dad is a semi-crazy, extremely-lazy, parasitical welfare-cheat) and frankly, I wasn't that interested. As I said, the main outcome had been arrived at; Tim's on his way over and will most likely be spending a couple of days--at least--on my floor.
This is going to be interesting.
Curiously, I'm not complaining. I'm learning things about myself, these past few months, and one of the things I've learned is: the neat and quiet life isn't all it's cracked up to be. I need a little messiness, a little (okay, a LOT) of stuff going on; not so much cleaning up after everyone around me, but at least having all their stuff play out in my vicinity. Otherwise I get lonely and bored and BORED and depressed, and grossly uncreative. (Speaking of which--I'm taking my REAL computer in this week, and once it's fixed I'm going to scan in a crapload of my artwork. I've been doing a lot of work in colored pencils, pastels, and conte crayons; I wouldn't call it groundbreaking, by any stretch, but it's surely fun, and some of it is quite pretty. In fact, my next step is to buy some mat-board and start decorating.)
I don't necessarily like this new development--and the minute Tim starts with "Squeaky has no place to stay," my attitude will change 180 degrees, to "And Out You Go Too!!"--but for the moment, hey, what the hell--I'll take care of the world for a while longer.
I mean, SOMEBODY's got to, right?
Saturday, February 23, 2008
Huh,
Of all the things that I wouldn't have thought would help my state of mind nearly as much as it did: Tim called tonight. Didn't want anything, really; just to say hi, to keep in touch, to chat. He and Squeaky are still together, still living with her dad; they actually seem to be really good for each other. I told him how surprised I was; how in the beginning I thought one or both of them was completely insane to be together; and how honestly glad I am to have been wrong about that.
I knew my opinion of them would improve once I was living on my own; now that we're not piled on top of each other like overgrown puppies in a too-small basket, we can get along and not constantly be snapping at each other. It's nice to be in a situation where we can be friends again. I hate to admit it, but I kinda missed Tim. (Squeaky, not so much, but I still consider her a friend; not necessarily a friend I'd like to spend a lot of time with, but someone who, if she was in trouble, I'd be glad to help....as long as it didn't involve, you know, actually LIVING with her for any length of time.)
Tim said he might stop by on Monday, which is fine with me; fine if he does, fine if he doesn't. But hearing from him, talking to him for an hour about nothing of great consequence...it felt good.
In other news, my oldest friend Debbi (of Debbi and Cowgirl fame, of Girls' Nights Out (now sadly abandoned, for lack of transportation and horribly conflicting job schedules), bought a house. Today was her moving-in day, and THIS is when not having a vehicle becomes a real annoyance; I would have GLADLY helped her pack and move and all the rest, but the whole transportation issue (she's moving from one completely-inaccessible area of a highly-underserved-by-public-transit south suburb, to a nearly-as-bad-but-there's-at-least-a-Metra-station-down-the-street area of another underserved south suburb) makes the whole plan fraught with difficulty. I wanted to go out there last Sunday to help her pack, but neither the necessary buses nor the required trains--the only way to get from here to there--run on Sundays. At least where she's moving TO, everything runs on Sundays--albeit on a monstrous, every-two-hours schedule. I could reserve an iGo car, but that's a little bit of a strain on the already-strained budget this month. It really sucks not to be able to see your friends because of transportation. The plus to all this, though, is that by the time I get a chance to see her and her new place, I'll have had the chance to finish her housewarming gift; I'm going to quilt her a set of placemats, and also have some drawings framed. (To explain the drawings would require an entire blog post all its own, but I will attempt to summarize: About twelve years ago, during the winter after JP's death, when Debbi and Cowgirl pretty much kept my spirits up as much as possible, Debbi got tonsillitis. There was a brief period when the doctors were talking about having them removed, and during this time, the three of us created a whole storyline about Debbi's tonsils and what they would do once they were "out". This culminated in a series of three cartoons, which could have been a much longer series, in which the tonsils packed their bags, left a note, and escaped through Debbi's mouth while she slept. Somewhere in the series, they were also chased behind the refrigerator by a gerbil, which...okay, look. Haven't I TOLD you people I have a strange, vivid, and intensely bizarre imagination? I think I've mentioned it. Anyway, The Adventures of Debbi's Tonsils turned up in a box of memorabilia which I was sorting through a week or so ago, and when I mentioned it to Debbi on the phone, her reaction was such that I knew I was going to need to get them framed and give them to her as a housewarming present.)
I'm a little jealous, I'll admit. But only a tiny, tiny bit; mostly, I'm just really happy for Debbi. She deserves a cute little place of her own; she's spent the last ten years in a third-floor walkup apartment in a building full of noisy families and neglectful landlords, and from what she says, the house is adorable. I can't wait to see it.
All this stuff, and my reactions to it, make me think I know what's happening, or at least SOME of what's happening, to make me so depressed; plain and simply, I'm lonely. That's hard for me to admit; I'm a fan of solitude, and usually very good at being my own company, but I think I've pushed it a little too far this time. Part of it is that I have a very hard time making friends--bluntly, I don't have the slightest idea how to do it--and part of it is that I am carrying so much guilt about friendships from the past. I think of all the people who I've lost touch with, and it really brings me down. Walking to work today, I told myself: I've got to let go of some of that guilt. Yes, I made mistakes; there were people I should have called or written to; people to whom I should have been a better friend. There are people who I lost because I was a drug addict; and people I lost because I was depressed and self-absorbed; and people I lost because I was with one man or another, to the exclusion of all else. There are some people I've lost and I don't even know why. All that is very hard to live with, especially for someone who can't seem to forgive her own mistakes; to think that I'm alone largely because of the many things I've done wrong...well, that's a heavy weight to carry. But it's true; in many of the friendships I've lost, I've been the responsible party. And now I seem to have lost the ability to make friends, to let anybody get close enough to decide whether or not they like me. I keep people at arm's length, because I assume nobody would want to be any closer than arms-length to me to begin with. I'm sure it comes off all wrong, but I'm not sure how to be any different; not completely sure I want to be different, really. It's a hell of a quandary.
So the only thing I'm sure I can do is try to keep the friends I have, try not to piss off anyone else who cares enough to still be around, and hope that maybe I'll figure all this stuff out, sooner instead of later....and try not to miss the people who I drove away. That, more than anything, is the part that sucks.
I knew my opinion of them would improve once I was living on my own; now that we're not piled on top of each other like overgrown puppies in a too-small basket, we can get along and not constantly be snapping at each other. It's nice to be in a situation where we can be friends again. I hate to admit it, but I kinda missed Tim. (Squeaky, not so much, but I still consider her a friend; not necessarily a friend I'd like to spend a lot of time with, but someone who, if she was in trouble, I'd be glad to help....as long as it didn't involve, you know, actually LIVING with her for any length of time.)
Tim said he might stop by on Monday, which is fine with me; fine if he does, fine if he doesn't. But hearing from him, talking to him for an hour about nothing of great consequence...it felt good.
In other news, my oldest friend Debbi (of Debbi and Cowgirl fame, of Girls' Nights Out (now sadly abandoned, for lack of transportation and horribly conflicting job schedules), bought a house. Today was her moving-in day, and THIS is when not having a vehicle becomes a real annoyance; I would have GLADLY helped her pack and move and all the rest, but the whole transportation issue (she's moving from one completely-inaccessible area of a highly-underserved-by-public-transit south suburb, to a nearly-as-bad-but-there's-at-least-a-Metra-station-down-the-street area of another underserved south suburb) makes the whole plan fraught with difficulty. I wanted to go out there last Sunday to help her pack, but neither the necessary buses nor the required trains--the only way to get from here to there--run on Sundays. At least where she's moving TO, everything runs on Sundays--albeit on a monstrous, every-two-hours schedule. I could reserve an iGo car, but that's a little bit of a strain on the already-strained budget this month. It really sucks not to be able to see your friends because of transportation. The plus to all this, though, is that by the time I get a chance to see her and her new place, I'll have had the chance to finish her housewarming gift; I'm going to quilt her a set of placemats, and also have some drawings framed. (To explain the drawings would require an entire blog post all its own, but I will attempt to summarize: About twelve years ago, during the winter after JP's death, when Debbi and Cowgirl pretty much kept my spirits up as much as possible, Debbi got tonsillitis. There was a brief period when the doctors were talking about having them removed, and during this time, the three of us created a whole storyline about Debbi's tonsils and what they would do once they were "out". This culminated in a series of three cartoons, which could have been a much longer series, in which the tonsils packed their bags, left a note, and escaped through Debbi's mouth while she slept. Somewhere in the series, they were also chased behind the refrigerator by a gerbil, which...okay, look. Haven't I TOLD you people I have a strange, vivid, and intensely bizarre imagination? I think I've mentioned it. Anyway, The Adventures of Debbi's Tonsils turned up in a box of memorabilia which I was sorting through a week or so ago, and when I mentioned it to Debbi on the phone, her reaction was such that I knew I was going to need to get them framed and give them to her as a housewarming present.)
I'm a little jealous, I'll admit. But only a tiny, tiny bit; mostly, I'm just really happy for Debbi. She deserves a cute little place of her own; she's spent the last ten years in a third-floor walkup apartment in a building full of noisy families and neglectful landlords, and from what she says, the house is adorable. I can't wait to see it.
All this stuff, and my reactions to it, make me think I know what's happening, or at least SOME of what's happening, to make me so depressed; plain and simply, I'm lonely. That's hard for me to admit; I'm a fan of solitude, and usually very good at being my own company, but I think I've pushed it a little too far this time. Part of it is that I have a very hard time making friends--bluntly, I don't have the slightest idea how to do it--and part of it is that I am carrying so much guilt about friendships from the past. I think of all the people who I've lost touch with, and it really brings me down. Walking to work today, I told myself: I've got to let go of some of that guilt. Yes, I made mistakes; there were people I should have called or written to; people to whom I should have been a better friend. There are people who I lost because I was a drug addict; and people I lost because I was depressed and self-absorbed; and people I lost because I was with one man or another, to the exclusion of all else. There are some people I've lost and I don't even know why. All that is very hard to live with, especially for someone who can't seem to forgive her own mistakes; to think that I'm alone largely because of the many things I've done wrong...well, that's a heavy weight to carry. But it's true; in many of the friendships I've lost, I've been the responsible party. And now I seem to have lost the ability to make friends, to let anybody get close enough to decide whether or not they like me. I keep people at arm's length, because I assume nobody would want to be any closer than arms-length to me to begin with. I'm sure it comes off all wrong, but I'm not sure how to be any different; not completely sure I want to be different, really. It's a hell of a quandary.
So the only thing I'm sure I can do is try to keep the friends I have, try not to piss off anyone else who cares enough to still be around, and hope that maybe I'll figure all this stuff out, sooner instead of later....and try not to miss the people who I drove away. That, more than anything, is the part that sucks.
Saturday, September 15, 2007
"Weird" Is Not Even the Word
Aaaaaaand it gets weirder.
I'm having a difficult time wrapping my brain around this situation, so I'm going to relate the facts as I understand them.
At 6 this morning, I awoke to a tap on the leg from Tim. We'd both stayed up late last night, drinking beer and just generally relaxing; I'd finally fallen asleep around 4, so I was apparently pretty difficult to wake.
"Um, can you give me a ride? Squeaky's in the hospital again," he said.
We drove to the hospital--not the same one we'd taken her to the other night, but one a fair bit closer to home--and I dropped him off. We were both assuming it was Squeaky's stomach again.
I stopped at McDonalds and picked up some breakfast and came home. There were a couple of messages from Squeaky's dad, asking if she was here; just as I finished eating, he called again, and I told him what I knew--that she was in the E.R, probably with her stomach complaint again. He said she'd gone out last night with his upstairs neighbor--a woman he's apparently known for about a year--and that she hadn't come back. I assured him that I knew where she was, and that she'd probably call him soon. I sent a text message to Tim for him to call Squeaky's dad, and then about 8 AM, I went to bed. I set my alarm for 10:40, since I had a noon appointment with Dr. J on the north side of the city.
At a couple minutes after 9, the phone rang. "Hey, um..." said Tim. "Listen, I don't have my bus card, and anyway they wouldn't let Squeaky on the bus because she doesn't have any shoes, and they're gonna discharge her in a few minutes....she's really fucked up..."
"What, did they give her pain meds or something?"
"Nah," he said. "She got raped by them Kings over in Humboldt Park. They drugged her up, too. Drugged her up and raped her."
"Holy shit," I said. "Damn. Yeah, I'll be there in a little bit."
I pulled up to the hospital and Tim and Squeaky walked out. Or rather, Tim walked; Squeaky leaned on him. She was moving very slowly, obviously in pain. While we drove home, she made a couple of phone calls; from what I overheard, I gathered a little of what had happened. She told someone "Yeah, I relapsed last night," and made arrangements for her dad to pick up some of her belongings from a friend's house, which Tim was supposedly going to get later. I dropped them off--Squeaky needed substantial help from Tim to get out of the car and up the steps--and went to my appointment.
I came home, fixed a sandwich, and went straight to bed. I slept like a stone for quite a while, and came downstairs around 8 PM. Around 9, as I heated up some leftovers, Squeaky emerged from Tim's room, on her way to the bathroom.
"How you doin', lady?" I asked.
Her voice was hoarse. "I have bruises all over my body and I feel like shit," she said. She showed me her arms; they were covered with bruises, like big finger-marks, all the way from the upper arm to her hands. "And I can't use this hand because it hurts so much. Do you have some ice I could use?"
I fixed her an icepack, and she went back into Tim's room for a while. When she came out, she started telling me what had happened.
The story she told was so crazy-sounding, so fantastical, that she said she knew nobody would believe her. It started out normally enough--she had left her dad's place with his upstairs neighbor. "My dad trusted her, so I figured I could trust her too, right? He was okay for me to go out with her..."
At one point last night, around 10 or 11 PM, Squeaky had called and said she was on her way over--that this woman was going to give her a ride over here. Then that plan changed, and Tim said she wasn't coming after all because "the girl who's driving wants to go see her baby-daddy," Tim said.
What neither Tim nor Squeaky knew was that the baby-daddy in question lived in Humboldt Park. *note below When they arrived, Squeaky protested, repeating that she really, really wanted to come over here and see Tim instead. "No, no," the girl apparently told her. "These guys are cool."
This is the last point at which the story makes perfect sense. From here, it gets dodgy. Not that I disbelieve her--I want to make that clear. I don't doubt that she THINKS some of these things happened, but...
I'm ahead of myself.
There were apparently several people in this place the neighbor took her, and at one point one (possibly more) of the guys wanted Squeaky to come for a ride with him. She didn't want to go but the neighbor said he was okay, that she should go with him and just relax, and that nothing would happen because if anything happened, Squeaky's dad was going to blame HER (the neighbor). Squeaky resisted, saying she still would rather go to see Tim, but the neighbor was adamant and said that if she didn't go, it would mess up her (the neighbor's) relationship with the baby-daddy, and blah blah blah. So against her better judgement, Squeaky went with the guy.
ALSO against her better judgement (she claims), she was persuaded to have a couple of drinks. She says she really, really didn't want to drink--she's been sober for a couple of months now--but that the guy pressured her. She said that after the drinks, she started feeling really strange--like her limbs were going numb, and her brain was fogged, and all sorts of other uncomfortable sensations. (I'm thinking the guy slipped her something in her drink.)
THEN, she says, he started trying to make a move on her, and she told him not to touch her--that if her "man"--meaning Tim--found out that he'd done anything to her, Tim would kill him. She fought him off, she said. Later, she says, he stopped to get some weed, and she took two hits.
This was where things got really, REALLY weird.
She claims she jumped out of the car at a stop sign, because she had called the neighbor to tell her to come rescue her, and when she asked the guy where they were, his answer didn't match the street signs she could see, so she got out of the car to check for herself. She claims she passed a cop car, but when she told them she was in trouble they said "I don't give a shit" and "Don't make me shoot you" and such; that they were in marked police cars but wouldn't show her a badge and wouldn't help her....
The story went on like this for a long time. At one point she was in a church that wasn't a church, because there was one white person speaking English and a lot of black people speaking in tongues, and they tied her down and put some sort of liquid on her which made her skin numb, and some guy made her repeat something after him...and there was an ambulance, except the people driving it weren't paramedics, and she said they were going to set it on fire...and on and on.
My suspicion here is that either her drink, or the weed, or both, contained some sort of hallucinogens--PCP, maybe, is Tim's guess. I'm pretty sure that all sorts of seriously-disturbing things happened to her, but that the cult/church and the fake cops and fake paramedics and being chained to the rails inside the ambulance...that all of that was the result of her seriously-altered perceptions. (Even when she was staying here before, I'd commented to Tim on her seeming inability to tell fact from fiction and reality from unreality; I'm sure THAT little quirk of personality is involved here as well.) She swears up and down that all of these things happened, and I'm sure, in her mind, that they did.
What is NOT called into dispute, though: the girl is COVERED in bruises. She was clearly hurt, and she clearly gave a good fight. She said she was combative in the hospital when she finally woke up, even to the point of yelling at Tim, when he arrived, that HE was part of this big conspiracy too. (She had convinced herself, at some point, that there was a small group of people who were in on this plan to hurt her; she says that the people she saw at the house when she arrived were the same people who were supposedly paramedics and police; that this same group was in the "church" and on the streets in the area. I don't know WHAT to make of that.) I'm sure some of the bruises were from the medical personnel trying to keep her from hurting herself or anyone else. She also says it took them a couple of hours to get her name and contact info out of her, because she was convinced that the people in the hospital were part of the plot as well. She says she thought they were going to kill her, and that she also thought they were going kill Tim, and she begged them not to kill Tim, to kill her instead.
She's absolutely devastated, to say the least. She's scared to be alone, and claims she's never going anywhere alone again, ever. She's very obviously been traumatized--there's not the slightest sense that she's faking. I don't know how much of what she says is true; the bulk of the story, as far as I can see, is the result of horribly-distorted perceptions caused by whatever these assholes spiked her drink or her weed with. She swears they're not--she is absolutely SURE that everything happened exactly as she remembers--which, to me, would be enough reason to be traumatized all on its own! But it's very obvious that she was victimized in some manner. I didn't press for info about the rape--whether the hospital had done a rape kit or anything--but I did ask if the police were called, and she said no. She has no recollection of how she even got to the hospital; my guess is that the "fake" ambulance, supposedly part of the plot, was actually real.
The hell of this? According to Squeaky, her father is still defending the upstairs neighbor--the one who brought her into this situation. Tim, of course, is livid. I'm hoping HE doesn't do something stupid as "revenge".
I told her I'd give her a ride up to her dad's tomorrow, so she can collect her stuff; before this happened, Tim had approached me with a request: that Squeaky be allowed to stay here til we move, to make it easier for her to get to the job that's waiting for her (downtown) and so that she can give a Chicago address to the social-services agencies; apparently some programs are only available to city residents, and her dad's address is in the suburbs. I told him yes, but SOLELY ON THE CONDITION THAT her residency with us ends the moment we move, and that any attempt to extend it beyond that point will be considered a dealbreaker as regards the continuation of our roommate-ship. He agreed to that condition--and several others, such as "she has to bring her own toiletries, because I'm tired of her using all my shampoo".
This new development, as I told Dr. J today, will not shake my resolve. (I was proceeding on very sketchy reports of what had happened, but I'd seen enough to know, even before I got the story, that something bad had clearly taken place.) She can stay til we move--which will be happening by the end of October at the VERY latest--but once we move, if Tim wants to live with her he'll have to get them an apartment together, because I'm not going down that road. That's what I told him in the first place, and that doesn't change because of what happened to her.
But oh, my god, do I feel bad for that poor girl. All my animosity towards her has gone; I just feel really, really bad for her. Nobody should have to live the life she's had; no matter what percentage of the bad decisions have been hers, that doesn't excuse the bastards who have taken advantage of her. Like everyone else, when she said "No" that should have been respected; like everyone else, no matter if she'd made a bad decision, she's still a human being and should have been treated as such. I can't begin to describe how sad her story makes me, or how angry--or how lucky I feel, to have had the life I've had, because no matter what has happened in my life, it's mostly stuff I've brought on myself--not stuff that other people have inflicted on me.
And again: she's only nineteen years old. I know some EIGHTY-year-olds, and not ONE of them has had HALF the bad things happen to them that have happened to Squeaky in those nineteen years. No matter what part she's played by making bad decisions--nobody, NOBODY, deserves the things that have happened to her.
*Non-Chicagoans--Humboldt Park is a neighborhood in Chicago, about a mile to three miles north and two to four miles east of where we live. It's predominantly Hispanic; though it's been in the process of gentrifying for about fifteen years now, there are still very rough patches here and there. JP lived in Humboldt Park when he and I first started seeing each other, back in 1994, and when my ex found out where I'd been going every night, he referred to it as "a demilitarized zone". Tim has an instinctive fear of H.P., because it's predominantly Latin Kings territory and Tim affiliates himself with a rival organization.
I'm having a difficult time wrapping my brain around this situation, so I'm going to relate the facts as I understand them.
At 6 this morning, I awoke to a tap on the leg from Tim. We'd both stayed up late last night, drinking beer and just generally relaxing; I'd finally fallen asleep around 4, so I was apparently pretty difficult to wake.
"Um, can you give me a ride? Squeaky's in the hospital again," he said.
We drove to the hospital--not the same one we'd taken her to the other night, but one a fair bit closer to home--and I dropped him off. We were both assuming it was Squeaky's stomach again.
I stopped at McDonalds and picked up some breakfast and came home. There were a couple of messages from Squeaky's dad, asking if she was here; just as I finished eating, he called again, and I told him what I knew--that she was in the E.R, probably with her stomach complaint again. He said she'd gone out last night with his upstairs neighbor--a woman he's apparently known for about a year--and that she hadn't come back. I assured him that I knew where she was, and that she'd probably call him soon. I sent a text message to Tim for him to call Squeaky's dad, and then about 8 AM, I went to bed. I set my alarm for 10:40, since I had a noon appointment with Dr. J on the north side of the city.
At a couple minutes after 9, the phone rang. "Hey, um..." said Tim. "Listen, I don't have my bus card, and anyway they wouldn't let Squeaky on the bus because she doesn't have any shoes, and they're gonna discharge her in a few minutes....she's really fucked up..."
"What, did they give her pain meds or something?"
"Nah," he said. "She got raped by them Kings over in Humboldt Park. They drugged her up, too. Drugged her up and raped her."
"Holy shit," I said. "Damn. Yeah, I'll be there in a little bit."
I pulled up to the hospital and Tim and Squeaky walked out. Or rather, Tim walked; Squeaky leaned on him. She was moving very slowly, obviously in pain. While we drove home, she made a couple of phone calls; from what I overheard, I gathered a little of what had happened. She told someone "Yeah, I relapsed last night," and made arrangements for her dad to pick up some of her belongings from a friend's house, which Tim was supposedly going to get later. I dropped them off--Squeaky needed substantial help from Tim to get out of the car and up the steps--and went to my appointment.
I came home, fixed a sandwich, and went straight to bed. I slept like a stone for quite a while, and came downstairs around 8 PM. Around 9, as I heated up some leftovers, Squeaky emerged from Tim's room, on her way to the bathroom.
"How you doin', lady?" I asked.
Her voice was hoarse. "I have bruises all over my body and I feel like shit," she said. She showed me her arms; they were covered with bruises, like big finger-marks, all the way from the upper arm to her hands. "And I can't use this hand because it hurts so much. Do you have some ice I could use?"
I fixed her an icepack, and she went back into Tim's room for a while. When she came out, she started telling me what had happened.
The story she told was so crazy-sounding, so fantastical, that she said she knew nobody would believe her. It started out normally enough--she had left her dad's place with his upstairs neighbor. "My dad trusted her, so I figured I could trust her too, right? He was okay for me to go out with her..."
At one point last night, around 10 or 11 PM, Squeaky had called and said she was on her way over--that this woman was going to give her a ride over here. Then that plan changed, and Tim said she wasn't coming after all because "the girl who's driving wants to go see her baby-daddy," Tim said.
What neither Tim nor Squeaky knew was that the baby-daddy in question lived in Humboldt Park. *note below When they arrived, Squeaky protested, repeating that she really, really wanted to come over here and see Tim instead. "No, no," the girl apparently told her. "These guys are cool."
This is the last point at which the story makes perfect sense. From here, it gets dodgy. Not that I disbelieve her--I want to make that clear. I don't doubt that she THINKS some of these things happened, but...
I'm ahead of myself.
There were apparently several people in this place the neighbor took her, and at one point one (possibly more) of the guys wanted Squeaky to come for a ride with him. She didn't want to go but the neighbor said he was okay, that she should go with him and just relax, and that nothing would happen because if anything happened, Squeaky's dad was going to blame HER (the neighbor). Squeaky resisted, saying she still would rather go to see Tim, but the neighbor was adamant and said that if she didn't go, it would mess up her (the neighbor's) relationship with the baby-daddy, and blah blah blah. So against her better judgement, Squeaky went with the guy.
ALSO against her better judgement (she claims), she was persuaded to have a couple of drinks. She says she really, really didn't want to drink--she's been sober for a couple of months now--but that the guy pressured her. She said that after the drinks, she started feeling really strange--like her limbs were going numb, and her brain was fogged, and all sorts of other uncomfortable sensations. (I'm thinking the guy slipped her something in her drink.)
THEN, she says, he started trying to make a move on her, and she told him not to touch her--that if her "man"--meaning Tim--found out that he'd done anything to her, Tim would kill him. She fought him off, she said. Later, she says, he stopped to get some weed, and she took two hits.
This was where things got really, REALLY weird.
She claims she jumped out of the car at a stop sign, because she had called the neighbor to tell her to come rescue her, and when she asked the guy where they were, his answer didn't match the street signs she could see, so she got out of the car to check for herself. She claims she passed a cop car, but when she told them she was in trouble they said "I don't give a shit" and "Don't make me shoot you" and such; that they were in marked police cars but wouldn't show her a badge and wouldn't help her....
The story went on like this for a long time. At one point she was in a church that wasn't a church, because there was one white person speaking English and a lot of black people speaking in tongues, and they tied her down and put some sort of liquid on her which made her skin numb, and some guy made her repeat something after him...and there was an ambulance, except the people driving it weren't paramedics, and she said they were going to set it on fire...and on and on.
My suspicion here is that either her drink, or the weed, or both, contained some sort of hallucinogens--PCP, maybe, is Tim's guess. I'm pretty sure that all sorts of seriously-disturbing things happened to her, but that the cult/church and the fake cops and fake paramedics and being chained to the rails inside the ambulance...that all of that was the result of her seriously-altered perceptions. (Even when she was staying here before, I'd commented to Tim on her seeming inability to tell fact from fiction and reality from unreality; I'm sure THAT little quirk of personality is involved here as well.) She swears up and down that all of these things happened, and I'm sure, in her mind, that they did.
What is NOT called into dispute, though: the girl is COVERED in bruises. She was clearly hurt, and she clearly gave a good fight. She said she was combative in the hospital when she finally woke up, even to the point of yelling at Tim, when he arrived, that HE was part of this big conspiracy too. (She had convinced herself, at some point, that there was a small group of people who were in on this plan to hurt her; she says that the people she saw at the house when she arrived were the same people who were supposedly paramedics and police; that this same group was in the "church" and on the streets in the area. I don't know WHAT to make of that.) I'm sure some of the bruises were from the medical personnel trying to keep her from hurting herself or anyone else. She also says it took them a couple of hours to get her name and contact info out of her, because she was convinced that the people in the hospital were part of the plot as well. She says she thought they were going to kill her, and that she also thought they were going kill Tim, and she begged them not to kill Tim, to kill her instead.
She's absolutely devastated, to say the least. She's scared to be alone, and claims she's never going anywhere alone again, ever. She's very obviously been traumatized--there's not the slightest sense that she's faking. I don't know how much of what she says is true; the bulk of the story, as far as I can see, is the result of horribly-distorted perceptions caused by whatever these assholes spiked her drink or her weed with. She swears they're not--she is absolutely SURE that everything happened exactly as she remembers--which, to me, would be enough reason to be traumatized all on its own! But it's very obvious that she was victimized in some manner. I didn't press for info about the rape--whether the hospital had done a rape kit or anything--but I did ask if the police were called, and she said no. She has no recollection of how she even got to the hospital; my guess is that the "fake" ambulance, supposedly part of the plot, was actually real.
The hell of this? According to Squeaky, her father is still defending the upstairs neighbor--the one who brought her into this situation. Tim, of course, is livid. I'm hoping HE doesn't do something stupid as "revenge".
I told her I'd give her a ride up to her dad's tomorrow, so she can collect her stuff; before this happened, Tim had approached me with a request: that Squeaky be allowed to stay here til we move, to make it easier for her to get to the job that's waiting for her (downtown) and so that she can give a Chicago address to the social-services agencies; apparently some programs are only available to city residents, and her dad's address is in the suburbs. I told him yes, but SOLELY ON THE CONDITION THAT her residency with us ends the moment we move, and that any attempt to extend it beyond that point will be considered a dealbreaker as regards the continuation of our roommate-ship. He agreed to that condition--and several others, such as "she has to bring her own toiletries, because I'm tired of her using all my shampoo".
This new development, as I told Dr. J today, will not shake my resolve. (I was proceeding on very sketchy reports of what had happened, but I'd seen enough to know, even before I got the story, that something bad had clearly taken place.) She can stay til we move--which will be happening by the end of October at the VERY latest--but once we move, if Tim wants to live with her he'll have to get them an apartment together, because I'm not going down that road. That's what I told him in the first place, and that doesn't change because of what happened to her.
But oh, my god, do I feel bad for that poor girl. All my animosity towards her has gone; I just feel really, really bad for her. Nobody should have to live the life she's had; no matter what percentage of the bad decisions have been hers, that doesn't excuse the bastards who have taken advantage of her. Like everyone else, when she said "No" that should have been respected; like everyone else, no matter if she'd made a bad decision, she's still a human being and should have been treated as such. I can't begin to describe how sad her story makes me, or how angry--or how lucky I feel, to have had the life I've had, because no matter what has happened in my life, it's mostly stuff I've brought on myself--not stuff that other people have inflicted on me.
And again: she's only nineteen years old. I know some EIGHTY-year-olds, and not ONE of them has had HALF the bad things happen to them that have happened to Squeaky in those nineteen years. No matter what part she's played by making bad decisions--nobody, NOBODY, deserves the things that have happened to her.
*Non-Chicagoans--Humboldt Park is a neighborhood in Chicago, about a mile to three miles north and two to four miles east of where we live. It's predominantly Hispanic; though it's been in the process of gentrifying for about fifteen years now, there are still very rough patches here and there. JP lived in Humboldt Park when he and I first started seeing each other, back in 1994, and when my ex found out where I'd been going every night, he referred to it as "a demilitarized zone". Tim has an instinctive fear of H.P., because it's predominantly Latin Kings territory and Tim affiliates himself with a rival organization.
Sunday, September 9, 2007
Crossing All My Fingers
Barring an unforeseen catastrophe, Squeaky will be leaving tomorrow and will be gone for "at least two weeks". (I place that in quotes because if I have anything at all to say about it--and I should, what with it being MY FRACKING HOUSE AND EVERYTHING--that "two weeks" will stretch to approximately "the end of time".) I'm dropping her off at her dad's house, on the way to my opthalmologist appointment. And then, dilated pupils and all, I'm going to come home and fix myself a big celebratory meal, of all the things I denied myself while she was here (because I didn't feel like buying/paying for/cooking three of them. There's a steak with my name on it, somewhere.)
(Oddly enough, as I typed this: Tim came out of their room and told me that she's not feeling well; that she has a pain just below her ribs, that she felt "a pressure" and then "like something exploded". I have heard about every...single....solitary ache and pain that this child has experienced: stuffy sinuses and a head cold ($30-plus for Benadryl--the drowsy AND the non-drowsy--and Mucinex), sore foot, a boil on her butt (yeah, really)--and it's tempting not to take this seriously, but I don't want to be cruel, either, if she really IS in pain. I'm in a wait-and-see posture, at the moment. But if this child doesn't get out of my house and out of my life, post-haste, I'm going to lose what fragments of my sanity remain.)
(Oddly enough, as I typed this: Tim came out of their room and told me that she's not feeling well; that she has a pain just below her ribs, that she felt "a pressure" and then "like something exploded". I have heard about every...single....solitary ache and pain that this child has experienced: stuffy sinuses and a head cold ($30-plus for Benadryl--the drowsy AND the non-drowsy--and Mucinex), sore foot, a boil on her butt (yeah, really)--and it's tempting not to take this seriously, but I don't want to be cruel, either, if she really IS in pain. I'm in a wait-and-see posture, at the moment. But if this child doesn't get out of my house and out of my life, post-haste, I'm going to lose what fragments of my sanity remain.)
Sunday, September 2, 2007
This Has Got To End.
From a conversation that occurred at 5:00 this morning, roughly:
Tim seems to think that he is to Squeaky what I am to him: he sees himself as the person who looks out for her, the one who cares about her when nobody else does--the way I do for him.
Okay, fine. Admirable, even. If you've got something to teach her that you think will help her handle her life better, then by all means go for it, and good luck to you.
But then don't go getting blotto-drunk and traumatizing the poor kid by doing stupid shit like threatening to kill yourself and/or cutting your wrists with a steak knife.
And then don't get pissed at her for being scared and waking me up because she doesn't have any idea how to deal with it. Or defend it as an attempt to make a point. You don't make a point by cutting yourself. (unless the point is "I am absolutely batshit crazy, and also very drunk." If that was the point? You've made it admirably.) You don't make a point by scaring the hell out of someone. So don't get pissed at her for dealing with it in the only way she could...
Then ESPECIALLY don't get pissed at ME for being pissed at YOU instead of Squeaky--"she shouldn't have woke you up!" Well yeah--and she wouldn't have, if you hadn't scared her half to death (and apparently opened up some old psychic wounds, as well.)
And Squeaky? When the situation is calming down? The sarcastic remarks calculated to piss Tim off? They don't help. Really. Shutting up--THAT helps. Rule #1: Do NOT poke the crazy.
Once the merriment and festivities had died down, the following facts were explained to Tim:
1. It is my FUCKING DAY OFF. This drama was not appreciated. This drama WILL NOT RECUR. That is a declarative sentence--not a request.
2. The day we move out of this house--no matter where we move to, no matter whether we move by ourselves or whether there are other roomies involved--is the LAST day that Squeaky will be living with us. Once we're in the new place, I am not putting up with this.
3. Any attempt to ignore #2 will be considered a total dealbreaker. Regardless of our friendship, regardless of our history, if you insist on poisoning my personal space with this ridiculous situation, I will GLADLY live on my own rather than put up with this childish crap. I understand that you are trying to help, but this Sid-and-Nancy-Lite shit is not helping anyone, least of all ME.
4. Your attempts to emulate me, by helping someone obviously in need of it, are appreciated. Your methods, however, are at times misguided (and at other times, COMPLETELY FUCKING INSANE and inappropriate) and you might think about how the potential outcomes.
5. Did I mention about it being my day off? Have we not, for some time now, maintained an understanding about my personal space? Then stop setting off the drama. It's every bit as much your doing as Squeaky's--more, really, since you're the one who knows better.
I don't know how thoroughly my statements sunk in--for one thing, they were percolating through a thick layer of Miller High Life, and were probably garbled on the trip--but at least I've said my piece. If necessary, I will repeat it.
It has also become obvious that I cannot have beer (or any other alcohol) in this house. Not that it's such a great loss for me--summer's almost over anyway, and that's the only time I ever really drink--but it's become apparent to me that for Tim, beer is like rocket-fuel for his inner butthead. This is the third or fourth time I've had to involve myself in their little interpersonal crises, and each time there was alcohol involved. It's like in the I Has A Sweet Potato story: "WE JUST WON'T HAVE ANY ROOT VEGETABLES ANYMORE. THERE. ARE YOU HAPPY?" Except in this case, it's beer. (I only WISH it was root vegetables. I've never heard of anyone becoming a jerk after an overdose of yams.) Like I said--beerlessness is no great hardship for me. I just happen to enjoy a couple of Coronas after a hard day's work; I'll just have to find something else to enjoy after a hard day's work instead. (Breyers' Caramel Pretzel ice cream is looking like a good candidate. In the words of lolcats everywhere, nom nom nom.)
So all in all, this so-called "long weekend" has been a total loss: Friday night I went to bed early because I wasn't feeling well; Saturday I worked from 8:00-4:30; and today was spent either babysitting my roommates and their domestic disputes, or sleeping in the aftermath of same. And then tomorrow, it's off to Mom's--where I will no doubt be treated, along with a delicious meal, to a running commentary about how much weight I need to lose. (But at least there won't be any drama. It's hard to believe it--I'm faced with a lecture about my weight, my hair, or my beliefs, and yet those lectures actually seem PREFERABLE to staying at home--because if I go where the lectures are, I won't have to deal with the silly childish crap going on HERE...Yeah, that's a sad state of affairs if ever I've heard one.)
All things considered, I'll be glad to get back to work on Tuesday.
Tim seems to think that he is to Squeaky what I am to him: he sees himself as the person who looks out for her, the one who cares about her when nobody else does--the way I do for him.
Okay, fine. Admirable, even. If you've got something to teach her that you think will help her handle her life better, then by all means go for it, and good luck to you.
But then don't go getting blotto-drunk and traumatizing the poor kid by doing stupid shit like threatening to kill yourself and/or cutting your wrists with a steak knife.
And then don't get pissed at her for being scared and waking me up because she doesn't have any idea how to deal with it. Or defend it as an attempt to make a point. You don't make a point by cutting yourself. (unless the point is "I am absolutely batshit crazy, and also very drunk." If that was the point? You've made it admirably.) You don't make a point by scaring the hell out of someone. So don't get pissed at her for dealing with it in the only way she could...
Then ESPECIALLY don't get pissed at ME for being pissed at YOU instead of Squeaky--"she shouldn't have woke you up!" Well yeah--and she wouldn't have, if you hadn't scared her half to death (and apparently opened up some old psychic wounds, as well.)
And Squeaky? When the situation is calming down? The sarcastic remarks calculated to piss Tim off? They don't help. Really. Shutting up--THAT helps. Rule #1: Do NOT poke the crazy.
Once the merriment and festivities had died down, the following facts were explained to Tim:
1. It is my FUCKING DAY OFF. This drama was not appreciated. This drama WILL NOT RECUR. That is a declarative sentence--not a request.
2. The day we move out of this house--no matter where we move to, no matter whether we move by ourselves or whether there are other roomies involved--is the LAST day that Squeaky will be living with us. Once we're in the new place, I am not putting up with this.
3. Any attempt to ignore #2 will be considered a total dealbreaker. Regardless of our friendship, regardless of our history, if you insist on poisoning my personal space with this ridiculous situation, I will GLADLY live on my own rather than put up with this childish crap. I understand that you are trying to help, but this Sid-and-Nancy-Lite shit is not helping anyone, least of all ME.
4. Your attempts to emulate me, by helping someone obviously in need of it, are appreciated. Your methods, however, are at times misguided (and at other times, COMPLETELY FUCKING INSANE and inappropriate) and you might think about how the potential outcomes.
5. Did I mention about it being my day off? Have we not, for some time now, maintained an understanding about my personal space? Then stop setting off the drama. It's every bit as much your doing as Squeaky's--more, really, since you're the one who knows better.
I don't know how thoroughly my statements sunk in--for one thing, they were percolating through a thick layer of Miller High Life, and were probably garbled on the trip--but at least I've said my piece. If necessary, I will repeat it.
It has also become obvious that I cannot have beer (or any other alcohol) in this house. Not that it's such a great loss for me--summer's almost over anyway, and that's the only time I ever really drink--but it's become apparent to me that for Tim, beer is like rocket-fuel for his inner butthead. This is the third or fourth time I've had to involve myself in their little interpersonal crises, and each time there was alcohol involved. It's like in the I Has A Sweet Potato story: "WE JUST WON'T HAVE ANY ROOT VEGETABLES ANYMORE. THERE. ARE YOU HAPPY?" Except in this case, it's beer. (I only WISH it was root vegetables. I've never heard of anyone becoming a jerk after an overdose of yams.) Like I said--beerlessness is no great hardship for me. I just happen to enjoy a couple of Coronas after a hard day's work; I'll just have to find something else to enjoy after a hard day's work instead. (Breyers' Caramel Pretzel ice cream is looking like a good candidate. In the words of lolcats everywhere, nom nom nom.)
So all in all, this so-called "long weekend" has been a total loss: Friday night I went to bed early because I wasn't feeling well; Saturday I worked from 8:00-4:30; and today was spent either babysitting my roommates and their domestic disputes, or sleeping in the aftermath of same. And then tomorrow, it's off to Mom's--where I will no doubt be treated, along with a delicious meal, to a running commentary about how much weight I need to lose. (But at least there won't be any drama. It's hard to believe it--I'm faced with a lecture about my weight, my hair, or my beliefs, and yet those lectures actually seem PREFERABLE to staying at home--because if I go where the lectures are, I won't have to deal with the silly childish crap going on HERE...Yeah, that's a sad state of affairs if ever I've heard one.)
All things considered, I'll be glad to get back to work on Tuesday.
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
No Good Deed...
You know how that proverb ends, right?
Yep--so do I.
(Note: this post was written over the space of three days. I started it Sunday; it is now just after midnight, which makes it Wednesday. I would say the three posts in a sequence--this one, the "OMFG..." post, and the "Disclaimer-ish" post--give a pretty accurate picture of the state of this house from Saturday evening til the present--to say nothing of the state of my mind.)
So Saturday evening, I get home from my first Saturday of work. I arrive with a 12-pack of beer, to find the house empty, and, expecting an evening of peace and quiet based on this fact, put the beer in the fridge and turn on the TV.
First problem: the cable is off. I calculate the date in my mind, then realize yeah, shoulda paid that one about 2 weeks ago. The bills in this house are in total disarray; basically, the squeakiest creditors get the cash, and anyone who can shut something off will be paid before someone who can't. Once we move, I will change that; I plan to be the...
pause.
This pause in my blog has been inserted because in light of the story I am about to relate, I need to add this interruption to show you all what I'm up against.
*************************************************************
(written Sunday night) I was writing this post, here in my living room where the computer desk is, at 11:00 PM--even though I have to be up for work before 6 this morning--because Tim and Squeaky had gone into their room at last and FINALLY, for the first time ALL FREAKING WEEKEND, I was reasonably assured of some privacy.
As I wrote the sentence just before the pause, they came out. Tim came over and whispered gibberish at me, to make it seem like he was talking about Squeaky. It's a game, I guess, that they play. Then, he went to the fridge for some ice cream. They sat down on the sofa, talking to me all the while. (Actually, Tim was mostly silent; Squeaky was yammering on about some TV show or something.) I listened for about three sentences and went back to reading whatever page I'd brought up when they came out--neither of them, as you might imagine, know about my blog.
After about ten minutes, Tim said to Squeaky, "Okay, leave her alone and let her read. She gets cranky if you don't let her read." (True enough.) After some more jabber, she followed him into the room, and I brought my page back up.
NOT TWO MINUTES LATER, from the room: "Gladys!!!"
I put my head in my hands. "What?"
"He called me fat!" Door opens. Squeaky and Tim emerge.
"Leave her alone," says Tim.
"I AM leaving her alone," she tells him. "He called me fat! Make him stop calling me fat!"
"Will you LEAVE HER ALONE!" Tim said.
"I AM leaving her alone!"
"Actually," I piped up, "you're really not. Actually you're sorta...still talking."
"I SAID, leave her the fuck alone!" Tim said. "I swear to God, I'm gonna smack you..." (He's not. We threaten horrible lingering death to each other a million times a day; I know of exactly one incident when Tim has hit a girl, and that was fifteen years ago and he was blackout drunk. So that threat, though it's obnoxious and dickheaded and all the rest, is not anywhere near as threatening as it seems--and what's more, Squeaky knows this.)
"I AM leaving her alone!!!!" To me: "Did you hear what he just said to me??? You're supposed to save me!!!"
I put my hands over my face again. "Okay, actually? No I'm not. That's what all that bullshit was about last night. I'm so totally NOT supposed to save you."
After some more squawking and yammering, and the background sound of a vein in my forehead throbbing, they finally went back into the room. The odds of them staying there long enough for me to complete this post are roughly nil.
end pause
****************************************************************
As I was saying:
Once we move, I plan to be the soul of order and punctuality as regards the payment of bills; now, however, it seems to be too Herculean a task to even contemplate the masses of unopened and opened mail which has accumulated on every available desk, much less to undertake to pay it all. I will continue to dwell on this shoestring, and take it as a lesson learned.
Anyhow.
As I was on the phone with the Automated System of the Damned, paying the Comcast bill, the door opened and in came Tim. Since my back was to the door, I didn't realize Squeaky was with him til she came out of the bathroom a couple of minutes later.
Here's the thing, though: Tim wasn't speaking to her. He went into his room, leaving her in the living room, and slammed the door and turned his music up loud. She made several forays into the room, and every time emerged looking crestfallen.
As I heard the story from her: apparently she was supposed to be staying at her dad's house. (Not her stepdad the sexually-abusing asshole; her real dad, who I guess is a wee bit of a jerk but otherwise mostly harmless.) Tim apparently had a long talk with Squeaky's dad a week or so ago, affirming that they both care a lot about what happens to her, and making an agreement that she could alternate between staying at her dad's and staying here. (In case you're wondering--no one asked me, no.) And it was that agreement that touched off the whole conflagration.
Apparently she'd stayed a day or two at her dad's, then gone to visit a "friend" of hers on the South Side. "Friend" gets quotes because it's a guy, and because her choice of "friends" in the past has led her into all sorts of situations. This was no exception; apparently, as she got off the Red Line at 95th to meet him, she was followed by a guy she knew, a guy who had raped her in the past, who she'd seen several weeks ago in a public place and who she'd apparently told off, made brave by the fact that he couldn't do anything to her while there were people around.
Well, this time, she wasn't so lucky; he grabbed her and choked her, telling her "This is for last time--you think you're so tough?" According to her, that was all that happened; she has bruises all around her neck, so either she's telling the truth or something else happened that she isn't mentioning.
She didn't want to tell Tim about getting choked, allegedly because she was afraid Tim would get mad and insist on finding and killing this guy. (Do I believe this story? Not entirely.) All she told Tim was that she left her dad's and spent the weekend with "a friend".
That's HER story. Tim's story--which came out after four hours of the silent treatment, during which I was left to entertain Squeaky and listen to her kvetch about Tim's treatment of her, all while I would have MUCH rather been relaxing with my Coronas, my onions-and-beef over rice, and my NASCAR race--Tim's story was: she was supposed to be staying at her dad's, and then all of a sudden she calls him and leaves him a message that she's staying with a friend--a GIRL, in the original story. And then halfway through her story, that girl becomes a guy. She claims she has no recollection of telling him she would be staying with a girl. She claims she was stung by a bee and because she's allergic, she took Benadryl and it made her sleepy and she doesn't remember that phone call because she was half-asleep.
I wasn't sure who, if anyone, was telling the truth. I didn't like, though, the way Tim was talking to her--like the ONLY places she was permitted to stay were either here or at her dad's, like she had no say-so and she wasn't allowed to change her plans. That was MY main objection--that he was talking to her as though he owned her, and that regardless of how angry he was, it was NOT okay for him to bring someone to the house and ignore them, leaving them as MY responsibility. "She's not your responsibility, though, G!" he said. "You shouldn't even be mediating this situation."
He claimed, after the fact, that the sentence "You shouldn't even be mediating this situation," meant "please stop mediating the situation." I didn't take it that way. So when he started yelling at her about her "friends" and her changing stories and her general lack of trustworthiness and consistency, I tried to calm the waters.
Big mistake.
At one point, he said something about Squeaky having no job. Now, she had told me that she'd just gotten a job, at a coffee shop, and would be starting in a week or so. I mentioned this, and he scoffed. "What, after waiting around for six months for a job?"
I couldn't believe what I was hearing. "Tim," I said quietly, "You really shouldn't judge people for making the same kind of decisions you made." He wasn't listening; apparently something in my expression showed my amazement that he would even have the nerve to say such a thing, because his voice started getting louder as he started talking about jobs she'd apparently turned down.
I was running out of words, not to mention patience, and so I just pointed at him. And apparently, this was exactly the worst thing I could have done, judging from the explosion that followed. The sum of what he was yelling--in my face, at the top of his lungs--was that he could have three or four jobs, and yeah he'd turned down a job, because he was entitled to do whatever he wanted if he thought a job wasn't worth taking, and don't you point at me, and blah blah really loud and ineffectual and probably at least somewhat guilt-ridden blah.
And he'd been drinking, and I'd been drinking (and yes, you are all entitled to crawl up my ass for the decision I made immediately thereafter, but I was, SERIOUSLY, not drunk) and Squeaky was in the background talking about "fuck it, I'm getting out of here, I'm going back to my dad's" and Tim was yelling at her about "no you won't, if you leave this house you'll just go right back to the South Side to fuck around some more," and I had now officially had ABSOLUTELY POSITIVELY ENOUGH, so I said "C'mon, Squeaky, I'll give you a ride to your dad's house." And I grabbed my bag and my car keys and walked out the door, got in the car and started the ignition.
And waited.
And waited.
No Squeaky.
About five minutes later, I called the house number on my cell phone. "Squeaky," I said. "I am outside in the car waiting for you. If you want a ride, you need to come outside, right now."
Five minutes after that, out came Squeaky.
"Tim says to tell you that no way are you driving and no way am I getting into a car with you in your condition. He wants you to come inside."
"Oh," I said, turning off the car and getting out. "So now I get to look like the idiot for stepping in and trying to help somebody else. Good. That's wonderful."
"I think he's gonna apologize," she said.
"I don't give a fuck either way," I replied, largely because I know Tim well enough to know that an apology was not forthcoming, at least not for an hour or so. As I walked in the door, I repeated that sentence, and added "I really have nothing to say.'
"Ohh," said Tim. "So if I don't want to talk, that's terrible, but if YOU don't want to..."
"I don't use it as an everyday strategy!" I said, walking up the stairs. " 'I don't wanna talk about it!' 'I just want to be by myself.' 'Leave me alone--I don't wanna talk,'" I said, doing my best (and, might I add, extremely childish) imitation of Tim whenever he's faced with some negative consequence to HIS actions. "Well, now it's MY turn: I don't want to talk."
I went upstairs and put a sign on my door: DO NOT KNOCK. I put another sign on a string at the top of the steps: I WOULDN'T. And I went into my room, got out my yarn, and sat down in front of the TV to crochet.
It took about half an hour, but Tim came upstairs, ignoring all notices to the contrary, and knocked on my door. And A Conversation was had; I explained to him that yelling at me was a very, very, VERY bad idea, for a myriad of reasons including but not limited to: if you're yelling at me, you're not hearing my point. (I managed, with Herculean effort, not to add "...and you'll never see another cigarette, can of beer, dollar added to your bus pass, dollar 'loaned' to you, meal shared, personal-care item purchased, cell-phone bill paid, or financial obligation ignored EVER AGAIN." Never let it be said that I have learned nothing from my mother's money-is-power issues.) "And my point WAS," I added, "that you shouldn't judge people for doing EXACTLY THE SAME THING YOU DID."
He conceded the issue, but added, "Yeah, but when you point your finger at me like that...."
"Yeah, I know. That was maybe not the best way of expressing myself," I told him.
We talked some more, and he did apologize; I told him that I really didn't appreciate a lot of the stuff that had been going on, and he told me that he would really, REALLY appreciate if, in the future, I didn't take it upon myself to mediate their arguments/bickering/complaining/disputes/whatever. "It's not your job," he said. "Don't put yourself in that position."
"I DON'T put MYSELF there," I reminded him. "SHE comes to ME when she wants to bitch about you."
"Well then, shut her down," he advised. "Tell her 'Look, I'm not going to put myself in the middle of this--if you have a problem with Tim, go talk to Tim.'"
"And then when you don't want to talk, and YOU shut her down TOO...?"
"That's between her and me, though." Which...okay, yeah, he's right, but it's tough to see a person with a problem, who's TRYING to talk to the other involved party about the problem, but the other person doesn't want to talk and so the wounded party is left with no recourse than to just deal--and it's very hard for me NOT to try to help, under the circumstances. Especially when I know that--for the most part--I can usually manage to remain objective...
...until people start yelling, and not listening to me, and claiming that true things are false, and the sky is green, and rain falls up, and they could have three or four jobs ANY TIME THEY WANTED THEM. Apparently that's my breaking point.
Anyhow, Tim and I worked it out, and had a hug, and the problem was mostly solved...
Mostly. As the other posts in this sequence will show.
Yep--so do I.
(Note: this post was written over the space of three days. I started it Sunday; it is now just after midnight, which makes it Wednesday. I would say the three posts in a sequence--this one, the "OMFG..." post, and the "Disclaimer-ish" post--give a pretty accurate picture of the state of this house from Saturday evening til the present--to say nothing of the state of my mind.)
So Saturday evening, I get home from my first Saturday of work. I arrive with a 12-pack of beer, to find the house empty, and, expecting an evening of peace and quiet based on this fact, put the beer in the fridge and turn on the TV.
First problem: the cable is off. I calculate the date in my mind, then realize yeah, shoulda paid that one about 2 weeks ago. The bills in this house are in total disarray; basically, the squeakiest creditors get the cash, and anyone who can shut something off will be paid before someone who can't. Once we move, I will change that; I plan to be the...
pause.
This pause in my blog has been inserted because in light of the story I am about to relate, I need to add this interruption to show you all what I'm up against.
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(written Sunday night) I was writing this post, here in my living room where the computer desk is, at 11:00 PM--even though I have to be up for work before 6 this morning--because Tim and Squeaky had gone into their room at last and FINALLY, for the first time ALL FREAKING WEEKEND, I was reasonably assured of some privacy.
As I wrote the sentence just before the pause, they came out. Tim came over and whispered gibberish at me, to make it seem like he was talking about Squeaky. It's a game, I guess, that they play. Then, he went to the fridge for some ice cream. They sat down on the sofa, talking to me all the while. (Actually, Tim was mostly silent; Squeaky was yammering on about some TV show or something.) I listened for about three sentences and went back to reading whatever page I'd brought up when they came out--neither of them, as you might imagine, know about my blog.
After about ten minutes, Tim said to Squeaky, "Okay, leave her alone and let her read. She gets cranky if you don't let her read." (True enough.) After some more jabber, she followed him into the room, and I brought my page back up.
NOT TWO MINUTES LATER, from the room: "Gladys!!!"
I put my head in my hands. "What?"
"He called me fat!" Door opens. Squeaky and Tim emerge.
"Leave her alone," says Tim.
"I AM leaving her alone," she tells him. "He called me fat! Make him stop calling me fat!"
"Will you LEAVE HER ALONE!" Tim said.
"I AM leaving her alone!"
"Actually," I piped up, "you're really not. Actually you're sorta...still talking."
"I SAID, leave her the fuck alone!" Tim said. "I swear to God, I'm gonna smack you..." (He's not. We threaten horrible lingering death to each other a million times a day; I know of exactly one incident when Tim has hit a girl, and that was fifteen years ago and he was blackout drunk. So that threat, though it's obnoxious and dickheaded and all the rest, is not anywhere near as threatening as it seems--and what's more, Squeaky knows this.)
"I AM leaving her alone!!!!" To me: "Did you hear what he just said to me??? You're supposed to save me!!!"
I put my hands over my face again. "Okay, actually? No I'm not. That's what all that bullshit was about last night. I'm so totally NOT supposed to save you."
After some more squawking and yammering, and the background sound of a vein in my forehead throbbing, they finally went back into the room. The odds of them staying there long enough for me to complete this post are roughly nil.
end pause
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As I was saying:
Once we move, I plan to be the soul of order and punctuality as regards the payment of bills; now, however, it seems to be too Herculean a task to even contemplate the masses of unopened and opened mail which has accumulated on every available desk, much less to undertake to pay it all. I will continue to dwell on this shoestring, and take it as a lesson learned.
Anyhow.
As I was on the phone with the Automated System of the Damned, paying the Comcast bill, the door opened and in came Tim. Since my back was to the door, I didn't realize Squeaky was with him til she came out of the bathroom a couple of minutes later.
Here's the thing, though: Tim wasn't speaking to her. He went into his room, leaving her in the living room, and slammed the door and turned his music up loud. She made several forays into the room, and every time emerged looking crestfallen.
As I heard the story from her: apparently she was supposed to be staying at her dad's house. (Not her stepdad the sexually-abusing asshole; her real dad, who I guess is a wee bit of a jerk but otherwise mostly harmless.) Tim apparently had a long talk with Squeaky's dad a week or so ago, affirming that they both care a lot about what happens to her, and making an agreement that she could alternate between staying at her dad's and staying here. (In case you're wondering--no one asked me, no.) And it was that agreement that touched off the whole conflagration.
Apparently she'd stayed a day or two at her dad's, then gone to visit a "friend" of hers on the South Side. "Friend" gets quotes because it's a guy, and because her choice of "friends" in the past has led her into all sorts of situations. This was no exception; apparently, as she got off the Red Line at 95th to meet him, she was followed by a guy she knew, a guy who had raped her in the past, who she'd seen several weeks ago in a public place and who she'd apparently told off, made brave by the fact that he couldn't do anything to her while there were people around.
Well, this time, she wasn't so lucky; he grabbed her and choked her, telling her "This is for last time--you think you're so tough?" According to her, that was all that happened; she has bruises all around her neck, so either she's telling the truth or something else happened that she isn't mentioning.
She didn't want to tell Tim about getting choked, allegedly because she was afraid Tim would get mad and insist on finding and killing this guy. (Do I believe this story? Not entirely.) All she told Tim was that she left her dad's and spent the weekend with "a friend".
That's HER story. Tim's story--which came out after four hours of the silent treatment, during which I was left to entertain Squeaky and listen to her kvetch about Tim's treatment of her, all while I would have MUCH rather been relaxing with my Coronas, my onions-and-beef over rice, and my NASCAR race--Tim's story was: she was supposed to be staying at her dad's, and then all of a sudden she calls him and leaves him a message that she's staying with a friend--a GIRL, in the original story. And then halfway through her story, that girl becomes a guy. She claims she has no recollection of telling him she would be staying with a girl. She claims she was stung by a bee and because she's allergic, she took Benadryl and it made her sleepy and she doesn't remember that phone call because she was half-asleep.
I wasn't sure who, if anyone, was telling the truth. I didn't like, though, the way Tim was talking to her--like the ONLY places she was permitted to stay were either here or at her dad's, like she had no say-so and she wasn't allowed to change her plans. That was MY main objection--that he was talking to her as though he owned her, and that regardless of how angry he was, it was NOT okay for him to bring someone to the house and ignore them, leaving them as MY responsibility. "She's not your responsibility, though, G!" he said. "You shouldn't even be mediating this situation."
He claimed, after the fact, that the sentence "You shouldn't even be mediating this situation," meant "please stop mediating the situation." I didn't take it that way. So when he started yelling at her about her "friends" and her changing stories and her general lack of trustworthiness and consistency, I tried to calm the waters.
Big mistake.
At one point, he said something about Squeaky having no job. Now, she had told me that she'd just gotten a job, at a coffee shop, and would be starting in a week or so. I mentioned this, and he scoffed. "What, after waiting around for six months for a job?"
I couldn't believe what I was hearing. "Tim," I said quietly, "You really shouldn't judge people for making the same kind of decisions you made." He wasn't listening; apparently something in my expression showed my amazement that he would even have the nerve to say such a thing, because his voice started getting louder as he started talking about jobs she'd apparently turned down.
I was running out of words, not to mention patience, and so I just pointed at him. And apparently, this was exactly the worst thing I could have done, judging from the explosion that followed. The sum of what he was yelling--in my face, at the top of his lungs--was that he could have three or four jobs, and yeah he'd turned down a job, because he was entitled to do whatever he wanted if he thought a job wasn't worth taking, and don't you point at me, and blah blah really loud and ineffectual and probably at least somewhat guilt-ridden blah.
And he'd been drinking, and I'd been drinking (and yes, you are all entitled to crawl up my ass for the decision I made immediately thereafter, but I was, SERIOUSLY, not drunk) and Squeaky was in the background talking about "fuck it, I'm getting out of here, I'm going back to my dad's" and Tim was yelling at her about "no you won't, if you leave this house you'll just go right back to the South Side to fuck around some more," and I had now officially had ABSOLUTELY POSITIVELY ENOUGH, so I said "C'mon, Squeaky, I'll give you a ride to your dad's house." And I grabbed my bag and my car keys and walked out the door, got in the car and started the ignition.
And waited.
And waited.
No Squeaky.
About five minutes later, I called the house number on my cell phone. "Squeaky," I said. "I am outside in the car waiting for you. If you want a ride, you need to come outside, right now."
Five minutes after that, out came Squeaky.
"Tim says to tell you that no way are you driving and no way am I getting into a car with you in your condition. He wants you to come inside."
"Oh," I said, turning off the car and getting out. "So now I get to look like the idiot for stepping in and trying to help somebody else. Good. That's wonderful."
"I think he's gonna apologize," she said.
"I don't give a fuck either way," I replied, largely because I know Tim well enough to know that an apology was not forthcoming, at least not for an hour or so. As I walked in the door, I repeated that sentence, and added "I really have nothing to say.'
"Ohh," said Tim. "So if I don't want to talk, that's terrible, but if YOU don't want to..."
"I don't use it as an everyday strategy!" I said, walking up the stairs. " 'I don't wanna talk about it!' 'I just want to be by myself.' 'Leave me alone--I don't wanna talk,'" I said, doing my best (and, might I add, extremely childish) imitation of Tim whenever he's faced with some negative consequence to HIS actions. "Well, now it's MY turn: I don't want to talk."
I went upstairs and put a sign on my door: DO NOT KNOCK. I put another sign on a string at the top of the steps: I WOULDN'T. And I went into my room, got out my yarn, and sat down in front of the TV to crochet.
It took about half an hour, but Tim came upstairs, ignoring all notices to the contrary, and knocked on my door. And A Conversation was had; I explained to him that yelling at me was a very, very, VERY bad idea, for a myriad of reasons including but not limited to: if you're yelling at me, you're not hearing my point. (I managed, with Herculean effort, not to add "...and you'll never see another cigarette, can of beer, dollar added to your bus pass, dollar 'loaned' to you, meal shared, personal-care item purchased, cell-phone bill paid, or financial obligation ignored EVER AGAIN." Never let it be said that I have learned nothing from my mother's money-is-power issues.) "And my point WAS," I added, "that you shouldn't judge people for doing EXACTLY THE SAME THING YOU DID."
He conceded the issue, but added, "Yeah, but when you point your finger at me like that...."
"Yeah, I know. That was maybe not the best way of expressing myself," I told him.
We talked some more, and he did apologize; I told him that I really didn't appreciate a lot of the stuff that had been going on, and he told me that he would really, REALLY appreciate if, in the future, I didn't take it upon myself to mediate their arguments/bickering/complaining/disputes/whatever. "It's not your job," he said. "Don't put yourself in that position."
"I DON'T put MYSELF there," I reminded him. "SHE comes to ME when she wants to bitch about you."
"Well then, shut her down," he advised. "Tell her 'Look, I'm not going to put myself in the middle of this--if you have a problem with Tim, go talk to Tim.'"
"And then when you don't want to talk, and YOU shut her down TOO...?"
"That's between her and me, though." Which...okay, yeah, he's right, but it's tough to see a person with a problem, who's TRYING to talk to the other involved party about the problem, but the other person doesn't want to talk and so the wounded party is left with no recourse than to just deal--and it's very hard for me NOT to try to help, under the circumstances. Especially when I know that--for the most part--I can usually manage to remain objective...
...until people start yelling, and not listening to me, and claiming that true things are false, and the sky is green, and rain falls up, and they could have three or four jobs ANY TIME THEY WANTED THEM. Apparently that's my breaking point.
Anyhow, Tim and I worked it out, and had a hug, and the problem was mostly solved...
Mostly. As the other posts in this sequence will show.
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