Every day I talk to people who are my friends, my family, whatever--people in my real, non-work life. Many of these people think I'm smart, or talented, or capable, or creative, or independent, or clear-thinking, or whatever. Some people even think I'm more than one of the above. They know me as the person who, faced with a problem, will come up with a solution; the person who can cook anything, find information on the Web, build furniture, fix broken things, write an awesome letter of complaint. They know me as the person who will generally come up with new ways to accomplish some goal, when the old ways aren't feasible. Most of my friends, at least once in a while, look to me for help or advice or something--they think I have a clue of how to get through life.
But every morning at 10:00, I walk into my office, and immediately I am surrounded by people who remember my every mistake, my every flub, my every flaw; people who think I'm incompetent, a liability, a joke. If you listen to these people, I'm the most remedial person in the department; my mistakes are used as punch-lines, and my personality flaws are fodder for the office wag. Even when I -do- manage to say something insightful or useful, my boss credits the idea to someone else--someone less-stupid than I apparently am--and when I object, or say "Actually, I was the one who said that," he laughs it off and encourages the rest of the gang to play along. Other people are given extra tasks and projects, letting them display their capabilities; I, on the other hand, am left out of even the simplest projects, and when I ask why, I'm either accused of being "angry" or "touchy" or "whiny", or I'm reminded of assorted past mistakes. Apparently I am the only one, of the six people in the department, who has ever made a mistake; or perhaps the other ones' mistakes are forgivable, where mine are evidently not.
Somewhere there's a middle ground, between my away-from-the-office self, with the giant "S" stitched across her chest; and my at-work self, sitting in the corner with a dunce cap on her head while all the other children laugh and point. One side is more-right about me than the other; one side doesn't know me very well.
Tonight, though, I don't know which side is closer to the real truth.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Mid-Winter
You know spring is coming when the countdown calendar on NASCAR.com says "14 days to Daytona!!!" I'm going to have to say: things are...improving. Not "good" yet, exactly, but improving.
I've had some major realizations recently--I've had plenty of time for major realizations, since I was at home sick for two days with the evil cold that has been circulating around my office. (It's somewhat better now, with the exception of the tendency to periodically launch into a high-speed machine-gunning of sneezes. As in, aCHOO!aCHOO!aCHOO!aCHOO! with no time to take a breath between them, in some cases; the sort of sneezing which practically guarantees the eventual loss of a contact lens.) Anyhow--major realizations.
First: I've been putting wayyyy too much expectations on the medication. There is not a pill in the world that's going to fix the main things that trouble me--one, JP's continued absence; two, the growing sense that I've missed a HUGE chunk of my life, which is not coming back either; three, the sudden understanding that I will never be 24 again, and that all the experiences and discoveries of that part of my life are behind me. There's not really much NEW from now on, and that's hard for me to take; and meanwhile, I feel like I would imagine a coma patient feels, waking up after fourteen years to all the changes that have taken place, to a world that's moved on while they have stood completely still. I miss JP; I miss the idea of him--the little details particular to only him, which no one else will ever be able to replicate even if I wanted them to--and I miss myself, as well. I miss who I was before JP died, before CR came along and smashed my self-image and my confidence to pieces, before LJ finished the job with his years of indifference. I consider going out into the world and trying to meet someone new, someone I could have a relationship with, and there's an enormous disconnect in my mind; as an abstract thought, I can see it, but when I actually put myself in that picture as the object of attention or affection, it becomes a "yeah, right."
And yet underneath it all I want to be ME again; want music in my life, want to wear my hair down with long braids in it, and string bracelets, and hi-tops, and to get a tattoo, or another piercing. I want to wake up in the morning full of ideas and plans; or to play hooky because it's a beautiful day and I can't bear the thought of wasting it at work, instead of because I can't bear the thought of leaving my nice safe bed. I want to have the energy level and the motivation I had when I was in college, and the confidence in my own ideas. I want all the "I can'ts" to go away, and all the memories of the things that created them in the first place. I want to stop being all self-effacing, pretending I don't know something so that the other person feels superior to me even if we're just equal.
Don't get me wrong: it's getting better, I think. Today, for the first time in can't-remember-when, my day off did not involve sleeping all day; I got up at 8, went to the clinic, went to the grocery store, went for a long walk, cleaned up the apartment a bit, helped Tim with the online portion of his cell-phone account, did Squeaky's taxes for her, then did my own because why the hell not, and then did laundry while making spaghetti sauce. Mind you, I'm freakin' EXHAUSTED; the anti-d's are apparently screwing with my sleep cycle a bit, because I haven't slept well for nearly a week now, since my dose went up; I'm just hoping it's a temporary thing, something I need to get used to.
Work...Okay, look. I love my job, okay? But right at the moment it SUCK SUCK SUCKS. The Crazy drove away a new employee after only four days, by humiliating her for not knowing The Crazy's last name yet; then, after that, there was The Big Post-Budget-Meeting Come-To-Jeebus Talk, in which we were informed that overtime will no longer be paid, our on-call hours will no longer be paid, there will be no more travel, much less training, and we will be stretching out the lifespan of the computers to five years instead of the original three--even though at least half the computers in question were found to have a fatal flaw which causes the motherboards to melt down, and even though every solitary one of these flawed machines is now out of warranty. Meanwhile, my immediate boss--despite his total lack of a spine--had a Come-To-Jeebus talk with ME, about how I wasn't doing enough work tickets. The reason my numbers were screwed was because I was not counting the things I did on Saturdays--clearing paper jams, helping students with tiny trivial problems--simply BECAUSE they were tiny, trivial problems, and I thought they were beneath notice. Well, once that convo had ended, I started tracking my Saturdays as well; my numbers are now toward the TOP of the pack, rather than the bottom. But there are things that could be done that would make ALL of us more efficient, and management flatly refuses to consider them--and now, if there's money involved, even just $10, now they've got a watertight excuse for WHY they refuse.
Meanwhile, the Circus has left town.
Squeaky found a place to live--a place with a family, a father, daughter, and her kids, where Squeaky gets a room of her own and can keep the cats, in exchange for a minor amount of rent and light babysitting chores. (I don't know if I blogged about the big catastrophe; basically, they had a place to stay til Tim's hospitalization, at which point their roommate--a 61-yr-old friend of Squeaky's, remember--said Tim was no longer welcome there. Shortly thereafter, he reconsidered, and one night Tim was there when he and Squeaky got into a fight and Squeaky had one of her screaming, violent meltdowns--Tim was trying to walk out the door to cool down and get away from the argument, but Squeaky wouldn't let him go and physically blocked his way, and when he pushed past her and walked out the door, she ran after him into the ice and snow--barefoot, which ended up causing frostbite--and directly into a small knot of police officers, who had been called by the neighbors. Tim came here, and when I went to bed that night it was with the information that they were "done"--that Tim had finally had enough, that he was through dealing with her.
The next morning I woke up and she was asleep on my floor with him.
Apparently the 61-yr-old had told her that SHE was no longer welcome either, and that if either of them wanted their belongings, she could either take them with her or they'd need the police to get them. Anyway, they stayed for two weeks or so; Tim worked on getting a storage space for his stuff, and Squeaky worked on getting a place to stay (for herself only, and the cats). Finally she found a place with a family--father, daughter, daughter's two kids--and went to get her and Tim's belongings on the day she was to move in.
Her stuff was all there. Tim's stuff--his more-expensive clothes, his video camera, the laptop I'd given him, and a bunch of other stuff as well--was gone. Apparently the 61-year-old's twentysomething "friends" had taken it and hocked it or something.
I'll get to the rest of this story in the next post.....
I've had some major realizations recently--I've had plenty of time for major realizations, since I was at home sick for two days with the evil cold that has been circulating around my office. (It's somewhat better now, with the exception of the tendency to periodically launch into a high-speed machine-gunning of sneezes. As in, aCHOO!aCHOO!aCHOO!aCHOO! with no time to take a breath between them, in some cases; the sort of sneezing which practically guarantees the eventual loss of a contact lens.) Anyhow--major realizations.
First: I've been putting wayyyy too much expectations on the medication. There is not a pill in the world that's going to fix the main things that trouble me--one, JP's continued absence; two, the growing sense that I've missed a HUGE chunk of my life, which is not coming back either; three, the sudden understanding that I will never be 24 again, and that all the experiences and discoveries of that part of my life are behind me. There's not really much NEW from now on, and that's hard for me to take; and meanwhile, I feel like I would imagine a coma patient feels, waking up after fourteen years to all the changes that have taken place, to a world that's moved on while they have stood completely still. I miss JP; I miss the idea of him--the little details particular to only him, which no one else will ever be able to replicate even if I wanted them to--and I miss myself, as well. I miss who I was before JP died, before CR came along and smashed my self-image and my confidence to pieces, before LJ finished the job with his years of indifference. I consider going out into the world and trying to meet someone new, someone I could have a relationship with, and there's an enormous disconnect in my mind; as an abstract thought, I can see it, but when I actually put myself in that picture as the object of attention or affection, it becomes a "yeah, right."
And yet underneath it all I want to be ME again; want music in my life, want to wear my hair down with long braids in it, and string bracelets, and hi-tops, and to get a tattoo, or another piercing. I want to wake up in the morning full of ideas and plans; or to play hooky because it's a beautiful day and I can't bear the thought of wasting it at work, instead of because I can't bear the thought of leaving my nice safe bed. I want to have the energy level and the motivation I had when I was in college, and the confidence in my own ideas. I want all the "I can'ts" to go away, and all the memories of the things that created them in the first place. I want to stop being all self-effacing, pretending I don't know something so that the other person feels superior to me even if we're just equal.
Don't get me wrong: it's getting better, I think. Today, for the first time in can't-remember-when, my day off did not involve sleeping all day; I got up at 8, went to the clinic, went to the grocery store, went for a long walk, cleaned up the apartment a bit, helped Tim with the online portion of his cell-phone account, did Squeaky's taxes for her, then did my own because why the hell not, and then did laundry while making spaghetti sauce. Mind you, I'm freakin' EXHAUSTED; the anti-d's are apparently screwing with my sleep cycle a bit, because I haven't slept well for nearly a week now, since my dose went up; I'm just hoping it's a temporary thing, something I need to get used to.
Work...Okay, look. I love my job, okay? But right at the moment it SUCK SUCK SUCKS. The Crazy drove away a new employee after only four days, by humiliating her for not knowing The Crazy's last name yet; then, after that, there was The Big Post-Budget-Meeting Come-To-Jeebus Talk, in which we were informed that overtime will no longer be paid, our on-call hours will no longer be paid, there will be no more travel, much less training, and we will be stretching out the lifespan of the computers to five years instead of the original three--even though at least half the computers in question were found to have a fatal flaw which causes the motherboards to melt down, and even though every solitary one of these flawed machines is now out of warranty. Meanwhile, my immediate boss--despite his total lack of a spine--had a Come-To-Jeebus talk with ME, about how I wasn't doing enough work tickets. The reason my numbers were screwed was because I was not counting the things I did on Saturdays--clearing paper jams, helping students with tiny trivial problems--simply BECAUSE they were tiny, trivial problems, and I thought they were beneath notice. Well, once that convo had ended, I started tracking my Saturdays as well; my numbers are now toward the TOP of the pack, rather than the bottom. But there are things that could be done that would make ALL of us more efficient, and management flatly refuses to consider them--and now, if there's money involved, even just $10, now they've got a watertight excuse for WHY they refuse.
Meanwhile, the Circus has left town.
Squeaky found a place to live--a place with a family, a father, daughter, and her kids, where Squeaky gets a room of her own and can keep the cats, in exchange for a minor amount of rent and light babysitting chores. (I don't know if I blogged about the big catastrophe; basically, they had a place to stay til Tim's hospitalization, at which point their roommate--a 61-yr-old friend of Squeaky's, remember--said Tim was no longer welcome there. Shortly thereafter, he reconsidered, and one night Tim was there when he and Squeaky got into a fight and Squeaky had one of her screaming, violent meltdowns--Tim was trying to walk out the door to cool down and get away from the argument, but Squeaky wouldn't let him go and physically blocked his way, and when he pushed past her and walked out the door, she ran after him into the ice and snow--barefoot, which ended up causing frostbite--and directly into a small knot of police officers, who had been called by the neighbors. Tim came here, and when I went to bed that night it was with the information that they were "done"--that Tim had finally had enough, that he was through dealing with her.
The next morning I woke up and she was asleep on my floor with him.
Apparently the 61-yr-old had told her that SHE was no longer welcome either, and that if either of them wanted their belongings, she could either take them with her or they'd need the police to get them. Anyway, they stayed for two weeks or so; Tim worked on getting a storage space for his stuff, and Squeaky worked on getting a place to stay (for herself only, and the cats). Finally she found a place with a family--father, daughter, daughter's two kids--and went to get her and Tim's belongings on the day she was to move in.
Her stuff was all there. Tim's stuff--his more-expensive clothes, his video camera, the laptop I'd given him, and a bunch of other stuff as well--was gone. Apparently the 61-year-old's twentysomething "friends" had taken it and hocked it or something.
I'll get to the rest of this story in the next post.....
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.
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