Andrew Letter 44 - Steve and I fight, and I start packing

 

 

Dear Mom,

 

Hi there. Well, I'm taking a brief moment from packing to write you on the status of my voyage. Snag city.

I don't know if you knew already, but I got my RV. It's an ex- air force SAC mobile command center. It is a 1963 Dodge UPS type vehicle, with an air conditioner, power converter and multiple lights and wall sockets, plus a couple metal desks and a shelf.

I bought it for its rugged tires, straight six cylinder engine and oil filtered one barrel carb. It has a roof rack and roll out awining. It weighs 7000 lbs. Anyway, I can fit everything I own in there.

And its a good thing. Steve is being a major weenie right now, and I fear that I have become like Tim in his estimation. He simply has no respect or liking or even tolerance for me anymore. He has again let things (which I have really conscientiously tried to avoid doing) bug him, like drinking the last of the milk. Or eating his 2 day old left overs. Or having my laundry in the washer when he wants to use it.

I don't know. He never said a word, and now it's over. He has told me that we are 180 degrees opposite and that he finds nothing in me to admire. He says he wants to have people who are his equals living with him. I, in short, bum him out.

But the thing is, I see no clues, so I proceed cautiously. I do things around the house if I think there's a possibility he will wank about it. So basically, when I do good, there's no clue that it mattered any, and it I miss something, it goes into my file.

I really have been trying to read and please him, but the man is an ocean. I can't see past the surface of calm and general disgust. I have tried to salvage it, really. I kept appealing to emotional sanity, that we could work it out. He said, “Why Try?”

He is completely isolating himself from any of his friends who he feels have not reciprocated exactly to his requirements. People are just liabilities to him. Friends are bottom line dollar amounts. He is going to wind up old and alone just like grandpa.

I cannot stop him. I am caring less. I have indeed recognized and been grateful for the opportunity he has given me to stay here thus far. And he had earlier spoken of paying rent if my trip were delayed much further.

But the other night, when picking up on some negative vibes emanating from Steve, I mentioned that I really wanted to talk to him about paying rent, and staying there for a while longer.

At first he said sure, rent might appease him. Then he gets second thoughts. He wants female roommates, and he feels I'd be a problem. "I'd rather see you packing," he says.

So, I'm packing. Again. And I'll be unpacking again soon, too. And so it goes.

I am not ready for the trip. I am not sure where my life is going. I need to find a partner. I have been desperately searching all the usual places, including some naughty workplace note passing. But I have suffered only rejection. I am not their type. I seem to be nobody’s type. 

I hope the people with the room for rent call me back.

I am enjoying my job (and my weekends on the river) and the weather and the people I work with (clients and staff). My main admirers are all mentally ill. 

I wrote a letter to a girl at work and told her how great she was and how would she like to go camping for six months and such. She was very nice not to hurt my feelings. We are friends now that I know I am not her type and that she has a boyfriend and that she is trying to get her life back together from drinking and drugs, and maybe nine months ago she would've, but now she's too responsible. 

I believe her. I still like her, regardless, and I'm glad that I got it off my chest, so now we can be friends.

There's another great girl where I work (who's married--dammit!) who has been a particular comfort to me. I'm glad I don't lack for human contact entirely, even if I have to get it from co-workers and not at home.

Steve really bums me out. What can I do? I'm out of here.

It's way, way past that. He practically ridicules me when discussing my situation. He gets sarcastic and feigns mock incredulity, mimics me and taunts me. He does not speak from reason, but from those black, grandfather, pit of nothingness emotions which I cannot fathom. 

He is intensely bitter. I hate him. I wanted so much for us to be friends, but nothing ever works out. I am everything he hates, a suckhole liability, an unnecessary expense.

I got nowhere to go. I'm looking. Fast. Two or three days max. If I have to sleep on the street in my van or whatever. He needs his space or whatever, and I haven't got time for the pain. I'm trying to put my own life together and I don't need someone telling me I'm worthless, nothing to admire. Fuck him!

Look who's bitter. Way to spread a little family joy around, yeah. Sorry. You don't need it. I don't need it. 

 

He drives me to it by tearing me down so much, but I really don't want to be bitter and hate him. But he will just never understand that he was young and stupid once and not too far from recently. He thinks I should have all the answers, firm plans, never change my mind, never get confused. He can have his equals. I'll just take fellow human beings. 

I cannot say for sure who is to blame for the terrible way things have ended up, but they were destined. I fought the deterioration as long as I could, but he just gets nasty and there's no use. He is like I was as a teenager, emotionally. “I don't want to talk about it, you'll never change me, Why Try?”

Why try to get along when you can just cut someone out of your life? Adios, Familia. Nice idea, while it lasted. C-YA.

Greed, in the end, destroys all things. His greed, my greed. Life can suck. It can be great. I guess it's who you hang around with, how you look at it, how content you can be with what is sent your way.

I am guilty of letting Steve do me a favor so now he can hold it over my head forever. Enough. Forget it. Move on.

I really don't know how much closer I am to deciding what I'm doing with my life, but I'm doing some serious reflecting on what I want out of it. And what I have to do to get it. I am too carefree, but not carefree enough to live the carefree life to the fullest like it was meant to be lived. I get scared.

 

“What a sissy,” Steve would say. Such male bonding. Oh, well, I gotta go pack.

 

See ya when I see ya. Bye.

Andrew