Well, hell.
I'm just very confused. I'm confused about who I am and who I should be in this current situation. Am I being too rigid and unyielding? Am I jealously guarding my privacy in this new, sweet, wonderful little apartment? Or am I being too soft and enabling, in allowing Joe to live with me in comfort, or at least, relative comfort, when I should have kicked his scrawny little butt to the curb long ago?
See, so Joe moved in with me last night. I knew he was going to, and I was prepared for that, but I wasn't prepared for how weird it would feel. How much I would be clenching my teeth, in bed at eleven at night, at hearing the loud movie he was watching on the computer, as he texted his friends -- he isn't even actually watching the movie, it's just that he needs the sound and the brightly shifting colors, I believe. How much I would resent it -- and him! -- for having to be quiet as I left for work this morning. How very awkward and guilty and angry this would make me feel!
And yet, how very much I care about him, and for him and worry about him and want to help him. And how easily I forgive him over and over and over again.
The kicking him to the curb part -- that is in relation to this past week. You know how I have told Joe repeatedly, that as long as he is driving an illegal car (long story) that he may not call on me for help, if he gets pulled over, it gets impounded or he gets arrested. That I do not want him to drive this car illegally, and so not to call for help, if anything goes wrong. Well, it did, and he did! He was putting new wheels on his car, "hella cool" ones, BTW, and did not put one of them on properly, apparently. It flew off while he was driving (no doubt too fast) up Thiessen hill. Fortunately Joe is a good driver, and managed to steer the car over to the side of the road without crashing into anyone, but the wheel, bouncing merrily along the road, was hit. The driver was very, very mad at Joe. And Joe promptly called me to come and bring my insurance card so the woman could get (illegal)reimbursement from my insurance company.
Wait, what?
Now, this all happened on an evening that Joe was supposed to be at home, cleaning as hard as he could go, since the house had been inhabited recently by hordes of teenage slobs, all of whom left dishes, food, cigarette butts, cigarette packs and beer ALL OVER my house. And, amazingly enough, we had a possible cash buyer who had been to look at the outside of the house, and who wanted to see inside. So I called Joe and told him, that this guy would be coming by the following morning. Joe said he and his friends would get it clean. In fact, he said that it was already clean, and that he and his friends would just put a shine on the place. So that's what he was supposed to be doing when he called me, at about nine o'clock, to ask for my insurance information.
I saw the house the morning that the man was due to come over, and it was god-awful. Joe insisted that he could get it clean in the hour and a half he had before the man showed up. But I saw it that evening, after Mr. Amazing Cash Buyer had come and gone, and it looked all but identical to the morning. Still the filthy floor in the kitchen incrusted with sticky goo. Still hardened, cracked puddles of egg on the filthy, sticky, multi-colored counters. Still piles of garbage here and there. Still food detritus in the sink. I was very, very angry, so angry at Joe for freely lying to me over the phone about how clean the house was, and how he and his friends had just spiffed it right up.
Wow. I can hardly see straight. Part of this, of course, is guilt. I should never have allowed Joe to live there on his own. I should not have cared about Joe's pleasure or his popularity or his friends in the neighborhood. I should have made him move to the apartment with me, taken his car keys away, and kept him bored and restless and irritated.
I mean, right?
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