Pretty sure my ex-roomie, Angela, was both overcharging me for rent and conspiring with her friend Gary to mess up my bike so I would then pay Gary to fix it.
What a shitbag thing to do, eh?
And I know why she did it : to feed her hoarding. In many ways, hoarding like hers (and she hoarded everything – pets, food, little trinkets that were supposedly gifts for someone – is like a gambling addiction, or like being a shopaholic.
The addition is always going to demand more, more, more. Because one of the ironclad rules of decadence is that every time you use something to fill the gaping hole inside you, the hole gets bigger.
So yeah. Looking back, it’s all quite clear to me now. Makes me wish that I had taken her up on her martyr routine about how she will show me the rent receipt if I did not believe her about how much rent was.
Would have been tres amusant to see her try to backpedal out of that one.
But this was 20 years ago and I was far more mild mannered and inclined to trust people, so I took her at her word and therefore lived in artificial poverty with her and all her critters for a year and change.
Obviously, there is nothing I can do about it now. I don’t even remember her last name and I know she doesn’t live in the apartment we shared any more.
I imagine she is hoarding away somewhere as I type this.
I mean, when I lived with her, she had four cats, three enormous fish tanks full of fishes, a cage of mice (cute but stupid in a very fucked up way), a cage with male rats, a cage with two male hamsters, and my favorite, an enormous aquarium tank that had been turned into a home for the lady rats.
I adore those little lady rats. They were so cute and so industrious and so social. And for the most part, they all got along great.
Every once in a while, you’d hear a few angry squeaks and have to go make sure that nobody was getting mauled.
But for the most part, they lived in a peace and harmony that was almost Smurf-like.
I try to avoid nostalgia, but there are definitely things I miss about those days. Like all the critters, especially, of course, the cats.
I love cats. I grew up in a home with like eight cats. Throughout my lonely childhood I always knew that I could go pet a cat whenever I needed to feel loved.
I miss those kitties.
I also miss how energetic and resourceful I was back then. I ran the local furry community and went to the events I organized, plus I sometimes just went places to hang out with people, or they came to me.
That kind of thing is not part of my life any more. Sigh.
It sucks to get old and sluggish.
Can’t wonder how much more fun my life would have been had I had access to my full resources instead of unknowingly supporting her habit.
These days, just like back then, if something is going to happen, it will be because I make it happen. I am the spark plug. I am the organizer. I am the motive force.
I am the synthesist – the one who brings together disparate parts and unites them into a brand new whole.
I haven’t done that in a long time. The last vestige of it was FRED, our biweekly fan nosh, and that died with the onset of Covid.
And now…. it just seems like too much work.
And I hate that. I don’t want to be some fucking lotus eater who goes through life in a dreamlike state where I am not even really a part of things.
I want to be involved. I want my life to have meaning. I want there to be more to my life than video games and death.
But I will have to get my tired old motor running first.
More after the break.
Oh shit, I’m down here again
Woke up feeling super depressed again. Hoping some food n’ hydration will make me feel at least a little better.
I can feel the tears wanting to come out. I keep trying to let them and/or force them out. But I guess I went back to being emotionally constipated again at some point.
I need more emotional fiber in my diet.
Speaking of my diet, the fact that we are out of fruit and there are no cold cans of pop in the fridge does not help. Normally not that big a deal but in my current emotionally vulnerable state it is far too easy to give in to feelings of being neglected and ignored.
Those feelings are never very far from the surface for me to begin with.
It definitely feels like my emotional constipation has something to do with control. Like at some point, in the interests of that semi-mythical state of control, I locked all my tears and dreams and other tender things away in cold storage and now I can’t bring them back any more.
Now, it always takes something external, something really sad that I see or read or whatnot, to get the waterworks flowing.
And I always feel so much better afterwards. Makes me wish I could have a good long cry on a regular basis instead of being bunged up most of the time.
Control is such a fickle beast. Like, if I am so “in control”, why do I feel so bad?
If I was truly in command of myself, I would lay down and bawl my eyes out until I had gotten all the deferred pain and rage and fear out of my system.
Call it spring cleaning for the soul.
Or, if you’ll pardon me for being obscure and disgusting, emotional emesis.
And who knows, maybe I will find a way to free up my feelings again. But until then, I guess all I can do is do this the hard way, via writing.
I guess at least I get my words out of it.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.