How Many Times Have I Started A New Post?

(Originally March 2 2006)

For the last two months, I've been adjusting to my new job and trying to find my place in the world again. There have been a few bumps along the way, namely provided by My Benefactor. He's a lot more unstable than I'd hoped, and there was one fine night that I was ready to leave...but had nowhere obvious to go. I have other friends who would put me up in an emergency, but I wanted to change my residence permanently.

It was a revisit with my historic struggles with interpersonal relationships. See, you just can't yell and curse at me. You can't get unglued and go for my character. Coming up with all sorts of criticisms and condemnations of me as a person integrally.

My Benefactor also has interpersonal relationship struggles, so if anyone will spill awful things out his mouth with no two thoughts about how he'll make a person feel, it's him. That's why he was eager to invite me into his home. I was an instant friend. Or so he thought.

So here we are, me trying to get a set of wheels under me as soon as possible, and him making sacrifices to help me do that. Unfortunately, I was rushing him and making suggestions that make him uncomfortable. I wanted him to risk just giving me the one car before I legalized it in my name, while he legalized the other that he had already bought, thus eliminating the need to share (which of course meant me driving him 30 miles to work, so I could have it for the day, and then me picking him up after my day was over). He evidently liked the company, but I just wanted to be done with 12 hour days.

So after I pick him up on the day in question, I have to drive him around to accomplish some tasks he needed, and out comes dashing a kid on a bike into the middle of the dark street. Well My Benefactor freaks out, screaming literally, and although I stopped and did not hit the little idiot on the bike, Benefactor's screaming went on and on into abuse. Calls me a terrible driver. Curses a bluestreak. Tells me my judgment is always bad. Tells me I had to be crazy asking him for what I was asking him. Tells me he felt safer driving while he was drunk than driving with me. And this he says after a full day of sobriety, so he has me pull over so he can get a bottle of whatever.

The content of the words I look back nw and see that they were not so bad. The screaming and cursing, however, I cannot describe. I only know that I was a teenager again at that moment, and it wasn't a dry drunk screaming at me, but my bipolar mother or my drunk father. And that's who it always becomes, whenever I'm getting cussed out. I've had at least one ex- tell me that "I'm not your mother" whenever she saw me shutting down, but nothing inside ME knew that. Emotionally, I'm just gone.

Well, days later, I found the guts enough to tell this to my benefactor. This didn't change his mind or anything, but it did stop his abuse cycle, which he had continued into the next day because he mistook my withdrawal and silence for rejection. Why I know his mind hadn't changed? Because he insisted that he hadn't been abusive. Yeah, okay. Cursing someone out isn't abusive. It's fun, actually? I didn't try to convince him. I only defended myself.

And things haven't been the same since. He invites me to hang with him in NYC to see plays. I don't want to go. He invites me to dinner. No thanks, I just ate. He didn't trust me as a driver? I no longer trust him as a friend. I would rather grind broken glass into my eyes than give him another opportunity to catch me out there like that again.

Well, eventually, I got the car legalized in my name and whatnot. He got his own car finally. He goes his way for days and days, and I play City of Heroes and go to Barnes & Nobles. I frankly don't care what happens between Benefactor and me from here on out. It's me alone again that I'm concerned about.

I'm comfortable again when I'm alone. And again, being alone is getting me nowhere.