What Price Freedom?

Whoapants.  I have to work tomorrow!  What is this crazy concept??  Work?  Bah.  I have had 6 consecutive work-free days (including the weekend), and will follow this one measely day up with three more days off (thanks to the Reverend Doctor).  Makes this one isolated day somewhat superfluous, doesn't it?  Like a silly waste of time and energy?

Hey, guess what I've discovered?  A couple things.  One:  Practicing Optimism is made an almost insurmountable task when suffering from a stomach bug and a miserable headcold.

Here's the other thing I discovered:  Eric pretty much has no plans of moving out.  This is not me being pessimistic, or paranoid, or mean-spirited or anything like that.  This is me being underhanded and scrolling through the sent and recieved texts on my husband's phone to see what was up in Eric's life.  Was it shady?  Meh.  A little.  But really?  Get your own goddamned cell-phone if you don't want people knowing your biz, or at least cover your tracks better and delete that shit.

Because Aaron's phone is 2 generations old, it doesn't save the texts in conversation form like mine does, so I sorta had to cobble together info to put together the whole picture, but the picture is a grim one.

Here's the low-down.

Looks like Eric is back in heavy contact with his 'ex', a girl he has railed about and verbally bashed, and foresworn, and vowed never to speak to again.  A girl he insists is a 'fucking psycho' and a 'waste of his time'.  He is back in contact with her and apparently scheming about how he can secure his lodging here indefinitely!

  Now a series of back-and-forths seems to begin after an interrupted marathon phone call, where I'm sure most of this got unleashed. 

    Of course the phone dies while I'm pouring my heart out.  Sorry to unload all this on you.  Don't worry about me, I'll be fine...

He writes, sounding both miserable and pathetic.

She writes back something to the effect of how she wishes she could help more, and asks about the living arrangements.  Now, please keep in mind that I'm doing this all surreptitious-like and RIGHT IN FRONT OF HIM, so I am rushing and scanning and just getting the gist of most of these awful and usually misspelled texties.

So she says, in one of those dangling remainders of a longer text:  ... live there?

To which he replies:  There (sic) landlord doesn't want me here.

This is the catalyst Aaron gave for a certain end date.  Our apartment was not meant for 3 adults and Peter is not pleased.

So this is among my very favorite (and by favorite, i mean, of course, nothing of the kind) responses from the young woman I opened my home to, opened my heart to, and have never said an unkind word about to date, no matter how much or how often Eric has, in this on-again-off-again breakupdance, tried to solicit my empathy and support. 

She writes:  There has to be a way!  You need to talk to your brother.  Get him alone.  It is your only chance!

UMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM!!!!!!????????!!!!!!??????!!!!!!

Whatthefuck?  Oh, it's on now, bitch.  I am so blindingly furious at that one I nearly blow my cover.  But I keep scrolling, trying to siphon a bit more details before I have to leave the phone alone.

In going back a little I see some shit about how she wants him to go to some hospital or something and he talks about how he cries all the time because he misses her sooooo much, wah wah wah.  So I skip that bull and jump to the few most recent.  Well well well.  In addition to pushing him to live offof  his brother and sister-in-law's generosity forever without remorse or scruple, she is also soliciting money from him.

        I found out I need to get new tires before I can drive home and I only have 20 dollars to my name!

So he goes, and this really is a kicker, let me tell you, for someone who is supposed to be saving for an apartment, a cellphone, a car, and whateverthehellelse a grown up needs to be a grownup.

       I should be gettimg my check tomorrow, so i can send you that...

WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAT?  Fuck You.  For Real.  Fuck you and get the fuck out of my home.

At this point my activity looks real suspicious and I need to put the phone down and make my excuses and get the fuck out (aaron was waiting for me downstairs, I'd come back in to use his phone--which he often leaves for eric's use whilst we are out together--to call mine and find it.)  I left, saying I must of left my phone in my pocketbook (which turned out to be true!), and immediately went down, got in the car and began informing Aaron of everything I'd discovered.

I thought he was going to hit the roof when he found out about the money for tires.  "Well, then, I guess we just need to give a definite end-date and that's that."  My husband says calmly.

As ever I express my angst and worry and concern.  It seems like an insurmaountable task, getting together enough scratch to strike out on one's own in a matter of a couple months.  But then, as we talk it through, Aaron helps me see that we have done all that two people with no money can do for a person. 

"We've provided free room, free board whenever he's home, and a perfect opportunity for him to get on his feet.  An opportunity which, I believe he has completely squandered."  And it's true isn't it? 

I am all stressed because I don't want him to have to go to Grandma's (which isn't really grandma's; it is Manic Julie and philandering Joe's, with an unhealthy dose of bat-shit-drug-addled Melissa's and bitchy-beyond-reason Samantha's!).  But Aaron points pout that that guilt I feel should be well exorcised by now.

"He's been with us since August."  He says, no-nonsense.  "We've done our part, and it can no longer be our concern whether or not he's done his." 

"But--"

"No.  To be perfectly honest, I stopped caring about if or how he was going to get his shit together since the new year.  It is well past time for him to be out, and now I just have to determine a date.  I want my apartment back but I don't want to screw ourselves over by picking something ridiculously undoable."

So there it is.  We get home and aaron sifts through his texts.  Many have been deleted.  I have no poker face and would make a terrible spy.  The kid obviously picked up that I was doing espionage and tried, sloppily, to cover his tracks (further evidence that he and his paramour believe they stand a chance in hell of playing my husband against me!).  Aaron said enough remained of the text convo for him to see what I was seeing:  That Eric has no intention of getting out.  None. 

So the plan is, for now, to see if Eric WILL try to talk to him alone, or if that was just a device out of Gina's sociopathic brain (Aaron's opinion, not mine.)

Then, before the end of the weekend if Eric has not approached him, he plans to go to Eric with the termination date, which is still TBD.

What do you guys think?  I am nervous and jumpy and see all kinds of ways this goes south.  I know I gripe and bitch and whine and bemoan, but I do love the kid and WANT him to succeed. Obviously success and prosperity would be IDEAL!!  I just know I'll love him alot more when he is out of this apartment!!!  Right now, these last days off, which should have been a dream come true, have been largely depressing and confining and ass boring, as I never feel like I can truly be myself when he is around-- and boy was he ever around.  Worked, I think, 2 days all week.  When I express concern that that isn't nearly enough hours for someone who's trying to save and move out, the kid shrugs and blames the person making the schedules, and no, he tells me, he has no idea if he'll ever get more days.  'hopefully', he says in a tone that belies the word, 'eventually...'  Well fuck you very much, here's your hat, get the christ out.

So instead of doing all the awesome wonderful fun things I could have done with Aaron, I have had a lazy loafer parked in front of either my tv or my computer for DAYS SOLID.  No fucking joke.  I got so depressed last night that I had some pretty black thoughts, let me tell you.  And woke up this morning feeling grim and hopeless and fragile.  Finding the texts, has, in a way, helped provide that much needed tipping point.  For some time I have had the suspicion about Eric's motives, but Aaron has insisted that 'Nobody WANTS to live like this.  He WANTS to move out... He CAN'T possibly enjoy living in a room with no walls and no door and on the charity of a married couple he's displaced."

And maybe on some level that is true, but I think it is easily outweighed by the free internet, the free tv, the free rides to work, the free meals, the free bed, the free towels, the free refrigerator, the free couch, the free medicine, the free heat, the free electricity, the freedom to do whatever he wants without having to answer to anyone, the free xbox, the freeeveryfuckingthing.

So what are your thoughts?  What would you set as a reasonable end-date?

Much love,  and enjoy your friday,

Beth