So yesterday I mentioned how tricky it's going to be to tell Carlos the complete reason I'm moving on, and much of that has to do with our history. After a good night's sleep and some Colbert Report reruns to keep my spirits up, I'm ready to take that stroll down memory lane. So put on your walking shoes and an extra pair of sock because this could be a long journey, here we go…
Carlos came into my life in late 1999 when we needed to fine a new roommate. It was down to two candidates. "One who smoked pot, and one who smoked pole," as I liked to say back then. Since one of my roommates, a disgusting beast I'll call Hermit, had routine random drug screening at his job, he was worried that a pot smoker would be too risky to have in the house. And even though they weren't too keen on having two gay roommates making the house hold a 50/50 mix of gay to straight, they decided to go for Carlos. I was still rather fresh out of the closet (Yep, I'm a late bloomer) so I was kind of excited to have someone I could talk to about life in the gay world.
Carlos and I hit it off pretty much right off the bat. He worked for at a copy center while taking classes at the local JC. He worked the closing shift so sometimes he would get home pretty late. I'm a night-owl by nature so I was usually still up when he was getting in. Soon we were having late night conversations and we started becoming friends. I really felt like I had met my soul-mate. Not even a year later, we had decided to join a gym to get in shape and to make all the gay boys beat a path for our door. Unfortunately, I had my sights set on one guy that I should have known would be off limits. That guy, Carlos. In the early summer, after a late night gym visit, I told him there was something I needed to talk about. We pulled over in a quiet neighborhood a few blocks from the house and I proceeded to lay it all out in the open and tell him how I felt. I should have known that was a big mistake as I was pretty quickly shot down. Adding a bit of insult to injury was his comment that, and I'm paraphrasing here, "my friend fall in love with me all the time." Wow. I mean wow. For someone who has so many personal hang ups and low self esteem, he's clearly not lacking any self esteem in the that department.
Things were a bit awkward for a while after that. I think I went almost a week avoiding him, or him avoiding me, or both. Long before the night of me making a fool of myself we had planned to take a vacation together to Disneyland. We still went and it was a lot of fun, but things were clearly now different between us. Where as before he had little problem showing signs of affection (platonic, of course) such as a hug or arm around the shoulder now he avoided physical contact except for an occasional—and usually horribly coordinated—high-five. When I asked him about it, he conceded that he flet a bit uncomfortable given what had happened, but also that he's not a physically affectionate person to begin with. Well that went contrary to how I'd seen him interact with our other friends. Hugging, kisses, and other types of casual physical contact were the norm for everyone to receive but me. His reasoning was that he'd known many of these people for years and that one day, years from now, he'd feel comfortable with me in the same way.
Time marched on. Months flew by and we became even closer friends. Eventually the day came when he moved back home to be with his folks. And we started seeing less and less of each other, but still kept in close contact and hung out as often as we could. We had our good times, we had our rough times, and ever time we made it through it. My feelings for him were not letting up and it became obvious to me that I unless I forced myself to move on, I never would and I'd be miserable for the rest of my lift watching as he moved in and out of relationships. One chilly fall day I asked him to meet because there was something I wanted to talk to him about. We met for coffee and a small bakery. We made small talk as we drank our latttes and nibbled at some pastry. Finally I cut to the chase, which was essentially that I still had feeling for him, and that the only way that I would be able to move on was to live a life without him. The words hung in the air with the smoke from the chimneys of the surrounding neighborhood. When he asked how long I thought it would be for, I think I caught him off guard with my reply of, "Never." That pretty much ended the talk and he left. That night was very rough. As was the following week. Complicating things a bit is that we had several mutual friends and I'm sure made things hard on them as well.
Things were rough without the one person who I felt I could talk about anything with. Weeks later things were starting to feel better and moving on seemed within reach with the support of my friends and coworkers. And then came 9/11 hit and the reality of choosing to lose my best friend seemed unfair and selfish when compared to all those that died in the attacks. Adding to mix of elevated emotions was the fact that one of our shared friends ran into Carlos on the street and "flipped out" because he felt that he was caught in the middle of a feud. Truth is that guy was just a drama queen who wanted attention to be paid to him.
A few months later, I was finally feeling in control of my emotions, that I had gotten to the point where I was moving on. Just in time for the holidays. The holidays have all ways meant family and friends for me so my thoughts began to turn to considering a reconciliation with Carlos. I wasn't sure how that would be received considering that I had said that the break up was a forever deal. I shouldn't have been surprised when I was finally able to contact him that he wasn't very keen on the idea of getting together to talk. But eventually he agreed to meet in early January. The meeting was a bit awkward as it was clear that what had happened had taken an emotional toll on both of us. He warned me that it would take him a long time to feel like he could fully trust me again, which wasn't beyond reason. We decided to take it one step at a time.
Over the next couple seasons, we began to rebuild our friendship, and at times it seemed as though our friendship was even stronger than before. Every once in a while Carlos would play the "you hurt me" card when he was feeling defensive. It was obvious that things may never fully be resolved. That never set well with me—it seemed unfair—but I rationalized that it was part of my penance to pay.
Flashing forward would find me helping him move into the dorm at a nearby university. I would visit often and things were going great. My feelings for him were remaining at bay and I had even started dating a guy, Erik, I met on Yahoo. It almost seemed like Carlos was a little jealous about that. Nothing big, just a hunch. I found it tricky to split my time between Erik and visiting Carlos at school, and Erik wasn't thrilled when I left after our first night together to meet up with Carlos for a perviously arranged breakfast. October 2002 found me at one of the most challenging points in my life. I was in a car accident, my school closed with me being 1 class session away from completing two certificate programs, I was working 2 jobs and hadn't had a day off in more than 10 days, and Erik and I broke up. It was probably for the best. Things improved in early December as I was able to drop of my jobs. Just over a year later I found a nice corporate gig not far from where Carlos was attending school and when I learned that one of his roommates was moving out of their apartment, I moved in. Things were great. A couple years passed.
Then our quality of life at the apartment took a turn for the worse when these young punks moved in above us and made our daily lives miserable. The worst was then flooded our apartment. Twice. We were ready to move and I was finally ready to buy a house. The timing seemed perfect, even though the circumstances weren't. I choose a 3 bedroom townhouse so that all three of us (Carlos, T-Snake, and myself) could relocate together. I had assumed that our living arrangements in the apartment would simply carry over to the house, but that would not be the case. About a year into living in the house Carlos commented that he'd like to, once he established a career for himself, consider buying a place together, or at least get added to the title and pay half of the mortgage. Wow, that was a bit of a shock, but it was also a very reassuring prospect. While the whole soulmates thing had become a thing of the past, I saw him as someone that would also be in my life.
I'm not sure how or why, but since moving into the house, things between myself and Carlos have really started to fall apart. I'm sure some of it can be chalked up to the stresses he faced during his final year of school, and I feel I went above and beyond to be supportive. Maybe that was my mistake and I'm to blame for the problems in our relationship. But I don't think that is to be blamed for the communication problems what we've been having. I feel as though he doesn't want to listen to what I have to say, especially if it's something he doesn't want to hear, but needs to know. He expects me to listen to his day, but I get an uninterested ear when I want to talk about my day. I know I've said it before, but the whole double-standard thing, I'm over it. I don't deserve it. I've earned better than that. And now I want to go out and get what I deserve, a place of my own, away from the burdens of an ungrateful friend.
But I can't tell him that, can i? Before I needed to get away from him because I couldn't get him out of my heart. But now I want to get away from him because I can't stand to be around him at times… and it's more and more often. He doesn't handle feedback like that very well, and given that he has increasingly been turning to pot and alcohol to cope with handle stress (aka: life), I'm worried that it would only get worse before I could be on my own. I feel like telling him would be similar to rejecting him all those years ago, and part of me still feels guilty for hurting him back in 2001. As awful as it sounds I just want to check out of the relationship until he can get his life together and he can learn to treat me with the same support and respect I've given to him. I want to be treated as well as he treats his other friend, or at least I don't want to have to be the person who has to subjected to the brunt of the negativity he spares other people from. Is that an unrealistic expectation? I would love to know, after reading the whole saga from the past few days, what you think. I might even post a survey to help me figure out the best course of short term action.
Alrighty, I really need to get to Trader Joe's before they close. Check back tomorrow for a posting on why I like straight guys. It's not what you think… or is it. Log on to find out.
I have a feeling that I'm going to be facing that for the next 30 days. Just what I needed, more stress. Who would have suspected that work could actually be the silver-lining in all this, the next couple months are going to be very busy so I'll be starting early and staying late at the office. And with the workload ramping up to an even more fever pace with two big projects, I'm going to need all the time I can get to get this place fixed up. It's just me, lonely little me. After all the years of supporting others, all I've got left is myself. I guess it's always just been up to me to support myself, but I just never made myself a priority. Well, now is the time. For once, it's time to be my own priority. It's unfortunate that it had to turn out this way.
Friends, fans, and frenemies (you know who you are) just wanted to let y'all know that I'm going to be away until Monday visiting my family and probably won't be on the interwebs while I'm there. From my last phone call with my mom, this might be a fairly serious visit—of the difficult life decisions variety—so I'll may have some pretty deep stuff to post come Monday night. Make your you get plenty of sugary-sweet stuff in ya before then. :)
Then, right in the middle of our downer discussion, Bette Midler's "Wind Beneath My Wings" starts playing over the restaurant's speaker system. If you remember back to the late 80s you'll remember this song was in the tear-jerking movie "
Ok, let's get the mega-sugary syrupy part over and done with, here's the additional pictures of 
When they came home from dinner T-Snake burst into the house giddy with the (never confirmed) notion that he was going to get a kitten or kittens. For the next 45 minutes there was a lot of back and forth (I'll spare you all the mind numbing and illogical details) and T-Snake was doing everything in his power to manipulate the outcome into his favor of getting a cat. He kept claiming that he's very qualified for taking care of pets, having raised more than any of us. I believe what I see and nothing I've seen him do would indicate he's capable of such a responsibility. I could not in good conscience entrust the tender fragile life of one of these rescued kittens into the care of someone who doesn't even do his share in cleaning his own litter box (aka: bathroom) or bedroom—the same bedroom whose stench still makes be gag when I walk by when the door is open—but was not mentally able at the time to put get that point across without possibly insulting him. OK, I can hear everyone out there saying in unison, "but you fucking own the house, and it's your right to take a stand." And you would be right. To be fair I wouldn't entrust the kitten(s) lives in my own hands right now, either. None of us are realistically able to make that kind of commitment right now. But I digress. 
Carlos found them under my car when he was headed out to the gym. They're adorable but obviously strays. Three different sizes, from smallest to biggest they've already been named. Pixel, the tiniest looks like a feline version of a chihuahua; Widget is the one looking at the camera and was the most timid to start with, but was the most eager to jump out of the box and loves being snuggled; and Spike looks like the leader of the bunch with a quiet strength. Tomorrow we'll be taking them in to Animal Rescue to get them checked out. We'd like to keep them, though I'm not sure how ready, or able, we are to take care of three helpless creatures when its a struggle just to take care of ourselves at times.
