Angels and Asshats

So I'm an asshat.

Before you protest, let me assure you that this is the truth. See, when I was younger, as I've said before, I had a very strong vindictive streak. Now thanks be to God for His taming and continued process of mending that part of me, but it is still pretty strong. Let me tell you about the latest flare-up in this respect.

Morgan met a girl he liked.

Stop, let's set this story up, shall we?

A long time ago.

Who is Morgan? One of my roommates. We met four years ago. He calls me his closest and best friend. Says I'm like the black version of Jesus (lol). Says I inspire good and great things in everyone around me. Says a lot of different things you would think are positive and wonderful and good and endearing.

Awesome.

For that time, we bond. We fight. We make amends. We learn. It's awesome and we're inseparable... until he meets a girl. Mind you, I'm only talking about the second time this has happened. Let's not even talk about the first one; it's just a hot mess. So he meets this girl. Within days of meeting her (it is not my place to speak of the circumstances surrounding it), he's enamored of her. Good, I say... except that he neglects everything else in his life in view of this new thing he's found. His words were, "Everything else is background noise..." My personal favorite quote was, "Sorry, I've been.... distracted..."

They talk every day, all day. Throughout work and the evenings, they text each other. Again, good for them... except that he spends days not speaking to me, the "closest and best friend" with whom he lives. One day, when he wrote me, I commented that he wouldn't have spoken to me if he were bored. He blew up... until I showed him where he actually wrote, "I'm bored...." as the opener to the conversation we were having.

After weeks of this behavior, he asks me why we've not spoken. I explain his daily schedule:

• wake up
• go to work
• come home
• play games until it's time for bed
• go to bed
• occasionally text me or say "we should talk or hang out" before going to bed

Then I explain he's been doing this for the last month or so.

"Oh..."

So after I explain the full gamut of my feeelings - which he says he hears and understands and wants to amend - he takes his computer out of the room and moves downstairs for four days to take virtual shots with his lady friend. Remember the cycle mentioned before now? It's the exact same except he texts me briefly about random things, for a few minutes, then says nothing for hours. Again: gaming and the gf-who-isn't-a-gf-but-he-loves-her-so-nevermind-logic.

Okay, well after I semi-comically suggest installing a dumbwaiter, he says I'm overreacting and that it's only temporary. I repeat he was downstairs for a whole four days with the only break being the changing of his clothes.

Okay, now let's talk about me for a bit.

Meet the asshat.

In the meantime, I decide that, if this is how my friend wants to treat me, I can learn to be happy on my own. It sucks at first, because we did so much of everything together and I tried to include him in everything. Now that option isn't there. I have to think of new ways to handle all of this. I have to wonder about the things I've promised him we'd do. Places we'd go. Movies to watch. TV series like Doctor Who. It all has to be refactored.

So I do this. It gets easier every day and soon I find myself having to consciously think of including him.

Then we have this talk and I hope for more again for the first in a long time letting him know, of course, that I'll not stand for it if he neglects me again.

Four.

Fucking.

Days.

Yeah, I'm a little bit on the vindictive side.

So I think about things to actually hurt him with and I find another friend I trust to keep their mouths shut and I vent and vent and vent. I hate myself because, in spite of everything I vent, I'll never do that shit. I can't bring myself to wound him that severely; mind you, he'll have no shortage of minor wounds to deal with soon enough.

Enter Karma.

So on Valentine's Day, he asks me to help him tie a bowtie. I tell him maybe. I don't want to actually do this because it's for his gf-but-not-gf who he's been neglecting me for. I clean the room and I make a point to be elsewhere and enjoy my night in peace.

He does not communicate with me further that evening. I read a post that the night went badly at midnight. She rushed out on him in the middle of their Skype date.

I crack the fuck up. I recount the story later and I crack up each time I do for the next seven hours. Tell me that it's wrong if you want, but I did it.

After this, she didn't speak for two days. Two days. Actually, from his writing (nevermind the explanation there), it was 60 hours.

What did I do as he sat at home, wanting someone to talk to and hang out with?

I went to the mall, bought myself an outfit, and took friends out for sushi (pictures on instragram). After this, I bought ice cream and hung out with other friends until well into the night. I talked more about my feelings about things and laughed more.

Why am I being such an ass? Because I wasn't hurting alone anymore and because I was hurting less than he was after all he'd done and, more importantly, not done. Because I was happy with choosing to be more than someone's afterthought.

In short, because I'm an asshat... and an angel.

In that time, I took him to work because his foot was hurt (we argued most of that trip because he was being a sarcastic ass and I wasn't having any of it). I drove to the mall to give him a hug to ease his now severely depressed state ("Why isn't she talking to me...?"). I met him at his parent's house to give him a ride home and hang out with his family who had no idea what he was going through. When we were driving home, I added extra miles to the trip so he'd have privacy to vent his emotions.

The next day, I "arranged" a ride home for him from work (assuming that he would ask... he did). I spoke reason to him when he needed to hear it and I tried to remain positive for his sake when speaking to him.

But I'm also an asshat. When he went into another depressive spiral because she wrote back and said she didn't really want to talk right now, he drank himself sick. I didn't prevent that. I didn't try to comfort him then because I refused to be the one that he reached out to for comfort and strength after he ignored the shit out of me for weeks.

But I'm also an angel because I'm doing laundry while he squanders his energy on reading comics, eating (without so much as asking if I were hungry which, yes, I do whenever we're in the same place and I buy food), and watching tv shows. Because I said he could have an IOU on the hug he asked for last night. 

So, yeah, angel and asshat.

Because I am human and I have feelings and emotions and I am through dealing with people that don't respect them when I can enforce that shit with how and when and where I spend my time. I'm a programmer and a project manager, I know how to analyze a situation and stop doing things that don't work and if that includes loving someone, then maybe it does and I need to deal with that, but in the end, it won't be me that has lost and this is why.

If I lose him, I have everyone else that I care for and knows that I love them to give even more love to because I'm not wasting it on him.

If he loses me through his neglect, the way he's lost so many before me, then if this girl thing doesn't work out, he'll have nothing.

Thing is, he's too blind to notice even when the writing is blazing on the wall and I've directly told him so. I pray that he learns before I'm gone, because if he learns after, I won't be there to know.