Weekend Guilt Trip in American Stories

My dad offered a zinger, early this evening, when he private messaged me on Facebook to lay down a guilt trip about evidently not showing any concern for his problems. I guess he'd been in the hospital. I hadn't known. I don't exactly ride his page. My parents got married when they were 18, split only months later. Within that time, my mother gave birth to me and promptly handed me over to her parents while she got her groove on through early adulthood. My dad was serving in Vietnam at the time. He was eventually discharged after having shot himself in the stomach. He was never a large part of my life, popping up now and then and leaving just as quickly. I mean "quickly". Like within hours. And those times are countable on one hand throughout my childhood. Twice I elected to go spend an extended amount of time with him; once when I was nine, the next after my sophomore year of high school ended. Both times he was all creepy golden for a few hours. Then he turned into some kind of major asshole, telling me I'd forgotten who I was because he lives in in some kind of drug-assisted fantasy land inside his head. His sister has told me that he's good about throwing tantrums when he doesn't get his way and tonight's was probably typical, screaming and stomping his feet when I hadn't posted a "Get well, Dad" comment on his Facebook page, somewhere. I got around to responding to his message, but about six hours later, after I'd napped and gotten up just before midnight, because I'd muttered a slight "Fuck you, Dad" into the ether and allowed today's medication fog to trump his whining. I really didn't have a choice. I'd been running low, so I'd taken it upon myself to ramp the dosages down in ration until I got a refill, which happened but I'm still getting used to the normal dosage. So I elected to rest for a bit until I responded. Which I did. But he pisses me off. He acts like he thinks we're tight and that I owe him something. We don't even really know each other and I don't really want to know him. I only agreed to a reunion with him at the request of his sister and I think she knows I kind of resent it. Though I like her and her family (because they're not a bunch of shitballs), I don't really want to know the rest. This is another "I'm 45" moment, putting my foot down, shouting into Creation that I don't care to have some virtual stranger or strangers put guilt trips on me for wanting to maintain distance. My whole life was about tearing me away from people. Now that I'm a state within my own shoes, this person and that person wants to get together with me and I can't. It's not as simple as being awkward. I just can't be "family" with family members who aren't family with me. That's what friends are for at this point in life. I long ago decreed that my friends are my family and that's how I want it. I don't need to meet some shady dude I've never fucking heard of for the sake of creating some manner of instant family. I don't know that guy. And my mother is infamous for stating I wrecked her life for just having been born. I don't need that, either. So put your guilt trips on me. If they knew there was no money in it, most of them would again disappear. I don't need 'em.

I got the Internet all battened-down. From myself. And hopefully from all the other downloaders in the house who refuse to admit their complicity. With BitTorrenting blocked at the router, maybe that'll do it. I'm just shaking in my shoes, worried that my link to the outside world will be brought down because somebody's shrugged their shoulders and downloaded a Taylor Swift song.

Bob continues to whine on Facebook about not having any friends. Billy's ex-neighbor ex-friend has sent him a few belligerent texts, too, leading me to suspect that the guy hadn't just inexplicably flipped-out as Billy suggests but that there was a deeper reason. Billy does that to people. Gets them to the point of "go fuck yourself" and the romance is history. For example, Bob's not the only one having trouble at work, socializing. Billy was ranting, the other morning, about a new supervisor who's been accusing him of dicking around instead of taking care of his duties. This isn't little-ol' Lovelock, Nevada. Up here, if you're not working out, you're gone and replaced in a fingersnap. See ya, fuck you; next applicant, please! Bob's supervisor has been doing similar to her. Bob complained to Human Resources about it, this past week, and had been sulking all day, today, because the woman didn't invite Jazmin to her daughter's birthday party, this weekend. I'd file that under "You Don't Make Friends By Reporting Them To HR". Pick a side of the fence, Bob.

Bob's problem has always been that she wants everybody to think she's runnin' the joint. She likes to flit around, being seen. Visiting. Taking credit for things that aren't necessarily hers to take credit for. I know this from both her own mouth and from the mouths of former co-workers. And I believe them. I've seen Bob in action. She was getting shit from the hospital in Lovelock for it before relocating. It's one of the reasons she'd wanted to relocate: getting shit. Gawd, Bob -- just buckle down and do your job. It could be worse. Try working where I was working for over two decades.

There's been a urban myth popped up, back in Lovelock, that warns against working at The Emporium. Once known as a place you could enjoy a relatively easy-going job and time working there, it slid from there to a place known for never letting anyone go. Anyone. Then it got a reputation of driving people cuckoo or into bad health. Then people started dying while in its employ. When a well-known junkie whose mother was on the payroll got a job, there, and got her hooks into the place and was never given notice while co-workers gave theirs and took off, when that junkie's friends started hanging about and drugs were rumored to be moving in and out of the place, it's once shining reputation as a go-to place in town slid behind newer establishments. The Emporium only remains because of its prime location at the center of town.

Being away from it for two years, now, I've not been thinking about what it did to me as much as what I'd let myself become while there. I didn't excel as the place's manager. I could only do so much under Pat -- the owner -- it's true. But that's when a person should find it within himself or herself to exceed the bullshit and be above it and I didn't. I sank below it, bobbed at its surface at best. I could've done so much better. Performed so much better. At least it's nice that I can see all this now and let it influence me from this point forward. I'll probably never find myself in the same line of work, again. But I can still take a great lesson away from my years at The Emporium. It can still make me a better leader, a better worker, a better businessperson. A better person.

Jazmin's beginning preschool, this year, tomorrow. Bob's been pretty cagey with me about it. Being the only person home throughout the day, I think it's well within good sense to provide some kind of a timetable as to when the kid'll be gone or not. I might decide to leave the house for whatever purpose, you know, unaware of when I need to be home, babysitting.

Ugh, Bob. I could go another hour about her, right now. Her and Pat. It's soul-sucking, though. I've known a lot of people in my life and never a pair like these two. Bob and my former boss Pat are a lot alike. Both seem to have suffered some kind of esteem-destroying event or events in their lives and went on to make up for it at my expense. Bob's made absolutely no attempt at hiding her contempt for me, growing up. Pat used to routinely hiss about our customers being "demanding" and saw herself as a kind of elementary school principal to them rather than a businesswoman. She absolutely could not allow herself to delegate authority to me, the store's manager, even once on the store floor shouting that the employees older than me didn't have to concern themselves with me because of their ages, so there's that. Another co-worker pulled a pistol on me not once but twice. He went on to replace me after I'd walked off the job. We had people who flat-out refused to work. She wouldn't let me release them in order to find people willing to work. And she'd frequently overturn anything that came out of my office -- not through me but after making it clear to our employees that she was the boss, not me. Which turned me into a useless figurehead who was walked-on and stomped-upon daily. I walked after having had enough, one day. After 21 years at the store since returning back to Nevada from college and 14 years in that position. My predecessor left in about the same manor and for similar reasons, including the factor of ill health that seemed to balloon once Pat's husband died and she took over the business.

Bob runs her life a lot like Pat runs The Emporium: everybody is to know that she's in charge, and anyone else's decisions are made to look stupid or at least unnecessary, although she'll turn around and make those same decisions when it both benefits her to and when it appears they're hers. It's probably one of the reasons why she has trouble at work. She's abrasive and infantile and fake.

I recall pausing in a weekly briefing/debriefing at work with Pat on a first morning of the workweek back from days off to ask her, after having been castigated for something ridiculous, if there was any particular reason my decisions were being struck-down beyond the fact that I'd made them. She looked at me in a manner that was peculiar for her to, a childish "you caught me" manner, and never answered my question. She never told me why my week's decisions had been struck-down. They were decisions in response to issues we were having with some of the employees. You know, as manager, I was not allowed any authority over the employees yet expected to somehow make it all work.

I smile. Exhale. It's all over. I remind myself to not focus on Pat's shortcomings but on mine and my reaction to hers. I can't do anything about her shit. But I can sure as hell do something about mine.

I'm trying to embrace a similar attitude toward Bob. I just walk away. Don't argue. It's easier, now, knowing that I'll be on my own -- hopefully -- at the turn of the year. What happens in this house isn't a reflection on me any more than what Pat's taking advantage of me was beyond understanding that only one person can allow it to happen and it's me. Say "fuck it". And go about my day. When I go -- and long thereafter -- the problems that exist here will exist. They're not about me.

I think about my dad, trying to make me feel like shit for not being on the spot, worrying about him. I'm not the absentee father. I didn't knock out two balls full of semen into my mom's vag and take off. I'm not the one who showed up at random times with some idea that he knew me. Little messages like tonight's aren't about me but him. I told him that I "loved" him because I don't want the freak to have a heart attack over some imaginary 45-year-old son he thinks is still a little boy who didn't show up at his bedside like a loyal son when we really don't even know each other. I don't know how wise that was of me. I just don't want his sister coming down on me because I'd turned my back on him when he reached out. You know, I've only met her once. Last summer. About a month after my tumor was removed. Maybe she is a nice lady. But this thing between her brother and me isn't my doing. Why do people who never wanted a fucking thing to do with you when you were younger always want to wedge themselves into your life when you're older? Why can't they just accept it that they'd thrown you away and leave it there? I've told him that he can't be a "dad" to me. You've thrown it away when you wake up, one day, and realize your invisible kid has grandchildren. Or is old-enough to.

I worry about how things are gonna be between Bob and me. I've always said I prefer to leave a situation with grace. We've been at this spot before. And I was quite happy to go. She was the one left blubbering that she'd never see her brother, again. What I don't understand is what she sees. What she feels. As far as I'm concerned. Who and what am I to her? This imaginary idea of a brother? Like I'm an imaginary idea of a son to our dad? And once I'm in grasp, the squeeze is put on me, to remind me who's in charge of my life?

Even after I left The Emporium, Pat was leaving phone message after phone message, begging me not to let it end that way, asking to meet me on neutral ground to discuss things -- then leaving angry messages as if to bully me. But I wouldn't go back. I'd gone back before. I'd walked away before but was conned into coming back and when I did, it was worse than ever.

There will be no more going back for me. It's time for me to be my person. It's long overdue.