Lessons Learned
If I could set my blog posts to different moods, then the previous four or five were journalistic blow-by-blow battle reports. They were adrenaline-pumped records, stories even, of whatever came to mind while I was still excited, shocked, and contemplative simultaneously. If those entries fit the profile of a really horrible drama movie, then this one's probably a documentary. Not so much in the way that I want to document more events externally, but more in the way that I have noticed some more internal changes in myself. Reading back on those entries this week was like reliving the panic that I went through every day for nearly three weeks. There’s this little image in my mind of me running with a football on a field, trying to dodge past an entire team comprised of that evil thing that lived in my house. But that’s that with that. Now, it’s time for me to grab a smoking jacket, find a big, fat, plush La-Z-Boy and light up a fine Cuban cigar while I straighten out my beard, tap on my bald head, and make a deep, throaty thinking sound. If the past five entries were an event log, then this is a… whatever you want to take it for. But if you’re here for the action, drama, comedy, romance, life, death, blood, guts, gore, and more from the previous entries about the Evil Eric, you’re in the wrong place. I promise that this is going to be a lot more boring than the previous posts. Props to anyone who stays awake the whole way through or reads this all in one sitting.
I wouldn’t go so far as to compare that horrible subletter comprised a saga or an epic chapter in my life, but it did feel like the events played out that way. That had to be the roughest three weeks I’d ever experienced, and I wouldn’t wish it upon anyone else. I find myself much more paranoid walking into my own neighborhood, watching at the back of my mind just in case he pops up around a corner or something with a weapon in hand. I should know better that he’s out of my life for good, physically, and that should be enough. But it’s only been three days. Three days of peace and quiet. Peace of mind at long last, after three tormenting weeks sleeping with my own fucking bedroom door locked. I've only just started leaving the door unlocked in my sleep, but I've still had trouble sleeping. To be honest, I think those three weeks I've spent sleeping lightly have probably developed into a habit of detrimental sleep patterns. I tried to sleep only after I was sure that he was asleep. I would turn off my lights at 11 so he wouldn't knock on my door. I kept my knife's holster unlatched at all times in the house, and at all times around my own neighborhood. At some point, and this was after he found Tom, I even learned to hold my keys like I would my knife when I went in and out of my house. I was the most high-strung, fucking paranoid kid on the block. If not for going home over the weekend, I was actually worried that I might develop Eric's problems, being unaware of the complete characteristics of paranoid schizophrenia. Despite Eric's call saying that he moved into a new place for good, I still didn't trust my own front door. Before I entered, I drew the longest blade on my knife, gripped it like there was a bear on the other side of the door, and threw that sucker open. Dark, empty, quiet. What else did I expect? The fucking parasite said he'd moved out. But I couldn't take any chances at the time. He could've been sitting around a corner with a twelve-pack of Millers of Bud Lights, or whatever the fuck he left on the table for me to clean up, just waiting to follow through with the voices in his head that have terrified us for the past weeks. Yes, these were my actual thoughts when I entered my own house on Monday night, on the 5th of July. I'd been tipped off by Tom before that Eric had a habit of sitting in the dark with a twelve-pack of whatever beer he could grab to drink his money away. I still can't believe it. I walked into my house ready for a fight. The worst part? I spent the next ten minutes checking every corner of my own house, bottom and top floors, and every room, just to make sure the place was "secure" and "safe" for me to go back into before I put away my knife. TEN MINUTES! I never walked into a room without first hitting the lights, which sounds like a rational thing to do, except for the fact that it was backed by irrational fears. If his game was making me paranoid, he scored a few points there. It took another five minutes before I finally went out and brought my luggage and backpack back into the house. I was saving the great cleansing of the evil bastard's thick presence for the next day. Oh, and why did I end up coming into the house alone in the dark? Tom was at his fiance's, Ted was out of town for yet another "some reason" reason, Roman had moved out, and Tina was working on a presentation at her classmate's place. Lovely scenario. Leave a paranoid knife-wielding Asian guy to enter a dark house alone with no witnesses to catch the potential chance for said guy to claim self-defense. Hm.
The part that stings the most is that I have this room all to myself right now. He scared Roman off, and I want him to pay for it (in money). He literally made Roman feel threatened enough to pay for a new place to stay. I came back to find my room half empty. There was my half, which was relatively untouched, but I took everything I had and laundered everything before I went to bed. No way was I going to trust my room lying open like that with a psychosis patient in the house. Then there was the other half. Bed sheets: gone. Blanket: gone. Desktop: empty. Bookshelf: empty. Closet: empty. Nightstand: empty. Chair: no ass-groove. Roman had clearly been gone for at least a day. Despite the initial joy I felt about Eric leaving the house, it felt like a pyrrhic victory at best since we lost Roman.
Well, that first night, I was planning on sleeping with the door locked, until Tina came home right as I was putting my luggage back into my room. I didn't know who walked through the front door then, so I called out, "Hello?" to make sure it wasn't Eric. She came upstairs with her own luggage, which said to me that she stayed out until I said Eric was gone for good. For some reason, having another person in the house that wasn't evil brought me the peace of mind I needed to finally RELAX. Despite talking to Tina about how much better the house felt, I felt weak. Weak in the sense that I was still a little afraid of her wrath, or of pissing Tom off somehow with his infinite patience. I've also found that my fear of physical attack has extended outside of the townhouse and onto my friends in UCSD. I've become more edgy and impatient, and I have noticed some new twitches... tweaks, whatever works. Makes me look like that fucking tweaker. The last three weeks have also made me EXTREMELY irritable, and I found that the only escape I really had from that irritability was going hiking, when my phone didn't work on the barrier-shaped mountain. I'd been having stress-induced migraines for about a week or two, with the obvious cause being dealing with that THING calling itself a human being. The wolf, Willow, sealed the deal. I felt strong being around her, like there was some sort of human-pet bond and I was her master rather than the man who had that special license holding her metal chain. I guess you could say it was being jumped on by a wolf that gave me the idea to go into my house ready for confrontation. That, or paranoid delusions. I reckon the latter. Now, if I felt that strength and willpower around a wolf, I wonder what would've happened if it was a bear.
The rest of the pyrrhic victory is strictly psychological. When I first met the gentle giant Tom, I felt a wave of calm literally wash over me, as if my body was telling me that he was some sort of leader for a positive force, and lo and behold, he turned out to be an ordained minister. That sense of calm didn't last for some reason. While I was purging the house of Eric's filth--bottles, caps, and rotten, half-eaten food belonging to the rest of us--I got phone calls from various friends to go out to dinner. All seemed fine until Tom came home, and for some reason, I found myself fearing him for... for whatever reason. I know I shouldn't have, and there wasn't any real reason to be afraid of Tom. We were on the same side with the whole Eric fiasco. We both cracked nerdy humorous comments whenever we had some down time and ran into each other around the house. I couldn't help it though. This is where I think Eric's influence kicked in. He had successfully implanted the corrupt seeds of fear in the human race into my mind for all the horror it is capable of. While my rational mind was telling me these past two days that Tom was a friend, my id, I guess it would be called at this point, was saying "tread lightly". Why? Just plain weird. Frankly I just wish he'd stop waxing Biblical to me, saying that "First you lived with a demon, and then he called a minister. That's probably God at work right there." Cute story, Tom.
Part of it may be the fact that Tina is still, at least in my book, "pissed off Italian chick". I screwed up with the internet, and whenever I find it going down, I also find myself wondering if she's going to chew me out. Doubtless all of it is really Eric's residual influence on me, and psychologists say it takes about sixty days to form a habit. But it hasn't been sixty days, so maybe living with a fucked-in-the-head leech hits faster than that. The habit-forming curve is pretty flexible, after all.
But for all the trouble Eric gave the house, there's still one thing about him that has to be taken into consideration, and that is the fact that he is mentally ill. It was only difficult to deal with him because nobody in the house had that kind of experience before. Well, lack of experience coupled with the fact that he had threatened to "KNOCK" all our "FUCKING ASS"es "OUT" and that he's "NOT AFRAID OF JAIL" since he's "BEEN THERE" and "GOT RIGHT BACK OUT" of it. My number one priorities right now are school and studying for the LSAT through my books (Barron's and Kaplan), but somewhere in the back of my mind, I still wonder how we could've dealt with Eric in other ways. Most of these ways include catching him ahead of time as a paranoid schizophrenic and kicking him out earlier. Only one involves actually putting up with him and trying to find him help in the San Diego area. Now that my source of fear and irrationality is out of the picture, I've been thinking a lot more clearly. Right now, I'm wondering if I should track him down and warn the person he's living with about his dangerous habit of mixing Seroquel with alcohol. Regardless of the plan, the trouble lies in execution. As he is mostly unpredictable, it's pretty damn hard to figure out which set of actions to take. He was able to show us just how hard it was to track an irrational mind. And as much as I say, "I'm just glad he's out of my life," I've actually noticed that deep down, I'm not as glad as that image I put up on the surface. I'm a little worried--not that I might gradually turn paranoid schizophrenic or develop some other psychological disorders. I'm a little worried that this set of events will turn me into someone so focused on protecting himself that he flat out loses the ability to turn his positive energies on, and instead turns inwardly all that energy that he wanted to use to protect the people around him. I guess I'm worried that I might soon shut people out, but since I can't bring myself to say that I "am" and instead just said "guess", maybe it's not such a big deal after all.
Still, there were times before where I said I'd hardened my heart. I can't even remember those events anymore without looking back on my own blogs. Maybe, hopefully, someday this whole subletter chapter of my life will remain a faint memory, and I'll simply remember it as "that time in college when I got screwed by a subleaser". But as of now, I'm more cautious than ever about the people I keep in my life. The only good thing I can take from the last three weeks is that I've never appreciated my friends and family more than now. And I suppose that with this entry, I'm sealing off a lesson-heavy chapter of my life into a vault that I'll only open for the curious observer.
I wouldn’t go so far as to compare that horrible subletter comprised a saga or an epic chapter in my life, but it did feel like the events played out that way. That had to be the roughest three weeks I’d ever experienced, and I wouldn’t wish it upon anyone else. I find myself much more paranoid walking into my own neighborhood, watching at the back of my mind just in case he pops up around a corner or something with a weapon in hand. I should know better that he’s out of my life for good, physically, and that should be enough. But it’s only been three days. Three days of peace and quiet. Peace of mind at long last, after three tormenting weeks sleeping with my own fucking bedroom door locked. I've only just started leaving the door unlocked in my sleep, but I've still had trouble sleeping. To be honest, I think those three weeks I've spent sleeping lightly have probably developed into a habit of detrimental sleep patterns. I tried to sleep only after I was sure that he was asleep. I would turn off my lights at 11 so he wouldn't knock on my door. I kept my knife's holster unlatched at all times in the house, and at all times around my own neighborhood. At some point, and this was after he found Tom, I even learned to hold my keys like I would my knife when I went in and out of my house. I was the most high-strung, fucking paranoid kid on the block. If not for going home over the weekend, I was actually worried that I might develop Eric's problems, being unaware of the complete characteristics of paranoid schizophrenia. Despite Eric's call saying that he moved into a new place for good, I still didn't trust my own front door. Before I entered, I drew the longest blade on my knife, gripped it like there was a bear on the other side of the door, and threw that sucker open. Dark, empty, quiet. What else did I expect? The fucking parasite said he'd moved out. But I couldn't take any chances at the time. He could've been sitting around a corner with a twelve-pack of Millers of Bud Lights, or whatever the fuck he left on the table for me to clean up, just waiting to follow through with the voices in his head that have terrified us for the past weeks. Yes, these were my actual thoughts when I entered my own house on Monday night, on the 5th of July. I'd been tipped off by Tom before that Eric had a habit of sitting in the dark with a twelve-pack of whatever beer he could grab to drink his money away. I still can't believe it. I walked into my house ready for a fight. The worst part? I spent the next ten minutes checking every corner of my own house, bottom and top floors, and every room, just to make sure the place was "secure" and "safe" for me to go back into before I put away my knife. TEN MINUTES! I never walked into a room without first hitting the lights, which sounds like a rational thing to do, except for the fact that it was backed by irrational fears. If his game was making me paranoid, he scored a few points there. It took another five minutes before I finally went out and brought my luggage and backpack back into the house. I was saving the great cleansing of the evil bastard's thick presence for the next day. Oh, and why did I end up coming into the house alone in the dark? Tom was at his fiance's, Ted was out of town for yet another "some reason" reason, Roman had moved out, and Tina was working on a presentation at her classmate's place. Lovely scenario. Leave a paranoid knife-wielding Asian guy to enter a dark house alone with no witnesses to catch the potential chance for said guy to claim self-defense. Hm.
The part that stings the most is that I have this room all to myself right now. He scared Roman off, and I want him to pay for it (in money). He literally made Roman feel threatened enough to pay for a new place to stay. I came back to find my room half empty. There was my half, which was relatively untouched, but I took everything I had and laundered everything before I went to bed. No way was I going to trust my room lying open like that with a psychosis patient in the house. Then there was the other half. Bed sheets: gone. Blanket: gone. Desktop: empty. Bookshelf: empty. Closet: empty. Nightstand: empty. Chair: no ass-groove. Roman had clearly been gone for at least a day. Despite the initial joy I felt about Eric leaving the house, it felt like a pyrrhic victory at best since we lost Roman.
Well, that first night, I was planning on sleeping with the door locked, until Tina came home right as I was putting my luggage back into my room. I didn't know who walked through the front door then, so I called out, "Hello?" to make sure it wasn't Eric. She came upstairs with her own luggage, which said to me that she stayed out until I said Eric was gone for good. For some reason, having another person in the house that wasn't evil brought me the peace of mind I needed to finally RELAX. Despite talking to Tina about how much better the house felt, I felt weak. Weak in the sense that I was still a little afraid of her wrath, or of pissing Tom off somehow with his infinite patience. I've also found that my fear of physical attack has extended outside of the townhouse and onto my friends in UCSD. I've become more edgy and impatient, and I have noticed some new twitches... tweaks, whatever works. Makes me look like that fucking tweaker. The last three weeks have also made me EXTREMELY irritable, and I found that the only escape I really had from that irritability was going hiking, when my phone didn't work on the barrier-shaped mountain. I'd been having stress-induced migraines for about a week or two, with the obvious cause being dealing with that THING calling itself a human being. The wolf, Willow, sealed the deal. I felt strong being around her, like there was some sort of human-pet bond and I was her master rather than the man who had that special license holding her metal chain. I guess you could say it was being jumped on by a wolf that gave me the idea to go into my house ready for confrontation. That, or paranoid delusions. I reckon the latter. Now, if I felt that strength and willpower around a wolf, I wonder what would've happened if it was a bear.
The rest of the pyrrhic victory is strictly psychological. When I first met the gentle giant Tom, I felt a wave of calm literally wash over me, as if my body was telling me that he was some sort of leader for a positive force, and lo and behold, he turned out to be an ordained minister. That sense of calm didn't last for some reason. While I was purging the house of Eric's filth--bottles, caps, and rotten, half-eaten food belonging to the rest of us--I got phone calls from various friends to go out to dinner. All seemed fine until Tom came home, and for some reason, I found myself fearing him for... for whatever reason. I know I shouldn't have, and there wasn't any real reason to be afraid of Tom. We were on the same side with the whole Eric fiasco. We both cracked nerdy humorous comments whenever we had some down time and ran into each other around the house. I couldn't help it though. This is where I think Eric's influence kicked in. He had successfully implanted the corrupt seeds of fear in the human race into my mind for all the horror it is capable of. While my rational mind was telling me these past two days that Tom was a friend, my id, I guess it would be called at this point, was saying "tread lightly". Why? Just plain weird. Frankly I just wish he'd stop waxing Biblical to me, saying that "First you lived with a demon, and then he called a minister. That's probably God at work right there." Cute story, Tom.
Part of it may be the fact that Tina is still, at least in my book, "pissed off Italian chick". I screwed up with the internet, and whenever I find it going down, I also find myself wondering if she's going to chew me out. Doubtless all of it is really Eric's residual influence on me, and psychologists say it takes about sixty days to form a habit. But it hasn't been sixty days, so maybe living with a fucked-in-the-head leech hits faster than that. The habit-forming curve is pretty flexible, after all.
But for all the trouble Eric gave the house, there's still one thing about him that has to be taken into consideration, and that is the fact that he is mentally ill. It was only difficult to deal with him because nobody in the house had that kind of experience before. Well, lack of experience coupled with the fact that he had threatened to "KNOCK" all our "FUCKING ASS"es "OUT" and that he's "NOT AFRAID OF JAIL" since he's "BEEN THERE" and "GOT RIGHT BACK OUT" of it. My number one priorities right now are school and studying for the LSAT through my books (Barron's and Kaplan), but somewhere in the back of my mind, I still wonder how we could've dealt with Eric in other ways. Most of these ways include catching him ahead of time as a paranoid schizophrenic and kicking him out earlier. Only one involves actually putting up with him and trying to find him help in the San Diego area. Now that my source of fear and irrationality is out of the picture, I've been thinking a lot more clearly. Right now, I'm wondering if I should track him down and warn the person he's living with about his dangerous habit of mixing Seroquel with alcohol. Regardless of the plan, the trouble lies in execution. As he is mostly unpredictable, it's pretty damn hard to figure out which set of actions to take. He was able to show us just how hard it was to track an irrational mind. And as much as I say, "I'm just glad he's out of my life," I've actually noticed that deep down, I'm not as glad as that image I put up on the surface. I'm a little worried--not that I might gradually turn paranoid schizophrenic or develop some other psychological disorders. I'm a little worried that this set of events will turn me into someone so focused on protecting himself that he flat out loses the ability to turn his positive energies on, and instead turns inwardly all that energy that he wanted to use to protect the people around him. I guess I'm worried that I might soon shut people out, but since I can't bring myself to say that I "am" and instead just said "guess", maybe it's not such a big deal after all.
Still, there were times before where I said I'd hardened my heart. I can't even remember those events anymore without looking back on my own blogs. Maybe, hopefully, someday this whole subletter chapter of my life will remain a faint memory, and I'll simply remember it as "that time in college when I got screwed by a subleaser". But as of now, I'm more cautious than ever about the people I keep in my life. The only good thing I can take from the last three weeks is that I've never appreciated my friends and family more than now. And I suppose that with this entry, I'm sealing off a lesson-heavy chapter of my life into a vault that I'll only open for the curious observer.