Emo Emo everywhere and now a chance to think.
I suppose i should start at the beginning because, traditionally, that's where all stories start (unless you're george lucas.. cause then chapter four is where you want to go)
Those who have known me well know john. he's the abbott to my costello and sometimes i'm the penn to his teller. he's been my friend for over 20 years and i've enjoyed it most of the time.
there have been times where we've had disagreements but nothing too extreme... times where he's done stuff that i'm not too fond o and i've done stuff that he's not really gotten behind... but we've always put the frienship first. i hope on this new thing we can do that again. this is kinda the biggie.
as any good tale does.. i suppose this starts with a girl. i can use her real name as i'm sure that this blog is only going to be read by one mutual party who knows her. i suppose this all starts with Lisa.
Lisa was the first really big love of john's life. people joke about someone falling into a girl never to be seen again and that was john with lisa. It SEEMED like the perfect fit. lisa looked to be as smitten with john as he was with her and it all looked good and that john was happy for what may have been the first time in his life.
myself, i had found MY soulmate in patsy and, with the courting and wedding and then moving into the house and the ongoing issues with mom at the time.. i didn't really meet up with john enough to really get a gauge on the situation much bast what i saw on the "things i observed when i was visiting" level
sure.. lisa was not a homemaker and tended to be a little loud and opinionated but john had his faults as well and if she can live with his then he certainly can live with hers.. as long as he was happy and for what i could see at the time.. he was.
then in the summer of 2007.. it all went right down the crapper.
John had been suffering from panic attacks and physical issues that had resulted in his release from his employment at his job and Lisa had done really nothing upon moving in with john outside of just "be". this had resulted in john feeling like he had to take the weight of keeping the house running as it was on himself without help and that lisa has just been along for the ride up to this point.
and then one day, john just went for a walk. he left his cell phone, his glasses, told lisa she can have it all, and went for a walk.
he walked for 16 hours whils Cary, Myself, and others went looking for him. he finally ended up at my door looking more tired then i'd ever seen anyone before. there he stayed for a month while Patsy, myself and a group of friends put him back together again.
little did i know it wasn't a lasting fix. he was broken and there was no way he was going to get better after just laying low for a month at my house.
so we sent him home to get his life in order and,with Lisa out of the picture, it looked like he was getting there. he seemed more relaxed, we hung out a bit more, and (using connections from another friend at the time) we had even managed to secure him a position at another company. all was looking up.
apperantly the damage was more severe then we thought as the other job didn't last 6 months and, due to health reasons, john was let go from that position as well.
This is where (as they say on "criminal minds") he started to devolve.
he had gotten on E.I and that and the rent from a boarder was paying his rent and supplying a modicum of food on the table but he had started on a downward spiral of depression that led him to playing video games and reading all day or watching television sometimes not getting dressed for the entire day.
i had made a visit sometime early last year and discovered how bad things had gotten. he had recieved a visit from the landlord and was served eviction papers. i had attempted to help establish some semblance of order and help in the form of hopefully getting him motivated to go to social services to help stave off his eviction but it he was too far into his depression to really take independant action at this point.
sadly he didn't even let his roommate know they were being evicted until two days before the date OF eviction. this was a monumentally bad call and i told him so.
Eviction came and went and john came to stay with Patsy and I in the back room of our house. I was glad to have him here because i had grandiose plans of helping him get back on his feet and get back to the john i used to know.
someone once said that "plans never survive first contact with the opposition". how right he was.
John had moved in with us and, for the first few months, things were what they were. He had been on E.I until that ran out. once that ran out (after pressing him on revealing this info a month after the fact,we had gotten him on social assistance. this wasn't an easy task as getting him to the office and getting the paperwork filed was like pulling teeth. he had delayed filling out the paperwork until i sat and made him do it and then cabbed him TO the social services office on my way to work to set up the initial appointment.
This ordeal was a large red flag to his mental state and so, on one of my many visits to my family doctor and with my wife patsy urging him on as well, i managed to persuade my family doctor to make an exception to his "no new patients" rule and take john on as a patient in the hopes that my doctor would be able to diagnose nd start to treat the physical and mental issues that john was suffering.
unfortunatly doctors can only help as long as you let them and john went to the doctor a few times and then stopped going altogether. i had reminded him a few times to go see the doctor for follow up treatment but it was never acted on.
and so time went on and john had gotten into the same habits here that he had gotten into at his place. cleanliness took a nosedive, general helpfulness was nonexistant and cartoon network and family channel became regular staples in a john day. it seemed like the less he had to think the happier he was.
now.. were he living on his own or in the basement, that would be what it is. he IS a grown adult and was paying his room and board.. BUT as he was living upstairs with two grown adults.. you can see how cleaning up messy dishes and having to be subjected to "super hero squad", "the suite life of zack and cody", "wizards of waverly place","sonny with a chance" and a seemingly neverending bombardment of bad old movies day in and day out for roughly 14 hours a day (no exaggeration) can become a little grating after a while.
but... that too was tolerable. we knew we were going to get him downstairs eventually as i was working up the courage to ask my nephew torin (the current occupent of the basement) to move out to make room for him.
and then came the Marshall incident... and with it.. the last straw.
Earlier that year patsy had gotten a puppy for her birthday named marshall. she had wanted to try owning a pet prior to owning another guide dog as she had troubles with the last one. so we went to the pound and got little Marshall.
Marshall was a handful. there was never any denying that, he would bark all the time when patsy wasn't around and was very much a rambunctious dog needing a lot of energy to play and liked to play bite.. as some dogs do. we had trained most of the more grody behaviours out of him and although things were tense sometimes.. i think with a little work, we probably could have gotten marshall to the stage where he would have made a good pet.
i fail to remember what the stressor was. where the big push had come from.. but john had always looked at marshall as something to dominate. as loud as the dog was.. he had to be louder. there was no talking to the dog or choke chain.. yelling at the dog was johns way of keeping him in line.
i think that marshall must have tried to take a nip at him as marshall would do that from time to time to see if he can get our attention as any attention is good attention regardless;
the fight was on. john had screamed at marshall which prompted marshall to bark and jump at john. i had heard the commotion and came out to find john screaming at marshall. i reined marshall in and john had taken a fireplace log and brandished it at the dog half threateningly.
i later came out to give john shit as disiplining the dog was not his responsibility and certainly wasn't going to become so as long as he thought threatening it with blunt objects or screaming at it was going to be his tools of choice.
he told me something then i'd never forgotten. "the only way i can deal with marshall is to have either complete non involvement or to get his respect thru fear."
what... the... fuck?????
i promptly told him that if that was going to be his additude, then he'd damn well better find a third way cause he had no choice but to cohabitate with the dog and we wern't about to let him go ahead with the "better living thru fear" idea.
he opted for the "as close to non interaction as i can get" approach. we tried that for a few months but the constant strain of keeping the dog away from john and other factors led us to sending marshall downstairs to live with torin as torin had always wanted a dog, this would have kept marshall out of johns airspace and we would still be able to see marshall from time to time.
the damage to patsy's emotions was done however and i was told that, if patsy was to continue to stay, something had to be done with john. she preferred eviction but i was able to talk her into giving me 3 months to try and get john on the right path again.
so at the end of febuary john was presented with an ultimatum.. get your shit together, get some professional help with your mental issues.. or don't bother paying for june's rent cause you won't need to. i later revised this to include that i want at least 2 visits to a psycologist or something by may 15th.. timing it so that if it wasn't done... i'd be able to give him his months notice without breaking the deal.
you can lead a horse to water.. give him every oppertunity including a canteen to drink out of.. but you can't make him drink.
The next three months were the most frustrating i've ever had. every day the same thing. he'd get up. he'd sludge out to the couch. he'd sit down, sometimes dressed sometimes not, and he'd watch t.v.
i'd remind him of our arrangement and i'd offer help but he'd just say something smartassed when he'd say anything at all and back to the t.v he'd go.
i'd try to talk with him on this to get him motivated but still nothing.
finally one day about a month and a half ago.. with 2 weeks left to do ANYTHING to show he meant to help himself.. i blew up at him. for what would probably be the first time in our friendship i yelled and screamed and said that i quit. i'm done trying to help someone who won't help himself and that he's on his own.
he vanished or the weekend after that and returned sunday after spending the night at his mom's. i was hoping that this would have driven home how important this was to me that he get help and maybe motivate him into getting on it.
not so much... no.
finally we couldn't put it off much longer.. on may first we gave him his thirty day notice to vacate the premises. we set this as a deadline and we were going to stick to it as i had given my word to patsy that this was what we were going to do.
i wish i could say that THIS finally acted as impetus but sadly no. all this did was prompt john to get in as much batman the animated series and superman the animated series and family channel as he possibly could until the end. myself.. i had given up and started the task of emotionally distancing myself from the situation as best i can. pulling away from john so that it won't hurt so much when the time came that he had to move out.
the one time we did chink the armor.. he mentioned that he was tired of being the responsible one.. the grown up. all i can think of is you don't really have a choice.
so now we sit on the eve of john's moving out and i'm writing the story down. have we reached the end or just the end of this chapter??? i don't know.
i know that i didn't want things to go down this way.. but then i never do. i didn't with gerard.. i didn't with dennis.. i didn't with grant.. and i sure as hell didn't want it to go down this way with john.
and i know that tonight and probably for a long time after i'm going to be wondering if i did the right thing.
i know this falls under the catagory of tough love.. and i DO love him like a brother and that it really boils down to dealing with john or losing patsy.. but i feel i gave john every oppertunity and was unable to help him in the end.
it's time his real family step up and we'll see if he listens to them any better.
i just know that i still feel like shit over it... and probably will for a long time.
Those who have known me well know john. he's the abbott to my costello and sometimes i'm the penn to his teller. he's been my friend for over 20 years and i've enjoyed it most of the time.
there have been times where we've had disagreements but nothing too extreme... times where he's done stuff that i'm not too fond o and i've done stuff that he's not really gotten behind... but we've always put the frienship first. i hope on this new thing we can do that again. this is kinda the biggie.
as any good tale does.. i suppose this starts with a girl. i can use her real name as i'm sure that this blog is only going to be read by one mutual party who knows her. i suppose this all starts with Lisa.
Lisa was the first really big love of john's life. people joke about someone falling into a girl never to be seen again and that was john with lisa. It SEEMED like the perfect fit. lisa looked to be as smitten with john as he was with her and it all looked good and that john was happy for what may have been the first time in his life.
myself, i had found MY soulmate in patsy and, with the courting and wedding and then moving into the house and the ongoing issues with mom at the time.. i didn't really meet up with john enough to really get a gauge on the situation much bast what i saw on the "things i observed when i was visiting" level
sure.. lisa was not a homemaker and tended to be a little loud and opinionated but john had his faults as well and if she can live with his then he certainly can live with hers.. as long as he was happy and for what i could see at the time.. he was.
then in the summer of 2007.. it all went right down the crapper.
John had been suffering from panic attacks and physical issues that had resulted in his release from his employment at his job and Lisa had done really nothing upon moving in with john outside of just "be". this had resulted in john feeling like he had to take the weight of keeping the house running as it was on himself without help and that lisa has just been along for the ride up to this point.
and then one day, john just went for a walk. he left his cell phone, his glasses, told lisa she can have it all, and went for a walk.
he walked for 16 hours whils Cary, Myself, and others went looking for him. he finally ended up at my door looking more tired then i'd ever seen anyone before. there he stayed for a month while Patsy, myself and a group of friends put him back together again.
little did i know it wasn't a lasting fix. he was broken and there was no way he was going to get better after just laying low for a month at my house.
so we sent him home to get his life in order and,with Lisa out of the picture, it looked like he was getting there. he seemed more relaxed, we hung out a bit more, and (using connections from another friend at the time) we had even managed to secure him a position at another company. all was looking up.
apperantly the damage was more severe then we thought as the other job didn't last 6 months and, due to health reasons, john was let go from that position as well.
This is where (as they say on "criminal minds") he started to devolve.
he had gotten on E.I and that and the rent from a boarder was paying his rent and supplying a modicum of food on the table but he had started on a downward spiral of depression that led him to playing video games and reading all day or watching television sometimes not getting dressed for the entire day.
i had made a visit sometime early last year and discovered how bad things had gotten. he had recieved a visit from the landlord and was served eviction papers. i had attempted to help establish some semblance of order and help in the form of hopefully getting him motivated to go to social services to help stave off his eviction but it he was too far into his depression to really take independant action at this point.
sadly he didn't even let his roommate know they were being evicted until two days before the date OF eviction. this was a monumentally bad call and i told him so.
Eviction came and went and john came to stay with Patsy and I in the back room of our house. I was glad to have him here because i had grandiose plans of helping him get back on his feet and get back to the john i used to know.
someone once said that "plans never survive first contact with the opposition". how right he was.
John had moved in with us and, for the first few months, things were what they were. He had been on E.I until that ran out. once that ran out (after pressing him on revealing this info a month after the fact,we had gotten him on social assistance. this wasn't an easy task as getting him to the office and getting the paperwork filed was like pulling teeth. he had delayed filling out the paperwork until i sat and made him do it and then cabbed him TO the social services office on my way to work to set up the initial appointment.
This ordeal was a large red flag to his mental state and so, on one of my many visits to my family doctor and with my wife patsy urging him on as well, i managed to persuade my family doctor to make an exception to his "no new patients" rule and take john on as a patient in the hopes that my doctor would be able to diagnose nd start to treat the physical and mental issues that john was suffering.
unfortunatly doctors can only help as long as you let them and john went to the doctor a few times and then stopped going altogether. i had reminded him a few times to go see the doctor for follow up treatment but it was never acted on.
and so time went on and john had gotten into the same habits here that he had gotten into at his place. cleanliness took a nosedive, general helpfulness was nonexistant and cartoon network and family channel became regular staples in a john day. it seemed like the less he had to think the happier he was.
now.. were he living on his own or in the basement, that would be what it is. he IS a grown adult and was paying his room and board.. BUT as he was living upstairs with two grown adults.. you can see how cleaning up messy dishes and having to be subjected to "super hero squad", "the suite life of zack and cody", "wizards of waverly place","sonny with a chance" and a seemingly neverending bombardment of bad old movies day in and day out for roughly 14 hours a day (no exaggeration) can become a little grating after a while.
but... that too was tolerable. we knew we were going to get him downstairs eventually as i was working up the courage to ask my nephew torin (the current occupent of the basement) to move out to make room for him.
and then came the Marshall incident... and with it.. the last straw.
Earlier that year patsy had gotten a puppy for her birthday named marshall. she had wanted to try owning a pet prior to owning another guide dog as she had troubles with the last one. so we went to the pound and got little Marshall.
Marshall was a handful. there was never any denying that, he would bark all the time when patsy wasn't around and was very much a rambunctious dog needing a lot of energy to play and liked to play bite.. as some dogs do. we had trained most of the more grody behaviours out of him and although things were tense sometimes.. i think with a little work, we probably could have gotten marshall to the stage where he would have made a good pet.
i fail to remember what the stressor was. where the big push had come from.. but john had always looked at marshall as something to dominate. as loud as the dog was.. he had to be louder. there was no talking to the dog or choke chain.. yelling at the dog was johns way of keeping him in line.
i think that marshall must have tried to take a nip at him as marshall would do that from time to time to see if he can get our attention as any attention is good attention regardless;
the fight was on. john had screamed at marshall which prompted marshall to bark and jump at john. i had heard the commotion and came out to find john screaming at marshall. i reined marshall in and john had taken a fireplace log and brandished it at the dog half threateningly.
i later came out to give john shit as disiplining the dog was not his responsibility and certainly wasn't going to become so as long as he thought threatening it with blunt objects or screaming at it was going to be his tools of choice.
he told me something then i'd never forgotten. "the only way i can deal with marshall is to have either complete non involvement or to get his respect thru fear."
what... the... fuck?????
i promptly told him that if that was going to be his additude, then he'd damn well better find a third way cause he had no choice but to cohabitate with the dog and we wern't about to let him go ahead with the "better living thru fear" idea.
he opted for the "as close to non interaction as i can get" approach. we tried that for a few months but the constant strain of keeping the dog away from john and other factors led us to sending marshall downstairs to live with torin as torin had always wanted a dog, this would have kept marshall out of johns airspace and we would still be able to see marshall from time to time.
the damage to patsy's emotions was done however and i was told that, if patsy was to continue to stay, something had to be done with john. she preferred eviction but i was able to talk her into giving me 3 months to try and get john on the right path again.
so at the end of febuary john was presented with an ultimatum.. get your shit together, get some professional help with your mental issues.. or don't bother paying for june's rent cause you won't need to. i later revised this to include that i want at least 2 visits to a psycologist or something by may 15th.. timing it so that if it wasn't done... i'd be able to give him his months notice without breaking the deal.
you can lead a horse to water.. give him every oppertunity including a canteen to drink out of.. but you can't make him drink.
The next three months were the most frustrating i've ever had. every day the same thing. he'd get up. he'd sludge out to the couch. he'd sit down, sometimes dressed sometimes not, and he'd watch t.v.
i'd remind him of our arrangement and i'd offer help but he'd just say something smartassed when he'd say anything at all and back to the t.v he'd go.
i'd try to talk with him on this to get him motivated but still nothing.
finally one day about a month and a half ago.. with 2 weeks left to do ANYTHING to show he meant to help himself.. i blew up at him. for what would probably be the first time in our friendship i yelled and screamed and said that i quit. i'm done trying to help someone who won't help himself and that he's on his own.
he vanished or the weekend after that and returned sunday after spending the night at his mom's. i was hoping that this would have driven home how important this was to me that he get help and maybe motivate him into getting on it.
not so much... no.
finally we couldn't put it off much longer.. on may first we gave him his thirty day notice to vacate the premises. we set this as a deadline and we were going to stick to it as i had given my word to patsy that this was what we were going to do.
i wish i could say that THIS finally acted as impetus but sadly no. all this did was prompt john to get in as much batman the animated series and superman the animated series and family channel as he possibly could until the end. myself.. i had given up and started the task of emotionally distancing myself from the situation as best i can. pulling away from john so that it won't hurt so much when the time came that he had to move out.
the one time we did chink the armor.. he mentioned that he was tired of being the responsible one.. the grown up. all i can think of is you don't really have a choice.
so now we sit on the eve of john's moving out and i'm writing the story down. have we reached the end or just the end of this chapter??? i don't know.
i know that i didn't want things to go down this way.. but then i never do. i didn't with gerard.. i didn't with dennis.. i didn't with grant.. and i sure as hell didn't want it to go down this way with john.
and i know that tonight and probably for a long time after i'm going to be wondering if i did the right thing.
i know this falls under the catagory of tough love.. and i DO love him like a brother and that it really boils down to dealing with john or losing patsy.. but i feel i gave john every oppertunity and was unable to help him in the end.
it's time his real family step up and we'll see if he listens to them any better.
i just know that i still feel like shit over it... and probably will for a long time.