Journal BarbaraHudson's Journal: Dealing with nut cases (and I guess I've still :got it") 13

In the last couple of weeks, 3 of my sisters, a neighbor, the therapist helping me explore job options for low vision work, and a couple of other people have told me that I've got to learn to say "No" more often. Not only was I running myself ragged volunteering, but I already knew I should have said no to a former co-worker who needed a place for him and his mother to stay.

They're both paranoid, and delusional, but I'll concentrate on him. I had told him years ago that if he didn't get professional help he'd be a 40-year-old virgin, and sure enough, he didn't, and I was right. He has always lived with his mother in what can only be called a co-dependent relationship that has mutated into elder abuse. When I found out that his mother was paying all the rent where they were staying ($1,400 a month, basically her entire pension) because he wanted to stay close to work, I immediately went from "this guy is fucked up" to "this guy is beneath contempt."

BTW, they don't need a 7-room place. No couch to sit on to watch TV, because no TV. No kitchen table and chairs. A cheap 120-volt stove (no wonder his mother didn't know how to fry an egg). Plastic cups. A few small folding tables like you'd set in front of the TV to eat off of to hold 2 computers. Twin beds (fortunately in separate rooms now - they weren't always). But with his mother stuck spending all her money on rent, she's dependent on what he buys, and he's a cheap bastard. He seems to think that grapes and soda crackers is an okay supper. She is the same, except that the times I brought her to the diner (she's obviously been socially isolated for the last decade at least) she really cleaned off her plate. I feel sorry for her. Like too many people approaching their 70s, they're vulnerable to the predations of their children. Especially since in their folie à deux, he really cranks her up.

His latest paranoid delusion is that his landlord, who lives downstairs, is using the sound of their footsteps to track them from room to room, moving an infra-sound projector that emits inaudible sound waves that are causing ear pain. In another building, it was another tenant's air conditioner, and the place before that, mold and noise. Multiple specialists have told him there's nothing wrong with his ears, so it's kind of obvious that his problem is between the ears. He's so paranoid that he glued the bottom flaps of his cardboard moving boxes shut "so that the movers couldn't get into them", so he has a room devoted just to uncollapsible moving boxes. Even a decade ago, he would insist on taking his backpack to the washroom with him because he didn't trust anyone, even though everyone else left their personal laptops behind when going for a snack, to eat, or to pee. He would cover his mouse with 2 layers of kleenex (germaphobe) just in case anyone else touched it. Oh, and he's anorexic. Doesn't trust most food. After a couple of decades, not only does he look like he has AIDS, but he's permanently damaged his skeletal musculature - he walks like an 80-year-old, with an 80-year-old's posture.

Things came to a head Sunday night. I had just entered the bathroom when he tried to squeeze in by me. I told him I was there first and he would have to wait. He kept on trying, so I pushed him with one hand - and even though it wasn't a hard push, he kind of went flying into the hallway's opposite wall. He's a real bag of bones with zero muscle tone.

I decided that this weekend would be his last. But first, I told him Sunday morning that he owed me money for him and his mom staying here. He said he'd bring it Monday, but snuck in real late Monday, left really early Tuesday, came back really late Tuesday night, and they were both gone Wednesday by 6 am. Problem solved, but I should have stuck to my guns in the first place - the last time he puled his nonsense, I told him never to contact me unless he's seen a psychiatrist, but of course paranoid people only see that as trying to exert control over them. And cash in advance. D'uh!

More good news. Not only are the crazies gone, but there's a Jack Russel at my feet. His owner asked me to baby sit him for a weekend, and then asked me if I wanted to adopt him. He was quite the handful the first week, but he's settled down nicely - he now walks properly on a leash, stopped humping everything in sight or trying to mark things. He's become really attached to me, following me everywhere. There were some problems with Jack, the little dog, but Jack put him in his place so it's all good.

But boy, does he crave attention, and lots of walking.

It's while I was walking the two of them that a guy almost half my age stopped to talk to me, asked me if I was single, and then asked for my phone number - several times. I've never looked my age, but I guess the increased estrogen is enhancing the desired effect.

My life - never boring.