She asked me for more involvement in my life and I consented. There are things in my life that I find difficulty doing and her help would be appreciated. But I could not ask her, because I am fiercely independent, but I was torn between that and my real love for her, deep genuine love and a desire to see her happy. So I asked her to help me find a place to live and a better job. She has a stake in where I live now, she travels to where I live to be with me. I don't want to be inaccessible to her so it is important that my new place be close to work and easy for her to travel too. And work, landscaping is fun and hard work and the hard work part damages the body. I am big and strong, but I have tendinitis in my shoulder and both arms. Rest is the only cure and that means no landscaping, which means that my arms won't get better while I work.
I love some aspects of landscaping more than others and I love helping people with problems. I get into conversations with regular people about plants and I realize how little they know and how much I can help them. I get into conversations with landscapers who have more experience than me and I realize how little they know too. I find that last part so strange!
So she did both. She asked me if I would consider being a mail carrier, a Mailman and I said I would, but I thought they were hard jobs to get, but she told me that the turnover rate was very high. Most people don't last a week. And she came over and helped me look for a place to live, and to soften the blow.
Soften the blow. You see my land lady called me distressed a few weeks ago and told me this sad story that she had family coming to immigrate and the place she was renovating was very behind schedule and she had to evict all the tenants of the house I was living in to provide space for them. It is the only way that a landlord is allowed to evict people quickly no questions asked in Ontario. So I had to look for a new place to live. My girlfriend and I went through the list of places to rent in the area and one of them was my room and the room was available as soon as I vacated it for her family members. It felt like a stab in my gut. She had lied to me and tried to make me sorry for her predicament to get me out quietly, but then unabashedly posted the room up for rent again where I could see it.
The next day I was fired from work. Laid off is the correct term, due to lack of work. I made it very easy on them because I had seen the signs already and my mind is very pessimistic and I feel like every day I am on trial at work. There has been a drought this spring and summer and things have not been growing. They have been dying actually. And people don't want to start new projects when things are dying. Grass does not need to be cut if it does not grow, but it still hurt. I was very light and happy for the next twelve hours. I thought of painting words for the next tenant on the ceiling of my room with glow in the dark paint, "The Landlord enters this room when you are not here." and "the Landlord paws through your stuff when you are not here." and "This room does not meet the Fire Code, it is an illegal rooming house." and "If you stay here too long the Landlord will tell you that she needs the room for family and you have to leave. She is a liar." all of it true.
Then on Saturday, around 2am my lack of depression broke a part. My girlfriend was beside me, her admission of being in love with me and not her husband broke her restlessness and she slept beside me for the first time. Slept. But my happiness that had arrived in the Winter and which had been sustained by She-Who-Lay-Beside-Me, had broken and I don't know when the happiness will return.
But she is doing a great job. She arranged with her husband that I could stay with her, in their house, with their children. And she got past my trepidation. They way she tells it, she had a harder time convincing me to do it, than her husband and her kids. I am not convinced, yet. I think it is the worst idea in the entire world. She came up with a list of rules that I would have to follow that were more severe than her husband would have imposed, like no sex when ever there is anyone else in the house. No public intimacy at all. And the scariest one, I had to participate in eating dinner with the family! I warned her that I would disappear. But I also thought that the threat of living with her and her family would push me harder to get a job and find a new place to live.
I told her that this could be the end of our relationship. Not because she would stop loving me or I her, but because in the rules of their open marriage, their hearts would remain true to each other and hers has not. People think that they can hide stuff like that from people, but they can't. They can hide it from their love, but not from others. It is like looking at a tornado; if the tornado is heading straight at you you can't see it move (away from you too), but if you are looking at it from the side, you can't help but see it. When I have been in-love, everyone sees it except the person who I love, unless they know. The attention I throw at them is visible to others and I think I have been good at hiding it; I am not and I have had a lot of experience being in-love.
I worry. I love her and I don't want it to end. I love her and I know what it is like to be in-love and to lose it—I don't want her to be hurt that way, but I am doing it anyway.
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