Justice: 15. My Last Year
When Simone moved in, my little routine was disrupted. He moved into the house and started his little reign of terror and I saw he was the next one elbowing in. And the whole thing was starting again. This new person coming in and thinking the house wasn’t clean enough… so he brought someone else in to clean it… and move things around. In a way, I was being edged out. I was so “out in the pasture” anyway. The only thing I was doing was scrubbing the toilet, doing the cleansing schedule and getting breakfast together. So this guy comes in and starts taking over. Events collided and I started to consider getting a place of my own. And then, about that time, Vidal said, “you’re not going to believe this, but I just bought a condo. No one really knows. Let me show it to you.” And he said there might be other ones available in the building. I thought there was no way I could afford anything, but he got a list and I thought I might be able to just swing the place with a little help. So it was like God’s Blessing. It was very profound. Finally it felt like things could change. And then everything just fell into place. I just had to let it happen.
Evans is the one that told Angelo. I had approached Evans about a loan to help with rent initially, but he was unsure about helping me so he told Angelo that I was moving out. I remember Angelo came into my room at 3 in the morning and we stayed up having this conversation. I don’t even remember it really. Just that I was moving out. But it wasn’t for a month so I thought he might try to tighten the screws down on me during that time, but he really didn’t. I just gave him one word answers, staying vacant. I wouldn’t get into conversations with him. He knew.. I had such a force field up against him by this point.
When it was finally time for me to move out, it was starting a little ripple in the group. I was moving out and people were starting to find out. So, when I was leaving, I asked Angelo if there was anything I could do to help. And then he started crying and asked if I could just tell people that it was his guidance that I move out.
I have to say, the thought of living on my own was scary. I was living in that house with Angelo for 15 years. I was scared. I’d come in and leave a light on at night. I’d go to work. Go to the gym. Buy a few groceries. Come home. Afraid that I wouldn’t have enough for my expenses. I didn’t want to use the electricity – it was a bare necessity life – because things were still tight. There were no second thoughts about it though.And little by little I looked around and saw that everything was OK. And kept being OK. So I started loosening up. I was still going to his house to do my service every day. No one was going to have to pull my load. That’s my thing, you see. No one would have to take on my burden. So I’d still go there every morning. Up until Thanksgiving dinner. That was the straw that broke the camels back for me. I think it actually surprised me too. I could probably have kept on going. But that morning, I had been at Angelo’s house, and he had been changing the dates back and forth for the Thanksgiving celebration… and I knew what it took to do all that… lining up the hall, arranging time off work, getting all the food together… and Angelo was doing it for no reason at all other than to make people jump. He had no schedule and no plan. And it sickened me. It made me sick. Disgusted. And I got home that day after work, planning on getting dressed to go to the dinner… and a message was on the machine saying, “The dinner is at 4:00 today and if you’re not there on time, don’t even come.” And something clicked. And I was done. I called Tiger and told him I wasn’t coming in anymore. And that was it.
