A Hard Look Within, Part Eleven

 

I have asked myself how long I will write these, The Looks, as I think of them. As long as it takes is what the answer is, yet I want it to be beneficial.

 

There is mostly a negative connotation with someone who chooses to use marijuana. I believe it is very easy to get sucked into the negative aspect of what I consider to be a very powerful and potentially beneficial medicinal herb. I also believe consistent, daily use, unless the user is in a chronic pain condition, is counterproductive an not helpful in the long run.

 

While my choice to use this plant was beneficial in that it helped me learn to bond with my baby, I was using it to try and numb the emotional pain and desolate feeling of being abandoned by my partner. I was angry. Cain had always, emotionally, been like Spock off Star Trek. Detached and unemotional. He wrote me letters that said he missed me, even held vivid detail of his love for me, yet he had never really used the words, face to face to tell me these things often enough to make me believe them. Most of the time, there seemed to be room in his mind and heart for only one person; him. It seemed to me he wanted to be adored and worshiped without ever returning any. The months of his out of state work turned into a year. I felt like I was dying inside. I wanted attention and affection. I wanted to be held and loved. I was still too young and naïve then to know, even at 22 how empty physical affection can be.

 

There came a time in our relationship that I told Cain I wanted to be able to see other people while he was out of state. I wanted him to see other people as well. It was a completely selfish maneuver on my part in so many ways. But I didn’t know what else to do. There was a guy that I was interested in. I didn’t want to have a relationship, I WANTED Cain, but he wasn’t available. It wasn’t even really about the sex so much as it was about being physically close to someone. I was so lonely, and not strong enough in myself to go out and find healthy alternatives and this is the negative route I chose. I am ashamed of it because I believe I cheapened myself, no to mentioned hurt Cain. I wanted to be Cain’s wife, yet he would never propose. Because I did not have those vows, the long time apart, the fact that Cain seemed content to have and leave it this way, were all contributing factors. What blew me away though, in the end, wasn’t that Cain was jealous or upset about me being with anyone else, what he told me was that he felt jealous because I DID find someone else to be with and he DIDN’T.

 

It wasn’t that I found other men to be with. It was that he didn’t find other women. That put a spear in my heart that would fester.

 

I felt I wasn’t worth enough for him to worry about. He was only concerned for himself. By this time, I had learned a bit of that from him as well. My anger grew.

 

In September of ‘94 my landlord, Chuck informed me that Joan and her husband were going to buy my house for their daughter. The bitch finally got her revenge. Chuck had, at one point, told me he would sell me the house for the cost it took him to move it onto the property. I was stupid and naïve enough I didn’t take him completely seriously and because Cain and I weren’t married I didn’t want to risk losing it if I did go that route. Hindsight, being 20/20 and all…

 

I didn’t take him up on it and Joan did. They gave us thirty days notice to move out. Then Joan tried all her old bullshit with me, such as telling me I had to get rid of my dog because they didn’t allow pets! AFTER they gave us the thirty day notice. I told her too bad. After all, what were they going to do, kick us out?!! Fucking idiots. Then I was subject to even more indignities. They claimed they wanted to come through and ‘get some video’ of the house for their daughter. I let them, thinking they would just do the upstairs. Everything was a mess. Stacks of boxes, mounds of clothes needing to be washed. The basement was completely trashed from the combination of having too much crap and me not being able to give a damn about a completely clean house. I felt so violated and would never again allow a landlord to do that.

 

Cain took time off to come up the last few days, help me load everything into storage and pack both his car and mine to the ceiling. Take our two cats, puppy and pet rat and go. By this time the apprenticeship had moved him from Utah to Denver, Colorado. We locked the door on the house in Montana and were off.

 

I was excited and optimistic. Cain, Carter and I were together and could be a family again!

 

Our first home in Denver? The construction sight trailer the guys used as a meeting place and to have coffee in the mornings. There was a bedroom in back but that was occupied by another apprentice who spent a lot of times and most nights out on the town. We were relegated to sleeping in the living room which was where the guys would normally meet before work. This proved to be very awkward. I was invading their morning coffee spot and they were invading my temporary bedroom! After the first couple of mornings of me sitting there, hair tousled, blinking owlishly at these morning freaks who thought the world should begin before dawn, and them staring, silently back at me, I said ‘To hell with it!’ and just burrowed deeper into my sleeping bag when they came in. I may have even snored. I didn’t care.

 

The trailer had no running water but there was a bag ice machine out back. I melted bags of ice for bath water, dishwater and cooking. The bathing really sucked because we only had a small dishpan to use. Carter was small enough to sit in it but Cain and I took some pretty interesting baths!

 

To demonstrate my sad level of naïveté, one of the times that Cain and I drove downtown to look for a motel to move into that was fairly close to his job site I spotted a sign on one of the buildings. It was a bath house advertising men’s and ladies nights. What a wonderful idea! I thought, and excitedly pointed it out to Cain. The reaction I got was an odd one and I didn’t quite understand why he seemed to think I was making a joke that wasn’t very funny. The next time we drove by it I told him we should go in and check out the prices. I was getting tired of melting bags of ice and a bath sure sounded nice! He again acted like I was telling an un-funny joke and I told him I was serious. He looked at me as if I were the biggest idiot on the face of the planet and informed me it was a gay bathhouse and they weren’t selling ‘those kinds of baths’. I was stunned and felt like the world’s biggest idiot. I thought Denver was a big city with an innovative and safe way for their probably large transient population to clean up. Coming from a small town Montana community we just didn’t have those things where I grew up. I tell you though, after having to melt bags of ice to bathe in I seriously considered my odds for getting into and out of a shower quick enough not to be molested. Cain wouldn’t go for it.

 

It was only about a week and a half before we found a motel called the Niagara House Motel on East Colfax Avenue. We lived there for three months.

 

While Cain was there and we were together, it seemed my life was just on the same path with a different view. I didn’t feel comfortable driving in Denver very far on my own, so Carter and I stayed in the motel room all day, all night, day in and day out. Instead of out onto the porch to check the mail, once a week we would drive the seventeen miles to the post office. Occasionally we went out to eat a restaurant called Healthy Habits, and all-you-can-eat health food buffet. We went to visit a friend of his one time. We would go to the grocery store. The one time I did laundry at the laundry mat on my own with Carter, I got to have the company of a homeless man who kept talking about ’the Zodiac’ and ’the Zodiac says’ this and ’the Zodiac says’ that and all I could think of was the damned and nefarious Zodiac Killer until the poor guy mentioned ’Zodiac’, ’Safeway’ and ’for twenty-five cents’ all in one sentence and i figured out he was talking about the little horoscope scrolls. I bought him a cup of coffee.

 

I was with Cain and still felt empty. I am an emotional person who needs emotional support and looking to Cain for that was like trying to hug a brick wall. I initiated sex with him even if I didn’t want to just so I could feel like he was there with me for a time and not in his own little internal world.

 

I found a pamphlet for the local community college and though that perhaps I could take some classes. They had an excellent Criminology and Forensics program and I felt interest begin to stir. For my birthday Cain bought me a used cello from Celebrity Vintage and Clothing for $100.00. He arranged for me to begin taking lessons once a month. My instructors name was Mary. She told me, on my first lesson, that I would be a quick learner and would pick it up quickly. I was so excited! I loved the voice of the cello and I was really looking forward to learning the instrument.

 

A week after my first cello lesson Cain came home with bad news. He had been fired. Something to do with him taking the extra time off to come help us move down there or something. I don’t know for sure. I am not sure I got the whole story or whole reason. There was nothing he could do about it. He seemed relieved, though. He wasn’t comfortable working with high voltage electricity. He had a fear of it instead of a healthy respect. He shouldn’t have been in the field in the first place. If it hadn’t been for his father’s pressure as well as his need to escape fatherhood, so like his own father had done, he never would have gotten involved in the apprenticeship program.

 

So that was it. Three months and we were going back home to Montana. Until we got on our feet, we would have to live somewhere. I knew Cain’s dad hated me so we would be moving in with my parents for a time.

 

Even though we had been reunited and were moving back to Montana as an intact family, old problems were still there. Old issues were still present. The time and distance we had lived apart had served to place a distant between our hearts. Like watching an old dear friend die a slow and painful death, our life as a family together lived on numbered days.

 

Interlude: The Dream That Lead

Originally Titled A View From the Outhouse, this is the blog I had to remove from my MySpace page because of the conflict it caused with my husband.  I put it hear because it is pertinent to what lead me to where we are now.

A View From the Outhouse

The title of this blog is what I have in my future.  I am trying to have a more positive outlook but I am stuck in the middle of moving and I am finding it very difficult.  Likewise, I am trying to find the humor in it, but honestly I have been spread so thin I don’t laugh much at anything at this moment.  I know I wrote of the whole CPS thing, but there have been a lot of other things going on as well that I have not been writing about, it has all been just so damned overwhelming I have been walking through life in a fog.

 

It was the Murphy’s Law of months was March, 2008. My van was in constant breakdown and with over $700 in repairs complete and it still needing more I want to junk it but can’t. We don’t have the resources to buy a new vehicle. My Mom had a scare and an overnight stay in the hospital for pains in her head. My Mom is 77 and getting old lady brain so pains in her head are to be taken very seriously. I didn’t even know she was in the ER until she was out the following day because my bonehead sister, instead of picking up the fucking phone and calling me (a local call, mind you) decided to power up her computer, connect to the internet and send me a fucking email about it which I didn’t even get until AFTER Mom had gotten home from the hospital and talked to me. There are days my sister is in sore need of a serious bitch slapping. We’re close that way. Can you bitch slap someone in an email?

 

Then there are my wonderful landlords. They are the caretakers of the property, taking care of it for their son who bought the place last summer and who works out of state to make more money. My lease was due to be up this month of April. They sent me a letter ‘addressing’ some ‘issues’ they had and a new rental agreement for me to sign.

 

When they bought the place last summer, they decided to ‘fix it up by power washing and painting it. Real professionals they were, too, moving the couch I had on the porch onto the deck right under the eaves BEFORE power washing the roof so that all the debris on the roof ended up on the couch. Granted, mostly it was a couch for Fat Dog who lives outside and loved that couch. But please. Use some sense. Then of course, washing out the fucking paint bucket IN THE LAWN after they were done. There is still green paint in the grass. Oh. New house color? Shiny brown with green trim. Yes, SHINY. They chose a glossy paint for the exterior. And it is a dark brown. And they painted it this color last summer when it was almost 100 degrees outside. They also showed up at 8:00 every morning and not consistently. I never got a phone call when they were going to come over and also happened to be sitting on the toilet buck naked when the grandson helping him decided to paint around the bathroom window. I had the blinds drawn, but the top of the window is arched and has glass so it is only the lower windows that have blinds. He was on a ladder. Luckily there is a bit of a partition but I had to duck and cover then streak for safety once the guys head was not in sight.

 

I tolerated that. They wanted to get it done, it was hot. I wanted them the hell gone A.S.A.P. Then the owner remodeled the apartment connected to the garage to rent it out. Fine, ok. I had enjoyed having no neighbor since the previous owner had moved on but whatever, they gotta make the mortgage.

 

Then I found out the owner was renting it to his nephew. One of the Grandson’s that had helped the owners father, whom I call That Old Bastard, do some of the painting. (Though not the one who had caught me au natural on the shitter.)

 

I started to get that uneasy feeling twinking at my gut strings. Why would they have a nephew rent the place? Why, to help ‘keep an eye’ on the premises for James, the owner and uncle. That and now That Old Bastard began to drop by often and unexpectedly to ‘visit’ the grandson. Which may have been legitimate. However, he would then find a reason to knock on my door and make inquiries about things.

 

Now, I we are a low income family and my reality is that if I didn’t have housing assistance we would have no home. The job market sucks and even though I have been registered with two temp agencies even the temp work has been next to non-existent. I did have a job before Christmas with a building company, but got laid off that because of the wonderful housing market crash. I have to report all income changes and there are yearly inspections to deal with from the housing people. Checking the place out once a year makes sure that I am not harboring illegal aliens, growing a pot farm or cooking up a meth lab. It also lets them track needed repairs, make sure we aren’t kicking out all the walls and forces the landlord to do needed repairs. Fine. I know how to jump through the hoops. Hate it, but have found it necessary.

 

After inspection, That Old Bastard came back to the property, unannounced, the next day to ‘check up’ on a vent plate I told him I would have to take off the back of the house because when I put it on I locked cats under the house. Now, I have been in violation of the whole pet thing. I have outside animals and feeding outside has snowballed into other cats coming over and one cat I had got knocked up before I got her, then her two remaining children fixed, etc. And two dogs, one outside couch potato, one inside small dog. The previous owner had no beef with it even if the rental agreement stated only one dog and one cat. Anyway, they had been under the house because every vent in the plywood foundation had been kicked out when I moved in. Then James boarded it up without telling me, trapping cats underneath the house. Expecting me to let them starve and die under there I guess. Anyway, I took the back plate off out of sheer laziness didn’t replace it all winter until the day of inspection. But I told him as I replaced it I would have to take it off but would be sure to feed them and put it on when they were all present and accounted for.

 

That Old Bastard decided to come back, as if catching me in an evil act, but chose to start yelling at Lew for it as I wasn’t home. He also screamed about a door that was damaged when we moved in, trying to say it wasn’t damaged last summer and informed Lew he would be back on Monday to do repairs.

 

He never showed Monday and didn’t call. Tuesday he showed up at 9 in the morning. This is after I had repeatedly told him repairs needed to be done after 11 because Lew works graveyards and that is like waking him at 3 in the morning.

 

Not only did he show up in the morning, he WALKED IN TO MY HOUSE without waiting for Lew to answer and was in fact, in the bedroom doorway and walking into the bathroom in this bedroom while Lew was still in bed after yelling. “I’m yellin’ here!” before he walked in. Lew was left to scramble to get his pants on with That Old Bastard standing in uncomfortable proximity.

 

Lew went in the bathroom to help him, heard a noise and looked up and lo’ and behold here comes the grandson, my neighbor WALKING UNINVITED INTO MY HOUSE without knocking or calling out!

 

These are just a few of the more blatant things. There are more. Combine that with a rental agreement they wanted me to sign that wanted us to power wash the OUTSIDE of the house when we moved out. Told me to ’talk to my children’ about ’bothering’ the other tenant (their grandson) if he were outside his apartment. Stated that there would be no outside noise allowed that might disturb their grandson.

 

Basically, it sounded as if they wanted us out and I was mad enough to oblige. After writing a highly incensed eleven page response letter not only outlining all the bullshit they had pulled but giving them direct quotes from Montana’s Landlord Tenant Act of 1977 law that clearly states what they were doing were in direct violation of my tenant rights. I also demanded that all harassing behavior stop immediately or I would seek injunctive relief as was my right by that very law. I gave my 30 day notice on the last page.

 

The Monday they would be receiving the letter from me That Old Bastard called and wondered when I would be signing the new rental agreement and mailing it to them. The Old Bitch, That Old Bastard’s wife had put a sticky note on the rental agreement saying parts that didn’t apply to me would be taken out of the agreement I was to sign. Every time I had spoken to That Old Bastard about anything rental related he told me to talk to The Old Bitch because she was in charge of all things rental related. Which made me wonder why the hell he was calling me about a rental issue. It was also before they got to read the part in the letter where I told them I wouldn’t speak to That Old Bastard about any rental issues anymore due to the fact he kept telling me to deal with The Old Bitch instead.

 

I know I sound a bit bitter and more than a little angry. I think most people could understand the anger. I have had it with the invasions. I told them in my letter I would rather live out of my camp trailer than put up with landlords who felt it was their right to be in constant violation of their tenants legal right.

 

And I would. I have had to move two years in a row now. First because of mold in the basement apartment under the funeral home where we lived. Now because I refuse to subjugate myself and my family to the whim of landlord tyrants. I am tired of moving.

 

I could have curled to their will, signed their questionable and possibly illegal rental agreement. But I know they want us gone. We’re poor people, you see, so we must be scum of the earth and criminals.

 

We have the mixed fortune of living in one of the most beautiful, and highly sought after places in Montana. The rich have discovered the Flathead Valley and even with the housing market crashing everywhere else, here you can’t find land on acreage with a home for anything under $200,000.

 

So Lew’s Dad owns five acres on the backside of Teakettle Mountain. They lived there about ten years, the two of them. There is an amazing collection of vehicles on the property. No well. The closest running water is a seasonal creek about three miles down the road. No electricity. Of the two I will miss the water the most. I will miss my huge tub here that was big enough for all three of my girls and I to fit in.

 

Why this route? I know people wonder. When my father was alive he told me I was crazy. Just plain crazy to go out there. I lived there for a summer but drove out there every weekend the whole winter when Lew and I were first together. With my then three year old daughter. I got stuck. A LOT. I learned how to put tire chains on. I had a beat to shit pick-up then. I went out there because I had loved the guy that lived out there since I was sixteen. He just didn’t know it until I was 29. I didn’t mind the summer, but I swore I would never live out there during the winter as ill equipped vehicle-wise as I was. The snow can get damned deep out there.

 

When it was just Lew and I up on that mountain, things were good. I could see the way to make the dream I had of having an organic farmlet a reality. There was solitude and beauty, even though you could always hear the highway noise across the river. You could walk over to our makeshift shooting range and blow the hell out of stuff and no one would call the cops. You didn’t have neighbors to worry about. No landlords to tell you to polish all the rocks before you moved out. No landlord to drive you out in the first place.

 

This is where it’s at I suppose. I am tired of being homeless. I am paying people for the privilege of living in their places until they decide they don’t want us there anymore. Or until my Fuck You attitude kicks in and I shake the dust of the place from my boots. These dwellings are NOT my home. They are shelter over my head until circumstances change. That’s why I have never tried very hard to get rid of my pathetically tiny 15 foot camp trailer cause by damned that thing is my HOME. Mine! I own it. Free and Clear. No one can take it away from me.

 

I have long known Lew would be happier out in the sticks again. He grew up there. It is important to me that he is happy and I want to make a home he is happy to come home to. He has made a lot of sacrifices for me and the kids. But living that rustic with a pack of small children is going to suck ASS until we get the water situation designed. Even if we have to haul water, little kids are grubby individuals on days when you have all you can run water. I bought a generator. So we can use occasional power. Thank God it’s warming time and not autumn.

 

I know a few people will think I am crazy, even me at times. I have prayed long and hard about the direction our lives are supposed to take. Faith sometimes requires just that. Faith that all is as it should be and all in the Great Spirit’s design.

 

I have misgivings. The largest is that the land is not in our names and Lew’s father is not in the best of health. There is no will. I am balking at building any permanent structure. Lew and I have been fighting about it regularly in fact. He sees the necessity of a permanent structure. Which is a real necessity. Especially living wall to wall with six people in a small camper. But I can’t get past the knowing that unless there is land in our name we are just tenants again who own nothing and can lose our home. Then wee really would be homeless. There would be no last resort and all we would have would be that damned camper.

 

There are days, like today, when I want to leave this valley. I want to leave what it is becoming. I want to go live where the majority of people don’t. Realtors and wealthy people have already discovered the land adjacent to Lew’s Dad’s. I’m afraid it’s only a matter of time before we would be pushed out of there as well.

 

That’s it, I suppose. It’s not ours. Not really. No matter what we built. So it would never feel like my home, even though to Lew it is home. I would just be another resident tenant. Until circumstances changed and I was left a nomad once more, children in tow.

 

There is too much division in this for me. I do not feel like we are standing on solid or unified ground at all. I don’t like this quicksand footing. Perhaps it is because my faith is being tested. I don’t know. I feel there is no place in this valley for my family and I. Nothing I will be able to say is ours. We are just living off of someone else. I HATE that! I have wanted to get off public assistance and can’t. I have wanted to finish school but can’t seem to do that either. Right now I have no hope of a happy future.

 

I know I am tired. Beyond tired. I took the week long temp job that I was requested for this week and it has thrown me a week behind my packing. Stress and more stress. I keep waiting for my arrhythmic heart to just explode. Some days I wish it would. I am into mind numbing exhaustion now, lack of sleep, headaches.

 

We were supposed to be getting married in May. Finally. After 8 years. Nothing has been planned for that either. I feel like it is the least of our worries and now just another added stress. I had been looking forward to it, but now. Well. I feel like there’s no point. I really, really wanted to have a wedding. We could go over to Idaho and have it over and done in an afternoon. But if one of the most important days in my life will be relegated to a side trip why fucking bother? It’s supposed to be a time of celebration. I think Lew would rather not even bother with any of that stuff and just blow the gas money to drive over to Idaho. Besides, what do I put as my bridal registry? Western Building Center for lumber or the Army Navy for winter survival gear.

 

My pessimism is reaching an all time high. I may even be out doing my late Father, Heaven forbid. I just want the fucking moving OVER with and I want my children sent off to boarding school so I can pack a fucking box without someone unpacking it right behind me because ohmygawdthat’smyfavoritetoyandwhereHASitbeen!!

Ah well. At least I have my camp trailer. Maybe I can set up along a highway and offer palm readings to stupid tourists while my children pick their pockets. Now I just need a trailer hitch on my pice of shit van so I don’t have to borrow a vehicle to pull the trailer…