The net came back up, but something was still against us. Tom did over 20 races yet lost $30. Figures, huh? I asked him if he thought we did the right thing in coming here. He said yes and our future is brighter.

It is? How’s that? How is the future brighter when we’ve been living like bums in a motel for nearly half a year, and are soon headed for a complex and all its chaos?

As I lay in bed thinking that maybe we should’ve gone that night when we had the chance, when the opportunity was perfect, instead of wasting time calling my folks, I realized something and that’s that it’s never too late. I’ll never have my peaceful, modest home with even just a little money left over each month, but I don’t have to settle the rest of my life away either just because Tom, as he put it, is never going to want to go. And why should he want to? He doesn’t mind noise, he can sleep through anything, and he wouldn’t be in the apartment all the time like I would be. But that’s just it; I’m not going to be either. I can’t make God grant me that one prayer of living where I want to live, but He can’t make me live the rest of my life where I don’t want to live either. The best I could’ve hoped for was to suffer the complex till he was 55, then maybe rent a duplex in a retirement community. Well, I’ve done my time suffering and settling! It’s either my life or no life at this point, and so far I don’t see any indication that it could ever belong to me. If God hasn’t let me be in the driver’s seat of it yet, why would He start now?

Tom said he’d “make a deal” with me. He said let’s just get into the apartment first, and then see where we stand. I said that’d be okay, even though I know where we’ll stand. We’ll stand with a bunch of rude, obnoxious assholes that can’t shut up. Well, I don’t want to return to the days of arguing over neighbors and how they should be dealt with, and seeing him get upset when I get upset. I don’t want to hear him defend them when I get upset over getting woken up or having my train of concentration constantly disrupted when I’m trying to work. There’s simply no excuse for the shit people do, and no reason any normal, rational person wouldn’t get upset over it either. But I’m not going to stick around and defend myself while he defends them on why they’ve just got to slam their doors, bang around inside their place, blast their TVs and car stereos, and let their animalistic children scream bloody murder by our windows.

And so that’s why I intend to kill myself just as soon as I’ve had a little reunion time with my stereo. Sure, it’ll be scary, and no one wants to die alone, but this way I won’t have the guilt of taking him with me if he really doesn’t want to go. I also won’t have to worry about carbon monoxide detectors that might go off in the office, and then he can have a better life afterward. There’ll be no one to complain about wild neighbors, not having certain things, or interrupting him when he’s doing the things he likes to do.

I told him he could notify Jessie, Paula and Mary, but don’t even waste time with the folks. They wouldn’t get it. They may’ve had their share of problems, but they have no concept of what it’s like to be denied such simple little things as the right to live in peace that they’d just be totally clueless. They’d just be like, “That’s not much to ask for at all, so why couldn’t you two just have done it?” They just don’t understand curses and how things tend to work with us. It doesn’t matter that it’s a simple little request. It’s my request. That’s all that matters.

Despite all the money he’s been making, it’s so damn expensive here that we’re still kind of struggling. Meaning, we don’t have the $500 or so we’d need for a new piece of shit to drive, so since I have a reliable browser now and don’t need the TV I won as a monitor and don’t plan to be around much longer anyway, we agreed he’d see if he could trade it for a car.

I don’t know who’s got it worse, me being bummed out with the hard, cold reality slapping me in the face, or him for having his head buried in the sand. He’s in as much denial over the horses as he always was about his pitiful performances in bed. To this day he’d tell me he was oh so virile if I asked. Right, so much so that he’s kept it hidden all these years? Yeah, right! Why can’t he admit there’s no money to be made with the horses any more than he could admit he was a sexual flub? One who’s probably only been horny a dozen times in his entire life and whose “problem” was his own doing that would never have “gone away” without birth control. Why are women so much stronger in that they’re the only ones who can face reality and admit their shortcomings?

At the same time, I’ll admit I sometimes envy him and wish I could believe all would be just peachy keen in time. Sure I’d only be kidding myself, but at least I’d have that hope, false or not, to keep me going. It’s hard to look forward to life when you know that for reasons you’ll never fathom, you can never live in a nice peaceful place.