Heard It Through The Grapevine

After E talked to me yesterday, I think he called everyone he knew and told them he was moving back to TX.

He called his sister, S, and she told him not to come.

He called his sister, C, and she told him not to come.

Big D and CR did not return his calls.

My mother tried to talk to him and emphasize how different things would be. Also, how very bad things were before he left. He cut her off and said he didn't want to deal in the past. She got no where. She sent me a text message:

He is determined.

There was also a lot of calling between the members of the family discussing the whole situation.

As I walked out of the office, C called me. She didn't even say, "hi." She started with, "What is going on??!? Why has my brother gone crazy??!?" I wish I knew. BELIEVE me. I wish I knew...

C relayed to me all the conversations that she'd been a part of and the ones she knew about. I filled in the blanks as best I knew them. We eventually agreed that the budget discussion really freaked him out. The timing was just too coincidental.

We talked for almost the whole way home, which, since I live in the middle of no where, is a long effing way. One of her last pieces of advice, before I lost signal, was to yell at him. Her reasoning was that he thought it was ok with me for him to move back to TX. I sighed... I had explained so many times already that day that this wasn't about me. It was about what it was going to do to E. She got that, but she thought the point was lost on him.

So I walked in the door, and started putting my stuff away. E walked in the room and I hit him with, "I had a super shitty day today and it's all your fault!" His eyes were as big as silver dollars. He said, "What did I do?"

C is sometimes too smart for her own good.

We sat down at the table and I just started laying it out for him. All these people he's been putting up on a pedastal... had any of them returned his call? No. I asked him: if you needed someone to pick you up in the middle of the night, do you have any doubt that I'd be there? No. Who talked to you about college? You. Who took you on tours to see colleges? You. Did anyone else even offer to have you live with them? "Well, dad did, but I didn't return his call in time." Yeah, right. I didn't try to argue that point. I told him, "I need you to see things the way they ARE, not they way you WANT them to be."

Then he started crying. Then, "If I could get a gun, I'd kill myself right now." I opened my mouth to respond and he went running out the door. He's barefoot and it's 40 degrees outside. So I'm on the porch yelling, "Come back inside. I won't talk anymore." Pretty soon he ended up on the back porch. So I'm trying to talk through the door, "Do you want a jacket?" No. "Blanket?" NO. "Shoes?" NO!!! Then he came inside, which of course was my goal all along, and stomped down to his room, where he laid on the floor and covered his head with a blanket. So I sat on the stairs. "Are you hungry?" No! I waited a little while, still sitting on the stairs. "Well, I'm going to make me some raemen noodles. And I was thinking I could fix you some noodles too, if you'd like some. Do you want some noodles?" Ever-so-quietly I heard, "Yeeees." Ah, the magical power of noodles.

Here's what we settled on: he's going to take the bus to TX tomorrow and stay with his mom for a week. (CR finally called me back today and she insisted it not be less than a week. She said if it was too short of a visit it would be too easy for him to forget all the chaos.) He had wanted to take the car. I told him that wasn't going to happen. He was thinking he was going to sell his truck and give me the money from the truck and he would just take the car back to TX. Like a trade or something. Um, not just, "no", but HELL NO! I told him if he moved back I'd be selling the car so he better get used to using alternate forms of transportation (because the truck will not make it back to TX). He's really not wild about the bus idea, but as mom noted, he is determined.

I updated C today via text message and got a return text that said:

Nice. He will be begging to come back to you.
I think this will work.

Let's hope she's right.