Visual Diarrhea

 

In my dream my roommate went to jail. This left me living alone and looking for a new place to live. What to do with all his stuff? I went to work and spoke to the boss, another person I couldn’t trust. There was a kind man there like myself who said he would help me move. I felt concerned but confident that I would deal with life somehow. An old fear from being a child with no resources and dependant on the undependable. Frustrated at having to put up with their insanity and incompetence, looking forward to being an independent adult.

Now, as an adult, I find myself with resources and reasonably relying upon trustable folks who, for example, manage my car, my physio and my health. I manage my emotional well being using excellent science based tools I have found dependable (REBT). I manage my communication companionship and sex needs with social skills I was taught by family therapist experts who advised me to see myself as an orphan. I found a way to get to art school for six years and typically don’t use money as a measure of success in my career, I use my satisfaction in interest in art and continued study. Others likes and dislikes only describe them and similar to reality TV it’s generally a shitshow.

In my personal reality TV I found this low cost building for seniors where I live independently after my roommate turned out to be an untrustworthy narcissist predator user I tolerated due to low income stroke recovery. The new building turned out to have several bullies living here, and since I was further along into my stroke recovery I was able to stand up to them. An unpleasant experience but I came away with my self respect.

A new bunch of folks took over the daily bully coffee meeting situation as others died or stopped coming. It remains a very toxic situation that I and most other residents here generally avoid. It is seen as a closed toxic group. I was placed on their email list by some misunderstanding so I got to see the coordinated manipulations to exclude others.

I had myself publicly removed from this list and I don’t engage with the members who I find draining with little or nothing to offer relationship. Other residents who have left the coffee group have confided that they call it the coffee mafia. They comment as the members pass by, “there goes Don Corleone.”

Don Corleone is a covert narcissist who is charming and manipulative, like the driver of the van with the blacked out windows you’d advise your children not to get into. A lot of sickly sweet victim stories, such as his former wife was so incompetent he was forced to write her art history papers so she would graduate art school. Narcissists devalue everyone; in this case not only his wife but the art school profs who are trained to spot that crap in a minute. Also, he claims to be a former professional educator, a vice principle, with no professional ethics regarding academic honesty who is forced to do these things by others incompetence.

During the charming overvalue stage of our friendship (narcissists overvalue, undervalue, dump, smear) I sold him a computer I was no longer in need of and as he was broke so I charged very little, wiped it clean and gave it to him. He had it so messed it up in trying to install windows I was called in to help. It was beyond my skills and it cost him 200 bucks to repair, claiming it was my faulty drives that worked fine when I gave it to him. He never really talked to me as a friend again and told everyone how I cheated him.

We have a social committee now. Their first project was to devalue a fine old stand up piano with lovely sound that had been here for years. When asked why, Don Corleone said the new building management asked to have it moved outside and painted. So they did. There are 3 professional artists in the building and several talented amateurs. None were consulted as they are devalued as well as the piano. The result looks like Don Corleone’s apartment: a sordid and squalid typical mess of a hoarder.

I titled it ‘Visual Diarrhea’. Words fail. The garish eyesore remains unfinished, typically, living on the buildings’ front porch taking up the only shaded spot, considering only itself and not the folks who like to get out of the sun and visit. It reeks of gassed off toxic chemicals and doesn’t attract community to come and play it, as advertised, it looks and smells like a repellent waste dump keeping folks far away.

The coffee mafia committee is organizing a group tour to a destination 3 hours away on a Ford bus known for its unreliability that has no washroom. Select residents were included in secret and it was only made public with 2 days notice after they discovered they didn’t sell enough seats to this mobile shitshow. The itinerary is a 3 hour bus ride, 1.5 hours in a tourist trap during peak season, and a three hour bus ride return. With no washroom. $90 bucks all in.

I asked a long term resident if he and his wife were going, the response was, “why would we want to hang out with them?”