Take me back, take me home, to world that never was

I have done good this week with food. Been around 1600 calories, although on Monday, my first day back to food recording, I actually had 1,208 calories. I meant to eat a bit more but I was learning how to send files to another server while watching the Pirates game. So I downloaded FileZilla while watching my baseball team win in dramatic fashion.

I start physical therapy tomorrow, so I am excited in my own way, to start that. I just want the (usually) low grade headache to go away. But recently I have been finding some small memory problems, and that is scaring me as much as the physical aspect of it. A doctor I know has said he thinks it could be partially from the exhaustion I am feeling from the injury and part of it could be the natural depression that follows recovery following any type of chronic injury. And he told me to make sure I get to my physician as soon as possible.

And as if I’m not going through enough pain, Toby called me this week to fish around about moving back to Pittsburgh and wanting to move in with me. If you don't remember Toby, just click here, here, here, & here and read, there is something about him in there.

Of course, he, as usual, didn’t actually ask me. He mentioned first that he was not doing well living in Chicago, and that he works so much he has no life (he cleans a wealthy person’s home for a living and then cleans the home he lives in instead of paying rent: he lives on Lake Shore Blvd.)

Then he complained that he hasn’t met anyone, and even if he did, he isn’t allowed to bring anyone back to his place because of the rules (forgetting to that he has called me from the bar a few months ago, somewhat tipsy, telling me how he won a “Big Dick” contest in a bar full of hot men…and I’m supposed to believe not one of them offered the guy who just won the contest, ummm, at least companionship for the evening?) And this led to him complaining that he has no place to call his own (forgetting that he has told me on numerous times that he is able to save so much money he loaned a friend over $8,000 to help buy a house) and how expensive it is to live in Chicago.

(I want to pause for a moment here to tell you that at some point last year, after he moved to Chicago, the man Toby lives with sent him to a physician, and he was, after testing, diagnosed with Asperger syndrome, a form of autism, and he clearly has the social and communicative deficiencies described by the syndrome.)

This led to me pointing out to him that the last time he “lived” in Pittsburgh he ended up homeless, or some facsimile of homelessness, and I asked what has really changed since he left? People in Pittsburgh don’t pay $20/hour to their housekeepers. And that is when he said “If I moved back to Pittsburgh, could I stay with you?”

My blood ran cold. I don’t know why I feel this way, but it is like I have to work hard at not being nasty to him. And I don’t even want to be his fuck buddy anymore. I mean, I don’t have the guilt I used to have, but I still pick up the phone when he calls. But I can’t let him move in with me. That would just me making yet another horrific life-decision, and I’ve made enough of those.

Instead of being upfront with it, I just said “Toby, do you want it to be the way it was before? I guess you can visit me” (either guilt, horniness or a combination of the two, are in charge at that time.)

“You mean I can’t live with you?” I could hear the heartache in his voice.

“No,” I said. I need to be firm.

Fortunately, the next morning, yesterday, he called me to say that he felt better about Chicago. He was just feeling some pressure the night before.