RM update

He's getting pushier, and I'm more and more determined to draw the line.

My mistake was being too mindful of his feelings early on, emphasizing that it wasn't personal, but it is inherently personal: there are people I want to spend time with, and he's not one of them.

Some time last week, he said, kind of offhand, "you know, I see you as a sister." I thought about what to say to this. He continued, "As a friend, you know." I didn't want to flat out say, I am not your friend, so I thought, in which time, he left. Later, he was downstairs, upset. I refused to feel guilty: he's not going to push me into a corner, and then make me feel bad about pushing back. For me, friendship is something that develops over time. You can't make it so by declaring it.

On Friday, he said, "Thank you for sharing your house with me. Hopefully one day I'll be able to reciprocate." It would have been the perfect opportunity to say, "I'm not sharing with you, I'm renting to you." But I didn't think fast enough.

So today, he gets back from his trip. I'm in the kitchen, hands dirty. I go and take the trash out--oh, and did you know that there is art in my alley way? An artist from Richmond drove by once and thought it was so beautiful that he came back to paint it. But I digress. I return, and he's standing there, with open arms. I walk right by.

He brings out a box. The week before, he'd asked me when my birthday was; I'd said early May, relieved that it was a safe distance past, that he wouldn't feel the need to do anything about it. But I was wrong. He got me a birthday gift. I was uneasy. I opened it, thanked him for it, really, truly wished he hadn't. Walked to the market, walked back, and returned the box to him, said that I was really sorry and appreciated the thought, but it was too much and I didn't feel comfortable taking it. But it's just a small gesture, he said. But it didn't feel right, I countered. Well, in that case, he understood, and apologized for making me feel uncomfortable. Later, he came back downstairs, said that the friendship he feels for me is real, is genuine, and I said I understood, but didn't feel right accepting that kind of gift (a small set of pearl earrings) from him. He took it well.

Another mistake on my part was teaching to the test, if you will: I thought, okay, he's incapable of getting it, so I'm not going to try to make him understand; I'll just find workarounds. If he doesn't bother me, it's fine that he doesn't understand that we are not friends. And this is where that's gotten me. Hopefully, the rejection of the earrings will be a step in the right direction.

There's a great line from The Bourne Identity, toward the very end. I don't remember it exactly, but the gist is, "I don't pay you to kill-- I pay you to be invisible!" I've applied that in many ways to my work life (people who could do my job, i.e. technically perform the functions, are a dime a dozen; what really helps the people I work for is not having to handhold me). It's like the housecleaner that annoyed the crap out of me in November: there are plenty of people who could clean a ceiling fan; I was hoping to hire someone that wouldn't have to be specifically told to clean the ceiling fan, since it's part of the house and it's filthy. But I digress.

Where this is pertinent to RM is, I don't want a friend. I don't want gifts--both in the passive sense, and in that I actively do no want gifts. I want him to live in the house and be my roommate. I don't want human interaction that is anything beyond superficial. That's how Kevin and I lived together for over four years, and in spite of that, we actually became friends.