[Nikolaj]

Angst rant- Of friendship, drunken marriage proposals, airline tickets, family fallout and a man in his own house:
Tis the season
-for my family, who will never see this.

Having stress about a good (female) friend since the 1980s visiting me for a few days. I bought her airline tickets to visit, and the day is very close. I thought maybe she'd cancel. She's visited 3 times since I moved back to the East coast in the '90s. I saw her last year.
I probably am going to have to suck it up, and go through with the plans, it's too close to her arriving to say 'don't come'. I do want to see her, and I don't, but I have to focus on the 'want to' and just have a good time, which we will, I think.
My family doesn't like it and has been badgering me about it. Something about me being 'naive' (at 46?) and it being "inappropriate for an unmarried woman to come live with me for a week"- four nights and leaving early on the fifth morning is a week, now? In a four bedroom house, in which she will have her own bedroom for the visit, which I had told them would be the sleeping arrangements?
Oh, and if she were a married woman, that would make it ok? Now it makes sense. No.
We've been friends since the 1980s. I'm so surprised, and hurt, at how much sh*t I've been taking about it.
It's all because just twice, in a one month time period this fall, she'd had her fill of wine during long phone calls, and asked me to marry her. The first time, I told her if she felt the same way in a year, we'd talk about it then, because I didn't want to be unkind, I do like her a lot and understood. Her sisters both married for the first time in their 40s, and she is 50 now. She knows what the deal would be, and that we'd be living separately. I can't leave CT and don't want to, which may be more accurate. She owns her own home and has a career she likes. She still thinks it's a good idea.
She just meant for mutual support. Plus, she really wants to be married, not to me in particular, just be married, I think.
I shared the info with my mom and my sister- I was flattered, and a bit amazed. It's not like I'm exactly getting marriage proposals now with the jaw-dropping frequency that I once did (har) and she is fun and successful.
I am fully aware that I won't marry her. My sister believed me, initially.
I had exactly one marriage and one divorce, at age 18 and 20. No kids.
It's like they think it would happen, "oh, there he goes again, getting married, every 28 years like clockwork." It's so wrong to still be friends with someone who when a bit loaded, confessed, touchingly, she wants to be married because she never has been, and we've been close all these years, and she chose me when the idea was on her mind?
So what? Who doesn't get lonely, sometimes? Should I disregard 21, 23 years of her being a wonderful friend, which is how she knows I think of her?
"No, of course not- but you don't buy her an airline ticket or tell her you'll entertain the idea in a year"-- my sister.
She has a point. I just figured that my friend would either be over the marriage craze by then, or find someone local and un loco!
Maybe I just want to see someone who isn't 100 years old, gross, and in need of my services, and have something of a life for four days, maybe have a good time? I don't mean sexually, at all. That hasn't ever happened with us, and it won't. We're comfortable with that. I mean, two old friends, comfortable, kicking back.
The whole big stank over it ruined my Christmas. Well, the 20 grand eased the pain, some.
Yay, I can pay my bills. And change beds and beg, in kind tones, of my handicapped father to please not be content to leave his pants not pulled up to hear my mother say I'm "picking on him".
"I don't say it to be mean. It's uncivilized. I say it because I don't want you to settle or accept to have to live with a slob. For him to sit there smiling and scratching watching tv, like it's normal to have half his ass sticking out of a Depends with sweatpants pulled just to his thigh and his gut exposed"- He can pull the pants up, and shirt down, it just takes effort. Make the effort. That's mean?
Don't pour a bottle of urine down the kitchen sink? That's mean? When I do their cooking?! Roll on the damned scooter down to the bathroom. I know he can't walk or stand. He still could shave. He still could brush his teeth. Good God.
He says "I'm in my own house, Kolya" (my nickname)-
-yes, that you are, in your own house, husband of my mother, somehow my father. But I'm here, I don't want to see your ass.
I'm why you're able to still live in your own house.
If you have to lay on the bed to be able to pick the pants up all the way- well, old man, go lay on the fcking bed to do it, I think, but don't say. My sister- who will visit 3 times a year- asked to have you shave. And change your socks. That is mean? He takes his handicapped status as an excuse to do nothing.
Oh, but how he has mastered the telephone.
Do call me when it's time for meals, and I can't imagine what I am smelling between the stove and the counter, til I realize, well of course, a perfectly cooth man pours his piss down the kitchen sink just before I come over to cook dinner. Of course.
So, I have a dear friend coming for 4 days and have been given nothing but hell about it. F them all. I am not canceling on her. I have a great house I rent, that is clean, and won't bring her over to The House of Scents, a few doors away down the street. I clean it and clean it and clean and clean and still it stinks.
That's what I get for sharing something personal with them, you know, something happy, even, about me. Someone likes me. Oh no.
Though I don't want to be married, would it be so horrible, for any of my family, if I ever decided to? I feel like it's 'keep anyone away from him who wants to get too close'- it has always been like that. I refer to childhood friends always being kept at a distance, a generally oppressive air that lead me to run 3000 miles across the country away from them as soon as I could, to marry at 18 and have no-one in my family present or know beforehand, and then divorce quickly, though at the time, it felt like an eternity, there was a year long wait. Centuries ago.
I just want to say to the lot of them: "I think you're crazy, and I ought to know!"