April 02, 2002 | 12:46 PM

7AA )### Thurston St.

I have an awful habit of bending over backwards to be fair to other people and assuming that in turn, those people will bend over backwards to be fair to me.

When my hyper driven sensitivity to the needs, desires, and feelings of someone else is not reciprocated, I am resentful. Outraged. Selflessness is pealed away to reveal its opposite.

How completely unfair! I made your wellbeing the center of my universe. Now how come you aren�t doing the same thing for me? Boo hoo hoo

Case in point.

John and I and the extra $1,500.

There were several decisions I could have made.

For the sake of integrity, I could have insisted we call the bank and inform them of their mistake.

I also could have told John to give me my half.

But I wanted to make him happy. I wanted to make things easier for him. I didn�t want him to bare too much responsibility.

(((Groan)))

I tell him to keep the money and use it towards his share of the down payment on the apartment.

And I expect that since I am being so generous, and so very �fair�, and since I have to come up with $1,883 and he only has to come up with $483, I figure that he might, you know, help me out with groceries and such.

Of course, that�s not what happens.

What happens is this.

I live like a pauper for months, saving almost every penny I earn at The Stupid Company. I even use five of my vacation days from work to volunteer for a medical study that pays $600. The study consists of me being shot up with insulin and having muscle tissue extrapolated from my thighs. This experiment leaves me with minor nerve damage and permanent scarring, but hey�you gotta make the rent somehow.

$1,883 is a hell of a lot of money to save in three months when you�re an underpaid, overqualified marketing research manager at the Stupidest Stupid Company on the planet.

I allow myself fifty dollars a week for transportation, groceries, and cigarettes. That�s it. No other spending money or luxuries. I give up drinking. And I eat once a day. The byproduct is I lose a great deal of weight, and as time goes on, I behave more and more like an anorexic. I only allow myself to eat between the hours of 6 and 7PM. I cut my food into little bites and chew each bite 100 times.

By the end of the summer I am down to eating one small hamburg patti per day with one slice of low fat cheese. I have lost sixty pounds in three months.

Everyone tells me how great I look. Little do they know that I am about one step away from having a nervous breakdown. Everything in my life has gone to hell in a handbasket.

I�ve lost Angus.

For all practical purposes I�ve lost John.

Ronnie gets scarier and scarier once he finds out that John, Jenn and I are getting a new apartment; he starts a rumor that the three of us are involved in some bizarre love triangle�this unnerves and embarrasses me. (what�s ironic is that John and I aren�t even really sleeping together much less doing anything fun and kinky like adding someone else to the mix.)

I despise my job and hate myself for being such a tool of corporate America.

And to top it all off, because of this down payment I have to come up with, I am destitute. Being so fucking poor brings back terrible memories of my former homelessness.

John on the other hand lives The Life of Riley. After all, he only has $483 to come up with. He�s home less and less and less. He swans about drinking with his friends, carrying home thirty packs and bitching about the occasional fifty-dollars he has to tuck away.

He doesn�t send any help my way.

Does this sound familiar to you?

The thing is, this whole situation is my fault. Again and again I allow people to get away with things. I let people walk all over me. I allow people to avoid taking responsibility for their actions and their lives. I try to save everyone, and when it doesn�t work, I get back at them in the most passive aggressive of ways. It�s as though I�m hoping that if I put myself at the mercy of people I love, they will take care of me, which will prove to me how much they love me.

And it hasn�t ever worked. It has always backfired in my face.

Don�t get me wrong, John behaved like a selfish little shit in this instance, as he did when he took that job at The Stupid Company, and he will again later in the SAGA when something horrible happens at The Stupid Company. But I allow it to happen, and the unspoken bargain on my part in each of these instances is that if I allow him get away with all this shit, he�ll take care of me, and take responsibility for my decisions. In a way, my behavior is just as selfish as his, if more vague and subversive.

A human being shouldn�t bend over backwards to make someone else happy when it means risking his/her own physical, psychological, or emotional wellbeing. We aren�t designed to do that. After all, our spines aren�t malleable, and bending over backwards can snap us in half. Maybe each person is supposed to stand up straight and hold his/her own ground. To be true to ourselves and honor our own voices.

I don�t realize that though in the Spring and Summer of the year 2000.

It will take me another year to reach that epiphany.

Stay Tuned for Part The Forty-Fourth...

Help me Mary, please

I've lost my home to thieves

They bully the stereo and drink

They leave suspicious stains in the sink

They make rude remarks about me

They wonder just how wild I would be

As they egg me on and keep me mad

They play me like a pit bull in a basement, and for that

I lock my door at night

I keep my mouth shut tight

I practice all my moves

I memorize their stupid rules

I make myself their friend

I show them just how far I can bend

As they egg me on and keep me mad

They play me like a pit bull in a basement, and for that

I'm asking, dear Mary please

Temper my hatred with peace

Weave my disgust into fame

And watch how fast they run to the flame

Read THE SAGA fromTHE VERY BEGINNING

time capsule from heaven - Sunday, Aug. 21, 2011
31 - Saturday, Mar. 15, 2008
Dead/Alive - Monday, Mar. 10, 2008
Do not trustTIAA-CREF-- they are fucking their customers - Friday, Jul. 28, 2006
Shilling - Tuesday, Jul. 11, 2006

Before After