The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
Jump in the discussion.
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It's been rough (especially anxiety-wise, but this isn't my first rodeo there and I'm reasonably competent at dealing with it at this point in life) but I'm hanging in there and am calmer about the situation than last week. My job situation is not what I want it to be but is not an outright emergency (I can string together enough delivery and bartending shifts on top of it to keep the bills paid.) so I can backburn that problem while I get the roommate situation dealt with and have a backup plan there that'll open up in a few months.
I am dreading the process of kicking the roommate out (He may legitimately have nowhere to go due to having burned every bridge, and if that's the case or close to it I expect much wailing and gnashing of teeth.), but he has more than overstayed his welcome and done less than nothing with the frankly embarrassing amount of aid I've directly or indirectly sent his way. His health problems are unfortunate but his refusal to manage them is not my fault or responsibility (nor is his failure to find welfare or employment), and allowing him to stay here is tolerating an incorrigible leech at best and putting myself at risk of being conscripted into caregiving at worst. I really thought I could help this guy and all I wound up doing was enabling his self-destructive bullshit.
As far as friendship goes (and this is something I'm going to have to work on after this is over so that I don't find myself in a re-run of this situation), I had a bad habit through my 20s of picking up "friends" who really just appreciated my being useful and disappeared/drifted away when I quit loaning them money, fixing their car, etc. If the only thing you value in yourself is being useful then you'll develop a knack for finding people who will exploit this mercilessly, and this roommate is merely somewhere between grandfathered in from the past and the worst case of all of them. It has to end, and I am not obligated to let this guy stay at my place until he dies because of whatever went wrong in his life that isn't my fault.
To be honest, whatever pity or desire I had to help him at this point has been overcome by disgust, at him for his shameless freeloading and refusal to even try and get his shit together and toward myself for having tolerated it for so long. I will not let anger get the better of myself when dealing with him but I cannot and will not continue to tolerate this. This won't be an ultimatum or intervention, just a statement of fact: "You need to leave."
Read your previous posts, you're making the right decision. Good luck.
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I've seen your type before and I'm glad you have identified the problem. Many people are looking to exploit other people. The good news is that when people who have always focused on helping people focus on themselves they become dangerously competent.
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You've got this man! Stand up for yourself! Get this guy out of your life, value your own!! Cut him out without mercy. Any kindness or wavering will be used as a splinter to reinfect you.
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