Freakshow of the Day

Something a little different tonight.

you stole a bracelet from my estate sale this morning

i know u took it

u asked how much it was and no one was here between when u inquired about it and when i saw it was gone

u can bring it back no harm no fowl.. its tuff times i get it.

if u dont bring it back ... well lets all pray u never have to find out.
Im here all day, if ur to embarrassed leave it in at my door and go

thanx

Because this is the most effective way to get your shit back, right? I think that we can assume that this was not a for-real estate sale, because then it would have been managed by a company that specializes in estate sales and so the bracelet probably wouldn't have been stolen. What this more likely was, was a yard/garage sale and the person was either too lazy or had too much stuff to move outside and so they just threw open the doors to their house and had complete strangers walking through their house. I've been to a few of those, and it's weird walking through someone's house looking to buy shit when they're still living there. About as weird as the time The Ex and I were shopping for the house he has now, and we went up in one house and I swear, I absolutely swear, the person who lived there, was hiding in the house somewhere. Almost like they didn't have enough time to get out by when the realtor said to be out. The TV was still on, there was still fog on the bathroom mirror... Yeah, I'm pretty sure they might have been hiding in a closet or something. I got so weirded out by that whole thing that the fact that the whole house smelled like cat piss took second place. I remember telling The Ex, "Someone is still in this house. Right now. I can feel it." He told me I was being stupid, but I know what I know.

I didn't do any yardsaling this year. I had all summer, basically, or at least every other weekend to go out and troll around in other people's yards and driveways looking for unusual shit for really cheap. I wanted to, had a girlfriend all lined up to go trolling with me, but then decided that fuck it, I didn't have the extra cash to spend, and I needed to just work on getting my house squared away without lugging more shit into it. So no yardsaling for me. A few years ago, there was one yard sale I went to, not much there, and this old guy was kind of wandering around in this squirrely kind of way, looking for something specific, but I can't remember what. I do remember that he was thin, tall, graying and had his hair combed over with a little Nazi-ish kind of mustache. Strangest guy, but you see some strange people at yard sales. Since yardsaling was such a mindless yet kind of productive activity for me, the kind of activity that was really designed to get me out of the house for a few hours without needing to have a fucking chaperon (although I had to come home with at least one useless item or I would most likely face the Spanish Inquisition about where the hell was I and what was I doing), I always tried to figure out where some of these people had come from. If you haven't figured it out by now, I have an overactive imagination. I liked to imagine that this old guy, well, maybe he's the same guy who showed up at the German embassy in New York a few months later looking for asylum when he was sneaking around trying to get out of the country because The Man was looking for him. It would certainly make for a good story. Same thing with the guy at the old rundown flea market, out selling knock-off jeans and purses and shit. Yeah, that somewhat attractive 30 something year old guy. In the trunk of his car? A rape kit, because that's how he rolls. And somewhere under the hood of his car? A little satellite thingy, because The Man knows how he rolls, too. But I digress, and let my imagination get away from me sometimes.

The Ex used to hate that I did yardsaling, and I think this was either because he ended up having to babysit, or because he thought the whole thing was beneath him. Probably a combination of the two. As a sidebar, I absolutely hated that I felt like I had to get him to babysit so I could get out of the house for a few hours. I mean, if they're your kids, it's not babysitting. It's being a fucking parent. I realized the other day that in ten years of marriage, I went away for a beach weekend with a girlfriend exactly once, and went out of town to spend the night with another girlfriend exactly once, for one night. I'm pissed remembering this, because all of a sudden, that doesn't seem normal. I have girlfriends who do the girls-weekend thing all the time, and I was always envious of them. The weekend I went to the beach? He was standing in the driveway waiting for me to get home, and then yelled for an hour that I was late and blathered on about how inconsiderate I was, blah blah blah. Sorry, I got home at one o'clock in the afternoon instead of eleven o'clock in the morning on Sunday. Please, divorce me. I hate that motherfucker. I know I've said this before, but I really do. I hate him for how he treated me, and I hate me for letting him get away with that shit for so many years.  What's worse is the realization that knowing all of this now can't make up for so much wrong for so many years. Ten years of my life, completely controlled by an arrogant and insecure bastard who treated me like shit and guilt tripped me into believing the stupid shit he had me believing.

The worst thing is wondering if this is now my norm. Wondering if this is all that I know, and I'll just end up with another asshole just like him. And then another asshole. And another. I wonder if he did such a bang-up job on me that I won't be able to be in a relationship where it's not like this. I talk a lot of shit about a lot of shit, but I wonder if I'm destined to live the rest of my life with just a bunch of first dates, because I'll be too scared for more than that because he might end up being The Ex all over again. That's what's really scary to me. I might end up doing this shit all over again.