PYHO: Being The Bigger Person

It's Wednesday, time to Pour Your Heart Out with Shell at Things I Can't Say.  Got something you really need to say, but have felt you can't?  Now is the time.  Link up, and read what others are talking about, too!

As some of you may know, our house has regularly been the refuge for those with no other place to go.  You know, like America used to be.  We have had roommates since P was born.  There was an agreement regarding how rent was to be handled.  We rent, so they were not on the lease, meaning our asses were on the line should something go wrong.  

It was a bad decision to let them move in.  I can admit that.  We tried.  We really, really tried.  But about a month ago, we hit our limit, and let them know they had to move out by the end of July. We weren't getting our money, always cleaning up after them, lots of yelling as a basic means of communication.   The guy got sooooo pissed he didn't speak to us for days.  Wouldn't even look at us.  And then he was fine.  

Then the stuff that happened a few weeks ago happened, and we moved up the timeline - out by the 15th.  Because she was working, we extended until the 16th.  This was just shy of 3 weeks notice.  Plenty of time, especially since they had somewhere to go.  They understood.  

Between then and now, our basement, where they were staying, flooded.  For the 2nd time.  After the first time, we said, hey, move some of your stuff up into the spare room or your son's room for the time being.  Didn't do it.  The 2nd flood was worse, and a lot of their things got ruined.  This became OUR fault.  Sigh.  But still, things were fairly okay after another blow up by him and the usual 2 day cool-down.

But during that 3 weeks, not one thing got packed.  Not one.  Packing, in fact, did not begin until 1pm on the 16th.  And all was not out that night, but we refused to let them spend the night, and told them the rest HAD to be out the next day.  We want to clean!  Again, not done.  That night we told them anything left was going out to the curb trash night (Monday).  Apparently they didn't believe us.  

Monday rolled around, and still nothing was being done.  So we said again, it's going out with the trash unless you get it.  NOW we have gotten through.  So, he came up and was screaming and yelling and name calling...you name it.  Punching things.  We stayed cool.  Well, I did.  Hubby hit a point where he yelled back when I got called a bitch.  

Anyway, so, the stuff gets taken out.  Phew.  But he couldn't let it drop.  And so spent the next day telling all of our mutual friends that I have genital herpes.  Yup.  Not kidding.  So then Hubby had to go do damage control.  Now, I do have Type 1 - the cold sore variety that 80% of the population carry.  Either way, no one else's business.  And their friends posted horrid things about us on FB.    

Sigh.  Yes, he was a huge help to us around the house for a while, especially when I was on bed rest.  But we were a help to him, as well.  It went both ways.  That fact seems to have been lost.  

Which brings me to my point.  Never, at any point, did we want things to go down like this.  At all.  We just wanted to have our house to ourselves, have our family, and not be stressed out.  When he was screaming at us, we tried to be rational.  Explain why this was happening.  About choices they made leading to this happening. But it didn't matter.  It was all our fault.  

Did I want to yell back?  Hell yeah! Did I want some acknowledgement for how we had been taken advantage of?  Yup.  But hey, Hubby and I are adults, and we act like it.  And at that time in particular it was very necessary.  Rationality had been thrown out the window.  So we accepted being the "bad ones," taking the blame.  Because someone has to be the bigger person sometimes.  

We apologized to neighbors who he dragged into it.  We apologized for the drama.  We apologized for his behavior.  Because we felt guilty.  We felt guilty for any of it getting this bad.  We apologized because sometimes, you have to be the bigger person and let things slide.  Even when you want to scream back to get out months worth of frustration and irritations and truths.  

This is being an adult.