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In total I bought five Lack shelves from IKEA. One was to go in the tv nook area, two were to be used to hold the alcohol in the ‘bar’ section of the ‘lounge’ area, and the remaining two were attached to each wall in the ‘bedroom’ area of the room.

My dad had this history of doing things ‘just good enough’ or otherwise as I would put it, quarter-assed. Back in the eighties when he transformed that room from a garage into a ‘family’ room he put cheapo wood-look panelling up on the walls. Now the room wasn’t ever particularly finished when it was built, just a standard garage, sheetrock on the ‘house’ side and bare concrete block on all other walls. I was too young to remember it actually being done, but I remember it being a garage, so it happened sometime in the blacked out memory of youth. He did a fairly good job when he transformed the laundry room from its unfinished state into what was at first a family room, but then became an office, which ultimately turned into a giant dumpster. I sort of assumed (whoops!) that he put some amount of care into the room in question. I was dreadfully wrong.

There seems to be a real flux in regards to the spacing of studs throughout this house… every now and then you find the traditional 16″ on center, but most of the time it’s something else, much greater a distance and a distance that I question the legality of. It’s no wonder that the company that built this house has long been out of business.

So back downstairs, I really struggled to attach the two shelves in the bedroom area. As anyone familiar with Lack shelving knows, it’s an “invisible hardware” style shelf that uses 10 screws in strategic locations to attach this bar with two large “prongs” that go into the shelf. I started to notice that the studs down there were more like FOUR FEET on center! If you push on the panelling it bulges! Studs were only placed on the edges of the panelling so that it could be attached. So, basically these shelves are held up by a prayer…. thankfully they were not intended to hold anything of any weight, just a few candles really.

Fastforward to me attaching the bar shelving. Same situation, no studs… I used very long screws hoping that somehow I’d go through the void into the drywall and actually hit a stud back there…. no such luck. All ten screws for the first shelf landed only in the void. Even with ten screws, simply squished into the drywall and open area just will not cut it. I put the shelf on the prongs, pressed down gently and the shelf started to slant…. and stayed that way.

So yeah, that’s a bust. I think I’ll put the two remaning shelves over the closet area; there SHOULD be a stud across the opening where the door is, otherwise there’d be nothing to attach the track of the door to.

I’m thinking perhaps going with the same heavy-duty shelving solution I used up here for the laser printer and networking gear… A four feet span is less than desirable, but it’s quite a bit better than screws into open air behind panelling! This also means though that I’ll need to invest more money, which means I’ll need to postpone that aspect of the room for a while.

I dove into clearing out one of the closets in the lounge this morning, finding mostly burnable trash. So here I am, standing outside in the middle of the night/morning, the sky is clear and directly above me is Orion. The last time I was standing around the “hobo barrel” at night was with Cole, burning the cartons the dryer and dishwasher came in. It was so ghetto, but still so enjoyable, because we were eating chicken fingers while burning that cardboard, lol.

It’s so incredibly difficult when you’re so angry with someone you love, and that anger has stemmed from worry. It would be too simplistic to blame my unhappiness on him, because through August and September I have had these memories of Davey flooding back to me. Right when I needed someone around most, when I really needed someone there to just… well, be supportive, he took off, but not without first burdening me with all sorts of justified concern for him.

Anyway, the idea of an unsent letter is that it is never sent, a way of venting off in either positive or negative ways, and for me to post it, in this case, is to send it. While I mean every sentence, I’m not ready.

So you’ve realized that life just isn’t as great as you thought it was, it’s about time. I was wondering if you’d ever notice how superficial you’ve become, but even then I might be giving you too much credit. I’m disappointed in you, especially because you expect me to just keep caring. I offered my help and you took it just long enough to stand on your own again, renegging on the idea that friends are to be around for each other, instead of what we have now.

So am I supposed to keep caring? To keep watching you destroy yourself over and over again, because it’s clear that I can’t really help you, because you don’t want to help yourself. Instead of looking for a real solution to the way you’re feeling, you drown yourself in drug abuse and you’re actually proud of it! It’s simply too painful to see you like this, especially when it is your own doing.

Maybe you should consider yourself disowned, finally, because I really don’t think I can deal with this unrelenting disaster you create of your life, anymore. I’ve been there for you as much as I possibly could for the last four years, I’ve gone so far out of my way just to try to help you, but you keep throwing it away.

I come to you because I’m not feeling too wonderful about the world and you tell me to go get on meds or just go hookup with people randomly; you don’t want to put any effort into actually being a friend to me, even though I’ve always tried so hard to be there for you, it’s not fair to either of us anymore. I don’t recall ever telling you to take your problems elsewhere, that I didn’t want to deal with them, but now that’s what I’m going to say, because it’s far too easy for you to do it to me.

You’re fully welcome to continue fucking up your life, but I want absolutely nothing to do with it. Continue to buy your superficial version of happiness, your drugs, leave me out of it. To paraphase what you said to me the other day, you’ll still be around in a year right? If it’s so easy for you to take a year off from the obligations that friendship carries, why can’t I?

There’s this flux about me lately, and I’m not particularly sure where it is coming from either. So, instead of not writing, which is almost not conceivable, there’s a preponderance of these strange single line entries consisting of a random string of letters and numbers.

I suppose I’m just no longer comfortable with raw emotion being available to view by just anyone that happened by or puts a search string into google for that matter. Plus it goes back to not wanting my journal to be the primary source of information about how I feel about certain people — it’s a responsibility to directly tell someone just how incredibly unhappy I am with them, or inversely, how happy I am with them.

It’ll pass, as it always does, once the confusion clears.