Butch's Gold Watch or A Rant to End All Rants

Back when I was a kid, I think I saw things differently. One of the few things I remember from my youth was wanting people to like me. It was in elementary school, I was very near sighted and I didn't know that I was. I guess I thought the world was Supposed to be blurry unless it was not a foot away from my face. Anyway, I loved comics, I still do to this day. I was in a world of my own as most kids were. Afternoons full of Warner Bros. Cartoons, repeats of the old Adam West Batman show, Ultraman, Captain Cosmic racing a Bart train on channel 2, Classic Star Trek, playing with Mego dolls, reading comics and drawing.
I remember not being able to bring things to school without them being stolen from me.
I wasn't good with people even then, shy kid being picked on by kids bigger than me. I found that trying to be invisible, to not be a target , inevitably to stay in my own world, was the way to survive. Not being able to see likely added to that.
I wanted other kids to like me, they stole from me. To this day it burned a hole in me. I can't stand the thought of people stealing my things. Philosophically I understand that it's all just stuff, replaceable objects. But try telling that to a 5 year old who brought his soundtrack album ( vinyl ) of the Muppet Movie to show and tell, or his Batman Blue Ribbon Digest his Mom bought for him for toughing it out when he got a booster shot, Both Stolen from him at school?
Good luck Bubba.
I hate it when people Lie In Your Face about it too. It brings out a special kind of rage in me. Seething Rage.
Let me give you a recent example.
Up until recently I lived on the east coast, Baltimore to be exact. I went there to live with my Internet Girlfriend. It took me a long time to agree to move there, I had lived in only one place in all my (at the time 28) years....
Hmm, this is a long story, let me proceed to the point and leave the road for another time.
We broke up, we still loved each other, but we broke up. I was crushed and slightly Insane. I wanted to go home and lick my wounds. Between having to pay for some of the utilities and the last month's rent I could only send part of my possessions so about half of it (part of my clothes, comic books, hardcover and paperback novels, a watch my parents bought me, for a few examples) had to stay there, with her, until I had money to have it sent.
In 20/20 hindsight I should have stayed with friends that had offered me shelter when my first real relationship hit the iceberg. Baltimore was a lot different than California. People are more likely to open up a shy fellow than people here I must say. I made some some genuine friends in Baltimore.
Back to the point.
I've been writing back and forth with my ex for the last couple months. I have been pretty low, I haven't looked for a job until recently because of that. And besides, what manager would want to sit down to have an interview with a guy who wanted to chew the veins out of his arm at 4 am the night before. Kidding.
It was a comfort to me that my ex had kept my stuff for me in my time of need. It was one of the things I was looking forward to getting that stuff back. I had a lot of comic books in those boxes. Gaps in my collection. Comics waiting to be read. "Identity Crisis" and "Astonishing X-men". Signed comic books. A signed picture of Stone Cold Steve Austin I stood in line for three hours at a Wizard Comic Convention to get. A digital camera. Hardcover novels I bought new.
A watch my parents got me for Christmas.
And those are only the things I remember.
All gone now.
She wrote me a e-mail, after a long period of not writing I might add, and told me that her children had taken my boxes out of the trunk of her car and they left them in their yard. Two days of rain and snow later, she says it all got destroyed. She apologizes briefly (throwing in a jibe about my stuff meaning more to me that her) and then goes into a tirade about me not having a job and And me not having and Ambition, and that I was a bottom feeder. I was crushed, mad, sick. I sent her an e-mail befitting my Mood. She sends me one back.
Remember in Pulp Fiction when Butch's girlfriend forgets his gold watch? She fucked up by not bringing it. She gets upset because he's mad she fucked up and makes him feel like shit because of it. Ironic he almost got fucked up the ass isn't it?
A crying woman Is a weapon of mass destruction.
I'm writing e-mails trying to get her to talk to me because I still love her and I don't want her to hate me. My Stuff has figured in the battles we had to get me to go to Baltimore. She said often at the time that I loved my stuff more than her, which wasn't true.
Eventually I got in touch with her on IM, and I said I was sorry and she accepted.
Something hit me tonite, like a bowl full of bad chili with water from a Mexico river. That sick feeling that hits you like a heart attack
How can a watch be destroyed by the rain or snow?
If the boxes were sealed something must have been left?
HER STORY DOESN'T MAKE SENSE.
Suddenly I'm that shy, pudgy kid who wanted people to like AND couldn't see past a foot in front of him, who can't and listen "The Lovers, the Dreamers, and Me" when he gets home from school that day.
I could drink hot blood at that very moment washed down with sweet, sweet, vengeance.
But, and I say But...
I'm willing to hear her out. Because I know in my mind it's all just stuff. Replaceable (at cost mind you, ugh). But in my gut....That's another story. A developing one. I'm not a violent man, but I do hold a grudge.
D-