06/04/15 - 11:49 a.m.

My girlfriend has been saying some weird sh*t the last few days. I'd kind of been hanging back, letting her enjoy being unemployed. She seemed calm. Happy, even. But, so, then when a job offer came along, she was upset and didn't really want it...

And you can hang back and be cool all you want, but something like that -- I just couldn't let it go by. She probably will take the job -- although if she has this crap attitude about it, it'll fall apart one way or the other. We didn't talk about it, and so of course it came up again when we were stuck in a car trip driving across town. And then at some point in that conversation, she lets slip that she actually has $10,000 in her retirement account that she's thinking about spending.

At this point I go to the fact that she owes me over $10,000. And I probably shouldn't have gone there, because that's not the real issue. Except tangentially -- if she never works, she'll never ever be able to pay things off. But really, it's just more about her refusal to line up any actual income stream.

She will, but she won't be happy about it, so she'll end up quitting within 8 months (and then still not have any money to pay me back...) And honestly, it's one of these weird things where she's grooving on herself and working on "her art" -- and what kind of unsupportive bastard would you have to be to discourage that, to point out that she's never earned a cent off it -- never actually even finished anything. Never quite got around to submitting it to one of those contests. But of course, it's a foregone conclusion: whatever happens is proof that she needs to "focus on her art". Like, "oh my god I came in third place in one of the 27 subdivisions! See, I totally am meant to be an artist...."

Actually, I probably shouldn't go there either. It's all really about the fact that she's acting like she's not ever going to get a job ever because jobs suck. It's a "live wire" issue for me, and she bumped up against it again by talking just a little too effusively about how awesome it is to be working on her art (and not holding a job). That's what's at the heart of all this -- and I guess I shouldn't go to the "You owe me money" place. Or the trope about how she doesn't actually finish what she started -- she just drags out the working on it until she has to put it on hold because she's out of money.

So, putting those aside: it drives me crazy when she says "jobs suck". And good god, I bit my tongue about it for the last six weeks. My hope was she'd relax and recover and get back to normal. But instead she's just completely not dealt with why she hated her last job -- reveled in not having to work, week after week. So we're worse off -- she's "gotten away" with not working, had a blast, "worked on her art". Why would she ever want to give that up? And the option exists to just blow through her retirement money and continue not working. Because.... art!

I can disengage, shake my head, look sadly on. I hate the stress she's brought to my summer -- your girlfriend is no longer okay or normal or solvent. And you can't say anything, or you're unsupportive. And then she's so blissed up on herself that she's actually not a good roommate either.

Because honestly, that's what this is all about. I move to the far end of the apartment, settle in for some quiet time reading a book. And then she shouts out "OH MY GOD!!!!" And then doesn't say a word.

It was like something Ernie would do to Bert. In the long passing silence, eventually I felt like I had to say, "What is it, dear?" And then she couldn't tell me -- she babbled out some jibberish. The conversation had to continue -- of course -- until it arrived at the point where she gushed about the fact that someone had mentioned her in one of her meetups. Honestly, I think that's what I'm mad about the most. She gets so tired -- so "drained" from working on her art -- that she rolls over anyone else in the room. Not maliciously. Just because of the size of her gargantuan ego.