hate at first sight

I am so tired right now and would like nothing more than to lay down and take a nap, but if I do that I ruin my night.

Have I mentioned that I hate naps? They just don't work for me. I wake up grumpy and a little disoriented and usually find I've slept longer than I wanted. Also, the only time I really feel like napping is when I'm consistently not getting enough sleep for enough days, and the nap only means I'll be awake later in the night than I want.

I have a whole pile in my reader that I'm not going to read right now. We went to Hot Springs NC for a quick camping trip this weekend, we being me and a a niece and the friend of said niece who drove up to hang out for the weekend. We met Momma and the boys there as well as some other friends and a couple of people I didn't know.

Of the people I didn't know, one was a cool girl and her daughter. I liked them well enough, but the guy she brought with her, a guy I can only assume is the boyfriend, was the reason my camping trip was completely ruined.

This guy was stumbling around in complete drunken black out mode, was going through people's things, stealing beer, playing his music too loud, falling into/onto tents and saying things that he would never have said sober. Apparently he's in AA, but if you don't not drink then AA aint gonna do shit for you.

In situations like this I tend to find myself growing protective of my people, and when the people present are family and/or younger people, I get more protective. I did what I could with the douche bag guy, but at that point there wasn't much I could do. I pretty much just had to hang out until he crawled into his tent for the last time

I'd arrived fairly late to the campground having worked that morning, and douche bag guy was well into being drunk, though at first it didn't seem soooo bad. He was obnoxious enough of course, but I didn't really get the full effect till a little later.

Anyway, not to go into the whole story, but the guy completely ruined the camping trip for me. Even the next day, when he was sober and hearing about what he had done the night before I still couldn't bring myself to feel anything other than desire for him to be away. His apologies for his antics sounded as if they'd been pulled out and used a number of times over the years, and I'm sure they have.

I've known people like this before, people for whom alcoholism is like a monster side of them that crawls out and takes their control. They act like fools and are annoying and offensive, and sometimes you can walk away and let them self destruct on their own. You can't help them because they aren't going to take help they aren't ready for, and they feel something like remorse when sober they are made to face their actions, but on some level it's still a sham. They are going to drink again, and they are going to be assholes again, and then they are going to do it again.

The next day douche bag guy hung back as the group that was going tubing set off up the trail. He acted as if he needed or forgot something. I was not tubing and was sitting away from the coolers watching random children. I heard a cooler open behind me and turned to see douche bag guy feeling around inside it. He didn't see me because his eyes were set on another of our group. Douche bag guy was watching the wrong person and continued to do so as he then went into my cooler.

I let him steal the beer and warned the friends that he was drinking again and stealing beer, and if I had animosity for this guy before it was all I had for him by this point. I decided it wasn't worth the trouble especially since I wasn't going to be there much long. Niece and niece's friend needed to get back to my town and their car and start their long trek back home.

And that's the story of my weekend mostly. I did go out for a bit last night, met up with some friends, played some pool and some foosball, lost all games played. It was mildly redemptive, if that's even the proper use of that, but it sounds good, so I'm leaving it. I know what I mean.