My wife and I rang the doorbell of the house we had just purchased. At first there was no response from inside the home we had driven 2,500 miles, in which to enjoy retirement and be close to grandchildren. From inside, a subdued voice told us to “come on in.” After opening the front door, we saw him lying on the living room couch. A depressed looking man around forty, he had a whiny voice, and trouble looking us in the eye. But, then he would change and show a mischievous, boyish grin or smirk. Being around him both irritated me and made me uncomfortable. He wasn’t a nice looking person, in truth, the more you saw of him, the uglier he seemed. His hair was almost gone from the front of his forehead; his nose crooked and turned up, with an ugly mole on one side. His skin gave the outer signs of neglect. He was not well kept.

“You’ll have to excuse me, I’m too tired to get up,” he told us, as we both awkwardly stood there, not knowing what to do. “I’ve been working so hard to try and get out of here.” We had phoned from our motel, to ask him if we could check out our house in preparation for our moving van’s arrival the next day. And lying on the couch he remained, for at least 15 minutes. Why doesn’t the son of a bitch get up and act like a human being? I had disliked him from the first time I saw him, when our real estate person was showing us through his home.

Michael was his name, and his wife had moved out and taken their three young children five months earlier. Was he so depressed he couldn’t function? The minutes went by, and Ann and I took a seat. We had questions about the security system, sprinkler system, appliances, yard, and other matters. But “Michael” was in no hurry. He lay there, with one hand behind his head, looking a mixture of depression and mischief. There was a time of uncomfortable silence.

The second time our realtor had shown us our new home, I saw a picture of Michael’s wife, Christy. She looked buxom and sensuous. Later when we met her, I found myself wondering if she had left him for a more vital and attractive man. It wouldn’t take much looking to find one, when compared to what she had been with for several years.

When still thousands of miles away, in our previous Midwestern home, our new home sale negotiations had seemed to take forever. We negotiated after a one-week trip to the Northwest. We had only so much time to vacate the home we had just sold in Ohio. First the estranged Christy wanted to buy the house from Michael, but couldn’t get a loan. Then Michael kept delaying his responses to our counter-offers, defying the deadlines our realtor advised us to set. Our realtor (what a case she was, but that’s another story) told us it was Michael’s realtor “Scott” who was responsible for the delays in negotiation. God only knows what the truth was.

Meanwhile, the time left for us to get out of our home and travel thousands of miles to meet our Moving Van in Washington was less than two weeks. Boy did I get pissed off at the whole mess. Pissed at the real estate system, with its lying, manipulative, and deceptive salespersons. Pissed about the ten thousand dollars we had to take off the sale price of our home, to give to real estate people who had spent just several hours of work for all that money. I felt my old enemy, resentment, eating away again at my stomach, and spiking my blood pressure.

And there was this lousy blue-collar bastard lying there on the couch, refusing to both get up, and to answer our simple questions. All the pressure and tension of recent months felt so heavy on me. I almost got up and said to Ann, let’s get the hell out of here. But I didn’t, because what else could I do but wait for this “blue collar bill,” or should I instead type him as an “upper blue collar bill” whose “blue collar belle” had left him? (As the reader can discern by now, I don’t exactly have a liking for the blue-collar segment of American Society; never have and probably never will). Why I despise them so, I really haven’t bothered to seriously ask myself.

When Michael did get up from his couch, he very slowly moved around, speaking in a slow monotone. He did not seem to care one bit about the bind he had put us in. “I’ll probably have to work all night, but I’ll be out of here before your movers get here.” Would he? I wouldn’t bet on it.

Ann and I stayed around for two more hours. The real estate lady’s daughter had arrived and was “cleaning” the very filthy house for “just” $200! She kept complaining how hot the water was. I felt like telling her, “just turn the hot water faucet down some, dummy.” “Stop talking and start working.” Afterwards, Ann and I both realized we had stayed there to help put pressure on Michael getting all his crap out of the house.

Michael’s new home was a condo not far away. For the first ten days he kept coming by to check his mail. He hadn’t bothered to ask the Post Office to forward it. In the yard he left a complete set of barbells, dumb bells, and racks of weights. Some friend had given them to him, but he hadn’t touched them. After two weeks, I had to get rid of them myself. Other junk was strewn around the yard, left lying there by a guy who clearly didn’t give a damn.

Weeks later, after we had begun to get settle in, I asked myself, “Why does someone like Michael bug the daylights out of me?” And even more, “Why do I feel so resentful and obsess on how I feel about him?”

Then I remembered. When my Ann and I were with our realtor, first considering our then future home, she saw on the refrigerator reminders of AA and other 12 Step Meetings. This guy, Michael, had an “addictive personality.” So did I. That was one reason he bothered me so much. To a certain extent I saw things I disliked about myself in him. Certain parts of his personality traits reminded me of myself. When he acted the way he did, it touched a nerve. I saw myself, especially before I got into recovery. I was most often disconnected from people. I was rarely present in a conversation, even with close family. To be in a healthy intimate relationship was a reality I had not experienced. Michael was a reminder of my old self from the past.

His addictive personality was someone I could become again, if I did not stay in recovery, and daily call upon my Higher Power to guide and strengthen me. To this same Higher Power I said a short thank you prayer, for the insight he had given me during this time of transition into retirement. I did not want this last part of my life to be like most of my adult life. I wanted to be sane, instead of living a life of insanity, enslaved to addiction. I even found myself saying a prayer for Michael, that he experience the new freedom and healing of recovery from the living hell, which is addiction.