Currently I live with my mother and an older unrelated senior citizen whom we've known for many years and have come to consider as family so we let him move in last year and contribute financially since we wouldn't be able to make ends meet without a roommate and would have to give up our house(all three of us pitch in financially, my mother giving the most). My mother is pretty much his legal guardian now, it's either he lives with us or goes to a VA nursing home. We've been struggling with this elderly man since the day he moved in. He began to overeat and we found ourselves frequently without food and a grocery bill that grew by several hundred dollars as he gained 40 pounds after 6 months of living with us. We could not live with this, so we had to put a locked chain around the fridge and pantry and only let him eat the three standard meals a day with treats occasionally. For the first 6 months or so we noticed he almost never bathed, so we began to require him to shower everyday. After a while we realized he would shower for only a 2 minutes at the most so we started timing him and making him stay in there for 10 minutes. He would wear the same clothes for several days at a time, and when we made him wash his clothes he put some of our clothes in there and ruined them so now we do his laundry too. He is an alcoholic too, and is not allowed by the VA to drink so we never buy him alcohol. In the past he's just stolen my mother's and her friends (when they were over) and got drunk as heck. He also broke my mother's bedroom window to get in there and look for some while she was at work. These have died down though since my mother started locking her drinks in a safe(I don't drink, so he can't steal from me).
Now I know what y'all are going to ask: why haven't you kicked him out yet? Well, like I stated above we need a roommate to keep the house my mother fought and saved up many years to get (she's 53 now, it took her over a decade to get this home as a single mother) and well, honestly he's done so much damage to the house we can't get another roommate without spending thousands of dollars in repairs we don't have. His room is completely trashed, the carpet is covered in stains and is starting to grow mold in places, he has broken the tv in there, the dining room table, and a recliner in his room that now smells like urine now matter how many times we've scrubbed it.
And you know what the worst part of this absurd tale is? He doesn't care. He says he's sorry, yet continues to steal food, leave trash on the floor, never clean up after himself, and many other things. My mother has broken down and cried in front of him wanting to know why he treats us this way and he says he doesn't know. When I asked him myself what his justification was, he said he had nothing. When I asked what made exempt him from morality and laws, he said nothing. He says he's just an old sinner waiting for redemption in heaven. I told him that (in my own opinion) that a life time of being awful to everyone does not warrant entry to Christ's kingdom and he says that just because he is saved, reads the bible everyday along with praying often that his redemption and entry to heaven is guaranteed. In other words he can be as bad as he wants and it's all OK just because he was saved. He can treat us like garbage and steal, lie, and destroy our stuff and it's just fine because he's a good christian. Today I lost my temper and said that everyone sins, but only monsters keep on sinning without second thought or regard for others and that monsters have no place in heaven. That was wrong of me, everyone has a place in heaven and it was not my place to say he didn't. But this is hard to live with. I'm a christian plagued by doubt who has just returned from a few years of atheism brought on by the deaths of my father and brother. To deal with all this damages my faith, and honestly I feel lesser every time that man does something to hurt us.
So please, pray for this man and pray for my mother and me as well. Times are very hard on us, her especially. And help me with this spiritual pain I feel because of this man I used to think of as my grandfather (Both of my biological grandfathers died before I was born). Thank you for reading this absurd post, and I hope you all have a wonderful day.
