I bought a $400 ticket home last Wednesday so that I didn't have to socialize with my roommate over the weekend. It was totally worth it - spent two days with my wife and my kid. Got rained on. Made dinner. Watched football. Lived like a normal person. Got up at 6, played airport games, landed 20 minutes early, spent an hour on the tarmac because fuck you we're LAX, Lyfted home and said-same roommate had covered two entire counters with dirty dishes. Worse, he hadn't even moved the clean dishes I'd re-cleaned before leaving on Thursday.

Got all covered in honey adjusting the shift linkage on the bike and left half an hour late. Made it in on time, exhausted and dehydrated, then made it home at midnight to a text reading "sorry for stinking up the house I had a recipe go bad." Went to bed.

Woke up, went to do laundry ahead of going to work and discovered that he had passively-aggressively moved his own laundry out of the dryer and put it on top to make room for his own laundry. Which meant that in order to do laundry I had to move two loads of his shit.

Sat down to drink some coffee and found a used Q-tip on the coffee table.

Lit the fuck into him over text message because I was in no mood to call his ass. Three hours later he sends some groveling "I know I need to do better" bullshit that makes it abundantly clear that this is his modus operandi - let it skate until somebody says something and then snivel your way to equilibrium.

I realized the core question last night: "Why does he feel entitled to make me fight for my comfort?" And shortly after that I deduced the answer: "Because he lacks the courage to face his disability."

I went to Western Washington University for two and a half years. It was literally the happiest point of my life, in the environment I have fought 20 years to reclaim. He went to Western Washington University for six weeks, then had a nervous breakdown and flailed back to his parents' house in San Diego. He does not openly discuss the cause for his retreat. I used to think it's because he's a mama's boy who couldn't handle the weather. Earlier yesterday I wondered if he had a roommate there that didn't cotton to used q-tips on their coffee table. Last night I decided it was probably the stairs.

He's 6'3, 6'4. 350 lbs or so. I weigh 200lbs and used to go hiking with a 70lb pack full of cameras. It was challenging but manageable. I realized that every time he gets up to go to the fridge, he's basically me wearing two 70lb packs.

My other roommate (the one I know, the one I like) keeps trying to get him to take a job at Panavision. It'll pay him $4 more an hour than his current job and it has opportunities for advancement. I told my other roommate that he doesn't take the job because he can't stand for that much of the day, but I hadn't quite extrapolated it out to the rest of his life.

This is a man who can take the recycle from the table to the sink, but from the table to the recycle bin 20 paces away is a bridge too far. A man who needs a stool in the shower to rest one leg on while he cleans it. A man who sits in a folding chair because rising from the couch takes a great deal of effort - I've never seen him sit on the couch, he lies in it. I suspect the last time he sat in it was the time it broke (the second time, after I fixed it).

He doesn't clean because it's the equivalent of cleaning while wearing 150lbs of weights. He leaves q-tips on the coffee table because the garbage can is eight paces away and he's conserving trips. If I had to literally carry my wife everywhere I went, I too would be substantially more static in my behavior.

So what do you do with that? He's 27 and his freedom of movement has already been curtailed. His activities are limited due to his limited freedom of movement. He's going to die before he hits 50. His range of motion will decrease, not increase. He eats zero-calorie salad dressing but his diet this weekend was Papa John's and Burger King.

And if we kick him out, he'll go back to his momma's house, and he will never leave, because he won't have to buy his own groceries.

So, Hubski. You must choose your words carefully. One way, you create this.

The other way, you might just save someone's future. How do you have that discussion?

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There's a third way, of course. My season got shortened by a week. Well, not entirely true but we all thought we were done Dec 7 but it's actually Dec 1. I can conceivably avoid him the next five weeks, considering the way my schedule works. I know for sure I'll never live with him again after that. So I can step aside and let the tragedy unfold. Having established a protocol for saying "do your goddamn dishes" without having to interface directly, I can re-use that channel.

But I'm pretty sure that's how he got to this point in the first place.