ARGH!

Gods, I HATE this! I have a friend that is in a big bind – HUGE, actually. And from everything I can tell, he did all the right things, but still managed to wind up in a huge mess through a series of bad coincidences and the manipulative and callous treatment of an ex. Now, he is facing some serious hardship, he is scared, and there is not a damned thing I can do about it.

 

My natural instinct is to help. But I can’t. This problem is too big for me to fix. Further, there is that fuzzy gray area of how far to go trying to help a friend when my first and foremost concern needs to be my own relationship and my own stability. As it is, we are down a renter, and may be down a second soon. We have had a reduction in our own income for several months, and the belts are getting really tight. And if anything, past experience has taught me about the hardships of inviting in other people’s problems.

 

Back during my trial marriage, we had a friend who was down on her luck. Challenged with severe and debilitating depression and a series of completely unrelated tragedies, a friend of ours was facing losing her place and having to live in her car. We invited her in, and she stayed in our guest room for a few months until she could get back on her feet. The reality is, she was not able to get back on her feet. And the domestic stress mounted. Eventually, we had to ask her to leave because it was causing stress to our (soon to be doomed anyway), marriage. My now-ex began to loudly complain because our friend, who was an R.N., was unemployed. She felt that our friend was mooching off of me by not doing enough to get a job and to help contribute towards expenses. “Gee…” I thought to myself. “Kinda like… YOU, you unemployed nurse!!” I began to realize. But that’s another story.

 

I felt like the lowest low that ever lowed asking our friend to leave. But all of our help (really MY help) didn’t help her. Despite giving her the opportunity to live rent free for a few months, and loaning her money to pay her bills (which she never repaid), it wasn’t enough. I do not know where she ended up. I do not know if she ever got back on her feet again. I just know that for some reason I still carry the horrible, horrible feeling of inviting in that drama and sickening feeling of helplessness, while never being able to fix it. I really can’t say that I know what lesson I learned from that experience, but it wasn’t pleasant.

 

I feel so bad right now for my friend. I don’t know what he is gonna do. He could lose everything.

 

I just wanna cry. THIS SUCKS!