In my last post, I had mentioned a variety things that I was dealing with during the worst time of my life. I was dealing with a multitude of complete mindfucks. One of the things I didn’t elaborate on was this statement:
“During that time, someone I cared a lot about did some really awful things to me, and someone else I considered my best friend had basically abandoned me once I left town.”
It was 2005, which seemed like the longest year of my life, and definitely one of my worst. In the process of moving from Paradise to Hell, someone I considered to be a very good friend that I completely trusted kicked me while I was down. (I’ll call him Sweathog, because he sweated profusely.) I’d met Sweathog in Paradise literally driving down the road one evening on my way home from work. He was next to me in his BMW with a redhead next to him yelling something to me. I had no idea what they were saying or what it was all about, so we pulled into a McDonald’s parking lot and officially met, and then Sweathog and I became friends.
Sweathog was a funny guy – always joking, playing pranks, and making everyone laugh. Living on a golf course, he’d set off fog horns every time a golfer went to hit the ball. It was funny, because the golfers never knew where it came from, and watching them get mad made it even more hilarious. It was like something you’d see on a prank tv show. Sometimes Sweathog would get onto sites like eBay and message sellers with really absurd or bizarre questions just to get a laugh. It was all harmless fun.
A heavy drinker, Sweathog would go a little overboard at times, which wasn’t so funny, and already immature to begin with, the addition of alcohol made him a real asshole. For instance, he came over once and smeared his greasy hands all over my glass coffee table, staring me right in the face like a child daring his mother. I yelled, “What the fuck is wrong with you!!??!!” while he just sat there doing imitations of Cartman from South Park and laughed about it. Come to think of it, he wasn’t even drinking; he was just a natural asshole.
Sweathog had an even darker side to him, the side I had unfortunately witnessed while I was in Hell. Because I’d considered him such a close friend, I’d confided in Sweathog about personal things in my life, my depression, and he was well aware of the other things I was dealing with. Even though he knew the difficult time I was having, he suddenly turned on me and began saying and doing really cruel things. Apparently, he’d started dating someone and treating me as if I was his ex (I wasn’t, we were strictly friends). He and the girl would send me nasty emails and leave voicemails all hours of the night that sounded a lot like things people would say to an ex, not a friend. I didn’t understand why he was doing this; I was hurt and devastated.
Again, I was finding myself 2600 miles away from home without a stable income or job, a single mom, scammed by some deviants, depressed as hell… and one of my best friends turns on me for no reason. (The other person I considered my best female friend had abandoned me out of her own selfish reasons she later admitted, so I had no one at all to talk to.) But Sweathog wouldn’t stop harassing me. He sent me a photo of him and the girl in Mexico saying they’d just gotten married. He was using what I’d told him confidentially and the depression against me, telling me I should kill myself, that the world would be better off without me, along with whatever other insults and names he could come up with to make himself feel better. It came to the point that I had to call the Paradise Police and tell them the situation, so Sweathog got a phone call to leave me alone. It worked.
Several weeks later, Sweathog apologized to me, saying he had been drinking a lot and doing cocaine and became a different person. (I’d never known him to use drugs previously.) He was very sorry he sent me all of that and did what he did, that his marriage wasn’t legal in the United States, and the girl and him are no longer together. Sweathog also claimed that he was in love with me and was hurt when I moved, because I’d left him. Huh? But we were just friends. I didn’t understand that part, but he seemed really sincere, like he was back to his old self, and I forgave him. Sweathog showed me his really good side by inviting me to a cabin in the mountains in Northern Alabama for a few days to get out of the Hell I was in (my child was on spring break visiting grandparents). We had a really fun and interesting time, especially considering the amount of humor we found in a place that prided itself as the Sock Capital of the World. That’s when I’d felt especially close to him and felt I could trust him again. It seemed as if our relationship had been taken to the next level. We weren’t exactly dating, especially due to the distance, but we had an emotional connection as more than friends, if that makes sense.
Filling Sweathog in on everything that was going on with me in Hell, I had discussed moving back to Paradise, because I felt like I was out of options. He’d promised to help me, because I needed to find a place to live, maybe stay somewhere temporarily, and help with moving my heavy items. He even suggested moving into his second room if I needed to until I found a place. Everything seemed back to normal until a few days after I arrived.
Sweathog went back on his word about everything, and his behavior went back to the way it was when he was being an asshole to me while I was in Hell. He ghosted me but still haunted me once again. At least this time, I was in familiar territory, had some connections, and knew what to do to get back on my feet. It didn’t take long for me to find a place to rent and move on with my life. But Sweathog had other plans. From my previous post, this was all about him:
“Someone that I loved as a friend and maybe more broke a lot of promises and turned on me like a snake, then proceeded to stalk me to the point that the courts issued a restraining order against him, and he wasn’t allowed within 500 feet of me, my home, place of employment, or child’s school. He’d posted an ad on an adult site with my photos, name, address, phone number and where I worked; the phone calls started immediately, and I contacted the website to take the ad down. I was scared for my life, and scared for my child’s safety more so, that some creepy asshole was going to show up to my house. Again, this was a time when there weren’t internet laws like today, so technically, he had not committed a crime! It wasn’t until he sent an email claiming he was going to cut my throat that I was able to obtain the restraining order.”
Sweathog obeyed the restraining order for as long as it lasted, I eventually married and didn’t hear from him for years.
In the meantime, I found a job working for a company that I liked and felt that my life was finally starting to get back to normal. And then we got hit back to back with three hurricanes that season, the last of which affected my job so that I no longer had one. I’d lost my car and several sentimental irreplaceable things.
That’s when my drinking habits became out of control, at one point began drinking straight vodka. I was severely depressed, hopeless, and felt completely alone. Then I got a DUI, which was the culprit to the scammers in Hell finding out my new address to serve me the lawsuit paperwork. While I was doing everything I could to improve my life, the scammers were doing everything they could to bring me down into their mindfuck hell. That is how 2005 ended for me.
Free The Burden 