Life can be pretty fucked up. - Democratic Underground

Forkboy

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Thu Apr-30-09 12:53 AM
Original message

Life can be pretty fucked up.

Edited on Thu Apr-30-09 12:55 AM by Forkboy

And for once I'm not talking about my own, whose fuckedupedness is already a matter of record.

I've had a best friend since I was about 11 years old. We hung out all the time, shared an apartment...twice, etc. He's basically my brother from another mother. He's the nicest guy you could ever meet, and he'd literally give you the shirt off his back to help someone.

Anyways, around 95 he got involved in a horrible relationship with a domineering woman who you would hate with as much a passion as I do. My friend tried to break up with her once...it ended up getting him his ass kicked by her friends, all his fingers broken, his shit stolen...all on her orders. She had a son (her 6th child by 5 fathers), supposedly by him, but she refused a DNA test, and my friend was too timid and nice to push for one, and so he went along and paid child support anyways, a decision I can't really criticize him for despite not knowing if it's his.

She used his money to get her nails done every week (at $60 a pop), to buy herself Chinese food while her kids ate mac and cheese, buy herself fancy clothes while her kids wear rags, etc. She's quite possibly the biggest cancer of a human being I've ever met. He used to come over on Sundays to watch football with me, his 3 hours of freedom per week, and she would call every 10 minutes to make sure he was still there and not cheating on her (something he would never have done with anyone). She was so jealous she actually accused him of having an affair with me at one point.

Needless to say, all this took it's toll on my friend. He started drinking heavily, abusing medications, etc. Never missing a day of work, mind you, even after breaking his ankle on my front steps. He just kept going, slowly turning into a robot before my eyes. His life just kept swirling lower and lower. Two years ago he got drunk while sitting on the railroad tracks and got hit by a train, severing his left leg above the knee. As my other friend said, it was shocking but not surprising. We had all joked about him getting hit by a train as he liked to drink on the tracks before work. It was a lot of yuks until it actually happened.

We found out by reading about it in the paper the next day. He had to be put into an induced coma just to detox him. My other friend and I wanted to visit, to call, anything, but his family stepped in and wouldn't let anyone talk to him or see him while he was in the hospital. It wasn't because they didn't like us (his father and I know each other well, and we've all gone to ballgames together), but they didn't want his girlfriend to ever get near him again and weren't taking any chances.

I called the hospital one day to see how he was and they said he had been discharged. We had no information on where he went, or with who. We figured his parents might have taken him back to Reno where they live, which we hoped was the case. But we couldn't find out anything. We had no way to get ahold of anyone who could tell us anything. We even thought about hiring a private investigator. We honestly never thought we'd ever hear from him again.

Yesterday I got a letter from a nurse in Worcester, Ma. She said she was taking care of my friend now, who is a paraplegic now and also has no use in one hand. His family never visits him and he spends all his time alone (he has sisters in Mass). The nurse had to write the letter for him. When I called she was crying because she wants him to see someone who actually gives a shit, and he talks about me and my other friend all the time.

So Saturday my friend and I are heading out to see him, and hopefully we can do so on a fairly regular basis. We'd like to bring him some music and a walkman, maybe some magazines and some DVDs if he has a way to watch them (he's into the same wacky Britcoms I am..Red Dwarf, Blackadder, etc). I fully expect a heavy emotional visit, and I'm both thrilled and terrified about it. I wish I could take care of him myself, but that's simply not an option (the least of the problems would be that you need to climb two flights of stairs just to get from the street to the house itself). I can't believe his family isn't visiting him. That's left me stunned and saddened beyond words. My friend is too good of a person to deserve that.

Anyways, not really sure why I'm posting this. I guess it's just a lot on my mind, and I'm really anxious about this and need to make some kind of sense of it all, and writing helps me do that.

Anyone who made it this far, thanks for reading, and send my buddy some good thoughts if you can.