[1063] Best Friend

I'm so fucking tired. I've been up since 4 and was falling asleep on the way home. I just got another call from the Anderson Police Department. They've tried to reach out to Byron 4 times, left 2 messages, and he's not responded. Byron is married to his phone. I've watched him pick up a dozen calls an hour for as long as I've known him. He's deliberately avoiding giving his story to the police.

It's looking like I no longer will have one of my oldest friends. I've watched him spiral away from the person I thought him to be for years, and it appears to have culminated in his approach and defense for this kid. If I reflect on the series of disconcerting things regarding our dynamic, I'm probably better off. Easy to say, miserably tired but feeling as though now it is absolutely necessary to explore, I'll lay it out.

When I lived in the 3-story town home, there was a fair amount of roommate shuffling. The most notable aspect of that shuffling was, I was always the last to know, expecting to have said roommates another year, and finding out within weeks of needing to re-sign that this wasn't the case. Every single person besides Hatsam, including Byron, left me scrambling to find a replacement, clean, move things out, or otherwise navigate finding a new place to live altogether.

Byron lived there initially in the living room. It was always a cluttered and chaotic disaster. He brought wild-animal asshole bunny into the mix for a few days. I didn't say anything. He needed a place to stay, so of course, I roll with the fallout of supporting my friend. Did that living arrangement foment the resentment of whomever was living there at the time? Probably. But I was also still under this impression I actually had friends who cared to support each other.

That eventually ended in a last-minute messy move out where I was left functionally homeless. I was doing drug studies, pivoted the cash, and managed to get a broke-ass moving van towed to the place and eventually towed to the land. It was early in the stages of attempting to transition to the land. I didn't have power, water, or anything remotely set up as a "living" quarter as the garage served mostly as a storage space. I didn't have it paid off. I didn't even have a coherent walkable path from the garage to the road, so any trip was bound to catch a dozen ticks and scratches from weeds.

I resolved myself to trying to make the best of it. I wanted to get used to the drive. I wanted to get a feel for the space. You do have to adjust to sleeping in a shed when all you've known is houses and apartments. I start working for Clustertruck, several other delivery companies, and other odd jobs like Kroger. I'm trying to avoid the exorbitant interest payments on the shed, so I'm working non-stop. I'm sleeping in my car in the Clustertruck parking lot so I can be guaranteed to sign on and stay on all day.

This goes on for a few weeks. It starts getting colder. Byron says he can't have his best friend sleeping in his car, and says I can stay with him and Rob. I end up sleeping on the couch and living there before starting working for Lifeline doing visit supervision. A few months later he persuades me to start working for DCS. Things aren't ideal, but they seem stable enough. I tried to keep the thought at bay that the only reason I was on his couch in the first place is him and Colin keeping me in the dark and fucking me, and I'm trying to be appreciative that I have a better paying job that's proving interesting and easier to adjust to than I imagined.

When I was making plans to leave the apartment, Byron put together a plan that, to this day, I still don't understand what went so egregiously wrong with it, but I knew I was leaving and I wasn't signing up for nor paying for anything related to wherever they planned to move next. That caused a major days-long piece of drama that got resolved when I believe it sunk in that I was getting out. I paid both Byron and Trent who had moved in by then all of the back rent for my time on the couch.

Me on the couch until moving was also the period Byron was doing is political stuff. He was campaigning and holding meetings. We were walking Ike and talking about the players and party direction. When it first began, I was working 16-20 hour days doing visit supervision, making almost nothing, and wearing down my car that I was driving without air conditioning. I had nothing left at the end of the day, no free time, no money, was doing nothing for myself for fun or to relax. It was pretty fucking miserable. Transitioning to DCS meant weeks away training in Indianapolis, all the while, I'm trying to coordinate getting the house set up by people who are scamming me, destroying things, or stealing from me.

At one point after Byron's failed bid, he said something to the effect that he couldn't succeed like he planned because I wasn't embedded in it like I should have been. With what time? With what energy? That's anyone's guess, but it was an extremely curious thing to say. I, too, had a series of difficult things to do and needed help with in getting my house in order. I had to functionally beg for months to get 3 hours from him to help me carry TVs into the place. I brainstormed and talked political bullshit almost every day. I showed up to events when I could. I offered the best advice I had. I didn't have anything else I could give.

I get out to the house. I start piecing things together. I keep getting fucked in finding anyone reliable. I don't have all the tools I do now. I certainly didn't have the time to make dedicated pushes. Things progress with Allie, Covid happens. I've got someone to help me and it's someone I'm happy to help back, and a little more time and funds to do more. Is Byron offering to help? Never. His plan is to flip a house. We can both get in on it, turn a nice profit, parlay that into more. Am I brimming with excitement knowing how successful his family has been doing exactly that our entire lives? Absolutely.

Water is treaded as 2020 plays out, I throw Allie out, I burnout of DCS, and I'm completely free, with just enough money, and all the energy and ability I will ever have to just focus in on this house. What happens? I ask to do a project, like pull up the old floor. "I don't want to live in a house without a floor." The big empty living room with all the space in the world to work gets packed with shit over the next few months. I make what feels like an endless series of garbage runs in my truck. I bring my tools over to landscape. I'm told, when I've stayed late, again, expecting to work and am stuck instead sleeping on a smelly sleeping bag, "You know, I'm not looking for a roommate." When "we," I, eventually get to work on something, it's around a ton of crap moved in the way, alongside the freshly moved in kid who's still at peak terrorizing, and being met each day with some move to put things off.

We didn't know Byron's dad was suffering from something growing on his brain making things more difficult. But that aside, we wasted so much time. We made the project harder for no reason other than Byron's discomfort, and in the middle of it, Byron decides the kid is his new mission. Ultimately, I spend 10 months or so not working and making money, not finding myself getting invested in what was to be a $12,500 payout. Instead, I lose money, lost that time, and have invested in tools for future house flipping that, while useful, are just more credit card debt when you're not making the money back.

Dozens of things then become part of the blame. His dad's health, a series of miscommunications and poorly set expectations, the kid, the market shifting, his political ally falling through and not buying the property. Pick your favorite or a healthy mix of all of it. I spent 4 days over Christmas single-handedly tearing down, cleaning, painting, and flooring the kitchen. Why? It needed to be done, I figured what's one Christmas away from family members that only make me think of getting fucked over with my grandma's house?

I'm currently the asshole who threw away a holiday, or at least the good food that would have come with it, to completely finish a kitchen, in a house that, once it was sold, made his parents and him even, and cost me money. I'm supposed to just shake it off.

Not too long later, Byron's uncle dies. He's supposed to get a good chunk of change, free and clear. The kind of money that let's you buy a car you can't really afford to maintain, pay off all your debts, and be comfortable for quite some time. I ask if he'll help me pay off my credit card. The credit card with a balance consisting mostly of less than I expected to make off the house sale and things bought in service to it. He declines. Later, it's discovered his other uncle finds a way to undermine his right to the money. Had he agreed, it'd be that much less he'd have owed back because it would have been spent. I, free of interest and with lessened resentment for getting fucked, would have paid him back in approximately 3 months.

He, since the night his kid pulled a gun on me, still owes me $350, 4 months later. You see, because I've also lent him several hundred dollars at at time that have stayed out indefinitely several times in the past. I run everything on credit cards. I use my entire paycheck to pay them down, accrue points, and avoid interest. When I take from my cash reserves to lend to him, it's costing me interest. I can ask or politely remind a dozen times. No installments. No, "I'll get it back next month." I have to functionally beg for my money back and create a detailed explanation of what it's costing me in real dollars if not psychologically.

Why is it such a pain in the ass? Aren't I going into debt for shows and toys? He'll ask me for money so he and the kid can non-stop smoke. He'll ask me for money for gas in his vehicles that the kid drives around and contributes nothing towards. The kid will show up with new clothes, a PS5, and other shit like the gun he was holding, but they need to borrow money from me? Then the smoke gets habitually blown in my face, in my car with a thousand empty "sorry" sentiments that aren't. The designer dog they bought was $700.

I'm now here, 3 months later, after the June 5th gun-pulling-kicked-out-of-the-car incident, and I'm still trying to get Byron or the kid to testify to their behavior to the police, or, do as they're continuing to prove to do. Ignore, downplay, and leave me with a "he said she said" scenario that can't on its face draw charges.

Like most things that catastrophically fail, it's not ever enough in any given moment. Things build and degrade slow enough that when you do a retrospective, it snaps into focus all along. I've never been less than vocal about each step of my dissatisfaction or feeling taken advantage of or getting burned. This is the last straw in almost a poetic way. If he'd prefer the life coddling and protecting and enabling the kid who would threaten, not only his life with the insane driving, but his "best friend's," lie to or ignore the police about it, ignore every time I insisted one of us drive instead and carry on like a perfect psychopath that we've openly discussed either of our capacity to be, more power to him. I hope he continues to get all he deserves from the way he treats his broken white boys.

I wish I really felt anything about it. There's no more consistent truth than every remotely stable relationship in my life is actually destined for some kind of ridiculous "totally could have seen this coming" scenario when you add up all the worst parts. My currently most stable friendships, while nowhere near resembling this level of chaos, could be described in their own damming and "fate-ridden" language. Ultimately, this is going to cost me more in tow trucks and rental cars, but I've spent enough of my earnest belief and energy. Everything gets to die.