Friday, March 10, 2006

Are old lost friendships salvageable?

I had a friend once named Mick. I met Mick while working at Anderson Windows about eight years ago... man I'm getting old! ...and we became good friends. Such good friends in fact, that when Mick needed a place to stay I convinced my roommate Denon to let Mick move in with us.


Mick is a really nice guy, but he has some serious issues. Over time these issues became more and more of a problem, especially after I got married, until they reached a point where we could no longer keep Mick as a friend. We tried, oh Lord did we try, to make things work. We set rules and standards, but nothing worked. Eventually, we let him go. He ended it more than we did.


Some of his problems, or rather, the problems that we had with him are as follows:


1. His weight. Mick is only 5'9" and weighs close to 400 pounds. None of it is muscle. Mick is actually the weakest person that I have ever known over the age of ten. I don't say this to be mean, I say it because it's true. He once punch me in the arm in anger. At the time my twelve year old sister hit me harder during play.


Mick was so large that he couldn't bathe adequetly, nor could he wipe completely after going to the restroom. He was so heavy and so weak that he couldn't sit down properly, he'd just back up to whatever chair or couch happened to be nearby and then fall onto it, which is extremely hard on furniture. During visits to our home he broke the frame to our couch, two lawn chairs, and the hinge off of an ice chest that we set out for him to sit on in an effort to save our furniture. He was too big and bulky to sit on the floor, or even to sit upright at all for more then fifteen minutes or so.


His weight was a direct contributer to all of the rest of his problems.





2. His hygiene was awful. The only time that he really bathed was before coming over to our house, and only because we insisted on it. His toenails were so long that he could tap them on the linoleum while standing barefoot in the kitchen without moving his feet.


Several times during the time that we were roommates he urinated on the floor in the bath room that we shared. I believe that these incidents were accidental rather than laziness, but c'mon! He knows that he can't see enough to aim it past his stomach, so why doesn'y he just sit down? He knew that he had made a mess, so why didn't he immediately clean it up? He almost ended up in the hospital both times that this happened, luckily, I had learned how to check my anger when I become violent by this time, which may have saved his life and my ass.


Another problem was that he could not reach and adequetly wipe himeself after using the restroom. This made for some unpleasant smells, as you could imagine.





3. He was depressed and bipolar. He used this as an excuse for everything. Why am I so fat? I'm biploar! Why do I smoke? I'm bipolar! Why can't I keep a job, have a minimum of personal hygiene, have an extreme fascination with S&M, live in a cesspit, act immature, have no education? I'm bipolar!


For Mick, being bipolar is the end all be all excuse. It covers everything. It doen't matter that other bipolar people have led successful, meaningful lives. That just means that they weren't as bipolar as Mick is.


I remember for a while at the end of high school, being depressed was "cool". Everyone went moping around, "oh man, I'm so depressed, I can't take anymore, boohoo, I should just kill myself and end it all, boohoo.." What a load of crap.


You're all stupid and the only contribution that you'll ever make is Darwin Award style, so please get started on that right away. Thank you.


Back to Mick. Mick takes a bucketful of medication every day to combat his bipolar disorder and the side effects of that medicine and the side effects of THAT medicine, and so on and son on, blah blah blah....


The weird part is that he'll take some medication, and it'll work, and then he decides that he doesn't need it anymore. He'll go off of it, slide down into the dark pit of depression, and eventually call 911 and say that he is suicidal. They'll come and pick him up, give a weeklong stay in a mental ward, and three meals a day and the company of other depressed psychs.


Of course, every time that he did this he got all of this attention from everyone wishing he was well, get better soon, blah blah blah, which he soaked up like a sponge. Apparently, I was the only one who never indulged Mick or encouraged this kind of behavior by treating him special when he flipped out. I'm a dick, I know. But I never encourage behaviour that I do not agree with.


Mick is also extremely immature. He also blames this on his bipolar fallback, but the reality is that he has the maturity level of a 14 year old.





4. Mick is a chimney. He smoked before I met him and he will in all probability continue smoking until the day that he dies, which with his smoking, his weight, and his age, will be within the next ten years. I've known him to get down to 3 cigs a day and up to two packs a day. He'll never quit though. Quitting requires willpower and discipline, neither of which Mick has in any measurable amount.

Obviously I hate smoking. So much so that my marriage has almost dissolved because my wife smoked. Luckily, Kat quit smoking when she got pregnant with our second child and has not picked up the habit again.

BTW My daughter Kathryn has a severe reaction to ciggarette smoke and to nicotine residue. She starts coughing, her eyes get bloodshot and burn, and her skin itches.





5. According to some people, my wife among them, Mick has a strange sexually inspired fascination with me. He used to buy me things, dinners, an occasional movie or book, as a gift. I never really thought anything of this, but others started having misgivings when Mick started spending more money on me.


Mick would also complain about me. He did this on a constant basis and in a way that reminded people of a woman complaining about her man. People joked that he was my sugar daddy.

This behaviour kept getting worse and worse and was my wife's final straw.





6. Mick's sexual fetish was spanking. While I have no qualms about what goes on in your bedroom, Lord knows that I'm not exactly "normal", and I had no problem with Mick's fetish per se, until he started to bring it up in a way that weirded me out at first, then freaked me out, then disgusted me. And everyone who knows me knows that it is extremely difficult to gross me out. But Mick did it. Easily.


The first incident was when he approached me and asked me if I would mind spanking him. You read me right. He asked if I would spank him. He explained that his best friend (I can't remember the guys name, I think that it's Nick, so that's what I'll call him) who was heterosexual would spank Mick on occasion and wondered if I would do the same.


I told him NO.


He then asked if he could spank me. I explained to him that if he ever hit me, no matter how softly, I would hit him as hard as I could, with the full intent of doing him bodily harm and with the hope that he would end up in the hospital. I thought and hoped that my response would have settled the matter.


Alas, no, I was wrong. Yes, it happens on occasion.


A few weeks or months later, during a cut down war (you trade insults and make fun of each other to pass time) wherein I had ripped on Mick pretty hard, he got into a boxing stance and said he'd kick my ass. I of course, blew him off and didn't even bother getting off the couch. I never expected him to tackle me.


It was like having a really soft, extremely thick, extremely smelly, down filled bean bag thrown on me. I never felt the weight, Mick seems almost weightless, in the way that quicksand might feel. I was so shocked that I couldn't move. I could barely work myself up to tell him to get off of me. I was disgusted, ashamed, violated. I felt demeaned, but I was too sholcked to be angry yet.


I wasn't too shocked to tell him that he should never, under any circumstances, ever do that again. Ughhh...


A few months later he did do it again. This time I was able to move, but I held my temper and rage in check and told him that he had until the count of three to get out of the room or I was going to try my hardest to kill him. We both understood that I was very capable of that and he left. He never did that again.


A year or two later, his spank buddy friend Nick died in a car wreck. Mick was understandably devastated. Nick was his best friend, his oldest friend, and they shared weird things that allowed them to bond more than normal.


While Mick was grieving and depressed, he approached me and again asked me to spank him. I took his grief into consideration and just told him that if I started hitting him, I wouldn't stop, and to never ask me again.


He even started dragging his sick fetish into our roleplaying games. While running a game one time, he kept trying to have my character whipped or spanked. That's just sick and wrong. I never played with Mick again.





7. Mick is too lazy to work. He is reaping section eight benefits from being mentally disabled and has done so for about three years now. He only pays $200 in rent and gets $800 in social security payments. For being depressed and bipolar.

And his wife is doing the exact same thing. That's $1400 a month that they have coming in, with only $200 going to rent. Almost all of the rest goes to food and ciggarettes. Can you imagine that? They don't even have a car. They ride the bus everywhere because a car is too expensive.


Mick and his wife live the definition of apathy. They are Sloth and Gluttony. And yet they are both highly religious conservatives. And they are both republican. Go figure...






After all this, you may wonder why I was friends with Mick in the first place. Well, I'll tell you. First of all, Mick really was a really nice guy. He is probably the nicest person that you will ever meet. I know of one person who is nicer (and much more balanced) and that is my friend Dawn. (she's also much better looking;-)


Mick also roleplays, which as you may have figured out is one of my greatest passions. He's not very good at it, but he loves it, and that does matter.


One of my fav things about Mick was debating with him. I love to argue and debate and so does he. We would argue for hours over the stupidest things imaginable. I usually won these debates as I was the more wide read and informed. He was extremely stubborn though. Even after I won he would still be debating.


We had a lot of fun arguments over the years. Another thing that he would do is help me bounce ideas around for roleplaying games and whatnot. He was good at making me think of weird things.


He was also very loyal. At least I thought so. I found out different later.





Things eventually got so bad with Mick that my wife had enough. She felt as if she were competing with Mick for my attention and affection and she was extremely bothered by the way that Mick spoke about me. I was tired of Mick's mood swings, his smoking, hygiene, and the way that he was destroying our furniture.


My wife, a much nicer, caring, and empathetic person than I would ever want to think about becoming wrote Mick a long letter explaining most of these things. Kat is NOT a confrontational person at all and this was her best way of dealing with the situation.


Of course Mick took what she wrote as a personal attack, which in a way it was. But there was nothing in that letter that was meant to hurt Mick. It was only her final effort in making it possible for us to still be friends with him. An offer that he rejected out of hand.


I did continue speaking with Mick by phone for the next year. During this time I introduced him to a girl that I worked with named Keisha. Mick and Keisha hit it off and I found out that they got married last September.


My final straw came about two years ago. I had just finished a three day stint in Fort Carson with the Navy Reserve along with the Army. I was trying to tell Mick about the experience when he put me on hold, but with an open line where I could hear everything in the background. I could him complaining to Keisha about me. He accused me of exaggerating about my experience to make myself look better and said that I had a huge ego (the first part is a lie, the second part is true). He also told her that he had made an excuse for missing a get together with us (I had been trying to get together at a mall or something) and that it would have to be another lie that they remembered to keep up.


Despite all of my faults, the one thing that I am not is a liar. I hate lies and liars and I see no reason to lie. Of course all of my friends and family know this and know not to ask me questions that they don't wanna truthful answer to. Of course, they also know that I will always give an open honest answer to everything and that when I give advice, it's honest advice with no ulterior motives. I don't play games and I hate drama.

As you could imagine I took what he said extremely poorly. If he had been available I would have beat the hell outta him. As it was, I hung up. I left a message later telling him that I wouldn't be calling him back. I told him that if he no longer wanted to be friends then he should have told me instead of playing stupid games.








The reason that I am writing this today is because Mick called me Wednesday. I haven't heard from the guy in two years and he calls me out of the blue. Weird. I don't even know how he got my phone number, probably through the phone books (duh).


Apparently, Mick and Keisha spend all day with nothing to do besides lay around watching TV, playing on the computer, and roleplaying. They have no friends other than Mick's friend Nick (different Nick, the last one died, remember?) and Keisha's ex boyfriend. They see Keisha's sister and her kids on a regular basis, but that's it.


They wanted advice on getting part time jobs. They wanted to talk and to get to know us.


I don't know what to do. If I was advising someone else, I'd tell them to blow Mick off. He has not changed at all other than getting married. Maybe some of the problems outlined in number 6 have gone away with him getting married, but all of the rest are still there.


The problem is that I like helping people. I love giving advice and seeing people taking that and making their lives better. Or helping someone get a job. Or a nice car. Or a girl. Whatever. Mick and his wife are the ultimate fixer-upper friends that you could ever want.


I also miss our debates and conversations. While I can no longer talk for hours at a time on the phone, I can write like a mad animal while at work, as you may have guessed.


I also missed roleplaying with Mick. Just as long as Mick is not running the game.


I guess that I'm confused and lost. I don't really know what to do anymore. I miss Mick and have missed him for some time. At the same time I can't stand the thought of being around the guy unless he changed, which he hasn't.


Advice anyone? Please keep it honest.


Thank you.

3 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I agree with your own advise....I don't think you should just jump at this.

But....before I really confirm and support that thought....how did the conversation go. Did he just act as if nothing's changed and nothing happened?

If so....be more defensive.

If he's remorseful, or even like "Dude...I've missed talking to you. Can you beleive how much time's gone by..." yada yada....then I'd be more open to it. At least that way you can be like.....this is what happened, this is how I feel, let's move on.

I understand how you feel about wanting to help him out - but really you're just opening a door for him to use you - and that's how it sounds.

Good luck with it, I'd be interested to know what you do decide.

Snazzie Out.

10 March, 2006 16:11  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I would travel slowly with this, if you should even decide to rekindle this friendship.

First, I truly wonder how much of a friendship this relationship even was. It seems to be shallow and not empathetic. There appears to be little commonalities between you two.

People as a rule are basically who they are. Yes, the occasional few do a change in attitude or veneers, but the core values remain the same.

Although my heart goes out to the mentally ill and obese population, I would truly question having a bipolar, unmedicated friend around my wife or children.

Could it be you have grown and are ready for the next level of friends?

One of the hardest things I have learned to do, is to allow past friends to fade away is their presence wasn't beneficial to both of us. This has always allowed me to grow and improve deeper friendships with mutual concerns and passions.

Good Luck!

11 March, 2006 08:20  
Blogger Dawn said...

Calamar, as you know my mom is bipolar. I have no choice but to deal with all of the symptoms that come with this. Yes, the immaturity lvl is there, the inability to cope, and the total self centered nature. A lot of this really does come with the disease. I have never once heard my mom utter the phrase "I'm bipolar" as an excuse though.

Some things will never change with Mick. He obviously doesn't want to change. After all, I give my almost 50 yr old mom advice on love and jobs, and sticking to things. That's kind of pathetic. Mick seems even worse than my mom is. I don't think Kat would be thrilled at all about this starting up again. Maybe she should be the one you are asking for advice.

13 March, 2006 14:01  

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