A bit of backstory first. There's a friend of mine, I'll call him Tom, who I've known a couple years, but who both my spouse and I are friends with and had some great shared experiences together. The beginnings of a really great friendship were all there. We all have lots of common interests and ways in which the rest of the world is not our cuppa tea.
Tom used to be, in his own description, "an angry, chair-throwing drunk." Five years ago, long before I met him, he got clean of alcohol and some other drugs of abuse, and while he's had a couple slips since then (that he admits to), he has mostly been on a path to live a simple life with few material trappings, and to help other people to recover from addiction. He's changed up his life, lives a lot more isolated from his triggers, and most of the time seems pretty well-adjusted in his own peculiar way.
There was one instance earlier this year where Tom was at the end of his financial rope at the same time as going through a bad breakup. He gave us a couple indications that he might be suicidal, but didn't come right out and say it (he did admit as much later though). We (my spouse and I) believed in our friend and what he could offer to the world, but we knew he wouldn't accept anything he felt was charity, so we advanced him a few hundred dollars as a deposit on future services he could perform for us, things that he's very good at and that we knew that we or someone we cared about could benefit from. The money wasn't a huge amount, nothing seriously damaging to our own finances, and my spouse and I also accepted the fact that it was possible he might not hold up his end of the bargain. No matter. We just wanted to offer a scrap of hope when he had none. As someone who has spent years trying to recover from my own damage, it is almost a necessity for me to attempt to help people who are struggling to hold it together, especially when they are my friends.
So fast forward a couple months after that. Our intervention seemed to have worked. Tom's life had stabilized, his business was picking up, financial crisis averted, seemed to be beginning the process of healing from the bad relationship. So, while I was helping out on one of his jobs, we had a bit of down time in between waves of activity, so we're having a smoke and chatting while we wait. We were talking about all kinds of stuff, life the universe and everything. He seemed like he was in a really good place. And I'm trying to reconcile the person in front of me with the person he used to be, maybe get a bit of an idea of how people heal and turn the corner into a better way of being (a subject always of interest to me), so I asked him: what changed with you? How did you go from angry chair-throwing drunk to, well, NOT an angry chair-throwing drunk? And he answered back "Well, partly because there's no one left to hurt."
I was a little stunned. This is what he says to someone who just a couple months earlier, I spent some not-inconsiderable time and energy, plus a few hundred dollars petty cash, to help him out in a time of dire need. Someone we've guested at our house and we've guested at his. Someone for whom we (my spouse and I) volunteered some of our time and energy to help him get his business venture back up and running, even aside from the crisis intervention. I didn't even know what to say, and since we were in the middle of some work, I didn't want to open up that particular can of worms right then anyway.
Not surprisingly maybe, Tom has since stonewalled himself away from us in a way that is becoming familiar: not retuning any calls or messages from either of us except in very terse or offhand ways, dodging or ignoring most direct questions, and when he does communicate with us he's often either explicitly or implicitly asking for our help, sometimes casting aspersions on one or the other of my spouse or I, and/or occasionally offering up some (usually weak) justification or outright evasion of when we call him out on his behavior. It's hasn't been all bad - there have been a couple moments of relative honesty and vulnerability he's shared with us, and sometimes he does surprise us by owning up to something or sharing a little bit of whatever bounty he has in his life. A few bits of gold amidst the bag of coal.
The tendency to suddenly cut off lines of communication, often shortly after being very needy himself, is troubling. On the other hand, as a PTSD survivor who has struggled with a lot myself, I empathize with the pain and alienation that I can only assume is at the root of his behavior. I don't know when or even if we will hear from him again, and I don't know whether to keep trying to be there for our friend (if he surfaces again), or keep our distance to protect myself and my spouse.
I'm thinking about all of this now, because another friend of mine really DID commit suicide last week, and though I hadn't spoken to him in over a decade, the news hit me and a bunch of our mutual friends really hard So now, thinking back on Tom's 'no one left to hurt' comment really stings, even more than when he said it. How can anyone say to a friend, that there's no one left to hurt? And how do you carry on a friendship with someone who feels that way? Or do you just walk away until they realize that no one is an island and that true friendship is a two-way street?
Tom used to be, in his own description, "an angry, chair-throwing drunk." Five years ago, long before I met him, he got clean of alcohol and some other drugs of abuse, and while he's had a couple slips since then (that he admits to), he has mostly been on a path to live a simple life with few material trappings, and to help other people to recover from addiction. He's changed up his life, lives a lot more isolated from his triggers, and most of the time seems pretty well-adjusted in his own peculiar way.
There was one instance earlier this year where Tom was at the end of his financial rope at the same time as going through a bad breakup. He gave us a couple indications that he might be suicidal, but didn't come right out and say it (he did admit as much later though). We (my spouse and I) believed in our friend and what he could offer to the world, but we knew he wouldn't accept anything he felt was charity, so we advanced him a few hundred dollars as a deposit on future services he could perform for us, things that he's very good at and that we knew that we or someone we cared about could benefit from. The money wasn't a huge amount, nothing seriously damaging to our own finances, and my spouse and I also accepted the fact that it was possible he might not hold up his end of the bargain. No matter. We just wanted to offer a scrap of hope when he had none. As someone who has spent years trying to recover from my own damage, it is almost a necessity for me to attempt to help people who are struggling to hold it together, especially when they are my friends.
So fast forward a couple months after that. Our intervention seemed to have worked. Tom's life had stabilized, his business was picking up, financial crisis averted, seemed to be beginning the process of healing from the bad relationship. So, while I was helping out on one of his jobs, we had a bit of down time in between waves of activity, so we're having a smoke and chatting while we wait. We were talking about all kinds of stuff, life the universe and everything. He seemed like he was in a really good place. And I'm trying to reconcile the person in front of me with the person he used to be, maybe get a bit of an idea of how people heal and turn the corner into a better way of being (a subject always of interest to me), so I asked him: what changed with you? How did you go from angry chair-throwing drunk to, well, NOT an angry chair-throwing drunk? And he answered back "Well, partly because there's no one left to hurt."
I was a little stunned. This is what he says to someone who just a couple months earlier, I spent some not-inconsiderable time and energy, plus a few hundred dollars petty cash, to help him out in a time of dire need. Someone we've guested at our house and we've guested at his. Someone for whom we (my spouse and I) volunteered some of our time and energy to help him get his business venture back up and running, even aside from the crisis intervention. I didn't even know what to say, and since we were in the middle of some work, I didn't want to open up that particular can of worms right then anyway.
Not surprisingly maybe, Tom has since stonewalled himself away from us in a way that is becoming familiar: not retuning any calls or messages from either of us except in very terse or offhand ways, dodging or ignoring most direct questions, and when he does communicate with us he's often either explicitly or implicitly asking for our help, sometimes casting aspersions on one or the other of my spouse or I, and/or occasionally offering up some (usually weak) justification or outright evasion of when we call him out on his behavior. It's hasn't been all bad - there have been a couple moments of relative honesty and vulnerability he's shared with us, and sometimes he does surprise us by owning up to something or sharing a little bit of whatever bounty he has in his life. A few bits of gold amidst the bag of coal.
The tendency to suddenly cut off lines of communication, often shortly after being very needy himself, is troubling. On the other hand, as a PTSD survivor who has struggled with a lot myself, I empathize with the pain and alienation that I can only assume is at the root of his behavior. I don't know when or even if we will hear from him again, and I don't know whether to keep trying to be there for our friend (if he surfaces again), or keep our distance to protect myself and my spouse.
I'm thinking about all of this now, because another friend of mine really DID commit suicide last week, and though I hadn't spoken to him in over a decade, the news hit me and a bunch of our mutual friends really hard So now, thinking back on Tom's 'no one left to hurt' comment really stings, even more than when he said it. How can anyone say to a friend, that there's no one left to hurt? And how do you carry on a friendship with someone who feels that way? Or do you just walk away until they realize that no one is an island and that true friendship is a two-way street?
