- Yesterday, I walked across the street to drop some things off for my friend at the appointed time of 4 o'clock. She mysteriously wasn't at home, but her weird father (who she lives with) answered the door and when I saw his red-rimmed eyes I was overwhelmed with the sense of "something isn't right, run". I've always felt uncomfortable around him because he is a very odd duck, but this feeling of danger was new. I unceremoniously handed him the Christmas cookies and fled, feeling like a spaz and blaming my anxiety disorder. It's a difficult thing, trying to wade through the muddy waters of "is this useless anxiety or good intuition?", either way the urge to get inside and lock my door was very real.
An hour or so later my friend called me and we had a slightly awkward conversation about why we didn't meet up when I thought we had it planned. She asked me to go back over to her house to pick up the Christmas gifts she had for my son. I was struggling with how burnt out I felt after my anxiety had passed and she could tell that I wasn't thrilled about going back over there, but I sucked it up, pulled on my coat, and trudged through the snow to her front door, all the while trying to hide as much of my face with my hood as possible because I was feeling so damn sketchy. When she opened the door I couldn't bring myself to make eye contact and I was giving one word answers to her attempts at conversation. She handed me the gifts, I told her an uncomfortable story about how tight my coat fits this year (I couldn't think of anything real to say) and then I was out the door. I kicked myself all the way home because I was absolutely certain that I had been rude for no better reason than that the chemistry in my brain is wack. I spent the following hours trying to think of something to say in a text message that might excuse my behavior, but I finally fizzled out and couldn't manage even a "thank you".
Fast forward to 1:00 am, I saw a frantic and depressed social media post from this same friend saying that she had wrecked her car and needed to find a new place to live. I called her and through her tears she explained that after this minor car accident her dad EXPLODED at her. He told her the most venomous things: she's worthless, the worst kind of scum, the worst mother, a whore with kids from 2 different fathers... a useless, pointless, waste of space. He hates her and regrets her existence, and worse. All because she got into her first car accident ever and needed a ride home. She is beside herself, she's going to return all of her children's Christmas gifts to try to get money to survive on because she needs to find a safe place for her and her children to live. The man is mentally ill and this incident is not the first of its kind. After calming down a bit she told me that earlier in the day before I saw him he had actually crashed the back of his pickup into his boss's garage and messed it up, and with that information I felt like I understood what set him off. I did my best to try to explain to her that all of the horrible things he said to her are actually a reflection of what he thinks of himself after his own car accident and that she is none of those things. She is a good person and a wonderful mother who was dealt a bad hand in life. I told her that I felt his storm coming hours before her accident and that he was a ticking time bomb. I feel so bad for her, but she said talking to me helped.
She is feeling hopeless and I'm going to do my very best to help her in every way possible, but there really isn't much I can do except offer support. I wish I could do so much more. I wish I didn't have to live so close to this deplorable man.
<3
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