MrChot and I have a friend we’ve known since college (about 20 years.) Let’s call him Q. He’s an intellectual with regrettably poor judgement in his relationships. I dated him briefly. He was my husband’s best friend. We’re still good friends.
A couple of years ago, Q had a bunch of money from a small dotcom in which he was a startup investor, because he sold when the stock was high. With that money, he tried to start up a business with a longtime friend (I didn’t know her).
To cut the story short, about a year ago the businesspartner split the country with a couple hundred thousand of his money. And his ex-SO seemed to feel she had rights to most of the rest, so there’s not much left.
Then in the last 6 months he got cancer, very aggressive - currently in remission after 6 rounds of chemo, a debilitating surgery, and a long series of radiation treatments. The surgery damaged the major nerve in his leg, so that he can’t walk well, falls frequently and without warning, and has pitting edema in that leg most of the time. At least he still has medical insurance…for now. Until his dwindling savings really run out.
For the last few months he’s been living (for lack of anywhere else to go) with the aforementioned ex-girlfriend in a state of increasing stress, and in absolute squallor because she and their other housemate can’t seem to turn on a vacuum or find a broom or mop…did I mention the multiple cats and 2 longhaired dogs?
He’s been making plans to get out, with ‘hard’ dates that come and go with no visible forward progress. There’s always some reason. They’re sounding less and less rational, and every suggestiion is met with ‘yes but’ ‘no but’ ‘I understand but’ and ‘but there are all these details you don’t know anything about’ sorts of dodges. The most recent ‘hard’ date was set for the 20th. I, thinking I would be helpful, arranged for my brother, his buddy, my husband, and a truck and trailer to be there (at our expense) to move his stuff to a storage unit on the 22nd, the soonest I could arrange. Presented with this hard date, he was still ‘yes but’ ‘no but’ ‘thanks but’ and saying it wasn’t going to work because he wouldn’t be ready.
He has no job, saying his job skills are out of date. This may be true in the IT field, and he certainly can’t do anything where he has to lift, walk, or stand. He has not filed for disability, foodstamps, Medicaid. He has not filed a police report on the aforementioned businesspartner. He has not done a number of other things he’s said he’d do to help mend the gaping outflow of money he doesn’t have. My husband and I aren’t sure he’s capable of holding down a job right now (he doesn’t seem to be thinking quite straight - stress? chemo? malnutrition?), even though he really has no choice.
My husband took Q a packed lunch and a bagful of non-perishable food last night, and it somehow made things worse… he said if we’d called and asked, he’d have said ‘not tonight’ but his cell phone is unreliable at best and he hasn’t been returning messages. So we just did it. And he’s upset because, having said he’d be out of the situation by the 20th…he now has to be out by the 22nd if not sooner…no more putting it off.
Except he has nowhere to go. He THINKS he will be staying with a friend in another town for 2-3 weeks while he gets an apartment, but we tracked her down and she says ‘2-3 days maybe, not weeks’. So he’s going to be homeless. He needs an apartment, but has to have 2 recent pay-stubs to prove income, to get one. Or, 9x the amount of monthly rent in a verifiable bank account. He has neither of these.
He claims a friend on the East Coast wants him to come stay with him and will pay for his trip, but since we cannot contact this friend, we have no way of knowing if it’s any more accurate than the “2-3 weeks” thing which was really 2-3 days. He won’t give us that phone number either, since it’s unlisted.
We’ve offered to let him stay here, but now we’re not sure if that would do anything to change the situation, and I would absolutely have conditions he would have to meet, period, such as:
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Call DSHS. Arrange to begin filing paperwork for assistance, including such things as food stamps.
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Place ad to sell teak he’s been storing for years, which is unfortunately not Bermuda teak and therefore few people have wanted it after seeing it. (But they sure can’t buy it if they don’t know about it.)
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Cut ex-girlfriend off insurance policy and cell phone plan. Change cell phone plan to increase minutes per month, to end overages.
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Provide detailed budget of all ‘fixed’, necessary bills, such as health insurance premiums. Attend financial counselling of SOME variety.
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Try to find some variety of sit-down job, even one that is non-prestigious or obnoxious, even if it paid less than he thinks he’s worth.
I don’t frankly think he’d like those conditions or willingly abide by them, and I have four kids, I don’t care to play mother to him and hound him, even if it was my place which it isn’t. Anyway, we’ve wanted to help, But every bit of help we’ve tried to give him has somehow been wrong, and I don’t think I can help him anymore. It’s giving me heartburn and keeping me up at night.
So to repeat my question, with this history given: How to help a friend who won’t be helped? Dad says to “let him go” but how do you let go of a friend of 20 years, just when they look like they’ve hit bottom and are digging? When they’ll be homeless? When their in-remission cancer is likely to recur with a vengeance within a year or two? Giving him money isn’t an option. We don’t have it to spare, and he hasn’t shown good judgment with his own money, or money we know he’s been given or loaned.