I went to see a friend of mine, whom I have not looked in on in years and of whom another friend said was in trouble. My friend is the true last of the nice guys, always getting involved with people and things, turning the other cheek, giving money to those who need it, always availing a listening and kind ear, talking long into the night to people who need to talk, feeding the hungry, and caring about those who need care with boundless energy. Life has given him some hard knocks but he has always bounced back. He is rock solid in his sense of reality, has a strong ideal of right and wrong, yet understands more fully than most the gray area in-between. More than once he put himself in harms way and danger to help people out, including spur of the moment decisions to act while others watched, stunned.
Well, he was there, but not there.
Physically, he was home but he is no longer the alert, gregarious, caring outgoing person he used to be. He is a depressed, reclusive, pallid shell of what he once was.
What is it about humans that allows them to take a great person and suck him dry until he falls, rip out all of his caring and love for people and then walk off, leaving him in the dust, as if he never existed to help them out in the first place? Then no one gives a damn.
Just like Alice’s Restaurant, a place immortalized in song from the 60s that let the love generation feed there either for free or to run a tab, but when the flower power movement people went on to be stock brokers, power people and yuppies, the old place was forgotten and left to fade into oblivion without a second thought and probably with a whole lot of unpaid tabs.
My friend was the type that even when I pried him out of his home to take a vacation from the numerous people calling on him, and dragged him to a strip bar that by the end of the evening he had dancers around our table and was listening quietly to them tell him all of their problems and making suggestions to ease their woes. (I wanted to get laid, but he was more interested in listening to their stories!!) He even bought them their wine coolers – most of the price of which went to the dancers, made with 7-up and wine, which most guys bought them to get them drunk in hopes of getting a free feel or getting laid – and ordered them made with straight 7-up!! He was sobering up the dancers! (The bartender thought he was nuts but followed orders and the girls loved it.)
I went with him across the state to bring home a runaway, and heard about how he stopped a couple of suicides. He stopped a robbery in a 7-11 just before it could happen, and stopped a big, mean drunk from beating the crap out of a smaller drunk, at risk of getting his own ass getting beaten.
Girls cried on his shoulder about guys and guys drank his beer and cried about girls and a bong smoking pothead used his tools to repair a bong and cried about being hooked on pot. He hid runaways from the law and took them home once the cops left the area and talked runaways out of running away. He got severely beaten up protecting a friend who could not fight his way out of a paper bag from two drunk thugs, and bailed people out of jail. He sobered up drunks and watched over people on bad drug trips, and his door was always open when he was home and people used it.
That was 15 years ago.
People began to take advantage of his good nature, stole from him, abused him, lied to him, played on his emotions and when he worked he got in trouble for being honest, for not playing office politics, for doing too good of a job. His superiors claimed his good ideas as their own and took the rewards, others stabbed him in the back to get his position, lovers cheated on him, friends betrayed him and people owing him money never paid him back.
When his depression hit, I found out, he staggered on for years until finally, everything collapsed and he went down like a stone, loosing his job, his home, his truck, and all of his friends he had at the time just took one look and scattered away from him. Even his beloved girlfriend, instead of trying to help him as he helped her, became cold, cheated on him and then abandoned him to his sickness.
My philosophy? They sucked him dry of every bit of caring that he had in him. You know, caring is a good thing but what you expend, you need to get back, to recharge the batteries so to speak. He did not get it back. People took and left. Some took and turned against him. He told me of people who ate his food, drank his beer, took his money and then tried to steal from him or told lies about him. He told me of turning to people for some help when he got physically sick and they not wanting anything to do with him yet he had nursed them when they were sick, cooking them soups, getting their medications, making sure they drank fluids and forcing them to doctors.
It bothered me to know that he spent several debilitating times, with what I think was pneumonia, alone in his bed, barely able to move, racked with fever while outside his apartment people he had taken care of came and went and avoided him. One ‘loving’ girl friend refused to come over, afraid she might get sick also. He dumped her when he got better. He got better each time and went on caring for people, once, against my advice.
Once I argued with him and told him to leave the b******s to rot in their own juices because no one cared about anything anymore and he assured me that in each person was a spark of good. I warned him that they would tear him down in the end.
I moved away and lost contact with him and I am sorry to say that I found out that I was right all of those years ago.
I found out that he is owed over $10,000 by various people who are able to pay it back now, but do not. Those who talked to him by the hour to solve their problems wandered off and no one wanted to listen to his. Some of the people who relied on him so much have encountered him in the street or at a store and act like they do not want to talk to him. His last boss, whom he saved from having to spend $2000 in fines to the main company by solving the problem encurring those fines, fired him when he started getting sick and having problems working. When he could no longer work a 12 hour day, they started bitching at him and causing him trouble, though he did not get paid for anything over 8 hours. The extra time he pulled because he was management and loyal and believed in what he was doing.
He’s in therapy now and has been for 5 years. He is legally disabled and frustrated with the mess of the social services system that seems to want him to die off rather than help him out. He has discovered racism within the system and he is White and is starting to turn racist, something he never was. He will no longer help out anyone who calls upon him and he no longer feels that people all have a good spark in them. He no longer donates to charity, no longer shares his food with anyone and he gave up drinking because he started drinking too much. He barely speaks to his neighbors and wants nothing to do with their problems and all of his extensive library of psychological and self help books are gone.
I think he burned them one night.
He risks his life for no one anymore and barely goes out of his home. All of the bright and cheerful posters he had are gone, along with his carefully handmade black light candles, and a few drawings some of his ‘patients’ had given to him. The big, commercial coffee maker he had for those long nights with one or two people is gone and so are the cute little cushions one of his ex-girlfriends gave him.
I feel sorry for him and I am saddened by the end of an era. Just like Alice’s restaurant, once the need was passed, he was forgotten. No one even sends him a Christmas card. Not from the girl he helped stand up to and get away from her abusive boyfriend, not the guy on his way to alcoholism he taught to drink socially, not the drug abuser he helped straighten up, not the depressed girl he kept from committing suicide, no one.
He’s working his way back and I will keep in contact with him, but what will emerge when he is better, I fear, will not be anything like what he was. I think that wonderful, brilliant and shining spark of care he carried for ages has been either dimmed or extinguished.
I think that is sad.
So, tell me, why do humans tear down the ones who care for them? Especially if they’re not lovers. What is it about good folks that make them eventually become a target? Why destroy and avoid the last of the nice people in the world?
I’d like to know. Maybe I can tell him. He’s 5 years along on his journey up from major depression, but the scars go deep and while he’ll make it, I suspect that he has a years long journey still to go. Will those scars remain there? How much damage that has been done to him will last?
I don’t know. He used to be the one with all of the answers.