It’s long, feel free to skip to the TL;DR
Freshmen year in college I became best friends with a guy next to my dorm room. He was a communication major, C student at best, and worked at a cellular store.
At the time I was a Christian, he was/is. I worked in ministry and though my beliefs have changed, I truly tried to give everything I could to a higher calling, thinking wrongfully of course that it would offer a reward from the turmoil.
He got married around his junior year in college. He stayed at the cellular store working his way up to manager to eventually working in corporate.
He told me freshmen year that it was impossible for him to cry, that it must be something wrong with his tear ducts because he couldn’t cry. I struggled with depression my whole life and was very aware of crying. For almost a decade I told people that some people don’t cry because of my friend.
We kept in touch, he had two kids and was doing very well in the corporate world. So much so that he was being moved to a promotion on the other side of the states.
I decided to take an artistic path and did the classic poverty artist wanting to be an actor. Eventually having spent a lot of years always in the red, not going out, eating rice and peanut butter, I had some enough work to move to LA.
Out of the blue my friend calls me, sobbing. I was floored, I thought some people didn’t cry.
He was having an affair with a woman at work for a couple of years and she was the reason he moved his whole family because it was her not him that got the promotion.
His world broke apart. Or so it seemed. He got a divorce, got 50/50 custody despite confessing he never really wanted kids, moved everyone back and moved in to one of the three properties he owned.
I got a gig back in CO that would last a few months and he offered to let me crash at this condo he owned.
I was a bit taken aback realizing he had not changed much from college, still eating pretzels with American cheese as a regular lunch and feeding his kids terrible junk food constantly.
I was single so while in town figured I would get on Tinder. To my failure I met someone with kids whom I thought might be a good match for my friend. I suggest this to her thinking it would be nothing more than a fling. It had not been very long since everything had happened and he still confessed to loving the extremely toxic colleague he had an affair with. But this Tinder woman with four kids and a steady job hits it off with him and his charm.
We go our separate ways till I am back in CO later on and he visits me.
By this time he had moved in with the woman, owned more properties and one of the properties was an apartment with two units. He suggested the idea that I could live in the heart of denver for super cheap because being friends I wouldn’t tell anyone about the illegal weed operation he had growing.
Now at the time in CO you could grow you’re own but only a certain amount and he was doing two or three times that. But worst case would be a slap on the wrist and a fine. So I said yes.
I moved in and that year my father died, so he bought me a big screen TV, first one I owned in years and even let me borrow his Tesla once.
One time he had me meet a guy out back to give him cash for some riding lawn mower he was delivering that he gets cheap from Home Depot (what I figured out later is that means it “falls off the delivery truck and written off and resold elsewhere.” I told him to tell me nothing of how he got rid of the weed, etc and when this man got up in my face saying it wasn’t the amount of cash he was wanting and started threatening me I knew something was up and told my friend I didn’t want to do this anymore. He let me live there still cheap and paid the water and electric so I felt I guilty ever thinking something with my best college friend was shady.
During this time I got into sales and was doing great at it and almost out of debt with some savings.
Then another crying call. He has lost all his money. Someone he had a deal with in underground boxing took it and ran off with it.
It was also at this time that the weed went bust. His colleagues were arrested and the ring was broken so he cleared it out and rented the space out.
I’ll never forget when I told him I could relate to being broke (having prepared once to live in my car) he said, “No you don’t, this is way worse. I owe people.” At the time I figured he meant friends and family and now maybe it was some other people.
After that I started distancing myself.
We hung out once at his mansion that he called a small home. He never lost anything. He still had his Tesla, his parents still had their house, he still had the “small house.” He would tell me all the time how it doesn’t matter.
It was around 2020 when I couldn’t handle the company I was working for as I had been number one in sales for months on end but our director was also super shady and management wouldn’t do anything and my whistle blowing with evidence didn’t do jack crap, so depression set in. It resulted in having a mental breakdown, quitting that job because I got a sales job elsewhere but I couldn’t mentally manage that and needed a break.
He got a job and was quick to be promoted to some executive level quick.
By 2021 like a lot of us I was pretty well broken and defeated. My “best friend” gave me the bad news, he needed me to move out so he could Airbnb the place for the money. I was hurt but then on Instagram saw him and his now wife by this time off in Europe somewhere on a super fancy vacation. I lost it. I told him he was a shit friend and he said ok and I blocked him from everything and haven’t spoken to him since.
I believe last he still may or may not go to church, he does tutoring or mentoring this kids in the inner city and looks online like a clean cut smiling good ole American.
While my GF just found out she has to return back to work to an area where we can’t afford any size house and she is struggling to get a job despite an impressive resume and my mental condition worsens.
It’s taken me a long time to get to a place to write this.
He still or last I knew had his Tesla, his mansion small house, his parents house and goes on luxury vacations.
He broke the law, cheated, lied, manipulated his way to money and it looks like it worked.
I was taught that one shouldn’t do that, that we don’t know what it’s like on the other side of the fence, that hard work pays off, etc.
But I see that nowhere.
Hard work doesn’t pay off as much as being sly and slick and using people.
It’s impossible to be a billionaire without stepping on people.
Crime doesn’t always pay but it pays often.
I know with depression, I can get into a cycle of victimization and I stand to blame on a lot of things and I did enjoy a nice apartment for awhile but I can’t help shake the fact I feel like the lesson in life is not anything I was taught.
If I could back in time I’d tell myself to accept that life is unfair and take advantage and be selfish. My soul hurts saying that. But I can’t shake that it’s truth.
It’s hard sometimes to not think this place is hell and some people get it more than us and we just work for those people.
TL;DR best friend eventually lied, broke the law, and manipulated a lot of people but still won out financially and makes me question if I should have done that to get ahead too. I was taught hard work pays off but I can’t help wonder if that’s a lie, work pays off by using others. I hate that.