Brutally Betrayed.

It is a challenging article for me to write as it has pained me deeply. The wounds haven’t healed yet.

I will try to remain as positive as possible and coherent considering the situation.You may ask yourself, “Why is he writing about them? I need to clear my head of these severe and harrowing incidents.

I have lost my two best friends recently due to betrayals. Nearly 40 years of uninterrupted friendship. I would have never imagined that one day they would be gone. I will not go into details as I was about to (just erased about 400 words). My wounds are still too fresh and writing about these betrayals revived horrible feelings.

I will tell you that one was over money (lots of it by any standards) and the other was about trashing my reputation and humiliating me publicly.

Despite these two horrible reasons, they are not what hurt me the most. What troubles me the most is that through these losses I have, all my positive, fun memories altered negatively. It was like witnessing the disappearance of a multitude of positive emotions of about 40 years. Part of me died along with these betrayals.

I know that I mentioned that I wanted to remain positive, but it’s proving it to be more challenging than I thought.

I wish to share my experience with you and what it taught me. Analyzing the “whys” and the “hows” was a futile exercise for the most part except that friends like any other human of my generation always look at what can they get out of something and in this case friendship. Like we use to say in trading: “you’re only as good as your last trade.”

The last generation of baby boomers, which I belong to, was very venal and ruthless like in the movie “Wall Street.” It is a movie, and like any other movies things are exaggerated a bit, but it gives a good idea of the mindset during the 80’s and 90’s. Money was easily made and easily gone too.

What I have learned from this debacle is that, unlike a good wine, friendship does not bonify with age; also I have to pick my friends very carefully and look at all aspects of their lives and mine and see if there are compatibility and no competition. The blogging community has been so far the best sources of new friends, and I believe genuine as we share similar scars and face identical problems. We seem to have a natural bond. I don’t see it as entirely virtual as you are still exchanging experiences with another person at the other end and not a blot.

Despite our current situation, I have tried to find some silver lining in all these negatives and painful experiences. The financial disaster and these two betrayals were probably the most devasting of all misfortunes we had so far. I try to keep a positive outlook to survive as they’re no alternatives. We’re at the bottom of the barrel on all aspects; emotionally, health-wise, financially and socially. I’ll keep fighting and hope for some doors to open and have one, at least, that remains open.

Peace and serenity

Lawrence

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