The friend who ruined my life, part two

Another three years went by and David finished his studies. It was 1987, I was 23 years old and I had not completed half the courses I was supposed to have finished by the time being. My friend’s academic performance had been very good for he was talented in engineering subjects and had been a hard working responsible student.

In the years that ensued I didn’t find him again, nor I knew where he was. This changed during the summer of 1991, when I was 27 and I went to my university with my mother and my kid sister for she wanted to pursue a major there. I came across David and learnt that he was working in an electronic company, very close to our university. Recently he had lived in England for almost a year. A short time later I found him in the phone book and from then on we met occasionally.

In January 1994 I went back to university trying to finish my studies and because of that I began to meet David more often. By mid 1995 I left university a second time, having failed again. Late that year I suffered a breakdown and spent seven months in a hospital. When I was discharged I was 32.

The remainder of that year, 1996, I didn’t do anything. I kept living in my parent’s house not working, taking strong medication which I quit because they prevented me from having a satisfactory sex life with my new girlfriend. My first in my whole life.

By September 1997 David was hired as engineering manager in one of the electronics companies which came to the state where we lived in the second half of that year. He wrote a phony resume with my name and working history. With this he got me a position.

Flashback number 2
David is in my house. When we met in our university, mid 1991, one of the first question he did to me was how I lived, what did I do. I responded ‘I don’t do anything’. You don’t run anymore?, he asked. I told him that I had been bicycling for several years.

My American road racing bicycle, Cannondale, is in the living room, resting on the stair rail. David approaches to it and observes my machine attentively. I can feel how he exudes gal through every pore of his anatomy. The expression of his countenance reflects hatred. A difficult moment for him, envy clouds his understanding, blinds him.

Our coexistence had always been very difficult because David tried to prove his intellectual superiority all the time. Since he would have been unable to beat me in sports, he aimed to prove that intellectually he was very superior.

Once I was in his turf, in a job, he thought that he had me at his mercy and tried to make me feel a tiny worm, believing that he had the talents of a genius. After a short time I felt astonished as I realized that he was unable to make the most elementary reasoning. Supposedly he was my friend, and boss. Since we were in an American company we had to deal with citizens of that country in person, by telephone or via e-mail. Inadvertently I exhibited to be a far better English speaker, something he couldn’t ever possibly handle. He went mad and behaved like an abusive boss, raising his voice to me in the presence of other people and telling me very offensive words in his office. He proved beyond doubt to be a very wretched man, abusing power.

Why did this flake thought that he could hurt me while I couldn’t do anything against him? He believed he could go on with his life, having hurt someone much stronger than him.
Seems a bit too obvious to say that I can’t know what is there in the future. Somehow I know that this traitor is going to face his self-destruction as a consequence of having stabbed me in the back. I’ve attacked him already.

The friend who ruined my life, part one

Monday February 2, 1998. Twenty years and five months ago I saw for the last time a man named David, whom I had met 14 years before. Early that day, I resigned my job in an American Company which had arrived to Mexico five months before. I had entered that firm on November 17 1997, the first job in my life, although I was 33 years old already. That day I began a second fall which would lead me to lose the desire to live, again, to give up, to expect my life to finish or kill myself when things turned out too difficult for me to handle.

Seventeen years later, late in April 2015 I obtained something that could be called a job. In my first working day I turned 51. Since then, three years and two months have passed, which have been the best time of my life since I’ve been productive and self-reliant. But in spite of this, suffering has been present, taking new forms. As I write these words I remember Viktor Frankl’s book ‘Man’s search for meaning’, about his experience as an intern in the Nazi concentration camps, the Holocaust, as he tell us how when he and his fellow survivors were liberated, kept suffering. Of course, my experience is far less dramatic.

Going back to this guy named David (a year my junior), I’ve referred to him as the individual who has hurt me more in my life, except for my father. The resemblance between these two people is astounding, the way this foe in friend’s clothing behaved reveals a perverse, Machiavellian character, albeit very sick. That son of a bitch must have a very serious pathology.

The day I quit my job in that American company I took my belongings and went out, being helped by a coworker of the Engineering department, to which both of us had belong. To exit the facility we had to keep away from the production area, since the material being manufactured was sensitive to static electricity. For that reason we passed in front of David’s office. He was outside and I walked near him. That traitor knew he had done something terrible for he avoided my gaze, staring at the floor instead. Since then I have thought that if I had done something like that, ruin another human being —someone I had called friend— turning his life into a hell, I couldn’t have handled my guilt. I would have find him trying to help him. That infamous traitor wouldn’t do such.

What moved him to commit such an evil deed? His inability to face his problems, which arose from a poor self-image.

Flashback No. 1
One afternoon during the year 1984 I am outside of my classroom in the university where I study my engineering major. Next to me is David, a fellow I see very seldom because he is in a morning shift. I don’t know him very well but I remember that when he was in the afternoon shift and we were classmates he performed very well and is considered a good student as opposed to me, who have been failing. This being the outcome of a very poor achievement during my basic, secondary and upper secondary education. I’ve suffered from attention / hyperactivity disorder, never detected. The family violence that pervaded my life from the beginning only worsened the state of things.

David tell us that he has been attending athletics classes, running, right there in the fields of our university. Although we met for the first time the year before, he doesn’t know much about me. I tell him that four years before I started running, having taken the Moscow Olympic Games of 1980 as inspiration I dreamed about becoming a world class middle distance runner.

As time passed I realized that this wouldn’t ever happen, but I didn’t quit training. I ran 40 minutes early in the morning and I went to the track in the afternoon to do speed training. For a time I ran eight miles every morning. I didn’t tell David that I ran that distance during a short time, because being unable to sleep and recuperate I suffered a serious exhaustion.

The year before, as we were classmates, a short time after we entered the university I saw David in a running track in the company of another young man. My classmate was wearing pants, so I couldn’t see his legs. He and his friend ran 100 meters real slow, as if they were walking briskly. When David crossed the finish line, his countenance reflected agony as a result of the effort he had done. As I recalled this event years later, with other experiences related to this individual, I realized that nature had endowed him very poorly in physical constitution, and his lack of muscle mass was real bad. This man was extremely weak.

When I finished telling him about the dream I had pursued and what I had done to make it true, I noticed in David’s countenance and in his attitude signs of him feeling uncomfortable.