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.