I don't think I've ever posted to this part of the forums, but something has come up....
I used to work with a lot of adolescent substance-abusers. There was one I got very close to -- I was the only person he'd work with, and it was hardly working, it was a lot of just sitting together while he talked.
Over the 15 years or so since then, he's contacted me several times. Once years ago I "paid" him $100 for art he never delivered. Mostly he's written me intermittently coherent emails.
Due to a freak concatenation of things in the universe, I saw him this past January. I still like him as much as ever -- he makes me laugh, which most people can't do. But his teeth are rotted away from meth (which he says he's quit, he says he doesn't do the "bad drugs" anymore), and he's probably always high, and if you talk with him more than 10 minutes he starts going on about the god he is in the outer dimensions he visits when he's tripping on LSD & DMT.
So. He's been emailing me a lot lately. I know he's miserable, and looks to me for something -- he says a friend, I think it's always a teacher, maybe partly a mother. He probably doesn't have anyone who cares much about him, just drug-users and customers who let him move from one couch to another.
So. I wrote him today and said there's no relationship between us now. I didn't even say "unless you do such and such." Just nothing, because we see the world differently.
I'm not sure if I'm posting this for advice or affirmation or what. Just I feel crappy about it. I'll always think of him as he was when he was 15. Now he's a poor madman & a parasite on civilization, but he still desperately wants to be loved and he knows it. It's so sad, but I can't help him at all.
