For some reason, I kept getting told not to trust the people who treated me well. Why is that? After years and enough stress, it made me start to really worry. And, in the case of my one friend, I had no idea what I was supposed to do. I literally was asking multiple therapists, my wife, my sister, and eventually a mutual friend. Nothing helped. My brain in burnout never had a chance. Before then, I could separate out what I didn’t want or need to hear. But, even though people knew I was struggling, they opted to either ignore me or try to win favor with me by running down my friend. It didn’t take much of either to upset me.

So, there it is. I essentially have no friends now. The ones I didn’t want caused me to lose the ones I did. I’ll never know who was right, not entirely. The “bad” friends went beyond any doubt of demonstrating their contempt for me, even as I was still defending them against people hostile to them. They’ll never know. Nobody is going to admit what they did. But, they have trolled me and my friends about it – sometimes covertly, yet publicly, just to throw salt into wounds. I can’t be there now to defend my friends, and I guess that’s what some people wanted.

The truth is dangerous for “good people,” because it might make the “bad” ones not seem so bad any more.