Let me preface by saying she's in the hospital and she's ok.
Now that that's out of the way, I met my friend, let's call her Jennifer, 15 years ago in a chatroom online. We never met in person, but we were drawn to each other and we'd send each other stuff in the mail. It was sweet. Life ends up happening and we drift apart and 15 years goes by until I found her on Facebook a few months ago. I was elated that I'd found my friend again. We reconnect on Facebook and we'd talk pretty much daily.
It turns out Jennifer's life took a far different path than mine. I had moved, gotten married, gotten divorced, moved again and finally found a good job that I can retire from and bought a house yadda yadda yadda. Jennifer ended up doing 8 years in prison for home invasion and gotten addicted to heroin. Needless to say I was shocked and saddened, but I wasn't going to judge her. She was still my friend and I cared about her. She was staying with her aunt now until she could get her own place and wasn't working because she lost her last job for a parole violation. I wanted to help. I sent her money, about $1200 in total. I put together her resume and I registered an email address where potential employers could email her. I put her resume up on a bunch of job websites and applied for about 80 different jobs for her.
I work at a very large insurance company and found a local listing for a position at an agent's office. I called the office, talked to the agent, he verified Jennifer's criminal background wouldn't be a barrier to employment there. There were two open listings, I filled out applications for both on her behalf. This was about a month ago. Friday morning I check her email that I registered for her and the agent is interested in hiring her. I was shocked because Jennifer hasn't had much employment history since being released. There were two aptitude tests that needed to be completed so I did them, emailed the agent posing as Jennifer thanking him for the consideration. Another email comes back and he wants to setup a phone interview. My jaw hit the floor. This was Jennifer's golden opportunity to get meaningful employment with a good company and something more than just entry level food service (No disrespect to food service employees, I appreciate what you do). I email the agent telling him Jennifer is available during business hours for the phone interview.
I messaged Jennifer a few times letting her know there was big news, no reply. With Facebook messenger, you know when someone has seen your message. Jennifer had been seeing my messages but not replying. I didn't want to press the issue, maybe her phone was broken or she was busy. I call Jennifer and leave her a message letting her know about the job. Saturday comes and goes, no contact. Today I see she's available and message her reminding her to be ready for her phone interview, she sees the message and no response.
Tonight I get a call from her aunt telling me Jennifer overdosed on Friday night and had her cousin not walked in when she did, Jennifer wouldn't be alive. I also found out that her aunt has kept two refrigerators full of food and that Jennifer was on Medicare. All the times Jennifer told me she was starving, or had to go to the ER, or needed a bus pass were lies. She had access to anything she needed. Her father put money on a debit card for her monthly. I was essentially buying her drugs and who knows what else. This whole time I thought she was getting her act together. I had sent her some fuzzy kitten socks when she was feeling down. I sent her some super warm Kodiak socks when she told me she'd be cold this winter. She had blisters on her feet so I sent her some bandages and Neosporin. She told me she was the luckiest girl in the world to have a friend like me and she used me, over and over again. I'm heartbroken and I'm mad and confused as to why she would do this. Her aunt told me not to feel bad because I'm not the only one she's done this to and that I was a godsend to Jennifer. I love Jennifer and I care about her but how do I get over the hurt?
tl;dr: Reconnected with friend after 15 years, friend is recovering from heroin addiction, friend is apparently still using and uses my willingness to help her as a means to get me to send her money to buy drugs. Friend overdoses Friday night and I'm heartbroken.
Submitted November 21, 2016 at 11:42AM by MemoryGraves http://ift.tt/2eVWaIr relationships
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