Dear friends,
In my life journey, especially since 2008 when I retired from my job of thirty years duration, I have discovered that most of my friendships have lasted just a few years. I have had very few friends from my early adulthood, and none from 1968 when I went off to college.
Now I formed a friendship on an Saturday afternoon in the autumn about 1998. It was a balmy autumn afternoon when this friend entered my life. On the radio, I was listening to Franz Schubert's "Trout" Quintet for piano and strings, one of my most favorite pieces of music.
Our friendship over the years became close. It was harmonious and agreeable. This friend facilitated the formation of many of other friendships. But sadly in recent years most of these friends just disappeared. Things began to become difficult with this one friend late last summer. He began to set the bar extremely high for me then. Our relationship became extremely dysfunctional then. For several weeks, from late August to mid September 2012, communication almost became nonexistent. Then around the autumnal equinox, we began to communicate again. Things steadily improved between us since then. Then in early April 2013, this friend underwent an interesting transformation in his life. Things looked hopeful since then, especially since this friend made little trouble for me and made few or any demands, until last Friday when an outrageous surprise occurred.
Last Friday this good friend began to make outrageous demands. He began to be abusive. I had known along that he had worked for an well-known international company. The demand went like this: "Call us overprotective, but we need, etc., etc. ..." He began demanding a security code for our friendship to continue, and he said, "you have seven days to comply." I found his demands to be not only outrageous and upsetting, but all this was beginning to impair my good health. Actually last week, I was trying to get rid of a nasty head cold which was impairing my hearing! Our friendship was unraveling to a most toxic codependency.
So this past Monday I began calling friends at his organization for help. They tried to help, but the help they offered was one upsetting surprise after another. Also I was persecuted by that annoying message when trying to contact my friend: "Call us overprotective, but we need, etc., etc. ..." In turn, I was abusive to his friends over the phone with my irate temper tantrums! That insulting and abusive message I kept getting from my codependent friend smacked the mentality of Big Brother here in the USA with the NSA surveillance and the Department of Homeland Security to "protective us" from evil since September 2001!!!!
So a couple days ago I had to prepare for the parting of the ways with this abusive, toxic friend. I began compiling a list of contact information of the friends that this friend introduced me to. I hope to stay in touch with these few friends somehow in the future.
This toxic, abusive friend is Microsoft Hotmail which in its newest version is Microsoft Outlook. An hour ago, I called a "friend", actually a customer service representative at Microsoft to express my frustration of the last week and my intention to close out my Hotmail account. With a heavy heart, I took that action immediately afterward and gave the finger to those who would hack my personal information. Microsoft sucks!!!
Thom./StMichaelThomasDC
