It's a little depressing how much Nick's behavior reminds me of my dad's decade-long midlife crisis.
My dad's started a few years older than Nick is now, but they mirror each other in a lot of ways:
-Financially successful middle-class professional, high intelligence and expertise; generous, loving father and provider.
-Unemployed housewife on psychopharmaceuticals.
-Divorce; Nick isn't here yet, and may not get here since the Rekietas have spiraled down the same hole instead of diverging.
-After the divorce, got involved with trashy, mentally ill women with substance issues because his technical brain wanted to "fix" them.
-Early on, just casual alcohol consumption and "fun" drug use for experimentation.
-DUIs and running cars into ditches.
-Almost schizophrenic rambling communication to family; spent an entire Christmas Eve and Day sending wife and kids hundreds of barely-coherent, profanity-laden texts telling us how we've all betrayed him because his psychotic behavior scared us away from celebrating the holidays with him.
Divergence point: Stroke. No physical or intellectual deficit, but it caused psychiatric issues and impaired judgement, so his criminal behavior escalated.
-Heavier relationships with even trashier women with worse drug problems.
-Domestic violence with the trashy women, mostly initiated by them and their kids.
-He started using the same drugs as these women.
-More severe criminal charges that I won't elaborate on to prevent doxing.
-Similar language to Nick, like "I haven't changed, and I'm still the same person," and "nobody understands what really happened, and it's not what you heard," and "nobody else understands why I did all this," and vagueposting like, "I think this may resolve other issues as well" like anyone knows what the fuck he's talking about.
It's a pretty sad situation. I was much closer to him than to my mom, but his behavior has alienated a lot of family and friends, and between that and some years of prison, I've lost a decade with my favorite parent. He's now a withered, broken husk of a man with constant sadness in his eyes, aged faster than he should, living in poverty.
I was an adult through most of this, and it was still traumatic, so I can't even imagine how psychologically damaged Nick's underage kids are, watching this decline of their once-stable parents and seeing the criminal consequences of their actions.
I'm progressing through young adulthood constantly vigilant of the possibility of any man to have a midlife crisis, so I can do everything possible to consciously avoid having one.