I remember, a long time ago, a family friend of ours who my mom was on pretty good terms with used to routinely be in touch with us, and at some point, he started going down a darker path. It wasn't originally visible, especially given how we tended to only hear from him periodically, and I remember it all came to a head one night in early fall, when he called us.
There comes a point, when you're dealing with someone that you actually care about, but is flawed - knowingly so - where they breach into the realm where you know that they are no longer quite who they used to be, but that they are now truly beyond salvation, and have become something you can no longer countenance.
In our case, it was him asking us to collateral our house so he could get bail money over a drug possession charge. Anyone remotely familiar with that kind of situation knows exactly why my mother was absolutely within her right to tell him to fuck off and hang up on him.
He had been a good friend to us over the years, one of the only members of his family that wasn't a complete piece of shit, and someone we genuinely trusted and cared about. Maybe he had fallen into it by genetic predisposition, given the criminal records of his siblings. Maybe someone needed to keep a closer eye on him. Maybe he was always a piece of shit under the veneer of decency under the surface, and maybe dire times do bad things to people. All I know is that it's the last time we ever heard from him and the last time I did a check on him, he was still in
Riverhead Correctional.
Null did the right thing trying to help Chris, and he did the right thing in cutting Chris off.
I honestly think that Chris has passed a certain threshold where maybe him going to prison (or at least being checked into a mental hospital) would be for the best.
