I don't check my Facebook account very often any more, but I got curious about an old friend, wondered how he was doing, and don't have his most recent phone number, so I logged in and looked him up this morning.
I don't know what happened to him sometime between late September and mid-October last year, but after only sporadic posting for a long time he suddenly started posting again, then every day, then 3-6 times a day, and it's all insane Angry Old Man rageposting.
He has a massive hateboner for Donald Trump and his family, and people who are not jabbed against Covid (which includes me). I'd say his posts are 50% TDS-fueled bellowing, 30% hatred (and I mean
hatred) for the unjabbed, and the rest is assorted knee-jerk angry Boomer libtardery.
He used to be a very smart, funny, cheerful guy who was the life of any party, who always dropped great one-liners, who had a genuine gift with words, and who got along with everybody—and now all he does is hurl the most cheap and vulgar insults, and wish pain and ruin on anybody who is not a TDS-afflicted, multi-jabbed, Fauci-worshipping liberal.
It's like he's possessed. Or maybe he has the beginnings of dementia. Or maybe the massive disappointments and financial blows he received over the last 15 years or so have broken him. He's been doing better, but things got pretty fucking dire; he lost his profession and all his savings, and will never make any significant financial recovery.
Maybe he's on medications that fuck with his head (and have an especially terrible synergistic effect when mixed with heavy doses of NPR and CNN), and he doesn't realize it. Whatever the reason, he hasn't just gone full retard, he's gone
full Keith Olbermann. I'm not kidding; his raging away is that insane. Just read Olbermann's Twitter feed; it's the exact same flavor.
I'm kind of in a state of shock at what he's become. We've had our differences; he made a really bad professional decision 17 years ago, and things went as poorly as I feared they might. He lost all his money, then went through an extended period of unemployment, financial difficulties, a divorce, and ill health. I tried to help him through it. But you can't help someone who reverts to nostalgia for a lost past—when everything went their way, and life was easy—who decides the world must
still work that way, and gets angry when you point out that it doesn't, and suggest things that work in the present.
So after one especially heated argument, where we both ended up saying terrible things, I backed away. That was eight years ago, and neither of us has reached out to the other since.
His life has improved; he still doesn't have much money, and it's not the life he believes he should be living, but it's stable, and he has other old friends around. The last time I looked at his Facebook was a year or so ago, and while he was still stuck in nostalgia for his youthful glory days, he was more like his jovial old self again—which makes what he's become now all the more terrible. All of a sudden, late last year, this wave of insane rage came up, seemingly out of nowhere, and has devoured him. Will he ever stop, and return to sanity? Will it ever be possible for me to reconnect with him before too much time passes, and I'm stuck reading his obituary instead? I don't know, but I doubt it.
I miss who he used to be, which I guess proves that I'm just as susceptible to nostalgia as he is, but I'm realistic enough to know that there is absolutely nothing I can do to change the situation. He will somehow snap back into sanity and drop the anger—or he won't. And, more than likely, he won't, so I'll just have to live with that. Which I can, but fuck—it's sad.
It's a teacup chihuahua. I don't know if that is better or worse than a pitbull. The shelter is no kill. We've tried to find someone we know (or friends of friends) who might be willing to take her but nobody is interested. We've got 3 other dogs (we ended up getting my brother in law's dog when he got divorced and sold his house) so honestly I think we are just kind of overwhelmed. We had a firm 2 dog rule and we are now at 4. We have one other dog who has some health problems that need treatment, so we just weren't prepared to have to come up with money for this dog's teeth. Just feeling overwhelmed, I guess.
I've honestly never really cared for chihuahuas. They just aren't my type of dog. I would never have adopted this dog myself. But, I wanted to keep her because she was my mom's. My husband has been patient but we've had to put up baby gates around the house to limit where she can be to prevent her from ruining all the carpet in our house. So, you can't even walk freely through the house anymore. It has just been 3 months of a lot of stuff. And I don't know why I haven't been able to housebreak her. I've never had problems with any dog before this. She just doesn't seem to get it. So frustrating. But I feel so incredibly guilty because I have never, ever taken a dog to a shelter. I've adopted all mine, but never given one up. I honestly don't even know if I can do it.
Chis are notoriously difficult to housebreak, and the stress of living with three other dogs, and humans who are increasingly worn down and losing patience with it is never going to help.
You've tried. You've done your best. But sometimes your best still isn't going to be enough. The situation isn't good for you, or any of the dogs involved, and if your mom was around she'd probably recognize rhat. Taking it back to the shelter is hard, but it's the best thing you can do for all concerned.
