I met Ray my sophomore year of high school, after moving to a new area and knowing about a handful of people in my district. We became instant biffles (best friends for life), pretty much inseparable until he ended up leaving school for good after meeting "the girl of his dreams". She was nice, although Crystal was known to date Richmond in high school, who happen to be Ray's best friend. Life went on, they got married, they had a kid, and I didn't hear from Ray afterwards.
I went on with my life, always wondering what happened to my best friend. He kind of just disappeared off the face of the Earth and stop talking to me. I completed college, then found "the man of my dreams", and thought of Ray from time to time when I was reminiscing about the good ole days
Then, out of the blue, Ray came across my MySpace page (yes, I meant to put MySpace). We started to chat and exchange numbers quickly. After a short reconnection, I learned that him and Crystal split up, were getting divorced, and she was heading back to Richmond, his friend from high school, whom he took Crystal from in the first place. At the time I had moved to a small town in the middle of Central Florida, so his life was way more exciting than my mundane and mediocre life. I started to visit with him when I would head down south back home again, and we reconnected like nothing had ever changed. He had told me that Crystal did not want him to be friends with me because I was a female, but I'm sure he was using any opportunity to make everybody hate her guts for leaving him to get back with Richmond. Whatever the reason, we were biffles again.
We continued our strong friendship, talking at least once a week when we got super busy. He supported me through my divorce with my husband and would invite me down south once a month to come hang out with himself and his new fiance to keep me from going crazy. Our friendship continued to grow, it was weird how much we had in common, like carbon copies of each other. That is, until Trump was running for President.
All of a sudden someone that was my best friend turned into my worst enemy. He was spouting off the rhetoric that I was so against, that my whole livelihood had been about for the past 10 years. It didn't make sense why he was supporting this man. He knew that I worked in child welfare for 10 years and never once did he complain to me about politics. In fact, politics was never an issue the 15 years that we ever discussed. He was half Mexican for fucks sake! Then all of a sudden out of nowhere, he's posting about my #1 enemy, The Donald.
During the primaries in the election process I unfriended him a handful of times on Facebook. Everyday his posts became more and more disgusting and ridiculous. I hated the fact that people were posting any type of Politics on my Facebook. I just wanted to see pictures of people's ugly kids again, and what they ate for dinner. Ray and I definitely went through a rough patch during the election, at one point his mother becoming involved because she was worried about our friendship taking such a downward spiral over the State of the Union.
We somewhat mended our friendship after that, although it wasn't exactly the same. We tried to make light of the disgusting amount of memes that he was posting on a daily basis, getting into silly internet arguments just for fun. His friends always thought we were being serious and felt the need to comment on our conversation, which drove me batshit crazy. All of a sudden I would be bombarded with 15 comments of Trumpys, ready to battle and punch me in the nose for not agreeing. It got to the point where I could not speak with Ray anymore on Facebook, had to unfollow him, and just try to ignore his actions because we were supposed to be best friends.
It seemed like I was going to further lengths than him to keep this friendship going. I continued to go down to South Florida to connect with him, but all of a sudden he was too busy to hang out with me. I made two visits, then decided to give up. Was he really not hanging out with me over a presidential election? Did The Donald convince my friend that I was an enemy because I didn't like the rhetoric that he was spewing all over my Facebook?
Also during this time the Pulse tragedy happened. At the time I was working in Orlando, and it just hit too close to home. Florida became too volatile to live in between the politics, and now the danger to the lgbtq community. I knew it was time to get out of Florida and move somewhere that I felt safe in my community. Florida was definitely not the place anymore. I decided to let Ray know that I was moving and wanted to visit with him one last time before I moved out of state. I'll let him know the dates way ahead of time so he had plenty of time to plan for me to be there. He was regularly blaming his reasons not to meet up with me on the fact that he had his son for the weekend, enabling him to go out to dinner with me.
The date finally came where I was heading down to South Florida for my last visit. It was about a 4 hour drive from where I lived, no small commute. I texted Ray on my way down letting him know. He quickly replied that he was going to Orlando the weekend that I was going down South to see him. I became so angry. I was putting so much effort into this friendship, driving for hours to see him before I was moving 5,000 miles away, and he deliberately planned to go to the city that I lived in the weekend that I had plan to drive down to see him. I completely lost it. I told him that he was an awful friend, that he didn't care about anybody but himself, and that he had changed. He was no longer the friend that cared for me unconditionally like he had so many years before, now his President deemed me foe. He offered to meet for dinner, knowing damn well I wouldn't make it to South Florida until after 9 PM. Our friendship was dead at that point. There was no turning back.
The next day I went to get my quarterly tattoos with my tattoo artist. Ray also knew that this was another reason why I was coming down to South Florida. In the middle of my appointment, he texted me out of nowhere and asked if I wanted to meet for lunch. I reminded him that I had my tattoo appointment that I was currently at (he knew I was there), and could not meet for lunch. I was confused because I thought that he had left the night before to go to Orlando, but I didn't question it. I didn't want to. I didn't want him to think for one second that I cared, and treat him the way he treated me. He told me that he would be in town the rest of the day, and to let him know when I was finished with my tattoos. Of course I followed up and let him know that the tattoos were done, but then he was too busy to meet up for early dinner. I made the assumption that he must be going to Orlando the following day and decided not to follow up. Later in the evening he must have felt bad, because he texted me and asked if we could meet for breakfast. I agreed that I would text him first thing in the morning.
The next day came and I was starting to feel reassured that maybe my friend wasn't changed, maybe I was being over dramatic about the situation. I texted him first thing in the morning but did not hear at all from him. By 11 a.m. I had to check out of my hotel and hit the road. At 11:30 am he texted that they were getting ready, and he would be on his way in an hour. Uh, what was I supposed to do for 2 hours? I didn't have a hotel to hang out in. I had been here the whole weekend waiting around for him. No, I was not going to wait. I let him know that he could politely fuck off and that he was no longer my friend.
This is where it gets good.
He sent me a text message back saying that I was the shitty friend because he canceled his Disney plans to Orlando just to make time with me this weekend, and I made up excuses not to meet with him. Yep, Trump trained my friend good. If you do or say something awful, switch it on them. Make it their fault. They deserved this treatment!
I didn’t answer his text, and refuse to talk to him until I get a real apology (never counting on that). It has been 5 months since that happened. Does Ray even think about what’s going on with me? Probably not. I’m the bad guy now. Because Trump says so.
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