I met Das the month after my baby sister died and we became fast friends. Growing up in the mountains, being homeschooled, and having the unique parents I did, his friendship was a welcome reprieve to my loneliness. He was an odd boy and we had a lot of ups and downs in our friendship. But knowing someone that well for that long, it wasn't impossible to pretend we were family. His parents were weirder and poorer than mine. He envied my many siblings. But his weird streak drove wedges and the longer I knew him, the less we had in common. We drifted apart in our high school years, but he still came to visit me a few times while I was at boarding school. It was through those visits he eventually met my soon-to-be best friend and his soon-to-be wife.
My best friend moved in with me the year after we graduated. It was New Years Eve when she got kicked out of the house she had been living in with an old lady from Das's church. I offered my parents home to her and she accepted.
She grew up in less than ideal circumstances, I won't go into the details, but suffice to say she became the amazing, motivated, loving, compassionate, headstrong person she is today despite her childhood, not because of it. I think Das, despite his parents and his poverty was a saving grace for her. I think my slightly less weird parents and slightly less impoverished poverty was another.
She was on the top bunk in our shared room when she got a call at the crack of dawn. It was the police station. Das had been picked up for breaking into a car and stealing an ipod. She scrounged up bail from one of her family members and we picked him up that evening in her boat-of-a-first car. He was rather quiet on the way home. But the story changed the more people he told. He never quite saw it as his fault that he had been arrested. I don't know that his parents ever heard the truth. No charges were pressed. It was his first infraction and they didn't want to ruin his life.
He was caught stealing from his job shortly after and was quietly let go. He never owned up to it, never admitted it to anyone. But my grandfather golfed with Das's boss. I knew the whole story. But... No charges were pressed. He was such a nice guy, he made one mistake. They didn't want to ruin his life.
He broke up with my best friend for a while. It seemed like he wanted to work on himself. I don't know what he was actually doing, but we took him at his word and let him grow as a person. I admit, I was glad he was out of our lives for a little while so my best friend and I could date boys together, build our friendship, and become closer than ever. It was a nice time. Eventually they got back together and I felt like he had matured in their time apart. He was calmer. He had a steady job. He was going to church. It felt like they were on the right path.
They got married Dec. of 2013. She got pregnant on the honeymoon. At 7 months pregnant, trapped at home in the mountains of my youth with no car to go anywhere, alone most of the time... (I had moved to Guam) She discovered he was cheating on her through texts on his phone. He never owned up to all of it, only the pieces he couldn't deny because she had seen it with her own eyes. But she stuck by him. He was a nice guy. She didn't want to ruin his life. She told no one... Not even me.
I came home for my sister's wedding. My best friend's daughter was just over 1 year old. We went swimming in the hot, late-summer evening after working all day to prepare for the ceremony hosted on my family's farm. My best friend and I swam out in the lake to a small island, lovingly named "Duck Poop Island". We strolled around looking for nests even though they had long been abandoned. I don't remember how she said it, but I remember when she finally did. I cried. She cried. I was shaken. This shouldn't have happened to my beautiful best friend. I couldn't believe how bravely she had borne it alone. For how long she had kept her hurt hidden.
She came to visit me in SD with her daughter and it felt like the final nail in the coffin of her marriage. She was done. She was ready to ruin his life. She wanted to be out of an unhappy marriage. Her daughter had just turned 2. I think it was the bravest, best thing she could have done. It took a full year for her divorce to go through, but the following Christmas, she got the best present she could have ever given herself.
Shortly after she divorced her husband, my cousin came sniffing around. He had kind of always been there in a strange background way. We used to run to the windows and peek out at him, giggling like little girls when he would come to visit my grandmother next door. He had this effortless charm about him. He didn't try to impress anybody, always spoke the truth, and never cared if he seemed cool. A total opposite of Das. He had once made a joke after spending some time with Das, my best friend, and their daughter that he was ready to find a wife, but only one like my best friend. And he hoped he would have a kid like their's. So it might come as no surprise that two years after her divorce, my best friend celebrated her second wedding... to my cousin. We were finally family.
Its hard to put into words the type of person Das is. If you know anything about narcissistic personality disorder... it sums him up nicely. If you understand emotional abuse, you'll know what life was like for my best friend being married to him. She shrunk to a size 6 being married to him and he still berated her to lose weight. He made her delete facebook, wouldn't let her share photos of her daughter to family over text or email (the government is watching), refused to have anything in the house that wasn't organic and "chemical-free", even clothing. She once brought home an organic cheese that had a fancy word for "salt" in the ingredients and he made her throw it away unopened. Anything that threatened his intelligence was forbidden from their house. I once got into a debate with him about something and every time she opened her mouth, whether to agree or disagree with him, he snapped at her to shut up and let him speak. You could catch him in a lie with undeniable proof in your hands and he would still weasel his way out of it and try to make YOU feel like the crazy one. Gaslighting. Put-downs. Manipulations.
Das lingers. Co-parenting with a narcissist might be a little better than being married to one... but not by much. He fought her every step of the way. He wanted everything 50-50 on paper, but wanted her to take 90% of the responsibilities in real life. It was all about looking good in court and nothing about actually being a good father. He stuck his daughter in a pantry big enough for a twin mattress and called it a bedroom. Their daughter would come home exhausted, rashy, filthy and hungry because he couldn't be bothered with things like bed time, wiping her after she used the toilet, baths, and feeding her a solid meal. But he "took parenting classes online" so the courts granted 50-50 custody.
When my best friend discovered he stole her mail and used money from a refund she was expecting from her cable company and used it to buy a gun for his friend, she called the cops. Nothing happened. She called again. She went down there. Over and over, they fumbled it but she persisted until a real cop who cared took the case on. He got the DA involved. It took a year for anything to happen with it, but finally, they began the process to charge him with two felonies and two lesser charges. The felonies were stealing mail and using stolen money to buy a gun. He threatened her. He said he would kidnap their daughter and run and she would never be able to find them if she moved forward with the case. She got a restraining order. He fought to overturn it and won, but he's no longer allowed to come to her property and they meet at the police station every day to pick up and drop off their daughter.
She has suffered through so many court hearings. She has paid so much money to a lawyer. She has fought for her rights tooth and nail. Covid hit and court moved to phone calls. And now... finally... a verdict. He was told to pay back the money he stole... and they dropped everything. She protested. She fought for more. But they said, "This is his first infraction. He's such a nice guy. We don't want to ruin his life."
