Prompt: Let Go. What (or whom) did you let go of this year? Why?

“What the fuck, Trey?” I can’t begin to count how many times I have uttered those words since my junior year of college, circa 1998. I met Trey on the internet, back in the days when the internet mainly consisted of a maze of twisty little passages, all alike. (aka BBSes, MUDs, and MOOs). Through the magic of text chat and hundred dollar phone bills we fell into some semblance of love. We stayed together for the next four years, doing all the things that kids in love do. We took crazy cross country road trips. We went to pre-Bonnaroo music festivals in corn fields. We got pulled over a lot. I went to grad school. He worked in a restaurant. I thought we would stay together forever. Then I realized we wouldn’t.

We didn’t have a breakup; we had a catastrophe. I found a place I could afford (a miracle, really) and moved out as fast as I could. Trey and I didn’t speak for about a year, except to talk about money he owed me. Then one day (accidentally, almost) we started talking. Hanging out a little. We became friends again. He fell in love with the first of many Katie’s. I started dating women. We were comfortable friends with a shared history; he was someone who knew everything there was to know about me, and I knew some of his secrets, too.

He also became an addict. When he hit rock bottom (meth, coke) and didn’t have anywhere else to go I let him sleep on my couch. He went through my 90 day “if you drink or do drugs I will beat your ass” program. It worked, save for the night he got stoned and tried to take a shit in my fridge. He got a job, saved up some money, got an apartment a block away. He helped Emily & I get together, and I’ll forever be grateful to him for that little piece of magic. He became a master dumpster diver, and we had great FNB meals to show for it. He started hanging out with gutter punks. Spray painted the entirety of his apartment, floor to ceiling, and trashed the place until it looked like a squat. My new favorite saying became “Trey, you put the ‘dick’ in ridiculous.”

He started doing drugs again (coke, opium, pills). Stole a baby Jesus. Got arrested for the second time on Easter Sunday (passed out on the sidewalk in front of the Episcopal church a block from his house). As usual, I picked him up from jail. As usual, he was beat up and full of righteous indignation. “My face didn’t look like this until the cops showed up!”

I got a phone call at 11:30pm on a Tuesday. “Eugene is over here and that fucker stole $3500 from me. I’m not letting him leave until he gets it back. Come over here. Bring your gun.” I do/I don’t. I’ve never liked Eugene but he seems genuinely bewildered. I try to play peacemaker but leave before Trey makes Eugene strip down naked. I get a call the next day. “The money was in a paint can in the closet. I forgot.”

Fast forward a few years and he is living in a rental house on a rapidly gentrifying street. No spraypainted walls, but the house has its share of surprises. We’re not really talking much, but when he needs money he asks us first, and sometimes we give it to him because he always pays us back. Until he writes me a letter, about how he wants to get his shit together, he just needs to pay off this one guy and someone stole some shit and he’s really in trouble. So we loan him $1300. And, predictably, we never see it (or him) again.

The story doesn’t end there, though. A few months later he sets his mattress on fire while arguing with his 19-year-old trustafarian girlfriend, and ends up causing significant damage to the rental house. He is carted away in handcuffs; leaves the dogs locked in the basement. My name is on the rental agreement as his emergency contact, so I get a facebook message from his landlord telling me to get his stuff out of the apartment, or else, and the dogs are going to the pound tomorrow. Emily & the most recent Katie & I traipse over to the house, rescue the dogs from the basement. Try to find them homes. Trey’s pit bull almost kills Katie’s cat. Trey is in jail. Then somewhat inexplicably he is released. I do not pick him up.

The next I hear of Trey he is in jail in Mississippi, after being caught smoking pot in a car that also had a quarter pound of pot in it. He calls both Emily & I, every hour or so, begging us to bail him out of jail, promising us that he will show up for his court date, he’ll do anything, please just help him. He’s booked under a name we’ve never heard. He sweettalks the bail bondsman; she is on the phone with us vouching for him, asking us to send him money, sign the papers, please help him. We don’t. Country John does. Trey misses his court date. A warrant is issued. Eventually he is caught and spends a good 6 months in the Starkville county jail. I sent him an almanac, a book of crossword puzzles, and Siddhartha.

He called me a few weeks after he was released, in March or April I think, and we decided to meet for coffee. “I have a lot of things to tell you,” he said. “I owe you an explanation of myself for the past 12 years.” We set a day, a time, a place. He never shows. Rinse, repeat.

This entire year has been an exercise in letting go. I’ve let go of the expectations I had for Trey; expectations of explanations or hopes of happiness or repayment or friendship or even a thank you for saving his dogs from euthanasia. Trey will always be a very important part of my past – but this year I’ve come to realize he will not be a part of my future.

“Forgiveness is giving up any hope of having had a different past.” –Anne Lamont

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