No good deed

No good deed goes unpunished!

It sounded suspiciously like the flu to me. Worldwide pandemic that never quite made it to my lucky country. When people started going crazy and emptying out the supermarkets preparing for the worst I sat back and laughed at how serious those around me were taking the situation.

My partner warned me that if I did not stock up on essentials soon we would be in dire straights when the country went into lock down and the supermarkets would be closed for weeks. I ignored his warnings and told him that he was over reacting, that the world had gone crazy and that I wasn't going to fall for that bull!

When people started to get into violent brawls over toilet paper in the middle of crowded supermarkets, I shook my head and asked myself what was the world coming to? I couldn't understand why people were behaving so poorly and being so selfish. I tried to remind myself that if I went into panic mode like the rest of the hoards that perhaps I too would be involved in a punch up when someone deprived me of the last bog roll on the shelf.

Perhaps it was the combination of events that lead to my receiving a most unexpected visit from someone that I had consider to be almost a friend. Early one evening midweek in the early stages of the pandemic came a knocking on the entrance to my abode. I answered the door to see an unkempt middle aged man. A past mistake of mine that had lived with me twice in recent years.

Peter Shane Errington and I had met after my marriage had broken down a few years earlier. The last time I had seen him had been in the midst of a heated argument during which he had told me that he was leaving and I had said goodbye, only for him to get angry with me for kicking him out. At that point in the argument Peter had turned around and attempted to emotionally blackmail me claiming that I had ruined his life by kicking him out. I kept my cool and reminded him that it was his decision to leave and that I had said nothing of it until after he had made that decision himself. I suspect that he had expected me to crumble and ask him to stay at that point. I am not a woman who begs a man to stay with her for any reason and my pride prevents me from asking for help from most people due to rarely receiving any from anyone. Family and close friends were a strange lot. When someone asked me for help or for me to do something for them I am usually happy to help even if helping them out will leave me out of pocket or in some sort of trouble.

Rarely do people return the favour and should I require assistance I get empty promises that they will be there promptly only for some bogus excuse to be used a few weeks later when I finally see them. It is never a big deal to me, I am used to it at this point in life so I learn my lessons quicker each time when it comes to deciding who I will keep in my life and who I will cut ties with. Fair is fair and if I go out of my way to do all I can for someone only to have them treat me so appalling like Peter had done I let them go!

Despite our not parting on the best of terms Peter was clearly happy to see me and was very friendly . We chatted for a reasonable amount of time and he seemed to hold no ill will for me until I mentioned to him that my partner would be arriving home shortly. Something in his manner changed quickly and thinking back to that passage in time I wonder if just the fact that I had clearly moved on was all it had taken for the future chain of events that was to follow him returning into my life.

However back then I was oblivious to any dire warnings of the terribly traumatic future that since writing this story has already come to pass and so I offered Peter a ride home with my partner so he would not have to ride his bike all the way back to his domicile.

From that day onwards over the course of a few months Peter and I hung out infrequently and things in his life were going well until he lost his job. Upon Peter confiding in me to explain himself, yet also strangely enough refusing to admit any wrong doing that may have caused him to lose his job, I made it my mission to try to make Peter see things from the perspective of another. As I had been somewhat making friendly with Scott who was incidentally the precise person who's opinion I needed on this particular matter due to the fact that it had been Scott who had fired my almost friend Peter.

So I called Peter’s ex boss Scott to discuss his version of events and try to figure out what had happened. Within twenty minutes of conversing with Scott I had determined from the builder that Peter had been fired with good reason. Turned out that he had neglected to tell me that he had stolen from his boss and then lied about it to everyone he spoke with. Armed with this information I returned to see Peter to bite his head off for lying to me and more so to scold him for the unforgivable theft from a man who had done so very much to help get Peter back on his feet giving him steady work after so very many years of unemployment, addiction and a string of petty crimes to fund his habit. Naturally with my unleashing all of hell onto Peter for his reprehensible bad behaviour he soon called up his former boss to apologise and thanks to my interfering he even managed to get his job back.

As it turned out in most cases like this there was more to the story that all involved had been made aware off. Peter had gotten so wasted on narcotics and booze that he couldn’t remember he had indeed sold his bosses property to his cousin. This information I had learned from Scott. Naturally Peter denied it and told me that Scott had lied to me. Having no way to verify this for myself as I did not know his Peter's cousin I remained calm and told Peter that the situation could very easily be resolved. All he had to do was call his cousin to find out the truth. So he did this and then called me back to apologise.

I told him that I understood as I was by no means some perfect angel who had never forgotten what she had done one night when she had gone off the rails drinking too much and blacking in and out of reality. I asked him if he had spoken with Scott yet about the situation which he hadn’t. Telling Peter that he was speaking to the wrong person that he had to call his former boss and apologise for what he had done I hung up the phone hoping that things would turn out for the best.

Drama seems to like company because after all that I had recently been subjected to more soon followed. Mere weeks after being fired and rehired Peter was in the deep end once again. He had now lost his home as his cousin couldn't handle him being around the house anymore and ruining everything he came into contact with. I had some huge doubts about Peter by this point and was not thrilled about him asking me if he and his two dogs could stay in my home if only for a few days. Reluctantly I agreed but I was very sure to make certain that Peter was very well aware that I had only allowed him to stay for his canines benefit and that I would put him to work cleaning up my house.

My partner was most annoyed at me for allowing Peter to stay in our home and I corrected him immediately, informing him that it was not Peter I allowed to stay there but his dogs and that he was merely acting as a live in puppy au pair. While far from ideal I reminded myself almost on a daily basis that Peter had not created the situation he was in, that he most assuredly did not want to be living in my spare room at his age with no source of income left now after another spat between him and his former boss Scott. I had to as per usual put my own feelings aside and was told almost on a daily basis how greatly Peter appreciated all I had done for him. Due to the pandemic that was still afflicting the world we lived in and while to a far lesser extent the city that we inhabited, times were severely tough and I was well aware that Peter would find it exceedingly difficult to get appropriate accommodation for both himself and his two large dogs.

Less than a month had passed and I was fed up with Peter, his pathetic defeatist attitude and most of all how he was alway there in my home being loud and obnoxious. I was at breaking point one day when I was unable to find two of my rings and I enlisted Peter’s aide in remedying this situation. He promised me that he would help me look for my rings the next day as he was not feeling very well that particular day . I bit my tongue and stopped myself from saying something unnecessarily nasty to the man and let him be while I tore the place apart in search of my two favourite, not to mention two most valuable rings.

I attempted to speak to my partner about the situation and asked him to help me search. To my utter shock and dismay I was told that he would not help me as I had previously suspected his involvement in a separate occasion where two rings went missing. Forgive my jumping to conclusions but it had made perfect sense to me that my partner may have sold the rings that had been missing as he was having money problems. It was almost a year after the first incident when those rings had turned up in the lint catchment in our washing machine. Despite my apologising to my partner about my placing any blame on him back then he still flat out refused to help me look for the rings that were missing now. Sometimes fair is not fair, I didn’t even bother to remind my partner of all the times he had accused me of stealing something that was his only for me to waste half a day searching for whatever it was he had lost so that I could clear my name.

I was alone in my endeavours to locate my rings.

Once I had completely exhausted every possibly place that my rings could have been I gave up looking for I knew damned well what had happened to them. To confirm my worst fears Peter vanished the very next day never to return and the complete scum bag left his two dogs in my backyard indefinitely.

He flat out refused to answer any of my calls or texts and after two months of his dogs being abandoned without a word from their owner I was fast running out of options on what I could do with these dogs and my meagre funds had long ago been depleted with the added financial burden of having to care for another two mouths that I couldn't possibly afford to feed. I did the only thing I could do with the dogs and surrendered them over to the council in the hopes that they would both be re-homed and find an owner that valued their lives more than his own wretched existence. Peter had stolen from plenty the people who's only crime was trying to do the right thing for him and it was a tough lesson to learn indeed.

No good deed goes unpunished!

The lesson to be learned from this most unfortunate and slightly heartbreaking scenario is to never trust anyone, least of all someone who was sadly nothing more than a liar and thief. A rotten scoundrel who's desperate need for their next hit was worth more to them than the over twenty thousand in combined price tags and the irreplaceable sentimental value of the rings he stole not to mention the faithful hounds who's lives he didn't even consider. Drug addicts are pathetic when they are willing to literally do anything to feed their habit. People that just abandon their pets so they could get away without the need to return to the scene of a crime they had just committed leaving what meager possessions they had behind including literally backpacks full of dirty used needles disgust me!

We all have our vices and I do not judge people when they abuse drugs or alcohol. Life is hard and it is very easy for people to turn to self destructive habits when they are not happy.

Stealing from someone who helped you and abandoning your pets for no good reason leaving behind dirty used needles that I was lucky not to get pricked with while I was cleaning up and emptying out the room that Peter had inhabited, I judged him very harshly for that!

Perhaps I am not like the vast majority of humanity? When my life is falling apart around me my answer to the unhappiness I feel is to try to help someone else in any way I can.

It is a selfish thing for me to do because I help others for my need to feel good about myself more than I do it to help them. Most of the time I do not even know the person that I am helping out all that well, or even at all.

What helped me get over this betrayal the most was putting other people's needs before my own and doing what little I could do to help them. That is how my next story starts, with my desire to help another that was having trouble in her life.

But that is another story and this one is at the end!