A Piece of Advice Is Free

Advice shared between two friends is free. It's not some kind of life consultation session where you sit down with your friend and discuss what they need to do in order to get out of whatever shit they've somehow gotten themselves into, then proceed to receive a consultation fee. Friends help out, you know. You want to see your friend excel in life, and therefore you offer them pieces of advice where appropriate, and they do the same for you. Friendships are great indeed.

So, this friend of mine told me a while ago that he was in a bit of a situation concerning his living arrangement and his room mates. It sounded to me like he was no longer happy to be living with these people, and the gist of it was that they all had to move out of that particular location at the end of the month, anyway. So, I offered an exceptionally sensible piece of advice: "Give your room mates a full one-month notice, then just part ways with them." It just sounded like he had absolutely nothing to gain by keeping association with them, and besides, I know him well enough to know he either thrives beautifully or wilts into oblivion depending on what kind of people he surrounds himself with. These two people would simply fuck him over in a long run, and my gut told me just that. My friend was thankful, saying my advice was very sound.

Then a few weeks afterward, I found out that he was actually moving into a new dwelling somewhere in a crappy neighbourhood with the same two people. It sounded like they pretty much convinced him to stick around, mostly for the sake of their own financial ease. I'd already had a bad feeling about these people from what my friend had told me from the start, so my reaction to that was, "are you really, REALLY sure it's going to be okay??" He was like, "yeah yeah, I'll get the entire basement suite, so it'll be fine." Then he moved into this new place, and I didn't hear from him for about three weeks.

Yesterday, I received a message from him basically saying he got fucked over royally by his room mates, and that he was rushed into signing a shitty contract where he was now required to pay more than his share of rent. A major face-palm moment. They got my friend by the balls and knew they could easily push him over and about: precisely, PRECISELY what I had feared might happen. To top it off, now he's saying he's had to decide to act civil toward them for the sake of his own sanity. I mean, seriously dude?! So, he's going to be stuck with these schmucks for one more year, paying a greater amount of rent than he should, while pretending like things are peaceful between him and the fucktards.

Somehow, "I told you so" just doesn't quite say it. I feel like an idiot for offering what would have been a life-saving piece of advice to him, and seeing him toss it away like it was nothing, and then to hear that all the shit I warned him about is now happening to him because he DID NOT LISTEN. AGAIN. Man, this isn't the first time he's done a complete 180 after initially finding my advice helpful, only to become a miserable mess because he reversed his decision. This whole bullshit pisses me off to no end because it could've been rather easily avoided, only if he'd listened to my advice like he'd initially said he would. But what am I, his babysitter, or what? He's a grown fucking man. I hate to say this but he's brought this onto himself.

I'll always be there for him because he's a buddy of mine, but fucking sonofabitch, "WTF were you thinking?!"

Alright, I'm done ranting.

#80