Puzzled By The Pieces

 

Illustration by Shannon Murdock

An Eye-Opening Discovery Revealed How Far A Former Friend Was Willing To Go To Get Revenge

Today I learned that almost 2 years ago, a woman I have never met tried to warn my then best friend that I was in danger of the ultimate self-harm after months of isolation and mistreatment at his hands. It turns out she had been spying on me in my apartment since I'd moved in back in September 2021, and she had apparently observed me crying alone at home one night following a series of arguments and a long estrangement from him. She tried to impart to him the love I bore him, the loyalty she could see for our friendship, and the anguish I was suffering because of his absence, but he would not be persuaded to even bother checking in on me downstairs in my apartment to confirm whether or not her story was true. "Shannon is not my responsibility!", he shouted at her as he is known for doing. 

As is typical of this friend, he had made a number of assumptions about me that he chose not to verify, and those assumptions became cemented in his paranoid mind as full-fledged facts. Acting on those misperceptions, he involved law enforcement, who on that night in mid-October 2023, cornered this woman and interrogated her for hours, claiming the most preposterous allegations that I had paid her to spy on him for me and report back with her findings. Mind you, I was and still am unemployed, and at that particular time, I was trying my very best to mend our relationship after months of being stonewalled by him for letting my emotions get the better of me when he ignored me for days on end, broke his commitments daily, and prioritized everyone and everything above me. 

It was revealed to me that a few weeks prior to this ugly tantrum in our upstairs hallway, my friend had a really bad morning. He discovered that his boyfriend had cheated on him, and then found a collection of intimate personal videos I had shared with him through a secure folder via my Plex Media Server, which only he and I could see or access. I'd put them there during a period when he had cut off all communication with me completely and left me no means by which to talk to him. They were recordings made by my home security cameras during the months he had lived with me and afterward when I'd helped him get an apartment in my building just upstairs from me. He had been aware of their existence from the start, because he was there with me when I installed the cameras and gave his input on the design of the signage I made to hang by my door to alert guests that audio and video recording was being conducted on the premises 24/7, informing them that by staying, they consented to being recorded. In fact, I'd made a copy of the signs for his apartment, too, because I helped him set up the exact same cameras in his apartment. There was nothing shady or secret about the videos.

Now, I don't know the specifics of his boyfriend's cheating, only that his yelling could be heard throughout the building after finding it out. And I only learned of it two years after these events took place, so I didn't even know then what the yelling was about. But I can imagine how unbearably hurt and betrayed he must have felt in that moment, and I completely empathize with him. This boyfriend was not the first to have been unfaithful to my friend, and it broke my heart when I learned it had happened to him again. I know that pain all too well, and I wouldn't wish it on anyone except perhaps a cheating piece of shit boyfriend. 

I can understand that with all that heartache and stress going on that morning, it must have been quite an unwelcome shock for him to scroll through my Plex library (which he didn't seem to mind continuing the use of despite his growing dislike for me) and see videos of himself there. I'd had no way to inform him I'd put them there for him as a courtesy since they were personal and intimate and in my opinion, representative of some of our most fun times spent together as friends. It never occurred to me that he would feel shame or embarrassment at their presence on his TV or phone, because he had never made me feel like he was ashamed or embarrassed to have participated in those frequent gatherings. As far as I was concerned, I was doing a kind gesture for someone I missed and hoping that when he found them there, shared with him and him alone, he might also remember our better times and lighten up on the stonewalling and disrespect he'd kept up since early July. 

I should point out that at the time in 2023, I was oblivious to any of this. His rage at finding those videos and the misperception he dreamt up of my motives in sharing them was kept secret from me until much later. I was too mired under my deep depression and loneliness to have noticed that he had set dangerous and destructive actions in motion or to understand how much he'd grown to hate me. We'd had our tough moments and weren't on the best of terms, but I could never have guessed how far from that his opinion of me had fallen. 

In August, I'd done everything I could think of to convince him to break the silence between us and talk to me about a small loan that he'd failed to repay before abandoning our friendship and shutting me out of his life. I'd sent him emails, sent letters, and left cards for him at his door, all very respectful but firm that I intended to file a small claims case if he did not contact me to make payment arrangements for what was then a very small debt. The night before I was set to go to the clerk of court's office, I got a call from him at 3:00 in the morning inviting me to come outside for a smoke and a chat. I was out the door in seconds even though I'd been fast asleep when he called. I didn't want to miss that rare opportunity to speak with him and try to settle our differences. 

We had a short but friendly talk outside on the sidewalk. He told me he'd been having a rough couple months financially due to a series of car troubles that had kept him busy and broke, but he looked me in the eye with sincerity and promised me he intended to repay me. He told me not to waste my money filing the case. He said it wasn't necessary and that he was sorry he'd remained silent on the subject for so long. I was so relieved that I immediately forgave him and agreed not to file the small claims suit in the morning. We chatted a little while longer while I smoked a cigarette and it felt like there might be hope for things between us to improve. Our visit was cut short when his boyfriend came outside looking for him, upset that he had not answered any of the half a dozen texts or calls he'd made wondering where he'd gotten off to for so long. My friend hugged my neck tightly, like old times, said good night, and we went our separate ways to our own apartments and to our beds. 

In the weeks that followed, he'd agreed to give me a chance to try and reconcile our friendship, because as he saw it, there were no faults or flaws that he needed to address regarding his own behavior. If things were going to get better, the changes would all have to be mine. Like a sucker, I bought into it, so desperate to have my friend back was I. A few weeks after our late night chat, he came to me with a proposition to sell me one of his used cars so he could use the money to put a down payment on a newer and more reliable car for himself. His cars were still giving him trouble and had become dangerous to drive to and from work on the freeway. I had been considering getting a used car just for taking little trips out of Seattle on the weekends, so I agreed to his offer and sent him a thousand bucks as a down payment. He thanked me and told me he'd start the paperwork later that week on his day off, which was fine by me. We had to take the car to the dealership so they could give us an estimate for repairs to get it running. He'd left it parked on the street in West Seattle at a friend's place for over a year, and it had a flat tire, a dead battery, and wouldn't start. 

But once he'd gotten the money for his new car purchase, he was harder and harder to get ahold of. As had been the case before our first falling out, he went back to ignoring my messages and he had less and less time to spend with me. I felt the familiar panic in my gut that he might have just used me so he could get himself a new car, and without any conversation to abate those fears, I grew nervous I was being taken advantage of. So I started texting him more urgently, asking him for updates on the car repairs. No answer. I left notes for him at his door for him to see when he got home in the evenings from work, and they only served to anger him. He'd come to my door in fits of anger, demanding that I stop pushing so hard and to quit leaving him notes. I was more and more certain I wasn't going to get a working car out of this arrangement, as he seemed to have little time or care to call the mechanic and get any update on the repairs. I never saw any paperwork drawn up for the sale. All I knew was I was out another $1,000, and my friend was being a jerk to me again. 

Well now I know why. While he was pretending we were still friends, letting me sweat it out and hold my tongue, bending over backward to get any time or attention from him and to maybe do some of the talking that needed to be done if a friendship was going to be repaired, my friend was busy putting together a criminal investigation with members of law enforcement and trying to have me arrested on federal stalking charges. 

Again, I had no idea of his duplicity. We'd argued about his lack of follow through, sure. But not in a million years did I expect things were so bad that he suspected me of actually betraying him. Looking over the evidence I've managed to piece together from that time period in late 2023, I'm so frustrated and angry and hurt all at once. There were so many wrong assumptions made by him about me and so many opportunities to have talked about them and cleared things up. I would have welcomed any opportunity to explain myself to him had he given me the opportunity to do so. Instead, he lied to my face, broke all of his commitments, and went silent on me once more, leaving the matter of the car sale and the return of my money unresolved. 

I spent all of November attempting to collect the debt he owed, and he spent it filing police reports claiming harassment. Even the sight of me caused him such rage he couldn't look me in the eye, but I couldn't understand why. What could possibly have driven my friend this far afield from where I was, trying to mend things and wanting to get along? I couldn't have known that I was the subject of around-the-clock surveillance, or that there were acquaintances of mine being used as spies to come into my home and gather information for the investigators. It's embarrassing how gullible I was the whole two years since we last spoke to one another. But at Christmas, after I'd given him a gift and a few cards I'd made as an olive branch, he chose to silence me once and for all. Right after New Year's Day I was served notice of a temporary domestic violence protection order that prevented me from making contact with him and forced me to retreat into my apartment for an entire fucking year. I can't begin to explain the heartache I felt at losing my friend again, being taken for over $1,100 that I desperately needed back, and getting no answers as to why or what had caused this outrageous escalation by him when nothing I had done had been malicious. I was standing up for myself for once, yes. I wasn't ready to bend over and let him steal that money from me after promising me that the car sale would not cause problems between us. From where I sat, I had been disrespected, ignored, and taken for granted for too long, and then I got punished for trying to collect my money from him. 

It's a sad sign of the times when people are more inclined to believe that an unemployed, mild-mannered, middle-aged man with no criminal history and a long, steady, respectable career was guilty of organizing and running a network of stalkers who he paid to spy on this Joe Schmoe than to accept the simple truth that I was grieving the loss of a very important friendship and doing my best to mend a broken heart while left wondering what exactly had happened. My friend saw things from a very different perspective. He made some wrong assumptions about me that led him to become angry at me for things I didn't do, and fearful of me for things his imagination had invented. He built his own reality and painted me as a monster bent on stalking and humiliating him, but that was never the case. 

That woman, the one they accused of being paid to spy on my friend? She was absolutely correct. I was on my way to killing myself. I'd taken steps in that direction. Made arrangements. Procured the means to do it. There have been many times over the last two years when it almost happened. Luckily I had therapy to keep me from taking that last step and bowing out of this unjust world for good. I am getting better little by little, but it's due to a lot over very hard work. I'm back in school full-time, trying to keep myself busy and better my situation so that there isn't room left in my day to feel the sadness or the hurt my friend left me with. And I wish he had seen me as the friend I wanted to be when he was hurting so much himself. There was a time when we where there for each other like that. I miss those times. But those two men don't exist anymore. They've turned into different people through this hell of an experience, and they are no good for one another anymore. Maybe we never were. I hope he moves on and that he'll eventually come to accept that I am not trying to stalk him. I'm happiest these days when I know he is far away and not worrying that he and his minions are about to break down my door and haul me off to jail for things he invented in his paranoid mind. Be well. Do better. And stay away from me.