You ever just feel like you’re watching a car crash in slow motion and you’re the driver and the passenger and also the person filming it on their phone, just utterly detached and trapped all at once? That’s where I’ve been, I mean, it’s not even just a feeling anymore it’s like a state of being. And it’s… it’s insane, because you see it coming, you know it’s bad, but you can’t actually *do* anything to stop it, not really. Especially when it’s someone else’s mess that you’re now tangled in, like some kind of really expensive, really embarrassing human yarn ball. And you know, you can try to unpick it, but every pull just makes it worse, makes the knots tighter, until you’re just surrounded by this absolute disaster and everyone’s looking at *you* like you’re the one who spun it all in the first place. And then you just find yourself playing along, because what else are you supposed to do? You can’t exactly blow up someone’s entire world, even if they kind of deserve it for being so utterly clueless and… well, just *stupid*. Like, how do you even tell someone who’s spent their whole life being this pillar of the community, this respected figure, that their entire savings are gone because they fell for a glorified pyramid scheme? A *pyramid scheme*, for crying out loud. Like, you’re an educated man, a retired teacher even, you’d think there’d be some kind of critical thinking skills there, but apparently not when it comes to promises of twenty percent returns overnight. So now he’s still showing up at the club, still ordering the expensive wine, still talking about his ‘portfolio diversification’ and you’re just sitting there, knowing it’s all gone. Every last dime. And you’re just… there. Pretending it’s fine. Pretending you don’t know. Because what, you’re just going to blurt it out during the weekly bridge game? “Oh, by the way, remember how you were so proud of your financial savvy? Yeah, well, you’re broke.” It’s just infuriating, you know? Because now I’m caught in the middle, helping him keep up this charade, buying rounds of drinks I really can’t afford so he doesn’t look bad, making excuses for why his ‘investments are locked up right now’ when he can’t pay his dues. And why? Because you can’t let someone’s whole life just… disintegrate. Even if they brought it on themselves. Even if every fiber of your being is screaming at you to just walk away and let him deal with it. But you can’t. Because that’s not what you do. So you just keep pouring the expensive Scotch, and smiling, and pretending like you’re not staring into a future that’s suddenly a lot more precarious than it was a few months ago, all because some old man got greedy. And you just hate it. You hate the lie, you hate the pretense, and honestly, sometimes you just really hate the person who put you in this impossible position. Like, REALLY hate them. But you still show up. Every time. It’s exhausting.