My sophomore of college I met Jacob Garis. This kid was goofy and funny and the friendship was instantaneous. I’ve had guy friends that were the flirty type friends but this was a true brother/sister relationship. This guy ended up being the best man at my wedding. His parents and sister became my family and they still are. We had family get togethers. He was the type of friend I could drink with and never once think I was unsafe or he was gonna make a move. During the course of our friendship, Jacob started dating this girl named Payton and from a big sister perspective I wasn’t vibing with her from the beginning. You could tell this was a girl that had everything handed to her in life and was clearly looking for a guy that was going to catering to her every whim. However, my best friend was crazy about her so I put in my smile and tried.

I watched my friend slowly fade and this shell of a person take over. He would come to my house and cry about how he couldn’t do it anymore. He would keep a bottle of Jack in his truck and chug before going to her house. I mean very clear signs this wasn’t a healthy relationship, but his self esteem was so low that he thought he deserved this “love”. She eventually isolated him from all of us. I mean isolated, not allowed to talk to us anymore, including his family. Long story short she left him for another guy. A spiral ensued of mass proportions. Marty had moved to Midland at this point so Jake and I had a lot of one on one hang out time. One night, Jacob and I had gotten pretty drunk watching OSU play and he start crying. Sobbing, he told me he was sorry for everything and that he should’ve never let her come between he and his family (including Marty and I). He told me he wanted to die to stop the pain she caused him. He said the only reason he hadn’t killed himself was fear of his sister finding him. I held him and we both sobbed together. My heart was broken. Here was my little brother, torn to pieces, over some girl who used him and abused him like it was fun for her.

The next morning I called my mom in hysterics. I didn’t know what to do. I was scared for my friend. I told his family that they needed to get him help and I was worried without giving away too much. He started getting counseling and things were looking up, but then came Tayah. (Cue positive music, with a sudden drop Dun Dun DUN). They had just started dating three months prior to my move. It was causal and I could already tell this was another needy bitch. I was exhausted from work and didn’t want to meet up with them at her place (she wasn’t 21 yet so the idea of drinking with the underage didn’t sound great either). She said I didn’t want to meet her and I was judging her. Blah blah blah. Sorry I worked at the stadium that day and spent 12 hours on my feet. I just wanted to relax. He and I continued our platonic relationship of disc golf and beer on Saturdays, family dinner a couple nights a week, or a bar on Friday nights and I didn’t hear much more from her. But a week before I moved he and I went to see a movie. The new Star Wars to be specific, pretty sure it was Rogue One. I found out later she was upset saying that he was lying about he and I and that she didn’t trust our relationship because he was ignoring her messages and he lied about going with me to the movies. But I moved on and figured that was put to bed since I moved 7 hours away. I didnt hear from him much after that.

A few months later I had text him and asked for an IT favor since we had worked at the Helpdesk together and I needed something on my account fixed. 5 texts top, no chit chatting or pleasantries. The next day she posted on Facebook saying if you weren’t blood related don’t be texting her man. I commented something along the lines of me and Jacob being like brother and sister so blood doesn’t always matter. His mom and sister and my husband also jumped in to my defense. I text him to ask if that was about me and got no response. His sister text me and said he was taking care of it because I was family and I didn’t deserve that. Apparently his mom got on to him for it. The next day I got a passive aggressive apology from Tayah. You know when you parents make you apologize? That’s what it was like. “I’m sorry, but not because I’m actually sorry.” She said she felt attacked by all of us. I said I understood how weird it would look from the outside but we really were family, no sexual attraction what so ever. I also apologized that we all got pretty defensive but his ex was controlling so when we see that behavior we kind of come to protect him and that we weren’t gonna be put in that situation again.

Y’all would’ve thought I spit in her face and burned her house down. She started going off that we all needed to stop comparing her to his ex, which is fine, I get it. She’s 19 and emotional and never had a real boyfriend. But then she pulled out the racist card. We didn’t like her because she was black. That was my stopping point. I knew once it went there that there was no winning this fight because if that was going to be her response to me, I didnt even want to venture down the road of extreme fall out. I sent one final message to Jacob basically saying that I wasn’t going to tolerate being treated like that and if this was the girl that he wanted to be with, I would gladly remove myself from his life. I said that after enduring a year of Payton’s reign and losing my best friend once, I wasn’t planning on going through that again. After that I didn’t hear from Jake. For a few months he would stay in touch with Marty, but that eventually stopped too. I would talk to his sister and she would tell me things like the girlfriend calling the mom and dad racist and not allowing Jake to go to family functions. How her mom would call her in tears from the things this girl said to her or things Jake said to her. My blood boiled, because these are the kindest, most accepting people you could meet. Redneck as can be, but they’d give you the shirt off their back and accept you

A couple weeks after that, Marty went to text Jake and it didn’t go through. So he went to try Facebook and couldn’t find his profile so we both came to the conclusion that he, as well as myself, had been blocked. I didn’t care much, but Marty didn’t deserve that and it hurt him. He was a good friend and had stayed neutral through this. My protective instincts kicked in and I reached out to Jake the only way I knew he couldn’t block me, school email. I said I wasn’t sure if he knew we had been blocked, but if he did know then I thought of him as a coward. I told him he should be ashamed of how he’s let his family be treated and that I shouldn’t be getting texts and calls saying he’s making his mother cry. I told him he was weak and he deserved every bit of misery he got. Not one of my finest moments, but I had moved past heart break to pure unfiltered anger. I’m usually one to bite my tongue, but I just couldn’t this time.

His sister confirmed that he had got my email and that I had hurt him pretty bad. I hoped it would be a wake up call in a way. I honestly did not care about salvaging our relationship at this point. I just couldnt watch his family be treated this way. A couple weeks later, he would randomly text Marty. Starting off casually like nothing had changed. Then he told Marty that “they” wanted to salvage the friendship between us, but I had to apologize for the email. I remember sitting in my back yard, smoking a cigarette, and Marty was on the phone inside. He would come out like a hostage negotiator and give me terms offered. Every time my answer was the same. “You can be friends with them, but I have nothing to apologize for and I will not apologize to anyone. They’re not my friends.” This went on for like an hour. Marty kept saying “come on, just hear them out.” I couldn’t because that was not my Jake and he never would be ever again and I definitely did not want to be friends with someone who used their race as a trump card for being a bitch.

Fast forward months down the road, Jake’s sister Sara, was looking at a teaching job out in Gallup. Well my parents would meet up with her and her mom for dinner and some local activities. Of course my parents asked how Jacob was doing. Stephanie, their mom, would tell my parents that they eventually told Jake and Tayah they needed to move out of the house they owned in Stillwater. The best part, and honestly I wish I was making this up, was Jake racking up $17,000 on the family credit card. The Garis kids each have a credit card for emergencies or if they were short on cash to help cover things. Well one semester, Tayah lost her grants and scholarship and since she was out of state her tuition costs were through the roof. So Mr. Jake thought in order to keep his gf around (I also believe this was her influence) he should use his parents credit card to pay for her tuition. He said it was an accident, but I dont know how you accidently run a card multiple times.

I struggled with losing this friendship for a long time. It made me bitter and distrusting of people, especially men wanting to be my friend. I still dont really have any male friends to this day because of how hurt I was over losing my brother to a girl. I understand distancing and growing apart, but to be straight up burned for just being his friend killed me. It played a big part in one of my lowest depression dips I had and I honestly think it was a big part of my ex husbands as well. It was like mourning a death of a loved one. Because he was my brother. There were no sexual feelings between us, at least not on my part. I stopped praying for him a long time ago and decided some people you can’t save and you cant sacrifice your peace of mind for someone who would set it on fire for their partners entertainment. For anyone out there that’s in this type of relationship where you’re giving up family for someone, remember to step back and ask yourself why. Is it better for you or for your partner if they weren’t around? If it’s only better for your partner, but hurts you, it’s not okay. For anyone who is making someone chose between their family or you, ask yourself why you want that. If it’s just because you “don’t like them” or you think they dont like you, that’s not a reason to ask your partner to give up their family. Believe me, I’ve had some crazy in laws in the past and even though I may not have liked them or my family didn’t like them, we didn’t mistreat them. We didn’t purposefully not include them in things to be malicious. I hope everyone out there reads this and remembers to be understanding and patient in your relationships.