Before I jump into the dramatics of yesterday, I just want to say how fresh the skin on my face is looking. It’s a smooth blemish-free canvas. And it’s 100% not synonymous with someone who should be starting their period like yesterday. I’m usually hideous right before my period. I breakout in spots, my skin is a rashy mess and I just feel icky. Anyway it’ll start when it wants to start. I read that the emergency pill tends to delay your second period, so I’ll just wait.
Ok, now the drama.
Yesterday afternoon at work, I was sitting at my desk minding my own business and a lady from HR comes up to me and says she needs to talk to me that it’s an emergency. I’m not entirely sure what’s going on until she sits me down in an enclosed room and tells me that Kirby is missing. In my head, I’m like, right. She goes on to tell me that the police have been in touch, a missing persons report has been filed and whether I’ve heard anything from him. I say no. At that point, the last time I’d seen him was on Tuesday and I hadn’t heard from him since then. She asked me to call him and see if I could get through to him. So I go back to my desk and I call his personal number. And someone else picks it up.
Immediately I say, ‘Hey Kirby, are you ok?’ but the person on the phone tells me that this isn’t Kirby. Kirby had basically left his phone at a bar, where this guy works, and he had held onto it for him. He then tells me that Kirby had been there the night before and had been telling him about his gambling escapades. I informed him that Kirby had been reported missing and then we ended the conversation.
I then went onto Facebook messenger and messaged him, ‘where you at?’ I saw he was last online three hours ago and so I was somewhat relieved that he was at least still alive. I went to update the lady in HR about my findings then went back to work.
To be honest, I wasn’t really worried. I concluded that he’d just left his phone at the bar and so no one was able to get through to him, hence why they thought he was missing. But come the evening, he replies to my Facebook Messenger message, ‘Just been super busy.’ The conversation carries on up until the point where I’m dressed and ready to leave for the gym. He asks if I want to meet up and I tell him I’m going to the gym so can’t see him for long. He tells me he’s staying at a hotel that just happens to be a few doors down from my place and that I should meet him there.
A few minutes later, I arrive at his hotel and we go up to his room.
To cut a long story short, Kirby wasn’t himself at all. He was slightly erratic and his behaviour was so uncharacteristic I knew that he wasn’t ok mentally. He was brandishing about thick stacks of cash, going on about how he’d been gambling and winning tens of thousands and that when he told his friends they didn’t believe him and that they were telling him he was crazy and that he was acting weird. One friend even called his parents about his behaviour, who then called the police, hence the law enforcement’s involvement.
Kirby then continued on with a whole load of stories. Mostly theorising gambling games and ways to play the system, which were all secrets he couldn’t share. In fact, the reason he was in hospital the other day was because he was testing out a fire starting hypothesis in his garden and he managed to get splinters stuck in his foot. He went to remove the splinters with a knife and ended up cutting his foot right through an artery. He was losing a lot of blood, all the while frantically seeking help from his housemates, his neighbours and even strangers from the street but no one came to his help and the ambulance were taking a long time to arrive. He couldn’t find his keys either, so he was unable to drive himself to accident and emergency. He was basically in an impossible situation.
The ambulance came and he was taken to the hospital. He had made them aware that he had a knife on him but they did nothing about it. When he arrived at the hospital, he was seen to and then was moved to a waiting area. The police then arrived. He told them he had a knife on him and they asked him to give it to them. They basically wouldn’t let him take the knife off his person and end up wrestling him to the ground in front of everyone. Kirby said that that experience basically traumatised him and now he’s scared of the police.
So when his parents called the police about him, he was so mad at them because they knew how the police had treated him and yet they still called on him the one thing that he was actually afraid of. He continues telling me the story of how the police then turns up at the hotel looking for him. Apparently they’d tracked his phone and car to the hotel and so he’d decided to rent another car and buy a new phone.
At one point, I go back to my place to get changed out of my gym clothes. I’d already made up my mind to stay and keep an eye on him, so no gym for me. When I return to the hotel I tell the bar staff that I’ll be going back up to his room, that I don’t think he’s mentally ok. They agree with me, acknowledging that there’s something definitely up with him. I let them know that I’ll be back down in about 30 minutes, then I go back up to meet Kirby.
He spends most of the night talking about all sorts of things. About how if you give the perception of wealth, people treat you differently and you can get a lot of freebies and discounts. And that maybe him and I can go around pretending we’re really rich and get things from free. Especially if he’s holding thousands in cash.
I indulge in his storytelling because I’m not going to tell him he’s being weird. But all the while, I’m messaging Telis on WhatsApp, letting him know what’s going on and where I am. But I’m seriously concerned. Kirby has been spending and spending and spending. He bought five new pairs of shoes, his car is choked full with things he’s recently bought. He’s throwing away money senselessly and that’s not him at all!
I want to get him out of the room and down to the bar because I told the bar staff I’d be back down soon, so I suggest drinks at the bar and we go down. Unfortunately, the bar is closed, so there’s nothing I can do but allow him to drive us to a 24 hour supermarket to buy drinks. When we arrive, he starts acting so irresponsibly. He’s throwing items into the basket, but really they’re just hitting me. Then he’s balancing a tub of yogurt on my head and he’s throwing it about, until it falls, the container breaks and the contents splashes everywhere, including all over me. But he just doesn’t care. He took a picture of the yogurt stain so I could show Telis, then he starts making crude comments, like about how big my boobs are and how I should tell Telis the yogurt stain isn’t a yogurt stain. To be honest, he was finding himself hilarious.
We drove back to his hotel and I told him I was going back to my place. His crudeness continued, with comments about how he’d bang me. I went to leave and wouldn’t let me go without a hug. I then went back home and spoke with Telis. I told him about the evening and how Kirby wanted me to be there when his parents came. Telis said I shouldn’t go because I’d put myself in a situation where his parents would want him to get help and he’d use me as leverage to the fact that he wasn’t crazy. But if I agreed with his parents, he’d feel betrayed by me, yet if I agreed that he was fine, I’d be hurting him more than helping him. Either way, it was lose-lose situation.
I just feel like Kirby shouldn’t be alone right now. He should definitely go back to stay with his parents. He was constantly asking me for confirmation that he wasn’t crazy but really, I think he needs to be seen by someone.
He’s been through a lot. He’s suffered a lot from depression, he hasn’t liked himself as a person for a long time and he’s been feeling very lonely. He hasn’t been sleeping either, which has given him a lot of time to hypothesise and theorise and it’s just made his situation worse. When I saw him a few weeks ago, he was really irritable and bad-tempered but yesterday, he was the complete opposite. He was cheerful, he was finding everything he was saying hilarious, but not really in the way that is normal for him.
To be honest, he hasn’t been himself for a while, I think it’s the lack of sleep. He’s been losing things, constantly. At some points last night he even struggled to finish a sentence. He’d blank out completely, not knowing what he was trying to say.
I just hope he gets help. I’ll keep checking up on him so that he doesn’t disappear.
So that was my evening. I let HR know that I’d been with him and he’s safe.
Telis returns tonight! I’m so excited!! I can’t wait!
* * *
Today I realised I’d made a huge fuck up at work. The price that I had calculated a few months ago for some support services were completely wrong and they had already been sent to the customer. It turned out the prices were much lower than what they should have been, which meant that the company would barely be covering their costs. My only saving grace was that no contract had been signed so it wasn’t binding, or else my boss and I would have been in big trouble and it would have been my entire fault!
The moment I realised, I messaged Telis and explained the situation. He said I should own up to it but I was scared shitless. There was no way I was doing that. I approached the colleague I worked with in creating the pricing and he said I had to tell the boss. I really didn’t want to but I knew I had to. So I did.
He wasn’t angry. Or annoyed. He told me to rectify it and send him the correct pricing and we’d have to go through the internal procedure of approvals again. I still felt terrible and just cried at my desk. Then I got that shit done.
The only thing balancing my mood out is the fact that Telis returns tonight! I’ve just needed his presence these past few days. I’m glad his holiday is over. No more long holidays without me. He’s mine!