God Bless Barry

Barry was born in 1981, Bournemouth; the second son of typically middle-class parents. The only oddity about his parents was their age difference; his father was 20 years older than his mother. He attended a local secondary school and was, on the surface, a normal middle-class kid, with normal social and sporting interests. Yet, by the time he left secondary school, he had become a loner, and would frequently escape into fantasy rather than deal with the setbacks of the real world and had already been living in a fantasy world for some years before I met him at university, where we became loose friends.

Meeting Barry

I instantly recognised a fellow restless soul, and we soon indulged one another’s fantasies, often playing the game ‘what if we won the lottery’ as we walked to class or skipped classes together, or even double-dated together. Barry believed he was destined to become a famous rapper or just famous, while I harboured grandiose delusions of becoming a famous academic, called on to attend talk shows and spread my great knowledge of mankind amongst the masses. To those of us who knew him, Barry did seem destined to be a rapper and could rap, which impressed us, but it was a poor carbon-copy of what we listened to at the time, so didn’t make the splash of originality that he dreamt of. We finished university in the same year and went into the big wide world – with our social science degrees – to low paid sales jobs.

Knowing Barry

As a natural introvert, Barry struggled making new friends and was consistently at odds with most people he had to work with, except at the gym, where he was respected as a part-time trainer who would offer good advice to many who were serious about building their muscles. I noticed as I became a moderate success in sales (finding my calling, professionally) and becoming good at rejection, Barry found it difficult to hold down any job at all, falling out with his line-manager being the usual cause. He would call me to chat while I was at work, or with other friends, who began to see Barry as weird and unapproachable. But to me, this appeared to more a measure of success for Barry, as he seemed to make money one way or the other, while I seemed to be rooted in the world of the wage-slave. Barry planned on being a millionaire by the age of thirty, and I would often remark that he was a true hustler in life and his own boss. I didn’t know that he was still living off his parent’s savings and that they also still paid for his rent, but I was impressed at his ability to stay out of the rat-race and remain his own man.

While I became increasingly gregarious and outgoing, we both struggled to make long-term personal relations, so we kept in touch, often joking about being old Batchelors together. Yet Barry was becoming increasingly difficult to communicate with; quick to get angry, argue over minor points and seemed easily irritated by events outside his control. Somehow, he found the money to go on holidays, often to Africa and the far east, where he used his money to live like a king and slept with many women. I didn’t know they were prostitutes but believed that Barry had a great pick-up capability he seemed to lack around me. He increasingly showed an over-reliance on instinctive thinking, but again this just seemed a bi-product of a successful entrepreneur and when Barry started selling contraband drugs to weight-lifters in the gym, this seemed to enhance my view and envy.  

Barry also looked after himself; training hard in the gym, never drinking, smoking, but taking regular cycles of steroids to keep himself looking jacked. The downside of this was the increasingly erratic temper, up and down, and quick to argue if he felt slighted or offended in any small measure. Barry kept his cool with me, as he once admitted he thought I could beat him up, which was a good example of the superficial outlook on life and lack of based principles Barry had, revealing what a fractured character he was becoming.

As time went by, Barry turned 30 without becoming the millionaire he had planned on being, I seemed to be one of the few people Barry still called a friend; finding something badly at fault with most people he knew and cutting them out of his life without mercy. I progressively found it irksome to talk to Barry without us slipping into the same conversations about what he would do with a lot more money and conversations he might have with people he wished to impress with that money. These conversations were bordering on the complete fantastical and got incrementally tedious to endure as I began to see how he was failing to grow with the indifferent world around him. He started talking about what if and if only this or that had happened at the right age, he would be a greater success. I would respond with positive feedback about how good his life was; earning a decent income without tax, while the rest of us struggled on taxed incomes. Yet Barry only saw what he didn’t have rather than what he did, and I was not aware that the life he lived was based on money his dying parents were giving and then left in their will.

I’m not sure exactly when, but about ten years ago now, I stopped calling Barry and just left it to him to call me. Barry seemed to identify more with his sense of self and the superficial world, while I was starting my spiritual journey. I was making successful changes in my life, but also aware that he was a toxic influence for me.

Grappling with responsibility

Then, several years ago now, Barry called up and declared, with great delight, that he was getting married. He boasted about how he had stolen her form another man, who was stupid enough to let her date other men. She also came with two kids. He seemed to take this in his stride and even I, who had no children, could see how rash this decision might be, both for him, his fiancée and the kids.  

A year later, I was asked to attend the elaborately expensive wedding. I offered to help set it up with the other workers they were employing, and I arrived two days earlier and enjoyed a nice holiday myself, rented a small cottage for the week in the local town and used the opportunity to start my meditation practice. On the night before the wedding, they had a massive argument and for some hours that evening they were not talking to each other. It took great persuasion and good will to ensure they got back together, and the wedding went ahead. A friend even mentioned, “If we are doing this before the wedding, how long can it last?” Yet we did get through the wedding and ran off in all our many directions. In the wake of the wedding, they began a vacuous, and unhappy marriage. There were constant arguments, passive aggressive behaviour, fighting, break-ups and two more children added to the brood, yet Barry would occasionally say how lucky he was to have his wife in his life. In the meantime, we grew further apart, and I met up with him less, as our lives went in different directions.

Transitioning

About two years back, Barry called me out of the blue, seeming more paranoid and frustrated then ever; untrusting of his wife, sure he was being targeted by a rival steroid pusher, and much quicker to become offended. As a measure of his paranoia, he attributed a singular incident to a gang that were out to kill him. He and his wife were walking down some steps when someone pushed by him; causing him to fall and his wife, pregnant at the time, to fall. He was sure they had followed him and were trying to scare him off his patch. Every detrimental act that befell him, was twisted in his mind and became a calculated attack on him personally. So, the train that left early at his stop, did so because they knew him and wanted to make him late. He also revealed that he had lashed out at his children, which was hard to listen to as it showed me just how little Barry had developed emotionally. I felt sorry for his children and tried to remind him that the way he treats them will affect how they treat him as adults.

 

More concerningly, Barry announced that, after some years of confusion with his sexuality, he wanted to become a transsexual. I wasn’t comfortable, believing there were only two genders, but found explaining this to Barry difficult, as he would use the mainstream media to back up his notions rather than look at the emotional issues he had yet to resolve. On one occasion, I tried to explain that the mainstream media, and one of the fundamental reasons I don’t watch it, keeps relevant by playing sexual & identity politics and gaining the anger, support, and participation of as many as they can still reach, as their views slowly dwindle. This angered Barry, “Why can’t you just support me?” he barked.  But supporting Barry was telling him the truth, even if he could not see it.

 

I was often torn between a desire to try and help, and fear of upsetting Barry, so I made excuses for not talking to him and it had been several months since we last spoke. That last occasion, having just started a new job, I was delighted to explain about the job and how well it was going, when Barry interrupted me; “Stop! I can’t handle listening to all that happy stuff right now!” Barry made several inferences towards a desire to end his life, to me and many others, yet these became so common, that they lost the effect they once had on the listener. And three weeks ago, his wife contacted me to tell me he was dead.

The funeral

 

The well-attended event was sombre. Barry’s best friend over many years, gave an emotional eulogy and I gave a tear-jerking recital of a couple of poems. Attendees exchanged stories about Barry, with an undertone of how harsh he was with himself yet avoiding mentioning how he died. Comforting his wife, I could see that he was ready to die some months before he did. Was it an accident? was it deliberate? The police found a suicide note, but it may have been written some time earlier and just left in the car.  Many attending, like me, did so out of a confused sense of guilt and obligation. Could I have said more? Should I have said less? Perhaps I should have tried to get him more help. Maybe I should have argued with him less because it didn’t help. And like many attending, I had become estranged to him and his increasingly dark view of the world.

Yet we all came together to mourn, recollect and re-learn a lesson, we’d forgotten; life is precious and must be lived.  

 

God Bless Barry