So I should give some history and background on the situation I find myself in. I currently live in a state (going on 16 years now) that is in a vicious cycle of poverty, with few opportunities (Walmart is our number 1 employer), most young people after high school get the hell out, and the old rule over the young (I live in a major retirement town where the elderly are the majority, so the culture and way of life is geared towards them, and real civilization of any kind is 110 miles up north). 5 or 6 years ago I met a friend at a job that reminded me of my younger self. For the sake of naming this guy, let's call him "Jacob". Now Jacob was shy and socially awkward due to his heavy religious upbringing, while I was an atheist at the time. After some time working together, we decided to have philosophical debates and conversations for fun that was very civil. We also bonded over similar interests and shared knowledge on things we knew about in different areas. One of these shared interests was hoping one day to go to another country to visit, and at the time he just so happened to be studying the language of that said country. Now Jacob's ambitions at the time were religious in nature, and he had hoped to pick up a romantic partner in his travels. Now I will give full transparency here, I am a bit of a planner when it comes to the future. I like to plan years in advance for certain objectives and I also plan out strategies and tactics to achieve those said goals. Now I understand if you see what I am about to reveal to you as sinister or manipulative, but I was hoping to reconnect with him further down the line to get a free tour guide with knowledge of the area and culture to show me around the country. My logic was he was naturally going to be there, so why not travel there in the future when he is there, and it would be with a friend. Of course, Jacob lived up north in a different state by 40 miles and he came down just for the job. Naturally, he had to leave eventually and I wished him the best of luck.
After a year, I meet up with him again and we kick off with online social media and got introduced to Discord. Now Jacob was changing a bit from a socially awkward religious guy, into someone more assertive and social with people he was comfortable with. A lot of this is due to the fact that he moved out of his parent's roof and decided to live by himself. We reconnect again and I decide to change my plans to stay in contact with him and maybe even help him achieve his goals. However, Jacob was changing as a person and going through a crisis of faith. Now, this is where it gets very complicated. Turns out that the religious household was actually a part of a commune that was controlled by one guy, and Jacob and his family lived under this religious commune's rule for most of his developing life. That's right, his family was a part of a cult. This cult believed anything that was associated with the Western world that didn't have a Christain lens or wasn't part of the big band wave was a by-product of evil. Now there is nothing wrong with religion, but he was unhappy with the circumstances he found himself in and he was already having a crisis of faith. So I talked to him philosophically about my views on life and where religion placed in the world, along with what I thought was a rational existence in this existential world. Now I will admit that my views had a bit of a nihilistic lens to it, but it was what redditors and YouTubers would call "Optimistic Nihilism" or becoming a "bloomer". The problem with this approach is that Jacob was more emotional as a person than rational, so the issue of "oh shit, there is no objective moral authority in the world and when I die that's the end of my existence period" was a constant shock for him. Maybe in hindsight, this was a bad idea to introduce to him. You see at the time, his cult and family were alienating him and spreading awful rumors due to him questioning the cult and its beliefs, combined all of this with his existentialism and natural depression it made for a powder keg for an explosive reaction. I thought my views would help him rationally find himself in life, and help guide him to finding a way to stand up on his own two feet and becoming his own person when I wasn't present to be a good friend during his darkest hours. Instead what happened is he came to the conclusion that he needed to move.
In 2019, he had enough of the small town he was in and decided to move to Austin, Texas. This put me in a sour mood. You see at the time, I was in college and I thought the only way to get out of my current state and survive was to have a college degree and a job lined up that didn't pay minimum wage. This was founded on the idea that the modern world was becoming more computerized, wages were stagnating, and I would just be back at square one of the poverty trap if I didn't have a college degree. I was scared that Jacob would be dooming his fate to a life of constant poverty, where he would need 2 jobs just to survive and he would not amount to much. What pressed this anxiety even further is that I found out he paid for his most recent college semester with a student loan, and at that point, the warning signs were going off in my head. Not only would I miss out on Jacob who was becoming my closest friend, but he was also diving headlong into a DEAD END. I had an opportunity to help him move, and I decided that I would jump on the opportunity to help him but also try and talk him out of moving. I threw everything I had at Jacob intellectually to talk him out of leaving. The goal was to try and talk him into staying there until he had at least gotten his college degree. But Jacob had enough of the small-town existence and it was a do or die situation, and he would have gladly accepted death if that was the case. For two weeks we argued. At first, it was civil, but as the deadline approached it got more and more uncivil. Eventually, I was always in a bad mood around him, and I resorted to mockery and sarcasm to make up for my desperation and I guess you could say "shock" that my friend was just leaving me. The final week was the worst of it; I was getting fed up with it. I told him that if he was just going to get trapped by poverty and if he would gladly accept death if he failed; then he was delaying the inevitable and he should just do us all a favor and get the pain and suffering over with. Yeah, it was a really fucked up thing to say, I reacted emotionally, I said it late at night when I was sleep deprived, angry, and extremely frustrated. I have apologized multiple times for my outburst along with the way I acted that week. During his last day there, I decided to be as helpful as possible and to change my stance from trying to change his mind to giving him the best advice I could. I advised him to cut off all connections to his toxic family and cult and to make new relationships while keeping the healthy old ones. We said our goodbyes and he left. And sadly, I think that is the last time I would ever see my old friend again, metaphorically speaking.
2020 to modern-day, Jacob arrives in Austin Texas. We still talk over discord and we have mended sore wounds from those two weeks. As 2020 roared on, Jacob manages to get a job as a night security officer and he starts making big money. Now as for me, I tried to finish college and maintain a job, but both ventures fell through, with me kind of becoming a NEET. But 2020 was also the year of the pandemic, and I figured it wasn't wise to try and get a job while the virus ravaged the world. My friend Jacob hyped this job as a daydreamer's wet dream, all he had to do was walk around, write reports, and observe. To me, who has severe ADHD with constant daydreaming, this sounded like a dream come true. Most jobs in my area were either manufacturing or retail that demanded a clear vessel mind that focused on tasks at hand with hardly any room for imagination or idle daydreaming (my daydreaming does serve a purpose. I am world-building and writing characters in my head that I hope to publish one day and it be well received. When I am not building and fleshing out the economics, politics, characters, themes, arcs, scenarios, philosophical ideas, planned stages of development, schemes, and plots of my fantasy world; I am debating issues in my head, forming plans while weighting all the scenarios, and thinking). I talked with Jacob about becoming a roommate with him, since at the time he was living with his grandparents in Austin Texas, and wanted to move out. Now I won't lie, I was really hoping to get the same job as him at the same company. At the time, I came to the conclusion that the area in which I lived, no matter what plan I made to try and get out of here, it was doomed to fail due to all of the poverty and businesses in the area not caring about education. I also had other plans in mind once I moved in with him, which I discussed in great length with Jacob. We were planning on going on vacations to foreign countries, improving our lives by working out, meeting new people, and helping him find a career he would enjoy ( he was debating on going into acting at the time, and I wanted to get back to college again but with a fresh start). We even signed a document with a witness with roommate agreements with full thought-out financial plans and how we would each cover the costs. The only flaw with this plan was I did not have the resources at the time to move down there, but I promised I would (and I had a history of always keeping to my promises.).
2021 rolls around, and I have yet to find a job. Jacob starts making his own play on things that deeply compromise our plan. At first he dedicates his finances to buying himself a car, BUT WITH AN AUTO LOAN WHEN HE HAS YET TO PAY OFF HIS STUDENT LOANS! I tried to talk him into relying on public transportation and using the truck he was using at the time. But he just says "okay sure", and makes the auto loan anyways! Then this dude starts weighing his options to join the military, which puts our roommate agreement at risk. We have countless arguments about it, and he tries to act like he is beyond reproach on this and I am the one who is wrong apparently. I point to the roommate's agreement, and his reaction is bewilderment and surprise. He thinks he is surrendering his complete autonomy over to me, for me to control him as some kind of weird power trip. Once again, I throw everything I have intellectually at him, and when that doesn't do it I resort to mockery and sarcasm. Thankfully, he decides to abandon the military idea. But he decides he wants to move with a new roommate that was his coworker at the time. Now this coworker is former military, but he is a special kind of former military. Apparently, he was part of the Army that was akin to PsyOps. they would use diplomacy and subterfuge by playing upon human psychology and sociology in the field to collect intel in order to accomplish military objectives. Basically, this dude was a spy but not for a CIA. If you haven't noticed it yet, there is a contradiction here. Jacob has left a cult for how controlling they are, he won't align with me because he thinks I am trying control him, and so he decides to try and become roommates with a former spy who knows and has perfected the art of manipulation through the US military. At this point, I start issuing ultimatums about how he is violating a contract we signed. Now I know this is obviously controlling and might be playing into his biases, but I felt cornered and thought Jacob was my only way out of this horrible state I live in. Jacob of course moves into the spy's apart as a roommate. And I decided to drop the case in order to maintain our friendship.
I felt betrayed, and like an idiot for relying on a human being like Jacob. It was so odd because the Jacob I knew would never ever do anything like this. It's almost like the moment I talked him into becoming an atheist, he abandoned all of his Christain principles and any moral principles or sense of commitment. This shouldn't be possible, he is usually self-conscious, rational, and moral enough about these kinds of things to see the value of being a man of his word. Even as an atheist myself, I did my best to set an example of how an atheist should act despite not having to answer to some kind of higher authority. Now in 2022, Jacob is a completely different person it seems for both good and bad. While he has become more confident and is doing well for himself (seemingly no longer suffering depression), he no longer holds himself to commitments and doesn't always take my word seriously. Sometimes it feels like I am talking to a completely different person than the one I used to know; same body but the mind and personality is drastically different. Is all of this just my teachings coming back to bite me; am I Doctor Frankenstein paying for a monster I have created? Am I just coming across as too power-hungry? Is Jacob seeing himself as some kind of next stage of evolution, with him talking about "being a man of action instead of a man of thought" while I am left behind trapped inside my own head? I guess what I am asking here is, what should I do? I want to keep what feels like the remains of an old friend that's dying out, but I don't think this new Jacob and I can get along. Jacob just follows his whims without a damn, while that spy is encouraging him, and I am just locked up here in this godforsaken state trying to save my money to get out. On top of that, I am experiencing a lot of negativity from this. While I am happy Jacob was able to overcome the cult that gripped his life and find success... I am envious of his success. What was supposed to be our success has to turn into just his success. And on the rare occasion when I do remind him that he betrayed me and how I have a hard time trusting him, he acts like I was asking too much from him and no rational human being would commit to such a circumstance. So Reddit, what should I do here?