Wax Packs

Huey started a business as a life coach.  I have a few things to say about that.​

So, apparently Huey has decided I'm not friend-worthy.  How did I discover this?  I went to block him from seeing my FB post that reads: "That moment when your ex, who probably still owes you thousands, becomes a Life Coach and is doing a paid presentation at the Sizzler to show people how to go to college without accruing debt." When trying the custom settings, his name wouldn't pull up. 

You know, right, that this meant a trip to his page?  

Turns out Huey has been busy developing his life coaching business, including putting up a couple of Periscope videos about reaching your goals and becoming wealthy.  His website is sorely lacking in information about his credentials (he claims to be a certified financial counselor).  He's holding a paid presentation ($25/person) at the Sizzler on Sunday in Jonesboro.

No, I am not making that up.  

The topic?  "The Truth about Careers and College."  Apparently, he's going to talk about how to get a degree without incurring a lot of debt. 

I might not be skeptical if the following were not true statements:

• In the early 1990s,  I bounced some checks for something as insignificant as bills because Huey bought a sealed box of wax packs that "might" have Scottie Pippen's Rookie card in there. How could I doubt his investment sense when you can buy those today on Ebay for $9.99?
• Huey had a pattern of trading in cars upside down on the payments. At some point he started leasing. He also had a pattern of breaking leases and moving a lot.
  
• One of the last contacts I had with Huey was when I was in Palm Springs on vacation years after the divorce was final. He called me to ask me about the "joint credit card."  We didn't have one. He'd opened an account using my SSN.  That was fun to clear up (but relatively easy, given I had financial paperwork and divorce papers to send to Capital One).
  
• ​Prior to that fun phone call, I had bounced checks yet again because Huey convinced a teller in Mississippi to cash a forged money order on my account.  It still had his name on it because he was depositing money into it (see financial mention above).  
  
• Back in 2004, he left me a stack of checks post-dated to take care of payments to said account based on our financial agreement in the divorce.  Within a week he called me to tell me I could not deposit any of them as he no longer had a checking account.
  
• I had to close all accounts he ever had access to at one point because he'd go to Sears--without his Sears card and convince them to let him put things on account.  In the call about the checks, for instance, he also confessed that he'd charged a refrigerator and a futon for his new place.  He did pay for those (it took him awhile, if I remember correctly).
  

I am honestly not angry about any of this; I do find the whole thing pretty sad (and incredibly amusing).  

The real reason Huey doesn't have a lot of student loan debt? Because I was the one taking out student loans while I was working on my doctorate.  And I'm the one still paying those loans.

Yep, some of the schooling that money paid for was a month of wrasslin' school somewhere in Florida.  But, hey, I got the house to myself that month and when he came back he'd been reading Nietzsche and all about the concept of the Superman. He had a new Type-O-Negative tattoo and was convinced he'd hit some new level of evolution.

This led to him taking a student-teacher he worked with to the bar where everyone in the English department hung out.  You know, the one he started sleeping with.  That story is coming up in an entry devoted to Christmas shopping.

One of his posted videos is his "testimony."  Yes, his father never claimed him and disappeared from his life when he was an infant.  He blames his biological father while he also completely lets his mom (who literally had to be confronted about the identity of his father when Huey was in his 20s) off the hook. I was there for the confrontation, as well as for the meeting with his biological father. Both parents agreed that it was his mother who decided there would be no relationship.  "You were just always mine," she said.

He also mentions in that testimony having gone through a 12 step program through Celebrate Recovery, a Christ-centered rehab.  "Not for alcohol or drugs or anything like that."  Amends are part of that process, yet I've never heard a single "I'm sorry." 

The testimony is the same "people hurt me and I lashed out." It's all "this happened to me." There's no clear "I behaved badly."  In the end, he proclaims himself an "expert" who can help other people battle their own demons.

Do I need that apology?  No.  Do I want an apology? Not really.

But the absence of an apology indicates to me that he was as honest and authentic in his rehab as he was in counseling sessions we attended as a couple.

​The best amends he could make to the entire universe (mainly to himself and the people currently involved in his life)  is to stop pretending.