No Good Deed Goes Unpunished.

Unless you set these important boundaries.

Photo by Matt Collamer on Unsplash

“No good deed goes unpunished” is something I learned the hard way when I agreed to let a former meth addict stay at my house for what was supposed to be a “little bit.”

She showed up on my doorstep out of the blue after being dropped off by her ex-sister-in-law, who happened to be a friend of mine.

My friend Missy didn’t come to the door when she dropped Amber off. She didn’t even look our way or wave as she sped away. I could tell she was pissed.

Missy had allowed her ex-sister-in-law Amber to stay with her while she, Amber, was trying to kidnap her kids back from her ex-husband, Missy’s brother, Ray.

Ray had unexpectedly moved across the country, back to our small town in upstate New York from northern Oregon. The thing is, he brought their four young daughters with him without telling Amber. Or Missy.

Ray wasn’t the most upstanding individual. He had some mental instability, run-ins with the law in Oregon, and was an alcoholic. Amber had her own substance abuse issues, I would later learn.

While Amber was at work one day at Dollar General, where she was a manager, Ray packed the girls into his 1974 Chevy, left Oregon, and drove home to New York. He moved them into a trailer hidden in the foothills of the Adirondacks, a property left to him and Missy when their father died.

Amber saved enough money to get a bus ticket to Missy’s, with the intention of trying to “get the girls back” from Ray.

It was all very Springerville and something I didn’t need to get involved in. Especially since I was, again, trying to quit drinking and didn’t need the drama.

But there Amber stood in the pouring rain with a backpack and nothing else.

I let her in and asked her what happened. It turns out Missy overheard Amber making sexual innuendos to her husband and her husband reciprocating, and that was it. She was out!

When Missy kicked her out, Amber asked to be dropped off at my house even though I had only met her once — prior to my new attempt at sobriety.