It has been more than five months since this debacle started. Five months of toil and drain and continuous gaslighting and abuse.
A week ago, Ha-yoon received a letter from David's lawyer.
It was stuffed with legalese and jargon. She could not parse it. Once again, the guilt had returned. Had she made a mistake? Was she wrong to leave him? The letter had laid out, in no uncertain terms, how wrong she was about so many assumptions and that she would absolutely not be getting anything close to what she had asked for (which was already far less than what she deserved).
Her mother read the letter as well. Since she was equally confused, she resorted to anger and shouting inside the house. Perhaps it was her attempt to show solidarity with Ha-yoon, but it only made things worse.
Ha-yoon cried for two days before we met up. I think, in her distress, she was unable to tell me what the letter was truly about. I knew she had sought advice from the Citizens Advice Bureau and assumed this was one of their responses.
Then I read the letter. I made it to bullet point one before I stopped.
"Oh," I said.
"See!" she shouted.
And I started to laugh.
"This is a bully letter," I told her.
There were nine separate points listed in that letter; each of them a lie, each of them construed by David and translated into legalese by his lawyer. The paragraphs were written to be as obtuse as possible. I can see how they might appear terrifying at first glance, but once broken down, I found it funny and to be perfectly honest:
Pathetic.
I broke each point down for her, disproved them, and showed how it was a meagre attempt to build up to a conclusion that didn't match. And I told her that if I--a non-lawyer--could see through his bullshit, then any lawyer worth their salt could argue their way out of this.
She exuded palpable relief. Then, I told her the bad news: he had hidden all his assets.
I saw, on the second page, the declaration, and I told her that this was not true. No part of it made sense. Given everything he had bragged about his finances, his shares, his bitcoin, I looked at those lines of declaration and saw nothing but lies. And it was done intentionally. It was done in-your face. Certain gifted portions were declared as loans. The trail was so obvious and clear that I could only imagine that this was shown out of spite. I knew David had gone back to his parents for a few weeks, and I had long guessed that he had stashed his money away into their trust funds.
Legal discovery will prove what he's done. But I had to explain the process to Ha-yoon (who couldn't tell what was wrong with the declaration), and also--
Well, I knew what David was doing.
He was bluffing. He was saying that he did not believe she would dare call him out, and that if she dared, he was going to crush her under legal fees in a protracted battle.
Like all of Ha-yoon's friends, I reminded her yet again that every single action he's done post-breakup has been abusive, petty, and manipulative.
David had reached out to me--after telling me that he was absolutely ending our friendship--that, "Hey, so I didn't really mean it that way" and "Could you tell Ha-yoon that I'd really like to give her some money to help her out?" He was trying to buy himself back into her good graces. He was, once again, trying to guilt trip her into being subservient, like he had done every single day of his life.
I had told Ha-yoon about this interaction, checked how she wanted me to respond, then blocked him.
If you read the original article above, understand this: that I have covered not even a quarter of his malice and ill intentions. I judged many things to be far too private and unfortunately, rather triggering given the subject matters.
Once we went over the letter from his lawyer, I told her that she could win. An easy win, actually. The letter proved nothing; on the contrary, it was damning to his own case.
I advised her to get her own lawyer and to respond on her own terms. This was a separate, perhaps more difficult, discussion. We are close friends. I am privy to the number in her bank account. That informs a decision because lawyers are not cheap.
She sought one out a few days ago. On the way back from the city, she was harassed by one of David's old co-workers.
And she stood her ground.
God, she is so incredibly strong. She's amazing and wonderful. I think, if any of you knew her, you'd be so proud.
Today, she told me that she had made a decision. She would not seek to disprove his lies. She would not take what was owed, and instead, she would settle. She felt safe and secure with the lawyer she had found, and he had told her it was an open and shut case--provided she chose not to go any further.
She doesn't want to. She's very tired.
I know this ending sounds terrible. Believe me, I understand. But you are seeing this from a third-person omniscient perspective.
And I am telling you: this is a victory. Yes, David will get away with it. His lawyer's letter, that ill-conceived in-your-face bluff, will succeed. The payout will be less than 1/10th of what Ha-yoon deserves.
I am telling you, yet again, this is a victory because she's free.
Understand Ha-yoon's perspective, her feelings, her trauma, and know that she is better now. That this is--no matter how it seems--a victory nevertheless.
This is the beating heart of it.
You must read it like this, no matter how much it hurts or how damning the injustice feels.
She is moving on.
