THE LAND.

THE IDEA

Somehow, all of that led us to land.

That is the part I keep coming back to.

Because by then, the financial picture had already completely reversed.

The person who had once talked about investing money into something I wanted to build was now somebody I was financially supporting.

And somewhere inside all of his financial problems came another idea.

Land.

According to what I was told, the client who could not pay him had left him with building components from a home he was supposed to build.

Those components needed somewhere else to go.

And somehow, that problem became an opportunity.

Purchase land.

Move the building components there.

Build something.

Turn it into an Airbnb.

Create another source of income.

An investment we could make together.

And honestly?

I understood the pitch.

There was land.

There were supposedly building components that already existed.

There was an Airbnb business we could potentially create.

I even started getting excited about what the property could become.

That was not really the problem.

The problem was whether purchasing it with him was a good idea.

Because by then, I had already learned something about the two of us:

We did not work particularly well together in business.

And yet somehow...

we were discussing another investment together.

THE BANK

Not long after we discussed purchasing the land, he wanted me to go to the bank and make the initial payment toward the purchase.

The land itself was approximately $40,000 USD.

For me, that was a lot of money.

I had never purchased land before.

I had never made an investment like this before.

And the truth was:

I wasn't ready.

I was still unsure about the entire thing.

He kept reassuring me by redirecting my attention toward what we could build there.

The Airbnb business.

What the property could become.

What it could look like.

And it worked, at least in the sense that I became excited about the possibilities.

I started researching the business.

Imagining the property.

Thinking about what we could create.

What I wasn't spending nearly enough time thinking about was whether purchasing approximately $40,000 USD worth of land with him was actually a good idea.

Because there were already reasons to question it.

By then, he had shown me several times that we did not work well together in business.

Discussions could become arguments very quickly when we disagreed.

Even conversations about how we would split this new business had already involved yelling and conflict.

I had seen this before.

Still, we went to the bank.

I remember standing there, still skeptical, still wondering whether I should actually make the payment.

When I reached the teller, I explained what the transaction was for.

She brought over her manager.

They explained that because of the nature of the transaction, I needed to provide documentation relating to the purchase.

The land.

The purchase agreement.

The other necessary information.

Without it, they couldn't process the transaction.

So I couldn't make the payment that day.

And secretly...

I was relieved.

The bank had just given me something I felt like I desperately needed:

MORE TIME TO THINK.

He was not relieved.

When I told him what happened, he became extremely upset.

He started talking about people waiting on him.

His word meant everything.

I had promised him I would do this.

And now, according to him, I was making him look bad by not getting it done.

I tried to explain that this wasn't my decision.

The teller had told me.

Her manager had told me.

The bank would not process the transaction without the required documentation.

He refused to believe me.

He accused me of lying.

I remember him pacing back and forth while I tried to explain something that should never have required an argument in the first place.

I even told him to go to the bank and ask them himself.

His reaction shocked me.

More importantly, it made the hesitation I already had much stronger.

I remember thinking:

Maybe I shouldn't do this at all.

Eventually, he left, and I took the kids home.

But the argument didn't end there.

For the rest of the day, I found myself in the absurd position of trying to convince another adult that a bank teller and her manager had, in fact, told me exactly what I said they had told me.

And somewhere inside all of that stress was the question I actually needed time to answer:

DO I EVEN WANT TO DO THIS?

That question barely had room to exist.

I can't remember whether we returned to the bank later that day or the following day.

What I remember is feeling so stressed by that point that instead of having the time to properly reconsider the purchase, I was preparing to go back and complete it.

We printed the necessary documents and returned to the bank together.

This time, the teller explained the procedure to him herself.

Exactly as I had described it.

I remember watching his reaction.

He almost seemed shocked that I'd been telling the truth.

Later, back at home, he walked around the room as though he were having some kind of revelation.

He said that, for the first time, he had been “humbled.”

Apparently, the realization that I had accurately repeated what two bank employees told me was a humbling experience.

At the time, I remember thinking something along the lines of:

Aww. This is cute.

Looking back?

No, sweetie.

It was not cute.

The part that stays with me isn't that the bank needed additional paperwork.

That was ordinary.

It was everything surrounding it.

I was considering a $40,000 USD land purchase that I still wasn't sure I wanted to make.

The bank unexpectedly gave me additional time to think.

I felt relieved.

And instead of using that time to seriously consider whether this was a sound investment, whether we could actually function as business partners, or whether I truly wanted to proceed, I spent it dealing with his anger.

Defending myself against an accusation that I was lying.

Trying to prove that something completely outside of my control had actually happened.

By the time we returned to the bank, the question in my head had changed.

It was no longer:

Should I do this?

It had become:

HOW DO I GET THIS DONE SO THIS STOPS?

Looking back, that difference matters to me enormously.

I LEFT

My hesitation didn't disappear.

If anything, it got worse.

I knew I'd never invested an amount like this before.

I knew the relationship itself had already become unstable.

I knew we didn't work particularly well together when money or business entered the conversation.

And somewhere inside me, I knew this wasn't a smart decision.

Eventually, I left.

I didn't make the investment.

I stayed with my cousin.

And at that point, he told me I couldn't come back to the house.

So now I was outside the home I'd just moved myself and my son into, trying to figure out what I was supposed to do next.

Some of my belongings had already been moved.

Others were still there.

I was actively trying to figure out somewhere else to stay.

And instead of getting space to think, the pressure around the land continued.

Texts.

How stupid I was for not making the investment.

People he had apparently told he would be able to pay.

His word.

His reputation.

The commitments he'd made.

I remember feeling like I wasn't being given a break long enough to actually think about what I wanted to do.

That matters.

Because this was not a small purchase for me.

This wasn't money I could casually lose and shrug off.

I had never invested this much into anything.

And I already knew in my gut that it wasn't a smart move.

At some point, I remember thinking:

This isn't even about the relationship anymore.

Because somebody who cared about me would've been capable of recognizing that I was scared.

That I needed time.

That this was my money.

Instead, the land seemed to matter more than anything else.

And eventually, after enough stress, my thinking changed again.

It became something closer to:

Fine.

I'll do it.

Not because all of my questions had disappeared.

Not because I'd suddenly decided this was a brilliant investment.

I wanted the pressure to stop.

And ultimately...

he got what he wanted.

THE LAND

I became the owner of the land.

And that's where the story becomes even stranger to me in hindsight.

Because remember what the land was supposedly for.

There was going to be an Airbnb.

There was going to be something built there.

An investment.

Income.

A future project.

Except the building never happened.

The Airbnb never happened.

And I am still the owner of the land.

Under our agreement, he was supposed to buy the land back from me.

He hasn't.

I haven't received the money I was supposed to receive under that agreement.

And the property isn't exactly something I can easily dispose of and forget about.

Which leaves me with a question that became much bigger only after everything was over:

WHAT DID THE LAND ACTUALLY MEAN TO HIM?

There are things I eventually learned that changed the way I looked at the entire purchase.

What I was told the land was for never became what I was told it would be.

And what I was told would happen didn't happen.

The Airbnb was never built.

The buyback never happened.

I still own the land.

And eventually, I came across things that made me look at all of it differently.

But before I could understand any of that, I had to understand something else first.

Him.