The Fourteen Years War - 2003 - Volume II

You’ll notice, that around the end of the year, AZ and I tend to end up together in some fashion. We’re speaking or seeing each other. There’s no easy explanation for this. I know why, but I don’t know why. I understand, but I don’t understand. See, AZ’s father died suddenly within a few days after AZ’s birthday. His dad was only 52 or 53 years old. AZ begins his spiral downward around Thanksgiving and doesn’t come up for air until around the New Year’s. Same pattern, year after year. We do talk to each other more around this time. Yes, we normally see each other too. Nothing different this year. AZ comes by the house to pick up some baked goodies and we have, “a moment.” After which, he’s sitting on my couch with this look of utter. . . despair. I can pretty much remember what he said but that’s very personal to him. The nutshell version is depression. Heaping dark clouds of doom. I talked to him about many things, many personal things, things from his past, things I never, ever had a clue about. There are a lot of things over the years, especially since the winter of 2003 that we’ve talked about that I can’t write about. Not here anyway. Those things shouldn’t be shared. Just imagine you’ve told someone some of your deepest, darkest secrets. Things you had never told another human being in your life. Imagine cutting your soul open and letting someone look inside. Imagine yourself as vulnerable as you can make yourself. That’s what the conversation was like. It answered a lot of unspoken questions, things I had wondered about, and personality quirks he had. So, now I understood better. . . but why did he tell me? Why is it me he turns to? And why is it me he walks away from? Because he did and he does. You might think after such a heart to heart, after such demons are bared, that we might have moved forward, maybe even towards being together as a couple, as opposed to “just friends with some benefits.” No. He walked away and basically shut down. Regardless, I tried as best I could to encourage him to seek help. I just tried to listen and talk to him, talk him through, talk him down. I wouldn’t say he ignored me, but he suddenly became very busy, and I wrote him a long letter and still encouraged him. Honestly, it frustrated me that at one moment we could be so close and the next, he’s hiding under that Scorpio moon, basically dodging me. That irritated me. It irritated me enough to ask him for Lex’s number, which he conveniently couldn’t find. I asked him three times over the course of three weeks. The geeks worked together! Don’t tell me he didn’t have Lex’s number! I was very frustrated. It was that same bullshit. AZ didn’t want me, was pushing me away, seeing someone else, but would not give me a simple damn phone number. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. . . But when has that ever stopped me?