It Gets Better

He didn't want to live. When I first met him, I didn't see that. Honestly, I couldn't see much beyond myself back then.

Aching from a recent break up and bitter from being on the other side of abuse, all I saw when I first looked at him was someone beautiful and someone I could help. Since my best friend was beyond my reach, I tried to reach out to him. At that time, I thought I was only helping him heal physically while he helped me emotionally.

A few weeks before we met, he had fallen from a fire escape. I remember how casually he told me about the fall, about the damage it had done to his body. The memory still haunts me, though I'll never tell him that.

Even though I didn't know him, his words were a physical pain to me. Empathy has always been my greatest weakness. It is what made me look past the exterior, the obvious warning signs, the knowledge that I'll only regret it, and waste my time on worthless slobs that only hurt me. The same empathy that made my heartbreak for his pain had made it shatter before because of "some asshole" one too many times before.

Listening to his words, I had assumed that the lack of emotion, lack of self pity, was because of the pain medication and having to repeat the same thing several times over to different strangers. I didn't realize it was because he honestly didn't care. He was bitter about being alive.

I don't think that he wanted to die. It was more like he just wanted to stop existing. He wanted everything to fade to black and the curtains to fall. Life left him weary, and he wanted to leave it behind.

Or maybe he did want to die, but he didn't want to kill himself because he was afraid of abandoning the people that relied on him. There were plenty of people and reasons, foremost his two beautiful friends and his precious baby brother. I doubt any of them would be alive today if it wasn't for him. They were all reliant on each other in a way that always has and always will stun me.

As much as I had opened myself up to others and let them hurt me, I could never have imagined lean as fully on someone as they did to each other. In time, I have grown to trust my friends and my husband more fully, but back then, their relationships were a marvel to me, and even with all the time that I've known them, they haven't lost that untouchable quality.

Whatever his reasons were, he never ended his life and never went out of his way to invite danger. However, he didn't avoid death, brushing against it frequently as he lost himself in the brutality of reality.

As I said, I didn't see it when I first met him. I only saw the damage on the surface, and I focused on healing that. It was fun, going into his apartment and caring for him. We were strangers, so things were easier. He didn't know that I was a damn fool, and I was safe to be myself, not who I was expected to be.

We grew close because of that...and because I almost instantly fell for him. From the moment I saw him until I was on my own again, I was free from my mind. No longer was I haunted by the memories I was fleeing. Without doing a thing, he made me feel safer than I ever had before. I don't know why, even now. Maybe it was fate. Maybe we truly were fated to be...or maybe it was the damn fool in me, trying one last trick to save me.

By the time I realized how little he cared for life, he was already moving away from it. Something inside of him had changed enough for him to have some zeal for life. It may be vain of me, but at that time and now especially, I thought that I had something to do with it. Emotional support or maybe just an example of how great the brighter side of life was, but he still smiled more, though it was a soft, secret smile that only those he loved got to see. It may have been a mistake to let me see, because once I did, it was no longer infatuation. It was full blown love.

The problem was that he was as straight as an arrow, and despite the cross dressing and occasional drag, I was proudly male.

Even when I was infatuated with him, I tried to sway my heart away. Going back on a path I promised myself that I would never tread again, I got myself burnt. One of the kindest and cruelest things that anyone has ever done for me is when he let me cry on his shoulders. Berating myself and drowning in self loathing, I sought out someone that made me happy. Unfortunately, new in the city, my options were limited to him, and that only made me fall a little more.

Whether he ever took my confessions seriously or not has always been a mystery to me. He laughed them off and sarcastically returned them for so long that I assumed that he just ignored all of them.

Maybe he realized that I was serious when I never replied to Darius's declarations of love...or maybe he just thought that it was worth the risk. I find it difficult to think that it is the latter, mostly because I still struggle to believe that I am worth much. Back then, I could have honestly said that I hated myself, and if I had been only fractionally less selfish, I would have left him. I knew there is someone better out there for him.

Right now, I am more than grateful for how selfish I was. As I watch Robert with our 14 month old daughter, I realize that selfishness not only gave me a renewed purpose besides being a shallow, petty fashion-whore. It gave Robert what he needed.

Before we met, we were both on a downward spiral. Our lives began bleakly and could so very easily have ended badly. Some times, when I close my eyes, I can imagine where we could be.

Maybe I would have ended up like Akira, involved with an older man that would not respect me and kept me there with his drugs and putrid whispers of the love that had always been so lacking in my life. Maybe I would have just drifted from one city to the next, searching for a heartbeat that matched my own and always hearing my calls ring hollow. Maybe I would have died by Nathan's hands, beaten until I was finally broken.

Maybe Robert's heart would have finally given up and stopped, no prompting from the outside world strong enough to keep it going. Maybe he would have found a woman that loves him in the same way, but never have needed him as badly as I need him every day. Maybe he would have finally under the desire to give up and just taken that final step, plunging himself off the ledge into oblivion.

No matter the maybes and forgetting the possibilities, we focus on the here and now. We focus on our daughter, our restaurant, our friends, and each other. We make every day count, and I try my hardest not to look back. I try not to imagine...

Life goes on, so forget the bullshit, let go of the bad things, and love wholeheartedly. It may take forever, but things get better.

~Zackery