When It Don't Come Easy

Announcement: I am god-damn tired of all this slippage, all these moments of almost-gone. Once, before he disappeared Derek and I were talking about his frustrations surrounding the HIV positive community - a community he never felt quite comfortable with. Sometimes, you know, I'm just tired of all these damn gays with the HIV. He pronounced HIV like "Live," but without the L. I must have laughed, said something about being tired of all these damn drunks.

So Derek's gone now, not dead, I don't think, just done. I wrote "done" meaning "gone," but I'll keep it -- why not? "Done" is a lie though.

This month - we got word from D's family -facts- about just how crazy it seemed he's gone; my brother struggled harder, raged around, dropped out of college; J (at 27) had heart attack, a collapsed lung; R relapsed again. Again, but this time I wasn't there, this time it was two hospital trips.

All this distance, all these times I would've sat in hospitals, by beds, held the hand of someone barely there, or there, and scared. Maybe it's something in me that wants to be needed, and hearing all of this - these people I love fallen to pieces, and slow healing... you know, maybe it's that they don't need me, not like I thought they might have. Better this immersion than to live untouched, said Lynda Hull. But she died young.