I wasn't going to post anything about this, but I can't sleep, and it's really hard to think about anything else. So here goes.
Nik was and is and probably always will be the best friend I've ever had. He was just that one person I could trust unconditionally with my life. I shared just about everything with him, and as far as I know, he shared his life with me.
Years ago, I was the first person he came to after he was raped. And I mean the very first. We were both young, and he was terrified, and I was terrified, and it was awful. I don't think I'll ever forget crying with him on my front porch, or sneaking him into my house so he could scrub himself clean for three hours.
Not quite a year later, he told me he was HIV-positive. He hadn't been with anyone at all. I knew what hatred was then, because for the only time in my life, I hated someone. I hated what he had done to Nik.
It's hard to describe how much I hated this man. It's even hard to fully say why. My relationship with Nik was complicated. We were more than friends, but we weren't together in any romantic sense. We were what we were; there are no words for it. In a very real sense, he was my first love. Regardless of what anyone says, that was-- is-- what he meant to me. I was in love with him without being in love with him. He wasn't my world, but he was the sunshine in it.
After the test had come back HIV-positive, Nik moved with his family to New Zealand. I think he had relatives there, although I'm still not sure. When we did talk, which was rare, we tried not to talk about anything serious. We were still closer-than-friends, and we'd determined that we always would be, but the separation made that impossible. Meanwhile, I moved about 2000 miles and was dealing with a life of my own. We sort of began to fall out.
A few years passed during which we had sporadic, meaningless conversations, and then he phoned me to tell me possibly the first serious thing since the move: he'd met someone. I had mixed emotions. I was thrilled to hear him sound so excited and happy and hopeful, and I was a little concerned because I couldn't be there to interrogate the man for him, but mostly, I was disappointed in myself because I hadn't been able to get that reaction out of him ever since the incident. Nonetheless, after I spoke with Chris, I loved him, too. Things were looking up.
Then he began getting sick. I kept in close contact with Chris and Nik's parents. He went in and out of the hospital numerous times, and every time, he got better. He was just that sort of person. We sometimes joked when he was healthy that he wouldn't ever let anything get him down, incurable illness be damned.
He died.
I met with Chris, who had told me the news. He said he came on his way up to Indiana, where Nik and I had met, because he knew how much Nik and I meant to each other. He thanked me for everything, and I thanked him, and we spent the night mourning together. Although I haven't seen him since and I probably never will, I'll always be grateful to him for making Nik's last few years here happier.
Even so, I can't help but feel angry, but I don't know whom I'm angry with. Everyone, I suppose. I'm angry with everyone. I'm angry with the man who raped Nik. I'm angry with Nik's parents for not keeping him inside that night. I'm angry with Chris for being too late.
But more than that, more than anyone else, I'm angry with myself. I feel like I let him down somehow, like I wasn't there for him like I should have been. I feel like maybe I should have probed deeper, should have forced the serious conversations, because maybe if I could figure out how to make him just that much happier, maybe he wouldn't die. I'm angry because he's gone, and I didn't tell him I love him, because I was so damn sure he'd get better. I'm angry because it kills me to write about him in the past tense, because I know he's still here. He has to be.
If he's gone, the sunshine's gone. I don't want to live in eternal darkness.
