The sentinemtal heart that beats...

[This is part five of a long story. Read part 1, part 2, part 3 and part 4 first.]

When we last left, I agreed to let Sam come out to Arizona to live for the summer, somewhat suspecting it was a bad idea. He quit his job, packed up and moved out on Memorial Day weekend, right after I had moved in to my summer apartment. In the interest of full disclosure, I told the two guys I was living with the entire story (both are still good friends.)

Things were actually really good, though. He found a job…working as a bar back/doorman/occasional bartender in a bar nearby. I had a couple of waitress/bartender jobs that worked out pretty well. And we got along really well, too…nothing awkward or anything. It was just really good to have him back and to be able to hang out and have fun again. BFFg came out for July 4th, and we had a blast (I just remembered that she hooked up with one of my very best friends that weekend and I always meant to try and get them together again…shit, I seem to have forgotten…)

Things were still pretty good until later that month. I went out with a new guy a couple of times, and I really got the sense that Sam was kind of weird about it. He didn’t say anything, but his whole mood kind of changed. Sometime around August 1, he finally told me that he wanted to get back together and would be completely broken if I sent him back home.

I told him that I hadn’t changed my mind and that it was still a ship that had sailed and wasn’t coming back. I tried as hard as I could to leave no wiggle room…I didn’t want there to be any mixed signals. He got really mad and sulked for a couple of days and then he tried again. This time, he wanted to move there permanently, get an apartment together and work while I continued at school. Again, I told him no, and he got really pissed again.

It is sort of hard to describe what happened next. He was there for another couple of weeks, and while there were no specific instances…he never got violent or anything, and we never had a real big fight…it was really uncomfortable. He was a complete asshole…he snapped at me whenever he could and made all kinds of really nasty comments.

Originally, I had just figured that I would wait it out until it was time for him to go home and be done with it. That, however, went out the window a week before we were all moving out. I was out with a couple of friends (not any of them romantic interests) and ran into him in a bar. He was kind of belligerently drunk…oh yeah, he had started drinking again, but not much…and made a complete scene in the place.

He went on a rant about how I had ruined his life, and had totally manipulated his feelings to get him to move out here and then crushed him again and I was an evil bitch and thought I was too good for him. There were some really nasty things in there, too. He got thrown out of the bar and I followed him home (with some other people:-)) and we had it out. He called me more names and I laid into him for trying to guilt me into feeling bad for him. I was really, really mad because I thought he was trying to take advantage of my already feeling somewhat guilty over the way things went in Chicago.

I said something that I genuinely wish I hadn’t…it was really mean-spirited and not true (I’d feel bad, but he said like 12 things worse) and told him that he had to move out in the next two days. I went and stayed at The Body’s house (her family lives a couple miles from where we went to school) for three days and when I returned, he was gone. He packed everything, left me a letter and went back home. The letter was much the same…kind of incoherent, really mean-spirited and not at all pleasant.

I didn’t speak to or see Sam for nearly four years when he left Arizona. Things got bad again for him when he got home. The drinking continued, he bounced around through a couple of different living and working arrangements, and he ended up back in a substance abuse treatment program again. He even lost contact with BFFg, likely out of embarrassment. She continued to talk with his mother, so she always knew what was up (and therefore so did I.)

His mother is another point of this story. She was very much an important part of my teenage years…as I mentioned, I spent quite a bit of time at all of my friends’ houses during those years. I lived with Sam and his mom for about a week during a particularly bad time with my own mother. Since the bad summer-ending, his mother stopped returning my phone calls. She blames me, and it kills me. I understand why she does…it is her only child and she was just upset to see him spiral like he did…but that doesn’t make it any easier to lose someone you care about like that. I would have liked the chance to explain my side of things to her, but it was never a realistic option.

Anyway, there is still a little bit of this story left, but I will have to leave that for an epilogue tomorrow…this is already too long. It does get better for everyone, though, I promise:-)

[To be continued]