Truman

Truman is all heart and no head. Despite his shyness around strangers, he is sweet-natured and will do anything for anyone. In fact, his people-pleasing seems to know no bounds - to the point where he often does things completely out of character, or reckless to the point of life-endangering, just to gain the approval of others. When pressed, he will admit that he hates doing the things he does, but he knows no other way to behave. Logic, reason and common sense are not terms to be readily associated with Truman's personality.

In January, Truman moved in with Leo and I for a second time. He had lived in our spare bedroom for a few months over 2010, moving out the following January to live with his girlfriend of two weeks. A year later his relationship had quite predictably gone asunder, and the person he had been living with since - another former roommate of ours - evicted him under false pretences. Luckily for him, Leo and I had long since agreed that Truman would be the only person we would have live with us again, on account of his not being a thief, grossly unhygienic, or a violent racist.

Unfortunately, he was about to completely outdo himself with a series of catastrophic blunders.

Just after we had agreed that he could move in, he needed to speak to me on my own. There was someone, he said, that he had been in love with for quite some time - over this last relationship, and even through the end of the previous one. This was no great surprise to me, considering the speed at which he had moved out last time to be with a woman he barely knew. Still, I was curious to know the object of his affections, hoping against hope that his choice this time was a good match for him.

I was to be disappointed, of course. With great difficulty, he admitted that he had wanted to be with me since meeting me almost three years since. He knew that his confession would not change anything - I had met Truman shortly after Leo and I got together - but he wanted the relief of not having to hold in his secret anymore.

He was to be proved wrong. The changes that followed could not have been predicted by anyone, not by him and certainly not by me. I went into freefall, seeing longing stares from Truman every time Leo's back was turned, and hearing innuendoes in his conversation that might well have not been there. Playful insults that I could have laughed off had they come from Leo cut like daggers. Leo himself did not notice that anything was wrong until it was too late, when I tearfully announced that my discomfort in my own home and his indifference to the situation were forcing me to break up with him and temporarily move in with another friend of ours. Even now, Leo and Truman cannot agree which of them was most shocked at this.

Under circumstances that deserve a separate post to describe, I was forced to return only a week later and resolve the conflict that both Truman and I had both been avoiding, out of instinct. I mistook his awkwardness for being obtuse; he bristled when I pressed him for an apology for what he had put me through. The accord we reached was tense and unsatisfactory, but there was little choice available to either of us. He had nowhere else to live, and Leo would not have seen him anywhere else. Yet it was my home too, and I had a right to be there without being made to feel uncomfortable.

Still, after a few days he and I became friends again. He kept mostly to his bedroom as I did to mine (Leo's domain had been the living room for months before our split). Life became easier, even if living inside my head became increasingly difficult.

So it was a shock when Truman announced last Friday that he was moving out the next day. Leo and I were both aware that he had been visiting his ex-fiancée, a thoroughly toxic woman with severe mental health issues that she seems to be able to turn on and off at will. She and Truman have a child together, currently in foster care, as her other two children are. She is full of excuses regarding her way of life, and she is either incapable or unwilling to look after herself, yet she has no qualms about bringing innocent lives into the world  in order to destroy them.

To illustrate: Truman is HIV positive. When they first became a couple, he refused to sleep with her for fear of infecting her. She told him not to worry; she too was HIV positive. Yet when she fell pregnant with their child, it was discovered that she had not had the virus before sleeping with Truman. The child was taken into care shortly after birth for fear of further negligence.

So you can see why Leo and I were concerned for him. He still pined for his most recent ex-girlfriend, as he often told us at volume and length, so what could have possessed him to return to such an awful relationship? He could not answer this question for us, but what is clear is that his self-worth is so low that he believes he does not deserve anyone better. His ex-girlfriend moved away after their relationship ended, and Leo and I were - had been - together. His crippling need to be in a relationship with someone, his inability to live and function as an individual, the depression he suffers from and his slowly declining physical health all led in one direction - backward. The frustration she causes him and the utter lack of affection he feels for her are both secondary to his need for a partner. He is destroying himself because he cannot bear to be alone.

He left on Saturday with promises to visit the next day, but since then he has not been seen and cannot be reached. Whether out of shame or defiance, Leo and I cannot tell. It would be impossible to try and convince Truman to change his mind, simply because his mind never comes into the equation. He truly is all heart, and he wears it on his sleeve for all to take a piece and keep none for himself.