Well, here goes attempt number two after I spent, literally, a day getting this post just write and about three paragraphs before the end, my computer crashes. But at least it's all fresh in my head. lol

If you make it through all of this post - and it will be long - I thank you. As I write this all over again I was trying to think of ways to shorten it but I can't. Because the reason I'm here, the individual himself, is pretty complex. I can't ask you guys for advice without explaining him because what advice would work for 99% of the population just won't work with him. And he certainty can't be explained in a few words.

The basis of my concerns for why I'm here - How to reach someone who doesn't want to be reached. I mean emotionally. Which in itself, I can think of a million things to try until I turn and look at him and realise that it won't work because.... So we sit and stare and I can tell he feels horrible but seems unable to do anything about it.

He is Judas. Odd name, I know, and he gets bugged about it a lot but I absolutely love it. It's very him. You know how some people just fit their name? That's Judas. Maybe at the end you'll start to see it.

I've known Judas for about two and a half years. Loosely, we have the same small group of people we know. I'm a lot closer to his best friend Ads (Aden), via his girlfriend and Judas is something of a gypsy. He's there, then he's not for two months and one day he just walks in like he was never gone. But it has really only been the last five months that we've been able to get to know each other.

I thought, at first, that he hated me. As soon as I would say Hey or come around he'd lose his cool demeanor. He'd get quiet and almost sullen. Sometimes he'd actually just get up and walk away after a quick furtive glance and a mumbled Hi, how's it going. And I was disappointed because I had the hots for this rough-n-tough bad boy! But he'd carry on and flirt with others, but those few awkward sentences were all I got, so I let it go. I knew (thought) he was never one to bring home, so to speak.

No one knows Judas like Aden does. I would go so far, in fact, to say that Aden is probably the only person that Judas truly considers a friend. It's not a term, for him, that is applied loosely. I hope one day that I'll be able to see as much of him as Aden does. Anyhow, he comes up to me to let me know what the scoop is because he can see what Judas is doing and he knows where he's going and I'm, at the very least, a road block to the end of that path that's to be avoided. When Aden told him I was interested in him, he shook his head and said “No, she doesn’t need someone like me.”

And he tells me that Judas does, indeed it seems quite a lot, like me. His behaviour all seemed a bit backward to me but it is what some people do, he just takes it a little further then most because in an order to not offend me in anyway or making himself seem stupider then he thinks he already is, he doesn't speak. How bad and how fast his anxiety shoots up depends on how many words I get and how quick he makes an exit.

So instead of letting him go the next time, I start again and gradually... I would say by three weeks, he'd actually smile a bit when he saw me instead of the opposite and I'd get a half hour conversation out of him. Some days trying to get four words out of him is absolutely painful but knowing the person that I'm getting to know, it's worth it.

Now, before I continue I need you to get an idea of who Judas is. But I tell you, he is a hard one to crack. You really only get what he wants you to see, except for the rare candid moments when he forgets that's he supposed to hide himself. And in order for him to let you get a glimpse you REALLY have to earn in.
So, order to help me help you, I discreetly asked several people the first five words they would use to describe Judas. Oddly enough, almost everyone pretty much said the same five things, a few slightly different.

1 - Beautiful.
And he is. You catch a glimpse, you second take, and you then you stare and drink him in because every bit of him is just...stunning. He isn't a big guy, at all. He's actually rather on the small side, I guess - at about 5'8" and 140-150lbs. But he isn't scrawny - he's just one solid mass of muscle. You look at him and he seems almost like a spring that's tightly wound and you know it could be chaos when it comes undone. But he's also fluid and graceful and every movement seems to have purpose but he's also the biggest klutz that I've ever seen.
He's like a subtle cross between Kurt Cobain and Gerard Way. He's not classically handsome. He's beautiful. Almost pretty. Black hair, and those blue eyes that are so massively intense. Just enough of an Irish accent. I love when the change, blue to green and back and there's outside ring of green around that blue.
Whether you love or hate him, and he doesn't have a lot of fans admittedly, you would have to admit that he's beautiful.

2 - Cold
I think maybe this should have been more labelled as Shy, but this is how he's seen, I guess. He isn't really a cold person. He isn't friendly, either. He can walk into a room and totally captivate it but he never takes it. He is not to mingle and talk and get to know people but instead he'll sit in a corner and just watch. But I don't think cold fits him - I think his reservations and his shyness and his massive insecurities are taken as him being a cold, arrogant jerk. But he can be that, as well.
Really, he has a huge heart. Yesterday he stopped pumping fuel and ran across the gas station to hold the door for an elderly lady. He volunteers at animal rescues when he came. He’ll randomly pay for strangers lunch or shovel sidewalks at the day care. He saw a dog get hit on the highway and picked it up, drove it to a vet, paid $500 towards it’s surgeries so it would have a chance. He always opens doors and pulls chairs and makes sure I’m warm or don’t need for anything. And this is Judas – his parents didn’t teach him these manners. He’s been on his own, and homeless a spell, since he was 15/16 when they left him. After he got a job, he straightened himself out enough to graduate high school via correspondence while he worked. He just shrugs it off and he won’t take credit for any accomplishments he’s done on his own.

3 - Psycho
This one is I'll start with an example. It was about 4:30am last year when everyone rushed outside due to the a massive commotion which turned out to be Judas slamming a guy in a car door, dragging him out and throwing him over the hood where he caught back up with him and started to beat the **** out of him. I don't think the guy got one hit in. I watched him take four good, solid hits from a cop baton, the last across the head, and the cop still had the bloody nose. I have no doubt really that, if the cop hadn't damn near taken Judas' head off, that guy would have been dead. Now, the act Judas caught him in which involved a sleeping lady, he wasn't innocent at all but... I don't think he's psycho. It's not like he just spazzes out and randomly almost beats someone to death because they look at him funny. I've watched him start fights on purpose that he knows without a doubt that he is going to lose. I asked him one time, after a particular bad loss while we were taking him to the hospital for stitches, Why? He just sort of shrugged and said "It's comfortable."
But when he goes there, wherever it is, it's like he's just...gone. Like a switch flips and that's all there is - him, the subject, and it. The Red, I guess.

4 - Loyal
This is another one that, like him or not, everyone tends to agree with this, that he is loyal and dependable. Now, I think here he differs a bit from other people. As I said, I do think Ads is the only person Judas truly considers a friend and he is ferociously loyal to Ads. I don't think there isn't a thing in this world he wouldn't do for him. I also think, that his concept of friendship and loyalty are more strict then general society. Judas will accept a lot of people as friends but I don't think he really truly considers them friends. Ads is the only person he would call for help or go to for advice or to vent or... Not even me. But when you're his friend, whatever level of friendship he places you at, he's your friend. I believe he is very much an all or nothing person. Whatever Judas does, he does with every ounce of his being and to the very best of his ability. When you have him, you have every bit of him. But when you lose him, that's it. There are no second chances. When you lose his trust, you don't get it back. Unfortunately I think this may be, while an admirable trait, I think it's a downfall for him, too.

5 - Sad
Judas suffers from severe depression and extreme anxiety. It's a well known fact that anyone who knows Judas, knows that he has always planned to go at 27 - Ironically, Kurt Cobain was something of his hero and he was also born the day he died. He has tried to commit suicide twice, at 10 and 18. He is 22 now.

Last year we were helping someone fix her mothers grave after her brother vandalised it and I noticed he was crying. Not loudly, not sobs. Silently, just big tears as he picked up broken pieces of glass. When I asked him if he was okay he started with “Yeah I’m fine.” Then he sat back and stared off and said “It just hurts, you know. I see all these kids and have no idea what they have, you know? What I wouldn’t give for a mom who called ten times a night to make sure I’m okay at the party or listen to my dad ***** because I’m on drugs and ground me, because at least it means they cared. They don’t understand that one day they won’t be there and they’ll be regretting every moment wasted on arguing and fighting and resenting them over something so stupid as doing homework or dishes or whatever but it’s too late because they’re truly gone.
I just couldn’t imagine doing this. But we’re not much, are we? We’re really just disposable – we’re just as easy to toss away as an empty coffee cup.”

There was more – about how he cannot remember his parents ever told him that they loved him, or what it was like to be cuddled or have them be proud of him – and it was absently heart breaking to listen too because I know that he really just wants them to accept him and he blames himself.
I remember awhile ago Aden was trying to find his parents after he was involved in a car accident – a semi driver fell asleep and drifted, catching his pick up truck and pushing them both off the rolled where he was pinned in his truck underneath the trailer.
Ads never would have bothered but the cat scan showed he had a brain haemorrhage from trauma and, being a minor, the hospital needed signatures because Judas was not conscious. I don’t know all the details, only that once they were finally reached, they said they would come and never showed and finally after the third attempt said he would be 18 in three days so if he made it then he could sign and they never showed up. I hadn’t met Judas at this point but I can imagine, being stuck in there after surgeries (he had a rib puncture a lung) and knowing that his parents left him to chance. That at any moment he could die if this haemorrhage erupted and they never came and here he is, crying over someone else’s mother’s grave.
It was shortly after he was released from the hospital, or left early, that he tried to kill himself the second time around.

Two more things that one should know:
1 – He is an alcoholic and a drug addict. He has curbed the drinking – I never thought he would. He’ll have the odd beer or whiskey but I haven’t seen him drunk and I usually never see him sober. He has, however, started smoking Speed in the last year.
2 – He is extremely suicidal. I don’t know what to do because he’s only let me in so far.
And I know he has plans. I know the only reason that he’s here is because of a promise he made to Aden after the last time. I can see the pain in his eyes. And there’s nothing I can do because he just won’t let me in.

So, fast forward five months since Aden’s talk with me and we are where we are. Now we can sit and chat and make jokes and it’s easier for him to let down his defenses a bit. I don’t know that he considers us “together”. He doesn’t make public displays like holding my hand all the time or whatnot. He doesn’t even really do that when we are alone. He’s a little more affectionate when we are away from a crowd – in that he’ll give me a random massage or play with my hair or let me know I’m beautiful or the likes. He isn’t really sending a lot of “you’re my girl” messages but I have to remember that he won’t be sending obvious ones. He hasn’t never brought up sex (He has quite the uh…. Bedroom reputation) and has never made a move and I’ve left it alone because it’s really not that important right now and I’m guessing he is moving at the pace he needs.

But I can’t just sit there and tell him he’s amazing and has so much to offer the world and he can’t give up because he really, truly is a beautiful person because he just can’t handle compliments. It’s been a work in progress for a long time but the first time you compliment him, the smile fades, you get a mumbled thanks and he turns quiet. You keep it up, the wall goes up. If it’s mentioned again, he’ll just up and walk away.

I had him cornered once in the car and I kept it up a bit too long, I didn’t see the signs that his anxiety was sky rocketing – well, I saw them but it didn’t register because it’s just… not normal. But the breathing quickened, he got a shake, he went fidgety and I swear, almost to the point of tears. They must have spent a good deal of time dictating over and over that he was worthless because he believes it, 100%. Loathes himself, was how he described it.

Now, in that five months, that’s how far we’ve come. Maybe not a lot to some, but it’s leaps and bounds for him. But then it sorta slowed and he’s just…mainlining. But I’m concerned because his depression has been BAD lately. And I know his thoughts aren’t good. I know he wants to go, it’s plain as day on his face. He’s hanging in for us but I’m scared that one day we won’t be enough and I don’t know what else I can do to get him past this. I don’t want to upset him by telling him he’s great… I’m just lost.

If you read all that, you're awesome! Any suggestions or tips or ideas would be so greatly appreciated.