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It wasn't something he'd realized overnight, or some kind of magical oh moment, no it had been slow, slow and confusing. It was like a giant puzzle, that he had been slowly putting together for months.
The puzzle pieces had started to come together more easily, after he actually gave himself permission to think about some things he hadn't ever let himself entertain before.
Speaking to father Brian had done a lot good, after dancing it out, and not in the metaphorical way, Eddie felt like he could breathe for the first time since his son left for Texas. But really, it felt like Eddie could breathe in a way he hadn't been able to for as long as he could remember.
Father Brian's words constantly played in his head like a mantra these days, or at least whenever he started to feel like he didn't deserve to try and do good for himself. “We can't take care of others, if we don’t first take care of ourselves”
It made him feel less horribly selfish for focusing energy on himself, because in some ways, this was for Christopher as well. He wants to be able to be the stability Chris needs, but also to be as authentic and open as his son deserves to see represented in his life, to be everything for Chris that Eddie's own dad never was.
It had been hard at first, trying to make sense of decades worth of feelings and thoughts he'd denied himself, pushed away.
Some days it felt like Eddie was sitting with this giant ball of yarn, that was impossibly entangled, and he could neither find beginning nor end to it all.
Other days, he'd have these moments, where he'd be thinking through stuff, and by the end of it, he felt like he'd at least pulled a couple of strings straight.
A lot of it, had been things he'd kinda been aware were problems of his for-a while, but hadn't felt he deserved to fix, hadn't felt like doing something like that for himself was justifiable.
Mainly things like his relationship with sharing his feelings, his deep-rooted fear of being perceived as weak.
Then there was this deep burning anger in the pit of his chest, that fiery feeling of betrayal, towards his parents mostly. He tried to think about letting it go, about how maybe it’d go away if he'd just try being “the bigger person” but, ultimately he came to the conclusion that he already was the bigger person, and that maybe this anger was something he just needed to let himself feel, to let himself accept that he'd been done wrong by two of the people that were supposed to be the most important in his early life, and there was nothing he could do to fix it, and he was right to feel angry.
The real… life changing revelations had come much later, once he started analysing his past relationships. There had been a lot to unpack, all the way back to Shannon and their first meeting.
He loved Shannon, he did. But in the later years of their life, he wasn't in love with Shannon, he knew that then, and he accepted it as a fact now.
But he had been, when they had first met, she had become his best friend, and then he'd fallen in love with her, and then she’d fallen pregnant, and everything he knew about life had been turned upside down.
He’d been 19.. When they found out Shannon was pregnant, they’d felt forced to marry immediately, he had never felt as lost in his life as he did those days, not even now.
He had wanted to make it work between him and Shannon again much later, but not for himself, for Christopher. He wasn't in love with Shannon anymore, she wasn't even his best friend anymore at that point, and Eddie had not been her best friend for even longer than that either probably.
However, he had loved the idea of Christopher having a mother again, a love, or want, he now realized had haunted most of his other relationships after Shannon.
There had been Ana, and then Marisol… and then kim…
They'd all been wonderful, sweet, kind, compassionate women. It's not as if he'd entered the relationships only thinking of a mother for Chris, no. He thought he liked them, but.. Really it was the idea of them that he’d liked. And admittedly yes, the desire to make sure his son was happy had played its role, but it always came down to Eddie and his own problems.
Casual dating had always felt like a performance to him, like he had to act a certain way, but that nobody had ever given him a rule book on the do’s and don'ts. It always ended up feeling fake, and benign, he was never really in it, was never really into it.
With Shannon, it had been different in the sense that they'd become friends before anything else, he didn't feel forced to fall in love with her, he just did.
And that's how Eddie Diaz found out that he was most likely demiromantic.
His second bigger revelation involving his romantic life had come soon after, as in, almost immediately after.
It was like some kind of wall had been torn down, whilst he had been thinking about all the things he wanted from a romantical partner, the things he'd been searching for in all the wrong places.. And all the wrong people.
How, he'd want something that made him feel like he didn't have to perform, something that came natural and where being together felt like breathing easier instead of choking him….
Something like how he felt when he was with Buck.
After he made that connection, it was like he'd opened a floodgate.
Eddie would also want a partner who would love his son as much as he himself does, someone who would always fight for Christopher.. Someone like Buck.
That one in particular made him feel like a bit of a blind moron, he'd said it himself, years ago, There's nobody in this world I trust with my son more than you. And no one will ever fight for my son as hard as you. And it was true, Eddie had meant every word of what he’d said back then, and he still meant it now.
What Eddie wanted for Christopher, what he wanted for himself too, was a family.
Something that he now realized they’d already found, with Buck.
This time, he wasn't even going to waste a single second thinking about how this wasn't how he was raised to be, how it couldn't be him, because really, Eddie didn't know who he was for most of his life, so this could be him. This was him.
And that was how Eddie Diaz found out that he's queer, oh.. And incredibly, impossibly, deeply in love with his best friend, who he may or may not have already been co-parenting with for a number of years.