What I would change

**********’s suicide attempt

This was a big one. Even now it feels wrong putting it down as something I would change since I’m not changing the situation itself, just my own personal reaction.

I think it’s safe to say there are some people who will come into your life and completely change its trajectory. Whether it’s a best friend, romantic partner or just a fleeting connection. This was none of those.

Looking back even now I think as individuals we were always meant to meet. We were both so young but had a connection that not many people could explain. On the outside it looked just like a crush, innocent pre-teen obsessions; best friends confiding in each other one day to mortal enemies the next. And in a way it was. There was no middle ground between us, it was either all or nothing.

This went on for years. No one could understand how we kept ending up back at each other’s throats or in each other's lives when we hadn’t spoken in months, let alone seen each other in years. But, there was one simple reason we always went back. He was just as messed up as I was.

I still remember being fourteen and even to this day one of the worst states I’ve found myself in. At that point we hadn’t spoken in months. It was as if we no longer existed to each other. But I was going through it and none of my friends could help, albeit they tried. It wasn’t until someone went above and beyond to bring us into contact again that I felt okay.

I remember she called his father, someone she had never met before let alone spoke to, and as a small fourteen year old girl told him his son needed to call me. And that was that. We spoke for a few hours and by the end of it I was fine.

This happened more than once over the years. Sometimes he would be broken and I would fix him, sometimes we were both not doing well, but as soon as we talked every issue went away. I thought we would continue on like that forever, always there if the other needed help. The difference, something I can see now, is that when he was broken he would use me to feel better, if I was hurt, I would want him to make me feel better.

This all boiled down to a less than pleasant incident in year twelve. Just like clockwork we hadn’t talked in months, possibly over a year. Until one day, during lunch I got a message saying he needed to talk and needed to call me. I of course dropped everything. That phone call only lasted maybe twenty minutes, but it felt like an eternity,

See, he was in hospital after a failed suicide attempt the night before. He was fine, no lasting damage or injuries, but he needed someone to talk to and he chose me. I didn’t have the hindsight to piece it together back then. I fully believed he needed me, and not just as a distraction from his current situation. I thought we were the same, that the reason he kept coming back was because I was the only person who truly understood and would never judge or leave him.

This wasn’t the case at all and it would still take me months to realise how expendable I was. How every time I went back to help him I was losing little pieces of myself, parts of me that made me happy lost and destroyed by my utter devotion to another person.

Even now every few months I will check on his social media to see if he’s okay. It’s not that I want to be in his life, I couldn’t imagine anything worse than that; it’s that I can’t believe he is utterly okay when I’m still working through it all.