All this time I've been feeling so guilty because of what you told me.
The words cling onto my back and whisper into my ear. Like a weight. A constant reminder.
You make cuts across your hips, you swallow pills each morning, and you've joked (not so jokingly) about ending your life more times than I can remember.
I want to make your life better, I want to make you better. I want you to smile and laugh. I want to make you as happy as I can, because you deserve to be happy.
We were friends, and that's what friends do.
And I do that because I care about you, not because it's my job.
Recently, however, I've realized that you've made it my job.
You assigned me a full time position of being your friend and at first, I liked it. Loved it even.
It made me feel useful and needed. Making you smile was often the highlight of my day as well as yours. I liked to make you happy more than I liked to make myself happy and at some point, I became the only reason that you smiled, and although I was honored to be that for you, you took it too far when you told me one night,
"If you weren't my friend, then I wouldn't be here."
It wasn't ever said allowed, but we both knew that you didn't mean just in my bedroom, sitting in the sheets. You meant on this earth. Living like everyone else. Completely gone.
And that's when my job became tedious.
I don't think that you meant to, I think in your eyes it was supposed to be a compliment, a declaration of love. And I appreciated the sentiment, I really did. But, by saying those words, you had just placed your life in my hands.
I wanted to treat it carefully, storing it away on some unreachable shelf, wrapped in layers of bubble wrap. Completely out of harms way.
I wanted to take good care of it, polish it every night like some fancy glass figurine. Protect it from the world like it should be.
But I was barely 17, I didn't know how to take care of my own life, let alone someone else's.
I don't know if it was intentional or not, but the second those words escaped your lips, you gave me the responsibility of keeping you alive- happy and healthy.
And the pressure was there all the time, constantly pushing down on my shoulders, lingering in the back of all my thoughts, and forcing never ending anxiety into my hands.
If something ever happened to you, I knew that I was going to blame myself. I would feel responsible because you had trusted me to keep you safe.
No matter how hard I tried to keep you smiling, it never kept the sadness away. There are nights when you made new marks on your skin and I cried to myself for not doing good enough.
It started out as friendship and turned into me trying my best to keep myself above water with you sitting on my chest. Priority always.
At some point I had completely neglected myself because in my mind, you always came first.
And only now, that we aren't friends, and the words are still playing in my mind wondering if you'll go through with your unintentional threat, am I realizing; It wasn't okay.
It wasn't okay for you to make me responsible for your life when I was struggling to be held responsible for my own.
It wasn't okay to give me the pressure and guilt that consumed my thoughts every time I was reminded of you. Which, you made sure, was all the time.
It wasn't fair to use that against me every time I tried to put myself first.
It wasn't healthy that I had terrible anxiety all the time because I was so paranoid about you hurting yourself when I wasn't around.
And it wasn't okay to tell me that you thought that our friendship was one sided because I didn't want to let you in, just in case my problems were the things to push you over the edge.
I gave everything that I could. Even if you still don't think that I did.
I'm not trying to be insensitive or cruel because I know how much you struggle. I do care about you and I do want to help you. I know this is serious.
It's one thing to be friends and to be there for one another, to tell secrets and to be each other's rocks,
But I can't be responsible for your life.
I can't be the ONLY source of your happiness.
I can't throw away my own needs in order to strive for yours.
And I definitely can't keep your life anymore, but I can't give it away because I don't trust it with anyone else.
