I've written about some pretty tough stuff here. Oddly, I went through something today that somehow feels worse than all of that. I know, intellectually that some of the stuff I've gone through felt this bad or worse- but maybe this feels like it hurts more because the other times, it was me that was hurting. This time it's someone I love. I spent two hours today *begging* someone I care very deeply about not to kill himself.

I don't know that I've ever felt so helpless in my entire life. To hear someone hate themself so much. To hear someone so broken that they don't want to live anymore... I think that is the worst feeling in the world. (I think that must be why I didn't say anything to my friends when I was feeling so bad a month ago. I knew it was fleeting, and it feels awful to be the friend on the receiving end of that news.)

There was so much I wanted to say when I started this post. Now I don't know what it was. He seems okay now. But I want to take the person who did this to him and slam her head into a wall. Repeatedly. Instead I'm sitting in my den drinking a frozen vodka cocktail and feeling incredibly helpless and worried. I want to tell everyone that matters to me just how much I care. Just how wonderful I think they are. I know he knows how much he means to me- he's been an incredible friend for some years now. To know that someone could strip everything that makes him who he is in a matter of days and that there is absolutely nothing I can do to stop it... That has to be the worst thing I have ever felt.

That's the thing about me. Hurt me, and I will go on. Hurt me and I will pull into myself and somehow find the strength to get through it. But hurt someone I love? Hurt someone so badly that they don't have the will to live anymore? That? Is not okay with me. I will do anything and everything I can to fix it. And when I can't, like tonight? I sit, and I think, I cry, and I pray. I don't usually drink. But tonight it just seemed necessary.