“Hope is all that we have. If you lose that, you lose everything. Don’t ever lose hope.”

A really good friend of mine told me this when I was going through some really rough times not too long ago. It helped me a lot. It helped me to know that he really cared about me. It made me not do something really stupid. It wasn’t just that line though, it was everything that he said. I could tell that he was going to be there for me no matter. All of the things that he said made a lot of sense to me too even though they were not what I wanted to hear. He told me that if I were to end my own life it would be incredibly selfish and that everyone in my life (i.e. parents, friends, him) would be completely devastated. I argued with him that they would eventually forget about me and be perfectly fine. He said that he couldn’t believe that I was actually so messed up that I would say such a thing. At the time, just knowing that he was there helped immensely but what he was saying couldn’t change the way I felt and what I wanted to do. Right now I am so thankful to him. He made me promise that I wouldn’t do anything to seriously hurt myself. This was the hardest promise that I have ever had to make. I almost didn’t but eventually I just gave in and made the promise. The next week was so hard. So many times I just wanted to call it quits and down a bottle of pills. Every time I would go to do this I would stop and think about that promise that I made to him and I would tell myself, “Not yet. Just one more day.” Now my meds are finally working and I am going to therapy once a week and doing a whole lot better. If I hadn’t made him that promise though, I don’t know where I’d be right now nor do I want to think about it.

I don’t know what’s going to happen down the road but I really hope that I can keep my promise to him. Now I know that it really would devastate those who care about me and I know I wouldn’t want to do that. 

“People will forget what you said. People will forget what you did. People will never forget how you made them feel.”