Don’t Want To Lose

How many more times will I have to text my friends long-winded messages filled with “I’m here for you” and “you’re going to be okay” before they don’t believe me? Before my promises that they are enough and that they are such a great friend stop working, before the truth I tell them that they cannot see gets so entangled they start to believe the lies their brains twist it into? I never realized that junior high would be the years where everyone started to break, the cracks and pressure starting to become too much, started to widen into fissures encompassing their very being, the urge to just succumb becoming more and more tempting with each passing day. I never realized that I would be the one frantically trying to mend those broken pieces, to put their crumbling walls back together because I couldn’t stand to lose them. I never thought that I would be one of the last ones standing, the one who managed to pull a shortstop before I went tumbling into the abyss so many of my friends seem to have slid into already. I’ve been told my views of the world are too idealistic, that I want a world that is too perfect to ever exist, but how is it my fault that I don’t want to lose my friends, not for real? Is it too much to ask to want to return the favor to the people that have helped me so much? The idea of teetering on the edge of this abyss so many of my friends have tumbled into all alone is too much to bear, I have to pull them out before it’s too late. I can’t fail. Because I’m afraid that if they leave, if they give up, that I will too, that my resolve will slowly start to crumble and I will become nothing, drawn toward the darkness forevermore because the light finally failed me.