It’s difficult when a friend tries to take his or her own life.
You try to look at them with kind, nonjudgmental eyes, but you know that your face will betray you with a panicked look of fear.
You try for a smile, shooting for somewhere between the wide, insincere smile a portrait photographer relentlessly coerced out of you in seventh grade and the concerned smile of a mother watching her kid play his first soccer game. It doesn’t work out like that. The former comes out, then the latter, and then you decide that now isn’t really the time for smiling anyway.
You search for something with which to break the silence, something that doesn’t sound too consciously casual, but not heavy-handed, either. Possibilities flicker through your mind:
“How are you?” seems like kind of a dumb question.
“Are you all right?” sounds too medical and intrusive.
“So, what’s new?” — oh God, how the hell did you even let that one cross your mind?
Your friend must have seen the look on your face and breaks the silence for you with a “hello,” followed by a hushed “thank you for visiting.” You quickly say that it’s no problem and sit down beside them, groping for anything resembling a coherent sentence.
You want to ask why, because you just don’t understand any of this. All the clichés that you castigated your mutual friends for trotting out. “I would have never guessed” and, “Last person in the world I would’ve thought” are just a breath away from escaping from your own mouth.
And you instantly hate yourself for it, but for a brief moment, you mentally entertain the most self-centered line of questioning: Didn’t you know how much this would hurt us? Why weren’t we worth living for?
Instead, you settle for a simple, “Do you want to talk?” A head shake.
“Do you want me to stay?” A nod.
“Hold your hand?” Their hand inches over to yours, and you take it.
You pause, and sort of blurt out, “I love you.”
You say it again — this time, without your voice cracking and with each of the three words getting its own syllables — and add, “I’m here for you, okay? Just let me know if you want to talk, and I’ll listen.”
Your friend smiles wanly and thanks you in a way that lets you know that they’ll take you up on your offer sooner rather than later, but for now, they’d really just rather take in the quiet.
You know that, within the hour, you’ll be in a mostly one-sided conversation that will shatter your heart in such a way that you’ll occasionally forget how to breathe. You know that you’ll do your best, with varying degrees of success, to appear calm and collected. You hope that, when your face makes your broken heart far too evident, it’ll read more as an earnest, desperate compassion and not as being in way over your head.
And you know that saying “I love you” is not a panacea that makes everything better, as if it were a magical phrase that will make your friend comically slap their forehead and say, “Really? Well, shit, I guess I’m fixed!”
But you say it anyway — in part because, at least for this moment, it’s all you’ve got. But mostly you say it because it’s true, and maybe a little selfishly, you’re saying it as much for yourself as you’re saying it for them — as if saying it now, urgently, could retroactively make up for all the times you said it ironically or in a half-assed way these past years.
You don’t understand. But you want to try.
You gently tighten your grip on their hand and whisper it quietly but fiercely.
“I love you. You’re loved, and I love you.”
Joe Dellosa is an advertising senior. His column appears on Tuesdays.
