Re: help winning my love and best friend back
i had a boyfriend who was my best friend. we lived together. he wanted to marry me and have children.
then he got depressed, and one day, he wasn't there when i got home. no car, nothing. the skin under my eyes was already raw from crying because he'd been talking about killing himself. i did everything i could, took him to the doctor, and then he said he wasn't going to do it.
i fell on the floor, crying, and called the police. they found his car on the side of the road, but it was too dark and rainy to find his body. i waited all night, paralyzed.
they found him in the morning. he hanged himself. i'd said goodbye to him the morning before and went to work, and he was just gone.
what's the point of all this, you ask?
that kind of stuff can happen anytime, to anybody. i've heard news stories about planes crashing into random houses and olympic swimmers drowning. you never know what's going to happen.
BUT--- you get over it. benjamin died almost three years ago. at first, i was a total wreck. i started doing every drug i could get my hands on... pretty soon i was shooting heroin... i went to rehab... i decided to be anorexic, instead... i became horribly bulimic... and yeah, these were previous tendencies, but they'd never been this horrendous.
anyway, after about nine months of therapy and treatment, i started to feel normal again. i got a job. went back to school, finished my bachelor's degree. now i have another job and another boyfriend who is also my best friend.
but i know, this time around, that i can be by myself, that i'm strong and capable and that the world doesn't end if i get hurt, no matter how badly. i'm not saying things don't hurt. they do. horribly. but with lots of work, you can emerge from your troubles.
though it's terrible to say this, my life has been better, in the long run, since benjamin died. i learned things and faced parts of me and parts of the world that i never would have if the tragedy hadn't happened.
so. here's my advice for you.
1. people can disappear any time. be thankful you can still talk to this girl.
2. it's really important that you learn to be on your own, especially at your age. Go somewhere monastic, or move to a city where you don't know anybody, or whatever, but put yourself in a situation where you can't use other people as crutches for your emotional wounds. it's just like physical therapy, i guess. if you break your leg, you have to walk on it and work it to make it better. if it's really badly broken, you can't even stand on it (that's where i was... that's why i had to go to rehab and whatnot before i could deal with being alone); you should determine the speed of your "emotional therapy" on your terms.
3. did you ever see the south park in which the girls make a list ranking the cuteness of the boys in the fourth grade? the boy at the top of the list ended up sliding by on good looks, and the kids at the bottom had to develop other skills and talents and "build character." well, that doesn't just happen with looks. no matter what its source, if you never experience pain, you're not a complete person.
in america, we have this strange concept that emotional pain is to be avoided at all costs. (either that, or people become goth and revel in pain, which is just as stupid.) well, sh!t happens. you can't avoid pain. if you could, rich people wouldn't kill themselves, gorgeous people wouldn't be blowing cocaine, and married soccer moms would never have affairs. no matter what, pain happens, no matter what you have or who you are. whether you have a girlfriend or not. whether you're rich or not. whether you're pretty or not.
i was lucky, because i was in so much emotional pain that i had to either get through it or die. i got through it. so the end of #3: use this pain. it's something you'll have to get used to in life, anyway. feel it fully, and then watch it drift away, knowing that more bad will come and more good will come, but no matter what, you'll always have yourself. learn to like yourself, and learn to let go of the things around you. Learn that being attached to good or bad is futile, not to mention miserable. you might find that heartbreak is the best thing that could have happened to you, in the long run.