One of the ways that I can define my experience is by what I saw importance in. At first, I only saw importance in our relationship. Later, I saw importance in your happiness. As I recovered, the people around me became more important. At this point, I'm finding myself to be important again. I want to explain all that.
The first night that I told you that I should just die. I felt that, without having my love for you returned, there wasn't any meaning for me or in anything. I only wanted to get back the future that we had going for us before. I wanted us to be as close as we could be, and I thought that meant as close as we'd ever been. You said we were best friends, and I tried to grip that as well as I could. But I still didn't feel that it was enough.
On that Monday, we texted. I cried about how I didn't think I could take it, how I still wanted to die. There was nothing left to say about that, so I changed the subject. Monty Oum had just died, and so I shared the news with you and mourned a bit. This was the point at which I realized that my darkness was burdening you. I stared at our conversation. Everything felt heavy and not right. I started thinking, scrolling through your words, what you'd texted and what you'd vocally said to me. I remembered that you said to see a therapist. I called in and scheduled for that evening. Because I realized once again that your happiness was important to me.
It was too late, though. By the time I'd finished my visit, you'd been told to leave me. You left me. I reverted, kept trying to talk to you, desperately held on to our relationship. You became scared of me, and I became scared of myself. In the wrong way, I began to care about your happiness again; if being with me would only scare you, and I only wanted you to be with me, then I had to die. I would die, terminating the possibility of burdening you. I thought that was an overwhelming possibility. That was when I had to learn weakness, to ensure your happiness. I kept going to therapy to restore our relationship.
Dying was the foolproof solution to never bothering you again. Desiring your happiness motivated me to learn from this tragedy, but it also urged me to disappear. It wasn't enough. I had to convince myself that other people mattered. As I struggled through, other people did begin to matter again. Not just the people that knowingly helped me, but also the ones who made things better without a clear idea of what I was going through. Not just those people, but also the ones I helped with their own situations. Very, very slowly, people aside from you became important to me again. These people certainly wouldn't benefit from my disappearance. They certainly didn't want me to die.
After so many months of slowly seeing the value return to the people around me, I started caring about myself again. I stopped dieting to disappear and started dieting because I felt better to be lighter. I occasionally bought new clothes and wore outfits that made me feel like I stood out. I started enjoying myself not as a treatment but as a natural compulsion. I began to find meaning again in smiling and in my own happiness. Yes, I am important, and what I want should not always be thrown aside for the sake of others.
I don't think it's quite right to call this a progression; it's a culmination. I still feel that our relationship is important, though I know how our old bond needs to evolve. I still feel that your happiness is important, but it isn't worth my disappearance. I still feel that other people are important, yet I recognize issues that I have with them that I can't expect to sew up on my own. There are many moments when I feel normal, as if we were still together or as if we'd never met. There are many moments when I must acknowledge that I am hurt, and if I cannot be rid of it without you then I must manage it until it can be taken away. I'm not plunged into the waters of emotional trauma anymore, and I'm not the dry of its experiences which have soaked into my skin.
There are still many reasons that I feel unimportant. That's been the case for a very long time. There are still many things that I can't do for myself nor for others. The core things that I do are only for you and for us; for your happiness and our friendship. Perhaps it's just a fact of my life that its core is motivated by you and by us. Even when I'm finished recovering, even when you're back, this will still be the case. That isn't a bad thing. You're just incredibly important to me.
