I should really be in bed, but whatever.

Tonight I dug up a let­ter John sent me a few months ago after he hurt me like never before:

I’ve been read­ing your blog and call­ing you all weekend…I know you need atten­tion and I’m sorry I’ve been so neglect­ful of you that it’s reminded you of the way your par­ents treated you. Please stop con­tem­plat­ing sui­cide as a real­is­tic course of action in order to rem­edy the prob­lem. I love you and would really miss you and at the end of the day in a self­ish way I’m scared that I’d hate you if you left me here by myself feel­ing as guilty as I’d feel if you did it. I think you have fun­da­men­tally mis­or­dered the pri­or­i­ties we all come hard­wired with. To rank the absence of sad­ness or the pres­ence of hap­pi­ness or what­ever sui­cide would gain you as goals higher than sur­vival is the first error and then to seek those first goals using the method­ol­ogy of sui­cide is the sec­ond. You’re a lit­tle Chinese man who drinks fruit shakes and is def­i­nitely intended to live longer than the genet­i­cally pre­dis­posed to die in his early 50’s Caucasoid over here. Lets keep it that way shall we, I haven’t got your eulogy pol­ished to nearly the degree you’d want it to be.

At the time, I couldn’t get past the first few sen­tences because the pain was too fresh. And his words too poignant. Whereas I’m very vocal with my feel­ings, John is the oppo­site, and for him to say these things made me feel like my heart would burst. I read it tonight because I wanted to be reminded that I’m impor­tant to some­one, the way I need to be.

It made me real­ize that a lit­tle part of me still defines myself through oth­ers. But I don’t care any­more. I have some­one who loves and needs me the way I love and need him. That’s what mat­ters. That’s what makes me feel impor­tant, like my life means something.

Knowing this brings me a great deal of comfort.

And that will be enough to get me through.

(I won­der what he’ll say at my eulogy.)