Emotional breakdowns. Break-ups. Arguments. Death. Suicide. Depression. Anxiety. Failure. As that friend, you are the first responder to all of these and more. You are the friend that they call first, the friend that sees the first tear drop and the friend that understands their situation better than they do. You are the go-to, fix-it­ friend for almost everyone you know, and although you love helping anyone and everyone you can, it gets hard to share burdens as often as you do. When it seems like everyone around you is crumbling and your job is to keep them all glued together, you become the glue that is being pulled in so many directions that you’re ripping yourself apart. Sometimes, you stretch yourself so far that you don’t have anything left in you to keep your own life from falling apart. When given a gift as wonderful as yours, you are also given an enormous burden to carry on your shoulders along with the armful of baggage you might already be carrying.

I want you to know that people are so grateful for you.

Inevitably, your friends will come to you in their times of suffering with tears or broken hearts or troubled minds, and they will unleash an extraordinary amount of their pain onto you. You can handle it, so you take as much pain from them as you possibly can while also somehow managing to make them crack a smile. When you part ways, you are content but exhausted; content because you helped them to feel happy when they felt overwhelmed with sadness, but exhausted because you took on someone else’s burden without any relief of your own burdens.

I want you to know that you are not overlooked.

You have a gift of strength, but with this gift comes the curse of needing to keep up that image of the unbreakable friend, the one that never cries or needs a shoulder to cry on. However well you keep up this charade, you know it isn’t true. You stack up everything that comes your way until the burden is too much and you can no longer handle it yourself. You know that you need someone to be there for you like you are for others, and you know that you want someone to ask you how you are just once. You want to let everything out to someone who will respond with nothing but love and empathy, but in doing so, you might lose your reputation as unbreakable.

I want you to know that being strong doesn’t mean holding everything inside.

This may be a foreign idea to you, but take time for yourself. Seriously. Whether that means spending time with your mom and talking things out with her, spending time in nature and talking things out with God or going for a drive and talking things out with yourself; do it. A good friend of mine once told me, “You cannot pour yourself into other people if your kettle is empty.” If you aren’t taking the time to care for yourself, you cannot expect yourself to care for others with the power that you know they need. This isn’t selfish, this isn’t a sign of weakness and this doesn’t mean you’re giving up; it means you’re going to take the necessary steps to take care of those around you even better by taking care of yourself.

I want you to know that you don’t have to sacrifice yourself for others’ happiness.

I want you to know that saying no to people is okay.

I want you to know that no matter what, there is always someone who will listen to you.

I want you to know that you are never expected to carry any burden by yourself.

I want you to know you are not alone.