I've told you before that spoken words can be hard for me, but written ones come much more naturally. I've been writing for as long as I can remember; I know how to weave worlds, to create people from nothing--to tell my own story, to tell my friends and family what I need them to hear but can't verbalize.

Thank you. I know that I'm hard to deal with, that I'm stubborn, that I'm clingy, that I don't back down from my arguments. We've fought over it. You tell me that I'm wrong, and maybe I am, but I can't believe that. My mind doesn't let me. Logic and mental illness don't exactly go hand in hand. That's why I fight as hard as I do against you and your points--my mess of a mind says one thing, you say something completely different, and my mind just screams out louder that you're wrong, that everything I'm saying is completely right. That how I see things is how they are.

I read. I spend time online. I know that I've been you for other people, even the ones who didn't actually need me to be. I can see the good in all my friends, but you're the one who sees it in me. You're the only one who knows my entire story--even the ones who took part in it don't know everything. You do. I told you after that night when I scared you badly enough to come down and check on me. I trust you, which isn't common for me. I fully trust very few people. Even my best friends don't know--well, you fall into that category and you know, so I guess it would be more correct to say that most of my best friends don't know.

You've never made me feel less for being this messed up. This one is hard to explain, but there's a certain stigma around mental illness and around things related to it, especially what I do--I can't make myself type it, but you know what I mean. There's this notion that people who fight their own minds every day are weak, that they're just not trying hard enough, that they just need to be happy or whatever. I've dealt with that before, even from someone who was going through the same stuff. You've never done that to me. You've never made me feel weak or pitiful or like I just wasn't good enough. Being angry at me isn't the same. You had every right to be angry--I would have been angry had our roles been reversed. But you never took it out on me, never belittled me, never anything that would have destroyed me more.

I still have that message you sent me over the summer saved on snapchat, the one where you promised to do whatever you could to help me. I look at that sometimes, times when I need a reminder that someone actually cares. That I matter to someone, even if that person isn't myself.

I don't like asking for help. I don't like receiving help. I've been crashing every day for a while now and I don't tell you if I can help it. You made me promise to tell you if I did anything, but I don't. I don't want to be that person, the one that always needs help because she did something stupid or can't deal with her own demons. I want to be able to handle this on my own, but you remind me that I don't have to. Handling it on my own hasn't worked, not in years. You help. You mean a lot to me.

Thank you.