People often think that being there for someone is simple - that all you need to do is hear them and give your best insight into their problem and then their problem will eventually fade away. But after personal experiences with my own loved ones and friends, I've learned that it takes a lot more time and sympathy than one would imagine. Ultimately, everyone is different, and everyone faces completely different obstacles - some a lot more severe than others. But at the end of the day, I have found that listening, showing empathy, and reciprocating love are fundamental when comforting another individual.

When I was 15 years old, my best friend at the time called me one random night and bellowed that he wanted to die. A few weeks prior, he had confessed to me that he was gay. I'll admit, I was not surprised to hear his confession, but I was not expecting everything that came after it. He began to call me endlessly and would repeatedly tell me how lost and confused he felt. He simply could not understand it; he would tell me that he could not wrap his head around the reality of him being gay, which led him to ultimately hate himself for it.

At the time, I didn't have much to say. Well frankly, I didn't know what to say, so I listened. I listened to him for hours while he vented about how much his father would beat him for it, how his mother would shame him, and how his sister looked at him with the eyes of disgust. He told me he had no one and he did not know what to do with himself. But on the night he told me he wanted to die, everything in me revolted in a way I had never experienced before.

My immediate reaction was to cry because I did not know how to help my best friend that was drowning in so much pain. But as the conversation progressed, I wiped my tears away and shouted the importance of his life to me and I begged him to wait before making any permanent decisions. I tried to empathetically convince him to believe that things would get better. By doing so, I showered him with love and made sure he was always smiling and laughing during the moments we shared together. Making him smile and laugh wasn't a solution, but at least it was a distraction and a pure sense of hope during that time.

When I was 16 years old, my boyfriend at the time tried taking his life on multiple occasions. He was a 17-year-old alcoholic who lingered through life with bruises swelling his body due to his father's outrages. As I listened to him cry in my arms for weeks, begging me to let him go, I fought him back with unconditional love. I refused to let his mind win and conquer him to a deeper extent. Instead, I forced him to accompany me on adventures that required activities in the outdoors like the beaches nearby and the community parks. I tried to empathetically remind him daily that life was valuable and precious, and those moments filled with love are what we live for. I later encouraged him to find extraneous help.

When I was 17 years old, my female best friend showed me all of her scars from the times she had attempted suicide. I listened to her story during a morning at Dunkin' Donuts. We munched on their breakfast bagels, and she spontaneously opened up to me about her past, and now today, I understand she was outwardly crying for help. The stories she told varied from how she was bullied in middle school and so forth and the stories intensified to the time she was raped by her cousin when she a young girl. As our friendship blossomed, she became more comfortable with me and professed her bisexuality to me. As her bisexuality came into conflict with her relationship with her profusely Catholic mother, her depression was sparked again and the scars on her wrists began to itch. I tried to empathetically guide her through possible solutions and outcomes. But more often than not, I stayed quiet and held her hand, showing my love for her even though the most important woman in the world to her did not.

With only 20 years of life, I have learned that life will never settle and make things easy. In fact, it will always have obstacles for each of us to overcome. This has also led me to learn that these obstacles should not, and at often times cannot be faced alone. We must rely on each other for comfort and trust each other for help. And after my experiences, I fundamentally believe that listening, empathy, and love are essential abstractions to respond in comforting an important individual.