.
When I was fourteen, an acquaintance of mine died by suicide. Someone that I was once pretty good friends with, but by that point hadn't seen for about two years after he had moved to the next town over. So, someone I guess I didn't really know all that well. But it took me six years before I realized I wasn't thinking about him every single day. I keep the only two photos I have of him (one of which I received at his memorial service) in the box where I keep all of my most valuable, treasured objects. And though I have fewer and fewer and fewer months where I think of him every day, the fact that I continue to think of him at all.... someone I suppose I barely knew.... that I have a tattoo in memory of him.... When my depression was at its worst in those first couple of years after his death, when I contemplated doing something myself, I thought about how he almost certainly had no idea that I of all people would miss him so horribly, would mourn him so deeply. That I would still be crying ten years later. We really do matter to more people than we think. I'm not in that dark place anymore, but I am glad I still think of him, am glad he still means so much to me, am glad (and utterly broken over the fact) that he couldn't see what I do now.
I hope and think, somehow, he does see.