Make Me A Pinky Promise

She sat on the bathroom floor, and in desperation, begged the question, “What is the point of it all?”

Maybe the point of surviving is just that we survive together.

I know the feeling of darkness.
The heaviness that drags your entire being as you try lifting your foot to take the next step.
Your lungs that feel like collapsing under the weight of the world.
The cries and screams into a pillow to stifle the sound of the pain.

I know the intensity of the loneliness as you lay, stranded and grasping for someone to find you.
I know the demons that haunt your thoughts and tear you from the inside out.
I know it seems easier and preferable to end it all, to finally have a way out.
I don’t know your pain, but I know that familiar place it can take us to.

And I also know this.

There is hope.

You may not believe me. Not right now. And that’s okay. Stay with me.

Your pain is valuable. There will be someone one day who looks at you and says “thank you for not giving up.”
It is unique. There is no other story exactly like yours and there never will be. It is yours and yours alone.
It is real. Don’t let anyone tell you any differently.
It is important. If you can brace through the pain, it will one day heal another’s hurting heart.
And remember one thing. You are absolutely worthy of love and belonging.

I am familiar with the point of no return, the place of giving up and giving in.
The point of complete and utter exhaustion.
The numbing and escaping and forcing your eyes to open each day.
And I also know that you are worth the fight.
We are worth the fight.

And so she said with tears glistening in her eyes,
“If you stick around, I’ll stick around…pinky promise.”