Four words and a thousand different interpretations.
Sometimes, when people say “I’m here for you,” they mean “I’m here
for a while, for an hour or an evening. You’re a generally good person
and I enjoy your company and I know you have to vent right now, so I’ll
listen; I’ll even bring the beers if you want. But I probably won’t stay
the night.”
Sometimes, when people say “I’m here for you” they mean “I don’t know
what else to say to your sad story. You floored me and I have
absolutely no advice, nowhere to go from here. All I can do is sit here
with you and absorb. Hope that helps.” Other times, “I’m here for you”
means “I’m here for you but I’d rather not be, it’s just what you’re
supposed to say in these situations so I don’t know. I’m offering, but I
hope you don’t actually take me up on it.”
See? Different. Sometimes it means something, sometimes it doesn’t.
Sometimes the people who say it might as well be commenting on the
weather, the brunch they just came home from. The words come out but
they don’t resonate, emptied of their meaning, just tiny bare word
packages floating across a synapse. And sometimes the people who truly
mean it never say the words at all.
But when I say I’m here for you, I mean it. I mean it differently. Genuinely. Let me explain.
There’s a part of friendship that’s more than camaraderie and good
feelings, more than having someone to hang out with all the time and
bullshit with on lazy Saturday mornings. There’s a part of friendship —
real friendship — that’s fierce love. The part marked by understanding,
protection, sacrifice. The strong part. The selfless, human part. The
part that would move your body in front of theirs to take a bullet
without a blink or second thought.
And that’s why I want to tell you I’m here for you — because I am.
Not in the therapist sense, not in the
let’s-talk-about-our-crap-boyfriends-over-martinis sense, but the real
sense: I love you enough to make room for your pain in my heart and
handle it like my own. Or better than my own, because my own usually
ends up stuffed into a back corner of my brain and left there to ferment
into a viscous, sour liquor.
I’m here for you honestly, sometimes painfully so. I may not have
firsthand experience with the exact thing you’re going through, but I
know what it means to hurt. Hurt translates pretty well. I know what
it’s like to feel silenced, shut down, wounded. To feel like there’s no
one who really understands, or cares, or will even make the genuine
effort; to feel like even talking about it is nothing but a pointless
stirring of air. I care about you too much to make you feel that way
alone.
I may not give the best advice, or even moderately good advice, but
I’m here for you. I may not give you any advice at all — sometimes there
just isn’t any, just try what sucks the least and hope for the best —
but I’m listening. You can talk to me about anything you want; your
fears and apprehensions, the things you’re afraid to acknowledge let
alone say out loud. They probably won’t go away but maybe they’ll get
smaller and a little easier to deal with, and that’s still something.
I’m here for you when you’re giving up, when you’re exhausted. I’m
here for you when you’ve got no more left. When you’re overwhelmed by
the bleak truth and vast helplessness of it all, the ache, the
emptiness; I’ll hold your hair back when your sadness makes you sick,
hold your chattering bones when you sob in my arms like a hysterical
child. I’ll listen to your words or your silence, whichever you give me.
I’m here for you when there’s nothing left to say.
I’m here for you, put it on my shoulders. I’m here for you when your
heart is squeezed dry, dehydrated and dark like shriveled weeds. When
you open your mouth to speak and no sound comes out because language
can’t articulate the white noise in your head, can’t wrap descriptors
around its frequency, I hear you. Pour your tears into me, wet my shirt
sleeves and dry your eyes with my hair.
Genuine friendship is a rare thing and that’s why I want to tell you
I’m here for you. And when I say I’m here for you, it’s because I need
you too — your existence makes me lighter; your presence helps tease out
the mess of the world. Is that weird? Are people allowed to feel that
way about other people anymore? There are people all over the place,
we’re always stuck in this incredible anthill, but when we find the one
person we can actually trust and let our guard down with we cleave to
them like dust to sweat. And we’re not trained to feel this way. We’re
supposed to be so evolved, so independent and self-serving, that
sometimes we forget what it’s like — and that it’s okay — to need
someone to love us, take care of us, take on our emotional weight.
I’m here for you because I am that person, and because you are that person for me
