Simple...
The nicest thing anyone ever did for me was just listen, really.

During my last year or two of school I was thoroughly miserable a lot of the time, and I never really felt like I could talk to any of my friends about it. I probably could have, but at the time I didn't think so.

Anyway, I hit year 12 (first year of college/sixth form) and met a couple of new people (our school was the only one in the area that had a 6th form so we had kids from other schools come in). One such person sticks in mind - we'll call him 'Xander. Started off a bit awkard abut eventually I got to know him a little through being paired with him in my German class a lot.

One particualr night I was chatting to him on msn and doing of those 'tell me what you think of me' email quiz things (I was 16 and bored), sent it to him and he replied truthfully. One of his answers really stood out, I think the question was something like 'Describe me in one word' - he wrote 'Lost'.

Now at the time I was considering leaving school and fighting back the urge to relapse (during my GCSE years I self-harmed a lot), and his answer really struck a chord.

What followed was a discussion of why I felt the way I did and whatnot and over a period of time I just unloaded on him everything I'd never told anybody else. We ended up together for a while and it was wonderful.

I'd never trusted anybody that completely before and to be honest I haven't since, and I'd like to say we're still friends but I was an idiot, I hurt him and I lost him.

But 'Xander', if you read this, just... thank you for being the best friend I've ever had.
(TuftyBee should have been working on, Sat 4 Oct 2008, 12:01, Reply)