The Friend I Refuse to Lose

“If you stare at the void long enough, the void stares back.”

There are some sentences that stay with you.

You read them once, and something inside you recognises them before your mind has even had time to explain why.

That sentence has been sitting with me lately.

Perhaps because I have begun to understand that there are moments in life when the darkness is not simply something we walk through.

Sometimes we stare into it.

Sometimes we stand at the edge of something we cannot fully explain and look down into a place that seems to have no bottom.

And sometimes, if we stare long enough, the darkness seems to look back.

The darkness in his own twisted way is very enticing.

I have been thinking about this because someone I love is standing somewhere near that edge.

My best friend.

Forty years of friendship.

Forty years.

That is a long time to know another human being.

Long enough to have watched each other become different people.

Long enough to remember versions of each other that nobody else remembers.

Long enough to know the stupid stories.

The embarrassing ones.

The funny ones.

The conversations that ended in tears and silence.

The moments we thought would never matter that somehow became the stories we still tell decades later.

Forty years of birthdays.

Forty years of conversations.

Forty years of growing up.

Forty years of life happening around us while, somehow, the friendship remained.

And now I find myself sitting with the knowledge that my friend has been having thoughts about not wanting to be here anymore.

There is something about hearing that from someone you have known for forty years that changes the way you hear the word suicide.

It stops being a statistic.

It stops being something you read about.

It stops being something that happens somewhere else, to someone else, in someone else's family.

Suddenly it has a voice.

A face.

A history.

A childhood.

A smile.

A laugh you recognise immediately.

It belongs to someone who has sat beside you.

Someone who knows things about you that almost nobody else knows.

Someone whose life has been intertwined with yours for longer than either of you probably realised.

And suddenly the thought of losing them is not an abstract fear.

It is personal.

Painfully personal.

I don't know exactly what to say about something like this.

I don't think anyone really does.

There are no perfect words when someone you love is hurting this deeply.

You want to say something profound.

Something powerful enough to pull them back from whatever darkness they are looking into.

But sometimes profound words are not what someone needs.

Sometimes they need someone who will simply stay.

Someone who will sit beside them.

Someone who doesn't become frightened by their honesty.

Someone who doesn't immediately try to fix them.

Someone who can hear, “I don't know if I want to keep doing this,” without responding with panic or judgement.

Someone who can say,

“Okay. Then let's sit here for a while.”

I think there is tremendous power in staying.

We live in a culture obsessed with solutions.

Everything has to be fixed.

Everything has to be explained.

Everything has to become a lesson.

But sometimes a person doesn't need a lesson.

They need another human being.

They need to know that their pain has been witnessed.

That someone knows.

That someone cares.

That someone isn't going anywhere simply because the conversation has become uncomfortable.

I have been thinking about our forty years.

And the strange thing about friendship is that you don't realise how much history you have accumulated until something threatens to interrupt it.

You don't think about the thousands of ordinary moments.

You don't count them.

You don't keep a spreadsheet of conversations.

You don't catalogue every laugh.

You don't write down every time you showed up for one another.

Life simply happens.

One ordinary day after another.

And somewhere along the way, those ordinary days become a life.

A shared history.

A friendship.

A story.

I can remember things about my friend that probably seem completely insignificant to anyone else.

Things that wouldn't make sense if I tried explaining why they matter.

A particular expression.

A soul wound that never seems to heal.

A stupid joke.

A conversation from years ago.

The way we could laugh about something that nobody else would have found funny.

Those things are part of what makes a person irreplaceable.

Because people aren't simply collections of achievements.

They are memories.

Relationships.

Stories.

The people who knew them when they were young.

The people who saw them before adulthood became complicated.

The people who remember who they were before life became heavy.

And perhaps that is one of the reasons this has affected me so deeply.

I know there is so much more to my friend than the darkness currently speaking to them.

There is a whole history sitting behind the pain.

There are forty years of evidence that this person is more than this moment.

And I wish I could somehow place all forty years in front of them and say,

Look.

Look at everything you have lived.

Look at everyone who knows you.

Look at the people who would feel the shape of your absence.

Look at the memories that only exist because you were here.

Look at the people whose lives are different because you were part of them.

Look at the younger version of yourself who somehow made it this far.

Look at everything you have already survived.

Please don't let the darkest moment become the final sentence.

Because darkness has a way of narrowing our vision.

It convinces us that what we are feeling now is what we will always feel.

That today's pain is tomorrow's reality.

That because we cannot see a way forward, there must not be one.

But not being able to see the road does not mean the road has disappeared.

Sometimes it simply means we are standing somewhere too dark to see very far ahead.

And this is where I think friendship matters.

Because sometimes when someone cannot see the future, another person can temporarily carry the hope for them.

Not forever.

Just for today.

Sometimes hope is too heavy to carry alone.

So let me carry some of it for you.

You don't have to believe everything will be okay today.

You don't have to understand what happens next.

You don't have to solve your entire life tonight.

You don't even have to feel hopeful.

Just stay.

Let tomorrow have a chance to arrive.

That is not a small thing.

It is enormous.

There have been moments in my own life when I have looked backwards and realised that the thing I thought would destroy me became something I eventually survived.

I know what it is like to have a chapter feel endless while you're living inside it.

I know what it is like to believe that the pain you're experiencing has become too deeply woven into who you are to ever leave.

And yet here I am.

Still here.

Still writing.

Still believing.

Still discovering that life can surprise us.

That is one of the things I want my friend to know.

You don't have to know how the story ends to keep turning the page.

Tomorrow is always a new chapter.

There is another thing I have been thinking about.

The person experiencing suicidal thoughts is not necessarily the person who wants their life to end.

Sometimes they desperately want the pain to end.

Those are not always the same thing.

And I think that distinction matters.

Because when someone is exhausted beyond words, when their mind has become a place they cannot escape from, when every thought seems to lead back to the same darkness, death can begin to appear like an exit.

But an exit from pain does not have to mean an exit from life.

Sometimes what needs to die is not the person.

Sometimes it is the unbearable pressure.

The isolation.

The shame.

The belief that they have to carry everything alone.

The idea that asking for help means weakness.

The lie that everybody else would be better off without them.

That last one is particularly cruel.

Because depression and despair can become incredibly convincing.

They can make a person believe their absence would be a kindness.

It wouldn't.

Their absence would leave a hole.

A real one.

A whole that deep that it would effect the generations of the very people that are standing close to them.

Not because they have to earn their right to exist through what they do for other people.

But because human beings are connected.

Because love creates bonds.

Because forty years of friendship cannot simply disappear without leaving something behind.

I don't want my friend to feel guilty for struggling.

I don't want them to feel responsible for my emotions.

I don't want to turn their pain into a burden they have to carry for me.

That isn't love.

Love doesn't say,

“You have to stay alive because I couldn't cope without you.”

Love says,

“You are worth staying for, even when you cannot currently see your own worth.”

There is a difference.

A profound one.

I don't want to manipulate my friend into staying.

I want to remind them that there are still things worth discovering.

There are still mornings that haven't happened.

Conversations that haven't been spoken.

Places they haven't seen.

People they haven't met.

Laughter they haven't laughed yet.

There are ordinary Tuesdays waiting.

And I have come to believe that ordinary Tuesdays are wildly underrated.

Sometimes we think life has to become extraordinary before it becomes worth living.

It doesn't.

Sometimes the miracle is simply waking up.

Making coffee.

Going somewhere.

Having an ordinary conversation.

Laughing at something completely stupid.

Getting annoyed about something insignificant.

Watching the sunset.

Receiving a message from someone you haven't heard from in years.

Life doesn't always announce its reasons for continuing.

Sometimes they are hidden inside ordinary things.

I think about Jesus when I think about people standing in darkness.

One of the things I love about the Gospels is that Jesus never seemed frightened by broken people.

He moved toward them.

He didn't stand at a safe distance and shout instructions.

He entered their world.

He sat with people.

He listened.

He touched people others wouldn't touch.

He stayed near suffering.

Jesus wept.

And perhaps that is something I am learning through this.

I don't have to have the perfect answer for my friend.

I don't have to become their therapist.

I don't have to become their saviour.

Jesus already occupies that place.

I can simply be their friend.

A friend who stays.

A friend who listens.

A friend who notices when something isn't right.

A friend who asks the uncomfortable question.

A friend who says,

“Are you safe?”

Sometimes love looks incredibly ordinary.

A phone call.

A message.

A coffee.

Sitting together.

Checking in tomorrow.

Checking in again the next day.

Making sure someone doesn't disappear into isolation.

There is nothing glamorous about that.

But perhaps love was never supposed to be glamorous.

Perhaps love is supposed to be faithful.

I keep thinking about the verse I shared with my friend from Paul's letter.

“We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed.”

— 2 Corinthians 4:8–9 (ESV)

I love the honesty of Paul.

He doesn't pretend that faith means never being afflicted.

He doesn't say believers never become confused.

He doesn't say they are never struck down.

He says something much more honest.

Not crushed.

Not driven to despair.

Not forsaken.

Not destroyed.

There is a difference between being struck down and being finished.

My friend may feel struck down right now.

But struck down is not the same as destroyed.

And perhaps for now, if they cannot believe that for themselves, I can believe it for them.

I can hold that hope.

I can keep showing up.

I can remind them.

I can sit in the darkness without becoming part of it.

I can pray and believe Jesus will move.

That last part matters.

Because I have realised something about love.

You can enter someone's darkness without moving in.

You can sit beside someone who is hurting without allowing their pain to convince you that there is no hope.

You can acknowledge how terrible the night feels without believing the night will last forever.

And maybe that is what friendship is sometimes.

Not dragging someone into the light by force.

Just sitting beside them long enough that they remember the light exists.

Forty years gives you a strange kind of responsibility.

Not responsibility for another person's life.

That belongs to them and to God.

But responsibility to love well.

To notice.

To care.

To speak.

To stay connected.

To refuse the comfortable lie that everything is fine simply because someone says it is.

I think about all the years behind us.

The younger versions of us would never have imagined this conversation.

We were just kids.

We had no idea what life would become.

We didn't know about grief.

Or loss.

Or disappointment.

Or addiction.

Or illness.

Or the complicated ways adulthood would test everything we thought we knew.

We simply lived.

And somehow forty years passed.

That is what makes this hurt so much.

Because when you have known someone that long, you don't just love the person standing in front of you.

You love every version of them you've ever known.

The child.

The teenager.

The young adult.

The person who made mistakes.

The person who celebrated victories.

The person who fell down.

The person who got back up.

The person who became tired.

The person who kept going.

The person on the other end of the telephone line and the only sound we hear is weeping.

All of them.

And I want my friend to know something.

None of those versions of you have disappeared.

They are still part of the story.

And the story isn't finished.

I don't know what the next forty years will look like.

I don't even know what the next forty days will look like.

But I know this.

I am grateful for every year we've already had.

And I am not ready for the story to end.

Not because I need my friend to make me happy.

Not because I am afraid of grief.

But because I genuinely believe there is more life still waiting.

More moments.

More laughter.

More ordinary days.

More victories.

More conversations.

More memories that neither of us has any idea are coming.

And maybe that is what I want to say most.

Not some grand theological argument.

Not a motivational speech.

Just this:

Please stay.

Stay long enough for the darkness to change.

Stay long enough for the thoughts to pass.

Stay long enough to let somebody help carry what has become too heavy.

Stay long enough to discover that the thing you thought was the end was actually a place where the story changed direction.

Stay.

You don't have to promise me forty more years.

You don't even have to promise me forever.

Just don't make a permanent decision in the middle of a temporary darkness.

Let tomorrow come.

Let someone sit beside you.

Let God meet you there.

Let us carry some of the weight.

And if you cannot see hope tonight, borrow mine.

I'll lend it to you.

As many times as you need it.

Because after forty years, that's what friends do.

We carry each other when one of us is too tired to carry ourselves.

And perhaps that is what I have been learning through all of this.

Love isn't always the person who knows exactly what to say.

Sometimes love is the person who refuses to leave the room.

Sometimes love is the person who notices the silence.

Sometimes love is the person who asks the question everyone else is afraid to ask.

Sometimes love is simply saying,

“I'm here.”

And meaning it.

So to my friend, if you ever read this:

I hope you know that you are not the darkness you are currently fighting.

You are not the thoughts that frighten you.

You are not the worst thing that has happened to you.

You are not your exhaustion.

You are not your failures.

You are not your pain.

You are not your grief.

You are my friend.

You have been my friend for forty years.

And there are still pages of this story I want to read with you.

So let's keep turning them.

One page.

One day.

One morning.

One breath at a time.

And if the void stares back again, don't stare at it alone.

Call someone.

Tell someone.

Let someone sit beside you.

Because darkness becomes much more powerful when we face it alone.

And sometimes the first crack in the darkness is simply another human voice saying:

“I'm still here.”

---

About the Author

Dylan Verdun Sullivan is the founder of Refined by Fire Press and an Australian author indexed in the National Library of Australia. As a Level 7 Local Guide with over 6.1 million views on Google Maps, he documents the intersection of faith, recovery, and the light found in ordinary places.

• Read the Memoir: Kissed by Death on Amazon
• Explore the Journey: Follow Dylan on Google Maps
• Connect on Instagram: @porkysparadise