You Didn’t Save My Life

It feels like that term gets thrown around so easily. Almost as easily as the words “love” and “hate”. They’re strong words and people just put them out there like they mean nothing. Like they’re some kind of joke.

“You saved my life.”

No. No, I didn’t. No one did. No other person on this planet saved your life. You did. Just like I saved my own. I know what it’s like to feel like there’s another person there that means the world. That saved your life. I know what it’s like to feel like there’s someone that saved me. It sounds so harsh when I say that no, no one saved your life. It sounds so cold-hearted. So… negative. It sounds like I’m saying that your life wasn’t saved.

Your life was saved. My life was saved. Not by another human. Not by a god, not by an animal, not by a creature, not by anything other than myself. I saved my own life, and you saved your own life. You’re the one that put the blade down. You’re the one that decided not to swallow the bottle of pills. You’re the one that said, “No. I’m still here. I’m still fighting.” You’re the one that kept going, and you’re the one that fought through it. You are the fighter. You are the one that pushed and you are the one that won. You are the one that made it through this.

Don’t give your credit to someone else. Don’t give away the fact that you’re a fighter, you’re a lover, you’re a winner, you’re a fucking boss. You fucking destroyed your demons and pushed your way through it, and you’re still here. Don’t let someone else have that. Don’t just hand that to someone else. Embrace what the fuck you’ve just done. Embrace the fact that you’re a fucking badass and you just demolished that demon and you’re going to fucking demolish more.

You made it. Why would you want to look at someone else and say, “You saved my life.” They didn’t save it. They didn’t lie in that hospital bed and decide to come back. They didn’t come back when things were almost over. They didn’t do that for you. You fucking did it. And you deserve to tell people that story. You deserve to tell people that you tried, you realized, and then you fought. You fucking fought to come back and you are the reason that you’re still here. Not a musician that you’ve never met. Not an actor, a celebrity, not someone that you see on TV, not your best friend.

They didn’t fight. They didn’t face your demons, they didn’t push against the demons to almost lose, to stay in this world and fight some more. They may have been a great influence. They may have spoken words that you needed or wanted to hear at the time. They may have said things, they may have done things, they may have given reason to bring a smile to your face when you thought that it was never going to happen again, but they didn’t save your life.

They didn’t save my life. I did. I’ve struggled with depression for years. I’ve struggled, I’ve fought, fought, fought some more to the point that I’ve been exhausted. I’ve almost given up both years ago and recently. I’ve put myself in situations where I feel that it’s incredible that I didn’t just give up. I know that I did those to myself, though. At the end of the day though?

You didn’t save my life. I did.