Dear Jon

One of the lucky ones.

It has been years since this rendezvous started. Many sleepless nights, many exhausting hours, and more worry than one thinks is humanly possible. It's another sleepless night and some sort of revelation has come to my mind. 

Why? At 2 in the morning, must my mind arise from the quiet to bombard me with thoughts, feelings; memories?

I guess something has struck a chord and I'm just now realizing it. 

She'd never seen you cry until it came back. I wonder how few do? Why me? 

I sometimes long for the little things you have in your relationships with other friends, family, your fiancé. So many get to see a different side of you, a side I love and miss. But then tonight I realized how blessed I am for the relationship we have. I don't always get to see you at your sickest, not always at your happiest, or for that matter, when your life is just plain normal... but I have been there with you in some of your darkest moments, and there is nothing that can replace that bond. I told you my soul purpose was to provide comic relief, and I'm seeing now there's so much more to it. That's not it at all. That's just it when the rest of the world watches.

You see, we are different, you and I. We live and breathe in our emotions. There is something so amazing about some of the moments we've had. They are different from any other that I've had with anyone else. The fear that we have lived and felt together is so utterly incomprehensible that I truly believe you and I are the only ones that get it. It's not that others don't feel it, but there's something to be said for the moments of silence where we have been in complete darkness, in body, mind, spirit, and literally. 

Our most beautiful moments have been your darkest and I am so blessed. I am so happy, in a weird way, that you choose me. And I know you know. It's not weird, we're not sick and twisted people who choose to suffer. I just feel you. I feel your heart. I feel your emotions. There is no one on this planet that I have been able to say nothing to, simply look at in utter quiet, hold onto, and just feel.  It's amazing really, that we can say nothing, and just cry together.

The moments replay over and over in my head. And they're ours. How amazing is that? I am just so lucky to have a friendship like ours. I hate to even use the word friendship because I'm not even sure it remotely describes whatever this thing is.

I have four favourites that I think about all the time. And I never share them with anyone. Because I almost feel like it's unfair to anyone that has never had the chance to go through something like this with someone because it changed something in us. So while I hate your cancer every plaguing day, I love what it's done to me. To us. And it sounds selfish. So, so selfish. But you... You changed my life.

My favourite moment ever, in my entire life, was in your first year of being diagnosed. You were so sick. It was a bad day for you. You barely slept while I somehow drifted in and out of sleep beside you all night. You were having headaches again. You were stressed, worried, and in pain. You laid there next to me and your breath was so heavy. At one point in the night you had managed to fall asleep. I was terrified. You were sweating. The bed sheets were soaked with your sweat, you whimpered in your sleep, you cried when you woke. And my heart; oh my heart. I wanted to ruin the world for that moment. And I could have. I wanted to scream out in complete anger that this was all happening. I wanted to scream in frustration, in pain, in disbelief. I hated every second of that night. It felt like it would never end, that it couldn't possibly feel any worse than that. The fear I felt for you was indescribable. And you know it. You felt it too. And somehow that horrible night finally ended and we were laying there in the morning, defeated. Exhausted. Crying. They had told you to get your affairs in order and that's all that repeated through my mind. And I wasn't ready. You weren't ready. And we were angry.  It felt like my heart was on fire and someone was trying to stomp it out.  I can't even imagine what you were feeling. 

So I laid there beside you that morning, after one of the worst nights of my life. And what you did... You laid there with me, made me close my eyes, lay face down, and you put your fingertips on my shoulders. You spoke in the calmest tone, so quiet. And you made me promise not to laugh...

And I didn't. I laid there quietly, somehow calmly as furious as I was. And you started to move your fingers. You moved them all over my entire body in the gentlest of ways, while you painted a picture. In my body there was a stress I was told to imagine as a ball, rolling through my body, getting bigger and bigger as it collected every ounce of what I felt. Every ounce of stress, every worry, every pain, everything. It rolled through my body and continued to get bigger, while you continued to paint more imagery. When I was ready I was going to let all of that go. When I was ready, that enormous ball of emotions was to be imagined leaving my body. You pulled your fingertips towards my feet and when you did, you pulled all of that out of me. 

You.

You, lying in a pool of sweat, with a headache that could cripple the strongest of men, pulled away everything. 

It was the most beautiful moment of my life. Out broken selves somehow both felt better and we were able to move on with our day and continue what's now been a 5 year battle. How amazing you are.

And I know at this time we were so confused. Because I think you and I share moments so deep, so passionately painful like this one, that we can't understand them. We don't quite know what it is really. We thought it might be love. But it's a different love. Because the relationship we have isn't typical. You love your fiancé. There is nothing I could compare to with what she offers you. She has your heart in a way no one else ever will. It's beautiful to see. Your love with her is more. It's more
balanced, more perfect, more full. It's true love. What we have, I still don't really know what it is. It's not a friendship, it's not a relationship, it's never been sexual. It's just us. And I am beyond thankful for what we have.  I love what we feel. I love our darkest moments. I love that you allow me to be a part of your darkest times. 

This is what I'm here for. Outside of your usual comic relief, when it's just the two of us, I am here to be broken with you. I'm here, standing in the dark with you until you're able to be in the light again. I'm not here for strength. I'm here for when you need weakness.

I am one of the lucky ones.