Cat Fight In The Kitchen-Wattpad Rant

You Saved Me

I got this amazing letter in the mail the other day and it completely inspired this rant.

We’re gonna talk about the You Saved Me plots today.

Lately that’s become a huge, huge deal—the plot where a troubled boy/girl meets a popular or deep and insightful boy/girl and that completely poetic boy/girl ends up making the depressed/suicidal/abused/at-risk MC see the good in life. They ultimately “save” their life.

And that annoys me. A lot.

It’s actually somewhat of a cliché and I kind of feel the need to be the first one to address this (and I feel like people are going to get a little pissy about it for some reason.)

So, this is the story that started this whole rant.

About a month ago my best friend talked a guy out of committing suicide. And I never knew that’s what happened until I got a letter from that man the other day, thanking me for some things that I really don’t want to get into.

But I’ll tell you what got me the most. It wasn’t the fact that this guy felt the need to thank me for what my best friend did. It’s not even that my best friend managed to talk this guy out of jumping from the roof of his apartment building.

He’s talked people out of suicide before. Three that I know of for sure.

It’s that when I asked my best friend about it, he made a really, really good point.

He doesn’t deserve the credit. So he simply didn’t take any. (Now I'm giving him some, because I love him more than anything in the world in case you hadn't already picked up on that.)

The letter was the only way that I knew what actually happened.

You see, as far as I knew, my best friend had casually gone to the roof of his building to smoke in the middle of the night and ran into some guy up there and they chatted for a few hours and became friends and now they’re drinking buddies.

I didn’t know that the guy had gone up there to jump. I didn’t know that my best friend sat down with him on the edge of the roof, looking down at the street, and they talked from three a.m. until ten in the morning. I didn’t know that the guy decided to walk away from the roof and go back to college. I didn’t know any of that.

My best friend never told me he saved a guy’s life, because to him, that’s not what happened. To him, they met on the roof. They talked. They became friends.

To him, he didn’t save the guys life. He was just there.

The guy made the decision to postpone his jumping in order to talk about his problems. The guy made the decision to share what was bothering him—to actually hear it out loud and process everything he was thinking about. The guy made the decision to step off the ledge, walk back into the building, and pick up his life again. The guy made the decision to go back to school. The guy decided to get his new job.

It was the guy.

It wasn’t my best friend. It was the guy.

And I know from the letter that the guy was influenced by a lot of things that my best friend told him (which was why I got the letter, because some of them were about me), but in the end, my best friend was just there.

It was the guy that saved his own life.

That’s what my best friend told me. He said he hates when people go all crazy for the “so-and-so saved my life”.

Your life can be influenced. Your decisions can be influenced, but ultimately you have to make them for yourself. No one else can choose to live for you.

And my best friend even said that people that brag about “saving” a life just do it for the glory. Because it shouldn’t matter to the rest of the world. It doesn’t need to matter to the world. It needs to matter to one person.

So I just asked him straight up how he did it. How did he matter so much to this one person?

I mean, it’s not every day that you talk someone out of jumping off the roof of a goddamn apartment building (unless you’re him I guess).

His answer was my favorite thing ever. He just said he talked to him like he was any other guy. He didn’t treat him like some mental patient. He just talked to him. Nothing special.

He figured if the guy listened then great. If not, he’d have to wait a few hours, but he’d eventually get his cigarette.

No, he didn’t want the guy to kill himself, but he also didn’t want the guy to be miserable forever.

And I keep thinking about how terrified I would have been in that situation. Seriously. I have no idea what the hell I would do. Probably beg him not to do anything and say the generic “people care” and all of that stuff that’s true, but usually not helpful.

But I can just see my best friend. I can see how calm he was. How he probably said something like “y’know, it’s a lot colder out here than I thought it’d be.” Something so calm. So collected. So normal.

Because I know my best friend. And I know how he treats people. And how he makes you see the best in yourself.

I know how he “saves lives”. He’s not afraid to get his hands dirty. He’s not afraid to say the wrong thing.

He’s not there to be inspirational. He’s not there to get the glory.

He says stupid things. He yells at you. He makes you feel bad and he makes you feel good.

More than anything, he makes you feel real. He shows you that you’re not perfect. You’re weird and screwed up and sometimes hopeless, but that’s okay. Because you’re alive. And that makes all the difference. You can change things.

And I know from the letter that my best friend told the guy something very, very important.

Sometimes you find that no one gives a shit about you. But maybe that’s not the point. Maybe it’s not about no one being there for you. Maybe it’s about you being there for others.

And to me, that’s the most important idea of all.

So let’s think about this next time we tackle the “you saved me” plots. Because after all, we’re the ones that ultimately make the decision to live. We’re the ones strong enough to walk away from suicide.

Others can influence us, but we have to continue down our own roads.

We need to empower these characters in our stories. We need to give them the credit.

Deciding not to kill yourself is a hard, powerful thing.

Let’s stop making it about being saved by someone. Let the supporting characters be there for just that: support. Don’t make them cheesy guys that deliver lines from Shakespeare or chic-flicks.

Don’t make the MCs so dependent.

Make the story honest.

Because honestly, it’s not just about saving a life. It’s about creating a new life.

It’s about being brave and admitting that sometimes things aren’t okay, but that’s okay. Because there’s good in the world and in your life. You just have to find it.