in reply to you.

“I’m a mess. A total mess…” you said.

“Then fix it,” I replied.

***

It isn’t the first time someone said something like that to me. Maybe three or four people had done it before you. Well, not everyone were as articulated as you about telling me what they really felt at that time, but I’m pretty sure that somehow they sent me one or two weird signals of disruptiveness in them.

And I would just get them. Just like that.

Either I’m a sad miserable person that attracts others with equal pain and misery, or I’m just by faith made to fix people. I thought I’m the second kind. Yeah, some kind of dreadfully unfortunate person—that also blessed—with enough strength to carry someone else’s burdens.

I thought it was noble. Accompanying people through the hardest times in their lives. Be the shoulder to cry on. Celebrating their awful madness by saying something like, “Sometimes people just don’t get it. But I totally understand.” Or even crazier, devoting all my effort to make it easier for them with a whisper of, “No, no, no, everything won’t go any worse than this. I promise you,” when they flip off and went totally ballistic.

Trust me some of them were able to do the unimaginable. And that was fine by me, as long as they stay clingy like they always did. Oh, and they were needy to. And that feelings of being needed, isn’t that the most flattering feel of all?

***

Until one day. I remember that day. The morning that I woke up on my bed with one single thought only. A thought of me saying something that pretty much like what they always told me, “I’m a mess. A total mess…” to my own-self.  But then I immediately strangled with another thought. If I were that special ‘second kind’ of people I always thought I am, how could I broke down just like them?

If I were destined to fix people, then who would fix me?

The possibility of me as just ‘a sad miserable person that attracts others with equal pain and misery’ soon creeping my mind. From that very moment I realized, I’m not responsible to fix anyone by any means. I even finally came to my senses that no one could ever fix anyone but their own self.

***

Only you can make you happy, oh
(la la la la la la la la)
Only you can make you happy, oh
(la la la la la la la la)

---Au Revoir Simone

I really wanted to reply it differently. I wish I could let you know. Far deep back inside my head, at some points in that moment, I really thought I'm the one to fix you.