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How do you “be there” for someone you love that is going through something unimaginable? There isn’t anything you can do to make it easier, there isn’t anything you can do to ease thatpain, all you can do is listen and pray. It doesn’t feel like enough. It feels like a cop out; a way to remove yourself from the situation. I feel guilty for the relationship that we’ve builtand the relationship that isn’t like ours that is about to go away. I feel like that person in some way resents me for the love and the relationship that we share. When that person is faced with an unimaginable situation and a decision that no one should ever make, I feel guilty. Guilty that we are close, that we love each other, that we have an amazing relationship; knowing that I may be the reason the other relationship didn’t flourish. The reason the other person doesn’t want to talk to me about it. I certainly don’t have any answers to help or to alleviate the pain, but I want to be there for that person. I just don’t really know how. I’m not sure how to reach out at this point. I’ve always been the one with the answers. The one who can make situations better by listening and providing an ear and life experience. I have no experience with this situation; no way to make it better. I have nothing but a sense of despair, of helplessness. A sense of not being in control. I still struggle with anxiety when things are out of control. I have a desperate sense to be with this person, to take away the hurt and the pain, but not able to do so. What if this person resents me now? How do I come back from that? What do I do to make that turn back to love and not resentment? Am I completely overthinking things again? Is my presence just a reminder that I’m not the other person? That I’ve taken that other person’s place not by choice, but by accident? Do I love too big? Do I expect too much out of other people? How do I comfort and love and be in the moment of pain with this loved one when I can’t directly correlate with the pain, but can empathize to the degree of feeling what they are feeling? I’m not sure how to do that, but I do know that I want to be the person that they turn too. The person that can lend the shoulder, to use my position of older and wiser to comfort them. To lend my strength when they have none. To be able to carry the burden in its entirety as they adjust and make decisions that no one wants to make. I don’t know how to do that, though. Which leads me back to my original statement….. can listening and praying be enough to help someone you love? Is it enough to let them know you are there when they are ready to let you help with the burden that weighs them down? Is love enough?