John's one of the people where I can say that, if he had not been around, I would not be here today.

John and I met when we were teenagers. He dated a friend of mine, and it did not work out, but that was how he and I met. John is two years older than me, and I think he only went to church because his mom thought it was a good idea, and then at some point because he had friends there. John's family life was kind of rough, and a

I was pretty darn weird then. I am weird now, too, but it is not the same kind of weird. Back then, I was socially awkward, and very high energy, and I did not know how to properly interact with people. Now, I know how to behave; I just don't care. But for some reason, John and I became friends. Good friends, even best friends.

We would stay up late every night, talking on the phone for two or three hours. I was dealing with depression and a lot of self-hatred, and for some crazy reason, John loved me. I always refused to be his girlfriend, but that never stopped how much he loved me. Sometimes he was sure that I was the girl meant for him, and other times he saw me as a little sister, but he was always caring and protective, and had for some reason given his heart to me.

I cared about John, and about my friends, and during the day I wanted to be the best friend to everyone. At night, I was alone and couldn't be anyone's friend, so I had to face myself, and I hated myself. I looked in the mirror, and saw Chairman Mao in the form of a skinny American teenager. I was sure that I had to be destroyed, but I did not want to die. I was craving a reason to live. John was the one who talked me down from that destruction on a night when it came very close.

Later, I had just about shattered. John was the one who collected all the pieces, and carefully built them back together, just because he loved me and he thought the world would be somehow less if I was not in it. The cool thing about John was that he was brilliant, and knew so much of how the human mind worked, and how people work, and he definitely could have put the pieces back together in such a way that I would have been dependent on him. In fact, it would have been easier than the way he did it. But he chose to put them back together in the strongest way he could, with what he had to work with.

And John and I never dated. There were a lot of people who assumed that we were a couple, but it never happened. And I think he knew at the time, when he was rebuilding his shattered friend, that he had a chance to make it happen, and if he didn't take it, it might never happen. And he still did what he knew was right.

A lot of people didn't see that about John. He dressed weird, he hung out with church people without really believing what they did, and he was always doing some random stunt that would probably get him in a lot of trouble. If you got to know him, you realized that he was incredibly smart for a seventeen-year-old, but you wouldn't get the heart of John from talking to him. You'd have to watch him to see this kid who would absolutely sacrifice himself for what he believed was important, and who'd find something of value in a metaphorical trash heap and take care of it.

John told me about once every other month that he would be in my life until I did not need him anymore. I would laugh, and say that he could not make that call, that it was my call about when he could leave. I wanted him to always stay, and always be in my life. It just hit me the other day, when I was walking back across a skyway from work, looking down at the traffic on Broadway, that he had left. It was more than an absence; he read my life, and saw that I was standing again, and shining brighter than I ever had when he knew me, and he touched his cap and bowed out with a smile. I still see him every few months, and we hug and there are smiles, but he did leave, and it was his call.

Because even when it hurts him, John will sacrifice what he thinks needs to go in order to let what needs to be thrive. I doubt that his presence would have held me back in the way that he thinks it would, but he's so good at reading people, and lives, that he knows how to weave events in such a way that only a better weaver can put them back without destroying the design. I am not any kind of weaver - I frolic on the pattern, and he smiles to see it.