I have recently been talking to someone who has given me increased appreciation for a friend of mine. This new person has been talking about how rare it is to find anyone that you can truly communicate with, where you can talk on a more personal level with. I have been lucky in finding someone like that.

In high school there was this person, lets call them Knife, who was weird in an interesting way. We had this group chat with all the students and teachers of our class. Knife started talking crazy in the group chat. The teachers were telling Knife to stop. Knife responded with how we are being censored and comparing the teacher to Hitler. They were going back and forth in the groupchat. It was so cool! That is what got me interested in finding more about Knife. They were a mix of very reserved, yet direct. During our first school trip that year, Knife was not really engaging much. I was going around asking the guys which girl they thought was the most attractive, taking notes and seeing who got the most points (horrible, I know). There were a couple of clear favourites. I asked Knife and their response, like so many other times was something unique, a name of a girl no one was thinking of. I believe that girl was not on that school trip with us which is why we all forgot about her. I remember the guys thinking about it for a second confused, afterwards one of the guys gave her a (horribly sexualized) nickname, and slowly but surely this new girl was gaining votes. We were getting all converted by Knife's answer.

It is rare to find someone where it never even crosses in their mind to leak personal stuff for social clout. Knife doesn't care. Usually, anything slightly weird I tell anyone is exaggerated and told to others as that extremized version. Not knife though. That option does not seem to register, which is nice.

After some time, I realized Knife was also into programming, which got us talking more. Knife was always a step behind though. Every step I made from kids programming toy to game engine to making a game engine, I would try to convince Knife and over time Knife would realize I was right. We were planning on going to a college for game development and took the entrance exam, and we made the cut (I got one spot higher, never forget). I then made the case that the whole world of software must be more interesting and rewarding than just making games. Talking about simulations, airplane software and all the interesting stuff we could do. Drawing circles representing the world game software vs different kinds of software. Knife agreed and we decided to go to this different school for more general software development skills. There over the 3 or so years, we did pretty much everything together. Every project, every lunch. We were both socially handicapped, not wanting to work with others while being able to program far better than our peers, which made us horrible people to work with. Every group ended up being us two doing everything and the others leaving the group or leaving the college altogether. Knife was somehow worse than me socially. I guess me being around women was like for Knife being around anyone.

I remember our first assignment of our first quarter was making a calculator interface. Not programming it, just placing the buttons correctly in Windows Forms. During that lesson, we not only did that, but we implemented each button, implemented the basic functionalities and were trying to figure out how to implement parsing of arbitrary equations. The teacher came along and she saw our buttons said good job! then we showed her that it works and she got quiet. Afterwards we got to work on whatever we want in that class. Each quarter it was the same story. The teacher would set up a way to simple programming task, we would finish it and add unnecessary amount of extra things and the teacher would suddenly see us as invisible and we got to do what we wanted. It was so much fun learning to program, discussing game engine techniques, making our own engines then merging them together. The fact that there was someone else there is what made me improve my skills instead of stagnate. I had a blast those years, and I remember them as my best years. Not only in retrospect but during, I remember during our walk to lunch, often reminding myself that this is the best! I get to program, progressing academically and have money to buy fast food. What more can you want?

I know for Knife, those years carried more negative weight. We did not often talk about the deeper stuff early on, only later. I remember the trip we went on together to Morocco. Still amazed that we went and did that. Finding out the reason Knife wouldn't wear short sleeves, finding out about past troubles and current issues.

When I found out Knife tried to off themselves, I was worried. Especially considering I was the only person (beside an online friend) who knew about this. Knife barely ate, didnt exercise, didnt go to therapy, did not do any of the things that might have helped. I tried talking and convincing them about the obvious things, about trying therapy, eating something besides fries. Standard self help stuff. Knife agreed with everything logically. Obviously as it is hard to rationally disagree with someone of my intellect 0_0. Knife knew that therapy was 'the right thing' to try but obviously did not want to. Who would blame them, I wouldn't have done it either if I was in their shoes, unless I was forced to. Things seemed to only go downhill. I did not feel that this stupid barely adult version of me was the best help. I felt I had responsibility to do something, it was a tough call. I knew that this may make Knife even more suicidal and probably hate me forever but I decided I would force it. I had Knife meet me in a Macdonalds. When sitting there I told Knife that "Today when your mother comes pick you up, you will tell her about your attempts and wanting to go to therapy or I will. I have just sent her a message telling her that you will have to say something important to her when she picks you up and that she needs to confirm it me that you said it"." I trapped them. It felt horrible seeing Knife putting their face down like that going limp from the situation. I stayed committed. After talking it over for a while, Knife left and told her, the mother sent me a message that seemed minimizing.. I just read it back again. She described it being due a death of a pet, not seeing or wanting to see the depth of the issue. Knife probably minimized it. At least she said that Knife will go the therapy. I fully expected Knife to cut off all ties to me, as it felt to me as one of the biggest betrayal of trust. Luckily Knife didn't, beside them being more reserved about their suicidal thoughts, I think little of our dynamics had changed.

(Very funny that right when writing this Knife's mom send me a message about Knife's birthday gift, first message in 5 years. I am starting to believe in the idea that attention can be picked up.)

I am not sure if what I did helped. Knife tried different therapy and medications over the years. The attempts did not really stop. maybe slow down? I like to think that there were some good moments in between the darkness that was created trough my actions. Not sure. Our physical paths split when we chose different courses. Knife became successful with a programming project (which they made when we should have been working on our college project) which allowed them to retreat from many worldly requirements soon after. Knife is alive, trying to hang in there. I hope that will remain the case, even if that is selfish desire on my part. I am so impressed with all the steps they took to try to improve, especially given the difficulty pushing in their state. We still message each other regularly and Knife is the only person (as far as I know) who is reading these entries. The only one who can identify me. I do not know why I have this implicit trust in Knife. Any other person I would feel that they might become angry one day and use the info they have on me as leverage or something.

There is this new person I am talking to about certain personal struggles. I made some minimal comment about the other kind and their response was 'this makes me want to end this conversation'... Just 1% of 1% of my thoughts is enough for most people to walk away. Not with Knife though. I can be unhinged and somehow Knife does not seem to stop the convo or try to move away from it. It feels weird writing something about a person you known for a long time as words don't adequately capture my memories nor thoughts very well. Not like any of my words make sense anyway. In both content and form my thoughts falls closer on the side of gibberish then legible text. I feel like the ability to communicate with myself, Knife and you Somi is large part what keeps me sane though, especially in the recent struggles. Be ready Somi, as the day of turning inwards might come sooner than we anticipated.