My Friend Mike

I wrote previously about my “David voice” that is the auditory manifestation of my friend David, who wants me to learn to be kinder to myself and asks me sometimes to not make myself hurt more and maybe even not finish (or start) a race if I’m not able to do more than a run-limp. Well, Mike is a different friend,  but I hope you also have a Mike in your life.

Let me tell you about him. In November of 2021, just ten months after starting a job in the financial world, I was facing down the CFP exam (Certified Financial Professional) after 3 months of cramming in all the course-work virtually. I had not passed a single one of the (many) practice exams I’d taken. I hadn’t even come close. My high score was a 52% and the estimate is that you have to get about 70% to pass (they won’t tell you exactly—that’s a secret).

“It seems stupid for me to take this test when I’m obviously going to fail it. I should postpone for three months and just pay the fee,” I texted to Mike.

“Mette, have you ever failed a test in your life?” Mike asked.

I realized as I sorted through all my memories that I had not, in fact, ever failed an academic test in my life. I am really, really good at taking tests. For whatever reason, I’ve always found test taking to be my happy spot. I usually do better at tests when I’m in actual test taking conditions than I do in real life.

So I went in and took the test. And I passed it. (I have no idea what my score was because that, too, is secret. It might have been by the skin of my teeth but it hardly matters now.)

People around me may roll their eyes and think, Duh, Mette, of course you passed that test. But it was not obvious to me in the circumstances that I would. I was pretty fragile and in the midst of divorce and still in a kind of shock and not at all comfortable in my new financial job.

The thing you have to understand is that anyone else who told me what Mike told me would probably have been dismissed. Sorry to other friends, but actually you probably did tell me what Mike told me, but I only believed him.

Why did I believe him?

Because Mike is kind of an important person. He’s in academia and he knows a lot of smart people. He has the job that I once imagined I wanted to have. But even so, he spends time on a regular basis checking in on me. He has texted me at a number of really bad times and made sure I’m OK. I’m sure I’m not the only person he cares about. But he makes me feel like I’m the one that matters most in the moment. I don’t think I have that kind of gift, but I’m a little in awe of it.

Sometimes when I tell Mike that I don’t want to be alive, that I’m so miserable and scared and so damned tired of how hard this life on the other side of my old world is, he says simply, “I would really, really miss you if you were gone.” And he makes me believe it.

Sometimes I tell him about the people who clearly hate me and who tell me about how awful of a person I am. And Mike says, “you are the most amazing person I know and you are brilliant and capable and resilient to boot.”

He doesn’t tell me that I owe it to anyone to stay alive. He doesn’t scold me about having suicidal thoughts. He doesn’t insist that I need to call a hotline, or a therapist, or go to the doctor for new meds (though he admits he takes meds himself). He just makes me believe that even if he’s exaggerating slightly about my awesomeness, he actually believes it. And that makes me think that he must be a little right, because he is not a stupid person.

Sometimes he texts me, “Hey, how are you?” and I know there’s a meme going around that says that you shouldn’t ask a depressed person this because sometimes they’re too depressed to respond. And I guess I’m not that kind of depressed person because no matter how depressed I am, I apparently always have the energy to text back.

“Meh.”

“It’s actually a good week.”

“I wish I was dead.”

Any of these are responses I might offer him. And he says something to get me to text a little more, and it doesn’t fix anything, but sometimes it makes me feel a tiny bit better to put it down in words. It makes it a little smaller to share it. Not always. But enough times that I think there’s a little magic in Mike.