What if the last time you did something was truly the LAST time?

I think back to the last time I hung up the phone on you.  Tears streamed from my eyes.  You must have had the same from what I recall of the quiver in your voice.  And I sat there stunned for quite some time.  It didn't seem real.  It still doesn't.

Years later I find myself sitting in a support group discussing the very things you always told me were there. I couldn't see them then.  I do now.

I wonder if I had listened to you all those years ago and sought help for my panics (and my tears and my frustrations and my anger and so many other things) what would be different now. 

Would I be happier? 
Would I be more successful?
Would I still have a best friend who understood me better than I do?

Of everything, that last one seems to be the hardest loss of all to take.  For a the better part of the time since we last spoke I've been searching for that sort of connection.  The ability to trust someone implicitly and to know that no matter how hard something is to hear, if it's being said it needed to be said.

But here I am years later, without that. 

I am timid.
I am hopeful.
I am climing up.

A stone's throw away from happiness.
Pity I never learned to skip those stones.

Be glad you aren't easily replaced. 

I am.