I get really scared

When someone I love hurts I don't know what to do.
I freeze up.
I choke on my words and they taste like bile in my mouth.
How am I supposed to help you?
What can I do to make you see what I see in you?
Is this how it feels?
The panicky feeling of helplessness that creeps into your chest as you watch them all drown; is this what it feels like to love someone?
When you are standing on the sidelines of someone else's story banging on the glass that separates you from them, how are you supposed to feel?
How are you supposed to reach out to them?
If you are sinking down; being eaten alive by quicksand, how are you to pull someone else out of their depths?
How do you make someone feel as if they are everything and the only thing that matters in your world when they would rather die than see who they are?
I feel as though these questions have occurred to those around me and I am not alone in my dread.
I understand now what it feels like.
Standing in front of someone with a medical licence the words suicide attempt tumbling out of their mouths.
You stare at their lips and suddenly forget how to breathe as the heart monitor beeps away in the room behind you.
The drip of the IV in your loved ones arm is haunting.
But its worse.
So much worse.
When you are sitting on the other side of a computer monitor and you read the words: Everything is wrong.
When you see someone you adore slipping into a place you know all too well and you are desperately trying to save them but you are unable to;
The feeling can best be described as terrifying.
They have fallen off of a very high cliff and you are keeping them up by the tips of your fingers.
They keep telling you to let go but you won't.
Not until your shoulder dislocates and cuts off the blood flow to your hand.
You are crying and begging them to just let you save them and they just smile up at you with a sad look in their eyes.
As if your feeble attempts to save their life is only reminding them of why they stepped off the edge in the first place.
You would die for them a million times over to see them happy but nothing you do is making them want to keep fighting.
There are people and events in their life that act as long bony hands.
Those hands rise out from the screaming sea below and grab a hold of your precious person.
The pain in their life pull against you and no matter how hard you fight to keep them with you, you know you are fighting a losing battle.
How is it so possible to love someone so much?
This love fills you up and breaks you open and leaves you bleeding on the bathroom floor.
You are crying and screaming and no one will come to save you because you cannot save them.
And you are both dying.
Slowly you are rotting away in your meat carcasses and one day someone will find you nothing but a pile of putrefied flesh.
It hurts.
When a piece of you; a person who holds your world in their hand, is withering away right in front of your eyes and you are powerless there are no words.
Nothing will make this better.
You are going to watch them wilt until you have shed your very last petal.