Who am I? Part 4

Date: 22/4/2011
I'm Mike's. I don't put a noun there because I can honestly and without too much discomfort say that I don't know what I am to him, except that I'm someone in his life. I am there for him to talk to, I take the initiative and start a conversation with him. I'm working on not being so trapped in my sympathy for him, in that he told me it didn't help him and he doesn't believe it helps me so he doesn't want to participate in that. He said last night that he thinks I'm doing better since his hospitalisation because I have had to rely on myself and not on him as much. I'm inclined to agree, my nerves are better and I'm coping me with ups and downs. But he's still someone I can turn to in times of stress and I am someone he can talk to and who will keep him company and try to help him. I feel like we're working together or in parallel to eachother to get our problems sorted. He's let me realise a lot about myself and has been very important/vital support to me when I couldn't cope but now I feel he's withdrawing. It's out of necessity because he has his won stuff that he has to be himself for, that professionals can guide him and I can support him but that he must work on. In a away, I am withdrawing too, because I know how important that is to him, and also because I'm gradually coming to acknowledge how little that was helping my own life. I remember when we were looking in the "Take Care" book in the section on complicated grief, and he pointed to the 'throwing yourself into helping others' as a sign that reminded him of me. He's right, I'm not sure, or at least, then I didn't know, what I was grieving for, but now I am getting an idea. I think I mourn the loss of my old ideas about who I was and where I was going, what I used to want.