Maddie saved my life that night, in a lot of different ways.
The phone was still ringing after I dialled the last digit of her number when I realised that it was the first time I had ever called her number. Her birthday invitation was the first time she had ever called mine.
After so long it was weird that it was the first time either of those things had happened.
The phone rang for a little while, and then was finally answered, and it was Maddie’s voice on the line.
As soon as I heard it I burst into tears.
“Andrew?”, she asked.
I blubbered yes between sniffles and tears, and said I needed to talk to someone. Somehow I got out that I hadn’t even chosen to call her, but that it just happened instinctively.
“I’m here for you honey,” she said reassuringly.
That was all I needed to hear. I took a few moments to get my wits about me, and then we started to talk about what had happened that day.
To her credit, Maddie never criticised Shannon’s actions – she was just a voice of reason. She agreed with my own thoughts that I might have left things too long, but that it was not an excuse for chopping me down so brutally.
I think we talked for nearly two hours.
She’s always had a way of lifting the people around her, yet she is sometimes so critical of herself and how she is as a person. Perhaps I am biased, but that has never made any sense to me – she’s even said it to me quite recently that she can be really cruel to people sometimes.
Nope. I cannot accept that.
On this horrendous Monday night, she was my saviour. I didn’t ask anything of her except to let me talk to her about how I was feeling about Shannon and what had just happened.
She just sat on the other end of the phone and listened. To every last dribbling messy broken-hearted thought I had. She spoke when she needed to, and reassured me when I needed it.
On a night I could have plummeted to rock bottom and dropped into a dark place, not only did she stop that from happening, but I actually felt better by the time we hung up.
“I’ll call you in a week or so to see how you’re doing,” she said.
“In the meantime, go and do things for yourself. Buy yourself something nice. Get drunk.”
“You’ll be fine and I’ll be here when you need me,” were her final thoughts.
That night I finally really understood her. On some level, I knew she loved me.
Romantic love is great, but when someone really loves you, you can feel it in the simplest of moments. This was a complicated night, but “I’ll be here when you need me” was the simple thing I needed to hear.
That night, she was my hero.