I'm trying o.k?

Phil's pov:

"It makes the world smaller..."

Dan continued to stare at the ceiling with his arms spread out, he looked spaced out as if he could be unconscious. I noticed that he wasn't wearing a long sleeve top. The only other times I had seen his bare arms since this began was when Dan was dying in the bottom of the shower followed by the night of the party when we were both shirtless. The first time there was too much blood for me to see which cuts were old and which were new, the second time I was too focused on kissing Dan and then on how new the cuts on his legs were. As I looked down Dan's arms now I could see that they were all mostly healed so they had to be older than a week and the cuts from his suicide attempt were distinguishable by the stitches.

The ones with stitches were way more aggressive and deep from beginning till end where as his usual ones started deep and got more and more shallow. I traced my finger up his arm but he turned it so that the scars were against the bed and let his head fall to one side so he could see me..

"Don't do that." He continued to drill into me with his stare. "Don't stroke my scars like their something nice to touch. This isn't some magical love story where one person self harms and the other kisses their scars and makes everything in the entire world better. They're not beautiful they're ugly. You can't fucking this Phil." Everything he said was monotone and clear.

"I- I wasn't." Dan rolled his head back to face the ceiling and let out a deep breath.

"What are we going to do Phil?"

"I really don't know anymore."

"Me neither. I don't know how to get better or even if it's possible and I know that I've began to drag you down because there isn't enough happiness in this relationship for you. It's o.k for me because I'm used to misery and this is more happiness than normal for me but it's not for you which means it's not fair."

"You could try therapy or medication or something? Even just look up self harming defense tactics like the rubber band thing-"

"None of those will help. I am trying o.k but-"

"Are you though? Are you actually trying because right now you are drunk out of your mind and you've self-harmed and lied to me about it in the space of a week. You haven't changed anything from before we were even going out. Are you really trying Dan?"

"No."

"Great. Well at least you're admitting it, now we can look into to techniques and everything and I can actually help you-"

"No Phil." He was still starring at the ceiling his words were cold. "I'm not going to try. I have no motivation to try because I don't care. I like the self harm and I like the drinking. That's the difference between real life and oh so magical love stories. There isn't just some life changing moment where we get emotional together and I see the error of my ways and promise to change. There probably won't be a happy ending because I'll either kill myself or die a bitter old man, still hating the world. But I don't care Phil, I couldn't care less because nothing has any value to me and nothing matters."

I sat in silence and my eyes filled with tears. "D- Dan... do I m- matter?"

The tears rolled down my cheek as I awaited his answer and I bit my lip to stop myself from sobbing. I didn't want him to know how close to losing it I was.

"Of course you matter Phil... it's just too late for me to change and I want to hold on to you but I know how cruel that is but none the less I really don't want to lose you. It's just too late."

"It's not too late Dan, if you tried, if you actually put effort into fighting it instead of rejecting everything that could help you then you might get better." I looked into Dan's cold eyes and confirmed to myself everything I didn't want to know. "I'm n- not worth it for you am I? You could change if you t- tried and you kn- now that but you won't because I'm not worth as much to you as your own destruction is. I- I can't believe you. You're just to selfish to l- love me enough to change."