Roots ; s.mendes

G O O D B Y E

"You know Shawn, do you remember that day when she invited us to her house and then she took me inside her room and like locked you out?"

I nodded.

"Well she told me something, and at the time I didn't really understand but now I do. She said to me that her story wouldn't end happily for everybody, and that that's okay and that she had a secrets nobody knew that would be the reason. She never specified what the reason was for but now I understand it's the reason she killed herself, Shawn. She told me that her seams were unravelling and that she was slowly, internally falling apart, something else about how in the end she would be happier but i'm not to tell you this until she's done what she had to do; and i'll understand what she has to do after she's done it. And... and then she told me this:

"She said to me: Eloise do you ever wonder why i'm so strange? I mean, except for this neighbourhood and my financial state, don't you wonder why sometimes I don't reply to Shawn when he asks me questions or makes bizarre statements, why my nails and fingers are bitten down to the bone, why I suddenly dyed my hair dark, why I can't go an hour without a cigarette, why I get so attached to small things- a boy with curly brown hair, his sweet little sister, sitting on tufts of grass till the towns screams are slowly turned into silence. Don't you ever wonder where my mother and father are? If i have any siblings? Don't you ever think it's strange how I know so much about you but you know so little about me?

"And then I stepped back and i realised just how little you and I did know about her, and then she told me everything we could possibly ever want to know. About how her parents ran away together when she was small and left her in the arms of her Uncle, who raised her and abused her. About how she'd often run off to her tree to hide from her uncle and that when she was small she used to write songs and that she'd always dreamt of being able to play the violin. About how she once had a dog but it got hit by a car. About how her uncle would take her out to meet his friends and they'd hit on her and sometimes they'd slip pills into her drink and every so often she'd wake up in one of her uncle friends bedrooms without any recollection of the previous nights. She told me how he would burn her with his cigarettes and that she only smoked because they were her uncles so she'd steal them and smoke them so that he couldn't burn her arms with them but she eventually got hooked.

"She told me how she bites her nails due to anxiety she's gotten from her uncle, that she died her hair brown because one of her uncles friends used to call her "blondy" and that every time she'd walk past him he'd grab her hair and would refuse to let go. And lastly that she gets to attached to things because 'the best people have a habit of leaving me' I guess she wanted to leave before she got left.

"God, Shawn, i'll tell you know with honesty and sincerity that she absolutely adored you. She told me to tell you this too: she said; God, kid, I love you. I love you and everything you've done for me and how you've made my most miserable moment my best ones. She loved how you'd always try with her, that although she'd pretend she didn't know, she knew that you loved her too. That you were the best thing in her sad life, that you truly, truly saved her partially. Even though nothing could fully save her, and it's important you know that. She told me that you should never feel lonely without her, that you should move on and be free and happy and that although she believes you are soulmates it's important you don't spend your life dwelling over that 'could have been's and the 'what if's.

"She told me: Shawn, our love story is a tragedy, but a beautiful one at that. And I wholeheartedly believe that our circumstances were the tragic part, not our souls themselves. That if you and I, were to meet in another life as squirrels or butterflies or lions, that we would fall in love all over again, that we would be together for our whole lives. That you and I are soulmates. And even though I believe that, I want nothing more than you to find another love and be happier with her than you've ever been with me. And I want you to forget me, and our tree and our mistakes and our untold love and i want you to pretend that Piper Hughes and her depressing life never existed, and then, hopefully, when you've finished your happy life, our roots will branch amongst the stars and intertwine again."

"It was her suicide note." I mumbled quietly, my words dispersing as breaths instead of sentences. It took everything inside of me, every muscle, every small bit of strength I had left in me to muster up the courage to speak without bursting into fits of tears. Piper's death was still fresh, the gaping wound wasn't even close to healing and I was afraid it would never.

Eloise took her small bitten fingers- which reminded me of my love's- and held my hand. She took a deep breath and gave me a small smile before squeezing my hand once more.

"No, Shawn, it wasn't her suicide note. It was her goodbye, her confession and her final love letter all in one conversation between her and I."

"But why wasn't it between her and I? Why couldn't she tell me?"

"I think she didn't want to hurt you, maybe she loved you too much."

And I inhaled Eloise's heartbreak and exhaled my own fear, and for the first time in weeks I felt like my broken heart healed ever so slightly, and I could almost feel pipers smile.

You're gonna be ok, i told myself, you're gonna be ok.