Wearing My Smile | ✔

Saturday, December 15th, 2007

I DON'T KNOW WHAT OTHER PEOPLE THINK, but I remember agreeing with you when you told me several times that death was easy because it really is. I didn't know what you truly meant at the time, not really, but I knew it was true even though I did not comprehend it fully. At least not until I screamed my voice hoarse begging you not to pull the trigger, but you did anyway.

If someone were to ask me what the point of this letter was, I would tell them there was no point. This is just me, your old friend Roo, talking to you because I'm missing you like I'd lost one of my limbs and I don't quite know how to function without it. I keep picturing you in an alternate universe where you'd still come into my house as you would every single day of our entire childhood, talking, listening, and maybe, waiting for me to come back to you again.

Nine months ago, your funeral had been overwhelming. Not many people came, but I suppose you wouldn't need many to come anyway—only ones who mattered. I came. My family, your family, Damian, and Penny. I think that was all you wanted. We had always kept to ourselves, after all, two members of our tiny circle of two. Of a sun and a little seal. Sam. Samson. I wondered if you'd ever thought that the name your parents had given you felt like sharp knife twisting through your heart in its prayer. I'd never asked you that before, now I'd never get to.

Maybe I'm writing this as a long reply of the last letter you'd left me long ago. One you put on my refrigerator like an unremarkable note you left me every once in a while. The one in which you wrote, I'm sorry I'm a stone and I keep on dragging you down to drown with me, to which I could reply with pages and pages of: I don't care if you're a stone, you're my fucking stone, please just come back to me, please, that I had never gotten to write down, because there was no point in asking for something that was no longer there, was there?

I don't even know if suicide victim's souls go somewhere. I just hope that they do—that you do. I can't imagine you living inside a limbo, all alone for eternity. You said to me once that you loved being alone, but I couldn't stand the thought of you being lonelier than you'd been when you raised up your gun and put it inside your mouth.

For a long time, I'd felt like I have failed you somehow. Even though my father, Luce—my older sister—and my therapist had told me that I wasn't to blame, I couldn't help myself. You were screaming the whole time and I didn't listen.

I know what you'd say. If you were here, you'd probably tell me to get over this and move on already. I swear, Sam, I swear I would. I'm writing this because I'll be leaving soon. I will get out from this place, leaving everything behind like I know you'd want me to. It just doesn't feel right for me not talk about it with you first since we always talked about everything.

And I want to. I want to tell you everything. I want to tell you about my dreams and my thoughts the way we used to talk every day. Most of all I want to listen to you talk. I want to listen to you as you laugh. How your voice turns soft and low when it's just us. How you joke. How you always understand what I'm trying to say, but then I realize now that there isn't you to talk about things with anymore. My memories of you are a curse that plays in loop inside my mind.

So, give me this. I'm going to write it all down here—our conversations and the days we had together. It will probably take me a week or two, but I have time. I will make time. You'd tell me it's a waste of time, but this is my promise to you: after this, there will be no more. After this, I will leave you behind, buried underneath the tree on my backyard along with the time capsule we'd never gotten a chance to open when we are twenty-one like we'd originally intended to.

Have you ever felt loss, Sam? I'm sure you have. It's a crushing, heavy thing. I don't blame you for wanting to stop it. I want it to stop, too. I understand it enough now. I just wish you didn't have to leave me behind in the process.

*