Wearing My Smile | ✔

Tuesday, March 27th, 2007

We had been fighting the day before you were gone.

I wasn't sure if I should apologize. This whole letter—or book?—sounds like an apology enough, I guess. It wasn't like it was the first fight we'd had. It was an on-going fight we had every once in a while throughout the years; about your tendency to shut people out, about your drinking problem because some days you'd drink too much too fast, about your unwillingness to talk it through with me, about your family, about your debilitating sadness, about our helplessness, about your hanging out with the wrong crowd just so you could get away from me. It was the same things over and over again.

But I should have noticed something was different. Something about you was different. You had been giving me favorite things of yours. You had been vacant more often than not when we were together. Sometimes you talked about something you liked wistfully, as if it would be the last time you'd ever done it. You never got to tell me everything you'd talked about with your father the last time he'd been here, only that you also mentioned about your sexuality and your relationship with me. Your eyes were haunted, more than they had been before. Sometimes I looked at you and realized no one was home. You were away, buried deep inside your mind, and I worried, Sam.

So, the difference in the fight was, after talking about your drinking issue, that I offered to accompany you to see a professional.

“See what?”

From the way your eyes blazing, I knew perhaps I'd taken the wrong way to talk about it. “Therapist. My therapist—I mean we could—”

“Roo, what the fuck?” you yelled. “I don't need a fucking shrink! I'm okay!”

“Sam, you have a problem and I can't help you if you don't—”

“Who says I need your help? Or anyone's?”

I heard my own voice raising. “You obviously do. Why can't you just see it?”

“Oh, fuck you, Roo!” you snorted, standing up from your usual seat on the couch that I had to stand with you. “I'm fine the way I am now. I don't need anyone's help, much less a shrink, damn it! I'm not crazy like you!”

As if you'd just heard what was coming out of your mouth, I watched, as if in slow motion, the way your eyes widened. Your mouth gaped open and in a detached recognition I thought it was odd that you'd ever lost words when you seemed to have so many. I blinked, but it felt slow, like none of it was real. I replayed your words over and over again in my mind and something inside me twisted so painfully I couldn't breathe right.

“Roo.” Long, strong hands, reaching out to me. Tousled shaggy blond hair you'd never quite styled again for months. Thin pale pink lips. Wide hazel eyes which seemed to draw me in again and again. “I'm sorry, I didn't mean that—you know, I don't—”

I didn't notice that I took a step back, from your hands, from your pleading eyes, from you. I flinched when you touched me and I couldn't breathe. I recalled every time I'd told you about my nightmares. How frustrating it was that it never stopped, how sometimes I'd sleepwalk and you'd guide me back into my room, how hard it was for me to sleep some nights even when I was tired, about the forest fire and blood in my hands. I remembered your patient gaze when I'd told you everything and I thought to myself how I was content with having at least one person to understand what it was like to be me.

“Roo. Please. Forgive me. I—”

I took another step back.

“Please, I can't—I need you. I don't know what I'd do if I didn't have—”

But there must have been something in my expression, because I felt a tear tracking down my cheek and another one tracking down yours as though it was mirroring mine. Your face crumpled with so much loathing I had to wince because I thought it was directed to me, because I thought this was it, this was how you'd thought of me the whole time, that I was just a crazy kid with nowhere else to go, so I averted my eyes. I remembered your smile and your laughter, the way you'd stomp onto dry leaves in autumn and the way you'd run into a storm, screaming, screaming, screaming.

Your voice was a whisper, threatened to be drowned by the weight of silence. “I told you before.”

I didn't say anything.

“I'm not good for anyone. Especially not you.”

I couldn't speak. My words failed me. My heart was in my throat, Sam, because I remembered one time when we were fourteen and you told me what a gift it was to be held by me. When we were sixteen, going through another fight, and you told me someday my gentleness would crush me. I remembered when we were nine, you were crying over the death of another unattainable dream and you asked me how anyone could be that sad and still breathing.

I heard the back door closed quietly before I managed to raise my head. From the opened window I saw your back as you walked further and further away, your hair glinting under the evening sun and I should have called out to you. I should have held you, Sam, and told you it didn't matter to me, that I loved you no matter what you'd said because I knew how you'd be when you lashed out and I knew you hadn't meant it. I should have followed you, I should have kissed you and told you how wrong you were, that you were good to me, that you were worth everything.

But I hadn't. And it was the last time I saw you before you decided to end your days with a shot to your head.