Wearing My Smile | ✔

Wednesday, May 9th, 2007

Thirty-three days after your funeral.

“What's on your mind?”

I looked up from pencil and paper I'd been fuddled with the past five minutes to find Dr. Quintana watching me with a small smile at the corner of her lips. I had known her for years and still I wondered what she was thinking when she looked at me. I was always under this paranoia that I was never good enough for people to decide they wanted to stay around. I was always here and people were always leaving. It is how it is.

For a moment when we had been together, Sam, right after we'd started going out and we hadn't been yet at that point where you'd lose your identity, I'd had this surging wave of belief, that when I'd looked at you, I'd been filled with certainty that this—this here was someone who wouldn't leave me behind. Someone who was going to stay. Then I'd close my eyes and see the blood splattered on the walls of your house and wondered how I could have been so wrong.

Of course I didn't tell her any of that. I told her instead about the progress of my project at school, about Penny's help, and about the conversation I had had with my school counselor the last time. I knew which university I'd go and what I would be doing there. It was kind of late for me to re-submit my application for a scholarship but it was still accepted. Everything was going just fine. Too fine, in fact, that sometimes I felt like floating. That I was trapped inside this dream where nobody knew you and pretended you didn't exist. It was fine.

Except for the fact that I was still imagining you around me sometimes. Walking around in my house, lying in my bed, running across the street, climbing up the tree, cycling sometimes. The other day I found an empty bottle of vodka on my kitchen table and I wondered if it was an illusion or if I drank it when my head wasn't really there.

“Roo.”

“Yeah?”

“Please bear it in mind that I can only help you if you tell me your thoughts and what you're feeling.”

“I do remember.”

She was quiet for a while, which never meant a good thing. Then, “Do you still blame yourself for Sam's death?”

I curled my hands into fists, hiding them under the table and smiled.

She pretended not to notice. “It may not seem like it's true, but his death is not your fault, Roo. It's not about you. Sometimes people leave because they need to. Sometimes it's their sickness taking over them, ignored until it's much too late.”

The way she was saying you were leaving, it was as though you'd just gone outside the town for a while and would come back home eventually. Immediately I lost interest in what she was trying to say, so I looked out to the window of her office and watched the clouds pass by as she spoke of things I didn't care about.

What I felt right then is exactly what I'm feeling right now, sitting in my empty house, a couple of days before I'm leaving, writing letters to you. Everything hurt, it hurts still. I don't think it will ever stop. There's a hole inside my soul and it's shaped like you. Your absence lingers even in my subconsciousness. I see your ghosts everywhere and I wonder if that's my curse: that I get to remember you when nobody else does.

So when she ended our session for the day, I wasn't surprised. I never cancelled our appointments. I did all the homeworks: the journal, the photography, the slam poetry, the morning runs, the socializing. I talked in our sessions. I never lost my composure. In a way, I was getting better, but we both knew I wasn't in the essential parts.

Still there was sadness in her eyes right before she closed the door after me. And she tried, Sam, she always did, and I could never blame her that she did, that she cared about me. I wasn't angry when she said, “It's going to better if you talk, Roo. Unburden yourself to me.”

But that was exactly the problem. I just didn't want to speak. This burden was mine to carry.