You Over Flowers

You Over Flowers : Phantom

"Promise me, I know it hurts to think about but just do it anyways. Please. Promise me."

Sami always spoke like it was her last day. Her words loaded, filled to the brim with secrets I was better off not knowing. She had been my best friend, the love of my life, the only one for me since I was 18. She still is.

I promised anyways.

I could never understand her, not fully at least. I knew her habits, her routines, when the high would come and when the lowest of the lows would hit. Sami was sad before I met her. My life was monotonous all the same before her. But I made her laugh like no one could and she... she was always vibrant. Painting my every day with Michael Jackson's PYT, waving her hands in my face while I drive 45 miles an hour through the streets of our hometown. It wasn't so much that she was attracted to danger, nor was she a thrill-seeker. She just wanted to feel something else, anything else.

One day, she stopped singing, she stopped dancing, she stopped trying. This was the darkness in her not even I could reach. I had hoped every waking moment that my love, our love, could heal those parts of her. I hoped that we could grow old together, that I'd watch her bloom beautifully in her own haphazard version of the world. I think she knew years before she died that she wasn't going to make it. I think every day was her trying her best to keep pushing and every night she cried of exhaustion.

What do you tell someone you love when they are so hurt and so sad beyond reason that not even they can understand? That not even they know why? I mean, is there a real solution to that? She seemed to think so. She found one.

I remember the night before so perfectly. I came home from work and found her in bed, eyes, and nose red and puffy. She wouldn't even look at me. She didn't have to say anything and I didn't ask. I could tell this was an angry fit of tears. Around this time of the year, Sami never failed to go through the past nine months of her life and amount it to nothing. Internally, she'd berate herself for not having accomplished whatever goals she set out for herself. Punishing the best parts of herself as if they were worthless. But it wasn't true, Sami chose to wake up every morning for those nine months. She got ready for her day. She worked hard and did her thing. Even if she was burning on the inside she still did it.

I... I tried too. And when she left... It made me feel as if it was all for nothing. Nothing at all. Suddenly I felt useless.

"Why do you want me to promise you something that we're nowhere near in our lives? You're 28 Samantha, you say this like you're gonna die tomorrow. We have forever. I'm not gonna promise to find love again when I know that it's you and it's always gonna be you."

It's been well over two years now and I refuse to remove her baby picture from my wallet. She was fresh out of high school when she had given it to me. All of Sami's baby pictures looked like she was the happiest kid to have ever lived. Maybe she was. Maybe she was and it was just short-lived.

*******

Seattle really is one the saddest places I have ever been to. The sky is grey and clouded most of the day, it's cold as fuck, and it rains every 30 fucking minutes.

Sami would have loved this.

Finishing my work on the cargo ship I had been assigned to this weekend I gave the captain my notes and took off. I still had a good amount of the evening to do something if I wanted to.

Truth is. It never felt right to experience things after Sami died. My throat would tighten up eating a dish I know she'd love, being at the beach in another country made my stomach twist, and making new friends was just completely out of the question.