May I Say I Loved You More?

There's gun beside me, a bottle I stole from the pantry in one hand, your note is in the other.

I'm shattered in a way I never thought would be possible. I expected to be changed by enlisting in the army. I expected to finish basic stronger than I was before. What I didn't expect was leaving so early. I never thought I'd be changed by losing you in that way. I never thought you would be the one to break me down to this point. I never thought I'd be here.

I'm sitting here thinking of you. Thinking of you being happy, Sabrina. I'm thinking of the times we spent just sitting and talking under the oak tree that grew in the fence line between our houses. Funny, isn't it? That tree, the very one you hung yourself on, was the one that brought us together. That tree was everything to us. It was a playground when we were kids. And as we got older it served as a divider between the way our lives had grown apart.

Then it was a symbol of hope, the first place I found you broken and crying. It was the place I helped you when your train of exisitence would momentarily derail. And as I helped set you back on track, it became the place we fell in love. But now all that is overshadowed because it will forever be the place you chose to leave me. And so as I think I have to stop and wonder.
Why?

I know you battled with the depression. I know you had to fight, every day, to get out of bed, to paint a smile on your face just so you could face the world. But I also know how much you said I meant to you. How you told me, every damn day, that I was your rock. That I meant more to you than I could ever imagine. That you loved me more than I could love you. But then you left me. So tell me, how the hell does that work?

May I say I loved you more?

I remember, our last summer together, the games we'd play. We'd write each other little notes and hang them on each other's side of that tree house our dads' had built us when we were in third grade. I'd always wait at my window and hold my breath when you would go to take your note. I always wanted to see your reaction. My favorite times were climbing in your window after the whole street was asleep. You'd make me wait, purposefully leaving lights on in your living room so I'd think your parents were still awake, when really, you just wanted to test me to see how long I'd wait to see you that night, but I always out waited you. And then I'd be over that chain-link fence in a heartbeat and into your window. And I'd whisper that I love you as you'd fall out of your clothes. Afterwards, we'd just lay there in the darkness and I would hold you. I would smell your sweet scent, the floral smell of lavender coming off your skin. It was like the dream of you I had where we captured all the fireflies. Because that's what those nights were for us. Little lightening bugs in this black night of a life. Shining moments that would light up our existence, if only for a moment. But as the summer progressed our time grew bittersweet.

We knew what time we had could be counted on your fingertips and that almost made you cry. But you let me hold you tightly as we said all our goodbyes. May I say I loved you more?

Every time I think of you my mind skips memories of us around , so naturally, there isn't a single second I don't feel like my head is skipping rocks. One of my favorites is the night before I left. It was the last time I remember you smiling. It was the last time I would ever hold in my arms like that. It must have been an hour that I clutched you in my arms. And I must have said the right things because you instantly felt warm. It was strange, how much closer I felt to you in that second, when I was saying words that were moving me farther away from you than ever.

You kept assuring me I should go. You told me this town was squeezing the life out of me and that I had to leave. But I knew leaving you was leaving my heart. So I gave my class ring for lack of anything more official. Official or not, you were supposed to become totally and completely mine when I got back. You were supposed to just wait for me. You heard my heart stop beating, and you wanted not to cry. And your sympathetic whispers, they told a tale of bad goodbyes. Neither of us wanted to go, to end our private goodbye because we knew the goodbye we'd have at seven forty-five the next morning would never be enough to get us through my time away. So we lay there in your bed together and watched as the first rays of light came over the horizon. I kissed both of your eyelids, your wrists, and your forehead. And before I left I held you one last time. I held you like you were a dream, an insubstantial wish that was never really mine.

May I say I loved you more?

I sometimes blame myself for this. Dammit Sabrina, every single night I go through the scenarios in my head. And single night I come down to one resolution. If I had stayed maybe you would have stayed too. You swore up and down that you were okay with me enlisting. You promised me you'd be okay. Dammit. I had my times when I thought about staying for you. I considered going to a local junior college while you finished school. But everyone told me to go. You told me to go. And despite what you said, you were never a burden to me. I never once felt a pang of regret when I held you while you were crying on your bathroom floor. I never second guessed myself when I held the hand of a sleeping you after they pumped your stomach clean of the cocktail of pills you had taken. And I never wanted anyone else when I was bandaging your slit wrists, wiping away your tears, promising it would be okay. Because I loved every inch of you, from your hidden dazzling smile to the sliver lines that webbed your wrists and inner thighs.

May I say I loved you more?

No one will ever be able to understand the agony I felt when I got the phone call. It had been two weeks. Fourteen days of basic before I was plunged into countless days of this living hell I now endure. Because that's my definition of hell, being somewhere you will never again be. Being somewhere you chose to leave. It's hell still being here when I have to live with the fact I was never enough for you. Knowing that I couldn't win. Because if I was enough for you, if I had loved you right you wouldn't have left me. You chose to leave me before I was done loving you. I loved you more than you will ever know now. You might have understood, if you had stayed.

These visions that haunt my dreams and my waking conscience would have been real. Because I keep seeing you in a wedding dress. Your stomach perfectly round with my child. Family Christmas. A table of minature versions of us. Our ten year anniversary. Twenty-five. Fifty. Our children breaing the news we were going to be grandparents. Our grandchildren playing in that tree house our fathers built for us so long ago. Retiring together. Growing old, together. I see all these things and I know that none of them will ever be real for me. I'll never have a bride in white. I'll never know the joy of becoming a father. I can't. And I don't know what was worse, the call, these visions, or finding the note you left for me on my side of the tree house, exactly where we had left notes all summer. I think maybe all of it is what's worst.

So now I'm sitting here, alone in my room. Crumpling the note and smoothing in across my thigh. Crumpling and smoothing. CrumplingAndSmoothingAndCrumplingAndSmoothing. Methodically, as though these convulsions could be your heart beating once more. Its like I'm saving you, with every clench of my fist and gentle smoothing of palm, its like CPR, like I'm here now to repair your broken body. Trying to breathe life into you one last time. Corpses can't come back to life. But you're my drug. And I have to have one last hit. So I open the note again, although I have long since memorized your last words. I crumple and smooth. As though this is the only thing that still keeps you alive to me.

Let's drink to memories we share. Down one for all the hopes and cares. Here's two for being unaware that you're gone.

"Timothy,
This is goodbye. This is me telling you its not your fault. Keep breathing, my angel. This is me saying I have always loved you May I say I loved you more? Its complicated for me to explain why I must do this. But this happiness is so artificial. Surely you feel the same too, don't you Tim? You swore you saw me laughing, and I swore I saw you smile. And this time we spent together was meant to last us quite a while. I was trying too hard to be what you wanted me to be. I tried to be the quarterback's perfect girlfriend. Even when I spent so much time in the hospital I fell a year behind I tried to be everything you wanted. And I'm sorry I couldn't be. May I say I loved you more? But when you left I saw the chance to give you what you deserved, something I've never been able to do. Your freedom. Now you can do whatever you want. I can't tie you to this town if I'm not here. Because you are perfect. And you will be some lucky girl's prince charming. It's just that I'm not a princess. My clock struck midnight a long time ago. And now I'm just a girl in rags sitting in a hollowed out pumpkin. Someone that could never deserve you. But I do still have your class ring. Its on a chain around my neck, where it will stay. I'll take this piece of you I'll carry to my grave, knowing that for someone you're an angel sent to save. Keep breathing, my angel. Thank you, Timothy, for everything. My time with you was the best part of my life. And don't feel like this is your fault. It wasn't you that came up short. It was me. The only thing I was ever good at in life was loving you. And in the end I couldn't even do that right. But you will always, always be the most important thing to me.

May I say I loved you more?
Sabrina"

I read your note again. And its bullshit Sabrina. Its all bullshit. I don't want this to be real. I don't want to be anyone else's angel. Because you were my angel. You were the one I was always supposed to be with. So why the hell could you not see that? May I say I loved you more? There's a gun beside me, a bottle in one hand I stole from the pantry, and your note is in the other. So screw it. Let's drink to memories we shared. Down one for all the hopes and cares. Here's two for being unaware that you're gone. Because before too long you'll be a memory. I think maybe I know why you left. Maybe now I understand what its like when your other half leaves you. I'll never be whole again, baby. I gave everything to sew you back together time and time again when you'd fall apart. And now that you're gone I have a gaping hole right where you fit. I have a gaping hole and the knowledge that I caused this.

It's two in the morning. A little over a year ago I would have been climbing in your window. But instead I'm sitting in my room not able to do anything, as I have for the past year. Because you left me a year ago today. And this year has been void of every emotion I've ever experienced except for pain. And I've experienced that like I never have before. So let's drink to memories we shared. Down one for all our hopes and cares. Here's two for being unaware that you're gone. I have my hands full, but my mind fuller. I drop the bottle and pick up the gun. Because before too long you'll be a memory... Your note will stay with me to the end. Its the only piece of you I have left, and I'm not losing it, too. But what's the point of going on when you're only half a person? What's the point in going on when your other half is going to be permanently missing?

I trace your words with my fingers again and gingerly hold the paper to my face, trying see if any of your smell still clings to it, but all I can smell is bitter regrets. I have regrets of never saying I loved you enough, never being there enough, just never being enough in general. The tears that have been threatening to spill over all night are pouring down my face now. My breaths are coming shallow and my whole body is wracked with sobs.

It's been a year since I lost you. When you left you severed all the lines that have tethered me to this earth. Since then I've been trying and trying to retie them, but the knots keep coming undone. The one thing that still has a pull on me isn't by my side. You've already floated away and now my lines have been broken too many times to be refastened. I can feel myself already floating away. With a shaking hand I raise the gun and place it in my mouth.

Because before too long we'll both be a memory...

Song: One Man Drinking Games by Mayday Parade
Written for this songfic contest!