I don’t think I will ever stop loving you. I knew that ever since we spent hours on the roof of our towns run down pub, the night you wore those beautiful blue fake diamond earrings. I remember you were picking your purple nail polish off all night, a nervous habit. I couldn’t believe I, of all the people you usually hang around with, made you nervous. I guess it was only fair because you made me so nervous I wanted to puke right on the spot. We lay on the crumbling and uncomfortable roofing, gazing up at the fog covered sky barely able to see stars. I remember watching you as you gazed up, you are so beautiful you know that right? But beauty is only skin deep, you are so much more than a pretty face.
I do admit at first it was your perfectly doe brown eyes that hooked me but your words are what made me stay. Who knew a pretty thing like you could be so intelligent and full of opinions? I always knew you were different, different from everyone else in our town. Maybe it was your faded blue hair, your perfect pale complexion or your devilish smirk you wore when you had an idea, or maybe it was all of that and even more. The point I am trying to make here is that you aren’t just some dunce with a pretty face and a perfect curvy physique; you show more compassion than anyone, you hold more creativity than Gogh, more rhythm than Ray Charles and more class than Monroe.
I think I like most about you is the fact that every moment I spend with you I learn something different, about you or about life. You are so full of knowledge and experience that it should be questioned but I can’t bring myself to ask you the stories behind the lessons. Sometimes I can’t shake the idea that you are a delicate flower that I must nurture and protect, like you need me to take care of you. You are the only person I know who can take full responsibility for themselves, you are the definition of independent. We all have our faults though, don’t we?
Have I ever seen yours? I don’t believe so. Is it possible for someone not to have any flaws or faults? Or maybe flaws and faults are in the eye of the beholder. To me you are the closest thing to perfect, not one thing out of place. I remember when you told me you hated your name, how silly of you to think that, is there any other name you could see yourself being called? Samantha, you told me to start calling you. I much rather preferred the old you but you never let me forget this new Samantha. I loved you before Samantha and I love you as Samantha.
Do you remember when everything changed? When we went from something so innocent to something so twisted and bent. I can only recall the moment you took your first drag from those awful smokes, when it was no longer acceptable to just be one with the world and enjoy everything. You replaced me with the need for substances, you used me for substances. I guess I didn’t mind at first because you needed me, a feeling I loved. I guess when I tried to change you back you resisted and found someone else to need.
Can you ever go back to your old self? Can anyone? I don’t think so, once you have changed you leave behind your old self and that person dies. That person drifts off, evaporating into the wind and carries away with the leaves to never return or reshape. I learned that after you came back to me, you looked like you, you sounded like you but it wasn’t you really. Sure you were Samantha, you had her doe eyes, her smile but the blue hair turned to a blue grey hue and her intelligence repressed for such a long time I’m sure it’s gone and her love and compassion clouded by need and addiction.
Was I not enough? Was it the fact I love you that pushed you away? I can’t say I’m sorry for loving you, it wasn’t a choice. I fell for you and I didn’t even know it until it was too late, I was on my knees and no power in the world could get me up but you. You left me though, I was alone and cold waiting for you to come back and love me. We don’t always get what we wish for, you might have come back to me but it wasn’t the same, it never will be.

So I write this to the old Samantha, even to a time before Samantha when you were just Penelope. My Penelope, I miss the times you were her. But I write this because I have lost my love, without her I am nothing. I am as useless as the plastic ends on laces, what the point if I am not keeping the string together? I am sad and I grieve, I grieve yes because I lost Samantha and Penelope but I grieve for you, you were a great person and now all that is, is a distant memory you barely remember. Those were the best years of my life and as I sit here waiting for what you call euphoria to drown my system and shut down my body I hope I do not wake up. I hope I don’t live to see another day of you being this run down person I once loved, I can’t do it anymore.
This is goodbye, goodbye “Raven”, goodbye “Samantha”, goodbye Penelope. Hopefully I will find the real you in beyond where I can again run in the woods with her, lay on rooftops, and cover her in wildflowers once more.