An Eulogy for someone once cherished.
On the door of my bathroom wall in my old house, I drew and stuck five figures of all of the boys. I remember when moving, I tried to peel them off to take them with me to my new place. Why this memory is so vivid in my mind right now is that when I tried to peel each of them out, Liams Head got stuck on the wall, and the paper ripped like dried leaf in my hand, leaving a headless body of the young man I adored. I remember cracking jokes with my friends at that time, saying "I killed Liam Payne" in mock sadness.
It's a memory from five to six years ago, and now, as I sit on my balcony, trying to comprehend what has happened, I feel the resedue of that paper like blood on my hands.
What is surprising to me how utterly calm yet defeated i feel right now. I'm mourning. I know that I am. But more than mourning the loss of the boy that was once a part of my whole world, I'm mourning the loss of my younger self. That fifteen year old Sam would lose her shit right now if she was here. And it took me this long to finally realise that she is dead. She has been dead for a while now it seems. I can't think of any other reasons I feel so void of it all.
Underneath this layer of numbness, all I can feel is red hot anger. At the world, at the people that boy choose to surround himself with and at the boy himself for making mistakes over and over again. But that's what he was in the end wasn’t he? Just a boy. Just a little boy who didn’t get the chance to grow out of being seventeen, didn’t get the chance to have a childhood, didn’t get the chance to breathe or learn from everything.
The world had done him dirty by giving him everything he could ever ask for and taking away what he needed. And I was right there, watching, cheering him on without realizing what he was losing. Some miseries can only be repaid with death, and he repaid his just last night, around the same time I was wide awake listening to songs that weren’t his, he was out there taking his last breath and falling over the railing. The parallels are astonishing. I was sitting on my balcony too, while he was falling off of his. And maybe it happened at the same time I lit a fire to light up a cigarette when he extinguish his own.
My darling baby. My sweet little angel with eyes that reminds me of autumn leaves. You were fucked up. Broken and battered. Flawed to the nines and destructive and devious. But you were never beyond redemption. Never beyond remedy and never beyond saving. Yet, we failed to save you all the same. I wonder how you felt when you laid on that cold concrete as the blood rushed to your head. The thoughts that rippled through your mind like water, I wonder what you saw in those very last moments. I can't imagine how lonely you must have felt, how utterly defeated and devastated. Maybe you gasped for one last breath, realizing how big of a mistake it was like we all do when the first slash of a knife that hits too deep on our wrists. I wish I was there to hold your hand when you let go. I wish that I could save you.
I never got to own a band merch you know? Never could afford a cd, or a poster with all of your faces on it. Never could attend a concert of buy a song from itunes. And with this, the chance of me ever getting to see you shining bright on stages also shattered to pieces. I cannot attend a concert where you will not be there with the boys, Liam. It will never be the same.
If only this world weren’t this brutal and ugly with you. If only you’d have gotten more time and better people around you, if only you’d have had someone near you that cursed night....so many if onlys.
Did you know, you’ve not aged a single day beyond seventeen in my head?
Rest in peace, my sunshine.
You'll always be forever young. Now and forever. I will never forget you.
