hmph.

today is a rough day for some reason.
today i miss someone. the boy who would play guitar for me on his roof. the boy who would set up a tent in his living room when it was winter and all i wanted to do was go camping.
a boy who loved live music almost as much as i do.. and who never failed to surprise me with tickets to my favorite bands..
[mute math, motion city soundtrack, the spill canvas, brand new, etc.]
a boy who taught me to use a pogo stick and taught me to clear the wake on a wakeboard.
a boy who never hesitated to tell me that he loved my smile.
i never deserved the kindness that was shown by him, but he showed me the best days of my life.
i found this old piece today and i think it is what started the emotional mess i am at the moment:



it started with a song. it came on on random, and suddenly it was unavoidable. the memories i've been pushing to the back of my mind for the past couple months flew back within a split second. the late nights longboarding, the endless mario kart competitions, slow dancing on his roof, floating the canal. random road trips, our saturday hikes...we would hike to the top of the wind caves. he would watch the wind blow through my hair and i would stare into the sky and realize how lucky i was.. stargazing on his roof, snowboarding off his roof, just sitting on his roof. i was perfectly content. and i was lucky.
i have forgotten the exact color of his eyes. some days they were blue, a deeper blue than the bluest ocean, and yet i can't picture it in my mind. other days they were steel gray; it was only when he was stressed. and even though i could tell, he hid his stress with his genuine smile. i can't remember his voice...i try to remember how cute his laugh was, but i can't hear it in my mind anymore. i feel the realization burning into my bones. it's as if it's making me hollow inside. i feel nothing. i see nothing. i am nothing in comparison to what i once was. and i am forgetting. 
in the hours i toss and turn at night, before i drift into a restless exhausted sleep, his memory flashes through my mind. i try to drown it out; i try to think of other things, but he manages to creep in at the edges of my memoirs. it's a fuzzy haze...why can't i remember what his voice sounded like? why is he blurry around the edges?
i remember the stupid things. his favorite movie...just friends. his favorite band? mute math and paramore, "a dead tie". he always popped his neck when he was nervous and he couldn't live without his arizona green tea. he would always reason, "green tea isn't against the church." but i think he knew better. the songs he wrote on the guitar were absolutely beautiful. he never left the house without his lucky watch and his iPod. i miss the mixes he'd burn me. i miss being called "loo." i miss the way his smile was crooked; i miss his jokes, as cheesy as they were. i remember it all, and yet i remember nothing. his face gets more and more foggy every day.
i'm not ready to forget his face; it seems to be happening against my will.today was worse than most days. it started with a song. it came on on random, and suddenly it was unavoidable. the memories i've been pushing to the back of my mind for the past couple months flew back within a split second.
i'm not ready to let you go.

I am nothing now and it's been so long
Since I've heard the sound, the sound of my only hope
This time I will be listening.
Sing us a song and we'll sing it back to you
We could sing our own but what would it be without you?

this HEART it BEATS, beats FOR only YOU
my HEART is YOURS

RIP Adam Garrin Smith
7/2/86-4/14/08

the day he left was the worst day of  my life. i awoke excited. jimmy eat world and paramore were playing that night, and he was going to meet me in ogden on his way home from idaho so we could go together.
i anxiously spent the day straightening my hair, wondering how good jimmy would be live, if i had everything i needed. if it was time to tell my parents i was seeing someone. what would i wear? where should we eat? 

i was not worried that i would not see him.

even when i was in ogden, and had been waiting for over 2 hours, i still did not realize. instead i thought selfishly that i had been ditched out on, and drove back to logan speeding and fuming and thinking of the yelling he was going to get the next day.
and yet the next day i heard nothing.
it wasn't until i was at work and an unknown number from pocatello called me that i knew what i had been trying not to know for hours. it sank in like a brick settling in my stomach.
"hello?"
"is this lauren?"
"yes, who is this?"
"lauren this is gayle... adam's mother." my stomach swooped and a wave of nausea knocked the breath out of me.
"what's wrong?"
pause. a life-changing pause. one you can't experience until it happens... a pause where you know nothing will ever be the same. and you're about to find out something a person should never want to hear.
"there was an accident."
"ok. is he alright?"
"i'm sorry, lauren."

she then proceeded to tell me that adam's tire had blown out somewhere between malad and logan, that his car had flipped four times and despite being life flighted to pocatello regional, he had died last night at 10:15 pm.

and this was the day my life changed forever. 

now i can go days without thinking about him. i can be ok one minute, and the next someone will say something that brings all the memories back in a rush. if there's one thing i've gained from this experience, it's the ability to hide what i really feel.

i never told many people about what happened. my roommates all crooned and cried and brought me flowers and ice cream. i laid in bed for over a week, feeling sorry for myself. but i couldn't stand it. one thing adam hated was sympathy. "you just have to make do with what god gives you," he told me once. "moping about it will get you nowhere."

and so i've dedicated my life to doing exactly that. i know there was a reason this happened to me, and there was a reason i was lucky enough to have adam in my life.

some days are just harder than others.

today is one of those days.

adam, i miss you.