Sam Part 2

One day, many years after Sam and I broke up that fateful night, and many years after Sam married that girl that broke us up, Sam contacted me out of nowhere. He appeared to be going through a midlife crisis of sorts and was simultaneously looking backwards and reaching out.

At first it was strange to hear from him, but quickly the old memories came flooding back. He sounded the same, the feelings I got in my chest and my stomach when I heard his voice were the same…I allowed myself to think for a minute that this was the moment I had wished for all those years ago, the moment where he came running back to me proclaiming what a mistake he had made throwing away our relationship.

Sure enough, quickly the conversations turned to his unhappiness in his marriage (now 8 or 9 years long), his disappointment in his life, and his eternal feelings for me. I laughed at him on the phone and told him that this was what he had chosen and that he couldn’t possibly have feelings for me today because he doesn’t know me at all today. I was not the same weak, quiet girl I was when he said he loved me the first time.

We talked a lot for about two months. He moved out of his house and into an apartment of his own. He booked a plane ticket to come and visit me in the spring. He was taking his guitar and cases of water to parks where he’d play music and hand out free water. He complained about his wife and how she never grew up and he was still taking care of her like when she was in her early twenties. He started online dating. He clearly appeared to be leaving his wife and making moves to come back to me.

But I was skeptical. He would tell me he loved me and I would say “you don’t even know me anymore.” Deep down I was excited to have him come visit and extremely hopeful that this was the beginning of my full-circle romance coming true.

Then he started getting weird. One day he called me to say he thought he had a demon locked in the trunk of his car. Another day it was to tell me that the Buddha had come to him in a vision and given him the blueprint to the new wave of Buddhism and it was now his job to sell it to the monks at the local Buddhist monastery. Once he called to tell me that he had realized we’re all rivers, whatever that means. He even called my mom once to rant about souls and spirits. He had told me that he can envision himself visiting me, but he cannot see anything for his life after that moment in the spring so perhaps he will die on that trip to see me.

In these phone calls, he would tell me he loved me, that he’s always loved me. That letting me break up with him was a huge mistake, and that letting me move away from him and to another country was an even bigger mistake. He asked me to return to him. He painted a picture with his words of what our lives would look like together. None of it was real.

Then, around Christmas time, Sam stopped calling and texting. He stopped responding to my messages. This also felt familiar.

When Sam finally resurfaced after the holiday that year, he was calling from the playground with his son to tell me that he had made a terrible mistake under the influence of ketamine. Apparently, when he had first gotten in contact with me again, he had just started a self-prescribed micro-dosing regimen of ketamine, and because he’s an idiot who experiments with drugs, he did it wrong and ended up getting higher and higher for months, losing all control and awareness of his actions and how he was messing up his life. On that phone call from the playground he tells me that he and his wife have reconciled, he’s stopped micro-dosing, he’s put himself $10,000 in credit card debt, and “he would have never blown up his life like he did if he weren’t on drugs.” And no, he would not still be coming to visit in the spring.

Once again, now as a 35 year old woman instead of a 22 year old girl, Sam had lured me in with his talk, and then hurt me just as I was starting to believe that he was being real with me. As it turned out, everything he said to me was a drug-induced lie. Everything.

I was mad. Beyond mad.

I told him that I couldn’t believe that he had done this to me again. That he had toyed with me out of being bored or being high for the last time. And then, again, and for the last time, I said to him “I hope it was worth it for you. Because I never want to hear from you again.”

He cried. He didn’t want to hang up the phone. What did he think I was going to say? That I’d be understanding that he was hallucinating and on drugs for two months and it’s all water under the bridge now? He did not know me at all anymore.

I said goodbye. I hung up the phone. I expected to never hear from him again.

Until I got an email from him a year after that. This email claimed that he had tried to text but it didn’t go through and perhaps I had blocked him (I hadn’t) or changed numbers (I didn’t), but in case I wanted to be in touch with him his number was in his email signature at the bottom of this email.

Shocked though I was to get this email that seemed to indicate that he had zero memory of what had happened the year before, I decided it was best to not respond. I unfollowed him on social media and haven’t heard from him since.

What a waste of energy.