Summer Nights and Pickup Trucks

July Twelfth, the middle of summer between our Junior and Senior year at Winona High School. We had grown up next door in the south. Our mothers were best friends, fathers drank at the bar and went golfing together every Sunday after church. Now Samuel was driving a rusted old Chevy pickup in cherry red. Lord, I couldn't ever get him to take my truck, he even insisted on taking the rusting hunk of metal to job interviews. Needless to say, he doesn't have a job. We had been attached at the hip since we started kindergarden. So, by the time high school hit I was crushing on Sam and we have been a couple ever since.
Sam was taller than me, but not a tall guy. Since he had worked in his fathers landscaping business his arms were always built, and Sam was normally a strong man. His light brown hair was always perfectly tousled and his warm brown eyes never failed to entice me during a heated argument.
Once I week since I got out of treatment for anorexia Sam would drive me to the stream by our houses and tell me everything that week I had done that made him smile. Every single time I would cry in his arms. The first week I got out he drove me to the creek and we sat in his truck for six hours as I told him everything that had gone on the past year that I hadn't told him. From the first time I started to think about calorie amounts, to going three or four days without eating, to when I started slicing my wrists in hopes it would get the voice telling me I was fat out of my head. The entire time Sam was holding my hand and being supportive. Not with the whole pity game, asking how I could do that to myself. He took the time to try and understand exactly why I was feeling this way. After four hours of me crying and telling him about every suicide attempt he took out a folded piece of paper.
"Why Sophie is beautiful. Her blonde hair, perfectly waved every time she wakes up. Her green eyes full of depth and love. Her tiny hands that fit so perfectly in mine. How she is my everything, even though I don't understand how that could fit into such a tiny, short little girl." Sam was now trying not to cry as he read the story. I crawled over the hump between the seats and curled into a ball and held him as I started to sob.
Since then I cannot picture my life without him. Eventually the list went from trying to convince me I'm beautiful to reasons I make him smile. He is the only reason I can still smile. When I was a freshmen my parents got into fights every night and eventually divorced. They can't stand even being in the same room with each other and are constantly dating new people. With our senior on the verge of beginning, I don't know how I am going to have graduation be, most likely will end in a messy situation.
With all of the mess set aside, Samuel are the happiest we have ever been. I have finally stopped bringing myself down, and Samuel is just being perfect as usual, or well my definition of perfection. He has his scrapes and scratches, nobody is a downright angel. He doesn't believe in religion, not quite a deal breaker to me. Religion was a big part of my life, but if a God exsisted then would he let me go through all of that? Also Samuel was depressed for years. I couldn't get him to do anything, though this was the same time as my eating disorder so it wasn't as if I noticed much. He wouldn't leave his room for days and was self harming. I am such a horrible person for not realizing. His family and I found out when his father went up to wake him for school when he found him on the ground with his arm wrapped in a blood stained towel.
Samuel was in intense therapy for 3 months by the time I got out of the hospital. To this day I try to imagine how he could even see me after all that time.