On My Own

This morning I woke up belting out Les Mis lyrics -- more specifically, these:

On my own
Pretending he's beside me
All alone
I walk with him till morning
Without him
I feel his arms around me
And when I lose my way I close my eyes
And he has found me

On Friday evening, I went to see the movie version of the musical with a couple of friends. What a fantastic rendition. I was really blown away. This video explains part of how they made it and why it is so amazing, but in a word, it's the music. Here's a clip of Samantha Barks, who plays Eponine, singing a bit of this song -- such a phenomenal performance; and another of Anne Hathaway singing a spoof of it to Hugh Jackman in a previous Oscar ceremony. They were both incredible too.

I studied abroad my junior year in college, at a place called The University of Warwick, about an hour and a half from London. That year, I went to see Les Mis twice in London, and I listened to the music almost constantly.

Studying abroad was a transformative experience, but it was also quite lonely at times, so I guess it isn't surprising that of all the brilliant songs in that musical, it is this one that I woke up singing today:

And I know it's only in my mind
That I'm talking to myself and not to him
And although I know that he is blind
Still I say, there's a way for us

It was also an interesting year for me in terms of love. I experienced both heartbreaking unrequited love for one of the other American students and glorious, liberating, highly amusing love for a British dude named Tom Williams (TW). (I don't usually use people's names in this space, but in this case I feel relatively safe -- I've tried to find him on Facebook, and there are so many of them, it seems impossible to sift through them all.) I've looked for him again, decades later, because when I look back, I really wish I'd been in a different position to take full advantage of that love experience. And even though I couldn't fully embrace the man he was -- he was in a band, he was a fighter, he was a smoker and a heavy drinker (we all were), he was hilarious and naughty and deliciously masculine -- I named that sort of sensibility TW and filed it away in the form of a knowing about how exciting men like that can be.

And here I am now, twenty years out from my TW experience, and I think he'd be proud of the woman I am today, and the way I've managed to embrace both myself and my love for another deliciously masculine character, who doesn't have all of TW's crazy qualities, but definitely his sensibility and sex appeal.

I know there will be times, after my man returns to his mountains, where I'll be lamenting his absence, and this song will seem fitting:

I love him
But when the night is over
He is gone
The river's just a river
Without him
The world around me changes
The trees are bare and everywhere
The streets are full of strangers

But I'm not feeling that way today. I'm just feeling blessed to be given another shot at being fully present to a man like this, and being in a very different place, myself, to embrace it mind, body and soul.