To Love Somebody

Woke up with this song in my head this morning, thanks to the soundtrack of 50/50, a movie that was apparently in my Netflix queue because it arrived at my door on Saturday morning:

There's a light
A certain kind of light
That never shone on me
I want my life to be lived with you
Lived with you
There's a way everybody say
To do each and every little thing
But what good does it bring
If I ain't got you, ain't got ?

You don't know what it's like, baby
You don't know what it's like
To love somebody
To love somebody
To love somebody
The way I love you

I don't remember putting it in the queue, but after my kids went back to their Dad's yesterday, I went to yoga and then came home, made some dinner, and fired up the flick. I was exhausted, so sitting on the couch was about all I had in me, and the movie wasn't half bad -- it was about a young person being diagnosed with cancer and being given 50/50 odds of survival -- but it was also funny in the way that any movie with Seth Rogen is funny.

Midway through the film, a friend called that I hadn't talked to in a while, one who knows intimately what I'm going through right now. We talked for about an hour, and I did some more emoting, and then I watched the rest of the movie.

And I missed him. A lot. I missed his body on my couch, I missed being able to see the movie through his eyes as well as my own, and I missed him when the movie ended and I crawled into my bed, where a part of him still seems to lie:

In my brain
I see your face again
I know my frame of mind
You ain't got to be so blind
And I'm blind, so very blind
Cause I'm a man, can't you see
What I am
I live and I breathe for you
But what good does it do
If I ain't got you, ain't got ?

Other than assigning me the wrong gender, those lyrics pretty much speak of where I am right now. And rather than trying to speed through this phase, I'm just going to let myself be in it.

Even with all the pain, I never lose sight of the fact that it was with him that I really, truly learned what it is like to love somebody. I'm so grateful these lyrics don't apply to me:

You don't know what it's like, baby
You don't know what it's like
To love somebody
To love somebody
To love somebody
The way I love you

I went through a phase, when he decided to leave, where I questioned whether he loved me in that way -- maybe he didn't know what it was like, and if he did, he'd be staying? That might be a more convenient explanation, but it doesn't square with my experience of our love. In order to be as powerful as ours, I reckon the love has to be mutual...