We will always belong together
I haven’t been able to write for the last week or so because Sam’s been staying with us. So basically I’ve been busy every minute. But he’s gone now, I just got back from taking him to the airport…and I’m listening to the music he recommended to me at 1:30 last night and we spent 20 minutes searching for it online, and I’m crying just a little. Laura and Elana are coming over any time now, we’re taking them and Evie to see the Wiggles at the local country club tonight, so I might have to cut this short…if I do, I guess I’ll probably just finish it later.
Before I get distracted by Sam and never mention it, a most glorious and important event has occured — Andrea has born a son! His name is Solomon Simon, a huge name for a little tiny boy. The bris is tomorrow. He’s adorable, he’s so tiny, but he’s so strong, at three days old he was fully capable of throwing himself out of one’s arms by pitching his head around. Babies aren’t usually that strong for a couple of weeks. So he’s ahead of himself already. So we now have a little boy in the family. Everything changes now. Evie adores him, she calls him her baby and she informed me yesterday that she didn’t want to go to the show tonight unless he could come too, because she’d miss him. Pretty good, eh?
Now, when it comes to Sam….there’s so much to say I don’t even know where to begin, I’m so afraid I’ll miss something important…it was really hard having him here at first. I didn’t know whether or not he shared my intensity of feeling, I didn’t know if the depth of love went two ways. He wanted to play something on our piano, so I gave him the only simple accompaniment I could find, which was "Lullaby" by Billy Joel, a song that already had emotional potency for me. It nearly broke my heart to listen to him playing it, again and again and again, however slowly. But then, on Friday, we watched the video of our performance in the Studio from the previous Friday, singing "Therapy" and also "I’d Give it All For You," and when the second song finished, we had a moment where neither of us said anything, and then I said, funny how life works sometimes, isn’t it. And he said yes, yes it is, but I believe it all happens for a reason. And I thought, ah. That’s as close to that conversation as we’re ever going to get. But I felt a lot better after that.
We went swimming that afternoon, which was hard because he’s very attractive, but was also fun. And then that night, we stayed up until 3:00 talking — we thought at the time that he would be moving on to his next home in LA the following morning. Here is part of our conversation that night:
STEPHANIE: It’s so frustrating that, now that you’re finally going to be staying in LA, I have to leave and go back to school! (At this point I expected him to say something like, yeah, sucks, and then change the subject.)
SAM: I know! And last year, when you arrived in Comox three days before I went to Russia…!
STEPHANIE: It’s like G-d is playing some kind of trick on us.
SAM: Yes. But maybe we can’t be together right now. Maybe this isn’t the time, we need to wait until we’re at a different place in life before we can settle in the same city forever.
STEPHANIE: That makes a lot of sense to me. Because…really, we haven’t spent that much time together, and every time we see each other our relationship grows so much…it’s kind of too intense. I don’t know if you feel the same way, I can’t tell because I’ve never seen you with anyone else, I don’t know if you’re just like this with everyone…
SAM: No. I’m only like this with you. You’re really important in my life, I don’t know why, you shouldn’t be, we barely ever see each other. But I’m the most myself with you. There is no one else with whom I am so honestly myself.
STEPHANIE: I’m the same way with you. I have a diary entry from last year in which I wrote that saying goodbye to you is like dying, because there is no one else with whom I’m this truly myself.
(He put his hand over his heart in a gesture of being touched to the core.)
I felt a thousand times better after that. Minus attraction, we were on the same page, and that was good enough for me. But he never heard that day from the people he was supposed to be going to stay with. We didn’t go out, because we were afraid of not being in when they called — Friday we went for a walk around Westwood and UCLA, got drinks at Pete’s Coffee, and had an all-around really nice afternoon. Saturday we went swimming again. I never had such a good time in the pool. We did all kinds of competitions, experiments, and stunts, and underwater name-that-tune. I can’t think of a time I’ve been happier.
Sunday we’d still had no word, and he decided that if he didn’t hear from the people he was meant to be staying with on Monday, he’d catch the next flight back to Vancouver, go home to Denman, and get himself organized from his home base. He’d been having a really tough time, because basically Nat was supposed to watch out for him and she had more or less abandoned him. He’d decided after he arrived here to stay and not take ihs flight back, which was Sunday morning…on Monday he talked to the woman he was meant to stay with, and decided to go home to Denman for a month or so and then come back after he’d had proper closure at home. So, abruptly, instead of having two more weeks to see him, I was driving him to the airport today.
Last night we stayed up late again, trading favorite songs, not talking much…we stayed up really late Sunday night talking, talking about depression, OCD (which he also had and still tends toward, he just didn’t really know it, so it was a revelation for him), our families, and us. Spirituality, psychic powers, the paranormal…there’s been a lot of stuff related to that going on in my life this month, I’ll have to cover that in another entry because Laura and Elana are here and I’m just trying to finish up before they actually come in. We had many late night talks. I adore him from the depths of my soul. (Insert several-hour time lapse to see Wiggle impersonators with hyperactive kids here.)
There are so many songs that make me think of him now…"Unusual Way," from Nine, especially the lines "In a very unusual way, I think I’m in love with you/ In a very unusual way, I want to cry…/ In a very unusual way, I owe what I am to you…/ In a very unusual way, you’ve made me whole." There’s a song by Josh Groban which I don’t actually like that much, but it has lines like "You raise me up to walk on stormy seas," and "You raise me up to more than I can be," which feel very appropriate. "Move On" from Sunday in the Park with George, which finishes with the lines "We have always belonged together/ We will always belong together./ Just keep moving on./ Anything you do/ Let it come from you/ Then it will be new./ Give us more to see." The first two of those lines is sort of the quintessential expression of it all, I guess. There are eleme
nts of "Not a Day Goes By," from Merrily We Roll Along, like, most of it…but it’s not what I’m feeling right now, now I’m feeling so much more our closeness and not the intimacy we can never have… And the ultimate song for the two of us has always been and will always be "Bridge Over Troubled Water." As I wrote under that quote at the end of his train letter, I guess some things never change.
He has this face that he does…it’s a softening of the eyes and a little smile and a tiny frown and I don’t even know quite what, there’s usually a little exhalation through his nose as well, and it’s the most beautiful expression. He does it when I’ve told him something sacred and difficult, or when I’m upset, or when I compliment him, or when he particularly loves me. It’s a face that says, I would pick up the world and reshape it to be what you need if only I could, but all I can do is love you and hurt when you hurt and rejoice when you rejoice. It says, ohhhhh, I want the Universe to stand with you, I want everything to be beauty for you, ohhh, I love you. I have never felt so safe as when Sam is looking at me like that.
I miss him dreadfully.
Sometimes I think that what I really need to do is never see him again. But my life is so much richer and more beautiful when he is in it. Ultimately, I am happiest with him.
I wish we had sung "I’d Give it All For You" one more time before he left.
We talked about eyes. He has a thing about eyes. He has no preference as to colour except that they not be brown, but he likes them "steely," he wasn’t able to explain what that meant exactly but he says that mine are steely. They change colour according to what I wear, varying between green, yellow-green, and hazel, but they’re always steely. His eyes are crystal blue. The only person I have ever known with eyes equal to Sam’s is Ethan. His are azure.
I’m sure I’ll add things about Sam and about our time together as I remember them later, in later entries. I would have liked to have written every day, but I was so busy being with him that I did not have time. Also, I’m leaving for school in a week, there is much stuff that must be done.
There is just this intense pull for me to be with him. This is what it feels like to have a soul mate. For some reason, we decided between lives that we could not be a couple in this lifetime; but that does not stop us from being together. We are very, very much together. We are incomplete without each other. It is an amazing feeling.
I want him back. I want him here. The house is empty without him. I am empty without him. Yet colours are a little brighter for the time I spent with him. Our time will come.
–Stephanie