On My Own
Les Miserables
And now I'm all alone again nowhere to turn, no one to go to
without a home without a friend without a face to say hello to
And now the night is near
Now I can make believe he's here
Sometimes I walk alone at night
When everybody else is sleeping
I think of him and then I'm happy
With the company I'm keeping
The city goes to bed
And I can live inside my head
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
In the rain the pavement shines like silver
All the lights are misty in the river
In the darkness, the trees are full of starlight
And all I see is him and me forever and forever
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
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
I love him
But every day I'm learning
All my life
I've only been pretending
Without me
His world would go on turning
A world that's full of happiness
That I have never known
I love him
I love him
I love him
But only on my own
How tender is this melody, how it speaks to my soul! In the days preceding my death I have learned that "all my life I've only been pretending" ("On My Own") that the world was pure. Indeed it is not, the innocence I had come to know "is only in my mind" ("On My Own") and now I walk alone. My dear father "dead and gone" (4.5.31), my brother abroad, my very lover "blasted with ecstasy: O, woe is me!" (3.1.151) I hear Hamlet's echo, "I did love you once" (3.1.113) and wonder about the "tenders of his affection to me" (1.3.99) and the "holy vows of heaven" he had proclaimed (1.3.112). "Love! his affections do not that way tend" (3.1.153). Am I bitter? Very much so. But my sorrow drowns this bitterness, for one's heart does not have space for both. Could he not know I love him still? My love for him never died, though stamp it out I tried. Instead it rots my soul to know that "without me, his world would go on turning" ("On My Own") while I am driven into outright madness. Though this melody holds cynical joy, this "world that's full of happiness" ("On My Own") surely does not exist. Exist it had in my own mind for such a brief but bright period but now that liberty has too been stripped from me.
"Denmark has become a prison" for my lonesome soul (Seng 218) and "I'm all alone... nowhere to turn, no one to go to" ("On My Own"). "O heat, dry up my brains!" (4.5.149) the passion of grief has overwhelmed my very mind continues to devour me in "a world that's full of happiness that I have never known" ("On My Own"). "Without him, the world around me changes" ("On My Own") and this change I can no longer stand. I feel as if I were a blind man violently exposed to light. Grown old, by now this harsh light is none but blinding! To flee, I took cover in my mind, "I [lived] inside my head" ("On My Own"). My very thoughts were my sanctuary. However, as of late I have lost this small comfort; it has been wrenched away by "the poison of deep grief" (4.5.71). To know that "I, of ladies most deject and wretched" (3.1.146) have lost my place in my very consciousness is a knife stuck in my heart which Hamlet's rejection twists. "How should I [know] true love?" (4.5.23) is the question I ask, day after miserable day. Ha! I never should know his true love again, if ever I did.
This melody could relate no more than it already does, it is the song of a broken soul, the death of unrequited love. I can only pray that God may one day look upon Denmark with peace. As I am lied to rest I have at last accepted that "I love him...But only on my own" ("On My Own").
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