love you goodbye. (slh)

if this is you leaving...

Waking up the next morning felt like a surreal reality. My vision seemed blurred at the edges and I laid in bed longer than I should've, trying to play back the night before and how Sam's smile had been before the news had come. He'd crawled into bed hours after I had and I'd pretended to be asleep. As much as he could try to comfort me and as much as I wanted him to, none of it would heal the cold numbness that had taken over my body in the hours since. The news of a tour hadn't startled me – it wasn't unexpected in a life like his. The unexpected part was that none of his team seemed to care for what he may want – or maybe they knew he didn't want it. I'd felt for so long that he was far away from me and that I couldn't reach him, but I'd convinced myself it would get better once he wasn't so busy. But maybe his team knew something I didn't. Maybe he'd secretly come up with this idea himself – maybe he was finally realizing the mistakes he'd made. Maybe he thought having a little girl was a little too much. Ella had been almost as unexpected as this news was. We hadn't even been trying, but it had happened. It seemed like everything came without us trying anymore.

Thoughts turned over and over in my mind and it came to a point where I just needed to get out of my own head. I climbed out of bed, listening for more signs that Sam was around. I kept quiet as I went down the stairs. His keys were still on the table by the door and I could take one quick look and know both of the cars were still here. I kept moving throughout the house, but not feeling or truly seeing anything. I felt like it was all some scene of a movie that would be ripped away in seconds. I was just waiting for a director to scream "Cut!" and then my normal life could come back.

I saw the wide windows of the living room before I saw the kitchen. My eyes always automatically went to the serene settings that usually happened in our backyard. The sun was just rising, the backyard clothed in dark oranges and calming yellows. For the first time that morning, I took a deep breath. I could feel the calm coming over me, my body releasing tension I hadn't known it had held. The thoughts in my mind returned to a near normal pace and the dizziness stopped. I felt the heartbeat in my chest returning to its typical rhythm, my vision clearing, the entire scene in front of me coming into a steady focus.

I felt a distinct feeling that Ella was still in bed, but my heart tugged me deeper into the living room and I figured that was where I'd find Sam. True to my assumption, I found him bent over the piano he'd insisted on buying years ago. The piano was the instrument where I found his voice to be the greatest and he often would mess around on it on date nights after we'd both had a few too many glasses of whatever we were pouring.

This morning, his black hair was clearly untouched after rolling out of bed and it stuck up in the silliest places on his head. On any other man, it would've looked unattractive, stupid even. But there was something about the way it went along with the playful twists in his smiles and the laughter he always held on the edge of his voice that made it look like it belonged there, like it should've been like that all the time. He was too caught up in the rhythms inside his head and the words that would come later to notice me leaning against the frame of the entrance, watching him. Not that he would mind, we both did that to each other – chose the most personally intimate moments to sneak into, watching the other in their own private world, closed off from everyone else. As much as I loved him when he was talking to me, his voice slipping into my mind and somehow making all my other thoughts stop, and as much as I loved him when he was doing what he loved in front of the millions of people, the ones who loved him nearly as much as I did, moments like these were my favorites. These were the moments that would somehow keep me sane when he was gone and I was left to do damage control. These moments were the one that made me forgive him for anything that could ever possibly happen. If I were to ever make a documentary of his life, these moments would be the entirety of the movie. But this was also the version of him that I selfishly wanted to keep just to myself. I know others saw him lost in his own world when he was writing or singing, but never like this. Never is his sweatpants and the old t-shirt he knew I loved, never with a cup of coffee steaming on top of the piano, and never with his eyes closed and his face lost in thought as he felt the notes of the piano wash over his body and seep into his soul and his heart.