...Then She Said, "YES!"

Obviously this should have been written and up the other night, but, as it turns out, it's actually better that I had a day or two to process everything that happened on Tuesday's episode. By "everything", of course, I mean the marriage proposal, which was EVERYTHING. When I tried to write last night, I stared at my big, glowing monitor for about two hours and the only word that came to me was "fadlkjdasdkkddk".  I decided to keep that word to myself and sleep on it. Not the word. The episode.

Anyways, it was a good thing. I had a whole day and night to absorb everything that happened. If you're thinking, "Jesus H. Christ. It was just a stupid soap marriage proposal", I'm feeling a little sorry for you. It really wasn't.

I found myself connecting with Sami on many different levels yesterday, which threw me for a bit of a loop. Leading up to the proposal, I was happiest for EJ. Poor EJ has waited how long to get to the place he and Sami are in now?  Hell, I've waited how long? Yeah, that's right. Seven bloody years come next month.  But on Tuesday I was all about Sami.

As someone with Bipolar Disorder, I found the whole episode very touching, though I'm pretty sure it wasn't just me. My Bipolar Disorder and I have the same sort of relationship Sami and her bad girl side have, or at least that's what I was feeling watching Sami's breakdown yesterday.  I wouldn't trade my BPD for the world. It's part of what makes me who I am.  For the longest time I thought I'd have to keep my mental illness from people. My parents didn't quite understand why I was the way I was when my siblings weren't. The only thing spoken between us on the subject back then was that whatever was wrong with me was something I needed to put effort into fixing, and that I needed to keep anything I already knew about it to myself. I was thinking about that yesterday when Sami was talking about people loving only parts of her, or who they thought she was. When EJ verbalized what we already knew, that he loves her for who she is ("the good, the bad, and everything in between", as he said years ago), I was touched in a whole new way.

You know that I'm ridiculously insecure, and that I always have been, but...I don't know. Somehow it seems justified, you know? Any time somebody tells me they love me, they don't really mean it. They don't really love me. They love some small part of me, or who I'm pretending to be, or who they think I am...or they love me but they want to change me...

-Sami

One of the things that gives me a great deal of confidence in my relationship with Alex that I never really had in any other is that he has never treated my array of mental illnesses as something that needed to be put up or done away with. They're all a part of who I am. I'm not saying Sami's tendency to be naughty is anything like a mental illness, but I am saying that it's a part of who she is. It's her fire. It's a fire she struggles to keep from getting out of control, much like my own fires, but if someone were to put it out, she just wouldn't be Sami anymore. If someone were to take away any or all of my mental illnesses, I just wouldn't be me anymore. I'd be lost. So, yeah - I connected with her in a way I wasn't expecting to.  I was fully expecting to start yelling, "Holy envelope-on-a-coffee-table, Sami! What the hell is your problem?! Just say yes!", but I didn't.  Instead, I kind of found myself getting a little weepy watching her stammering and sobbing. My heart broke when she apologized to EJ for ruining the moment, then a second time when she blurted out "yes!" and kissed him so that he wouldn't have to wait a second longer than he already had.

There have been times I've wondered if a marriage proposal from EJ to Sami would even mean anything to me anymore. Soaps have done this to me in recent years. Actually, scratch that. Days has done this to me in recent years. There was a time when I believed that soap love was forever. Victor and Nikki, Luke and Laura, Bo and Hope, John and Marlena, Jack and Jennifer...they were all couples I just knew were going to be together forever, because when they weren't together, they were thinking of each other, or they were talking about each other, or others were talking about them. Soaps constantly reminded us that these two people were meant to be together, and that we should tune in daily to find out when and how it was going to happen. It was comforting and it gave us all one less thing to worry about. It was one pay-off we were almost always assured of getting. They may have lost friends, siblings, sons, daughters, or parents along the way, but they almost never lost each other.

Gosh. Even when Victor and Nikki hated each other they loved each other.

Over the past three years or so, though, I'd learned that nothing was ever a guarantee, and not because it couldn't be. Yeah, okay. Love isn't always forever, and in the real world, shit happens and relationships fall apart. You end up with the wrong person, or someone you care about ends up with the wrong person, or ends up with the person you think is the wrong person, because who can ever be one hundred percent sure of something like that, et cetera. Soaps aren't real-life, though. I want soap love to be forever. Once that character finds their perfect someone, I want to know those two perfect someones will spin around each other for the duration of their soap lives, until it's no longer possible. And by "no longer possible", I mean beyond even the capabilities of the writers, the show, hell - even the network. Nothing short of real-life death should be keeping some of these characters apart. It's one of the reasons I'm so incredibly bitter over losing Jack Deveraux. There was absolutely no reason for it, other than some dimwit out there deciding he couldn't be bothered to write for him, or deciding that Dan was meant to be Days' next generation of leading men and there was no longer room on the canvas for more than two or three complex characters at a time (obviously I stopped talking about Dan towards the end of that sentence there). Who the hell knows. All I know is that we got royally shafted, and my ass still really smarts from it.

The proposal and the conversation leading up to Sami saying yes restored my faith in soap love. It also sort of restored my faith in Days in general. TPTB have it in them to fix what they've broken if they feel so inclined to. It was something I very desperately needed proof of after that tremendously awful Dannifer/Chloe storyline I thought would never end. Come on, Days. You can make this show great again. I know you can. You're under a helluva lot more pressure now. I won't accept anymore C's or D's now that I know you could be giving me A's and B's. 

Can you use those perfect fingers of yours to wipe my tears away, too?

Anyways, I was thinking that maybe the EJ/Sami proposal would be exciting for me simply because it was happening and it was about fucking time, but that would be as far as my worn out little heart could be bothered to take it. EJ and Sami have two children together, they've been married to other people, and they're both in their thirties. Will a marriage proposal still be something for a jaded viewer like myself to be excited over?  Oh, it was. If I wasn't entirely convinced of that while it was happening, I'd definitely have realized it the second they left the pub, hand in hand and laughing as though they were on top of the world. It was like all the years between EJ dropping his towel and him slipping that ring on Sami's finger melted right off of them, and they were the EJ and Sami I always knew they could be. Oh, wait. They are the EJ and Sami I always knew they could be!

Okay, my turn! Get back on that knee!

When Lucas popped up, I was a little peeved at first. They couldn't give me five minutes to enjoy my shiny, new car before having that angry little bird show up to shit on the hood? Really? But after that night I spent not writing this blog entry, I decided I liked that he showed up. I liked that he spouted his usual refuse and then stomped off with EJ and Sami still smiling.  If you've ever watched the BTVS episode "Fear Itself", the name "Gachmar" might mean something to you. Lucas was the Gachmar here. After that proposal, nothing was going to bring Sami down. Lucas tried to cut right through to Sami's nerve, threw everything but the kitchen sink at her (perhaps because he couldn't reach it - that'll be my only short joke today, I promise), but it was like Sami and EJ were wearing Teflon. Neither was feeling any pain and Lucas couldn't leave a scratch on them. All the confrontation served to prove is that Lucas has never really cared about anything or loved anything more than being right (pretty much the same road Rafe continues down). And when Lucas doesn't have that, does he have anything?

Incidentally, what is a "fondue machine"? I've heard of fondue pots, fondue makers, and fondue fountains, but...Nevermind. I've already put way more thought into that than I wanted to.

So in the end it was the perfect proposal for two imperfect people living imperfect lives who are perfect for each other. I guess that's about as good a conclusion to this blog entry as any, huh?