Molly wondered what was wrong with her. The person she felt most alike in the world . . . was fictional.  But Eponine—Eponine was real, she was tragic, she was so much like herself. So much of what Eponine had gone through had also happened to Molly.

Sure, Molly wasn’t poor, that they did not have in common, but giving up yourself so that the man you love could be with someone else? This feeling Molly knew well. Victor Hugo’s Eponine was powerful and much appreciated by Molly, but her real connection was with the singing, heartbreakingly beautiful stage version of Eponine. The Eponine that belted the audience her woes and loneliness in On My Own and sang quietly to her love, while dying in his arms during A Little Fall of Rain.

Molly had seen the musical over thirty times. It never lost it’s power over her. Eponine’s words followed her, haunted her. And they did more than that, they comforted her. She was not alone. Molly had loved and lost, and felt that only Eponine could truly relate. Molly carried Eponine’s words during the three part harmony of A Heart Full of Love  with her everywhere, “He was never mine to lose. Why regret what cannot be?” It had become her mantra. “His heart full of love, he will never feel this way,” yes, these sentiments Molly felt deeply.  

Eponine had loved Marius, a student. A boy foolishly in love with Cosette, the protagonist’s daughter. Cosette was beautiful, sheepish, and also faithfully in love with Marius. But Eponine’s love was pure. As Molly’s had been. Eponine was an urchin, homeless, a child of the streets. Not worth the love of someone educated, someone with family. Eponine’s words in the act one finale resounded in Molly’s soul, words that seemed to forever echo: 

One more day all on my own.

One more day with him not caring.
What a life I might have known, but he never saw me there.

That is how Molly felt now, after everything had happened. That she had never truly been seen, after her Marius, Jess, had found his Cosette. A finding she had helped orchestrate, anything to see him happy. What a dumb girl she was.