my careless contagion

161 miles. That was my total for the year. When I was struggling to deal with my life at the beginning of 2018, I decided I wanted to keep track of something positive during the year. So, I decided to keep track of the miles I ran. I started out really strong in January, which is amazing because I'm sure the weather was crap. I ran 23 miles that month. The first half of the year was also strong, but with the sale of my house and with a 13-credit-hour load at school, I wasn't able to keep up that pace. Finally, in December, I finished with only two miles for a total of 161 for the year. That's not phenomenal, but it makes me realize that positive change is incremental. It makes me realize that a mile or two here really adds up. I didn't add in all the miles hiking, and I'm sure I forgot to write down a few miles, so the actual expenditure of energy is much higher than the 161 miles. I also realized I hate running long distances, so those two-, three-, and four...

She lay beneath me on the bed as she said those words — "I'm never going to be enough for you, am I?" The smile on my face disappeared, and my eyes blinked and then closed. The words slowly started to rally in me, then came out in a measured cadence. I started with, "No, you're never going to be enough for me." I said that because, at the end of each day, no one is ever enough for any of us. We are needy creatures created with a hole in us that needs something greater than any human being who has ever lived, no matter how amazing. We are created with a hole that needs God. So, no, my beautiful, you're never going to be enough for me because of that hole. "But life is amazing, and so are you. You add beauty to each and every one of my days. Just knowing I get to come home to you makes my insides warm, even on the coldest day. You make me want to experience every day with you the rest of my days because I treasure you, because I love you, bec...

It's true I took it hard when she left my life. It's true I continue to struggle, though not as much. I know why it hit me so hard, too. She is the thought I keep coming back to, but I will try not to beleaguer the point and test the patience of my readers. I thought, perhaps, there was something wrong with me. Why couldn't I move on?  The world is full of tragic love stories. It makes for great fiction, but too often it drives nonfiction storylines. The lives of many poor souls, including me, are a testament to that fact. There is something resolute in us that refuses to move on, to grasp for another branch, so to speak, and move forward through the forest of life. We're stuck on the one our heart has chosen. Amazingly, for us, it is better to love and not have the one we love instead of another.  There are many stories of a love that extends beyond the grave. Many people have even died of a broken heart to join a loved one who has passed on. The need for our b...

Consequences by Camila Cabello highlights some thoughts with which I'm familiar. It showcases Cabello's voice, as well, because the instrumentation stays mostly in the background. This is a sentimental ballad lamenting the consequences, good and bad, of a relationship that has come and gone.  Not all the lyrics fit how I feel about the girl I lost. I don't think what happened between us was "dumb, dark, and cheap," however, it definitely had consequences. Actually, the consequences are staggering. I've had a frame-of-mind change that I can't even equate with anything else. As time and a long, hard retrospective look have informed me, the consequences for me are a strong parallel to the birth of my son and other beautiful things I've seen. Speaking only for myself, I would never want to undo it. Someone once said that you have to accept the fact that things will never go back to the way they were. Such is life. Some things are undoable. Can a ba...

Niall Horan's Too Much to Ask is a typical breakup song. I gravitated to it as my divorce neared about a year ago. After 20 years with the same woman, and my "heart dancing" without her, I was met with a potent mix of emotions of which I could scarcely make sense. Somewhere in our heads, so many of us think when we break up with someone that our rift could be easily repaired. "If they would only (fill in the blank)," we tell ourselves, we'd be inclined to give them another chance. When I told Kate, my ex-wife, I was leaving her the first time, she clearly wasn't listening. I can still see the room we were in as clearly as this one. I can see my anger in the air. I can feel that moment like it was yesterday and not more than five years ago.  After trying and failing to make our marriage work over the next few years, I again told her I was going to leave her. A great storm was in me for the longest time as I struggled with that possibility, and onc...

I wish my parents had divorced. That may seem like a strange statement, I admit.  This month, my parents marked their 50th wedding anniversary. That's quite a milestone, especially for a relationship so fraught with difficulties.  One thing parents do for their kids is teaching them how something is done. How do you live your life? Chances are you learned most of it from your parents. Parents think their words carry more weight with their children, but the most effective way they teach their kids is by their example.   I don't want to spend a lot of time dwelling on the psychology of why my parents got together in the first place, but I do need to sketch some things out. My parents met in college on a blind date. My dad was a jerk, but he called my mom later and was a different person so she gave him another chance. She thought, erroneously, that because my father was not good enough for her he would treat her well. That seems like a poor dynamic for any re...

I always wanted to be a father. I remember working with people who said they wished I had been their dad. Let's face it, dads are in the doghouse these days. So many men have reneged on their responsibilities at home to their wives and children and, most importantly, to God. I thought I could be a good dad. My son sometimes feels like the easiest person in the world to live with. He's smart, vocal, clear about his opinions, and wants to do the right thing. The flipside of that is a monster I cannot even see around. It fills the room and all I can see is that beast staring at me — immobile, resistant, defiant, foul, and hateful.  Parenting is the hardest thing I've ever had to do. Doing it alone is even harder. My heart hurts for all the single moms and dads trying to make a living, trying to raise good kids, and trying to have a life (if that's even possible). It is the single most humbling task I've committed myself to. I never go to sleep at night thinking...

This Town is a song I passed on the radio one day after Cindy came back into my life. I heard enough of the song to go right back to it. As I listened closely to the lyrics, my heart melted because the song encapsulated so many of my thoughts about her.  I mentioned the song to her, and she said she had thought of me every time she heard the song. I guess it was our song. The town in question doesn't matter. We grew up together there, but it could have been anywhere. The truth is, I can't add much to the lyrics of this song. My thoughts are all there. When I saw that she had more than moved on from our fleeting stab at a relationship when we were freshmen in college, that she had two beautiful children and a handsome man in her life, my heart was glad for her. Secretly, it sank in me because someone else had more than made her happy.  I sat, holding my tongue, wanting to do as the song says and tell her all the words I wanted to say the first time around. And then ...

Her words came through the screen in my hands like a bolt of lightning. My brain sputtered and my thumbs fumbled, wrote something, backed up, wrote again, backed up, wrote again, and finally replied.  She said she loves me.  Those words were like a gullywasher to my parched soul. Like a cheeseburger to a POW. Of all the words I wanted to hear in this word, those were exactly it. I fell asleep with a smile on my face that night. And I slept like a baby.  My writings here over the last 11 months have been a smattering of this and a smattering of that, though writing about her — the one I love — has predominated. My effusions about her have come in every shape and color. Looking back, some of what I've written is painful to read. Some of it makes my heart take flight. Some of it is merely notes on how I was doing at the time and no longer applies, but somehow she got tangled up in my mess. And that shouldn't be surprising. I was very messy for a very long time. Some...

Radio Nowhere from Bruce Springsteen's 2007 album, Magic, is a song I keep coming back to. I can't believe it's been that long since this album came out. It feels timeless. So, too, is my timeless struggle with solitude.  I have a brief respite from the solitude, but I'll be thrust out into it once again. I'm like a lone rocketeer being catapulted into space or a wilderness wanderer on a mission that's never completed. I keep sending my signals back to home, wherever that is, but I never hear anything. Just silence.  One of the strangest fates mankind can succumb to is sensory deprivation. Radio Nowhere  makes it clear that we all need noise. We all need to home in on something. In my being spat out into the darkness and cold of solitude, I've tried to stay warm with thoughts of the woman I love. I've continued to broadcast my beacon for all who will hear. My thoughts and feelings have turned to stories and my stories into a book of sorts. In my...

This song and video have interesting features for a country song. Country music can be faulted for hewing too closely to traditional forms. Break up in a Small Town seeks to shake things up a bit with the way the video is edited and the storytelling that segues into song. Still, it's another lost-love country song.  When I divorced my ex-wife, my divorce took place in a small town (about 2,000) where we both lived. To compound that, my ex is also close to my parents (mostly because we work for them). Her desk is right in front of mine at work. I have to work closely with her on projects. While this is not a problem in my day-to-day life, as I respect her and have a friendship with her, if I imagine a future for myself it is clear I have to move on. And that moving on will entail an actual move, as the song suggests.  No one tells you how mutual friends or mutual acquaintances will treat you after you get a divorce. It's a strange feeling. You almost leave your bod...

Happier is an unfortunately appropriate song for my life. The video tries to lighten the impact of the song by making it about a girl's relationship with her dog. As with any piece of art, the application is up to the viewer (or listener). For myself, I see the meaning of having to let someone go so they could be happy. It's a sad thing to realize that your very presence in someone's life has brought about unhappiness. It's even sadder to realize you have to let them go in order for them to be happy again. The worst thing is when you realize you cannot undo the sadness you've wrought in their life.  I've had this feeling in every single one of my relationships. I have always felt like I was saddening the other person in some way, like I just could not measure up. When I realized I wasn't ever going to measure up to Cindy, that she was too good for me, I effectively let her go. She was thereafter with a much better man than me. He's accomplished s...

Okay, I may as well just call this blog "Let's talk about Taylor Swift songs." Begin Again comes from the Red album (2012). It contains a kernel of hope for me. She also talks about James Taylor, her namesake, which is fun. The song feels rustic, but also like it could be taking place anywhere. The video (or at least parts of it) was shot in Paris. But it could be about anyone anywhere in the world. It could be about me.  She talks about how her former lover didn't get so many things about her. She compares it to her new man's understanding of her. When she says, "I've been spending the last eight months thinking all love ever does is break and burn and end," I get it, but I think "eight months" should be more like "my whole fucking life." Maybe her version is better, though.  I guess I'm just a hopeless romantic. I love hard. I feel too much, perhaps. I have the old sentimental feeling that love should be given free...

I wonder how she's doing. She's divorced like me. I'm sure we have shared some of the same grieving processes. But she is not like me in many ways. Her heart beats a purer rhythm. Her mind is sharper and more focused on things that matter. My heart keeps scribbling illegibly, right off the page, seemingly at odds with reason.  Yes, this is another Taylor Swift song. I keep going back to her discography because it's accessible and meaningful to me right now. All Too Well is off her Red album which was released in 2012. The line that sticks out to me is "Cause there we are again, when I loved you so, back before you lost the one real thing you've ever known." And then my heart breaks for her. I have to extrapolate because I don't know exactly what her grieving has been like, but I feel I know her well enough to say that line is pertinent. And I'm sure she remembers all the memories she's made with her ex-husband and children "all too w...

  December 16, 2016, was the day she came back into my life. In the following two years, I've seen a whirlwind of changes. I was so happy she was back in my life. As of this writing, she is not in my life anymore. Of all the changes I've seen in the last two years, this is the saddest. I thought once we started talking she would never be out of my life. It's okay, though. My life has taught me to live with the lack of things. And it was too good to be true anyway.   There was a change that took place in me on a recent Sunday. I sat alone in my apartment and something broke in me. It was a giving up. It was a letting go. Whatever you want to call it. I realized something that I should have seen before but didn't.  Stepping back and looking at the carnage from two divorces is sobering. If I could have done anything to help any of those in pain, I would have. What I didn't see was that I was perhaps the one most affected, the most destroyed, the most hurt by t...

Sometimes I'm surprised by how dense I am; I finally came to this conclusion a short time ago. When I fell in love with the woman of my dreams, I was asking something her heart could not in a million years give me. I was asking her to fix what had happened to me over the many years since she was last in my life. I was asking her to erase that intense pain.  How unfair of me to ask that of her. She is a beautiful and capable woman, but she is not capable of fixing what she did not break, nor was it fair of me to ask such a thing. She's not a surgeon. She's not a magician. She's not a healer. She's many things, but she cannot put my heart back together.  When I sat with her in a Mexican restaurant some time ago, I grabbed my chest and leaned in, saying, "My heart is like a crime scene." Any sane woman would have run if she had heard that. Maybe she did want to run inside, but she politely sat there with me.  What a shithead I was. I didn't have ...

One of the most difficult things to reconcile when confronted with the death of a relationship is the mosaic of memories. I say "mosaic" because that's how they appear in my mind. They are little shards of time that I've pieced together and layered into an overall "picture." They don't reflect reality as it was. They are something new. The good and bad memories flow into one another. The bad memories are lightly interspersed and aren't nearly as shiny as the good memories. It's a false recollection, the way they're put together, but it's all I have now — just a mosaic of memories. What do I do with them? How do I make sense of them? They come up randomly, seemingly at odds with the feel of the moment. They force their way to the front of my brain and shove other thoughts aside. They sit and stare at me until I decide where they should go on the mosaic. Are they good? Are they bad? Are they just random moments? Do they mean anything...