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Showing posts from February, 2019

Holding Cynthia

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  Chasing Amy. Looking for Alaska. 500 Days of Summer. The Great Gatsby.  I have my own lost love story. It's compelling. It's beautiful. It's haunting.  I still chase her with my mind. I still feel her with my heart. She was the most beautiful thing I ever held in my hands. She was always there. Until she wasn't. I've searched for her ever since. I never knew a woman could make me feel the things she did. I never knew I'd be so impossibly ruined by her — ruined for anything else. I knew she was never truly mine, but just the thought of having her made me impossibly happy. A love like that is a gift. A woman like her is a jewel. The time we had together was a dream. And the memories of her sustain me.  There is no perfect human being, but she was perfect to me. She made me see the world differently. She let me believe something as precious as her could be had by a man like me. Oh, what I would give for just one more day with her. Just to hear her voic...

Psalm 32

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Psalm 32 sounds an awful lot like Psalm 51. They are considered companion chapters, as they deal with the same thing and were most likely written at about the same time. Psalm 32, however, shows us what happens after David progressed through the awful reality of Psalm 51. Psalm 32 is about forgiveness.  I own a study Bible from the 1970s. It's old, and it looks it. It's just one of a few Bibles I own. I would say it's mid-pack in the looks department. No matter, because I want to talk about what it says inside. First of all, go ahead and read the psalm here . You can see there is a familiar progression, with David saying this is a "teaching moment," so to speak. But where Psalm 51 dwells on the raw reality of David's awful predicament, Psalm 32 is a reminder of God's forgiveness. David screwed up bigger than at any other time in his life. I mean, this was a massive series of mistakes he was caught up in. If he had not admitted his sins to Nathan the ...

Psalm 51

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  My heart has been drawn to this verse for many weeks now. I've read it countless times and prayed it for myself and all those with me in this pit of contrition. For those who don't know the story, here follows a mild retelling ( or the whole story is here ).  King David got in trouble with a woman named Bathsheba. She belonged to someone else. His name was Uriah. David slept with Bathsheba and she became pregnant. David then tried to get Uriah to sleep with his wife and take the child under his care. Uriah refused to go home to his wife while his countrymen were at war. Plan B was to take Uriah out to a hotspot in the war and pull back, leaving him to be killed. This worked. Nathan the prophet came to David to tell him a story. It was the story of a poor man who had one sheep he loved very much. And also there was a rich man who had many sheep and much livestock. But the rich man wanted the other man's sheep so he took the one sheep from the poor man. The story in...

All heart

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I don't have it in me to stop wanting her. She may want nothing from me, but all I want is her. I'm all heart, and my heart only wants her. How do I explain this to bystanders? How do I explain this to myself?  She's lovely. She's perfect. She's all I want. If I ever thought I could get over her, that debate is over. There is no getting over a woman like her. There is only surviving life without her and somehow breathing and getting by. There are stolen moments when one does not think of her. The rest of each and every day until the day one dies is one thought after another of only her.    You can call me what you want. I've surpassed my own measure of foolishness, so your opinion is of no worth. I'm content to spend the rest of my days in love with the memory of her if that's all I can have. It would be much better than to try to love (and to fail to love) a lesser creature. The heart wants what it wants. She's gone from my life, but she...

Anatomy of two heartbreaks

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The first time she broke my heart was December 1996. I didn't know it at the time, but she chose the man who ended up being her husband, a man she would have in her life for 22 years and is still tied to in her heart and by their two children.  Though it was many years ago, I remember the last conversation we had on the phone. When I hung up, I knew that would be the last time I talked to her (and it almost was, as 20 years went by). I remember she got angry at me for something. I thought it was because I brought something up she didn't want to talk about. Something difficult. She stopped talking to me for eight months. She did send me a letter, however, when she learned I was moving with my parents to another state. I threw it in the trash and never responded. I was still dreadfully hurt by her. And I was angry.  The second time was much worse. After enjoying each other immensely for a few months, shortly after the first time we had a weekend together, I could feel it....

The morning after

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Today is the day after. The day after she broke my heart again. The day after she told me she does not read these words. It's just as well. So many of them are raw, ugly, malignant. But, I had hoped she would see the loveliest of them — the love letters. Those were bright spots amidst the carnage. Those symbolized her in my life.  My blog is many things. But mostly, it's like a little kid trying to put together a puzzle. He rearranges, turns things around, gets up, walks away, gets angry, laughs, tries to stand on his head, all to figure out how the pieces fit together. It's kind of a schizophrenic approach, I admit. It's just me trying to figure things out. This woman I love is by far the most puzzling piece. Today I didn't go to the store early as I normally do. Today I stayed in bed, too depressed to even think of stepping out onto the cold floor and fumbling around in the dark to start a day I just wished would go away. It's one blow after another. An...

Happy now

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Happy Now by Zedd and Elley Duhe seems a pertinent song right now. Today was the day the woman I'm in love in told me she does not, indeed, read my blog and has not for a while. This was my singular connection to her. I guess it's just as well. The theme of this new year seems to be "back to reality." I had hoped she would read my words and they would touch her heart. While this blog has been filled with all sorts of pain and all sorts of questions and all sorts of strivings, the posts about her kept me coming back to sit in this chair and look out this window and imagine a day no matter how far off that was happier. And I loved to think about her and write about her. As all men in love with their muse are wont to do.   Today that reality I thought I was living turned into a joke. An unreality. A fantasy. The words of this song, especially when she says, "There's nothing left to say. So I shut my mouth," seem literally written for me at this momen...

I’m a bad driver, just like you

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There must be something in the water in the Black Hills. I’ve seen the worst drivers of my life since moving here about five years ago. I wish I could say I was any better, but I’m not. While I am originally from the Black Hills, I hadn’t had a whole lot of experience driving here until I moved back. Let me tell you, it was cause for concern.  I’ve seen all sorts of bad driving, as I’ve been driving for roughly 26 years (not continuously, thankfully), but Black Hills drivers take the cake. The roads in the Hills are curvy. I get it. Staying in your lane can be a chore. Coming across the centerline at me, though, is not fun for me. Quit it. On the other side of the spectrum are the too-careful drivers who believe breaking the 45-mph barrier will surely propel them into oblivion. Then there are the 35-mph drivers. They are in a category all their own. Okay, I know there are a lot of reasons people drive slowly. Maybe they’re elderly and their reflexes aren’t what they used to...

All of me

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If John Legend (Stephens) wasn't a legend before writing this song, he certainly was after. All of Me is a classic love ballad, encompassing the many soft and sweet parts of being in love as well as the rough edges.   Legend wrote this song about his then fiance, Chrissy Teigen, now his wife. This song has almost a billion and a half views on YouTube, which shows the power of a good love song. The reason I'm posting this video is that so many people get it wrong. We don't get what love really means. Yes, it's a great feeling. Yes, it can feel perfect at times. But that's not the whole story.  When you love someone, you take all of them. You don't get to choose the parts you love. Love is an acceptance of the whole person, even the flaws. We all know that in our heads, but in practice, it almost never works. I'm a deeply flawed human being. I don't expect anyone to look at me and not see those flaws. When I look at the woman I love, maybe I don...

If you're a bird, I'm a bird

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The above is a screenshot of something I came across on Tumblr. It's wonderful. It's beautiful. It's thrilling that someone cares so much about a movie to put so much thought and talent into a felt pen drawing. And it's fucking scary. Why is it scary? It's obsessive. It's creepy. And it reminds me of my obsession with a certain woman. If I'm a little scared of the level of obsession in a drawing, then I'm sure anyone reading my blog is more than a little concerned about my mental health. And for the object of my affection's wellbeing. Sigh. I fully admit I've been obsessed, and most of my obsession has taken place here in this safe place. I have not stalked her (that I recall). I have not called or texted relentlessly. I got a little carried away with emails (which went increasingly unreturned). If she stopped replying (for the most part), I stopped. That's what most people do, right? That's normal?  In the mind of the obse...

Closed captioning

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   I don’t know exactly when it started. I think I started watching TV with the closed captioning on when my son was a baby (so I wouldn’t wake him up). But he’s not a baby anymore. So why do I still watch TV with the closed captioning?  An article at medium.com called “Why Gen Z Loves Closed Captioning” explores the reasons why we’re seeing a surge in Generation Z kids (born mid-1990s to mid-2000s) watching TV with closed captioning. These are kids with no hearing impairment. It’s just ... odd.  One of the reasons why Gen Z kids may like captions is because it helps them deal with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). I never thought about this until I read the article, but I have long exhibited ADHD symptoms (in fact, I didn’t even finish the above-mentioned article). Could this be a reason why I prefer watching TV with the captions on? Maybe.  It seems captions help those with ADHD focus and block out distractions more easily. I don’t feel re...

Saying no is saying yes?

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This is going to come off as a dumbass post, I'm sure of it. I'll give it a shot, though. My idea, though it may sound antithetic, is that saying no to something is actually saying yes to a whole lot of other things. One of those books that affected me as a young man was Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls. It's a book primarily for boys, I think, but it has some universal lessons. One of those lessons is letting go.  The young boy in the story wanted to teach his hounds how to hunt raccoons. But he needed a coon pelt to do that. How do you get a coon pelt if your dogs don't know how to hunt coons? A raccoon trap was the answer — a hole bored into wood with a shiny trinket in the bottom. The hole had to be large enough to admit the raccoon's little hand yet small enough to hold it once it grasped the trinket and made a fist. I experience the same thing when I make a fist in a Mason jar. It's not fair, of course, for the raccoon, as they love shiny t...

Everywhere

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When someone you love leaves your life, you have two choices. You can either accept that fact and move on or live with the constant ache of them being gone. Apparently, I've chosen the latter.  The ache is a constant reminder of what your heart knows. She's gone. She's not coming back. But the heart wants what it wants. And it wants her. So the mind manufactures her. Everywhere.  Everything begins to remind you of her. Your calendar used to tell you many things, but now all it tells you is that it's been so many days or so many months since something happened with her. You remember the softness of her skin and the tautness of her muscles beneath it, the infinite tenderness and suppleness of her body, the way she smelled, the way her hair felt on your chest, your stomach, your everything. You tasted her mouth and now recall her soft lips and impossibly big, beautiful eyes that were yours and only yours to behold for a moment. You remember her in her underwear and ...