my careless contagion

Today, Feb. 8, marks two years since I divorced the woman with whom I spent more than 20 years of my life. That's hard to fathom. I once read that most people who divorce remarry within two years. That's even harder to fathom, though I admit it probably would have been a healthier path for me. Two years ago, I got to find out what it was like to destroy the person who meant the most to me in my pitiful life. It was about as much fun as it sounds.  Clearly, I misjudged myself going into my divorce. Someone with my particular psychology and background should not move ahead with a divorce without more support than what I had. My baseline state is so much lower than most people, I simply could not bounce back from my divorce. I don't have the same chemicals in my brain that most people have. It's like I started 6 feet underground and then went further down, all the while trying to get back to the same level that most inhabit aboveground. My divorce was extraordinarily...

I have lost. I've lost her. I've lost many things. I don't know what else to say, but I'll probably say a bunch of stuff anyway.  The thought came crashing in on me one night: "All is lost." That thought has remained with me. I know that truly not all is lost. Still, of all the feelings that have coursed through my veins in the last year-plus, this one is preeminent. Here's the thing. I'm very practiced in letting go. My whole life I've had to let go of places, people, things, parts of myself, things precious, and things mundane. This world is ultimately temporary, and we with it.  It should not have surprised me that I had to let her — the woman of my dreams — go. It should not have surprised me that I took it so hard, either. Precious things are hard to let go. The last time I saw her, she felt she had to give her marriage another shot. I sat and prayed with her, but she seemed so far away. She had already pulled away. Before we met tha...

Their names are A and B. A is a girl, 13; B is a boy, 8. It's been almost a year and a half since their parents separated. I recall A's mom telling me she overheard her daughter playing and saying something about being from a broken home. This was before the separation. Those words are haunting, and they also foreshadowed the coming sadness.  I don't know the full effect on these children of the separation and divorce of their parents. Surely there had to be signs along the way, clues that they can make sense of now. It's hard for me to try to extrapolate how they're feeling from what little I know about them. What I do know: it's not my world they live in, and I have no right to feel anything toward them. But I feel dead inside when I think of what they've had to go through and what they continue to go through.  There aren't words for what I want to say to them, but I'll try. I know they'll never read this. They'll never know the thous...