my careless contagion

I love her with a love neither of us understands. It's an unrelenting, driving thing. How it exists without the object of its affection, I'll never know. She's gone, but my heart keeps loving her.  I can't explain. All I can say is it seems my heart searched for a woman like her, and when it found her, it didn't want to give her up. To me, she was the model of the perfect woman. I knew I'd never find another like her. Imagine my surprise when the very model of perfection walked back into my life!  Even though she's gone, my heart agreed to love her. It settled on her with a finality unlike anything I've seen.  She has moved on. She has left me here to weather the world without her. I don't know where her heart has wandered, but it is not with me. Perhaps it's gone back to a former love, perhaps on to another. Perhaps it's just hurting and waiting and hurting again — by itself, unable to love anyone.  This love I have for her will ...

Confession time. My life is a mess. I really should be suicidal, but I'm not. I think it's pure fear keeping me alive right now. It's a beautiful day, but I feel wrecked once again.  Last night I woke after midnight and couldn't go back to sleep, got up, read one of my textbooks, and then got on the internet and decided that was a bad idea. The waking in the night, every single night, has to stop. I want to pull my hair out, but then I'd look like even more of a freak.  I've fallen off a cliff of epic proportions. Maybe I was unaware the whole time my life was crap, and I'm just now realizing it.  Most people have stuff figured out by the time they're 40. I'll be 41 soon, and I have exactly zero figured out, except I'm a mess. The things I formerly took pride in are no longer there. I've severed ties with people and the past so severely I no longer have ties to anyone or anything. I live alone. I have no friends. I talk to God alm...

*"Can't Hardly Wait" by The Replacements. I love this song. It's grammatically incorrect, but that doesn't seem to bother me. It was included on the soundtrack of the 1998 movie of the same name starring Jennifer Love Hewitt. If you've watched a fair number of movies set in high school, you're aware of certain tropes that exist. There's one that I call "That Girl." You know the girl, the one the (usually) shy guy wants to be with. She's amazing; she's out of his league. She's that girl, the one he's pined for forever. She's the one who can elevate his life in ways he can't even imagine. It could change the whole course of his life if he could just get that girl. Somehow, mustering up the courage or doing whatever is necessary to get that girl would change him from being a loser who nobody knows into somebody. My "That Girl" got away, and I let her get away. The year was 1996. It was one of the most...