my careless contagion

I remember the exact moment she came back into my life. It was December three years ago. I remember where I sat and the smile that spread across my face. I remember the warmth that suddenly coursed through me even though my body was trembling with cold.  I loved that girl with such beautiful hues — words dipped in aching, gasping, glorious color and spread across the widest canvas. Perhaps I got too involved, but love is an involving emotion. In all of my heart-pounding feelings, did I betray myself and create a love that didn't exist? I lost her an unspeakable number of times. I lost her every moment of every day and every night with every heartbeat after she left. Every day and week and month that went by and she was silent, that loss penetrated deeper in my bones. Still now, she is lost. Love is perfect, though sometimes imperfectly found. And, boy, did I love that girl. If I could do it again, I would, and a thousand times. If I had a thousand lives, I'd li...

  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...