my careless contagion

Cindy's Song (I mean Annie's Song ) is a musical masterpiece and a true love song. It's simple, eloquent, and timeless. It has persisted since 1974 in spite of the threat of being buried by decades of mediocre and downright terrible music. Take that, Justin Bieber. Perhaps the most amazing thing about the song is it was written in approximately 10 minutes while John rode a ski lift after having a fight with his then-wife, Annie. He was grateful he didn't break up with her, and Annie's Song is the product of that sentiment. Unfortunately, they did end up divorcing a few years later. That divorce has been described as ugly. In spite of that, and fortunately for the rest of us, this beautiful song lives on long after that divorce and after John left us. Annie's Song is straight from the heart. It's not a complicated song at all. Anyone can learn it, even me. Every time I hear this song, I think of a girl. Maybe you know who I'm talking about...

This post will no doubt raise a few eyebrows. But, I discuss my theories here sometimes, so bear with me. Believe whatever you want to believe.  My God is a jealous God. I went the other way from Him most of my life, only to be brought back. My God jealously fought for me and sought me out, and put me into situations He knew would crush my resolve to lead a life He could not bless. Eventually, I ran back to Him, mostly because He took away all other choices!  I gave my life to God when I was 15. I don't mean that I accepted Jesus as my savior then; I did that when I was a little boy and many times, actually. I mean I gave my entire life , every second, every moment, every breath to God. It was a promise I made. Then I rescinded it and did my own thing because following God is hard . But God didn't forget my promise, and that's why He chased me so zealously in the intervening years. I put a lot of idols in my heart in that time (really, anything that prevented me from...

Joey, as I recall, actually looked a bit like James Dean. Joey was his name. I know he was Indian (dot, not feather), and I think he lived in Columbus. I had moved in with my girlfriend, Kate, that summer. We got our own place. I remember holding her as she cried because there were dead cockroaches in the cupboards and the fridge smelled like paint (we got it replaced). I said we'd make the place ours. These were little things. The important thing was we were doing it together.  She cheated on me with Joey, a guy she met on IRC, the same place she met me. I took her to the bus stop and picked her up from the bus stop, her mood quite different upon her return. I must have been incredibly stupid to think she was going to just hang out and have dinner with someone. He got her off. She didn't return the favor. That sounds about right for her. I should have kicked her out when she told me what happened, but instead I slept on the floor in the other room, my little bed trample...

For this post, I reprise my role as Sad Keanu. Go away, bird. This post is a milestone — post number 300! I've been writing steadily for more than a year and a half (sometimes posting multiple times a day) about my various struggles. This space is a safe, healing place where I can fall apart and reassemble myself in front of a largely anonymous audience. In short, this is my therapy. But I need a break.  I've put so many thoughts and feelings here in a relatively short amount of time, and after my recent trip to Nebraska, I decided to slow down. There feels like a backlog of things I need to process. There are four drafts I have yet to post, three of which contain some beautiful sentiments, so I will post them. The fourth post I've been working on for weeks and is tentatively titled "Fifty reasons why I won't get the girl." I have not decided whether it will be seen or not. On one hand, it is part of my thought process and needs to be documented her...

Walter Mitty is a character created by James Thurber. But he could be any of us. He could be me.  The world was originally introduced to Walter Mitty in the short story The Secret Life of Walter Mitty , then later on in book form. Thurber loosely based the character on his friend Walter Mithoff we're told. What makes Walter interesting is not his actual life, but, rather, the life he lives in his head. As an introvert, I can identify with the character. If I said half the shit my head wanted to say, I would be the most polarizing character ever. But at least I wouldn't live a boring life.  Daydreaming is a great way to leave your humdrum life. At least for a little while. Eventually, you have to go back to the grind. I think I've spent the majority of the last two years living the daydream life, which isn't really living. It's hard when you want something so much yet can't have it. If you could imagine it to life, you would. If you don't have the tool...

  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...

A used condom. That's what I saw. That's what sparked this post.  I was hiking around a place called the Rock Maze not far from where I live. It's a place for fun and games and illicit activities such as recreational drug use. And, apparently, sex in the dirt. Oh, and it's a rock maze. I walked around a cliff face and saw a used condom in the dirt. It's nothing I hadn't seen before but didn't expect to see the evidence of someone's fun at that particular moment. As I shook my head and walked away, I thought of how my idea of sex has changed in the last few years. It used to be so common, so throw-away. Like that errant condom. It's strange how something that used to be so common can now seem so precious. When I think of sex, I think of one woman. And I can't even think of having sex with her in the dirt and leaving the condom behind. Really, I just want to hold her hand. Let's face it. Sex can be anything we want it to be. As lon...

The title How to Fix a Broken Heart (by Guy Winch) seems the perfect remedy for what ails me. I bought the book and welcomed it onto my lap many evenings after my son had gone to bed. What this little book taught me was what I had gone through needn't break me. Heartbreak is a common affliction, though we don't treat it as it should be treated, and sometimes we simply ignore it. Well, I couldn't ignore my bleeding heart if I tried. It has been broken for far too long. I cried as I read this book many times, most notably because I realized that the woman I loved was going through hell of an unspeakable kind — a kind of hell she wasn't even able to verbalize — yet I was valiantly trying to have a relationship with her. When she could barely get through her days, I was feeling rejected because she didn't want to talk about whatever stupid thing I thought was important. She surely saw this as a personal failure (or a failing of our friendship), and certainly as ...

Like a gift, you've given your body to me. I don't take this precious thing you've put in my hands lightly. I will not drop you. I will not break you. You've been dropped too many times, my dear, and it will take your heart a long time to know I won't drop you too.  Don't for a moment think I don't know what it means for you to give me your body like this. My fingers trace the scars on your heart where you were broken and betrayed. I know you're putting your heart on the line once again and expecting the same. But I will not drop you, and I won't betray you. My heart clings to yours, and if I dropped yours, I'd drop mine too. We're tangled together and wrapped around each other with a love that has no beginning and no end.  I've studied your curves all day long. I try and fail to contain my gazes to when you've looked away, but you know I've been undressing you all day. So as my mouth tastes your mouth and my hands ...

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 ...

I loved her with a love that was bigger than me. It filled me up until it leaked out in messy ways, embarrassing ways, lovely ways, little ways, big ways, and forever ways. I loved her with a love that could have swayed any woman, but she was not any woman. She was a ghost by the time I realized it was all over and done with. When she left the room, I was still picking out baby names for our love child. When she put me down and put me away, I was scrawling poetry for her across the sky.  I must have been exceptionally dull or blind because she made her escape while I was dreaming about our future. When I said I wanted to marry her, she must have been terrified. When I told her I loved her, I can't even imagine how she felt. She ran from me with a purpose and speed that equaled the love I felt for her. The more I loved, the more she shrank away.   If I could love her like this — even with the sadness mixed in — how could I love her if our hearts were one? It wo...

There's only one girl in the world I want to hear from. My heart pants for her and waits patiently (and sometimes impatiently) to hear from her. She's my heart's one desire. I've made peace with not having her, but oh, I'd love to hear her voice again. The only problem is I'm sure it would send me into space. It would be too much — like a buffet to a starving man — I'd feast until I'd become sick.  There's something in me that turned off, though, and forever. It was a rabidity I can't explain, like a ceaseless roving. Once my heart settled on her, a calmness replaced it. I answered all the questions that could be answered. I checked every box. I communed with my God until I knew all there was to know, and then I made my decision with a sureness that only comes from examining every aspect of something. Have I thought of everything? I can answer with all honesty and say, "Yes. At least, all that matters."  My fight is over. My mi...

My dear, I've seen so many of my wishes come true, but of all of them, I wish there had been more of you.  I wish it had been me holding you as you held our babies. I wish I could have been there for you when you brought them home, gave you a shoulder to rest on, let you fall asleep while I watched them. I wished it had been me. When you were so tired and so hurt, maybe for a moment you wished I had been there too. When your baby girl and your husband were the most important people in your life, and they were being pulled away from you, I wish I could have held you together.  Your love, your patience, your tenacity pulled you through. I wish it had been me instead. I wish you didn't have to love that way, that you could have loved naturally and without fear, without wondering, without missing any of the pieces. I would have held all the pieces together for you. I wouldn't have asked you to do the same for me.  I see you there, with your baby in your arms, and I...

The voice of reason always has the last word. My heart says what it wants to say, and then the voice of reason quashes all dissent.  The voice of reason says her heart belongs to another, and it always has. It's a deep, abiding love I've only seen the surface of. Yes, she loves him with all she has, even though he hurt and humiliated her for years. It's a love as strong as any bond or trauma-bond I've seen. She cannot walk away. She cannot crawl away. She's fused to him forever because this was her promise to him. She's the most loyal person I know. She has proven over and over she belongs to him. It's beautiful and tragic at the same time. There is no competing with a love like that. I can't think of her without being awestruck. The voice of reason tells me she'll never be mine. It tells my heart to pack it in, go on, at least try to move on. I have tried, of course, but every time I try my heart cries out like it will die. I love her with ...

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 ...

There's something wrong with me. Besides the obvious, I mean.  I've hesitated to write this post for a long time, the reason being I don't have the wherewithal to understand what is wrong. So, this is an exploratory post. I hope that by releasing my thoughts about this I will understand what's happening. By the time I put the final period on this page, I will know more than I do now.  I was going to write this post Sunday (who knows when I'll post it) but decided to go for a hike instead. I put my hunting gear on just in case. Turns out I made the right decision, as I bagged one of the largest whitetail bucks I've ever had the opportunity to hunt. The fact that I walked away from writing this tells me two things: 1) I'm putting less of my life on this blog, which is good because I'm actually living my life, and 2) I'm scared of writing this post, which is odd for me because I favor finding the truth in everything.  This is an uncomfor...