my careless contagion

Let's start with a joke! Was it funny? I guess that depends on your sense of humor. Many will laugh because the punchline is unexpected. Unexpected things make us laugh for some reason. It made me laugh, and perhaps because the girl appears Slavic, and they are known for having a rather severe take on reality (no BS). So, here I am in a tank top, dude .  Two things have been tangled in my thoughts for some time. The first is what I feel God answered about the girl and my missed opportunity. I feel He told me to move to where she lives last summer, but I did not. I was disobedient because I was scared of a non-existent pandemic. I didn't know how that would play out, but all things are in God's hands. I believe if I had been obedient, it is possible we would have eventually been together and He would have blessed us. Maybe I'm just hanging onto my delusion, but that's what I feel in my spirit. (She probably disagrees, but all I know is what I feel God said.) It doesn...

I wrote this post this summer but didn't post it, obviously. I edited it a tiny bit to take out the most negative things. I guess it's okay to post it now, just for my own record. I was still holding on to something. What it was, I don't know. Yes, I believe God told me something two years ago about being with Cindy, but maybe I had to let go of that original relationship first before something legitimate could take its place. Or maybe I just love with foolish abandon. Maybe both.  Anyway, here's a post I neglected to post 5 or 6 months ago. Maybe I should post all my neglected drafts since everything is over. Then I can write love letters again since that's all I seem to want to do anyway. Get the disappointment out of the way and just write what you want, Joshua. Write about how much you love that girl. There's nothing to lose anymore. It's already been lost. There's a verse in Matthew (6:21) that says where your treasure is, there will your hear...

  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...

One of the most difficult things to reconcile when confronted with the death of a relationship is the mosaic of memories. I say "mosaic" because that's how they appear in my mind. They are little shards of time that I've pieced together and layered into an overall "picture." They don't reflect reality as it was. They are something new. The good and bad memories flow into one another. The bad memories are lightly interspersed and aren't nearly as shiny as the good memories. It's a false recollection, the way they're put together, but it's all I have now — just a mosaic of memories. What do I do with them? How do I make sense of them? They come up randomly, seemingly at odds with the feel of the moment. They force their way to the front of my brain and shove other thoughts aside. They sit and stare at me until I decide where they should go on the mosaic. Are they good? Are they bad? Are they just random moments? Do they mean anything...

Lyrics:  Pull down the blinds Don't think I'll make it out today Spilling down from the sky Another day, one more than I can take Get my irons from the fire Cause mistakes are all I seem able to make these days Later to bed, later to rise Feeling unhealthy, unwealthy, and unwise I'm not screening calls I just ain't answering the phone Don't come banging on my door Please just leave me alone I don't know another way I'm waiting for my luck to change Without you by my side This loneliness I feel Is the kind I fear I'll keep I'm trying to fall out of love But I'm only falling asleep I miss you so much I might as well miss everyone Ain't we having fun   I've committed a great crime of omission. I have neglected to mention one of my favorite bands, a band I thought I would never get to see live yet got to see twice. Samiam! How do I describe Samiam? They're indescribable! Their name is clearly derived from Dr. Seuss. W...

What you did to her I don't know you. I don't know what you did to her. I just know what she used to be like. You took a virtuous young woman and took and took and took. She would have kept giving, even though you took all. She told me she would have endured any amount of "pain and humiliation" to keep you, to keep you happy, to keep you coming home to her.  I don't know what you did to her, but I see the end result of it, how she's done with life, done with men, just ... done. She'll never trust again the way she trusted you, and never will she lay herself bare and vulnerable in a man's arms again. Whatever you did to her, I don't know, but she'll never be the same. She's always going to have that awareness in the back of her head that she's been done wrong, that she's going to find out any day just how wrong she's been done. You made her a detective when you should have been making her smile. You made her question ever...

With any great hurt or disappointment, there are a number of stages one walks through in the aftermath. There is usually some anger, wildly fluctuating feelings of betrayal, etc. The range of emotions can take your breath away. Somewhere in there, you will probably do a "what happened" sort of retrospective. I've been writing these pages in the effort to gain perspective on what the hell went wrong in my life. For all practical purposes, I'm nearing the end of this process, and, I believe for me, the next stage is acceptance.  I have to accept things about my life I'd rather not. But, there is no way to move on until I do. I've accepted the fact that I couldn't save my marriage. There were things in both of us that conspired to destroy it, things I didn't even see until years after the damage was done and all the goodness leaked out. Likewise, I couldn't save any other relationship I've been in, however strong it may have seemed in the ...