my careless contagion

Thank you, Lord, for these moments with her. Holding her hand in the theater and fighting back tears of happiness because this is what I always wanted. Here she was, and sitting next to me as if it was the easiest thing in the world. Thank you for letting me see her heart and to understand, at least in part, such a beautiful soul — a special soul that knows no equal. I get to hear what's in her heart, her mind, and to see your imprint on her. It's all over her, in, and through her.  Thank you for letting me be something in her life. Just to be here is a miracle for which I am beyond grateful. She makes me incredibly happy, and I can't help but see her as a gift. I get to enjoy her, feel her warmth radiating next to me, revel in the scent of her skin, and bask in her laughter. And what beautiful laughter! I'm in love with the sound of her voice. I don't think there's a single thing about her I haven't fallen in love with. The sum total of her is probably more...

Thinking about this space where I spent so much time and expended so much mental and emotional energy, I can't help but liken it to something. I wrote an awful lot about a girl here. I was quite taken with her. I fell in love with her, and that love burst forth on these pages, year after year. I am still in love with her, though I know her differently now.  I wrote, not knowing whether she ever saw a word. I believed she did, and that's why I continued to write for so many years. This was my message in a bottle.  With a message in a bottle, we're never sure if it reaches its intended destination, if the one person in the world we want to read it actually does. I never knew. Did she ever feel those things I felt for her? Did she know how much I truly loved her? Did she read once or a hundred times or not at all? Did it make any difference what I said or didn't say? The hours I spent crafting my words, did it change anything? Did it make her bad days more tolerable? Were ...

The capital of Nebraska is Lincoln. Here is the capitol building in Lincoln. And neither capital or capitol is capitalized . How fun! English is only slightly infuriating. Lincoln, Nebraska. It's the state's capital. It's the home of Cornhusker sports teams. Nebraska has no professional sports teams, so the Cornhuskers are it. It's safe to say Nebraska is sports-obsessed. If you care about sports, it's a great place to live. To me, growing up a three-hour drive away, Lincoln was a great place to visit.  My dad was in the National Guards, starting in South Dakota (Hot Springs and Rapid City) and ending in Nebraska (Lincoln). National Guard duty entails a few weeks' commitment in the summer as well as every other weekend during the year. I often went with my father on the weekends and spent that time tooling around Lincoln, often by myself. It was more exciting than time spent in a town of about 4,000 (Broken Bow), needless to say. Sometimes too excitin...

It's the echo of my own mind. It's the words of a friend. It's the sharp blast of winter wind in the eyes. It's waking from a lovely dream only to be thrust back into an awful reality. It's living with a decision you didn't make. It's an accident on the freeway. Your dog getting hit in the street. A miscarriage. A letter you read and discarded but wish you had back every single day. It appears to be that time, dear readers, to face reality. I've been chasing butterflies, riding unicorns into the sunset, reading fairy tales and imagining the man in the moon coming to life for too long. It's time. I hear it in the words of a friend. Sometimes it's just a gentle tug that I need to get me back on the road. Sometimes I need to be hit over the head with a map and cursed at a little. THAT WAY. Go that way, dummy.  There is a period of adjustment after the end of a relationship when one feels free. You can do anything you want! I've imagin...

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...

My white bears (hastily scrawled): 1) End up alone 2) Angry 3) Defeated 4) Paralyzed 5) Drinking 6) Twisted up (whatever that means) 7) Suicide I read an article a few months ago about facing your white bears, which are unwanted thoughts (a bit more:  http://www.apa.org/monitor/ 2011/10/unwanted-thoughts.aspx ), often worst-case scenarios. The idea of writing them down is thought to be helpful because once you put these things in front of you, you can take them apart. By taking them apart, you realize these are things you've either previously dealt with or are figureoutable. Once you say them or write them down, you realize these are common problems and you already have the tools to deal with them. In essence, they become smaller on paper than in your mind.  When I got divorced, I was faced with a variety of fears and uncertainties. I wrote down the seven scariest. I've already experienced the top four. Number six, I suppose, means that my inside...