my careless contagion

This may be the hardest thing she's ever been through. This thing I've helped set in motion has unfairly impacted her and her little ones. This thing ... is just another trauma in a string of unsettling, traumatizing events. She's shielded her little ones from his actions. But, she couldn't shield them from mine. No, I've not been the one to heal her. But, I pray for him, whoever he is. This is my prayer. I pray you're a man after God's own heart. You'll need to be. You'll need to be selfless and strong in something other than yourself, something other than those around you. You'll have to be strong in the Lord. There will be times you'll feel slighted, rejected, left out, unable to make progress. Put yourself aside. You'll have to trust God because you can't give in to discouragement. You'll have to be more than a man, and I'm sure you will be. I pray you have a healing touch, for this woman has been abused (there...

We all have those make-it-or-break-it-moments in life. For most of us, they pass without noticing because we did what we had to do. We made it. We did the right thing. Some of us can't seem to get it right, though. This is about those people. This is about me.  Some of us come pre-loaded with difficulties we have to unravel throughout our lives and make sense of. We're already two strikes down when we get up to bat. I consider this keeping things fair. There's something special about those of us who come from behind and (hopefully) win. It's the classic underdog theme. Underdogs make for happy endings. Life doesn't always give us happy endings, though. This is about those other endings. I'm one of those guys who came pre-loaded with trouble. When I think about my life, it's amazing that ANYTHING WENT RIGHT, as there were so many strikes against me. It's no wonder I've had so many dismal failures. The cards were stacked against me. It wasn...

Some people seem effortless, the way they get through life, but life is hard for a lot of people. I know a way to make it easier.  I once worked with a girl (let's call her Shelby) who would talk disparagingly of another girl we worked with (who we'll call Shayna). Shayna was a little slow. She went to an alternative school. I got the feeling there was some sort of abuse or at least neglect (which is the same as abuse, really) at home. She loved her boyfriend. She smoked pot sometimes. This was a girl who should definitely not smoke pot, as she didn't have enough brain cells to go around as it was. She told awful, not-funny stories and would laugh like they were funny. Shelby said Shayna was a "herp derp" or just "herp." Sometimes just "derp," "derpy," or some derivative of the same nonsense. Yeah, she wasn't very nice to Shayna.  Shayna loved Shelby. No, not that kind of love. But, she certainly followed her around a bit ...

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...

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...

I'm not obsessed, I swear. I just obsessively think about this girl like there's nothing else in the world to think about. Really, it's no big deal.  I've decided on a simple comparison of our lives to illustrate just how impressive I think she is.  After my last Facebook (FB) purge, I have around 80 friends. She gets more than that many likes on her posts. She's one of the nicest, friendliest girls I've ever known with a heart as big as the moon, so it makes sense she's garnered a lot of friends. She doesn't use FB to troll people or post stupid memes. She uses it to reach out to her people, to educate, to praise, to cherish those in her life. I don't currently use FB, but when I did I mostly posted articles about stupid stuff bears were doing. Yes, bears.  She has talents I don't have. This list could be very long. She's creative and crafty. She can bake a cake. She can run a half marathon, mow her lawn, pay the bills, feed the kid...

When did I realize I experience the world differently than other people? I've tried to pinpoint when it all began. It must have started in my family unit at an early age, as I don't recall a particular moment of realization. Once my brain stopped trying to find that blip of time, it turned to the possible reasons why I felt so odd. The disconnect I felt from other people and their experiences was a clue that something wasn't right. Although I was a healthy weight and size when I was born, my health began to suffer soon after. I got pneumonia when I was a baby. I didn't grow or thrive like my brothers. In short, I was the runt of the litter.  As time went on, my mother became increasingly frantic about finding solutions for my physical state. It the age of 2.5, I was only 20 pounds. I had terrible digestive problems and couldn't seem to get well. After going to a doctor, it was revealed I had chronic impacted bowels. The doctor, by hand, disimpacted me. This...

I've said so much. Too much, really. You know things about me no one else knows. I wonder if I know you even half as well as you know me. As the evening wanes into night, I miss you even more than usual. I wish I had your strength to sit in silence. I cannot but tell the trees and the wind of how much I love you and miss you, how much I wish you were near. I love hard. I don't know any other way. I guess it turns women off, as I've had nothing but failure in love. I wanted too much, said too much, felt too much. And then I hurt too much. Now I sit still and wonder at what tore through me. Missing you used to make me ache. Sometimes it still does. There are the sharp pains and the dull aches that tell me you're nowhere to be found. There are moments I have to hold myself still and hold a hand over my mouth, as it feels I'm falling to pieces and nothing can hold me together any longer. Then the convulsions come, and my whole body shudders in pain. If you wer...

I have a fear of drowning. Not me personally, though. I fear my son drowning.  Last weekend, my mother said she had a dream my son, Isaiah, went straight into their pool. A few weeks earlier, my oldest brother invited me and my son to spend some time with them on a lake. I declined because I said the water was too deep there, and I didn't feel comfortable having my son around water that deep. Soon after I said that, a friend of our family mentioned her son fell into a river while they were on vacation, and she had to jump in to save him. I felt justified.  This could be considered paranoia. If I didn't believe in the supernatural, I might agree.  I've had more than a dozen dreams of my son falling into water since he was born. Every time I would have those dreams, I would pray over him. When my little family moved to a property with moving water (three different water sources), the dreams remained the same.  I never kept Isaiah from playing near water, a...

When I was in grade school and we lived in a small town in the Black Hills, on specific Wednesday afternoons some of the kids went to church while the rest of us went to the Veterans Affairs (VA) campus in our town to hang out with some of the veterans there. The program paired one or two kids with a vet, and we did projects and tours and other fun stuff. This was the middle of the 1980s, so these vets were WW II guys, the Greatest Generation. It's strange the memories that come to you when you're not even trying to think of anything. This is one of them. There seems to be a necessary recall going on in my head, the end of which I've yet to see. The VA once tried to arrange for our parents to meet our vets. There was some sort of party that we were all invited to. It was a great idea. I didn't tell my parents about the party. My veteran got upset with me, asked why I didn't invite them, why we didn't go. I just figured he wouldn't understand, so I di...

When I touch you, what does it mean to you? I may never know, as you are a mystery to me. A beautiful mystery, and you hide so much in your heart. Can I tell you what it would mean to me to touch you, to be with you, to make love to you someday?  It would be unlike anything I've had before, for you are unlike anyone I've ever known. I could tell you I'd be loyal and kind and tender and gentle and loving, but you already know that.  My love, I'd hold you like you fell from the stars. My fingers would speak for me, and my heart would be in my hands. Every caress would be an affirmation and a revolution.  I won't ever hurt you like he did. I know you can't believe that now. You'll never have to wonder where my heart is or what I'm thinking about when I'm with you. It will always be you. Even if I never have you and reluctantly have to let you go, it will always be you.  Laying with you would be a dream come true. Holding you would be incompr...

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...