An Open Letter to God

An Open Letter to God

An Original Short Story
By
Robertdogwood
Copyright 2003
Rated R for language and adult situations
02-23-03

Dear God,

Sorry to bother you on Sunday like this. Now I know a lot of people would say that’s the day that I should talk to you, but personally I think they’re wrong. In the Big Book it says on the seventh day you rested, not us; so why do we insist on you having to listen to us all day on Sundays?

The reason I’m writing is – now I don’t want you to take this the wrong way, but I don’t understand you taking this teenage girl. You know the one they did the wrong transplant with? Now I’m not one to act like I know better than you or anything, but I wish you would come to me before you do things like that.

This girl was only a teenager, I would have gladly given you my life in exchange for hers. She had a whole life in front of her, I’m fifty-five years old and fading fast. Now like I said, I don’t want you to take any of this as criticism but I could surely use your thinking on this. I mean I know without knowing anybody involved that there was a lot of praying to you going on over this to save this girl and yet she had to die.

It’s the last straw for me, anyway. Death has been lurking around me for months now. In the last six months, a very good friend of mine who was two months older than me died finally of a terrible blood disease and even worse than that, another friend of mine died – I suppose you could have called him my best friend, he was only forty-six. We went to many, many concerts together in the eighties, all over the place and he died of liver cancer and now within the last week I received word that another good friend of mine who is eight years younger is dying of cancer too.

Here’s the deal, my life was never that great anyway, so at this point I certainly wouldn’t have minded going if it would have meant that beautiful young girl could have grown up, maybe met a man who wanted to love and cherish her, get married and make babies and raised them up to be adults.

I mean – don’t get me wrong. I had my moments, I had my innings, but I think my game is winding down now. I hated being a kid. I wasn’t physically abused or anything like that, although my parents always thought spare the mouth and spoil the child. According to them I never could do anything right. I guess it was the way they were raised too but it lost something in the translation and I grew up thinking I was lower than a big ball of shit.

Sorry about the bad language, but sometimes plain talk is better at describing something. Anyway that’s not why I hated being a kid. I hated being a kid because I couldn’t do anything I wanted to do – all those years I had to do what someone else always wanted.

So then what happens – I finally get out of high school and move away to college. Man, that first year away from home, I was so happy and I never could quite get over that I even was accepted at a college. So I come home over the summer and get a crummy job and blam! I get struck by a car and knocked about a quarter of a mile in the air down a highway.

That’s a fur piece, Lord and when I landed, my left leg wasn’t much good after that. That’s when I first learned about physical agony – not when it happened – I went into shock very quickly then. No, over the next year was the physical agony part and then after that, I learned about emotional agony because I walked with a terrible limp.

Nineteen years old and I looked like some kind of circus freak and you must remember, God, that your teenage years are well known for feeling self conscious anyway. But you know I ended being happy all that happened because it kept me from being sent to Viet Nam and killed.

I know – you’re going to say how could I be so certain that I was handpicked to die? Because all of my childhood friends went over there and came back fine without a scratch. Of course some of their minds were never quite the same after what they saw over there, but we were protecting all those people from communism, weren’t we?

And my best friend at the time was a helicopter pilot and he volunteered for two tours over there and pilots had a life expectancy of about eighteen seconds I think and he came through perfect so I know I would have been killed. It only stands to reason. It’s the law of averages.

Then it was the late sixties and I started using drugs, all kinds of drugs, anything I could get, over and over. That was a lot of fun – for a few years but then it turned bad. But guess what? I couldn’t quit, no matter how hard I tried. And I almost died a few times, and then a few times more.

Finally I had to give it up and go into treatment. It was a year long program and I got well there. For the first time in my entire life I felt accepted by people and it all started with accepting myself. I didn’t have a low self concept. I thought I was inferior. I had thought that others were better than me my entire life. I learned there that I was wrong.

I ended up having a great time there. I met a lot of cool people, smart people, made a lot of friends, ended up changing my entire life because after treatment they offered me a job on the staff and I worked there for most of my life.

You know what’s funny? I helped a lot of people get well. No, that’s not it. I helped a lot of people help themselves to get well. But I mean a lot of people. I helped to save the lives of well over a couple of hundred people and they are not only alive, but they’re clean from drugs, are married, some with families and have professions they enjoy. Personally I think that’s a pretty good legacy.

And then right after I got out of treatment, now that was a good time. I was still relatively young – twenty-five – I had plenty of money because I was working and my needs were slight and I was straight, clear-headed, and actually thought something of myself for the first time in my life.

And women! There were lots of women and I don’t mean one night stands. I’m talking about women I was also friends with. I don’t mean to imply that there was anything like sex every night, but the chase was on – it was possible and win or lose, it was fun. And then I met the woman who was to become my wife.

It was love at first sight, even though I tried to deny it to her and myself – it was there. And I was deliriously happy. It was the best time in my life, bar none. It was pure passion. You know in all those movies or maybe you don’t get out much – I don’t know. But in all those movies where the two people just can’t stay away from each other no matter what they’re threatened with, no matter how badly it might turn out they can’t stay away. It was like that. I never had experienced such feelings in my life.

And she was so God damn (oh sorry, no offense) she was so damn beautiful that I couldn’t believe she loved me in return. I never ever once thought that a woman that attractive would ever find me desirable.

But the whole thing was your joke, wasn’t it? She was eleven years older than me and at the time it hardly mattered. I was twenty-seven and she appeared exactly my age and we continued to age together for years until suddenly one day out of the blue, she not only looked eleven years older than me – she looked even older than that. I’m now married to my Grandmother.

Now I certainly don’t want you to think that I’m as crass as someone would have to be to let something like physical appearance dictate my love after all these many years (28 years married) because I’m not. What has happened in my marriage is about five years ago my wife decided that I needed a lot of nagging to convince me that my interests of playing a lot of video games was inappropriate for my age and later that writing fan fiction and having a lot of internet friends was also wrong.

I’m so confused now I have no idea what I’m supposed to be like. Ok, I’ll grant her or anybody else most fifty-five year old men don’t play video games and write fan fiction – does that make me wrong? If I didn’t do that, what should my interests be? Playing golf? I hate playing golf. Fishing? I always thought fishing sucked. My wife watches a lot of movies. What? Is that more legitimate in the eyes of the world? At least in my interests, I’m the active party. I’m not just sitting passive watching something someone else did for me.

Now again I don’t want to give you the wrong impression. We had many great years together. Many years of sweet, pure, passionate love and we didn’t have much or have any money either, but it didn’t seem to matter. I mean this. I’ve had more than a lot of people ever get and I’m not talking about material things. I’m talking about love reciprocated from someone I loved dearly.

And then you got smart alecky, didn’t you? I never thought I would have any children and I had made myself okay with that. As you know, my wife had three children by her first husband (he received custody which just about killed her at the time) and she told me in flat terms no way was she going to have anymore. One day in my thirty-fifth year I learned otherwise. My wife was pregnant. Now if I was thirty-five that made my wife forty-five.

Yeah, Lord, that’s pushing it in the pregnancy department, isn’t it? Forty-five? Your joke? My wife thought that I was frightened to become a father and that’s why I had stayed so emotionally detached through the pregnancy period. That wasn’t it at all. The chances of having a Down’s baby raises dramatically after the age of forty and she had already told me she wouldn’t raise a Down’s child, that it would have to be institutionalized.

Now you might be happy to hear God, that I didn’t believe in that. If chance or you or whatever gave me a Down’s child to raise I would do the best I could for them, but I thought it was foolish to become involved in some large hurtful argument over something that hadn’t happened yet. But that was why I appeared emotionally detached.

I was working full time, usually some overtime, going to University for twelve hours a week and then my wife’s blood pressure sky rocketed so dangerously high her doctor became extremely frightened that she would stroke out. So she was sent right to the hospital for twenty-four hour a day bed rest. Try fitting that into the schedule I just mentioned.

Because naturally being extremely pregnant at the time, she was put in the maternity ward which I don’t know if you know this or not, but it’s not like the other units in the hospital as far as visitors or visiting hours. Because the woman would usually only be there for a few days at the worse only immediate family could visit and visiting hours were practically open ended which meant I spent every waking moment I wasn’t at work or at school with my wife.

Her blood pressure did not get any better and her placenta was deteriorating and the doctor said he was going to have to induce the baby or we would lose her for sure, but the baby wasn’t even fully developed yet. This was all funny to you – right? They were giving the baby steroid shots attempting to help her develop enough of her lungs to allow them to induce her.

The morning they wheeled my wife in to do the caesarian, do you remember hearing from me? I remember talking to you; something akin to the fact if you were there and did care even a little I would at this point settle for my wife alive and lose the baby if it came down to only one making it. Looking back I think that was only natural of me, don’t you? My love for my wife was a known commodity, my love for my child was still yet a mystery to me.

My little girl was brought into the world and because she was considered premature and still had slowly developing lungs they rushed her down to put her on oxygen. I went in to see my wife and I was immediately sent down to observe the baby and report back. My wife hadn’t even seen her yet.

I walked into where they had her lying with a oxygen ventilator over her entire head. She was so tiny. I stood there stunned just looking at her, one of the nurses told me to touch her. Her hands had been clenching and unclenching. They were so little you wouldn’t have believed it. She easily would have fit entirely in my hand. I stuck one finger into her hand and she gripped it. I mean she gripped it hard and looked at me. I was gone. I was lost. I was never the same. Having a child does change a man, I’ll tell you that or it should. I now had someone who depended on me to take care of them, who depended on me to be there for them no matter what, all the time, no bullshit excuses.

I went back to where my wife was. She said, “Well, what did she look like?”

I answered, “She looked like a very little wrinkled old man and the fat’s in the fire now.” My wife knew immediately what I had meant. She knew that I meant my heart was lost to another woman once again.

Oh yeah, and then in my daughter’s first year when I was still killing myself trying to get my M.A. so maybe I could go teach in a little junior college somewhere, we had more fun, didn’t we. I was playing softball in a league; remember – I had a bad leg? Well, it had gotten better through the years to where I could play sports on it and I loved being able to do that.

I was sliding into third base that night and I heard it snap right in my ear. It was so loud and the pain so sudden for a moment I thought I’d been shot and then with a sinking in my heart I realized what it was – I had rebroken my bad leg. What a hoot that must have been for you.

Ten months it took that thing to heal and in that ten months, it all almost coincided with my daughter’s whole first year, we spent so much time together we were perfectly bonded. Was that your idea? If it was, you did a good job. My daughter and I remained bonded throughout her entire childhood. She never reached the point where she would push me away like all the childhood experts insist will happen.

That’s not to say we didn’t have a stormy relationship at times. We’re too alike for that not to be true, but no matter how wild her behavior became, she always knew we loved her, we would take her back immediately and we would do whatever we could do to help.

She never lied to me, I mean about big things; of course she would lie about skipping school. Kids have to lie about that. Even when she knew I wouldn’t like what I heard she would tell me the truth. She trusted me that much. It’s good to live in a place where people don’t lie to you.

I absolutely hate being lied to. And when people lie to me to spare my feelings, I know they’re lying and it causes me to hurt just as much or maybe more. And those feelings of hurt grow into anger and then my anger causes me to stir the pot of rage and pretty soon the whole relationship blows up and the meal is ruined for all time. Wouldn’t it have been better if they had been straight with me from the very start?

That’s what is still perplexing me, God. Which is the truth as far as you’re concerned? I’m told God works in mysterious ways. This is to help me supposedly understand why things like that beautiful teenage girl needlessly dying happened and all those people in that nightclub fire. But then I’m also told that you don’t interfere with the world at all, that it is all up to our free will. Which is it? You can’t have it both ways.

If this world is a result of our free will, it’s time for some determinism – let me tell you. When my daughter was at her rebellious worse, when you could say look out that truck will hit you and she would run out in front of it just to spite you, I used to tell my wife over and over, like a mantra – our job is to keep her alive. Our job is to keep her alive.

And I meant it. We couldn’t make her go to school. We couldn’t stop her from going out her bedroom window in the middle of the night. We couldn’t keep her from getting in trouble with the law. We couldn’t pick her friends for her. But we could help keep her alive. And we did, that much we did and now she’s all grown up and she’s doing great and once in a while she’ll shake her head remembering some of her antics at the age of twelve and thirteen and she’ll say, “I’d be scared to do that now. What was I thinking back then?”

I don’t tell her, but I think it was – “I can, I can, I can.” I went through my rebellious period but it was in my late teens. She went through hers in her very early teens. Her children, if she chooses to have any, will probably go through theirs when they’re ten and so on. At this rate in about five generations babies will be rebelling in their wombs.

My daughter grew up. She basically went on her way. That’s as it should be. I never tried to make her feel guilty about that the way my parents did me. She comes by to say hi when she has time. And we don’t nag her. That’s different, isn’t it?

Another thing that irks me is this age lie thing. I’m fifty-five, I’m told I’m only as old as I feel. Which feel? Physically feel or emotionally feel? Emotionally I feel about sixteen, physically I feel about one hundred. I’m serious here, if I’m lying I’m dying.

And try this one on – you’re fifty-five? That’s not old, that’s middle age. Well like yeah, if you live to be one hundred and ten, then fifty-five is middle age. No, thanks I think I’ll pass on the one hundred and ten part. Can you imagine? I don’t feel good now, what would it be like at one hundred and ten? And think about being old for fifty years!

So basically my daughter was gone and my wife and I hung on, coexisting by ignoring each other as much as possible. I wasn’t happy, in fact I was miserable. But then I’d been miserable for years. I expected nothing different. I wasn’t complaining. I figured I’d had my good times, my happy times. No one ever promised me I’d be happy all my life. No one ever promised me I’d be happy at all so I figured I was ahead of the game.

And then I met someone online. A young woman online and we really hit it off. I mean we really liked each other and then we professed our love for each other. Oh I know – haha! Sure, laugh your Godly laugh. We fell in love online. I ‘did’ too know what she looked like. She sent me plenty of pictures. I sent her pictures of me.

I was so happy. She awoke feelings in me that I thought were impossible to find anymore. I was like a young man. I thought about her night and day. We told each other everything. I told her things I had never told anyone, not even my wife. We thought we had been connected in the past. It certainly seemed that way. It was like we knew things about each other before we were told them. On one fateful night I answered every question correctly that she asked me about the way she looked and I had never seen a picture of her up to that time. That must have counted for something.

And she saved my life. Yes, online she saved my life. We had been talking online for about six weeks and a couple of weeks after professing our love for each other when it happened. It was on a very late Saturday night. They lived out in the country and were fairly isolated as they had no extremely near neighbors. The weather was mild and the windows were open because of it.

Sudden she complained of smelling cigarette smoke which was indeed alarming because no one in her household smoked so she was afraid someone was lurking around her house. She told me to hang on and she went to check. She came back in a few moments and said she looked around thoroughly but she didn’t see anything unusual.

I said good and as a joke, but it was true, I said you know I had just lit a cigarette before you said that about smelling smoke. And she said (and I’m sorry about the yelling) “EKKKKKKK!” And I’m freaked so I’m going, “What? What?”

It turns out that it was pretty coincidental that she smelled smoke thousands of miles away just when I lighted a cigarette, but the main part of her protest was that I smoked. I guess it just had never come up in conversation and she was dead set against smoking. There were also some physical issues with her and it but I don’t even think that’s important to this.

She proceeded to argue and argue with me about smoking, telling me all these physical health horror stories she herself had witnessed with people who smoked heavily. We literally argued for hours. Finally I told her, if I was there with her or she were here with me, I could quit, but I couldn’t just quit because someone online who I might never see my entire life wanted me to quit. She told me she didn’t believe me, that I wouldn’t quit even then. We finally said good night.

The next day as soon as we started talking the argument began again. It just went on and on. The thing is it’s impossible to defend smoking. Everything everybody says about it is true, so the smoker is reduced to saying things such as I don’t want to quit – I’m still enjoying it; which may or may not be true. Or the smoker will say I don’t want to quit and really means I would like to quit, but I don’t think I can and I’m scared to find out.

One argument would wind down and she would say, “Well, it’s your life. You do what you think is best.” And she was never mean or nasty about it. I knew that she really cared about me and didn’t want me to smoke. It was a cinch no one else in my life cared whether I smoked or not and that included my wife and daughter.

Maybe one sentence later she would start the next round of the argument and on it went through the afternoon. Finally I had to say goodbye because we were going out. Once I was out in the car, I began to think why not attempt to quit? I couldn’t lose anything and she was of course correct in everything she said against it.

So I started not smoking a day at a time. I didn’t even tell her until twenty-fours had passed because generally the first day is pure hell and I wanted to make sure I actually got all the way through it before shooting my mouth off. And from that day to now I haven’t smoked again. And she saved my life.

No, I’m not speaking theoretically. I’m speaking realistically. You should pull my medical file when you read this. The heavier we got in our relationship, the more my lover suggested to me that I visit. I was finally able to figure out a way when my daughter and my wife would be away together and I was to be left at home that I could get away for a weekend.

We started making our plans. I almost had all the extra money saved that I would need to keep the trip a secret from my wife. I was ecstatic, I was in heaven (pardon the expression), I hadn’t been so happy in over two decades. It was all I thought about, it was all we talked about; what we were going to do when we had our visit.

Let me get one thing straight right off because you know these rumors can start. I’m not talking about sex. In fact, we had already decided we would take all that very slowly. I was just so happy that I was going to actually ‘see’ her and be able to touch her and hug her and talk to her face to face. The closest I had been was talking to her once a week on the telephone or listening to her interact with her family through having the sound on in her chatroom.

And then, as I’m sure you already know, it all got real dicey and then ended up blowing away to hell. It started with my job. I actually enjoyed working with my clients and I loved most of the people I worked with, but the paper work was killer. There was no way I could ever get it all done on time. And it seemed as if we had a audit once a month; in this case an audit meant some inspector would come in from some licensing or funding agency and would pour over the files to make certain that even the most esoteric requirements were being met.

I was never caught up. I worked on my paperwork most every evening and all of my weekends and I was always behind. I began to loath the job and have a terrible attitude, but I told myself I needed to hold on to it as best as I could. I thought it started affecting my health.

I was tired all the time. I mean I could get eight hours sleep at night and wake up exhausted. I would fall asleep in staff meetings like an old man. I was excessively sweating all the time when everyone else would be comfortable. I was always out of breath. I would nod off at traffic lights on my way to work. Luckily I had so far always woken up before my foot could slip off the brake or the light could change and traffic could begin to move again without me.

I thought it was either my physical reaction to the stress on my job much like a person could develop ulcers or experience migraines or this is what it felt to get old. But most of the time I didn’t think about it at all, because I was in denial of actually how bad I felt. Finally I had to first tell my wife and then my boss that I had to leave the position, I could no longer stand it. I hated coming to work each morning. I decided that was not a satisfactory way to live.

When I explained to my soulmate online she suggested that instead of locating new employment to begin immediately after leaving my job, I would be best served to wait and have a hernia surgery done that I desperately needed. There would still be plenty of time before I was to come out and visit.

After I thought about it, I decided she had a great idea and that’s what I decided to do. I made an appointment with the surgeon and the surgery was scheduled to take place on a Monday following my last week on my job. I was also instructed to have my preliminary blood work done so the surgery could take place on time.

I am the great procrastinator when it comes to things such as that and I didn’t have the blood work done until the Monday that was seven days before the surgery. Then I went to work. Once arriving at home my wife told me she had upsetting news and asked me to sit down. She informed me the hospital had called and asked to speak with me. When she told them I was at work, they acted amazed that I could be anywhere other than lying in bed.

This was because the blood tests came back showing that I was extremely anemic. I don’t pretend to be a medical expert, but apparently I was only getting twenty-four percent of the red blood cells I needed to breath, run the entire body, etc. No wonder I had felt so badly. I firmly believe if I hadn’t quit smoking it would have ate up enough of the remaining oxygen that I would have fallen asleep while driving or something else would have happened equally horrible. She had actually saved my life twice. Once when making me quit smoking and two suggesting to have the surgery done and through that having my anemia discovered.

Now it remained to find out why I was anemic. I had this and that test administered to me and it was discovered I had esophageal bleeding varices; in other words, excessive bleeding in my throat.

Generally speaking this is a sign of acute chronic alcoholism because the liver has become so cirrhotic that blood cannot no longer force its’ way through it and it began to break down somewhere in the body. Or it can be caused by extreme acid reflux. Neither of these problems had anything to do with me. I hadn’t drank for many years and I didn’t have any acid reflux.

The full spectrum of blood tests was run and as far as I was concerned the very worst possible result came back. I had Hepatitis C; the worst possible kind too. It was practically incurable and only had a five percent chance of improvement after a year of treatment with a substance whose side effects are worse than the virus.

The ultimate conclusion would be after years and years I would either die from cirrhosis or liver cancer; if something else hadn’t killed me first. There is a certain relief in knowing what probably will do you in. One of my physicians already has me on a list for a liver transplant. And I don’t think I would ever agree to one. It looks to be too much misery for me to put up with for a few more years of life.

Besides, I probably contacted this virus thirty years ago through my illicit drug usage. Some punishment for sins just takes a while to surface, doesn’t it – eh? And I’m sure there would be people on the list far younger and who contacted it through no fault of their own. Why should I be given the opportunity for further life first over them? What would make me so much more worthier? Are you listening, God? Do you have any answers for me?

I called my love on her cell phone as she was expecting to hear from me as soon I received the results. I was sobbing as I told her and soon she was weeping too. Despite all the emotional pain and disappointment I was experiencing, I was also happy. Her crying told me that she did care about me, about us. I never had up to that point had any reason to think otherwise, but it was still gratifying to realize she had spoken the truth.

Fore I understood why I was crying and I knew she was crying for the same reasons. I was sobbing for myself, my illness, my life, but also I was sobbing for her, for our love, and for us. Because there was no more us, I knew that right then and so did she. This was because she had serious health problems of her own, that included auto-immune deficiency. If I passed my virus to her, it could kill her fucking dead in no time. Love or no love she would never be able to risk it, and it also cut out all the extra-curricular events we were going to participate in instead of the main course.

My present happiness was killed by Hep C which was a direct result of my drug usage of thirty years prior. One never knows when they may make a decision which will affect them negatively years later, do they God? Our relationship was over before it was given an adequate chance to begin. It just took awhile to wind down horribly and then end.

A few nights later we were ‘talking’ and I was going on about how much more money I had saved and how soon we would be together. When I had finished, her response was ‘Yep.” Now as time went on from that point, I began to see “Yep” a great deal from her as an answer, but at that particular point she had never said it to me in response to my being excited over finally seeing her.

Most people, I’m sure, would have chosen to ignore it for any number of reasons called justification, but not me; oh, no, not Mr. Hot Shot Counselor.

I asked, “Is something wrong? Are you having any second thoughts about me coming out?”

In that almost five minutes that passed before she answered me, I learned that your blood ‘can’ run cold because mine did. I ‘knew’ before she answered what she was going to admit it. I sat there in the interim thinking, ‘Oh why have I always got to be so God damn smart?’

Sure enough, when she finally ‘spoke’ she confirmed my worse fears as she said, “You know, you’re beginning to know me pretty well.” With increasing horror (and I mean horror) I listened as she proceeded to explain to me that she didn’t think she could go through with it because it would cause her to feel too guilty. She told me she hadn’t told me because she was so scared that I would end the relationship and that she loved me so much she didn’t think she could handle not being able to talk to me everyday online.

Her still professing love to me helped a small amount, but waving the word guilt in front of a counselor is akin to waving a red flag in front of a charging bull. I immediately made a smooth transition from a person whose feelings were rocketing out of control to the non-judgmental, unemotional role as a counselor in order to help her through her almost hysterical emotions.

I actually felt as though I was a character in a play. It just didn’t seem real to me at the time. In fact, I not only fooled her that I was handling it, I fooled myself. I really thought that I understood it all and was fully accepting.

What a night that was! I certainly will never forget it. It took around four hours to calm her down and convince her that I still loved her and wouldn’t end the relationship because she had changed her mind about me coming out to visit her – ‘for right now.’

That was the understanding she left me with – that someday soon I would be visiting her as we had planned; that she just needed some time to be alright with it. She had finally literally made herself sick with the whole thing and had taken some medication and staggered off to bed. I still felt fine. I wished her ‘sweet sleep’ and then went offline thinking that everything was fine.

I hadn’t had anymore then clicked that computer off when it all hit me and I broke down sobbing. I couldn’t stop, I just cried and cried. I was totally devastated. I wasn’t alright with it. ‘What the fuck is wrong with me? Why didn’t I tell her the truth? Why was I playing the noble one?’ I was lost groping in an emotional fog of pain and desolation. There would be no sleep for me that night.

I went back online looking for my only true friend. I had totally alienated everyone else with my arrogance, excessive demands, and my ever spiraling anger. There’s one thing I wish to get straight with you right now, God. When this friend of mine, who is a young woman finally, dies in sixty or seventy years, she goes straight to heaven – got it? For the simple reason she is already an angel lost in the wrong place.

If it weren’t for her, I wouldn’t have made it. I know you don’t want to hear this, but I would have offed myself, plain and simple. I just couldn’t have handled all that emotional pain on my own and I had no one else to talk to.

And she never wavered, she never hid from me, she never said, “Not today.” She always listened and cared and attempted to help me by offering feedback and different ways of looking at things.

That night she wasn’t online. I didn’t know what to do. I was so confused and I hurt so badly. I decided to sent my lover an email and attempt to tell her my true feelings about everything. I ended up sending her four emails, each one a little more emotional than the one before, but each one basically saying the same thing – how unacceptable I found it to be that I would never see her in person, that I would never hear her voice in real life, how I would never kiss her, or hold her hand or embrace her.

And then my friend popped online. I didn’t want to overwhelm her, but I couldn’t let her get away. She talked to me for hours. Sometimes I was crying so hard I could barely see the computer screen. She told me to not jump to conclusions. She told me it was worth waiting for. She told me if it were to be, it would happen. She told me to hang on. What she told me made sense.

Later that same day, I received an email from my lover. It simply said, “If you come, I will be here.” Of course I ‘knew’ it wasn’t right on my part. She had told me she didn’t think she could go through with it because of her guilt towards her husband and child, so I had just ‘outguilted’ her. I poured so many of my emotions concerning not being allowed to see her onto her that she couldn’t possibly turn me away.

Did I go through with it? Of course not. I allowed her to renege. I loved her, doesn’t love mean that you sacrifice your feelings and desires to the ones of your beloved? Isn’t that right, God?

Of course I will regret this to the end of my days. A couple of days later, she informed me I could come visit her as long as I agreed that it would only be as friends. I agreed to that immediately. It was seeing her, holding hands with her, hugging her, talking to her that was important to me. And I had this terrible fear if I didn’t get out there to visit her now, it would never happen.

I was ready to make the hotel reservations when I checked with her about it once more, concerning whether it was a good place and would she be able to get there. And she explained to me that she had changed her mind again and decided this too would cause her to feel guilty.

Now God I’m sure you think that because I had been through this once before, it was easier to deal with. You would be wrong. This was much much harder, because I realized this time I would never see her as long as I lived. And unlike the first time, she did not beg me to not leave her, but instead advised me to do what I needed to do to take care of myself.

That was our last hurrah. I knew enough to read the handwriting on the wall. She no longer loved me. She was frightened to tell me for fear I guess of hurting me badly, but it would have been so much better if she had. When I asked her if she did, my love still paid lip service to the idea that she loved me, but in every other way her actions belied she did.

The last two months were a horrible winding down of the relationship. It became so bad she would tell me she didn’t feel like talking on the telephone on our days to talk. If I told her something in confidence about myself she would use it against me when we argued. I don’t want you to think, God, that I am painting her in a bad light. Beneath it all, she was trying to push me away; she wanted me to end it so it would save me the pain that I would feel if she had done it.

What she never realized was I would never end it, because only I knew that I would have nothing left when it happened. It finally ended so badly I’m no longer even allowed to contact her by email. I believe there is only so much happiness available in the universe at any given time. If this isn’t true, why haven’t people grabbed a little for themselves and there seem to be so many miserable people around.

When I was happy I had somebody’s happiness and now I’ve lost it and someone else has it. I really feel at this point in my life to just let it go. I’ve been very happy in my life on a number of occasions and I think this last time will be the end of it for me. It’s been months now and I still feel just as badly as on the night she first told me I couldn’t come out to visit her. I sincerely doubt I will ever get over this one.

Now, God, I don’t want you to think I’m talking about shuffling off the mortal coil by my own hand, because I’m not. I’m currently scared to die, but I’m also scared to live. All those people who I helped in my life were surely my reason for living and now I just need a legitimate reason to die.

Like I said in the beginning, the next time you have that urge to kill some young person, talk to me first – take me in their place. Then I could die knowing I had helped someone and there was a reason for it. And that’s all that matters, isn’t it?

You can do this one little thing for me, can’t you God? Please.