Notes from the margins of a drifting soul.

There’s a garden I walk through every evening at dusk. It isn’t mine. No one ever claims it, though I suspect it belongs to someone who once loved beauty so much they built a place where the wind could hum softly through lavender, and the stones could remember warmth.

I walk this path and think of you.

Not every flower is perfect—some have curled or browned—but there’s honesty in that. Even the damaged petals catch the gold of the sun in a way the perfect ones can’t. It reminds me of you, and me, and the truth we never got to speak aloud.

There’s a bench beneath an arbor of wisteria where I sometimes sit. I bring a notebook, pretend to sketch or write, but really, I just watch the shadows stretch and think about what I’d say if I could.

I’d say I still carry the shape of your voice.

I’d say you don’t leave a person like weather leaves a day—suddenly and without residue. You stay like a season, like a shifted meridian.

I’d say I miss you in the quiet ways, the ones that echo and linger in overlapping recollection.

But the garden doesn’t ask anything of me, and neither do you.

So I leave this story, here, where the air is soft and no one interrupts.

Maybe someday, you’ll walk this same path, find it waiting on the bench like a letter never mailed.

And if you do—don’t answer. Just sit a while.

That would be enough.

—Someone who once loved you, and still does, wordlessly.

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#essay #memoir #journal #100daystooffset #writing

A man's heart leads him like a slave

I am trying so hard to be that man—the upstanding one. A bastion of reliability and reason.

Respectable.

Encouraging.

As a teenager, I marveled at an older man I knew named Leonard. He was a degreed professor who had turned his back on academia to privately teach people the Bible—for free.

That was his life’s work. Six days a week, four to six hours a day, unpaid and unsupported in any practical way. He mowed lawns to pay the bills and spent his spare time reading and birdwatching.

He and his wife, Kathy, carried notebooks to log what they saw. Binoculars always hung around their necks. Even the humble sparrow, invisible to most of us, became a subject of careful observation. They could spot obscure field marks and identify the most easily dismissed birds.

But what I loved most about Leonard was his love of language. He could sit for hours, unraveling the etymology of words, diving deep into ideas far beyond my teenage comprehension.

He had a magnificent library—wall-to-wall shelves of reference books, fiction, biographies. Naturally, birding guides took up more than a few rows. I always dreamed of becoming that sort of man: Intelligent. Well-read. Industrious. Unselfish.

And surrounded by books.

Not to impress, mind you. But the right people are always impressed by books.

Besides, a large library is hard to hide unless you live in a house big enough to close the door on it.

I’ve lost the thread.

My point is this: I feel I’ve fallen short of that goal.

Outwardly, I’ve lived responsibly. There’ve been mistakes, sure, but no catastrophic derailments. No burning wrecks. But inwardly? That’s harder. I know my own mind. I know where it drifts when no one’s watching. I know the urges that don’t align with the image I project. I’m no monster—but desire is a real battle.

We all need desire. We want to want. And we need to be wanted in return. To be seen, known, and chosen.

No one is completely without merit. Even the forgotten are remembered by God.

He who sees and values every living thing. Even when the rest of us forget.

I think this ache—this recent shift in my inner world—is tied to something deeper. My wife warned me for years: “Slow down or you’re going to lose your mind.”

I thought she was overreacting. Now, I think she might have been a prophet.

Still, I’ll survive.

The past, I’ve heard it said, is a lighthouse.

Men like Leonard are part of my constellation now, lighting the way from somewhere just beyond reach.

So I’ll keep moving forward. Living between the cracks of this world. In it, but not of it.

Trying to outlast the childhood trauma that still floods my body with unnecessary fear.

Until then, I’ll do my best to reach the end of each day.

Inch by inch. As they say, it’s a cinch.

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#memoir #confession #journal