This “loving someone” crap is for the birds.

Have you ever seen someone with prostatitis? It’s not a pretty thing to watch. Especially in someone you love. He whimpers, groans, grimaces and flinches through the highest fever and the coldest chills and some seriously harsh and continuous spasms of pain, all the while you sit and hold his hand and pray to God for this to pass quickly.

And for the test for prostate cancer to come back decidedly negative.

Very little makes me sicker than the thought of losing Michael now that I’ve found him.

* * * * *

For four years, I have missed my best friend Carol. She and I were constant companions starting with my sophomore year in high school, up until 1998’s insanity drove a horrible wedge between us.

Since then, there’ve been divorces, broken hearts, new houses, and a host of things I’m not even sure I’m privvy to. But we’ve done it all separately.

Never, ever did this sit well with me.

Sometime right before Christmas, my longing to be reconciled with Carol popped up again. I’d hear someone say something she used to, or think of something cool she’d laugh at. I’d miss her, and I’d be terribly sad. Like, the kind of sad that goes all the way to your bones.

But I’d made attempts to contact her over the years. Letters, phone messages, the whole nine yards. If there’s anything I’ve learned in the past four years, it’s that you can’t force anyone into anything. You can only pray. But this year, I went ahead and sent a Christmas card.

Today, as I got the news from Mike about his diagnosis and basic turn for the worse, and was running out the door of my office, I grabbed the mail. And I saw handwriting that I’d recognize even with a bad case of amnesia. It stopped my heart. It was a letter from Carol.

I couldn’t bring myself to read it until I got to Mike’s. I didn’t want to fall apart while I drove. And I knew that I would, if she were asking me to never contact her again or some such thing.

I sat on the sofa at Mike’s and read the letter. He sat next to me. I’d told him about Carol and he was surprised to see a letter from her. And midway through the third page, I started to sob.

Carol reached out a hand to me today. Through her letter, written in May 2001, when she didn’t have an address for me. Back when I was so wrapped up in my own shit there was no way I’d be able to appreciate this gift she was about to give me.

A second chance.

I’d stopped truly believing in second chances, in my heart. And my very best friend ever in the world just handed me one, undeserved as anything and enough to make me weep.

Beyond grateful, and praying,

michelle