No Greater Love

In my marriage, I grew cold and distant, I was dark emptiness taking up a small space. When the marriage inevitably ended, I was left wondering if I was capable of love at all. Wondering if my coldness led to the death of something great for many people.

Since then I've tried a few tepid attempts at love, with each trial showing me new errors.

People say, "You just haven't met the right person yet," but that isn't true. Relationships fail not because there is some mystical magical right person out there for each of us but rather because we are human and being human means failing sometimes.

(Of course, just because there is no "right one" that doesn't mean there aren't wrong ones. There are after all a few truly terrible people mucking about in the world but these are the exceptions, not the rule.)

I am currently a failure at relationships, but with each failure, I learn and grow, and eventually, I will be a fantastic success at one relationship.

In the meantime, I've spent the last five years cultivating my ability to love. Grinding down hard edges of bitterness, and fine-tuning my heartstrings.

I've learned setting boundaries sends a lot of the wrong ones running for the hills. I've learned communication skills, how to admit my faults and take responsibility. I've accepted my imperfections and no longer fear that mistakes will make me unlovable.

Still, my greatest fear in relationships was not if I could be loved but if I could love greatly in return.

Many of you know my dear friend's daughter was abducted, what you don't know is where I've been the last few years and more.

When my dad was passing away I moved back to where I grew up to be with him during his final days.

I stayed for some time after as well, getting to know my mother as an adult and improving our relationship.

Never did I expect my mother to become my best friend, but getting to know her as an adult has been one of the greatest joys of my life.

As a child, my mother showed me how to be cold and survive. She demonstrated how to shut down instead of lash out. If it hadn't been for those lessons, I'm not sure I would have survived the trials by fire life generously poured gasoline on.

As an adult though, seeing my mother through new eyes, with a tender husband, a man with a calm and patient temper that my father did not possess, I saw the warm gentle spring the icy cold of survival can hide.

My mother and I are in most ways polar opposites. She is quiet and meek. She despises being the center of attention and she is amazing at keeping her mouth shut and her opinions to herself. She is gentle with her words and never "tells it like it is" to unwilling ears.

I have not been so fortunate as to inherit her social grace nor humility. When nervous I become a braggart. When flustered my mouth runs away from me and up and over the next twenty hills, but when afraid I find her strength, the strength of hundred-feet thick ice in my bones.

What I wasn't sure I possessed was her endless capacity for service. Her work all day and clean a house and fix a meal and do dishes fortitude. A fortitude of love.

Then, Angie was taken.

Three weeks later I packed a bag and got in my car and drove out to see how Alex, her father, was doing. It was meant to be a quick week of fixing meals, light housekeeping, etc, that one does for the grieving.

I arrived to a disaster. The floor could not be seen. Alex hadn't showered or slept since Angie was taken. His eyes were the bleary red of one whose soul was destroyed. Too exhausted and drained to cry. Too drained to think. The last time he'd eaten he didn't know, and I'm fairly certain he hadn't brushed his teeth in all that time.

Stupidly, I'd thought others would be in trenches with him. Stupidly, I assumed he had friends like I have friends. The Sam, Amanda, Michelle, Megan, M, Niamh, Christine friends that see you suffering and get to work easing it in all ways possible friends.

I'd forgotten in my comfort how abandoned and alone in the world one can be. I'd forgotten the day I called eighty-three so-called friends with the news I'd been drugged and needed someone to pick me up and yet every single one had a shallow vain excuse for why they could not help.

I'd forgotten how nearly a hundred people were responsible for me waking up in a pool of blood, raped and disoriented.

The world can be cruel. It was a hard lesson never to be forgotten. If someone doesn't come when you need them, they aren't your friend and you should never again put yourself in a position to need them.

Alex needed someone and not a single person was there. My heart stretched painfully upon the rack of guilt. I had not been there for him.

I was as bad as any of those who had abandoned me in my time of need. I was as false as the Emporers "new" clothes.

My soul stripped naked by truth, I shuddered in horror at what was revealed.

Immediately I got to work. I cleaned and cleaned and cooked and cleaned. Then it came time for me to get back to my easy and all too comfortable life.

Alex, looked up at me with eyes filled with endless sorrow, grabbed my hand and asked, "Can you stay, please?"

I remembered the day I was cold even wearing a heavy coat and Alex who didn't have a coat took off his shirt and gave it to me. I remembered the snow on the ground and how he claimed he wasn't cold despite shivering.

I extended my stay one more day but then went back to my comfortable life, for a few days, just long enough to say goodbyes and pack up essentials for the undetermined length of however long he needed me.

December passed into January's new year. Things were improving for Alex. My presence seemed to be alleviating some of the trauma of Angie missing.  The bands tightening my muscles relaxed a little.

But life was not ready to let me breathe. January twenty-sixth, my sister, Heather Dawn Needles Christensen, mother of four passed away.

As children, we were often mistaken one for the other. Her stunning blue eyes at times the only visible discernible difference between us. Despite our two years and eleven month age gap, her shortness, and my tallness made us seem as though we were at stages in our lives, twins.

Often people I didn't know would come up talking a mile a minute about things and people I didn't know and after a long moment, they would pause and notice my eyes and with an exclamation of surprise would declare aghast, "You're not Heather!" In the same breath, their eyes would narrow accusingly as though I deliberately deceived them.

"I'm her sister," I explained time and time again. More often than not her friends turned away without so much as a "Good-bye" or an "I'm sorry."

Growing up Heather wasn't very fond of me. I catered to our father and was his "favorite" more often than not and it came between us. I don't know if she ever knew the true cost I paid for being Daddy's favorite, it isn't something I can share online.

When she died we weren't friends on facebook. She unfriended me over religious and political differences. My stupid tactless self had offended her.

As a last note of love though I go to her profile and see she liked my author page. The most abrasive parts of me, in the end, it seems, she accepted.

As I grieved winter melted into spring.

Things again were improving. Alex seemed to be doing better, and I was making headway towards some goals.

I started dating, partially to get my mind off of Heather's death and partially because, with my father and another sister dead, I needed to feel as though I belonged to someone.

Soon after I started dating there was a robbery. Alex's vehicle was broken into and his meager belongings stolen. His anxiety climbed. Worry for Angie's well being in such a lost and fallen world skyrocketed.

 Mother's day came and I busy with my life or too many boys and romantic dramas didn't notice Alex falling again into depression.

In his anxiety for never having had a loving mother and Angie still in the clutches of a violent meth and heroin addict who knew not how to be patient, he forgot to take his pills. Pills for diabetes and blood pressure, this, added to his anxiety over Angie, led to an emergency.

With a gorgeous man on my arm, I noticed Alex's truck pull into the parking lot. While my date was on his phone I gradually grew concerned when I didn't see Alex getting out of his car. Not wanting to interrupt my date's phone call, I tried to motion where I was going and that I would be back but my date turned away.

I was tempted to wait a few more minutes for him to finish but something in my gut tightened screaming not to wait.

I approached Alex's car. Through the window with the sun's bright reflection masking the interior, I could tell something was wrong. Panic set in. I hastened my steps.

My shadow fell across the glass. Inside Alex's mouth was open, his face pale and splotchy. He didn't turn to see who was standing by his car. I tried to open the door. The car was locked.

Alex slowly roused just enough to look over and press the button to unlock his SUV.

I opened the door and within every cell of my body alarms bells went off. I had to get him out of the heat. His shallow breathing rasped labored and strangled.  He sluggishly, drunkenly tried to get out.  It took him three tries and me helping before he was able to emerge. With his body half standing and half slumped upon me, my arm around his waist and his over my shoulders we walked towards the apartments.

His steps were drunken and disorderly despite being a man who rarely ever touches alcohol. His breath rasped labored in my ear.

My date followed us awkwardly into the apartment and then got a call and left saying to call him if I needed anything. The truth was I needed help then, if Alex with his diabetes, fell into a coma I would not be able to lift him and get him to the hospital alone.

In the end, I dialed nine-one-one. As I told the operator my concerns, an ambulance was dispatched. The paramedics arrived within minutes. They discovered Alex's blood pressure was two-hundred-thirty-two over one-hundred-eighty-one and climbing.

With concerned looks and continued attempts to convince Alex to let them take him in the ambulance, the paramedics helped Alex to my car. I drove quickly to the nearest hospital.

In the emergency room, the doctor informed me he was worried Alex's blood pressure could burst a vein or artery in his brain and he might have a stroke. They needed to give him an MRI to be certain it hadn't happened already. The orderlies whisked Alex away.

With him gone my heart raced fearing someone would soon be in to inform me Alex was dead. Each passing moment, fear clawed at my throat and tightened like the hangman's noose.

My thoughts turned to Angie, how would she take the news of her father's death? How could she handle that on top of everything else she must be going through? Pain for a little girl of only seven having to deal with so much shook my body.

At last Alex was brought back. He was attached to an IV filled with chemicals to reduce his blood pressure.

As the monitors began to show more normal numbers the worry in my mind eased but did not disappear. Thoughts about what would happen to Angie if Alex died continued to haunt me for months.

Needless to say, I never went out with Mr. Gorgeous abandon me in an emergency situation again.

At last, summer bloomed. I was dating someone who offered to help the day Alex went to the hospital when I called him and Alex was doing better.

June 7,  I was dumped yet again for not being capable of and not wanting children. Men always seem to think they can change my mind and when it doesn't happen, my heart gets broken over and over.

I tell myself someday a man will see me and all I offer and know how lucky he is to have my heart and because of how others hurt me I will treasure him even more deeply in return.

Still a little sad on June 8, I was getting ready for work a migraine stabbing at my brain, a loud knock thundered through Alex's small apartment.

I answered hoping it was my amazon order. Instead there stood a golden-haired fully uniformed policeman.

At first, I worried it was Angie's body they'd found but the look on the officer's face wasn't one of death. No, he was anxious-looking but not fearful anxious, more so excited but doing his best to hide it.

"Does a Mr. Alex Garzarelli live here?" he asked in a tone that attempted to be stern official police business.

"You've found Angie!" I stated back. Excitement readied to hum through me as he tried to figure out what he should say since I was not the person he was sent to speak to.

"Is Alex here?" He questioned confused and unsure what to make of the situation.

"He's at a wrestling match. I can call him," I grinned, something in his body language releasing a little and giving me the whole story. Angie had been found!

"We've found her, " His words, at last, confirmed what I already knew,  "but."

My mind spun a million directions. Was she hurt? Was she in the hospital? What trauma had she endured that made the officer say "but?"

 "We haven't been able to get a hold of Alex." He interrupted the storm of anxiety churning in my brain.

"Let me call him," I told the officer, "Alex never ignores my calls." In a flash, my phone was in my hand. I called, asking the officer, "Where is she?" while the phone rang.

The call went to voicemail. "Lowell, Indiana" The officer replied catching my enthusiasm and grinning back at me.

I dialed again and as the officer was telling me it was pointless, Alex answered.

"Hello?" He asked knowing I didn't usually call when he was in the midst of doing other things.

"They've found her! They found Angie!"

"What?" He asked, his voice incredulous.

"THEY FOUND ANGIE!" I nearly yelled into the phone.

"WHERE?" Alex shot back his voice booming with joy, excitement, and determination.

"Lowell Indiana," I shot back watching the officer's eyebrows raise with worry he was going to get in trouble for telling me before he told the father of the missing child.

"The officer is here with me I'll let him give you the details," I blurted into the phone just before shoving it into the officer's hands.

As they talked my mind wandered to all the prep I might be able to do before Alex got home. I could pack a few things for him, and once he left, I would need to start clearing my stuff out of Angie's room so once she got back she would know she hadn't been forgotten or packed away. I wanted to put her room back to the way it was when she left, except clean but that wasn't going to happen.

Before Alex arrived back at the apartment, I'd packed some clothes for him, made some food, and spun in circles trying to figure out what else I could do. I knew he had a go-bag ready with toiletries but what else would he need. Was he flying or driving? Questions spun in my mind. I checked plane tickets bus tickets, called a friend who worked with the airlines hoping they might have a program for such special circumstances but there was nothing I could find that would get Alex to Indiana for under a thousand dollars.

Private investigators, lawyers, etc had eaten up every excess dollar Alex had and ones he didn't for months, but now that Angie was found people wanted to help wanted to be part of the success in bringing Angie home.

Friends and family donated money and food towards the trip.

Expecting it to be goodbye, I started packing up my things and readying to leave so Angie would never know anyone else had ever been in her room.

Instead, though Alex stopped me in the middle of my packing up, "Can you come with me? I'm not sure I can get there on my own."

"I can but shouldn't I get Angie's room ready for her instead?" I worried about how any little girl would feel having had her room stolen from her while she was away after missing out on so much already.

"Angie won't care you were here," Alex assured me.

I doubted I would be much help with a migraine that had already lasted two days and with my endometriosis would probably last quite a bit longer, but though others were willing to take some part in Angie's return only one other besides Alex and I would go the distance. Since I haven't asked her permission to write this I will call her Alice.

Alice, Alex, and Ashley headed out to add another A to the report card I joked in my head to distract myself from the migraine. I hoped it would go away quickly so I could be of some help along the way.

Utah, Wyoming, a touch of Colorado and into Nebraska we went. At last, we stopped in a town with a stench so pungent it punched one in the gut and drove a desperate need to vomit. It was as though the entire town had crawled into the sewer and brought it out to wallow in.

Too tired to drive any further that night we stayed in the Eau de Skunk's Ville of Ogalalla.

In the morning we continued our trek. After another day of driving in shifts, we arrived in Lowell Indiana, an hour too late for Alex to get to see Angie that night. The next day though he would, at last, see his sweet little girl.

We went to bed excited believing tomorrow would be filled with nothing but joy and happiness for all of us who had been so worried about Angie, but there was a surprise waiting for us at the courthouse. One nobody expected, one that left the social workers speechless and one that left me alone locked in a room with a terrified little girl.

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All the best my dear friends!