**This is the first in a series of essays that deal with my evolving thoughts, feelings, assessments, and experiences with the concept of love and loving again after the loss of Kara and the life I had at the time. It’s an ever-unfolding journey that I’ve been writing about in one way or another from the beginning. It started with how I was feeling just days after losing her.**
Part 1: Never Again
February 2022
Kara simultaneously gave no fucks, and all of the fucks in the universe. In many ways, she hated this world but cared for and lovingly tended to its downtrodden and overlooked inhabitants more than anyone or anything else in her own life. As an in-home crisis counselor, she gave her whole soul to those who needed it, to her own detriment.
Kara regularly invented new ways to use and integrate the word “fuck” into meanings and realms that it had no business trespassing upon. A true master of her craft. Then pivot on a dime and speak to a toddler or a teenager in calm, reassuring tones and in a language that let them know they were being heard and cared for. Even more masterful.
She was wildly talented and could probably do whatever it is you and I are doing right now, better. Kara politely, and perhaps unconsciously veiled the fact that she was so amazing behind legitimate humbleness and self-deprecating humor. She was, as all of us are, imperfect - but as it turns out, she was perfect for me. Sharp, jagged edges and smooth alluring curves. Long hair, short temper, and no middle ground.
I would never have guessed that a living, breathing, balance of extremes would be my everything. I feel immeasurably blessed that for some reason, she chose me. Or as she put it, that I was “Amenable to being her sir.”
I know it sounds reactive, shortsighted, presumptuous, etc, to say something like “I will never love again.” I know she would want me to. But none of that changes the fact that with the absolute confidence of right now, I feel like I won’t. Because nobody else is Kara. And Kara, more than anyone I’ve ever known, is nobody else.
My sun has fucking set.