tao1776

I've amassed over thirty years of "stuff"while living with my wife and it was all whisked away over the past few weeks. Every bit of it. The home is left in shambles. Dirty, broken and beat down. No heat. Ice had formed in the kitchen sink. No pictures. No curtains. No furniture. No remnants of what there once was. Only filth, dirt, emptiness. How appropriate. In the past six months, I have refused to sign any order of restraint and for two reasons. 1) To give my wife an opportunity to make amends; to reach back towards me in a non-controlling, punishing way. 2) My adult daughters did not want to be in the position of having to take her in and asked that I allow her to remain at home. The court finally issued one on their own after her second arrest; an order of "No Contact" - allowing me to be well within my rights to return home and have her vacate the premises. But I stayed away to give her time to move into her new apartment. You know, the apartment that s

I swear by all that is good and holy, that after I returned home from being absent for four days after my wife's first domestic assault, if she had met me at the door with an apology and a desire to discover a pathway to healing, I would have crumbled at her feet in full surrender. And that moment continues to reverberate through my mind because I was willing; but I was met with silence, and anger and  an unspoken line was drawn. Drawn in a circle, a very familiar circle, a circle of control and containment. But I would have still returned to her. And I realize, fully, that it would have been the wrong decision. One born out of familiarity. And here I am...her anger continues like nuclear fallout. It spreads across the land and everyone is sick. I look back into history and ask if there was any way in which I could have avoided seeing that doomsday button being pushed. And I don't know what I could have done. I feel as though I have been dancing around looking to avoid this

The terrible truth is: that the truth is not all so very terrible after all. No amount of anger, or anxiety or self - pity or false bravado will change the fact that life is how we find it. All the kicking and screaming will never be an adequate antithesis to us sitting still and just plain taking responsibility .

It would appear that my friends to the north are much less observant than I've given them credit for. I can understand the increase in the membership of the Tea Party, as the highly independent voting force of New Hampshire (along with everyone else) is seeking to escape the "status quo - s.s.d.d." rhetoric of our barnacle laden two party system. The Tea Party, based on its festering growth alone , would appear to offer a way out. It may well possess the ability to upset the worm filled political apple cart that sickens us so. But Mitt Romney? How was it that this guy was ever considered by the Republican party to be the next great white hope? And do the Tea Party people really consider Mitt as a potential candidate or is it the political machine of the Elect Romney for President,  that is claiming Romney as a Tea Party potential candidate in New Hampshire? Doesn't anyone look at the facts anymore? Romney? Seriously? Well, no. The information age has done noth

Strychnine makes your tummy pucker as it kills you and ice cold water will shrink your pecker every time. It's funny how divorce accomplishes it all in one bold swing. And I just can't seem to wrap my mind around it. And the very essense of me trying to wrap my mind around my pain and suffering has my friends telling me to be easy on myself. That this will all pass. And it will. I know that. Everything changes. I've been with the same girl to woman for thirty five years. You cannot expect to ease out of that sort of history like a Hollywood revisionist changes the facts of what has happened in order to sell his story. Just can't be done. You feel what you feel. Acknowledge it. Face it. Explore it.  We in New England can find that the Winter season is able to start long before its scheduled entry date of December 21st. When flurries begin to fly in late October, leading the meteorological onslaught of snowstorm after snowstorm the months that should be leading into

He wore a knit cap which he removed in perfect unison with his slide into the booth opposite mine. His dark hair revealed the typical bed head of a hat that had been worn all day and I felt a laugh stumble through me. His hair rose to a point like that of the old SNL character Ed Grimley. I half expected him to get up from his seat and do the Martin Short dance. I didn't want it to look like I was staring at him, perhaps projecting some of my own pet peeve (What the fuck are you looking at?)  but I was. Kind of. Sip my beer. Glance. Bite of my burger. Stare. You know the drill. And then he did the unexpected. He reached slowly into the inside pocket of his coat and began to pull out something from deep within when the waitress came by to take his order. He waved her off saying that he was waiting for someone and that he would order when they arrived. Blah, blah, blah. His hand slid a little deeper and he pulled out..............a lemon. A bright yellow lemon. He placed it up to