Sunday Morning coming down

I sit at the kitchen table savoring a cup of coffee trying to ignore a festering ache of anger, resting like a bird on a wire, on a beautiful Sunday morning. And I think,

A man is born gentle and weak.
At his death he is hard and stiff.
Green plants are tender and filled with sap.
At their death they are withered and dry.

Therefore the stiff and unbending is the disciple of death.
The gentle and yielding is the disciple of life.

 

I am in the process of a divorce from a stiff necked non nurturing woman that I have given my all to for over thirty years. Much of the content of This Being Human... has been the diary of a drowning man. It is beyond hard living with a no resolution, everything's a pissing contest, her way or the highway kind of woman. And after all her bullshit, her arrests for domestic assault, her destroying my property, her emptying the house of all property, I only wish her well and peace of mind. Kind of like wishing that a bear could turn into a domestic dog. Not really possible at this stage of life. Or is it?

 The court issued a no contact order upon her for one year. That did not stop her from coming to the home twice late into the evening and attacking the coop and sundry things about the property. I then had to serve a No Trespassing order on her allowing the police to arrest her on sight if found on the property. 

 

Yesterday I wrote my weekly check that the court ordered in lieu of my having to add her to my health insurance plan. I went to the post office to drop it off. Upon returning to my truck I met with her face to face as she slowly passed by, a passenger in my daughter's car. And true to her nature I was met with a hateful glare and a middle finger radiating the energy of hate like a bright spot light in my face. At first, I felt nothing. No shock. No surprise. Absolutely neutral. But slowly it took hold. Like a slow smouldering coal it grew bright red and hotter than hot deep in my gut. And all the wishing that it and her, would go away will not make it so. Ignoring her, trying to appease or please her has never changed what was. And if I were to die today, she would not be pleased or victorious. She would still be the victim of all that ever was, asking everyone she knows to conform to her needs or to become her safety net; like the scorpion convincing the frog for a ride across the river, she will be true to her nature and everyone about her gets stung. So I should not be surprised by whatever she does. She may kill me yet; but forewarned is forearmed. As Thomas Paine said; 

 

"Could the peaceable principle of the Quakers be universally established, arms and the art of war would be wholly extirpated: But we live not in a world of angels...I am thus far a Quaker, that I would gladly agree with all the world to lay aside the use of arms, and settle matters by negotiation: but unless the whole will, the matter ends, and I take up my musket and thank Heaven He has put it in my power."