Happiness. It's relative.
Originally posted on Red's Wrap:
PART 1 Thirty years ago, I sat all night on the sofa in my upper flat, smoking Benson & Hedges, with my mother’s green and orange afghan wrapped around my shoulders, waiting for my addicted, unpredictable, and sometimes…
If you love someone and that someone often disappoints you, maybe hurts you, lets you down, wrecks your stuff, or gives you a black eye you can’t explain to your boss, you are often compelled to draw a new line in the sand. This… Continue Reading “A New Line in the Sand”
Tap, tap, tap. I pull the blanket tighter around my shoulders. Tap, tap, tap. The house is silent now, the whispered screaming over. Tap, tap, tap. He’s sorry now that he scared me. Tap, tap, tap. Do the downstairs neighbors know that he is lying… Continue Reading “Tap, Tap, Tap”
I’d wear Groucho Marx glasses every day if I could. It has limited effect now, however, since practically no one now knows who Groucho Marx was. The fun of flicking a stogie is lost on 90% of the people I encounter. So, why bother?… Continue Reading “Dress-Up”
“What black eye? I didn’t see a black eye.” My husband sat in the driver’s seat with the map of Colorado spread over the steering wheel. He didn’t even look up. His concern right now was finding a way around Rocky Mountain National Park… Continue Reading “Rescue”
PART 1 Thirty years ago, I sat all night on the sofa in my upper flat, smoking Benson & Hedges, with my mother’s green and orange afghan wrapped around my shoulders, waiting for my addicted, unpredictable, and sometimes violent boyfriend to pull up in… Continue Reading “My Square in the Domestic Violence Quilt”
I reached with my paintbrush for the tiny unpainted space between the two bedroom walls and the ceiling that the roller had missed, stretching my back and arm and holding the brush by its very tip to avoid having to step down from the… Continue Reading “Paint It Red”
PART 1 Thirty years ago, I sat all night on the sofa in my upper flat, smoking Benson & Hedges, with my mother’s green and orange afghan wrapped around my shoulders, waiting for my addicted, unpredictable, and sometimes violent boyfriend to pull up in… Continue Reading “Quilting: A Domestic Violence Story”
Two years ago, I went to my old boyfriend’s funeral. I milled around with old and old-looking friends and colleagues, talked to his nieces, now adult women, with whom I’d spent several Christmases so long ago, and every now and then glanced over at the urn that sat on… Continue Reading “Men We Love – A Domestic Violence Story: Part 4 The Coda”
Not long after the endless night keeping watch out the window, after a bunch of happy evenings with my boyfriend, a trip or two to the racetrack, a drive in the country with a stop at a funky bar, and, oh, maybe a concert… Continue Reading “Men We Love: A Domestic Violence Story: Part 2”