'Easier said than done,' now there's a saying I can get behind.  No false hope is offered in its telling.  No tired sympathy eeks around its triteness.  No, it's nothing but straight pragmatism, which I assume would be different than gay pragmatism, though I don't know how.

"That's the third job this year!" she screams, a handful of paper crumpling in my face, probably bills.

"I got fired.  What do you want from me?" I shoot back hotly.

"And why did you get fired?" She asks.  She knows.  But I won't say.

"Times are tough, and Jimmy's nephew is in good just cause his mom's a..."

"You decked your boss at the Christmas party!"

"He deserved it!"

"Why?" she answers hotly, pressing me hard, no quarter given, none expected, not at this point in our tortuous relationship.

"Cause...cause...well, he was drunk, and...and..."

"And acting like your dad!" she fires her accusatory arrow straight to the heart of the matter.

And I, I have no answer.  She's right, and I have nothing with which to rebutt her very valid, very painful point.  Getting over stuff is so often easier said than done.

Heaven help me, where do I go now?

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This is in large part a true story. I've decided after a while that this person is my father. His dad, my grampa, whom I never met, was a miserable drunk. Tragically, both of my paternal grandparents drank themselves to death within a year of eachother in 1969. Although my father maintains that he was never physically hit, his mother was very frequently -- and the whole househould had to suffer nightly. The verbal abuse was the worst though, and it was constant and directly affected my father in ways he won't admit. This is how I think he must have felt growing up and all of his mixed emotions when his father died.

updated Jan 22 '09 by Tad_Winslow