And Now The Award For Father Of The Year

The autopsy of a relationship, especially a bad relationship, is not for the faint hearted.

I despised weekends because I would be home to witness the fact that my soon-to-be-ex husband would sit in front of the computer for ten hours and never speak a word to his family. My weekends were exhausting because I had to invent reasons to either stay away from home or else come home and risk mentioning something like, "Can you take the trash out?" and be met with the attitude that I had just requested his left testicle.

I learned a couple days ago that during one of the times that my son and I were out together and our first dog was a puppy, my soon-to-be-ex-husband was glued to the computer as usual and when the dog, who he was also ignoring, had an accident at his feet, he flew into a rage at my daughter who wasn't even in the same room. I remember her telling me that he had gotten really mad at her but I didn't realize that it involved him screaming at her that the dog having an accident was all her fault. If she has to take the dog outside and spend four hours to get him to go to the bathroom, then that was what she should have done.

She then proceeded to take the dog outside and decided that if she went back inside he would probably slap her so she sat down on the front lawn with the dog and waited for me to come back home. Within fifteen minutes, he screamed at her to come back in the house because she was taking to damn much time outside.

When she came back into the house, he continued to scream at her and when he wanted to get past her, he slammed her against the wall to get through. She ran up to her room and shut herself in and he left the house for a half an hour.

When he came back home, he went upstairs to her room and asked her, through her closed door, not to tell me what had happened. He then proceeded to tell her that if she kept her mouth shut he would buy her something.

Thankfully, she told him to fuck off.

And when I got home, he was sitting at the computer. Maybe he gave a grunting acknowledgement that I had entered the house, maybe he didn't. I don't remember.

It was just another day in the life.