Sweet & Sour

A roller coaster of a weekend here, friends. Friday started nicely... I spent the afternoon with my elderly father-in-law and he and I indulged in new pipe tobacco and several strong drinks together. After that, my wife and I went grocery shopping for the week.

Saturday was generally good... somewhat lazy, but I had the usual tasks... my five mile walk, cleaning the cat boxes, as well as other normal duties. We decided to go to mass on Saturday to allow ourselves a lazy-style Sunday morning and came home and ate dinner. It was after dinner that things went horribly wrong. As I was sorting through some items, she became tearful and ran into the bathroom and would not talk. Nor did I ever learn what was going on other than she was upset with me.

Now, I truthfully, very sincerely, very adamantly and with most all of my effort and energy work to keep family time a happy time and one where people are content and happy. I cannot identify anything that I said or did that would have made her so upset.

The rest of the evening was spent (at least by me) in a tense, uneasy silence. As is my normal response to this sort of event, I have two reactions.....

The Internal feelings I keep at bay: frustration, rage, anger, a desire to run screaming through the streets at the unfairness of the situation and my inability to comprehend the situation. I often feel like I would like to go out into the garage and take a piece of lumber and pound, cut, chop and pulverize it into sawdust.

The External feelings I express: an empty hollowness in my eyes, a sadness that causes the corners of my moustache and beard to droop noticeably, and a deep, overwhelmingly strong desire to sleep to close out the world and to dream of alternatives to what the day is. I often sit and smoke very, very deeply from my pipe, with the harshest, strongest pipe tobacco I have, during times such as these... perhaps in an attempt to saturate my brain with such levels of nicotine so as to attempt futiley to erase the memories of the sadness and despair I feel.

After going to bed and having a very fitful sleep, Sunday was a day of return to some sense of normalcy. I still felt very tense and out of sorts and sad and questioning, but she felt and acted better, back to pretty close to her normal self. But, without any sort of understanding about why and what had happened, my return to normalcy was very slow and I am still trying to refocus my mind around the day-to-day.

When this sort of unfathomable anger happens towards me it makes my mind erase much like a hard drive near a strong magnet. I feel out of sort and unfocused for days as I attempt to restart my own focus.

It feels so unfair. It is so unfair. It is, however, my unfortunate reality. In times such as these, I ever more tightly and desperately grip the stem of my true friends who always understands me, my pipe, my pouch, and my lighter.

PipeTobacco