David Senra

My father led us to believe he despised us for loving him, would punish us for it.

It seemed like he could be driven crazy by it and so could I. When I tasted it as part of myself, it made me scared and sick.

And so at this point, they're spending half the year in New Jersey and half the years in California.

This is going on for quite a while.

So it took a while and one massive and all blowout of an argument where Patty finally fed up with my bullshit, threw down the gauntlet and laid it out.

Stay or go.

This is what I'd push her toward, and with one foot out the door, I stopped for a moment and the weak but clear thinking part of me asked, where the hell do you think you're going?

The road?

The bar?

I still enjoyed them, but it wasn't a life.

I'd been there, seen all they had to offer.

What was conceivably going to be different?

Was I going to get back on the hamster wheel of indecision?

Of lying to myself that it would all never grow old?

and throw away the best thing, the best woman I'd ever known, I stayed.

It was the sanest decision of my life.

Together, we settled into a reassuring quiet, not trying to push each other too hard or make too much of things.

We gave each other a lot of room and something happened.

It was a sweet surrender and I've always felt that it was there, at that time, in the gentle days and nights we spent at the sea, that Patty and I emotionally married.

I loved her.