In the beginning was the fighting. And the fighting was the relationship.

I remember some of the first fights Rose and I had, and when I started to realized that I (and we) had a problem. Gods, looking back on it now, it was so obvious what I was doing, how manipulating I was behaving.

At the time I was working at a printing press and I had two main jobs – I ran a high-speed inkjet printer and I had to make sure that the bulk mail paperwork was correct for the USPS. I hated it. I hated my supervisor who always managed to get sick on Mondays. I hated some of the people I worked with (some were pretty cool). I hated running my machine – I felt like I was just there to feed the machine. As long as the machine was running, the bosses were happy. They didn’t care about the people, I thought.

So I wanted to quit and find a new job. Rose wasn’t real keen on the idea. She wanted the security that the printing press represented. I found the day in and day out drudgery to be suffocating. A “normal” conversation would go something like this:

“Man, I hate that job so much.”

“Well, we need the money.”

“You don’t understand, I may as well be a machine there”

(the tension increases) “It’s a secure job.”

(Getting angry) “There are guys there that have been running the same machine for 30 years. I’m not going to do that”

(She’s getting angry) “You can’t quit.”

(anger is ratcheting up) “Oh really? I tell you what, if I stay there I’ll be dead. I’ll kill myself in 10 years if I have to do this shit!”

(She begins to cry)

Yeah. It was bad.

And this was 3 months into our marriage. It only got worse.

I found a new job, one that was significantly worse. Less pay, less benefits. I thought there was opportunity, but there wasn’t. Eventually I wasn’t even getting paid for the work I was doing, but I was too stupid, proud, stubborn, and just generally too fucked up to leave. Some of those fights, during this period, was when I started to physically intimidate her. During an argument, I’d invade her personal space. I’d slam things. I’d hit things. There were holes in the drywall when we left that apartment.

Rose was/is a nurse, thankfully, and she was the only bread-winner. Eventually I did quit and was unemployed for about 3 months. She worked, I stayed home and tried to find some work (this was when I started in engineering). We actually didn’t fight that much, mainly b/c Rose was too tired and I think she was going through her own shit. But the strain was telling on her.

It was during this time that she started counseling and invited me to join. I said “Hell no.”

Of course.