I've suffered betrayal with all five senses. For over a year.

Love makes you want to be a better man. But maybe love, real love, also gives you permission to just be the man you are.

A town so suffocating and small, you tripped over people you hated every day. People who knew things about you. It's the kind of place that leaves a mark.

The question I've asked more often during our marriage, if not out loud, if not to the person who could answer. I supposed these questions storm cloud over every marriage: What are you thinking how are you feeling? Who are you? What have we done to each other? What will we do?

I have a meanness inside me, real as an organ. Slit me at my belly and it might slide out, meaty and dark, drop on the floor so you could stomp on it.

It’s humbling, to become the very thing you once mocked.

Safer to be feared than loved.