• "What did you just say to me?!" my wife asked in furious disbelief, with her bottom teeth showing.

    "I said, 'It's not that I've ruined your day or your life, or you're "entire existence" like you're saying... It's that you contain so much self-pride in your mind, that your heart doesn't know what it means to have a little respect for those around you.' That's what I said." Little victory bells went off in my head. I just stood up for myself. Against HER. The cause of all my worries and stress. And the grey hair that I saw in the mirror that morning.

    But that's not the point. The point is who I did that for... because it wasn't for me. Heck, no. It was for my son, Jeremiah. He was only four and a half, but he still had one b***h of a mother. Who just-so-happened to be my b***h of a wife.

    Speaking of said wife, after my victory bells were almost finished ringing, with pure, honest hate, she slapped me full-on across the face. I really should have been used to it by then, after at least... what, three years of it? But it still got me every time.

    After one second of that painful shock I decided I was not going to back down. So I stepped up to the plate and played t-ball with a nice right hook. Home Run! Oooh but it was caught!! The punch landed at the perfect angle on her nose, smashing it in and sideways at the same time. She screamed.

    And she's.... OUT. Finally.

    I guess my parents didn't name me Brutus for nothing. Even as a small(ish) baby, they could tell I was going to be a big, bulky-hulky kind of guy. So they named me Brutus, like the stud from Julius Caesar. I was actually quite proud of my name. Not only that, but I was one of those big, bulky-hulky guys with a supersized, bulky-hulky heart. Like a giant teddy bear who doesn't shave all too often.

    Which is why I never had the inner strength to fight back at my wife Rhianne, verbally or physically. Which she knew, and took advantage of. But it was like she honestly thought I deserved it. And if I ever did do anything about it, I was 100% sure that she'd take it to the court and get me behind bars for abuse.

    And that is exactly why I had set up a small camera for this conversation. I had it all planned. I had been praying and praying and praying and pleading and begging and crying out to God about what I should do. What I could do. And He kept giving me the same answer.

    So I finally stopped refusing and I gave in. God's way is the only way. I should have learned that by then.

    The conversation had started out how it normally did. I get home from work, Jeremiah's still at daycare for at least another hour, Rhianne talks about how she got laid off last year. She says all she gets to do all day long is sit around the house or shop. And then she either complains about how I (who happens to work 10 hours a day) need to clean house more often or how we're out of money. Or that Jeremiah doesn't need to be in daycare.

    And to this, I reply, "If you're bored at home with nothing to do and you want the house clean, YOU should clean it. If you think we need more money, YOU should get a job and stop shopping for stuff that I'll find in the trash a month from now. And if YOU think that the perfectly respectful daycare YOU decided to pay to take care of MY Jeremiah is too shabby for YOU, go ahead and take care of him yourself. You obviously have nothing else to do. Actually, I take that back. I would never want little Jeremiah to be forced to spend all day with you."

    There was a short silence filled with shock. It was as if I had been laying on a stretcher, slowly dying, my heart slowing down. But then, it was like I, myself grabbed a couple of those chest-zapper things and zapped my self alive again.

    I felt accomplished in that small second of silence. But then she came up with an "I'm better than everyone in the world, but you're so stupid, that you daily try your damnedest to ruin my entire existence" speech. That was pretty much the whole speech right there.

    And then we're back to start, where I say what I say, and she says, "What did you just say to me?!", and so I repeat myself, which makes the victory bells go ding-a-ling. Now we fast-forward to where I first left off.

    Rhianne fell against the wall, holding her crooked, bleeding nose. She was obviously disgusted with both the fact that her nose wasn't perfectly straight , and that she was bleeding all over her fancy work clothes which she bought with the money she's not making, and wore for complaining, since she didn't actually work anywhere.

    She was also in a lot of pain. Breaking a nose isn't all that enjoyable... if you're on the receiving end. If you're the one giving it, if your name isn't Brutus and you don't have a heart of gold, then to your surprise... you might actually find it enjoyable. But I didn't, because I still loved my wife, if only a little bit.

    Nonetheless, I was feeling guilty for causing her such agony that I was truly caught off gaurd when she grabbed a plastic flower vase and hit me over the head with it. But my bulky-hulky helmet-skull came to the rescue. I didn't feel a thing.