Almost Anything

She slammed the latest book she'd been reading down on the bed and screamed.

"Ryan, I can't do this anymore, I have had it!!!"

This wasn't the reaction I'd hoped for. I'd just returned from Riverton. She hated it when I'd go back to my hometown without her. I came from a family of roughnecks. My Grandfather had been one his whole life, my Dad and his four brothers followed in his footsteps. I was never cut out for it, but I was willing to do almost anything to keep my dwindling marriage to my high school sweetheart from burning out.

"Why'd you do it Ryan?!? You know we need the money!?!"

Honestly, I could've cared less where the money went. I always gave her my paychecks, no questions asked. I hated fighting with her and avoided conflict whenever possible.

"I just couldn't do it Rita. I tried, I really did..."

I had four jobs in the two years that we were together, as newlyweds, each better than the last. Yet it was never enough for her. I nearly died on an oil rig for a paycheck to please my young bride.

She was an expert at speaking her mind and an even better expert at the silent treatment.

"I'm going to my Mother's. I'll be back whenever I get back!"

She jumped up and threw her clothes on. I lay there in the nude.

"I'm taking Mickelle with me."

She ran to her Mother when she should have been running to a psychiatrist. She could've stayed and talked with me, but when she got like she got, it shut me down, to the point where I couldn't form words.

All I could say as she left the room was, "Ok, Rita..." That was more often than not the response to everything, when I knew she wouldn't have it any other way. She loved control, and me, I hated being controlled. 

This was six years after she first asked me what time it was. Motherhood, almost losing her Mother and knowing that her cutie little freshman with the 'macho waddle' had had a girlfriend the year we had broken up, and had become something more than a cutie, had turned her bitter, mistrusting, suspicious and selfish.

But I'm jumping ahead of myself. I'll tell the story, the way I remember it, from the beginning...