One of my commitments to this blog is to always be completely honest. How will you folks trust me unless you know I’m telling the truth, the entertaining truth, and nothing but the stylized truth? Yes, because I’m a creative nonfiction writer, I will always present the truth creatively. There are abundant ways to interpret that word creative, and all of them are up for debate. But for the purposes of this blog, I will never intentionally write something that is untrue or misleading. All facts will be true as far as I am aware.

If I say, for instance, that a certain action of MFT’s could cause him to be shanked,[1] that will be true. Is he likely to be shanked? Probably not. Has he ever been shanked before? No. Is he worried about being shanked? No. (But Dolly is, therefore, I write that he could be shanked.)

So, all this leading-in is leading up to what I want to talk about today—our fights. (No shanking involved.) Because we’re embroiled in one right now, and it doesn’t seem likely that it will clear up in time for me to read the next post to him before Monday, I have been in a quandary.

What’s a dolly to do?

I’ve committed to posting every Monday, and I’ve committed to writing this blog honestly, and I’ve committed to giving MFT the power to veto.[2] So, my solution this week is to write honestly about what’s going on in our lives right now, about why I’m not running this post by MFT prior to publication, and to write something so entirely factual that MFT couldn’t possibly find anything to tweak. I think my solution meets all the criteria.

I’m going to get down and dirty and give you a front row seat to our felonious fights. Actual quotations from our vituperative texts. The only editing I will do will be shortening my very long angry texts, correcting MFT’s adorable misspellings and grammar inaccuracies, and artistically arranging the texts. (I do this to maintain our anonymity because I’m not ready to publicly admit to some of these.) And, in the interest of creative writing, a list of short savage sentences will be more entertaining to read than protracted paragraphs.

Be forewarned: the rest of this post is not intended for children, impressionable innocents, goody-two-shoes, people on pedestals, or holy rollers.

“So I think it’s pretty clear the problem lies with you.”

“You’re impossible to talk with.”

“And once again, you ruined my perfectly good mood.”

“You need to fix yourself before you try fixing me.”

“I’m done with your apologies because they are meaningless.”

“You are meaningless as a [spouse] and friend because you are so selfish.”

“I will divorce you if you don’t stop your selfishness running our lives.”

“I have a lot of truth I could give back to you! So get over your selfish ass!”

“Stop gaslighting me with untruths.”

“You are gaslighting me. I want a divorce.”

“You are a classic gaslighting narcissist.”

“Gaslight all you want, but all you are doing is f***ing yourself and us by doing that.”

“Get back on your meds and use your tools. If not, I will serve you divorce papers.”

“I AM on my meds, you f***head.”

“Wake up ***YOU*** are the Negative.”

“YOUR bad reactions are my biggest problem.”

“Look in the mirror asshole.”

“You’re a f***ing inconsiderate, conceited, selfish asshole.”

“Start fixing yourself. You’re a f***ing asshole and I hate you.”

“You f***ing traitor. Send me the divorce papers.”

“I’m done with you.”

Now, after reading this post and trying to cool down your eyeballs, you might be thinking that MFT would definitely have vetoed this post. Let me assure you—he wouldn’t. He wants me to be honest with everything, even our sex (whoa, Nelly!), so trust me, he will have no problem with this post. In fact, if he’s reading it right now (listening to it being read), I guarantee you he’s inwardly grinning, because he knows I’m right!

Addendum:

We made up enough that I was able to read this post to MFT prior to publication. He showed himself to be the bigger man and set aside our kerfuffle because he knows how important this blog is to me and my goal to post every Monday. That’s one of the things I love about him. He can disconnect from his anger and pettiness to do the right thing. And clearly, I have a higher opinion of my writing than it warrants. He did have a few tweaks to make in my paragraphs (which definitely improved things) and helped to write this addendum. And he gave a thumbs up to the actual list of expletives.

[1] Stabbed without warning by a homemade knife

[2] Every week it’s a wrestling match, because I don’t necessarily agree with his edits. And of course, once the dust has cleared, I usually see that he’s right.