I surveyed the debris strewn about  the well-worn wooden floor for only a fleeting moment before burying my face in my hands.

"Holy Shit! What have I done?" blew in and out of my head, competing with the phrases, "Get out of here! Go! Run!" and "Why did I let her push me this far?"

Indeed, why did I push myself this far? How desparate was I not  to be alone that I let myself get caught up in this non-stop melodrama? My reasoning was: "I'm 40. This is  my last chance at a relationship." I hung on with all I could no matter how detrimental it was to my mental and physical health.

There was some shattered glass, a broken clay pot or two. I focused on the toothbrush looking oddly complacent in the wreckage. Aside from the glass and clay objects, most everything was well within the realm of repair. If indeed there was an irreparable chaos, it  had been building for months inside my head. 

 The cat, Ophelia,  had jumped out the window during the  explosion and lodged herself as far away as possible on a branch of the tree just outside the second story window of the old Victorian home that had been split into several apartments. She would remain there some 24 hours, frightened, refusing to accept the "all clear" from Cecile until a bribe of raw turkey meat finally brought her in.

Cecile now stood in the middle of the room, naked, her arms held tightly around her chest, trembling, sobbing, calling my name like the frightened little girl she had now become. I was surprised that I didn't detect any fraudulence in her demeanor. Beneath the quaking little girl, I was convinced that there still had to be that snarling dog I'd come to expect after all this time.

I walked up to her and tried to catch her eye. She wouldn't look at me. She turned away and hid in the corner. Maybe this time it was for real. She really was an innocent little girl lost in the woods. It was a woods of her own making, and I played no small part in helping her create it.

Only seconds before, she'd been yelling at me for not knowing how to be a man who knew how to fight with her, how to control her, how to get her to stop her incessant insults of "You're a pussy; You're a momma's boy; You're a talentless no good hack;" and, the worst of all, "I guess I'll have to lower my expectations in order to stay with you." I didn't realize until years later that this explosive incident is what we'd both wanted. I wanted her to shut up. She wanted to be a little girl again. Whatever it is her stepfather did to her as a little girl, she was trying to recreate it with me.

Life with Cecile was a battle of contradictions. One second she wanted to settle down and have kids, the next, I was the most irresponsible man on the planet who couldn't hold his head correctly,  much less know how to please a woman or properly raise a family. According to  Cecile, despite my having co-habitated for years on end with a couple of women, I had no clue as to what a "real relationship" was, and that, thanks to her, I was finally going to learn. When asked to explain what a "real relationship" was like, she'd merely snort, "You'll have to stick around and learn, amateur!" 

I did stick  around for about a year. In the world according Cecile, a real relationship basically consists of a crazy woman constantly changing her mind about everything, keeping the ground shifting beneath her boyfriend, all the while hurling as many insults and beer bottles as a 5'3" terror could at said boyfriend. I guess I had been  quite naive all those years in thinking that relationships consisted of two individuals trying to help move each other's lives forward rather than a whirling cesspool of two individuals trying constantly to drag the other down into despair, or rather, as in this case, one dragging down the other to her level.

When Cecile wanted to move-in together, I spent a couple of days on craigslist and hitting the streets looking for a potential love nest. When I'd narrowed the prospects down to three places and invited her to go see them on her day off, she bluntly told me "you aren't ready for that!" Despite excitedly talking about the prospect for weeks, she'd now suddenly shelved the idea, and it was somehow my fault.

Another idea she had was that we should go to church together. I scouted a few, inviting her along each time. She never went, always claiming she was too tired or didn't like a particular denomination.  When I finally found one I liked, she accused me of going there behind her back.

She also wanted to travel together. I arranged a few trips out of town and out of state. I'd get everything organized and planned, only to have her back out at the last second, leaving me stuck with an extra plane or train ticket, or rental car reservation. I'd offer to cancel the trip and stay at home with her, but she'd insist that I go ahead without her. I'd go, and call her a few times a day during the trip, only to be treated like someone who'd shot her  grandmother. She'd yell at me for not caring about her needs and how I never put forth any effort in the relationship before slamming down the phone on me, refusing to pick up when I called back.

When I'd get home with tons of presents, she'd sniff at them and throw them aside with a blunt, "Thanks," before sending me home because she was too busy to see me. As soon as I got back to my place, she'd call me and accuse me of having an affair in whatever city I was just in. "You're probably seeing some creative Wiccan type! You don't have the guts to do it in your own town so you have to fly around the country and sneak around behind my back! You fucking gay pussy! Learn how to be a man!" she'd vent.

This was pretty much the script everytime I went out of town after she  cancelled on me.

We did manage to do some camping. I loved it. She did, too, for the most part. She'd  occasionally lapse into tirades about how she carried a knife with her (I'd asked to see it, but she'd never show it to me) because a) if we ran into danger, I wasn't alpha male enough to protect her; and  b) I couldn't be trusted and she may have to use it on me. Occasionally, she'd sneak off the trail and smoke some pot to calm herself. The calm would last a few hours before the storm rose up again.

So, after all this - and this is but a sampling of the weirdness - what made me finally snap?

Cecile had tried to throw my pants out the second story  window onto the busy street below. All my money, my drivers license, and credit  cards were in those pants. I'd have been royally screwed if those pants made it to the street, not that I wasn't already royally screwed by letting myself get mixed up with this mad woman. I grabbed Cecile and my pants. I wanted to hit her, but the thought of harming another human being, especially, a little woman, no matter how demonic she may be, made me ill. Instead, I trashed the room. She began to cry.

I  walked home, fully expecting the  cops to come after me. Like a fool, I went back to Cecile's three hours later. I even bought her some cigarettes. I sat there and took her abuse while she puffed away. She still didn't want to break up. I did, but, as usual, I swallowed my needs out of some sense of manly obligation. I'd been a stupid fool to get involved with her in the first place. For the forseeable future, I was going to continue being that fool.

Happy Halloween.