I move in with my old man for one year to get back on my feet. Just one year, I tell myself. When I was in my 20s I\u2019d think: I can do anything for a year. A year is nothing. I can snort coke every day; I can date a psychotic nymphomaniac; I can hustle billiard halls for a living. In my 30s a year felt longer than it had in my 20s, but it was still just a year: I can survive on unemployment; I can live without health insurance; I can sleep in my car. Now, a year feels like darkness where there will never be light; like I\u2019m dangling from the rim of a black hole. Maybe it\u2019s because my marriage failed and my son disowned me; or because my old man is ashamed and waits for me to come upstairs so he can fire off a round of questions: Where will you live next year? What about a job? What about child support and alimony? Or because he once called me a pariah and I can hear the walls of this basement whispering that word every minute of every day; or because my old man joined the military when he was 18 as a way to get money for college but then 9\/11 happened and Iraq happened and Afghanistan happened and an IED took one of his legs and all of his ambition; or because yesterday I saw my son for the first time in eight years and he\u2019s changed a lot but I knew it was him because he has my eyes, so I wanted to hug him, I wanted just one hug, but he backed away all confused and I said, why are you so afraid of your old man? and he stared at me like I was a crazy person, like he had no idea who I am.<\/p>\n
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When I was in my 20s I\u2019d think: I can do anything for a year. A year is nothing. I can snort coke every day; I can date a psychotic nymphomaniac. In my 30s I’d think: I can survive on unemployment; I can live without health insurance. I can sleep in my car. Now, a year feels like darkness where there will never be light.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":182,"featured_media":21045,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3530],"tags":[3716,2621,1818,863,3717],"class_list":["post-20540","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-flash-fiction","tag-estrangement","tag-fiction","tag-first-person","tag-flash-fiction","tag-pariah","writer-jamy-bond"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20540","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/182"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20540"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20540\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21046,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20540\/revisions\/21046"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21045"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}