"I'm a firm believer in the observer effect, which states that anything you try to observe is automatically changed by the mere fact that you're looking at it. The way I see it, if you try to study your emotions on a microscopic level, the best you can do is understand how it feels to hold the magnifying glass." -- Tennyson

And all because we longed for healing and happiness -- as if happiness is a state of being. But it's not. Happiness is a vector. It's *movement*. Like my own momentum across the pool, joy can only be defined by the speed at which you're moving away from pain.

Stealer of screams and thief of anguish,  I am a criminal, but you can’t see it, blinded by your own relief as my body becomes a battlefield in a war that can’t be won.  Will I be the bullet that ends your pain, or will you end mine?

Mom doesn't cook anymore. She does nothing much motherly or wifely anymore since Dad did some unmentionables during his midlife crisis. Bronte and I have become convinced that Mom, God rest her soul, kind of died inside and hasn't come back from the dead yet. We keep waiting, but all we get is Domino's.

The Bruiser moves to his brother and pries him away from the dead bull; but the kid goes ballistic, screaming and cursing and fighting and kicking, limbs flailing like a spider monkey. "Cody, stop it!" the Bruiser yells; but the kid's gone into demonic possession mode, scratching and biting until it's all the Bruiser can do just to peel him off himself. And the second he does, Cody jumps back on the bull, clinging to it like cellophane and bawling even more loudly than before.

Once in a while our school has half days, and the teachers spend the afternoon “in service,” which I think must be group therapy for having to deal with us.