#01 – Anthony M.
He came in and sat down at the bar, eyes bloodshot, ragged clothes, scraggy hair, unshaven. Hunched over, arms folded on the bar, he sat motionless — gazing straight ahead with an empty stare that screamed defeat.
His appearance was so haggard he could be mistaken for homeless. He just sat in quiet desperation. Many dismissed him as a bum or a junkie. He certainly had the hollow face of a worn man. But Anthony M. wasn’t a bum. He wasn’t a junkie. He wasn’t drunk or stoned.
Just an hour earlier, Anthony was in a screaming match back home.
“F*cking b*stard!”
“Stop being an a**hole!”
“You’re a monster!!”
“I hate you!”
Every profane word was used…the worst ones more than a few times. They got so loud that he’d be surprised if the police weren’t waiting for him when he got back home. He hated himself. He hated his failure. How could he have let himself blow up like that — especially at his 12-year-old little girl?
It was she that had screamed the loudest and had cursed the most. After the third or fourth F-bomb, he snapped. He looked down and picked up the first thing he saw and threw it across the room in rage. It was her stacked schoolwork — it flew apart and papers and notebooks rained down in a flurry of chaos across the floor and furniture of her room.
The screaming continued, this time with his wife, who was furious at him for his outburst. She had to remind him their daughter had a condition called Oppositional Defiant Disorder, and that she couldn’t help acting that way. Of course, as soon as his temper got the better of him, he had remembered. He just wished he could have controlled himself better.
Anthony would never hurt his little girl. But tonight, he did. He screamed at her and made her feel worthless and unloved. Then after he realized what he’d done, he cursed himself for not having the strength to hold back his rage.
Anthony had always tried to be a good father. Tomorrow he promised to do better, but tonight he had failed, and he needed to punish himself for it.