Wincing at Light

Day 1: I bought some arsenic. For the mice.

Day 3: My wife was screaming at me this morning. All she ever does is make me miserable. So I put some arsenic in her coffee. Not enough to hurt her, and besides, she’ll never know. I just need to take control of something in my life. I won’t do it again. It made me feel better.

Day 7: My wife and I don’t connect like we used to. She seems distant and paranoid. I know I said I wouldn’t do it again, but I put some arsenic in her coffee. When she felt sick the other day, she needed me. It made me feel better.

Day 10: My wife is feeling sick and needy. It’s stressing me out. It’s always about her. I just need a break from her constant whining. So I put some arsenic in her coffee. After she got sick, she went to lie down for awhile. It made me feel better.

Day 14: I don’t know what I ever saw in my wife. She’s lazy, sleeps all the time, never does her part around here, acts paranoid. She’s pale, sickly, doesn’t take care of herself. She’s always ragging on me about something being wrong with her, or with us. Thinks it’s maybe Carbon Monoxide. I told her I’d get one of those sensors. It’s all too much pressure. So I put some arsenic in her coffee. It made me feel better.

Day 21: I deserve better than what I ended up married to. There’s just no love here. All she ever does is harass and accuse me, and I can do better. So I put some arsenic in her coffee. It made me feel better.

Day 28: My wife doesn’t meet my emotional needs. It’s all about her and *her* illness, her needs. Can’t she see I’m dying here? I just need to feel loved. She can’t even do that right. So I put some arsenic in her coffee. It made me feel better.

Day 35: My wife got all up in my face today. God, she is such a bitch. She deserves all of this. If she’d treated me the way a wife was supposed to treat a husband from the beginning, this would never have happened. So I put two spoons of arsenic in her coffee. Serves her right for the way she treats me. It made me feel better.

Day 40: Today, my wife found the bottle of arsenic. She is pissed off. She says she’s going to call the cops. I can’t believe she found where I hid it. I feel like shit.

Day 41: I used to be happy and my wife was a lot easier to deal with when I had the arsenic. I wish I had more, but she won’t let me go to the drug store.

Day 42: Took my wife to the doctor because she’s vomiting blood. She can barely stand, let alone walk. He said it’s going to take 2-5 years for her to recover from arsenic poisoning, and even then, part of her brain was apparently destroyed. (From a little arsenic? Yeah, right! Fucking quack.) She’ll never be the same again, he says, but will probably get most of her functions back if I take care of her. Can’t they just pump her stomach or something? Now I’ll have to listen to her whine and watch her vomit for the next two years.

Day 45: I just wanted to feel better. Why can’t she just get better so we can go back to the way things used to be? I know what I did was wrong, but I was stressed out and fucked up. What else could I have done? I’m not a bad person, and she *was* a bitch. Still, I didn’t think this would happen, not just from a little arsenic. It just made things easier to cope with. She makes it sound like I tried to kill her. Like I was doing it on purpose. I was just trying to cope. I’m a good person.