Robert Long

Brain Damage and Bacon Grease: a Recovery from Relationship Trauma Robert Long

The book is a collection of short stories and poems that were written as I moved through several relationships over a four year period. I wrote blogs that were originally supposed to be a part of this. I charted and chronicled every step of my healing, every growth, every realization. Rehabilitating one?s personality is hard. At the beginning, the book was supposed to be a chronicle of my recovery from my divorce, but I made the mistake of going straight from my marriage into a bad relationship with a younger woman. Getting away from that relationship almost killed me. 5 years of marriage plus 5 years of abusive relationship plus ten years of custody battle equals fifteen years of pain and suffering (the first five of the custody battle were served concurrently with the abusive relationship). But really, the pieces collected in this book were the expressions that came out of the healing period, from 2006 to 2011. These were the creative parts, the art therapy. I decided to leave out the blogs, the rants, the emotional gushing, the instant message transcripts. I suppose at some point, if there?s ever an interest, those things might be restored. They?re all stored somewhere. Now that I?ve bummed you out, realize the collection is hopeful. I?m still alive, and on the other side of it all? my life is picking up momentum, and I?m doing more with the time afforded me now than I ever have before. There is a novel that I'm very proud of, coming very soon. So a personal thank you to all those who helped create what?s inside. I can?t list the names, because apparently that?s gauche, and besides, there are enough first names dropped to make the curious have something to salivate over. But thank you to all of them nonetheless; thank you for the laughter, and the tears, the anger and the fears, thank you for the pain and the joys that have helped me bring me to this point, to who I am today. I am still alive. The story goes on.