The Year In Pictures.

Lots of people do these. I used to.

This year, the pictures are going to be from my mind's eye. While I envision them, I will write about them.

This was the year 2010. Through my eyes.

By the middle of January, it was clear. I was going to be let go from my job. The job for which hell is to tame a word to describe. After enduring 11 months at the hands of a hyperactive, abusive, micromanaging asshole of a boss, and working in the worst job I had ever experienced...the axe came down.

And I knew full well it was coming. I would drive the nearly 2 hours each way, every day. That combined with the work and the job itself...was killing me.

By the fall of the previous year, on the way home from work one day, I said aloud to myself in the car. "I am not going to make it".

My health was suffering. I had severe edema in both lower legs. The stress was over the top. And I decided to just let it all go. I filed for short term disability. Denied. Shortly after that, I was let go.

That was January.

Once I knew of my fate, I notified my landlord of the job loss, and that I would be vacating early, and moving in with my father. A place I had lived just 4 years earlier, when my ex wife threw me out of my home with a restraining order. I thought I was doing them a favor. I could have just not paid rent for a couple months and waited for the eviction notice.

Through the help of my father, I secured a mover. The same mover who had now moved me and my family 4 times previously. He and his company had moved me just 3 years before, to that very townhouse. Now, he was coming to pack me up, and move me to storage, and some things to my father's home.

The place was crowded to begin with. Once everything was packed, it was jammed. Hardly able to move. The things I had to move myself were exhausting. I was already spent from the months of hell preceding this.

I had to relinquish my independence. Yet again.

The day before the trucks came. A Nor'easter hit and dumped 26 inches of snow. We had to move after a blizzard. The roads were barely plowed. Getting things into and out of the trucks was a nightmare. A fitting end, apparently, to my short tenure as a single man, with my own home.

I moved on Valentine's day. A day that has lost any and all meaning to me to begin with. While others were snuggling up or going out with their sweethearts, I was watching yet another dream die. Alone. Box by box.

My mother had been gone a year now, by this time. Going back into that house was heart-wrenching. Instead of her greeting me and giving me a hug, I got to see a box with her ashes, and a photo of her on the mantle.

I had worked hard to get out of the situation I was in. I had been thrown out by a vengeful ex-wife who was in the midst of her second affair. After the divorce was final, and the house was on the market, we figured out a way to get me and my daughter into a townhouse of our own. It was not to last. Before I ended up moving back here, my daughter had moved back in with her mother and brother.

So, on February 15th, 2010, I woke up in the same bedroom in the upstairs loft of my parent's home, now occupied only by my father.

My two dogs came along. Thank goodness, my father was willing to tolerate them. I would have never been able to part with them. To this day, they are my faithful and loving (and silly) companions.

I had to give away the 3 Chinchillas. I adored them. But there was no way for them to come here. Thankfully, some very good friends took them, and they are doing wonderfully in their new home.

Every month, I would send out job applications. And hear nothing. Crickets.

I poured a ton of energy into my photography. Trying to make headway there, to see if there was something I could put together that might raise some income. While I got some incredible shots, I have made nothing in the way of income by doing so.

By August, we could no longer afford to pay for the storage facility. In it was all of my furniture.

So, we hired a friend to load a truck, and take all of my things to the lake cabin, and store them in the garage there.

Half of my life now sits in boxes in this house. And the other half sits in a frozen garage, in the woods of NY State.

I don't know if I will ever see or own a place where I can unpack.

Right now, I live cramped in a room, with far too much crap around, in a house owned by the king of hoarders. There is no room in this entire house. Just walking through it is a chore. And it is a huge house.

Thanksgiving had many bad memories for me. My ex made some terrible scenes in prior years, with my parents in attendance. Other times, my mother was too drunk to have the holiday, and I'd have to go out at the last minute to get something to eat for all of us.

So, this year, my dad was going with his new girlfriend to her kids' house in NY State. I decided to spend the day alone. My ex invited me to her house. I told her that I won't play "happy lets pretend we are a family" for the kids or her or anyone else. We are divorced. Years now. She has a boyfriend who practically lives there. I let the day pass. And I was happy when it was over.

Today is December 13th.

My dad sits in a hospital bed. Awaiting open heart surgery.

I sit here in the now familiar loft bedroom of his home.

My mom's voice sometimes echoes in my head.

My dad has been living at his girlfriend's house for many months now, and only comes by to feed the cats.

I have no job. And barely any hope of one.

I have 2 weeks left of unemployment.

The landlord? Fined me over 7000 dollars for early termination.

My bankruptcy petition has just been filed in federal court.

I have no one to hold, or to hold me.

And Christmas is coming.

And I do not care. At all.

Each year now, for the last 5 years, I have said that I hope the next year is a better one. A happier one.

I will not hope any longer. Because to do so is a pipe dream.