My therapist suggested I track my mood to see if we can pinpoint when/why I go into some of these darker moods at seemingly random times. Since that day I’d say my mood has been fair to good, but not great.
Yesterday, however, I thought I was actually going to get to document that I was feeling great. I was feeling really good about how productive I’d been with work, even making phone calls that I normally try to avoid. I did a little happy dance when I got off the phone with a Division Order office.
I stayed a little later than normal to finish up some things that weren’t urgent, but I’d been putting off. So when I left, traffic was heavier than usual. I wasn’t concerned, since I knew my husband was home for when the kids got off the bus and we didn’t have guitar lessons to get to. I sat in traffic as we creeped past an accident without that urgent feeling I can sometimes get when things aren’t going as expected. I even decided to do a detour and pick up my med refill from the pharmacy. Everything was going fine.
Then I got home. The kids had already disappeared into their rooms and my husband was sitting in his recliner doing something on his iPad. He didn’t even look up when I got home. I think he might have asked how my day was and I responded “Really productive! How was yours?” I don’t think I got more than a grunt out of him. I tried going into the kids’ rooms individually to see how their days were, but the moment of getting anything out of them had passed. Neither were interested in sharing.
At that point, everything started to annoy me. My husband crunching on ice sitting next to me. The dog whining to be fed an hour early. The pile of dirty dishes sitting in the sink… Everything.
My husband had an improv class to attend, but had said he would make dinner. I assumed that he would have it ready earlier than our usual dinner time so that he could eat with us. When I saw the time, I asked him when he needed to start dinner. He didn’t move. I asked him what I could do to help. He continued to sit. I turned on the oven and started washing the dishes. He finally got out of his chair and started working on dinner. But he needed the sink and I already had it full of soapy water (our dishwasher has been broken for 2 years). Dinner was not ready until 6:10. He had to leave at 6:15. He said he wasn’t hungry anyway, so he didn’t eat with us.
I don’t know why people not eating aggravates me SO much, but it does. Maybe it’s because I’m so obsessed with food and it makes me angry that other people aren’t. I don’t know. It shouldn’t bother me that he rarely eats more than one meal a day when I feel starved when I only have two. It doesn’t make sense that my mother in law coming home and saying she had a late lunch and won’t be joining us for dinner gets on my nerves, but it does.
Anyway, it ended up being just me and the kids eating dinner. My son started talking non-stop (as he does) and didn’t let his sister say anything. As soon as he was finished eating, he bolted from the table (as he does) and tucked into his phone.
I’d already asked my daughter to put away the dishes I’d done earlier, but she hadn’t. I reminded her and asked that she get it done so I could start on the dinner dishes. She was working on it while I put away the leftovers. But it was taking her forever (yes, I recognize this was an ADHD moment, but it got on my nerves anyway) and I may have fussed at her. She started to cry. I told her “We need to figure out how I can redirect you back on task without you getting offended. I recognize that I didn’t do a good job just now and I’m sorry.” She finally finished and I told her to go shower while I got to do MORE dishes.
After completing the second round of dishes for the day, I told my son to put them away (he didn’t move) and asked my daughter why she wasn’t in the shower. She said she was working on homework. I bit my tongue and waited for both of them to do what had been asked. I sat in the living room, unable to really focus on anything. Then my mother in law started to FaceTime with her daughter and those grandkids (this is a multiple times a day occurrence). I could hear her talking baby talk to the 1 year old. I don’t know why this was annoying me, but it was. And seeing my son sit and stare at his phone aggravated me. And my daughter not getting in the shower.
I realized that if I stuck around, I was going to end up exploding at someone. So I sent myself to bed. I announced that I was going to my room and everyone could get themselves to bed without me. No one heard. I went around turning off all of the lights and that’s when my son said “Why’s it so dark?” I responded “Because I turned off the lights and it’s night.” He asked me why and I responded “I said I’m going to bed.” Then I shut myself into my room, got ready for bed, turned off the lights, and curled up in bed with my iPad.
I’d like to say that removing myself from the situation helped to calm me down. It did not. I messaged my friends that I’d shared my good mood with earlier in the day and said “Well, so much for my good mood. I’m irritated by every living being in my house right now. Except maybe the lizard.” One of them offered to listen. At first I resisted, but venting actually did help some. He was able to make me laugh a little, which was also helpful. I ended up texting the kids “I will not be up in the morning. You will have to make your own lunches. Feel free to make them tonight so you just have to grab it in the morning. Might want to set an alarm for the bus. I’ve quit.” The only response I got was “Ok” from my daughter. Nothing from my son (who you KNOW was on his phone).
I turned off my alarm and decided I would not be available to get them off to school. However, I woke up anyway. But I stayed in bed and pretended to be asleep. My husband could tell I was awake and asked if I was okay. I said yes, but I stayed where I was. When he went out to the living room and I could hear him talking to our son. Later he told me that my son asked if I was mad at them. I had explained to my husband the night before that everything had been irritating me and rather than snap at people, I’d sent myself to my room. He explained that to our son, but I’m sure he still felt like he’d done something wrong.
As soon as the kids were gone I went out into the living room. I tried to turn my attitude around and asked my husband what he wanted to do for his birthday. He said he didn’t know. Which irritated me. I realize it’s unreasonable, as I frequently don’t know either, but I had been asking him for weeks and he kept saying that we couldn’t do what he actually wanted to do. He decided to make chili for dinner and started on that first thing in the morning. I could feel myself still being annoyed. I asked him if he wanted to go to lunch and he asked ME where I would want to go. I said “It’s YOUR birthday. You get to pick.” I asked him repeatedly if we were doing lunch as noon approached. He was very noncommittal. I gave up and went to shower. He still didn’t say “Yes. Let’s go to lunch.” Just got into the shower. So I started writing this post. When he got out of the shower, I was typing. So he went and sat down in the living room. I called out “Are we doing lunch?” And he said “Whatever.”
And I lost it. I slammed my laptop closed, slammed the bedroom door, and escaped to my closet like I always do. But I was hungry. Hangry. So I grabbed socks and started putting them on as I went to the living room for my shoes. He saw me putting on shoes and said “Does this mean we are going to lunch?” And I yelled “I don’t care what you do, but I get hungry. And hangry too!” And I stomped to my car and left. I drove away with him probably stunned and unsure what he did.
I drove around the corner and thought “This is wrong. Running away isn’t the right thing to do and I know it. Why am I doing it?” I ended up turning around and going back to the house. When I walked in, he was still sitting in the same spot, staring across the room. With clenched fists and tears I took deep breaths and said “I’m sorry. I don’t know what is wrong with my brain today and I don’t know how to fix it. But I would like to have lunch with you for your birthday if you’re willing to spend time with me. I understand if you don’t want to.”
He got up and started putting his shoes on. I put the dogs away. We took his car and went to a Korean restaurant he’d recently tried and wanted to introduce me to. We talked at lunch like nothing had happened. We didn’t discuss the blow up or any of it. Afterwards, we went to a couple of stores looking for a game that we thought the whole family could enjoy (our son tends to get bored with many of the games the rest of us enjoy playing). He finally settled on Cards Against Humanity – Family Edition.
We made it home before the kids and I made sure to text my son to let him know that we would be spending time as a family and not to plan on playing games with his friends after school. His response when he finally saw it “Oh. I just told D I could play at 4:30. I’ll let him know I can’t.” This was a MUCH better reaction than I would have gotten if he’d come home and we told him as he walked in the door. I think I may need to start each morning with a heads up about how much time he will/won’t have for playing video games.
When the kids wrapped up homework for the day, we watched the newest episode of Bad Batch, then a couple of episodes of Cars On the Road. We had dinner, then introduced the game. Even my mother in law joined in, which is unusual!
It was a HUGE hit. We were laughing harder than I think we’ve laughed in a very long time. I even managed to win! But everyone had a lot of fun, which was the point. The kids are already talking about the friends they want to play the game with and I mentioned that it would be fun to have another family over to play. Everyone agreed.
The end of the day was a complete 180 from the morning. So I guess over the course of the two days I really did a 360. I went from good day, to bad evening, to bad morning, then back to good evening. I could have let the whole day be ruined. Which wouldn’t have been a very nice birthday for my husband at all and would have left me feeling even worse about myself than I already felt. Maybe this is the “opposite action” that the Emotion Regulation Skills worksheet that my therapist gave me was talking about. I resisted it before because I felt like it was telling me to not feel my feelings, which I thought I was supposed to do. But I guess what this did was break the cycle of feeling bad. I could have continued to feed my anger and irritation at my family and myself, but by forcing myself to do the opposite of what I normally do (retreat), I was able to turn my emotions around. This will be an interesting topic to discuss with my therapist next week (assuming I remember to talk about it).
I think I also need to talk to my husband about it. Piece together what went wrong. I think there are a few things. 1) I felt unappreciated when I got home on Thursday. 2) I felt lonely. 3) In my efforts to people please, his indecisiveness left me feeling unpleasing, if that makes sense. I felt like he didn’t really WANT to spend time with me, but was just doing it to appease me. None of these messages were intentional, I know. But that’s where my reactions came from. And when I told myself I shouldn’t feel them, I got irritated with myself for feeling them anyway. I guess that’s the “feel my feelings” I needed to do. Give myself permission to feel unappreciated and lonely and unpleasing. Tell myself it’s okay to feel this way. But then take action to prove the feelings wrong by talking to my family instead of withdrawing and feeding my negativity.
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