Unhinged

I don't always know when I'm getting close to blowing a gasket. Surprisingly, it escapes me that I've become antsy and very, very irritable. My hair bugs me when it blows in my face and the house feels way too small. My heat rises because a lone cup hasn't made it to the sink before I've finished the dishes, and my nerves are frayed to nubs because my son keeps opening and slamming the kitchen cabinets (he's a toddler and likes the way they sound). I will find saliva covered toys in my cabinets, and I will trip over hubby's shoes even though I tried to step over them. Usually, all of this happens in such a short span of time that my explosion looks instantaneous to others, and sometimes even to myself.

I become unhinged. Not dangerously, as my physical outburst days are long behind me, but loudly; OK, very loudly. And I am not in any way kind when I loose it. I discard tact and lay out every single solitary gripe I have in me; from the bugs in Texas to how I am the only one that scrubs the toilet even though I'm not the only one that uses it. I do it in a brutally honest, as-I-see-it way. I'm not always completely accurate, but I am completely emotional, venting with every ounce of my personal energy. My restraints become completely undone, and I have to verbally puke out all of the angry-ugly until I've fully finished my tirade so that I may return to my usually calm and stable self. If I snap in the morning, I can actually go on and accomplish a lot with my day because afterwards I feel cleansed, cleared and as empty as the first keg tapped at Oktoberfest.

I do go along for very long stretches of time without snapping, but when I blow, I put nuclear weapons to shame. I have never understood why this my process, but my process it most definitely is. I've analyzed and meditated, and it happens with a lot less frequency than it did in my teens and twenties, but I still do this despite my advancing age and maturity. After all these years, and so much self-analysis, soul-searching and emotional healing work that I've done, I can not seem to squash this particular personality flaw.

For some reason, I don't seem to realize that I was so stuffed full of emotional garbage that a blow-up was inevitable. If I were able to recognize it before my own personal Armageddon occurred, I would have come up with a much more civilized way of dealing with the purge long ago. I would let it out like a steam valve on a well regulated schedule, a little bit at a time instead of going off the chain like a banshee. My words bursting forth in a gravelly scream-yell, aimed at whomever is in earshot with all the sting of small-caliber bullets and tears streaming down my face uncontrollably. To any observer, I'm sure I seem in desperate need of a strait-jacket.

I've decided that these must be the times preachers are referring to when they say, "for better or for worse...". I sometimes wonder if hubby would have married me if he knew that I had this infrequent, but recurring glitch in my software. That my horns would pop out like daggers and I would become a horrible site to behold. It's a good thing that it happens so rarely... and that I've already got the ring.