Temper Tantrum Tuesday

Adult temper tantrums, meltdowns, hissy fits, whatever you would like to call them, they are real. I was going to share a memory from my past, where John lost it over attempting to hang a towel rod in our bathroom. Instead, I am going to share an experience I had with John this morning which is very fitting, as today is, in fact, a Tuesday.

Yesterday, I was leisurely scrolling through my phone when the right side of my neck spasmed and I suddenly had a jarring pain from the base of my neck to the bottom of my shoulder blade. I woke up this morning with that pain even worse and spent the first 30 minutes not working out but stretching and gingerly trying to get my neck and head to move a bit more naturally. Needless to say, I was a bit emotionally tender, in the way that you may feel if you’re getting sick or just want to be held.

I’d come upstairs from stretching at 7:00 and gotten dressed for my work day. John had woken up at his typical 6:30 alarm and was lying in bed trying to wake up and looking at his iPad. As I was about to head to the kitchen to prepare my lunch bag, our cat jumped onto the bed, padded over to John’s side, and proceeded to paw at and lick John’s face. This is a very annoying quality about this cat (we have two). He does this at either 4 am or when we are least in the mood for this sort of behavior. (Sounds pretty typical of cat behavior, right?) As I was heading out the bedroom door, I heard John’s irritated voice quickly turn into one of anger (a low, teeth gritted, very masculine tone), telling our cat “not now…give me a minute!” I stopped and, taking matters into my own hands, picked up our cat and put him outside in the hallway and closed the bedroom door. I knew that John would not have taken the rational step of putting the cat outside; instead trying to ignore or expect the cat’s behavior to change, hence making John even more irritated – the cat continuing to try to be lovey-dovey – John becoming more angry – and so on until John blew up in an irrational emotional fit, causing the whole house to be effected.

Resolving this possible scenario, I left the bedroom and proceeded to finish getting ready for my work day. I was on the verge of running late and remembered I needed to print a document for John before leaving. I attempted to do this but was unsuccessful. In annoyance, I went back upstairs and opened the bedroom door (letting the cat back in) and started talking to John about the copies. The cat immediately jumped back up on the bed and proceeded to attempt the previous behavior; sending John into the same angry tone of voice and starting the entire thing over again. (Am I writing a “The Three Stooges” episode?) Because of my neck pain, running late, and simply the intensity of these early morning emotions; I said something to John to calm down and then listened to John as he proceeded to vent to me that he was just trying to get an email written, that he’d just spent the last 45 minutes typing one and with the cat coming over the chances of that email being erased or sent too soon was high, he was tired, had a headache, was trying to multi-task, and just wanted to complete a sentence without being interrupted – ending all with, “I’m having a TBI moment.”

After taking a deep breath, I said, “I know” and started to head out the door to leave the house. He said, “Well, are you going to give me a kiss?” I said, “Yes, I already have.” Which I’d done just a moment before, just before the barrage started, and wasn’t too inclined to do again because it meant bending down to reach him on the bed when doing so was very painful for my neck. As I kissed him a second time, I wondered if John was having a memory lapse due to his temper tantrum.

As I was leaving the house, I nearly started to cry. I got into the car and started replaying the events of the last 15 minutes in my head, trying to understand why I was nearly crying over such a simple thing. I realized this was all just a TBI moment, paired with my not feeling well and being stressed out about getting to work on time.