Of MLK Day and Migraines

ON THE MOVE: Dr. Martin Luther King, lower right, holds hands with his wife, Coretta, during an Alabama march. — PHOTOGRAPHER: Associated Press

Happy Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, everyone. If anyone deserves a holiday commemorating their work, it’s him.

What I love about this picture is that it shows that he was not alone in his work and his belief and his actions. He’s surrounded by a whole lot of people, some of whom look nothing like him.

That speaks to the power of A) someone who has a very, very clear vision of how things could be — and is willing to put themself on the line for it, and B) a cohesive group of committed people who support that cause and are willing to put themselves on the line, as well.

I grew up in the late 60s and early 70s, when students were bused in the small city we lived in, and the Black Power movement was on the rise. Those were the days after Dr. King’s life had ended, and I watched the Civil Rights Movement devolve into fractious fighting and chaos. I was attacked by other students a number of times because I didn’t look like them, and one of my most significant TBIs came at the hands of some of those kids. It was a violent time, a messy time, and there was a lot of harm done.

Of course, the pendulum tends to swing in different directions, so maybe that was to be expected. I’m not sure what would have happened, had Dr. King not been killed. There’s no guarantee things would not have descended into chaos, in any case. All I know is, those years of my childhood were extraordinarily tough, due to race relations, and I’m still dealing with the fallout.

Today is a holiday for many folks, including the schools. I actually don’t have the day off work. It’s an elective holiday for us, which means that office is going to be very quiet, as everybody with kids takes the day off to be with them. That also means there’s no point in me going into the office, and I can work from home.

That’s good.

I’m not in the mood to deal with people today. I’ve had a sick headache for days, now. It’s getting better, but it’s still around. Yesterday was better, probably because I got plenty of sleep over the weekend, I took it easy, and I cut out all that chocolate that I’ve been eating since the holidays. I’ve had at least 2 pieces of chocolate in the afternoons, for months. Sometimes I’ll have a bunch of it over the course of the day — to keep myself going. The amount has steadily increased, and I think it’s contributed to my migraines.

Chocolate has caffeine in it. Sugar, too. I’ve been using it as a substitute for coffee for those afternoon lulls. But that makes no sense — it’s still caffeine, which has been linked to migraines. I’ve also been drinking black tea (with honey) and yerba mate, both with caffeine. Come to think of it, when I started drinking more black tea (Red Rose is my favorite), the headaches started to come back.

So, I cut it all out for the past two days, and I’m feeling much better. I bit withrawal-ish, but better.

I had planned to get off caffeine completely, back in May, but that didn’t work. I have to have at least a little bit in the morning — I cut back on my amount drastically. The month of May came and went, and over the months, my headaches really subsided. But now, eight months later, I’ve slipped back into my old ways, and the headaches are back. So, I’m taking corrective action. And I’m just doing the smart thing — the thing that connects the dots.

I think there’s more to my headaches than just coffee. There’s usually more than one thing, with me. I ask myself: What all have I done differently over the past few months, that might have given rise to increased migraines?

1. I was really off my regular diet over the holidays — eating a lot more sugar and carbs than usual, and not watching my portion control. I ate a LOT of candy, although I justified it by only eating chocolate, rather than a lot of other junk food. I told myself that dark chocolate is good for me, and it’s been linked with longevity. Who doesn’t want to live longer… all thanks to dark chocolate?
2. I also stopped exercising regularly. I had a project in November that consumed my attention and kept me off the exercise bike, first thing in the morning. It also kept me off the trails on the weekends, and it consumed every spare moment of my time. Consequently, I lost muscle tone and strength and gained weight, and my energy level dropped. Not good.
3. I was also pretty stressed at times over the holiday break. I got pretty bent out of shape about all the changes happening – work changes, doctor changes, etc. It got to me more than I care to admit, and it was definitely a factor in increased irritability. I wasn’t sleeping great, the stress was throwing me off, and I just didn’t feel like I could handle anything.
4. Also… I worked from home for the week and a half around Christmas and New Years, and my spouse and I got irritable from being underfoot with each other. We had a couple of blow-ups, which shot up my blood pressure. I’ve been really struggling with my anger — and my heart rate — ever since. My headaches come on when my heart rate goes up, so it’s actually a helpful reminder to keep it down. And since I know how to lower my heart rate, I need to go back to just doing that. And so I have been. It takes time and practice — and I’ve been a bit out of practice.

think this is all inter-related, so I need to do something about it. And I’ve been doing just that. Laying off the chocolate. Doing my breathing exercises. Being extra-mindful about what’s going on around me and how I’m reacting to it. And taking action to reduce the stress. And making more of an effort to peacefully co-exist with my spouse. They’re making more of an effort, too. They actually asked me to work from home today, which is a huge change.

The most important thing for me is support. It make everything easier. I hadn’t mentioned my migraines to my spouse, during the holidays — I just did my usual shut-out thing, where I ignore the pain and hope it’ll go away. It didn’t, though. It just got worse. And of course, my spouse couldn’t figure out why I was in such rough shape, all of a sudden.

When I told them about my headaches, last week, suddenly there was support — compassion — and extra help with doing things like getting to bed at a decent hour and not overeating. They don’t do great with the whole TBI issues thing — it freaks them out, even to this day, and we can never discuss them without them going into some form of panic/anxiety. So, that’s no good. But they can deal with the idea that I have migraines. It doesn’t make them question their own safety and sanity.

If they think my brain is not working properly, they get frightened and combative, because it threatens their existence. But if they think I “just” have a sick headache, that poses no threat to them, and they can think clearly about how to help me. Migraines are less intimidating. Headaches are something they can relate to, without it turning into a life-and-death struggle… or pointing to a future filled with dementia and diapers.

So, “playing the migraine card” is a useful way to get the help I need, under these conditions. It helps, that it’s true.

And that’s good. Because all alone, dealing with all of this is a tough go.

Bottom line: when you have support from other like-minded individuals who share your vision and your dreams, you can actually achieve a thing or two.

Onward.

That’s weird – my ear is bleeding and I don’t know why

One of the advantages/disadvantages of extreme focus combined with a crappy working/short-term memory is that I frequently get hurt, then can’t remember how it happened. I play pretty rough with myself in the course of my everyday life — a combination of velocity and some balance issues. I tend to go at a pretty brisk clip, at times, so I tend to collide with things as I go about my business.

And then I find all these bruises later on.

On the one hand, it’s a little disconcerting to find yourself all marked up for no reason that you can remember. But I’ve kind of gotten used to that. I just shrug it off and get on with things. As long as there’s no long-term serious damage, it falls into the category of “Oh, well”.

On the other hand, it’s kind of nice not to have to truck around all the recollections of the injuries I sustain on a daily basis. That would get to be a bit much after a while, I have to say. Not remembering how I got hurt frees up space in my brain for the things I really need to remember. Almost every single time, I’m bruised or cut or scraped through my own doing. Every now and then, it’s someone else’s fault, but 99.99% of the time, it’s my own clumsiness that’s the culprit.

In wintertime when shoveling, I often “gore” myself on scrapers, shovels, and my snowblower handles, but it’s not till later when I find all these little bruises at handle-height, that I realize just how much of a contact sport snow removal can be. And in the summertime, I get all scraped up and never realize it till later. I sometimes look like I either fell into a bramble patch or I had a run-in with a very angry animal with claws. But honestly, I can’t clearly remember what got me there.

It’s a problem at times with my doctor, who sees these bruises and scrapes and knows that my spouse and I have our differences at times. And they ask me how things are going at home, like it’s domestic violence or something. Once I said, “You should see the other guy,” but that didn’t go over very well. Note to self: Don’t joke about violence with the doctor.

Lesson learned.

So, anyway… my ear… I felt this rough patch a few minutes ago, and when I rubbed it, some dried blood came off, and then my fingers got all bloody. Weird. What did I do this time? I was out working in my yard earlier, so maybe one of those vicious biting flies got hold of me. That’s probably what happened. I remember mosquitoes flying around me, and some other buzzing, but I don’t clearly recollect getting bit. When I think about it, maybe I did feel a little pinch, but it didn’t leave a big impression on my mind.

It did, however, mess with my ear. If that’s what happened.

So, I got a Kleenex, applied pressure, and stopped the bleeding, and now it’s fine. Like it never happened.

Clean slate. It’s Friday. Happy weekend, everyone. Whew. That week went fast!

GREAT reading about defending the “purity” of sports

Ken Dryden on hockey violence: How could we be so stupid?

Good reading – great food for thought. From a former NHL goaltender.

March is Brain Injury Awareness Month

And this month, the Brain Injury Association of America is putting a special emphasis on concussion with their campaign “A concussion is a brain injury. Get the facts.”

I’m really happy they’re doing this. As someone who has sustained a number of concussions in the course of my life — several of them during sports events — this topic is near and dear to my heart.

The more we know about it, and the better trained coaches are to recognize and respond to these events, the better off we will all be.

Because concussion doesn’t just affect the individual who’s been injured. It affects all the people they interact with, their families, their teachers, their peers. And in the long run, it can affect society on a very large scale. Violent crime and repeat offenses have been connected with TBI,

About eight years ago, a study was conducted which tested the hypothesis that TBI is related to violent crime. What they found was that more than half of the participants in the study (half of whom had been convicted of domestic violence, half of whom had no convictions) had sustained a TBI — the violent offenders had had more severe injuries.

Knowing about TBI and responding appropriately to it is important not only for the criminal system, but for all of us in everyday society. Whether it’s dealing with anger management issues, attention issues, poor performance which cannot be explained any logical way, or a host of other issues that come up after TBI (sleep issues being a big one for me as well as many others), the after-effects of TBI (even “mild” TBI) can have dramatic and long-range impact on many, many aspects of our lives.

And since we know, deep down inside, that none of us is really an island, we can safely way that individual problems can and do become collective issues.

So the more we know about TBI as a whole society, indeed, a whole world, the better equipped we can become to respond appropriately to it.

I hadn’t actually intended to write about this today, but m reminded me that it’s Brain Injury Awareness Month, so I’ve got to make mention of it.

I guess maybe I’m supposed to give more thought to the other things I was going to write, before I write them.

All good 🙂

Hits madness… the good kind

What a day I’m having… That little post I put together on the train while coming to work has caught people’s attention. My normally sleepy little blog has by now logged 1,646 visitors. Up from a high of 200-some, a few months back.

Suddenly, people are paying attention

I’m pretty excited about this, and checking where the traffic is coming from, Alphainventions and Condron.us are both feeding me. Alphainventions mores0, but Condron is doing it, too.

It’s a pretty intense jump — a 10-fold increase over what I typically get. Dizzying. It’s kind of depressing, that this happened as a result of me talking about terrible things happening, but I guess in these times, everybody is paying closer attention to terrible things.

I think that perhaps we’re really trying to figure out how to handle it all. It’s not easy, living in these times, and I suppose it’s human nature for people to ponder imponderables. That’s not a bad thing. In fact, it’s a good thing. Writing about terrible things isn’t the most pleasant activity, but if we can come away with some lessons learned, then we may be able to turn negatives into positives.

One can only hope.

I talked to my friend today about their nephew. People think it was a drive-by shooting. Stupid, stupid, stupid. What’s the point?! What does it give us — anyone — to strike out against others from a safe distance?! From the safety of a passing car… What is the point?

I can think of a number of reasons someone would want to do such a thing. I can think of a whole lot. In a small way and on a very limited scale, it certainly has allure. But on a grander scale, within a community context, it has on meaning at all, and it only serves to destroy what little connection we have with our world.

And I think about how this relates to TBI. And PTSD. I can’t help but think about it. I wonder if the people involved were cognitively impaired, in some way. If they were socially impaired. If they had been injured so often and so badly by a wrecked family system and a wrecked culture, that there was no way they could get through it in one piece. If they were so brutalized by the inequities of this culture we tend to adore, that there was no hope left for anything but violence. Shooting. Cowardice from a moving car.

Certainly, whoever did this was alienated from their community, else they wouldn’t have done this. People are by their nature self-preserving. They do most things because they get something out of it. My logic is getting all tangled around, I’m sure, because I’m so pissed off about this shooting — about all the shootings that have been going on. But it seems to me that people who feel they have a place in the world, who have a future ahead of them, who can clearly see how they are interconnected with one another, and who have positive, mutually beneficial relationships with others they care about, are not going to run around shooting other people from moving cars.

But, you may say, people are responsible for their life choices. They have to make wise decisions and act on them, and if they choose the lesser, then they should be caught and punished… possibly put away for a very long time. I’m not saying that isn’t true. I agree with it. Personal choice is critical in all this, and I do believe in finding, catching, and punishing wrong-doers. I hope whoever killed my friend’s nephew is found, tried, and sent away for good.

But if someone is so f’ed up by a long, long history of abuse and neglect, and thanks to many beatings and falls and fistfights, their brains have been altered in ways they’re unaware, so that they’re doing things and making choices whose reason escapes them, and their skills and abilities are eroded by lifetimes of neglect and misunderstanding and seemingly random punishment, what chance do they have of acquiring the ability, even skill, of assessing their behavior and their situation and figuring out how to set right what’s been wrong for so long?

I do think, based on my own experience, that head injury probably plays a much larger role in our society’s ills than we care to admit. Certainly trauma and post-traumatic stress does. We should probably look closer at it as a nation. I suspect we’ll have ample opportunities to do so, as our veterans return from Iraq and Afghanistan, many of them with TBI and PTSD — and not all of them diagnosed and treated or supported in any way. I fear we are headed for social melt-down, even as our economic situation worsens waaaay past where we thought it would bottom out.

This is not to say that I think everyone who’s been hit on the head or suffers from PTSD gets a “pass” when it comes to bad — even evil — behavior. Some sh*t is precisely that — pure evil. The thing is, with brain injury, you don’t always know how evil your behavior is. It’s when you start to approach your injuries and deficits and learn to understand it and you get your broken head around the ideas of what’s right and what’s wrong and what you should and should not do, that you have the chance to examine your choices, become conscious about them, and become capable of taking responsibility for what you’ve done.

But until you can look at your injury and the after-effects, and come to terms with the person you’ve become as a result, you can’t really even start to approach the level of self-examination that’s so important, even vital, to responsible behavior.

My friend’s nephew is dead. It is a goddamned tragedy. Hearts have been broken, and some of them will never heal. This happens every day, all over this country… all over the world. And every time it happens, it is a tragedy. There’s no two ways around the awfulness of it all. But the worst thing of all is, this sh*t keeps happening, and we don’t seem to learn. We can’t seem to figure out how to stem the tide of this wretched self-destructiveness, and we can’t seem to figure out how to make our streets safe. Not just the nice streets in the nice neighborhoods, but all streets. In all neighborhoods.

I’m just one person looking on from something of a distance, but I am holding onto some hope. Maybe it’s easier for me to do it, because I’m not in the middle of my friend’s family’s pain. I’ve been in similar pain… and if nothing else, I cannot lose hold of hope.

I can only pray that maybe someday we’ll figure out ways to approach our social limitations with common sense and compassion, find the courage to reach out to ask for (and offer) much-needed help, and force ourselves to look at social ills not just as opportunities to capture and punish the anti-social dispossessed, but as gateways to greater understanding… Gateways that not only make it possible for us to understand, and sometimes forgive, but which force us to face up to the terrible things we have done… and change our ways.

Maybe I’m being overly optimistic. I’m sure on some level I am. But after all I’ve been through and survived, after having come through so much wretched difficulty in my own life, after having won so much and achieved so much despite my limitations, I’m convinced, there are such things as miracles.

More senseless gun violence

A good friend of mine lost their nephew last week. I don’t know all the details, but I do know he was shot. Apparently at a bar. I’m not sure they know who did it, but even if they did, it won’t bring him back. It all seems so random. I didn’t know the man, and I don’t know if he was in some kind of trouble, himself, but even if he was, being shot over something — anything — hardly seems like it can be justified. By anyone. For any reason. I know there are folks out there who  believe in payback and are hardened to the effects that the most extreme forms of payback have on the “debtors”…  but I’m not one of them.

For every person who “gets what they deserved” — if they “deserved” it at all, which is usually doubtful — there are family members, friends, loved-ones, who are crushed by that aspect of the world we live in. It’s not just about “paying back” the person who did wrong — it’s about devastating the lives and hearts and futures of everyone who was connected with the person who was taken out.

Gun violence seems to be on the rise, given news reports. And it’s happening worldwide. There have been several recent incidents in Germany of people taking out numerous others — a young man killed 15 people on a shooting rampage in southern Germany this past March, a man killed his wife and child around that same time, and just recently, a court shooting in Bavaria left two people dead.

In the States, we’ve seen shootings, too.  In Alabama this past March, a man went on a shooting spree that left ten people dead, many of them children. And just recently, 13 people were shot dead in New York, and a nurse and seven elderly people at a nursing home in North Carolina were gunned down. It’s everywhere. And it happens all year round. Last year during the holidays, shoppers in an L.A. toy store had to duck for cover as a fistfight between two women turned into a pitched gun battle between their men.

Everywhere I look, these days, there seems to be gun violence. Explosive destruction on a small scale that ripples out with baffling waves of shock.

The philosopher in me wants to find some deeper meaning to this. The engineer in me wants to find the root causes and figure out a solution. The mystic in me wants to lift my eyes unto the hills and focus on Eternity. The citizen in me wants to run and hide. The social reformer in me wants both stronger firearms controls, limits on what kinds of weapons are commonly available, mandatory licensing for anyone who buys ammunition, and mandatory training in gun use for all individuals, starting at age seven (or when they’re old enough to fire a gun without getting knocked over, whichever comes first). The friend in me wants to just sit with my friend in total silence for hours on end, just being quiet, just being there for them and whatever they need.

The TBI suvivor in me is glad I don’t have a gun. I have specifically chosen not to own a firearm, not to use firearms, not to go down to the firing range to blow off steam, not to go out hunting with my dad and brother and uncles. Now, I was raised in a family of hunters, and I was taught to shoot from when I was about seven or eight years old. My dad took me out to the stubble-covered cornfields with his brothers, ’round about the time when hunting season was about to start, and we all practiced our aim on tin cans. I learned to shoot shotguns, 30-aught-sixes, and 22’s.

I went out hunting with my dad a few times, too. Deer hunting, when we went out to a cabin in the woods, got up before dawn, and I sat up in a tree stand, while he circled around to drive the deer my way. We went rabbit hunting, too. But I had a hard time seeing the rabbit, and he had to kill it for me.

Now, ever since I was a little kid, I looked forward to being one of the family hunters. One of the providers for my tribe. One of the ones who went out and did what needed to be done, to make sure my kin were fed. But I had trouble seeing, I had trouble hearing, I had trouble with my coordination. And as hard as I tried, as much as I wanted it, the whole hunting thing never “took” with me.

It wasn’t for lack of trying. I learned to track, I learned to clean a gun. I learned to shoot. I learned proper handling of rifles and shotguns. I learned how to carry a gun while I was walking around other people. And I did it all enthusiatically, from a very young age. Even  before I was able to carry and fire a real gun, I was pretending to do that, dressing up in my dad’s orange hunting vest, making sure the hunting license was clearly visible on the back.

But I think my better angels have protected me from handling guns — even in legitimate sport. I have issues with motor coordination. I have trouble with my sight and hearing at times. I also have trouble with figuring out exactly what is going on, sometimes. And I have — when I’m fatigued and/or stressed — a tendency to “go off” on raging temper flares which I manage with varying degrees of success.

Quite frankly, I make a terrible candidate for gun ownership. And even if every citizen in the United States were allowed to “pack heat”, as I’ve heard it recommended (so that we can all protect ourselves in the moment from a crazy shooter on a rampage), I doubt very much that  I would do it. I would rather duck and run for cover, than take my chances with a gun. I would be far less safe with one, than without one — as would everyone around me. I know my limits. Handling firearms is strictly out of bounds for me.

As is being around other people who carry firearms on a regular basis. When I was younger, I ran with a kind of rough crowd. And some of them carried weapons of numerous types. I’m not sure if there were guns in the midst of us, but I wouldn’t be surprised. There were drug dealers and career criminals in my immediate social circle. At the time I was running around with those hell-raisers (and worse), I was often intoxicated, and when I wasn’t intoxicated, I was definitely impaired from the aftermath of some chemical ingestion. Plus, I had a lot of unresolved TBI injuries to deal with. It wasn’t good.

Frankly, I count my blessings, these days, as I look around me and I see everything going so terribly wrong in so many ways. In my youth, I easily could have ended up like my friend’s nephew — dead after an inexplicable shooting. I could very well have had my life cut short, with my family wondering what went wrong… how they might have helped… and devastated by that inexplicable loss. Any of us could end up in that situation, really. These days, with the violence being so extreme and seemingly so random, it’s hard to know exactly how long any of us is going to make it.

But for now, for today, in this moment, I am alive. I am living, breathing, going to work on the train, and counting my incredible blessings. The world is going to sh*t in so many ways, and yet I’m still here. I’m still standing. I’m still going on with my life, to the best of my  God-given ability.

In the face of all that’s wrong, all that’s unfair, all that’s tragic and terrible and just friggin’ awful, perhaps the most exciting thing I can be is normal, boring, regular, and blessed with a delightfully uneventful life.

God bless, everyone. Stay safe.

One Potato, Two Potato… A Tale of a Temper Flare

It was such a small thing. It was no big deal. So, I dropped the potato on the floor. So it slipped out of my hand and got away from me. I didn’t really need to flip out and slam the potato peelings into the trash can and curse a blue streak. I didn’t need to startle my partner and frighten them with the intensity of my reaction.

But from the way I lashed out after I dropped the potato, you’d think it was a huge deal. My temper flare was totally out of proportion to what happened, and I was totally unable to stop it. And that’s what drives me crazy.

Once again, I have overreacted extremely to a seemingly minor annoyance, turning a proverbial molehill into a mountain — no, a volcano. My partner is steering clear of me for a while, till I simmer down. My blood is pounding in my ears, I’m sweating like I’ve just run a hundred yard dash, and my head is spinning with the sudden crash of waves of unexpected emotion on my once-staid interior. Dinner might turn out okay, but the evening is pretty much ruined.

And I am humiliated.

It started out so simply. I had a long day at work, and I was looking forward to just chilling out, making my signature dish for supper — meatloaf with mashed potatoes and green peas. I don’t have the biggest cooking repertoire, and my partner usually does the cooking, but for some reason I make a killer meatloaf. After the long day I’ve had — no, a long week — tonight I need some serious comfort food.

I had intended to take off early and get home at a decent hour, but I got tied up at work with some last-minute things I needed to take care of. Running later than expected, I called my partner to say I was running behind, then did some shopping on my way. I picked up the 93% lean ground beef, egs and milk, and some extra celery, then waded through late-rush-hour traffic, and finally got home. Not bothering to change out of my work clothes, I rolled up my sleeves, chopped and mixed and patted together a pink loaf of beefy joy that would soon enough brown to perfection. I was running behind where I had hoped I’d be, but in another hour and a half, all would be well.

While the meatloaf was cooking, I turned my attention to the potatoes, and I suddenly remembered I’d intended to pick up some fresh spuds at the grocery store. A sudden flare of irritation rose in me, but as I picked through the potatoes we did have on hand, I found enough that were still in good enough shape to eat. As I rinsed them under cold water and shaved off their skins, I was having trouble hanging onto them. I could tell I was pretty tired from the day. The oblong shapes were slippery in my hands and I had to really concentrate at keeping hold of them, when I didn’t have rough potato skin to grip for traction. The peeling knife was slippery in my hands, too, and I struggled a bit with carving out the eyes and removing skin from tight crevices and wrinkles in the flesh.

As I turned away from the sink with one of the skinless tubers in my hand, suddenly it jumped from my grip. I tried to catch it as I felt it slide from between my fingers, but it escaped and landed with a thud on the linoleum and skittered away from me, as though it had a will of its own.

In an instant, my whole system was flooded with a sudden cascade of intense emotion. I could feel the blood rise in me, an adrenaline cocktail of volatile biochemicals boiling up at a moment’s notice, and I saw red for a split second. I felt something vicious in me coil and uncork like a thunderclap, and all I wanted to do was stab that fucking potato with the peeler I was wielding. In my mind’s eye, I saw myself stab it viciously, without hesitation or remorse, till it lay in shredded fragments before me.

“FUCK!” I fumed. “GODDAMN IT TO FUCKING HELL. MOTHERFUCKING PIECE OF SHIT! FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU!” I cursed the tuber. The unnamed thing that had coiled and unsprung inside me started to thrash, like a wild animal caged and prodded with an electrical probe. My gut churned with fierce lust for vengeance, and my head suddenly cleared of everything but a cold, cold drive to annihilate. Reaching for the nearest thing, I snatched up a handful of potato peelings from the sink and slammed them into the nearby trash can. Some of the peels slipped from between my fingers, and I pounced on them like a ravenous predator. I dropped to my knees — work clothes and all — and with tightly closed fist, I pounded them on the floor, as the inside of my head roared with rage. “STAY THERE, YOU GODDAMNED COCKSUCKING PIECE OF SHIT,” I hissed at the inert piece of vegetable peel. “DON’T FUCKING MOVE.”

The potato peel obliged me and lay still on the floor in front of me. The inside of my head howled with frustration and rage, and I snatched up the offending object and threw it violently in the trash atop the rest of the peelings. My breath was heavy and ragged, and my torso was tracked with rivulets of sweat that descended from my chest and armpits to my belt. The whole kitchen seemed to shift and sway before me, and the overhead light became unbearably bright.

Behind me, I heard a sound, and my partner appeared in the doorway.

“Are you alright?” they asked, as I picked myself up off the floor and crossed the room to pick up the potato that had slipped from my grasp.

“I’m fine,” I muttered, as I snatched up the maverick spud and turned back to the sink to rinse it off. The rage that had torn through me just moments before suddenly receded with the presence of another person in the room. The part of me that knew that losing my grip on this slippery vegetable didn’t warrant the firestorm I’d unleashed perked up and pulled me back from the brimstone brink of my outrage.

I felt my partner’s eyes on me, but I couldn’t make eye contact. Their gaze followed me back to the sink, with an all-too-familiar sense of apprehension and defensiveness. This was not the first time I’d blown up after a long day at work, and I was pretty sure it wasn’t going to be the last. I could feel the recrimination in their eyes — What are you getting so upset about? Why did you freak out over just dropping the potato? What’s wrong with you? Why are you so … violent? I knew all the questions, but I didn’t know the answer. All I knew was, I had been overcome by a wave of emotional overreaction that — once again — had blindsided me and reduced me to a big baby — pitching a fit over some stupid little thing and making me look like a raving maniac. For nothing.

As I ran water over the potato and I nearly lost my grip again, another smaller wave of anger welled up in me, but I held it back. I could feel my partner’s eyes still on me, watching to make sure I wasn’t going to get out of hand and break something. I’ve broken things in the past, slammed things, thrown things – the cracked dustpan that we keep in plain view in the kitchen is a constant reminder of how intensely my temper can flare, and how violently I can become as a result.They needed to make sure I wasn’t going to wreck anything in the kitchen.

Again.

I willed myself to act as though I were once more calm, and as I systematically went through the motions of cutting the last remaining potato into quarters, my partner’s wary curiosity was satisfied, and they disappeared again into the living room. Quiet… they were quiet in that way they get when they’re afraid of me and unsure about how the rest of the evening is going to go. I was quiet, too, willing my system to chill and not radiate the white heat of unprovoked rage that my partner can instinctively sense.

But though I seemed fine on the outside, inside part of me was still writhing. Still smarting. The crash of the rage felt like it had cracked something in me… as though a heavy anvil had fallen onto my foot, cracking and breaking bones… bones I needed so I could walk the rest of the way through my day. Something in me felt bruised and battered, but the hurt had come from inside my system, not outside me. And I had been defenseless against it. If the attack had come from someone or something beyond my own skin, I might have been able to defend myself. But this attack came from the inside, and it hurt as much as if I’d been jumped in an alley and beaten by thugs.

Yes, this attack had come from inside. From the depths of my being, the core of my character. At least that’s how it felt. I felt damaged and inept. Useless and beyond help. My insides felt sick and worried. All this drama over a little potato… All this rage over some stupid couple of minutes of me losing my grip… in more ways than one. “What’s wrong with me?” I wondered “Why can’t I deal with something that simple? My partner doesn’t seem to have this problem. Why do I?”

Keeping quiet, keeping to myself, I adjusted the setting of the burner beneath the boiling potatoes and headed upstairs to change my clothes. The best I could hope for, was that my meatloaf would redeem me, and that the food I was preparing would be more comfort for the one I loved, than my own self was, that night.