Day 71

A really hard one.

All the family drama from last week came back for another round and then Middle ran over a curb and blew out a tire. He didn't take it at all well. Neither did ABL as the plan had been to take him for frozen yogurt as the sports center was closed yesterday so we couldn't bowl...but I wasn't about to drive 25 miles each way (toldja we lived in the middle of no-damned-where) on one of those compact spares for ice cream. Yeah, well, safe choice but a freaking complicated one because autism just doesn't DO well with last-minute-change-of-plans.

It was a crappy day in the neighborhood.  Before noon I was already mentally screaming "THIS! This right here is EXACTLY why I drank so fucking much!  All this fucking craziness and shit beyond my control!"  The weird thing is that instead of going straight to "and dammit that's why I want a drink!" I went to "but I don't DO that any more so now I'm stuck FEELING all these goddamned miserable FEELINGS and it's not fair and it fucking SUCKS is what!'

I snorted and stomped around with that one for a good hour or so while simultaneously making sure Middle got home okay and playing endless rounds of The Calendar Game (going ritualistically over the upcoming events, including rescheduled frozen yogurt, on the wall calendar with ABL.)  Once again I let myself get far too hungry and far too angry and one of the pieces of the family drama is that Spouse isn't coming back home tomorrow after all so throw in some lonely while you're at it...and didn't realize ANY of the above till Spouse said in one of the seemingly endless phone calls "why don't you go eat something?"

A big ol' grilled cheese sandwich helped.  Oh it didn't bring me back down to normal, mind you, and I was still all "it's not FAIR I can't have my favorite coping mechanism, dammit!" but it was more a sulk than a howling roar. Got all the shit on my To Do list done which wasn't really that big a deal in and of itself but gave me something to do with the excess energy so that I wasn't just pacing or vibrating or something.

Good thing too because the family drama heated up again later in the day.  Oddly enough the second round just made me fatigued and sad. Well, the kind of sad that goes with frustrated and powerless which might just be anger turned inward, but it was still sad not pissed off. Middle decided to go into town (only 6 miles one way; far better) to get dessert and I ended up crying myself to sleep on the couch while he was out as if I were still a preschooler...but when I woke up after not even quite a whole hour I felt more like I could maybe handle the rest of the night.

Which I've been doing. Now that the day is winding down I'm starting to get back to my emotional baseline although once again Spouse had to cue me to eat--would you believe that I was sitting there thinking "no I'm not going to have one [of the ice cream cone dessert treats that Middle got] because I've already eaten enough today" even though I've told myself and others that I'm not going to deal with the whole food thing just yet?  Boy do old dysfunctional patterns die hard. Even after "oh, go have one already" I was sitting there mentally arguing the point.

Then I realized that was stupid, had one, enjoyed it very much and felt considerably better. Funny how that works.  I know that HALT is a real thing, have seen in myself how taking care of the four elements helps make things easier but I still end up falling into it just the same. I guess the important thing is that despite feeling seriously awful for big chunks of the day I didn't go back to the old coping mechanism of just drowning all my troubles...and maybe next time I'll be able to recognize and treat the hunger and the anger before I get to the meltdown stage. Here's hoping, anyhow.