‘Let it go’ and ‘relax’ are words I hear often. My brothers tell me to tuck my crazy back in, and those who are friends who have seen me go from zero to ten call me ‘Dexter’ because, well… it’s self explanatory. For those of you that have never watched ‘Dexter’ then this will all be lost on you. Give up now.
I have a physical response that varies in degrees when I get angry. The only problem is, the things that make me angry – are often avoidable (in hind sight, which is useless really), and it all happens so fast that there is little chance of me salvaging any semblance of a normal reaction.
The physical responses are always in the same order. I overheat, and my ears start to hum. Your mouth is moving but all I hear is a buzz that I know wont go away until I smack your mouth. My pupils dilate, and my vision becomes tunnel like. At that point, I am usually able to ‘feel better’ by verbally maiming whoever has made me feel that way – but sometimes… when the confrontation lasts too long or I am in a situation where breaking someones face is not an option – I feel like it collects in my neck and back, and if angry enough for long enough, I will have a seizure, or a series of small ones.
I had a seizure yesterday, and my poor boyfriend James knows I have them, but he has never witnessed one. They have only happened twice in the 14 months that we have been dating. The thing about temporal lobe epilepsy, is that the emotion signals that fire back and forth in our brains are usually much more vivid and intense than for someone who’s brain works properly. This is why when I get angry – there really is not much chance of talking me out of it, or of me pretending im not. Its a physical thing.
The reason for the last seizure, was because I spent a day in a busy mall surrounded by people. I don’t like people at the best of times, and so being in a mall is like torture, but it was necessary. I had a yelling match in the first store we went into with the woman behind the counter, and she ended up phone head office and I regurgitated my issues over the phone, and hung up eventually because if there is one thing that I can not abide, it is when someone in a position of power of any kind – repeats the same stupid answer like a stuck record, and there is no actual logical or reasonable conversation.
The next store… had a sale. That word alone means that every clammy handed in bred moron will be standing wading through all the items that they can, hoping to find something that fits. But what it also means is that people who are not thin, will hope with all their gold trim loving hearts that something in the petite section will magically fit them. Now, before anyone who is not thin has a go at me – I am NOT THIN. So… when one fat woman, who has an awareness of other people and the space around us, looks at another fat woman who is swooning over sequins on something that wouldn’t fit over her head… it makes me want to smack them upside the head and tell them to move it along. You can stare at it all you want… its not going to suddenly become the size you want it to be. And also… fat people shouldn’t wear shiny things.
So… I am picking out clothes in Nazi dictatorship fashion and sending James off to try them on. He has a fashion shoot coming up and if he had his way he would go with one outfit – and hope the photographer didn’t notice. He had been told to have 6 outfits and not to be boring. But having me as a girlfriend is deadly when arguing about the colour of a shirt is involved and all I want to do is get out of the store. So to make light of it all, he started to portend that he couldn’t hear me – in hopes of making me laugh.
I didn’t laugh. I was still reeling from the idiocy of the woman in the previous store. And I had not been allowed to punch her… so it was in James’ best interests that this all happened MUCH faster than it was.
To cut a long story short, we ended up in 5 different stores, and James was having a ball and I was growing increasingly belligerent.
So later, when when we made it home, I phone the head office of the same store that had pissed me off earlier and I have a go. I received the same broken record response and all I can say is that hanging up on someone with an actual slammable telephone is MUCH more satisfying than pushing a button on a touch screen cell phone.
… An hour later I was standing in the kitchen making coffee, and I could feel it coming. Knowing that James hasn’t seen it before I just said: Seizure. Leave me be. And ran to the bedroom and curled up on the bed. He knew enough not to touch me, having been told by friends that as soon as I regain control of my limbs I would likely kick the nearest person in the face. I don’t know why – but I am insanely aggressive for a few minutes afterwards… and then when its all subsided, I am right as rain.
So although he didn’t touch me, when it was done, I focused on what was around me and there was James, sat on the very edge of the bed holding a cup of water and some pills. I felt bad for him but turned my face to let the anger pass.
Mocking Bird Down 