The anxiety, the cannot-be-still but afraid-to-move rolling and turning and spiking right below my rib cage. It began Saturday afternoon and continued throughout Sunday, and woke with me this morning.
Sunday morning, his repair work woke me before 8AM. He spoke only perfunctually throughout the day, making sure to save his conversation and seeming light-hearted laughter for the boys.
Sunday night, 15 minutes after crawling into bed, he came into the darkened room and attempted to engage me in conversation (a.k.a. accusatory, blaming rant) as I attempted to consciously soothe the anxiety monster in my chest.
He begins by asking if there’s a cat in the room. I tell him I don’t think so; I didn’t feel one jump up on the bed. The nature of what he really wanted to know surfaces: “How do you expect me to sleep in here with cat hair in the bed?” I reply, “You aren’t sleeping in here and you haven’t given an indication that you were going to sleep in here tonight. When you decide you’re ready to sleep in the bed, then we’ll close the door and remove the cats.”
“You should be more forward thinking,” he says.
I say, “It’s not nice to generalize me as not being forward thinking. I am going to sleep now. You haven’t wanted to talk to me all day, and I’m not going to talk to you now.”
He muttered something and walked out.
I’m almost calm after another 20 minutes. Drifting softly into sleep. He throws the door open and rifles loudly through a drawer looking for something he didn’t find (or perhaps wasn’t ever there?).
He seems to be attempting to control what is said and when it is said. Historically, he has sought to disturb my sleep patterns when he is in a fit, and this is no different.
When he came into the room, loudly rifling through his drawer and slamming it shut reinforcing the noise with a loud curse word, I feigned sleep. I gave him no attention, not even a rebuke. However, the disruption did cause the anxiety to increase. It is difficult to go to sleep when I know someone may (or may not) seek to disturb me.
This is, of course, vastly different from the previous 10 months of peace.