Full Time Care

This evening was a nightmare. I was in town dealing with paperwork for benefits and picking up some shopping or a couple of hours this afternoon, but when I got back my lady was in fine form. OK, so she’d been drinking - she didn’t make the four day cutoff this time, since the anxiety from yesterday had made its mark - but she’d had a great session with her analyst and she was happy.

Unfortunately, I stupidly forgot one of my most important rules when she has her head in a bottle: do NOT try to have a conversation. I tend to reduce my vocal input into our discussions to a minimum, without being mute or rude, of course! This time, though, I was an idiot and opened my mouth.

The reason I keep quiet is because there is always the danger of something I say being taken the wrong way. This happens to us rather more frequently than normal because we also have the vestiges of a language barrier (she’s French and I’m English). Add the drunken habit of focusing absolutely on a single expression and drawing some truly deranged conclusions from it and bingo! Instant argument.

Yes, it happened this evening. I said one thing that she took the wrong way. Admittedly, I chose my words badly (it was a horrible choice of expression) but that just got her going. Five seconds of stupidity and I spend the next four or five hours trying to stay calm and repeatedly reassuring her, while she continues to rant and rave about it. It’s funny how people, in a fragile moment, will instantly accept a bad comment as the truth, but it can take four million times as long to get them to see the opposite viewpoint.

Actually, it’s not funny at all. It’s bloody horrible. I’m just glad she conked out and went to bed, or we’d still be going round and round on the same subject even now. I just hope that it’ll blow over tomorrow, though I suspect it’ll be the subject of discussion for several hours then, too.

Trackback URI | Comments RSS