Battle Of The Wits

A battle of the wits has been going on in my house between Angela and us. None of us are budging our thoughts about what we should or shouldn’t do. Who is going to win in this obnoxious game of chess?

Back Story of the Battle

To begin with, the answer is YES. Angela is on her period. The last few months have been somewhat tolerable, but this month she has unleashed her beast.

Monday:

She had a pretty fabulous day. She already started her period, so we thought we were all doing pretty good with how she was behaving and not letting anything get in her way of staying fabulous! Our roommate, Ellie, took out for a special treat and to spend time with her for a couple of hours.

Angela was on top of the world, especially when she got to spend some “Granny” time with Ellie (Which is what we call her lol, Granny!). Anyway, Her mood was WAY up.

She ate her Popeye’s special lunch that Granny bought her, and she got full and couldn’t eat it all, so she decided to save it and eat it later. Okie Dokie. No Problemo!

We all get to that moment of where we are just stuffed, and want to save our food to finish eating later. In fact, she didn’t eat dinner because it was a late lunch. When she was ready for the rest of her food, she came down from her bedroom and happily ate it.

We’re all sitting down and having a blast just talking everyone’s heads off. Angela got quite. We taught her, and everyone else, to not be rude and interrupt people while they’re talking. Let them finish their little conversation, and then you can enter in your input or start off on a totally different random subject — which is something that is renown for! Random topics out of the clear blue.

“Some babies come out your butt hole!”

Her random out of the clear blue conversational topics is how we learned that, “Some babies come out your butt hole, and others come out of your vagina.” That’s a totally different topic for another day! lol.

One of my nephews and Granny were talking, and you can see Angela getting a little Antsy. Her fingers started twitching and getting restless. I immediately thought to myself, “Oh no.”

My nephew said the word “gun” in a sentence, and Angela lost her cool and started screaming.

“I don’t like that word. I don’t like guns. My brother had a gun shove down his diaper from our dad! You can’t say again!!”

We were like, Whoa. Take a breath little missy. Relax.

We had to spend the time to explain the topic of the word, and that it was actually a conversation happening between those two and not her.

The word “gun” was just a trigger word for her to butt in and be dramatic. Do I take lightly that she doesn’t like the word gun and why? Did a gun get shoved in my diaper? No. A bag of drugs did, and my dad was firing a gun a cop out of the window that was chasing us. The facts were there, but they were confused. Yes…we had an amazing upbringing from a fabulous father. *Sarcasm for those that couldn’t tell.*

The real underlying issue and fact of the matter?

Angela wasn’t getting the attention that she wanted…when she wanted it.

Then her bipolar kicked into high gear. She didn’t stop screaming and yelling.

I was not in the mood to have to deal with this behavior. Though, is anyone EVER ready to have to deal with an emotional melt down from someone? No. But you have to be on your game and ready to go.

By being on your game = start putting your emotional side out of the whole realm, which is not an easy thing to have to do.

So, she starts her yelling and screaming all the way up the stairs and into her room, where we follow her in hot pursuit. We allow her to “say what she wants to say” (for the most part) in her room with the door closed, so she can get it out of her system.

Angela wasn’t stopping for anything in the world. No matter how long we tried to have a calm discussion about things, it just kept escalating. So we started yelling, too. We were yelling over her voice to try to help snap her out of the yelling part of her tantrum, which usually works because it helps bring back down to earth on focus on us. It’s like placing a big stop sign right in her path, and she can’t go passed it.

She says very vulgar things. She can’t help herself from saying the things she says.

She doesn’t have an off button.

She doesn’t have a filter on her mouth.

It’s hard to listen to her degrading you and calling you simply the most horrific names that you can think of. Emotions run high after a few hours of listening to the pure crap coming out her mouth.

She finally got calmed down a little bit to where we couldn’t hear too much, so we all went to bed a little bit later than expected, and woke up late. Ugh. I hate it when that happens. However, it’s so much better than having to stay up for 2-3 days at time to keep in her check. Yes. We’ve lost a lot of sleep over having these meltdowns. She won’t sleep, no matter what. She doesn’t know how to turn her brain off, and she fights any type of medicine.

Tuesday:

The day starts off okay, and a little shaky…but it is what it is. Angela seemed to have shaken off her little bit of crud, but you could tell that she was still built up…and she was.

We were able to feed her breakfast and lunch, but that was it.

She was up in her room, and it was way past due for her to take a shower. Two days past due.

ME: “Angela. Why don’t you go ahead and take a shower, so that way you’re done before dinner.

ANGELA: “Well, the boys have to shower, too!” She yelled at me.

I explained to her that it’s fine, and that there will be plenty of hot water for them after dinner. Angela likes to take hour long, super hot showers, and drains the hot water dry.

I tried for 20 minutes to get her into the shower, and she just started in again…with foul language usage.

She was telling us how we are always forcing her to do S***, and she’ll do it when she’s ready to. She was telling us that are always forcing her to do stuff. Come and eat. Go and take a shower.

She was ready to fight…and she did.

She has been saving up this melt down for a while. It was a nice doozy of one.

Luckily, she didn’t start trying to kick, hit, or bite us.

The meltdown was just happening at the most inopportune moment…bed time for everyone. Stephen and Granny get up super early for work (2:30am), and go to bed early.

So she kept a whole house up…groggily…not enough coffee to wake up with for the next day to cope with the onset of the day.

She truly says the single most hateful things out of her mouth. You KNOW that she can’t stop herself from saying the things she does, but it doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to be effected by it all.

We all came to a screaming agreement: We won’t force you to do anything any more. We won’t call you to take a shower any more. We won’t call you to eat any more when food is ready. It’ll just be waiting on the table for you, and you can come and eat if you want it.

We also took her Kindle that we bought her, and put some of her things in the closet and locked it. This was her punishment. If she was bored, could still watch her portable DVD player.

With the exception of using the bathroom, she did NOT come out of her room to eat dinner.

Wednesday:

Another day, and sign of Angela.

I went upstairs to let her that breakfast was ready. Stephen and I were ready to start the day anew. It’s something that we have always done. No matter what happened yesterday, today is a new day.

She started in yelling at me about what is Stephen going to say about her stinking and smelling so bad. I was like please…just be quiet about that stuff, and just come eat breakfast.

That wasn’t good enough for her, so she just started in again.

Yelling. Screaming. Saying things that didn’t make sense to talk about.

She didn’t come out of her room all day to eat at all. So, that’s a total of 4 meals she has missed, which isn’t like Angela at all. She eats 4 meals a day, and stays so damn skinny. I hate her for that, but that’s a complete side note.

She was trying to prove a point, and so were we. We weren’t going to force her to come eat…but food was ready for her. Drinks were ready for her.

She stayed in her room and mumbled her horrible filthy words that would make a sailor blush.

At the end of the night, while we were getting ready for bed, she starting yawning obnoxiously loud. When she does that, it’s her sign that she wants her nightly melatonin and to see if she can test the waters of how life can be.

I didn’t give her the melatonin. I went to bed. The melatonin was not going to help her at all. Nothing was going to work. Just giving her space and allowing her to vent her stuff out verbally, and us occasionally giving our stern voice to lower her voice.

Thursday – Today:

She woke me up at 5 in the morning with her loud talking. Granny had enough told her shut her trap while she was on her way out the door. I giggled a little bit, but it’s so overwhelming that you have to find something to laugh about or you’ll just cry out of exhaustion.

So I marched into her room and told her to go back to bed.

She screamed for her melatonin and it was my fault that she was awake.

I gave her a small growl of how it’s not my fault she’s not asleep.

She passed out an hour later and slept in.

She didn’t come down for breakfast…again. So we are now at 5 meals, and I’m almost caving in. She has to eat, but we did tell her that there would be food there and we did remind her.

I went off to go meet Stephen somewhere, and she had just jumped into the shower. To me, that’s my signal from her that she’s going to try to make life right today. I came back 2 1/2 hours later, and she came down 45 minutes later…ready to eat.

I didn’t make it anything spectacular. It was cinnamon and apple oatmeal…it’s what was her breakfast. I heated it up and and added extra milk to it to make it creamier.

She came down talkative and playing with the dogs.

She was showing us that she was better, and sorry.

She ate her food…hungrily…didn’t complain about what it was. Ate every last drop, and got a fresh glass of ice cold water.

She came over and hugged me, and signifying that she was sorry.

We are still hurt and tired. However, we have to be flexible and “give in” to life, but not completely. We have to make sure that we express to her about how the words she said hurt us, and she didn’t have to fight with us over taking a shower or coming down to eat breakfast.

It’s not the shower that triggered her meltdown. It’s not breakfast that triggered her meltdown.

A gnat could have farted on the other side of the world, and it would have been that one thing that set her off into crazy land.

So here we are….licking our emotional wounds of a tumultuous 48ish hours debacle.

Tomorrow, life might be a little normal.

However, we are still not sure if we want to give her the Kindle back tonight or tomorrow.

The jury is still out.

It’s time for emotional healing first.

What do you think? Should We give her the Kindle back tonight? Tomorrow? Hold out longer? We’ll see what happens. She’s going to start asking for everything tomorrow.

That much is a guarantee.

This battle was a draw. A stale mate. No one really won.