Pain and Anger: Lashing Out At Our Loved Ones - HAWMC Day 18

Today's prompt is "I take it back".  Write about a time that you lashed out at someone close to you because of frustration/fear/anger resulting from your health condition and you wish you could take it back.  Forgive yourself and let it go.

Well, there have been many times that I have lashed out at my husband and children because of the pain, anger, frustration and sadness I feel as a result of the fibromyalgia, migraine headaches and depression.  I often become very agitated by my situation and because it keeps me limited in the activities that I can actively participate in.  For the purpose of today's post I will focus on the anger and frustration that I feel due to the inability to clean my house or enhance it the way I want and need to.  I am a clean freak and absolutely despise clutter, filth, spills, crumbs, paper, piles of dishes and dust.  Thanks to my mother, I have inherited her type A personality when it comes to cleanliness and organization.  Unfortunately, my body and health has declined so much that washing dishes is painful thanks to my carpal tunnel and folding laundry unleashes a fiery storm across my shoulders and down my back.  So, because of these things, I have had to delegate most of the cleaning responsibility onto my children.  They do not always do their chores and when they do, it sometimes looks as if nothing was cleaned.  It drives me mad!

After spending a day or two confined to my bedroom because I was in too much pain and discomfort to move, I'll venture out into the rest of the house.  And then wham!  I'm confronted with shoes, book bags, coats, dishes piled up in the sink, crumbs on the counters and floor, unmade beds and dirty clothes on the floor.  If I had been really struggling with pain or depression, I tend to just lose it.  I yell at everyone demanding why it is that they can't clean up after themselves or make an effort to keep the house presentable.  Instead of calmly saying that it would make it easier for me if everyone picked up the slack around the house and took care of it, I just go off and basically make everyone feel bad.  It's horrible.  I admit that I fail as a parent when I do this.  It's not healthy and it isn't productive.

The stress of dealing with chronic pain can sometimes leave me hanging on by a severely frayed thread.  All of the pent up frustration of being stuck in bed because of the pain is unleashed when something like an overflowing trash can breaks that tiny thread.  I am really working on not taking it out on the kids (or my husband after he asks me to do something for him when I've been in pain all day) by getting angry.  My delivery needs to change.  I'm not like that all the time but on super stressed-out-to-the-max days, I can fly off the handle pretty quickly.  After all is said and done, I feel really bad and ashamed of my behavior.  I apologize for yelling and ask them in a nicer, more gentler way.  I haven't had an outburst like that in a while and I'm proud of myself for reeling in my temper.  The kids are getting better at keeping up with their chores, although they slip up when I'm not feeling well enough to make sure they do them.  They have schedules posted on the fridge to remind them of who is responsible for what.  It's a process and we're slowly, but surely making progress.

As for myself, I'm learning how to breathe first instead of react.  I haven't mastered it yet but it's been getting easier.  Rectifying my mistakes and making healthier choices are two things that I'm always working on.  I've been able to forgive myself for being out of control at times because I immediately recognized it as such, asked for forgiveness from those I hurt, and modified my behavior to reflect that I learned from my errors.  Now, I am human and I will slip up from time to time, but I have the corrective action on immediate deployment if and when I falter.  The most important thing for me though is that my kids know that I love them, never want to hurt them, and that my anger is coming from a place of pain and frustration that has nothing to do with them and everything to do with what's going on with me.  That's what matters.  Truth, accountability, and forgiveness. ツ