This is not what I intended to post about today. I had this light post about food all ready to go, but I’m putting it off until next week. Because I’m angry and I need to put it out there; get it out of my head.

It started sometime in the middle of sleep last night. I woke up somewhere around 3am realizing that the dream I’d been having had somehow morphed into an argument. It was starting to get heated and I think waking up was my body’s way of asking me if I really wanted to go there. I kinda didn’t, but I also didn’t want to get out of bed, so I stayed there in my warm cocoon, eventually falling back asleep.

It was a restless sleep, though. The kind where you’re dreaming, but you’re also kind of directing your actions. I directed myself right back into that argument. I won’t tell you who I was arguing with except to say it wasn’t Sparky. I sometimes have dreams where Sparky does something that makes me so mad that I’m still mad at him when I wake up, so I want him to know it wasn’t one of those.

Arguing is not my style. I’m more an appeaser.

At first, in the dream, I was arguing back. But then I started to lose the argument because the other person kept going off on tangents and I followed right along, as I do in real life, so that my righteous anger gets siphoned off to a topic that is more comfortable for the other person. I go along because I’m uncomfortable arguing. Because oral argument is not my strong suit. Because it takes time to translate what I hear to my brain. I don’t know if I have auditory processing disorder or if it’s more a sensory thing where I have trouble focusing on speech when there are other noises in the environment. Or rushing in my ears. Regardless of the reason, it gets so much worse when I’m upset.

Then there’s the fact that I spend at least some of the time the other person is talking trying to come up with a retort or an answer to a question asked. I’m still listening, but the processing of what the person says slows even further. I have a lot of information in my brain, my therapist calls me Research Maven, I just don’t always have easy access to it. I think my brain needs a better filing system. And a faster stenographer.

It’s easy for the other person to lead me to a topic where the ground is rockier for me and my head starts to get cloudy, which makes me doubt my stance on both topics. And suddenly I’m treading water (figuratively, even in the dream) and I’m so confused that I can’t remember why I was arguing in the first place and all I want to do is get out and somehow clear the fog from my head.

That’s the point where I woke up this morning. I told Sparky I’d been arguing in my dream. He said it must have been a doozy because I was talking in my sleep, though he couldn’t understand me. I think I must have been working through something in my subconscious, but damned if I know what it was. The argument was pretty true to life for me, though it was much angrier than I generally allow myself to show. I’m uncomfortable with anger. I somehow think I don’t have a right to feel it. I make excuses for the person I’m angry about so that I don’t have to feel it. So that I don’t have to be wrong in feeling it. I take care of them, even when they’re pissing me the hell off.

So I’ve been angry all day. And tired because the sleep I did get last night was not restful by any stretch. So all I want to do right now is curl up in a ball and sleep. But I can’t do that because I have little kids who need things like snacks and diaper changes and dinner. And my oldest has his constant stream of questions and statements and requests and complaints and right now it’s all I can do not to just tell him to shut up. But I won’t do that because it’s not his fault I’m short on temper today.

And then WordPress ate three paragraphs of this post. I managed to rewrite most of it, but can’t shake the feeling that WordPress kept the really good part.