Snaps and Breaks

We all have our faults and our nasty little character traits that life teaches us are either endearing little quirks or horrible personality flaws. While I am sure I have some cute quirks that have come to endear me to others, I also have one horrible personality flaw.

I have a very bad temper. Correction: I’m normally as mild-mannered as a superhero under the guise of his or her spectacle sporting alter ego. I’m friendly and easy to get along with, and I believe I have a fairly high tolerance for the annoyances that usually piss others off. I’m often the person coaxing another to calm down in whatever aggravating situation. It takes a great deal of pushing, poking and prodding to get me to that explosive point, but when I do get there, things tend to go very wrong, very fast. I think this might be hereditary, since I’ve noticed this rage in my younger brother, mother, and sister on more than one occasion, and I’ve heard stories about some wild shit involving some other relatives. Wherever it came from, it’s been with me since childhood and has caused me my share of problems.

I remember a particular incident when I was around 10. I was on the phone with my best friend and my little brother, Jamal, who was around 7, would not leave me alone. He was just doing typical little brother stuff, talking in my other ear, running in circles around me, changing the channel on the TV program that my friend and I were discussing; things that on any other day would have earned him a slap on the head and a shove out of the room, nothing more. However this time was different.

I have to provide a bit of background here. When my parents were pregnant with me, they bought and moved into a big ol’ Baltimore row-house. Three stories and a live in basement, six bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, and a fenced in backyard. It wasn’t a mansion, but it was pretty damn big. But it wasn’t under-utilized. Living in the house while I was growing up, there was always my mom and dad, my older brother Kojo (Ko), my little brother Jamal, and I, but sometimes other aunts and uncles, sisters and brothers, and even more extended family and friends lived in our not-so-humble home. You would be amazed how quickly so much space could become so very tight.

Anyway, at this time my oldest sister Wanda and her two young sons were living with us while her husband was in the Army and stationed away in Germany. My parents had gone out of town for the weekend and left my sister to baby sit her younger siblings. Now, as I said, my sister had two young sons of her own, so she usually didn’t feel like dealing with my brothers and I too, so she pretty much left us to our own devices for the weekend, and took care of her own offspring. My older brother immediately left to be off with his own pubescent friends and left me with this pest to watch after. By the end of the weekend, with no parental supervision and no one to force this child to leave me the hell alone, Jamal was dancing on my very last nerve! I was homicidal and all I could think was that I couldn’t escape him but I couldn’t kill him but if I didn’t get some help soon someone wasn’t going to make it out alive. My parents had just returned so I thought I would have some relief, so I’d adjourned to my bedroom to watch TV, call my best friend and rant about the weekend’s ordeal.

But my parents just went to their room, closed the door, and the little bugger was right back in my face….

I tried. I swear I tried to hold it in. But he wouldn’t go away no matter how many times I threatened him. So I cut off in the middle of my phone conversation and I proceeded to scream at the top of my lungs “I’M GOING TO KILL YOU!!” I grabbed my little bro in a head lock, wrapped the phone cord around his neck and beat him repeatedly in the head with the handset.

I think the blood curdling screech and the fact that my 10 year old hands couldn’t do much damage, saved his life. My father came charging down the hall and from his angle it must have appeared as if I was defending myself from Jamal’s attack, instead of attacking him, so he grabbed him by the back of the neck and with one mighty hand hoisted my tiny brother and flung him halfway down the hall.

Oh shit, my rage shifted.

“DON’T TOUCH MY BROTHER!!”

The screech again. Phone still in hand, I lunged at my father, arms flailing. Everything went white for one tragically long moment, and I could neither hear nor see. I have no idea what happened in the unknown time that passed, but the next thing I remember, my brother is on his ass at one end of the hallway, I’m on my ass at the other end of the hallway, my father is in the middle with both arms extended, palms out to Jamal and I, and the 3 of us are breathing very fucking hard.

Then a tiny voice screamed “Rashida!” and scared the hell out of me! I looked at my tightly clenched fist and the phone was still there, my best friend was still on the other end squawking that she was going to call 9-1-1.

Unfortunately, the older I got, the more volatile my reactions, when provoked to the point of no return, became. Such reactions resulting in heated conflicts with family members, the loss of numerous friends, the consumption of mass quantities of alcohol, and three encounters with law officials thus far (though my blessed powers of persuasion have managed to ease me out of any actual arrests to date). Now let’s take this temper and throw in the mix some good old fashioned sexual aggression, shall we?

A little less than a dozen years later, I’m finally nearing the long overdue end of my first adult relationship. I’m 22, living with a man less than two years older, and our relationship should have ended before I ever moved in. We had already been together 4 years, long enough for things to go from bliss, to heaven, to normal, to weird, to hard, to hell. He had cheated on me several times that I could prove and his family and friends, not to mention my own, were all telling me that he was the worse thing to ever happen to me. It was so pitiful in fact that in typical old married custom, he and I still lived together but we had separate bedrooms and barely spoke.

By this time, neither of us had the money to live apart and I had become so ashamed of myself in this subservient position that I had lied to most of my closest friends about the true nature of my relationship; I didn’t think I could bear for them to find out how bad it really was. However, the house rule was that he had to come home at some point at night unless he called from a friend’s house to tell me otherwise. These were the days of Caller ID and that at least provided the slight assurance that he was someplace familiar, even though all he really had to do was have said friend call me on 3-Way. I’m not that stupid. I just wanted him to make the effort.

Of course this rule as all the others eventually got broken. Then it repeatedly got broken. So of course I got angry, then I got enraged.

One morning, got up when the alarm went off, grabbed a cigarette, looked in my closet to figure out what I was wearing to work, and went to take a shower. I walked past his open bedroom door and I could see into his empty room, and his made up bed. I just knew that bastard didn’t just pop up all bright eyed and bushy tailed and make up his bed for some reason before I got up, and I also knew he didn’t call last night to say he wasn’t coming home, and we just had a fight about this same damn thing two days ago, and I’m so sick of this shit, I can’t keep doing this if I don’t get out of this house I’m going to kill him, I support this asshole who fucks me and every other piece of ass that will lay down long enough and----

I can’t breath, I’m hot and cold and sweating, I’m tingling all over and my chest is tight, and I’m no longer aware of my surroundings.

I tried. Really, I swear I tried to hold it in.

Mind numbing pain shot up from the tip of my right big toe all the way to my right hip and I might have grunted. I fell back against the wall and slid down the wall to plop on my ass, which sent the shockwave of pain back down my leg.

Apparently I had walked into the dark third bedroom that we used for storage and very forcefully kicked something, which I assumed was the wall. I reached up and flipped the light switch and saw the undeserving victim: a white 5-gallon bucket of what should have been powdered sheet rock. My ex bought it to repair a hole in the bathroom wall, but the genius had mixed the whole bucket some time ago and left it there to harden. It now sat with a crack in the plastic and a chunk of the sheet rock beneath crumbled. Fuck.

I was pretty sure I had done some damage to my foot, but I was also instantly embarrassed at my stupidity. I hopped downstairs and go the ice trays, snatching the phone along the way. I left a message on my office voicemail making some excuse for being late while I dumped the ice into a pot. I iced my foot for as long as I could take, took a handful of ibuprofen and went to work, and by the end of the day my foot had swelled and turned grossly purple. The pain was horrid, I was a secretary and had to wear skirts and heels everyday. I had to ice it again to get my shoe off and I followed this routine for days until one morning I just couldn’t get the swelling to go down enough to get any of my shoes on. I caved and went to the hospital where x-rays told me that I had hairline fractures in my 1st and 2nd toe. They taped my toes together, gave me groovy painkillers and anti-inflammatory pills, and a note to stay home and off my foot for 4 days.

It was more than a year before I told anyone how I really hurt my foot, I think I just told everyone I was moving furniture or something and dropped something heavy on my foot.

You think now I would learn a lesson. I’ve escaped jail time and a criminal record by the skin of my teeth and now I’ve just barely skated by without breaking my foot. Huh, yeah right.

Maybe six years, but what seems like a lifetime later, I’m out of that and one more equally unstable relationship, and smack dab in the middle of another one. This relationship was much more passionate than all the others, and so was every emotion connected to it. We laughed louder, debated deeper, loved hotter, and fought harder than anyone I had ever been with, and I was addicted to every second of it. I truly was in love.

We used to have these heated fights on the phone about all sorts of things and when I thought I had gotten to the point that I was going to say something regrettable that I couldn’t take back, and I could no longer control my mouth, I would just hang up. Ooh, he hated that! He would call back and cuss something terrible, and I would hang up. WOO! He’d call back, I wouldn’t answer, he’d leave some nasty messages on my voicemail, he’d call back again, I’d answer, we’d yell some more and then maybe we’d talk. This happened a bunch of times over the course of a couple of years and then once he said to me that the next time I hung up on him it would be the last time he ever spoke to me again. He thought it was just rude and at least I could say goodbye first before hanging up. He had never said anything that serious before, and I did love him and didn’t want to lose him forever so I decided to make an effort to talk things through, or just say goodbye, instead of hanging up. Sounded fair.

You see, the problem this person and I usually had was that we were both too stubborn and sometimes neither of us felt like giving in, and we both tended to think we were right about everything. Two people like this butt heads a lot. We made up for it with tremendous sex, but that didn’t always work. As usual, a phone conversation had turned into an argument (don’t get me wrong, we also fought via email and in person, we had a lot of….passion), but this time I really didn’t want to fight because a very long fight with the flu had left me with laryngitis and an extremely sore throat. I kept trying to tell him that I didn’t want to fight, I even began to just agree with whatever he was saying just to end the conversation, but that seemed to aggravate him more. So I tried to say goodbye, I was going to get some tea, but he thought I was dodging the discussion. I thought long and hard about his ultimatum; we had been doing this song and dance for a couple years and it was exhausting, I was in love but damn! I wanted it to end and I honestly thought he would stick to his word.

I hung up.

And it felt good. For about ten seconds. Til the phone rang. I looked at the Caller ID and of course it was him. He said I would never talk to him again and he usually does what he says, this isn’t fair! I didn’t answer. He called again and I didn’t answer. He called my cell phone. DAMN! I was thinking that something bad was going to happen and I should get help. By now I’d come to recognize the warning signs: I was pacing up and down the floor, I was talking to myself (“Leave me alone, no, you said you wouldn’t talk to me anymore…”), and my heart was beating way too hard. I was living with a male friend of mine and he was in the bedroom across the hall with two other guy friends, and I knew it was time I went to tell someone that I might have a problem, when the ringing stopped. It got quiet and I held my breath.

A minute passed and no ringing. I exhaled. He was gone and it was over. I stood in the middle of the floor breathing for I’m not sure how long, until I felt safe to move again without kicking anything, then I went to the kitchen to get a drink of water to cool off.

The second I step into the kitchen I am shocked out of my skin by an angry pounding at the back door that leads from the kitchen into the backyard; the same back door that he usually knocked at when he there was parking available in the backyard. He only lived about ten minutes away and whether he was calling me from his cell phone, or I was actually standing in the middle of the floor trying to calm myself longer than I realized, he was here now and I was terrified. I didn’t want to do anything foolish. I was breaking into a cold sweat as my heart started to pound again and I debated whether or not to answer, then I remember that he always respected calm, rational behavior not emotional outbursts. I figured that if I could hold it together for long enough to tell him that he said he would never speak to me again and I expected him to honor that, then maybe I could finally end something like a grown up.

It almost went that way.

I open the door and he was standing there, one fuming, tightly wound nerve ending. When he opened his mouth, his voice was so low and deep in his throat that I could barely hear him, but I still thought I might make it out of this free and clear.

“I told you what would happen if you ever hung up on me again,” he snarled.

I very calmly and hoarsely said, “Yes, you did, goodbye.” I began to close the door and since my intention was to lock it immediately my hand was on the knob for the dead bolt. Well, I’d finally met someone with as explosive a temper as mine.

With all the strength in his solid ass leg, he kicked the shit out of the door! The dead bolt knob slammed into my palm and a shock of searing pain shot out and up my arm and my fingertips went numb. My rage was overwhelmed by pure, unadulterated surprise and I was stuck to the floor. What got my feet moving again was this grown ass man said, “Fuck you!” then stuck his tongue out at me…..HE STUCK HIS FUCKING TONGUE OUT AT ME, like we were in kindergarten and he just stole my snack-pak!

I tried!! Oh, I know I really did try so hard to hold it in, but that was just too damn much!!!

He turned around to go back to his car, and I’m sure he was feeling very full of himself, and I followed him. I caught him in about six steps, stepped in front of him, croaking in my whisper of a voice, “You son of a bitch!” cocked my throbbing/ piercing/ tingling hand back and slapped the shit out of him. Then I turned and left him standing there, or so I hoped. With one foot in my back door, I heard his hurried footsteps come up behind me. I half turn, half stumbled inside the doorway as he half grabbed, half shoved me. The look in his eye matched the feeling in my heart: utter fury.

That blind wrath came over me and I really don’t know what happened, all I know is that we went for each other and some hand-to-hand combat was involved.

At some point one of my friends, who was obliviously chillin’ over in the bedroom, had come to get a drink of water at just the right time, and he pushed his 6 foot frame between us. I simply couldn’t stop. I was shouting (or trying to at least) and I reached behind me onto the counter and picked up a saucepan and hurled it over my friend’s shoulder at my lover’s head. He ducked in time for the pan to miss, but it distracted him enough for me to reach over with my then killer right hand and slap him again.

My friend shoved me out of the kitchen into the living room and somehow convinced my lover to leave. I couldn’t breathe. I could hear my pulse in my brain and I could barely see. I ran across the hall to get my roommate, I grabbed him in a bear hug and cried sobs that made me choke. I tried to tell him something, but tears and laryngitis made the words come out as a pitiful squeak. My friend, the unlucky referee, walked in and briefly explained we were just grappling in the kitchen, when my goddamn lover comes bursting in the room!

I forgot that the front door to the building was broken and the front door to our apartment was usually unlocked when we had friends visiting (a habit that ceased as of that moment).

My initial reaction was to go for him, but my friends pushed me back and the last bit of fight in me quickly deflated. So I resorted to crying and yelping for him to get out as loud as my raw throat would allow. He kept saying we needed to talk which confused and triggered my ferocity even more because that’s the exact opposite of what was supposed to be happening. I felt my sanity fragmenting and needed this situation to end. My friends rapidly convinced him that it would be a better idea for us to talk later and got him to leave.

I collapsed into a puddle on the floor and cried for what felt like hours. Again, out of sheer shame I refused to go to the hospital right away for what I knew was an injured hand (it was the size of a baseball mitt and I couldn’t bend my fingers). This time, not only had I allowed my super intense temper and super sexual feelings to take me to another violent place with someone I knew I loved, I had taken my shame public and my friends had not only seen but had to be active participants in my humiliation.

All of this happened on a Saturday. I curled up in a ball and suffered with my painful mitt of a hand until Monday morning when I realized there was no way I could go to my job at the children’s museum where I chased kids and climbed jungle gyms all day. Off to the hospital again, more x-rays, a couple more hairline fractures, I get wrapped in a brace and an ace bandage this time and my arm hung in a sling (I’ve oddly enough still managed to avoid a severe enough break to warrant an actual cast, go figure), more groovy painkillers and anti-inflammatory pills, and a doctor’s note for 3 days off. My voice didn’t begin to return for about 5 days after the whole incident.

Do I talk to him again? No. For the first time, the phone doesn’t ring, there are no unexpected visitors, no emails. I don’t hear from him at all, for one whole week.

A week later, around 2 in the morning, I was sitting in bed reading and listening to music and there’s a knock at the front door. I assumed it was a friend stopping by after club hopping or coming to tell me about a date or something, so I didn’t think twice about going to the door, but when I looked through the peep hole he was standing there.

And it scared me how instantly I became enraged. I attempted to make a fist by reflex, but I couldn’t because the brace and bandage that I was forced to don for the next 3 weeks prohibited that. My temper is tempered.

I opened the door. He had tears in his eyes and he simply said, “I’m sorry.”

I let him come in. We talked, and every time either of us began to get loud or irate, we visibly reined the hostility in. In the end, I remember still wanting to hurt him, but wanting to be friends with him more, and knowing that the issue was that for the time being we couldn’t be in a relationship. Not the deep type of relationship we were in, it was more emotion than either of us could bear. In the end, it might have been what saved our friendship, because he is one of my best friends now.

And in the end, well, I’m hoping it is the end, of my violent, hotheaded, fiery, fuck-myself-or-others-up temper days, at least. It has been so far, knock on wood, with the exception of a few smashed CD cases after bad days at work or something like that. I have to vent! I think about that nuclear meltdown frequently and how much overflowing and uncontrollable antagonism and animosity I felt toward someone I love and I assure myself that not only will I recognize that emotion in the future, I will recognize every characteristic leading up to it.

And I will not try, I swear I will not try to hold it in! I will let it out calmly before it erupts like Mt. St. Helens, and then I will walk away, shit I will turn tail and haul ass if need be. Because the next time somebody might really piss me off…