What's Wrong With Me?

It's nearly 4 o'clock in the morning and I am hiding in the bathroom of a hotel room while my kids sleep.

We are on our way home from a little mini-vacation -just me and the kids. It was wonderful! Calming, peaceful, loving. Lots of laughter with friends and family along the way. Just delightful.

And then...

It's like we start getting close to home and all the old behaviors and tensions and stresses flood everyone's bodies. It started with my daughter getting angry in the car - over nothing really. Just teenage daughter stuff but that triggered the anxiety in me as I went in to register at the hotel.

The next part is just mortifying. Humiliating and so embarrassing. I got in a, shall we say a "discussion" with the clerk because she did not have our reservations nor were there any rooms available. Normally, I am a "ok mistakes happen....let's find a solution" sort of gal but something about this clerk who was rude and seemed rather indifferent to my plight - no reservation, car full of kids, tired from a week of driving around the country and pissed off that it seems all my family's behavior is reverting back to pre-beautiful-vacation mode - triggered something in me. She and I started arguing about her complacency and lack of help in the situation. It probably would have ended relatively sanely there but then SOME WOMAN! in the lobby started in with her caustically delivered "advice!" I mean what the hell!!

I told myself to stop arguing. I knew I needed to walk away. And yet, it was like I was watching myself from outside myself, unable to manage my emotions or actions. And it still gets worse!

My daughter comes in and in what was the WORST effort at de-esculating a situation, starts admonishing ME! Now I feel like I am arguing with two strange women AND my own daughter. It was stupid, ugly, tacky, embarrassing and pointless.

I left with my daughter - her and I arguing as I stormed out the door - got in the car and we screamed and yelled at each other some more.

I can't tell you what a total ass-hole I feel like. A beautiful time with my kids and I ruined it in what felt like forever but probably wasn't more than three minutes. I don't even know why I reacted as I did. I really am not "that" person usually.

So here I am at 4 am in a hotel bathroom, looking at random stuff on the Internet and crying when I happen upon one of those series of photographs advertised on FaceBook, this one being couples who re-enacted vintage photos of themselves from 50 or so years ago.

And that's when it hit me:

This is what being in a loveless marriage does to you.

I know we are all responsible for our own actions, it's not what happens to us but how we react, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah but we're human beings. Things AFFECT us. Now, maybe we have to work for them to not affect us and maybe we have to manage how that affect manifests itself in our behavior but still...

We marry and partner up to fulfill our human need for love and intimacy.

And when that need is left empty or drained? That just may be what is "wrong" with someone.