Christmas.

...was difficult. Ex-Service-User's monologue in full flood, for four days. I ate Christmas dinner wearing ear plugs.

And the daytime noise doesn't calm down or end, and yet he is silent all night - one of the things I'm so grateful for...But really, the only model that fits the evidence (being coherent, polite and calm whilst talking to a doctor, police or waiting in A+E...) is character disorder.

Regardless of origin, all his fear and rage and eloquent expositions of victim-hood, are aimed at us, my husband and I. The rage is aimed at us - ha, this is just guessing by me by the way - the rage is aimed at us because he has 'stuck process' [link]. Authoritarian folk don't get it aimed at them straight away, but it would only take a few hours before they too would get the monologue and increasing anger directed at them.

It is violent, and it means to do harm. Yeah, I'm sounding paranoid now, but I'm not. It takes a lot of courage on my part to write those words because I prefer to believe the situation is manageable. I know what I do when things are broken. I weep and mend...because the alternative is a cliff edge - there is no going back from a police record, or being sectioned. Those labels stick.

At the core - using logic because I've nothing else! - he knows how out of control and unbearable he is being. Instead of using that as fuel to seek change, he focuses and feeds the thinking. Pure O (OCD) style with zero desire to let go the adrenaline, cortisol, endorphin rush of rage.

Talking, to get a response, any kind of response can't replace the satisfaction of living one's own life. But living his own life isn't an option, so the victim voice tells him. Logic dictates that if he felt satisfaction from following his own stuff, art,anything, he would begin to mend...but he isn't going to do anything because he knows that he can't (the inner voice dictates). And so his challenging behavior increases until we are sanguine and calm about that - oh, try citric acid as a way to neutralize urine in carpet smell...In his universe, if we could give him sufficient and increasing outrage per 'accident' perhaps violence wouldn't be necessary...

Today, more violence.
It isn't getting any better.

So what's it like being a bullied parent? It's a lot like being a bullied child, except when I was bullied my strategy of going quiet meant I wasn't exciting enough and the class bully let me alone. But I remember how the eight year old me felt. The freeze. The nausea louder than thought... That bully just pulled my hair and stood too close whilst jeering at me. My son is terrifying, that's all I can say, and I've faced the fear of him seriously hurting me about four times now...

And I still freeze and try to put everything back together. I can't phone the police, I'm speechless. Silent tears. I tidy up like its a mantra..