When the crazy days keep coming back around

Column Post by Laura Hyers

There’s this thing that happens at my house. I call it Crazy Tuesday. It’s the same day every four weeks, the same place in my birth control pack, the Tuesday before my endometriosis kicks in and knocks me on my butt for a weekend of cramps and nausea and light-headedness and all those fun womanly adventures to which I’ve grown accustomed.

Crazy Tuesday is the day when I lose my ever-loving mind.

Crazy Tuesday starts easy. I go about my day and some little thing happens that sends me wildly off-kilter, swirling and whirling in flames and smoke into a full-blown, crash-and-burn disaster. I explode in anger at Caleb. Actually, anger might not be the most accurate term. Unparalleled (and unprovoked) rage is probably the best way to describe it.

Whatever has happened, I’m furious, and I’m seeing red, and I’m on a warpath headed straight toward my beloved. I’m fed up and sick and tired of this or that and why doesn’t he care that he does or doesn’t do this one very small thing that is so absolutely necessary to my happiness? Why doesn’t he care? Why? Not even a question any more, it’s just a ticked-off declarative statement.

He, in his infinite patience and kindness, handles me with kid gloves and responds in a far better manner than I deserve, stating his simultaneous confusion and remorse for whatever infinitesimally tiny thing that resulted in his wife’s fury.

It’s normally somewhere in the middle of his sincere apologies for my ridiculous trigger that I look at the calendar and count the days on my fingers and send the text: “Caleb… It’s Tuesday.” He knows what that means, and he knows what’s about to happen, and he is just as patient when I weep and beg forgiveness for how unstable I can be on this miserable day.

He tells me it’s okay and that it’s not that bad and it’ll be okay and we can talk tonight, and he reassures me enough to get through my day and he knows without a shadow of a doubt that I will weep and beg forgiveness all over again that night when we both get home. He knows, and he rides the storm with me, and he loves me fiercely in spite of myself.

Most people don’t know about this day. My best friend hears nuances of it in the way I talk or mention an explosive argument, but I keep it quiet. I mean, it couldn’t get much more embarrassing. It’s a secret my husband keeps for me, but I’m bringing it out into the light and showing it off for the nonsense and lack of self-control that it is. I say and do stupid things and I have no good excuse, regardless of what day it is.

But maybe your house has a Crazy Tuesday equivalent, and maybe laughing about these days sucks the angry wind out of their sails. Maybe knowing crazy is normal could help us both.

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Laura Hyers is a Tampa native, writer, and the newly wed wife of musician Caleb. She recently graduated from the University of South Florida with a bachelor’s degree in psychology with a concentration in literature and is currently teaching preschool. When not chasing a class of two-year-olds, Laura is writing and fighting fierce bouts of wanderlust. She loves music, reading, being near the ocean, and dreaming big over huge cups of coffee with her best friend Lakin. Laura blogs at http://littlebirdmarie.wordpress.com.

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