My December to Remember: Day Twenty-Five
News: just more bad news that is expected but not documentable. not today, Santa.
I bashed the absolute Christ out of my boyfriend’s toe overnight. I did some kind of mid-sleep “wind up spin kick” in his words, my heel clipping his baby toe and wrenching it downward. “F*ck!” he cried out into the witching hour, 3:30AM eastern, “You jammed my f*cking toe! Battering Ram!”
“I’m sorry!” I cried out, not understanding the extent of what I had just done. Because in my half-asleep state, I thought I had only bonked the top of his foot. So my first instinct was to think, “Oh, get over it, it wasn’t that bad.” It wasn’t until later around 7:00AM that I felt the disdain from his corner of the bed. He didn’t set an alarm until 9:00AM, but I was awake. He was still mad at me about the kick and how bad I had actually hurt him. So I told him I would be going into the living room and that I wasn’t trying to piss him off, still not understanding the level of his ire. But I knew he needed more sleep, just like I needed to boot my own butt outta there before a lump of coal ended up in my stocking.
I stayed on the couch for two hours, flipping back and forth between my phone and shutting my eyes. I just felt bad. I wasn’t mad at him so much as I just knew mistakes were made, and that this would be a real test for us, an informal punt into another layer of our relationship, just in time for the holidays.
He came over just past 9:00AM, rousing me sweetly and saying he was sorry I felt bad enough to leave the bed. I told him I still didn’t get why he was mad at me, to which he sat me down and explained how he didn’t get to sleep until around 2:45AM, and his peaceful drifting off to sleep was rudely awaken by my hoof to the foot. He even did a light recreation on my thigh, exemplifying how fast it all happened. I had a much different sleep cycle, as I passed out around 1:00AM after trying to finish writing in my journal before I’d hand it off to him to signal when the lights should go out. Unfortunately for me, he kept nudging me awake to finish writing, something we concluded might have been my reason for the nighttime retaliatory kick. Still, it doesn’t seem like proportionate retribution, so he also suggested I was just having a dream and he caught the literal brunt of it. Maybe I was running to my presents under the tree and just couldn’t wait.
I did tell him the story about how my dad woke my mom up one time by throwing punches in his sleep, because he dreamt he was in a boxing match. “Oh great, it’s genetic,” my boyfriend said. I know he was joking and I know he wasn’t actually mad at me, but I still felt bad knowing I could do something to hurt him this much. I don’t see him any different here, but I do feel a different sense of where we are as two people making it work with one another. We’re domesticated. We’re husband and wife without the paperwork. It’s a good place to be, even when it gets kicked up a notch in a most unexpected way.
I’m learning a lot about myself in this relationship, and how to work through things that once may have never been resolved due to blinding anger. I take responsibility and have vowed to work around what may have caused a nighttime outburst. For example, we agreed to temper my writing at night and get me doing it earlier if I’m too tired to continue. I just want us to remain open and keep working with one another to get through such things, as long as the next lesson doesn’t start off with a bang like this. No more opportunities to make the naughty list here.
