And what a crappy week it was! Geez!
It all started on Monday…Brian’s day off…David was supposed to be off, but that was canceled to make up for a storm day. On the Monday’s Brian is off, he takes David to school and David was not happy about having to go to school! This should have been seen as foreshadowing, but it wasn’t! If I had been on the ball I wouldn’t have participated in what became a massive fight between Brian and I.
As Brian and I have grown in our relationship, we’ve matured and really don’t fight much at all…thankfully! In the grand scheme of things the disagreement wasn’t all that massive, but it seemed like it at the time and definitely put a damper on that day as well as the week.
When we were coming back from Dickinson on Monday, Brian kept asking me what was wrong. I kept telling him “nothing” (never works, don’t know why I say it!)…finally I’d reached my limit and basically told him that it was the “same stuff, different day”.
There is this one are of our relationship that I’m not happy with…and I remembered the first time I brought it up to him was while we were waiting in a subway station in Alexandria, Virginia coming back from our 10th anniversary dinner while vacationing in Washington, DC. That was almost 8 years ago!
If I’ve been talking to him about it for 8 years and it hasn’t significantly changed in those 8 years, is there really a point in bringing it up yet again? I didn’t think so! While I was sad that he hadn’t kept a promise to me that morning, I thought further discussion was pointless. But he kept pushing…and what happens when something is pushed beyond the breaking point…yep, EXPLOSION! Which is what I did…a verbal explosion all over him. He didn’t appreciate it…but yet he’d brought it on himself.
He was mad that he’d pushed, he was mad at himself…I was mad that I’d exploded and mad that I’d expected a change and had allowed myself to be disappointed yet again. We didn’t speak for the rest of the day and well into Tuesday.
Tuesday dawned with a census test looming. I had to pull David out of school early so I could get to my test. It was way to cold for him to walk home and any other “back-up” drivers were working or otherwise unavailable. I pulled up to school at the agreed upon time to see my son being escorted out by the principal! CRAP! David had been in a fist fight, in the bathroom, just prior to lunch. CRAP! The principal had David’s side of the story, but she still had to get the stories of the other 2 boys involved.
See, David has been a victim of bullying since first grade. Part of it is his size, at that time a whole head taller than all other 1st graders, and another part is the fact that he’s an only child surrounded by adults…he doesn’t have the same frame of reference as a lot of other kids and it shows, making him different yet again. It continued through school in Vegas and here in ND.
He’s been bullied all through school and has developed a bit of a victim attitude…which makes me crazy. I try to get him to let the crap roll off his back, and Brian says to stick up for himself. Basically he’s fed up and when someone touched him in the bathroom, David pushed him away, which gave the class bully all the impetus he needed to slug David in the jaw and it all went to hell from there!
David had himself so worked up and depressed by the time I got him home he was physically sick. Wednesday ended up being a “mental health” day and I kept him home…which worked out well. The school principal spent a lot of time in David’s class on Wednesday showing them a movie about bullying and what happens to the victims as well as the bullys. It sounded like it left a powerful impression with the class.
By Thursday I was worn out and have been feeling down and overwhelmed. Today, Friday, has been a bit better…I’m just glad I can write off this week and start over fresh next week.
Filed under: All About Pam
