okay...well Friday was an evening of fairly mixed emotions. My boyfriend was supposed to get off at 10pm. When I called to make sure, he didn't know when he was actually going to get off. He was going to be the only pharmecutical tech working from 8pm until whenever he could get off. To make things worse it was their brand new night pharmacist (she's never worked in a retail pharmacy and his is the busiest in their entire district). He was already frustrated because he had wanted to visit with friends and grab a bite to eat when he got off.
Well I had had lunch but it was getting on 9 o'clock, and my friend Maggie was starving so we tried calling various friends. It ended up with us going to AppleBees so people could get food. I got something small so I could still get food wth my boyfriend when he got off. Around 11:20 I called the pharmacy to see where he was and he'd just left. He doesn't have a cell phone so I kinda waited figuring he'd call me from the gas station nearby when he found no one home.
He did. He called around 11:35, just as we were getting our checks for food. He asked where we were. So I told him and asked him if he wanted me to bring him anything home. He sounded like he had a bad day. So my plan was to get the check, go home, and figure out where he wanted to get food. I didn't get a chance. He snapped at me that he'd wanted to see people but nevermind. He was going to go find himself food, gave a terse goodbye, and hung up.
At this point I don't know why he's acting that way, but I figured he kinda needed to be alone, which is the usual case when he's had a particularly rough day. So I continued to hang out with friends. We drove to a neighborhood nearby to look at the pretty houses.
While we were out he called again from a friend's phone and asked where I was. I told him and he snapped "I'll see you in the morning then." When I tiredly asked if he was going to bed, he continued in the same tone about having work in the morning, how late it was and how he mistakenly thought we were going to visit with people. At this point one of us hung up and I started to tear up. My friends asked what I wanted to do and all I wanted to do was go home.
As I arrived at our apartment, Maggie noticed his car was gone. I began to worry, but just as we got in the house my phone rang. He was again trying to figure out where I was and I told him at home.
This was going to be a pretty big arguement I was sure. He'd acted like a complete ass and I had no idea why. I shuffled Maggie out of the apartment just as his car pulled back into our block, sat on the recliner, and waited.
What ensued was not at all what I'd expected. That day at the pharmacy the new pharamacist had panicked and told him to do something. As he is just a tech, the pharmacist can have him written up for not following instructions. Three write-ups and you're fired. He already has one and one of his bosses is trying find ways to fire him anyways because he doesn't take the guy's crap. Well, this particular something was illegal for him to do according to state law, so he said no. She got even more panicked and told him flatly just to do it. After three hours of having to man all four tech stations (drop-off, pick up, drive thru, and intial counts) on his own he was fried, broke down, and did it. She then tried to get him to do something else that only a pharmacist can do, but he utterly refused.
So he had gone in to full freak-out mode, both because he broke the law and he was terrified he screwed something up and hurt someone. He had desperately needed someone (in particular me) when he had gotten home, but didn't bother to tell me any of this on the phone. He yelled about how he'd wanted to see me, but apparently I didn't want to see him. I started to cry and backed up a littel as he continued to rave, but I realized one all important detail. He wasn't raving at me, not really. He had hit the breaking point and was taking it out on the only person who down here who's that close to him. He said he felt like he was going insane and hit himself in the head. I yelled at him to stop. His father is severely disabled due to a brain hemorrhage. I will not lose him that way.
Finally, he began to calm down slumped down into the recliner, utterly defeated. He continued talking. He had lost it at work. He didn't even know what he was doing much anymore. The one person who cared enough was standing there trying to understand and trying to figure out how to help, but all he could was yell about something there was no possible way for me to have known about. The last thing he had wanted to do was take it out in any way on me. All he wanted since 9pm at work was to hold me. He looked at me with a look of deep-seated hopelessness and asked a question that nearly broke my heart. "So I guess this is it for us huh?" He choked on the last word. I asked why. He said "Because of this whole thing....what I did just now, yelling at you." I walked over to him and ran my hands on his face. He had scared me, it was true. But not once was I scared for me, but scared from him. It would take a lot more than some elling for me to stop loving him as much as I do. I'm sure at some point down the lineI'm gonna yell at him. Heck, my parents and I had gotten into worse fights, but I still love them and think they were good parents.
But I told him I did think he should talk to someone. His father messed him up pretty bad as a child, and I think its still affecting him. As much as he fights being anything like his father, with at least some help he won't be able to properly move on. He asked me to get him the number for a counselor at our college today, which I did.
He's apologized more than once for that night. It hurt yeah, but everyone has days where its simply too much for them to handle alone. He's never been taught hown to handle that point, and I don't care what anyone says...you can't really on intuition alone.
