Among my many, many faults is my temper and my lack of patience. I was
reminded again of how these faults impact those around me. Today, my
wife and I were planning to catch different trains, the ones scheduled
sequentially. As it turned out, her train was delayed and so I had the
possibility of catching it instead of the later train. As I parked in
the station's lot I saw the train pulling in. I ran and jumped on the
nearest car. Success! Or, at least you'd think. I was completely out
of breath, gasping for air. Now that I think about it, this was
frustrating me as I've been working out for months so I feel like I
should be better able to handle that. Being frustrated made me angry
and I lashed out at my wife's gentle criticism that I was making a
scene on the train with my gasping. This turned what should have been
a happy unexpected trip together into a miserable one. I haven't
chatted with her online all day and I miss her. It's completely my
fault. :(
There are reasons why I'm more irritable than usual. My elderly father
has been staying with us longer than expected. While he was planning
to only come for a weekend at the end of September for my child's
birthday, he fell one morning, fracturing some metacarpals in his
wrist. Following from that was a 6+ hour visit to the Emergency
Department of our local hospital (pretty quick considering the ER was
full of people and he had a CT scan and an x-ray done) and a follow-up
visit with a orthopaedic surgeon at the same hospital earlier this
week. This has prevented him from driving the four hours to get home.
Consequently, he has become more and more resentful of being "trapped"
at our place. He told my cousin that he "feels like a prisoner of
war". He's withdrawn and difficult to get along with. Even when we try
to involve him in doing things with his grandchildren, he demurs and
opts to stay at our house. He doesn't clean up after himself and
leaves things all over, including medications from his compliance
packs (!). The issues I have with my father are numerous and I don't
need to get into them here. Suffice it to say, he left our family when
I was 12 or 13. I reconnected with him as an adult. Unfortunately, his
behaviour since then has showed me that he really hasn't changed or
learned from his experiences. He's basically the same self-centred and
socially-inappropriate person he was when I was a kid. Consequently, I
can only handle him for short periods of time. This enforced stay is
adding to my sense of frustration and unhappiness. While I know it's
no picnic for him either (he just wants to go back to his own place
and routine) his seeming complete lack of empathy or consideration for
other people makes him very difficult to live with.
Not that all of that is an excuse but it's increased my level of
background frustration. Now, it's spilling over to my other
relationships. I just don't know what to do.
