Hitting Our Breaking Point
One of the biggest keys to our success in military life, dream chasing, relationships, etc., is knowing where our breaking points are. We need to know where they are, see them coming, and then know how to course correct before or after they hit. We live in a hectic and overstimulating world, and at one point or another, it will get all of us.
I ended up there tonight. I did "baby and me" swim lessons with my son earlier today, and most of that time was spent with him crying. Having a screaming toddler for an hour is already a recipe for overstimulation. We then did lunch, came home, took quick naps (30 minutes, which was not enough time for either of us), and headed off to rock climbing. I enjoy that activity, but it can be overwhelming chasing our son around the gym. Follow that up with a dinner outside, in the heat, surrounded by flies, and my breaking point was quickly approaching.
I highly recommend getting a partner who understands what "we need to go now" means. It only took one look in my eyes to know that an extra ten minutes with those flies would make a horrible rest of the night for us. And I highly recommend a partner who knows what to do when we get into that space because the ride home was mostly quiet. When I am stirred up like that, any conversation can lead to snappy comebacks, which only worsens the situation.
I am not saying I am proud of my behavior tonight. I fully recognize that we should control our emotions, and allowing them to run the ship can ruin a lovely evening.
Knowing what our recipe for disaster is doesn't always mean we can control the ingredients being put in our pot. I didn't get to pick eating outside for dinner, and everyone else seemed annoyed by the flies compared to my anger. The combination of the day left me sweaty, tired, and desperately needing a shower. Sure, I could have taken one ingredient out by not participating, but I didn't know precisely what saying yes would look like.
But I generally know when a soup starts looking like it will break me down. In an ideal world, we can change course. I could see that coming tomorrow if we had stayed on the 5 am flight. A super early wake-up time, regardless of whether we got a hotel tonight or drove up in the morning, is definitely not ideal. Going from that straight into family-oriented activities rather than bed is a recipe to make things much worse. We were able to divert that by changing our flight to 11 am, which made our wake-up time much more reasonable without the added cost of a hotel for the night.
In that scenario, I could correct the course. I'll still be tired after a day of travel, but that is nothing that calling it an early evening won't fix. Tonight, I could correct things before they got to an unredeemable point. That's not always the case, though. And in those moments, the most important thing we can do is recognize that we are not in our right mind and figure out how to get back to it.
We have to have big and little fixes handy. When we are overwhelmed with kids, bills, and life during a deployment, we need the little fixes of taking deep breaths or saying affirmations for the moments when we can't hit the pause button on life. We also need to have the big fixes handy, like hiring a babysitter so that we can nap, take a bath, or clean the room that has been overwhelming us so horrendously.
We can't avoid all the frustration and stress that happens in life. We will see it in relationships. We will see it at work. We will see it in our dreams. But that doesn't mean we are on the wrong path with any of those things. It just means we need to take a step back and quiet the noise in our heads so that we can head forth on a more focused and mindful path.