Stupidest meltdowns ever - share yours!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
41

Are you my twin? This describes exactly how I felt about a week after Little Miss was born: For a week, every time I turned around, someone else was at my house - grandparents, friends, etc. I had no sleep, and felt absolutely trapped… finally had to tell my husband that visitors were certainly welcome, but ONLY between the hours of 5 pm and 7 pm, not “just drop by anytime you’re in the neighborhood.” I actually went back to work two nights a week WITH a 17-day-old baby just because I stood a better chance of having some peace and quiet at work than at home!

And thank you so much for your generous offer. I’ll very likely take you up on it when the husband has his surgery. (“Fortunately,” my husband’s friend’s travel plans have fallen through, because otherwise, I was also going to have a houseguest from Chicago for a week or two, starting next week. I put fortunately in quotation marks, because the plans fell through after the friend broke his ankle - I certainly didn’t wish that upon him, but the prospect of dealing with baby, husband, two pre-teens, dog, and houseguest whom I’ve never met was looking pretty harrowing!)

42

Yeah, but my real life rants are embarrassing.

43

A work-related one, and a personal one.

I used to have a wireless Microsoft keyboard; there’s something wrong with it - the W or Spacebar key would not react at times. Nothing seems to solve the problem. One day while feeling extremely annoyed and depressed, I was working on a program, which kept refusing the work. The keyboard chose at that time to hang up, and after a few hours of this, I snapped.

With a roar I seize the keyboard and slammed it on the floor; again and again. Bang! Thwack! All the while with a war-cry of fuck and shit on my mouth (I wonder what my landlord thought of me).

After a few minutes of this, I settled down. The keyboard still worked, and gave me no problems for the rest of the day.

The next day, this happened again. I calmly shut down the computer, walked down to the nearest mall, and got myself a new keyboard.

…

The other one was…more damaging. I had to go back for a stint of military reservist and got assigned for clerical work. There’s someone I don’t see eye to eye to, and while in one of my bad moods, I snapped at him. We confronted later and I was reduced to a heap of crying, snorting emotional puddle when he said to me, “You know, you should really just give others the benefit of the doubt”. Took the rest of the day off, and pretty much no one else talked to me for the rest of my stint there. Thank goodness it was short.

44

Did it get sister to clean up at least, even if it was for a while? I think it was completely justified; overblown maybe but that’s what happens when things fester.

45

When I was 17 or 18 I was at my boyfriend’s apartment and we got into a fight over something while preparing a meal. I don’t even remember what (hey, it was 20 years ago) and I really lost it. As in unmedicated-bipolar-lost it (pre-diagnosis). Anyway, “to show him” or something–I’m still not sure my motivations–I grabbed the stick of butter off the table and slammed it down on top of my own head.

And then felt immediately lost and embarrassed. He was just staring at me, at a loss for words, and I am sitting there with a big lump of softened butter in my hair…

…it was not a high point in my life.

46

I was pregnant, making some kind of stir fry with strips of steak for dinner. I had cooked the steak about medium. My husband reminded me that the doctor told me to eat my meat well done while I was pregnant.

I immediately started crying and apologizing for ruining dinner. It culminated in me feeding the whole dinner to our dog. Hubby was understandably confused, but was smart enough to not say anything and just hugged me and ordered some pizza.

47

They fuck you at the drive-through. :wink:

I’ve had several melt-downs, but I don’t remember the specifics of any right now. My husband had one last night, but it was alcohol-enhanced. I had listened to him go on and on about a great idea for about 1/2 an hour. I agreed that it was perfect! and wonderful! and - you get the drift.

But Idol was on. And I’d had a really shitty couple of days. I just wanted to chill and watch something mindless, and I wanted him to just shut.the.fuck.up.

I said (nicely) that I didn’t want to talk about anymore right now - and he lost it. He had repeated himself at least 4 times, and I thought it was “me” time. Nope - I never listen to him, TV’s more important than him…

Sigh. We’re ok now. But I still didn’t get to watch American Idol!

48

This is why TiVo rules. If one of us wants to talk during a TV show now, we can, and nobody has to miss any of their show.

49

It was my husband’s first day at work after Leo was born. He had thrown up four times that day and I had no idea that was normal. So I cried for two hours while he napped, then I called my husband demanding that he take us to the ER right then, because Leo clearly had some horrible and unknown Disorder Of The Esophagus.

He came home, but we didn’t go to the ER. He just let me sleep and held the baby. I realized how irrational I was after my nap.

50

Not my own meltdown, but one that scared the willies out of me. One of my college roommates came in the room after a hard test. I had only beaten him back by about 5 minutes or so, and was just into the first couple of swallows of a beer.

He marched in, paced around a couple of times, picked up his “boom box” (this was the early 90s), smashed it to the floor (smashed it well, I might add), and sat down. A few minutes later, he looks up, and says “What happened here?” I got out of him that he was seriously bent about the test, and sort of “blacked out” during the smash & sit period. He did a little better than he thought on the exam, but not as well as he’d have liked.

It was the only violence I ever saw out of him, and everyone was stunned at what had happened when they heard the story.

51

The ones that come to mind:

  • teaching at a private school, and at the time, I was unknowingly hit with Seasonal Affective Disorder (the school had no external windows, it was early spring, and I was at school during all daylight hours) and had been fighting bronchitis for two months, and could not come to terms with the culture of the school. One of my classes drove me to the breaking point, and I lost it. Yelled at them loud enough that another teacher came to check, dragged one of the girls down to the dean’s office, and yelled at the dean. And, I did it in front of a visitor. Yeah, got my ass fired over that. Went and saw a psychologist, my regular GP, and spent a week at church, working on a project for ten hours a day in direct sunlight. Oy.

  • Had my tonsils out at the age of 34. The ENT warned me that about five days after, I’d be feeling better, and then the scabs would come off, and grown-men-cry pain would start. I thought she meant in a general, over the course of several hours sort of way. Nope. Felt better, saw a movie with my mom, got home, thought “wow, this really really, really hurts, I want some pain meds.”

Pain meds were stored in the kitchen, where my dad was prepping dinner. Without realizing it, he stepped in my way about four times in a row before I finally said, “Dad, I need to get in there,” in a hoarse whisper. Dad went on a short rant about how he was making dinner and I could just wait. I grabbed my hair and started wailing about how I Was In Pain and He Never Loved Me and I Just Wanted ONE GODDAMN FUCKING PAIN PILL!!!

Dad stopped what he was doing, left the house, and took a half hour walk. Mom soaked me up with a couple of towels, wrung me out on the bed, gave me two pain pills (Vicodin, whee!), and when Dad returned, I wept and wibbled and begged forgiveness and fell asleep, drooling, before he could give it.

  • Boyfriend had taken me to the ER for pelvic pain the night before. Doctor catheterized me to get a urine sample instead of giving me a cup of water and waiting 20 minutes. Then, on the diagnosis of trichomoniasis, treated me like a great big slut who’d gotten it by banging a marine division instead of getting it from an unfaithful boyfriend. Wrote a check I knew would bounce to pay for the medication for myself and boyfriend (I hadn’t figured out the unfaithful part yet) while he bitched about how he couldn’t drink beer for a week, because the meds didn’t allow it. Finally got home, tried to cry on his shoulder and tell him how awful everything was, and he said (I quote), “Well, I guess you’ll never let me live this one down.” Cue ten full minutes of screaming at the top of my lungs. I don’t fully remember everything I said, but I’m told the apartment managers had to repaint the neighboring three apartments in both directions, from all the paint peeling.
52

I haven’t had many but I guess we’re all human. The one that comes to mind was a long, long time ago and in a land far, far away. I was working a retail job at the time and a supervisor of mine that I didn’t particularly like (he was sort of a jerk after all) got snarky with me about my job performance one evening and I totally lost it. Very defensive and incensed, I gave him a BIG piece of my mind. Just totally deranged. Much afterwards I began to realize that he was just sort of jerking my chain and I shouldn’t have taken it so seriously. It just hit me exactly the wrong way and I came unhinged. Kudos to his ability to punch my buttons, I guess. Jerk.

53

phouka, your father got angry at you for wanting a prescribed pain pill when you were in pain…and you were apologising? :confused:

54

Yeah, I’d have found a new roommate. I kinda feel for the guy, but if there’s one thing I cannot abide it’s that smashy shit.

55

Ok - I don’t consider this a stupid meltdown - but it’s the biggest one I’ve ever really had.

First thing you should know about me is that I’m a pretty bubbly person and I don’t typically yell or scream about things. If I get upset, I tend to walk away, breathe and rethink things - try to check myself and see things from the other person’s point of view. I’m not always successful - but I do try.

That being said, my former husband (aka Grumpy) was just the opposite. He would yell and scream about everything, and rationality was the last thing that entered his mind when he would do so. He’d yell at a pile of paper if one piece fell off. He’d yell at his keys if he dropped them. He’d yell at the cats for being cats. (In fact, he’d yell at the cats so much they thought that was just his normal speaking voice. So if he’d yell at them to get down off the couch or table - they’d just ignore him. Where if I’d sternly tell them to get down, they would immediately jump down - it wasn’t my normal voice and they knew I must be serious.)

So it’s a Saturday and Grumpy is in another foul mood. He’s clearly agitated and we have a tiny apartment - so I go back to the bedroom, sitting cross-legged on the bed, to work on bills and give him his space - a normal habit for me. But today he decides that he needs to share the wealth - so he bursts in to the room and flings mail across the room shouting, “And THIS has been piled on the table for days - just more sh*t to clutter up the house!” and starts ranting and raving and pacing back and forth across the room before sweeping out of the room and slamming the door behind him. I just sat there and let him rant - never saying a word.

Firstly, the mail was from yesterday and was on the table so he could look at it before I filed it or threw it out. Secondly, flinging the mail across the bedroom wasn’t going to help with the de-cluttering he was yelling about. Thirdly, I was giving him the run of the whole place so he could rant and rave - and he had to specifically come in to my one little haven and suck the peace and quiet out of the room to make himself feel better.

Something in me just snapped. It wasn’t a hot, boiling rage. It was a cold, calculating stillness. An eerie calm. I uncrossed my legs, walked quietly to the bedroom door and opened it and walked in to the kitchen where he was still grumbling, and just waited. He looked up at me, all ready to yell, and then caught sight of the look in my eyes and just stood there.

“You think throwing things across the room solves things?” I asked calmly. “Let’s see if your theory works.”

I picked up a plant from on top of the bookcase and dropped it on to the rug. The plastic container cracked and dirt fell out.

“Did that make things better? I don’t know. Maybe not. Let’s try again.”

I picked up a book from off the counter and dropped it on the floor. “How about that? did that make things better?”

I picked up the cordless phone and dropped it on the ground. The battery cover fell off and the batteries fell out. “Maybe that made things better? Did it? Hard to tell.”

I began randomly picking things off the table and counters - holding them in the air for a minute, and then dropping them on the ground. Salt & pepper shakers, plates, napkin holders. My eyes never left his face as I calmly asked over and over again. “Did that solve anything? How about that? Did that make things better? No? Maybe this will?”

Grumpy reached down, his eyes scared and not breaking my gaze, and his stubby fingers groped for the cordless phone trying to put it back together. I think he was terrified that if he looked away, I would suddenly stab him with a cleaver or something.

Finally I stopped dropping things and calmly crossed my arms across my chest. “Well, it seems to me that throwing and breaking things really doesn’t help anything at all. I’m going to go back in the bedroom now. And when you are ready to come in and talk to me like an adult - I’ll be ready for you. Until that time, clean this mess up.”

Then I turned and calmly walked back in to the bedroom, quietly shut the door, and sat back down on the bed and waited. For two hours. When I finally left the bedroom, I found all the mess cleaned up and Grumpy quietly sitting on the couch with the cats, trying to watch TV. When I asked why he hadn’t come in to talk to me - he said he was too scared.

For years and years after that - until our divorce in 2005 - if you asked Grumpy, “Does Melody get mad?” he’d answer: “Well, there was this one time, in the summer of '96.”

56

Oh, that is magnificent. You’re my hero. :slight_smile:

57

Yes, a controlled, anti-meltdown meltdown.
Melody, did he get back into the habit of throwing things in the following years?

58

No, I apologized for screaming at him. Short of something that is literally life or death, I do not scream at people, especially my father. Usually.

59

I came home from work to find my extensive CD collection all over the road in front of our house. The kids said we were using them as Frisbees. This is after already taking all of my spices and sprinkling them all over the front lawn because they were bored. My yard smelled like a salad for months! They also got in trouble for rolling apples down the hill that were clogging the sewer down the hill.

This day was my “melt down” day. I told them that I had to work for an hour for every one of the CD’S now wrecked and in the road. I asked them how they would feel If I destroyed something that was theirs? They laughed and said it would be no big deal.

I went upstairs into my sons room and unplugged his TV and opened his window and heaved it out. I went into my daughters room and took her electronic cash register and opened her window and heaved it out the window. Both smashed onto the back sidewalk. I then came downstairs and handed them a trash bag and a dust pan and brush and said do not come back inside until the road and the back sidewalk were clean.

They never touched my things again.

60

Never in front of me.