The Kitchen

Planet Tokyo Beef stirfry -  made up as I went along - was today's selection, as there's only so many nights in a row we can eat Butter Chicken.  LOL Had to get rid of the refrigerated vegetables.  Opted for stirfry to do that, although a stew was tempting.  Thought maybe like a Beef Burgundy based stew.  But I'd left it late and I wouldn't have had a cooking wine.  Stirfry seemed the more economical option. Forgot the garlic, in all the prep and batch frying saga of getting stirfry together.  Must be going senile. Tried something different:  stirfried French fries to throw into the mix.  Difficult cooking the potato off.  Went in the microwave ... but sort of got stuck together and turned limp and unappetising looking.  Still threw my chips in, along egg, onion, carrots, capsicum, cauliflower, cabbage shreds, fried rump steak strips and an improvised sauce:  light soy, Kecap Manis, Char Su sauce, chilli paste, tomato sauce, splash of water, few drops of sesame oil (later thickened with cornflour slurry). Tastes nice.  Could have maybe done with a bit more sauce.  But it's OK, considering I just made it up as I went along. The prep and small batch frying everything takes forever, but I cook enormous proportions.  Batch frying makes all the difference, as the food gets sort of charred and wok smoked instead of steamed as it would do cooking in big batches. I got the vegies out of the way, tipping those into a stainless steel bowl as I went along.  Meat was last.  Batches again and tipped into separate bowl, so that I could then give the meat some time to soak in the sauce, before tipping all the vegetable into the sauce, which I have thickening in the wok by that stage. The wok smoking I did yesterday has seasoned my wok nicely.  It was a breeze using it, all the way through the meat batches. Same shit, different day. F*cking assh*le. Threw back who knows how many drinks while I was preparing the meal. It has gone from relaxed and normal to arguing with a d*ckhead who is insisting to me that I am the problem and that he's not drunk, while he's indulging in conducting himself like a poorly behaved adolescent and talks absolute sh*t at me and then argues and argues and argues and argues, like he's suddenly sprouted a vagina. The personality change in him and the change in his demeanour disgusts me, while the argument takes me to the edge of tolerance. It rapidly turns into an argument. He's cocky and full of sh*t and he just won't let up. Full of absolute sh*t, escalating argument about sh*t. I can't f*cking take a minute more of him. This is how just about every day with him is. It will begin OK. It ends in sh*t. Now it's muttering loud enough for me to hear from the next room. Obviously, it's something that's supposed to be insulting. It's his favourite form of torment. Having already argued and already going from composed to wreck in the space of minutes of dealing with this pissy moron, I will try not to react. I feel sick. I feel extremely tense and shaky. It's impossible to imagine continuing to live with this insanity. My fucking existence thrown into chaos by this assh*le, who drinks for no sane purpose and imposes this on me. Refusing to blow in the 'breatho'. Mouthing off at me. It's psycho, saying "I won't do any test for you, you c*nt." So much for the claim it's not drunk. We seriously can't live together. This is insane. He's off his head. The stuff he's rambling doesn't even make sense. I'm freaked out and shaking. Took me forever to find the device, because he wouldn't find it himself.  Wasn't even sure what I was looking for.  Finally found it, half expecting to get a whack for my troubles, but determined to know the reading.  Last time this happened a few days ago, I'd let it go.  But I'm curious.  I want to know what it takes. Meanwhile, he's playing Ramone's 'Psycho Therapy' loudly on his mobile, just to aggravate me, I guess.  Or he finds it funny.  No idea. Finally got him to blow:  0.87.  0.087 Muttering that I'm a 'Nazi c*nt' (for having insisted he blow in tester).  Now he's muttering about 'Nazi feminists'.  That would be any female that doesn't want to take crap, I'd say. So we went from perfectly amicable and at peace to entirely at odds, and having an insane disruptive 'argument' that wasn't even really an argument about anything real or material ... it was just mayhem and unpleasantness for no reason, that erupted while I'd joined him to watch some TV program. Just him being unpleasant, overbearing and at odds, displaying a degree of aggression or hostility (without reason) that I found quite unpleasant (although it was displaced); and being unwilling to pipe down, even when I've clearly expressed that I've had enough and erupted in an outburst of my own by this stage. All that changed in the 'before' and 'after' mayhem scenarios is his alcohol intake (which isn't even all that much, I would think). I find this particularly stressful, because I feel I need to decide what I'm doing in future. I can't just keep repeating this.  But there seems to be no getting this through to him. All quiet on the Tokyo Front. Felt so upset that I went to bed and tried to sleep, but I couldn't.  Lay there feeling really anxious and freaked out for ages.  Overwhelmed and really emotionally charged. At one stage he came in, flicked on the overhead light, swore at me, gathered up whatever he'd left on top of the bed.  This was really uncalled for, as I wasn't arguing with him or anything; I'd retreated. Told him that if this kept up, we'd both be homeless.  Said he didn't care because he's got a swag.  LOL ... I'm sure he's not serious, but the problem is that we *will* wind up homeless if this keeps up. Lay there feeling sick and really worried.  Kept personalising what had happened, like it was a deliberate attack on me or something.   Began wondering what sort of 'sick individual' would deliberately do this to someone. But I don't really think it is as deliberate as it seems to be at the time, after I've had time to calm down.  However, highly charged arguments usually follow a deliberate act, in so far as it is a deliberate act to get into a state that leads to what I guess is disinhibition that usually precedes the dramas; so, in that sense, it is a deliberate act. At the height of feeling overwhelmed and emotionally flooded and wired, I feel like I could just about have a breakdown.  I feel this more keenly than I have before. Eventually got up to do a kitchen clean.  Sort of feeling teary, but I don't cry.  The crying part of me is generally blocked.   Resumed reading Coleman's book about Tavistock Institute.  But felt too guilty to focus on that. My companion's still engrossed in Ramones videos, but he's got earphones in now. It's taken me something like 4 hours to calm down and to wonder WTF even happened. I don't understand what happened. We were on good terms earlier, it was all calm, we were getting along (I even got a present) ... and then everything just sort of exploded out of nowhere. I think it's highly emotionally charged scenes I can't handle.  Suddenly, it was high intensity and high-energy, out of nowhere and unrelated to anything that was happening, and my angry protests just sort of fuelled that (instead of putting it to a stop), and it just got more highly charged, unpleasant and chaotic. At the time and for some hours later, I found it really distressing, infuriating, emotionally disturbing. Before that, I had an anxiety sort of mounting.  Suspected alcohol was being consumed and I'd hoped to avoid exactly the scene that was played out ... only I wasn't expecting one just out of nowhere, like that.  But I suppose that's where all these scenes always come from:  it's like a wildfire set off by some small spark. I don't know what I could have done differently. "You should have kept your mouth shut", he says.  He's dreaming.  It's not as though one person can be sort of wired, high-energy, disinhibited and sort of aggressive (or aggressive-appearing), and that the other person in close proximity (and disturbed by the dynamic etc) can just ignore it like it's not happening and ignore that their angry protests are met with more of the same. It is impossible not to react and then not to get more distressed if angry protests are met with more of the same sort of arguments, insults and high-energy drama that's suddenly erupted. Even so, once the dust had settled I found myself feeling guilty wondering if I was maybe me:  was it my fault?  Woke up feeling like I'd been hit by a truck. First act of the day was accidentally dropping my coffee cup (which luckily fell in the sink and didn't break).  Spilled coffee all over the kitchen cupboards and floor.   Barely a mouthful left, but I took that outside so I could have a cigarette. Tried to discuss things, but I'm not being heard.  Walks off mid-way during my attempted discussion to fuss with kitchen cleaning, when I'd mentioned I'd lost my coffee.  That annoyed me.  Anything to avoid addressing what has to be addressed, matches the various subsequent denial manoeuvres that I'm also familiar with. Conceded that he'd had too much to drink.  But it's like dealing with a lunatic, because I still cannot get a promise out of him not to drink around me again.  The 'controlled' approach to drinking that he proposes (and he was already supposedly exercising during the months of these same dramas) is exactly what I told him it would be:  a failure.  But, no matter how many dramas we have (and no matter the mental breakdown I'm about to have), he refuses to do the rational thing and simply stop drinking.  He's going to drink less, he says.  But his record so far demonstrates that this is lunacy, and that this not within the means of control once it is under way as a habit. So I'm stuck playing Russian roulette with a lunatic, unless I'm prepared to make us both homeless now.  That's pathetic and I'm a prisoner. I don't understand why he will not just stop drinking in my presence.  Point blank refuses, even though we will be homeless because I cannot cope with this.  It's not like it's a big ask for him to drink elsewhere; but he refuses to do this, even though it is proven that he is capable of desisting and that the zero alcohol approach works well. His refusal to stop subjecting me to this leaves me feeling like I'm dealing with a lunatic.