To flip the switch

It happened in a blink of an eye. The switch from loving, doting, caring husband, to homicidal manic, raging, mouth foaming mad man telling me to leave the house that he owned and had paid for.

It was just a simple call, I really didn't mean anything by it except to tell him that I was in over my head and I needed a rescue. Or that's how it sounded in my mind when I told him to come get his kids. Our 1 year old was spilling water on our precious wooden floors in his sisters room while our 6 year old was devolving into a collapsing puddle of tears over a supposed mold stain on her bathtub wall.

He was at Walmart, shopping far longer than he should have been for sugar. That's all he needed to get, just some sugar for the lemonade, canned grapefruit and frozen blueberry waffles. What could possibly be taking him this long? It made no sense to me that he was out there doing what I asked him to do when I was at home dealing with this madness. I mean what would you do? Time longer than expected always means that he's up to no good.

But to say that this was the only instance, or even an event in solitude wouldn't really describe the situation adequately. His mania was as reliable as an electrical circuit, where you flip the switch and there was light. But it wasn't light being channeled across the circuitry; it was something else altogether. A horrible, guttural, primal even lividity that had the keenest of edges to cut through you with words designed to maim.

He wasn't always this way, or at least that's what I let myself believe. We had been dating in earnest for about 2 months at the time of his accident. He has no recollection of the event. Police say the culprit turned left and rammed his motorcycle as he went straight through a green light. An error of the twilight perhaps.

Yet the way that accident changed him was permanent. It was as if a different man emerged from that hospital. Sullen, easily triggered, happy one minute and frothing the next. Yet if I think about it, this is the way I've known him, for 7 years now we've been married, two kids, 2 million dollars and a world of adventures. Yet always I live in the shadow of his temper. Like lightning that strikes twice in the same place, his tempest comes where it no longer should.

Feeding him sometimes helps, maybe I should feed him more. Maybe I'm the problem. Maybe I should leave, but he won't let me take the kids, so that's a nope. Maybe tomorrow won't be as bad.