Blood boiled in my veins.  My spinning head felt hot.  A rushing sensation in my tightening chest.  No doubt about it, I was angry.  I was on the edge of explosion.  It was time to leave the house.

A quick exit would have been too much to ask for.  I had my keys and was out the door, but I didn’t have my wallet or my phone.   Turn around, go back inside.

“Dad, why are you so angry?” my son asked.  Perfectly legitimate question, I thought as I told him that it was nothing.

Leaving the neighborhood at 4:45 and getting into the afternoon traffic wouldn’t have been my first choice, but I knew that I wasn’t going to keep my cool.  As I drove to the Starbucks to get a cup of coffee, I saw Goska’s Liquors.

That was the immediate reaction.  Go get a bottle.  I’d thought better of it and was determined to go to Starbucks.  Why the fuck did they have to be right next door?

Just get coffee.  Booze isn’t going to help.  A new mantra.  Repeat it over and over, turn right not left.  Don’t go to the liquor store.

Don’t. Go. To. The. Fucking. Liquor. Store.

Success — coffee achieved.  Now, make a phone call.  Head for a quite park.  The hell with dinner.

It isn’t even like you actually have to dial the phone, dude.  Siri can take care of that.

Success — my sponsor answers the phone.  I unload.  He reminds me not to “awfulize” and live in the wreckage of my future.  He reminds me that my problem is really a “high class problem.”

Something about talking relaxes me.  I see my part in it.  I realize that I made mistakes too and start to see that maybe, there will be a way out.  Do the right thing.

When I get home, I find out that I’d looked at a signed contract from the year before, not the one for the coming year.  No commitment had been made yet.  Everything was cool.

I’d pole vaulted over a mouse turd.  The future wasn’t going to be awful.  Everything would be okay.

Take the family to dinner.  The boy has a blast seeing his friends.  I make amends for being losing my shit and leaving the house in a huff — I could have made it worse.  I could have gone to Goskas.  I could have screamed at my family.

But I didn’t.

It works.