Spitting isn’t very adult either, but mercifully it hasn’t come to that–yet.

You know when you become an adult you don’t get to yell at all the people you want to.

You can’t yell at the people in the grocery store whose cart takes up the entire aisle.

You can’t yell at the people at the gas station who don’t pull up to the forward pump.

You can’t yell at your boss when he’s been a complete dickhead all day long – nay, all month long. Or seven months long.

Well, you’re not supposed to anyway.

I’ve been suffering in silence for months. I’ve been gritting my teeth and avoiding eye contact so as to keep my temper in check. I’ve been dodging him and, instead when I was feeling near my breaking point, I’d go down to Ava’s office and shriek at her. Sometimes, just to mix things up a bit, I corner one of my teammates and flail my arms in their direction for a while. I yelled at My Honey every night when I came home from work. I employed the tactic of ignoring his most egregious emails since I couldn’t reply to them in a professional manner that didn’t end in an enormous STICK IT UP YOUR ASS in italics at the end.

The whole thing has been frustrating and I was overwhelmed with a feeling of impotence.

I considered drinking, heavily. I told another coworker that I was considering drugs but, I know when it came down to it, I’d chicken out and just eat a bunch of jellybeans until my stomach hurt instead.

Today was my breaking point. He’d messed with me one too many times and I lost it. There was yelling, finger pointing, and the slam of a door. It felt good. One of my teammates was right outside the door when it happened and she raised her hands in a silent cheer.

“How did he respond?” Ava asked me when I finally found her so I could tell her of my triumph.

“He didn’t. In fact he looked quite stricken. It was glorious.”

The rest of the day he was insanely nice to me. I am not fooled. His retaliation will most likely take the path of passive aggressive torture. Wheeeeee!