Fear

I'm afraid to leave my kitchen. More specifically, I'm afraid to leave a centrally located point in my house where I can monitor what my teenage son is doing. He exploded in rage at dinner. It started relatively benignly. He was reading a book, something based on a fantasy game, I think. Not exactly serious reading, but playfully, he was calling it a must read of childhood, and teasing his older sister because she had never read it. When he called on me for support, I said I didn't think it was published when I was a child. He said of course it was, it was published whenever he said it was published, but his sister wanted to prove him wrong. She took the book from him to read the copyright pages. He picked up a glass to hit her fingers with to make her drop the book, and obviously hit hard. I don't think he meant to hit hard, but it's hard to tell, I was still in the kitchen. His sister yelled and got furious, he said he was sorry, she yelled some more. He got furious and said he was sorry and why was he always blamed for everything. She went into the kitchen -- not sure why -- and in a rage, he poured a full glass of coke over her supper, splashing down onto her upholstered chair and the floor. She had been very hungry, and seeing the ruin of her dinner, she burst into tears. I took his supper from him, put it on another plate, and gave it to her. I didn't yell at him, I just made the punishment fit the crime. He worked himself up into a rage. Everybody hates me. I want to kill myself. I stopped him from going to grab his medicine, and he went up to his room. All the while he was talking about killing himself. I tried to talk to him, but it didn't seem to matter. Finally he said he was leaving and wasn't coming back and I couldn't stop him. I've learned my lesson, I wasn't about to try. The only thing I was going to do was keep him from taking car keys, and hopefully keep him from doing major damage to something (himself, car, house.) Once outside, he broke a broom, but since I wasn't watching, I don't think it was satisfactory. I don't know what I would have done if he had gotten more violent or really tried to hurt himself. He has always come back when he does run away so I wasn't worried about that. Finally he came back inside, spent some time online, IM'd some friends, and when they called, talked to them, took a shower, and now he is watching a cop show -- Law and Order or CSI or whatever. He seems calmer, but is still angry. This time I managed to stay calm. That doesn't always happen. Each time he does something like this I feel a little colder inside. Do parents really truly have unconditional, bottomless love? I hope so.