The Book of Screet

Wednesday, April 22, 2026

Who doesn’t love to invent words?! I am doing it constantly in my busy brain, and I recently came up with SCREET! (scream + yeet = SCREET!) I feel like the word screet should be in all caps with an exclamation point always attached, as it is a combination of the words scream and yeet, meaning when you throw something in a rage and scream while doing so. The intensity and volume of the act means caps and exclamation, but wait… the times that I have lost control and had a screet moment, I’ve also been simultaneously wondering WTF is wrong with me that I am so out of control in this moment? so maybe it should be screet-interrobang, or SCREET?!

Some of the other words I have invented are dappy (dapper + happy), ugherwhelmed (ugh + overwhelmed), adorkable (adorable + dork), and flummbergasted (flummoxed + flabbergasted). Many mortifying moments have revolved around accidentally using these words in conversation as though anyone would know what I mean, like the time I greeted my principal with a “Good morning! You look dappy today!” and when he looked at me quizzically I said “That is a mixture of dapper and happy! It’s a really great thing!” and then he looked at me even more quizzically and I wondered if he was making a mental note to search my desk later for a false bottom drawer that was hiding vodka or tequila or something, a la Bad Teacher. But I digress…

Back to SCREET?! There have been a few key screet moments for me. Wait! I just figured something out. “Screet” written like this indicates an adjective, and “SCREET?!” indicates the verb. Phew. I feel better, glad I got that sorted out. Have I mentioned that I have ADHD? I intentionally write some pieces in bursts of hyperfocus and do not work on structure or attempt to appear “normal” (no such thing) if I feel that the content requires the attempted harnessing of my hyperactive mind. And SCREET?!  the concept definitely comes from my ADHD brain and the difficulty it has with both emotional regulation and impulse control. 

Generally speaking, I am so emotionally dysregulated that I completely disconnect from how I am feeling. All the time. It’s exhausterwhelming (exhausting + overwhelming). For the past eight years I have also been in chronic pain (I’m working on a new word for this, because that term infuriates me for some reason) and this has NOT helped with my propensity for splitting my mind from my body. I do not want to be in my body. It hurts. A lot. All the time. 

BUT… from time to time, a wave of rage will come along and hit me like a tsunami. Flatten me like a steamroller. Bowl me over like Sobchak (he’s not wrong, he’s just an asshole). Knock me down like Chumbawamba. You get the idea. Fight, flight, or freeze takes over, which is often what happens to me when I feel ANY emotion, because I feel most things way too intensely for my physical comfort. Thanks again, ADHD. Aaaaanyways, sometimes when that wave of rage hits, I freeze, go into my head and start breaking down the problem into small steps over which I may have some control. This can be dangerous because I am a super codependent person and take the blame for things that are not even remotely my fault, but that’s a means of control because if it’s my fault then I can fix it!!! I can’t think of many times that I have fled, and the one time I am thinking of, I realized after chasing someone in a rage that I was suddenly in a deserted alley surrounded by him and two other menacing dudes so I decided to run on out of there. Good thing I had just come home from run club, so I was warmed up and could sprint. 

That covers freeze and flight, but now for fight. Sometimes my fight response becomes activated in a good way, meaning that I run toward the danger to help someone or to solve the crisis at hand. I’ve had jobs that have been dependent on this quality and it can be a very good thing. Other times, it is a very bad thing and leads to me putting myself in dangerous situations and wondering after the fact what on earth I was thinking. Like the time I became enraged because someone was trying to get into my house when I was at home with my child, banging on the outer door with a chair and then trying to open the inner door quite forcefully and I RAN outside in my bare feet and nightgown to chase him. At night. In winter. Down the icy driveway and into the street. Yelling like an idiot and following him into the snowy night intending to beat the crap out of him (I have never beaten the crap out of ANYONE and I am really not very tough) until I realized that my kiddo was watching out the window, probably terrified and thinking that I was going to get myself killed. 

So what was I thinking? Well, obviously I was not thinking. A person is rarely, if ever, doing their best thinking when in a situation in which they are in fight, flight, or freeze. SCREET?! has happened when my fight is activated beyond control but there is no one in need of help, and no one to chase, and I have lost all impulse control, so the object at hand or the object that has caused the infuriation becomes airborne while I scream. I generally have no memory of picking the thing up, or sometimes it’s already in my hand, but then once it has flown and shattered or hit the wall or whatever the case may be, I don’t feel any better. Often there is physical clean up afterward, and then there is always a massive amount of emotional clean up. The shame and horror of having lost control is part of a negative spiral which keeps me feeling the need to lock down the feeling of anger at all costs. The regret that comes with having destroyed an object that I really wish I hadn’t is also a shame inducing, saddening, and generally crappy consequence of SCREET?!ing. 

I had intended to write about one of these specific screet times today, but just defining and exploring what the word means has been a bit much. Flummbergasting, if you will. My liver hurts. I’m not kidding, my yellow bile must need draining. Hippocrates might have been on to something with the four humours. I will leave this as an introduction to a new section of the “Interrobang Me Hard, Baby” blog entitled “The Book of Screet” and end with a list of things (in no particular order) that I have SCREET?!ed over the years. That’s the past tense of the verb. 

• The book “House of Leaves” by Danielowski
• The book “Full Catastrophe Living” by Kabat-Zinn
• The book “The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work” by Gottman
• The book “Not Just Friends” by Glass
• The book “Moby Dick” by Melville
• My purse
• My hairbrush
• My framed wedding photo 
• A pair of shoes that were gifted to me by my husband on our wedding day
• A leather jacket that once belonged to my grandfather
• A plastic cup (or was it a plate?) 
• My keys, while screaming in the car at a red light and someone saw me and looked terrified
• Rolls of pennies and nickels at a man who had a shotgun pointed at me

Woah, there are a lot of books on that list! More than I thought, but they kept coming to me. I’m sure there have been other things that have been SCREET?!ed, and that memories of those will emerge as I write these posts. Sigh. This is a bigger issue than I thought it was. And… well… there were times that I refused to SCREET?! and ended up self-harming instead. Those times were very few, and I haven’t done that in over a decade now. I am hoping that people will share their screet moments with me; I am naming it to tame it, but I KNOW that I am not the only one who has done this and felt alone and ashamed as a result. I’d love to find some fellow screeters. Or is it SCREET?!ers…?