Things with my mother have been completely insane for the past week. Today, I had the “wonderful” experience of dealing with lawyers for the first time regarding her health situation and trying to make some progress in the area of not having any legal right to assist in decision making about her care, which is important considering she can’t do it. Unfortunately, she also can’t be forced to offer me rights (power of attorney, guardianship) as long as she is deemed to be of sound mind and body (of which she is neither but is deemed as such by our ridiculous medical system).

At our last ER visit after an exceptionally bad fall that she had (due to poor decision making – as in , “it’s a good idea to try to walk three miles to a store rather than call my daughter and ask her to just drive me there.”) even the ER doctors were infuriated by this ridiculous system and code of law, because they knew she needed to be held for extended evaluation and they WANTED to hold her, but she had to agree. Of course, she didn’t.

Well. I’m going to be completely honest with you all right now. When I blogged several days ago about how hard and how nasty caregiving can be, things were bad. Today, things are much worse. Recently, a friend of mine gave me some sound advice on coping with this whole thing but here I am, again, finding myself in a place where I feel like it is all just TOO MUCH. On top of what I’ve been dealing with pretty much on my own for the past few years, now I have the added pleasure of family members (some of whom I don’t even know) deciding that it’s a great idea to tell me what a terrible job I’m doing, try to manipulate the situation in some ways, but mostly try to manipulate my mother.

I’m trying my best. I really am. But I am NOT OK. I can feel my mental health starting to fade. I can feel the depression grabbing on from the inside out, trying to swallow me. I was doing well this past week…I was focusing on things that were far removed from my mother and that situation more than the situation itself, even though I was still in the situation. I had a couple of breaks where I didn’t have to be the caregiver, as a friend visited with my mom. But tonight I can feel myself shutting down. Pulling away from everyone. Building those walls back up. Closing myself off.

It’s all I know to do – I feel insecure and vulnerable and I feel emotionally/mentally unsafe. I am only human, and I’m tired. I’m tired of fighting. I’m tired of fighting with my mom to keep her safe and alive. I’m tired of fighting with the judgments and the interference of others who are only making the situation worse. I’m tired of fighting with the medical system/professionals. I’m tired of fighting a losing battle with my state regarding the laws surrounding how I can (and mostly can’t) take care of my mother. But mostly, I am tired of fighting with myself.

I am doing my best. But, I just can’t grasp – I just can’t understand at all – how that’s not enough (NEVER enough) to keep my mom safe. To keep her taken care of. I can’t understand how I’m expected to do it, I’m told I’m the only one who can as her only living immediate family member, etc., but no matter what I TRY to do to uphold that responsibility, whether because I feel obligated or just compassionate, I CAN’T ACTUALLY TAKE CARE OF HER. I can do all the things – the driving her around like Miss Daisy, the doctor runs, the help with the cleaning, the yard work, the trash pickup, the picking her up when she falls, the cleaning her up after accidents, the turning back on the power and water after it’s been shut off because she hasn’t paid it even though I’ve taken her…I can do all of that.

I can do all of the things. BUT I CAN’T TAKE CARE OF HER in the way SHE NEEDS because I don’t have any legal right to made decisions about home health care and other services. I’m expected to care for her, but I am expected to do it ALL on my own, because she refuses to acknowledge or accept that there is a problem and refuses any help other than mine. And that, my friends, is running me into the ground faster than alcohol or cigarettes or fast food or any other vice that is bad for our health would do.

I know that if Dorie was here, she would tell me that it’s just when you’re about to give up that everything might be about to turn around. She’d tell me to, “just keep swimming.” If my Dad was here, he would just handle it because she’d listen to him. But when I think of Dorie saying, “just keep swimming,” all I can think is that I feel more like I’m drowning, and there’s not a life raft in sight. Everything works against me because I don’t have any legal rights when comes to any of this, no ability to make the decisions that matter and need to be made. And I feel like in my own sinking and flailing I am pulling everyone around me under along with me.

People say that I need to stop fighting and just float. That I need to stop worrying because it will work itself out. And in so many cases and situations in life, that is true. But if I don’t keep fighting, my mother’s literal life is at risk. That is not an exaggeration. So I try – I keep on fighting a broken system and a stubborn, set in her ways old woman who pretty much hates me at this point. But I’m tired.

I’m tired, and I’m fed up. I’m sick of people around me encouraging me to express myself and vent it out and talk it out, then telling me, once I’ve done that, that I’m feeling sorry for myself or I am complaining. This is a woman’s life, and all I’ve ever done was my best to take of her while she’s fought me tooth and nail. When those people have been in my shoes, they can then talk to me about feeling sorry for myself or complaining. But until then, they don’t have a CLUE what it’s like.

Then I have people say things to me – I KID YOU NOT – like, “you have a choice, you choose to care for her.” In response to that, nope. It’s just me. I take care of her or she dies via starvation or getting hit by a car or wandering off and falling somewhere where she’s never found. Then, there’s the response of, “well, you can choose to let her do what she wants and if she dies she dies.” SERIOUSLY? Just let her die? Do you know how much that hurts? If this was someone else mother, and their situation, and I said that to them, I’d expect to be told that I was being insensitive and heartless, and that that was a horrible thing to say.

There are no easy answers – maybe there is no answer at all except to keep going as things are because this vicious cycle never seems to end. So, perhaps it’s just all about warrioring on. I just don’t know how much more warrioring my mental health can take. We all have limits. We all have a sort of “mental cut off” valve that certain traumas or grievances or situations can push to the off position. And that’s where I feel myself heading.

I NEED HELP to keep going – help taking care of my mother, so that I can take care of myself and my own family, and animals. I’m tired of warrioring on. And, I don’t want to end up being killed by this battle… That’s the scariest part of the depression creeping back out of my gut and into my mind and spirit again. But without some help with my mom – without some rights and some meeting in the middle and some serious healthcare help to go along with the antidepressants I’m on and the therapy I’m working so hard in for myself (and some of my own behaviors I’m already working on changing for my own good), well – truth be told? I do fear for my life as much as I fear for hers tonight…