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I’m done, too…. Have been for quite some time now. I think it hit me when I worked so hard to repair a friendship and support the person’s new life not realizing or fully accepting that we weren’t really friends at all until I was accused of “stalking” because I added the person’s new boyfriend as a friend on a Facebook “without asking permission.”

Who the hell asks permission to be friends with a friend’s boyfriend if they are truly friends, especially when they are 30+ years older than you and it is extremely clear that you have zero interest in drama and only have an interest in getting to know and support people?

That experience taught me that it is very rarely about you but almost always about some insecurity or issue that someone else has when they do something completely ridiculous like that. I’d done nothing but prove myself forgiving, trustworthy and kind up to that point but that day, in the blink of an eye, I was done.

I was angry, and I was hurt. I’d done nothing but listen to this friend go on about not wanting to disappoint anyone by going on with life and had been encouraging and, I hope, uplifting about it all. I gave a hundred percent to making an effort to support this person’s new life and to encourage them to live it however they saw fit to live it, not worrying about the judgments of others.

I felt insulted and used as a human being. And, ultimately? It had very little if anything to do with me. It had to do with that person’s own lack of trust, whether in me or the boyfriend or whomever. It had to do with their lack of actual concern about me, and that day that lack of concern slapped me in the face out of nowhere.

That day, I didn’t give up on the person, I finally saw my own self worth and let that person go, like I should have done all the other times that person had walked out of my life, instead of trying so hard to make what was not meant to be in my life work in some way.

This post really spoke to me. Sometimes you’re gonna love or care for people at different levels and in different ways that are never going to truly care about you. Sometimes, they’re gonna say they do but their actions are actions that speak more loudly to their lack of care and concern than the other way around.

The following re-blogged post was me that day, and every day since in any situation where I feel used or mistreated, and I didn’t even realize it until this moment. I have learned to truly be done without questioning when my heart says it’s time.

It feels good to be done.

Sweet Serenity Blogg

I’m done holding the door open for people and wondering what I’ve done wrong instead of realizing it’s their loss.

I’m done trying to give people a reason to stay when in reality, I shouldn’t want someone who doesn’t want to be here.

I’m done investing time and energy into people who just don’t care.

I’m done picking myself apart for people who only ever took everything I had to give and left once they realized I didn’t have more in me.

I’m done saying sorry to people who should be the one apologizing.

I’m done letting guilt eat away at me when I shouldn’t

I’m done fixating upon my flaws and trying to win people over when there are so many people who wouldn’t like me if I changed.

I’m done pretending to be someone I’m not simply to fit the mold of their expectations. 

I’m done trying so…

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I have spent a lot of time thinking about this in the last couple of days:  At this time in my life it’s not even about ups or downs or moods…it’s about bad days and good days. People say that you can choose to have a good day just by having a positive thought when you wake up, or by praying or meditating when you wake up – all sorts of different things like that, usually involving gratitude for something, even just life itself. I find that extremely difficult some days, and completely untrue on those days, as witnessed by my past couple of posts.

I don’t think that the power of positive thinking is always enough. There is nothing I can EVER do to change things with my mother. I can not cure dementia. I can not change her. I can not change the situation as it is at this time. Same thing with grief – I can not change the fact that my father and my best friend are dead. They are not coming back. In those instances, people will say it’s down to acceptance and that is true. I can get behind that, to some extent, although as most of you know I don’t believe in such a thing as an end to grief…

I was listening to music earlier while I was folding laundry and this song came on called, “Breathe Me,” by Sia. It hit me in my gut like a bad piece of chicken. We can take responsibility all we want to, we can take action all we want to, but sometimes it just hurts. Sometimes we are just lost. Sometimes we are just hurt. Sometimes we are just afraid. Sometimes we are all of those things and more, all at once, and we are completely overwhelmed. That’s where I’ve been.

Yesterday a friend of mine told me, “Now I’m gonna say this and I just want you to listen to me. I don’t want you to use (anything) as a crutch. You’re STRONG. You walk around with a shaved head because you want to! You don’t care what people think…” She went on… So last night I laid in bed, in my pitch black and freezing cold bedroom trying to stave off an impending migraine (unsuccessful, by the way), and I let all she’d said float around in my head. And ultimately, two things stood out to me.

I do have a crutch. It is alcohol. And it is a waste of time – it doesn’t accomplish anything positive, except momentary lapses in the ability to feel things. And, strength is relative. People see different things as examples of strength. The fact this person, who has been through more than I ever imagined when I first met her, completely rebuilt her life and walks around with such an air of confidence even my shaved head is in awe – for this person to say to me, “you are stronger than this. You ARE STRONG,” humbled me in a way that I couldn’t understand. Of course, that led to more thoughts and more considerations and a whole lot of writing in my journal…but I fell asleep knowing that I did not want to drink today.

And I didn’t.

And I don’t know why. I don’t know what changed.

I do know that by lunch time tomorrow I’ll be craving alcohol like the drought ridden fields crave rain…and I don’t know what I’ll do about that. Probably text or call her, or my cousin, or my therapist…maybe go to the feed store and hang out. I don’t know. But I do know this much – if you really want to make a change, you will do it.

I haven’t smoked in over 24 hours, haven’t had a drink in over 24 hours, and the only reason is because I just wanted to see if I could. I didn’t tell anyone until later in the day today, when I was at the feed store. I didn’t keep it to myself because I was afraid I would fail. I kept it to myself because I only wanted it to be about me and what I wanted.

I don’t know what tomorrow will bring. But I do know that I don’t feel the same way I felt a few days ago when I was battling the suicidal ideation and the complete lack of regard for my life, my health, or my Be-ing. I don’t know what changed… I think mostly, it was being seen, and being cared for, and being spoken to in a way that wasn’t at all what I expected.

I always said I would never allow another “Dorie” into my life – or at least that there would never be another her. I think I may have changed my mind…or my heart… You never know who is going to walk into your life, or when.

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Therapy used to be the bane of my existence. Now that I have the best therapist on the planet (for me) via BetterHelp, it’s not so bad. The whole thing revolves around my time schedule – which can be pretty chaotic – and finally finding (or being gifted by the universe?) a therapist who GETS ME is priceless.

That said, it doesn’t change my thoughts or feelings. It helps me to express them in a safer environment than any other, but the reality is that my kind of depression doesn’t ever really go away. It’s up and down, it doesn’t flip but it rises and falls. And with my mom? It’s basically a pit of hell.

I think the thing that brings me down the most is watching this all play out and not being able to do a damned thing about it. Dementia is like that. No matter what you do, it’s gonna progress. Maybe slowly, maybe quickly. Maybe meds help. They don’t if you’re fighting with the person to even take them.

Mostly, the whole situation makes me both miss AND respect my dad so much more. Sometimes I am so angry that he is gone. Most of the time time I’m just sad. Sad at a level that isn’t just melancholy or blue, but at a level that is a thunderstorm – dark clouds and pouring rain, raging winds and thunder in my head. Sad at a level that I can barely breathe through these days.

But here I am. That counts for something, I suppose. Even still, I feel so useless to everyone around me. I feel useless to my mom because she won’t LET me be useful to her. I feel useless to everyone else because, well, depression. I just stay in my room, and read. I cry but I don’t know why as it doesn’t really let anything out. I wish that someday I would be able to find the words to describe this experience just in case I make it past it and have an opportunity to help someone else.

I hope you all have a pleasant weekend. I appreciate your correspondences and your kindness more than you know. You help me more than you know.

All the love,

C.

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Today someone asked me a whole lot of questions about different things. The one that stuck out the most for me was about how I felt about dealing with the situation with my mother, and if I felt like a bad daughter. It didn’t take more than a nano second for me to yell, “HELL NO I don’t feel like I’m being a bad daughter – I think what’s going on is that I’m sick and tired of being treated like one.”

It’s triggering many things, from depression and hurt in general, to bad dreams and weird memories from my childhood… Not that life isn’t difficult for all of us at some point in time, and all the time for some people, but that’s the thing I’m feeling the most. It’s just all so difficult. I told my mother’s doctor just last week I no longer wanted to be her guardian (something I’ve been fighting to be named as for over a year) and that I was willing to lose the land and even my horses at this point if it meant that she was cared for. I feel like I just can’t deal with it anymore.

As far as drinking – I shared a while back that I was concerned about how much I was drinking. Truth be told I’ve been using alcohol as a sort of escape for a long time, just not to this level. I had quit for a while but I just picked it right back up because, well, in the simplest of terms, fuck it. I know it’s not the answer and I know it’s not healthy (at a number of levels) but right now I really just don’t care.

I really don’t care about anything right now… I feel very much like I could hide away and stay gone for a very long time and be perfectly OK with that. I really can’t even find my words today – which is also unusual.

I’m angry. I’m depressed. I’m not well. And honestly, I don’t care. I’m ok with not being ok. And right now I’m ok with drinking myself to death. I don’t care if that sounds selfish to some, or if it’s something others can’t understand. Raw me here. I don’t want to walk in these shoes anymore. I don’t really want to walk at all. And I’m not even writing this under the influence of alcohol. I’m also not writing it for attention. I write. That’s it.

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This past week or so has been so crazy. I know – I’ve already written about that more than once. But tonight I want to write about how old I feel, and it’s BECAUSE of not just this past week (while the majority of it is) but of being my mother’s caregiver in general for the past few years.

In itself, caregiving gets old. But the way it makes you FEEL… Argghh! There are days when it doesn’t feel “like a gift to be able to care for one who once cared for you.” There are days that I don’t feel “grateful for the chance to give back.” Pfft. Let’s be real – it’s emotionally nasty. It’s a nasty, dirty, wreck of an emotional job and it SUCKS a LOT, a lot of the time.

That said, I still push on. As of now, as you all know, I don’t have any other choice.

In updates to my lasts posts about my mom, I’ve gone in to check on her and twice found her in the floor since those posts. There have been a couple of other issues that have come up (financial issues), and all she wants to talk about is going to buy a new computer. She doesn’t even have the Internet right now. She has an iPad. I explained this. She doesn’t NEED a computer, she needs to worry about us getting other issues sorted – namely her CARE. It’s just like she doesn’t NEED, nor can she have, her car.

She doesn’t – she can’t, or she refuses to even meet me halfway and try to – live in the reality that, as sad and frustrating and angering and annoying and depressing and ridiculous as it all is, especially for her, her life is not, can not, and will never be again what it used to be. I know that is awful for her…but it’s emotionally exhausting for me, too…

And you can’t ever make that make sense to them. You just can’t. It’s a losing battle to try, so you lie to them. You tell them, “maybe when you heal from this fall.” Then you say, “maybe we should give it just a couple more months.” Then you say, “maybe once we get the car fixed,” even though the car is not even broken. You make shit up. You LIE to your parent, even though as a child you were beaten for such nonsense. Like, BEATEN. With a hickory switch.

The role reversals are hard. They make no sense to my brain some days. Some days, despite the fact that my mother was never in my life like this for me, I want her to be my mother and hug me and tell me it will be OK and say comforting things like, “we’ll get through this,” or, “your daddy would be so proud of how much you’ve done here, and that you’ve worked so hard to get this back to a working farm.” It’ll never happen. It wouldn’t happen even if my mother didn’t have dementia/mental health issues. But as a child, I DO wish it would.

My life exhausts me. I get up early in the mornings, I take care of mama and the horses and chickens and everything. I come home and take care of my kiddo, we do things, whether it’s school or playing outside or whatever. I do housework and yard work at the neighborhood house. Then, after whatever other running around I’ve done all day (bank, post office, etc.), it’s back to the rinky dinky little farm I’m trying to build and mama’s, to either bring her home or to make sure she still IS at home.

By the time I sit down at dark, I feel like a little old lady who can hardly crochet anymore because of her aching, arthritic hands – and I only have slight arthritis/carpal tunnel – when I try to write or type these things out of myself. I feel like a firefighter who has been battling a blaze all day long in the hot summer sun. I feel like a marathon runner who has been training all day. I feel like a doctor who has been running all day long to go from this patient to that, this hospital to that office to this building to that, trying to make sure everyone is being cared for and check to see how they are and what they need and what changes need to be made, etc.

Yet, I’m nothing so achieved as a firefighter or marathon runner or doctor. I’m just little old me, wearing myself down to the core of my sanity and watching it start to spindle apart backward, one twist at a time coming off the spool and piling up in a big ball at my feet. Then I get tangled up in that ball, and start tripping over my own delusions and disillusionment and exhaustion and the anxiety and panic start to build and then the depression grabs on, you know, just for kicks, and I end up sitting in the pile of sanity that I used to have, having a complete come apart.

Does any of this make any sense? I don’t know if it does or not, if you’ve never been in a situation like this or at least somewhat similar to this. But I have a hunch that most of us have felt this way at least once – maybe more than once – just because…well, LIFE.

Life is a gift. Yes, it is. And I am so grateful to be alive. I just wish I felt it. I do, sometimes…but I fear I’m wearing that escape thin, as well. Perhaps I should just dwell on writing about the life I wish to live rather than chasing after one I can’t have right now…and another one I know I never will have (because some things are just not meant to be and not gonna happen…you know?). I’ll keep making music, and sometimes sharing it. I’ll keep playing with photos. I’ll keep hugging my son and my doggos and my gentle giants. Playing with my chickens, and with fire.

I’ll stay on the outskirts of my own chaos for as long as I can before I let it suck me in. I will make no promises on how long that will be.

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Everything feels so upside down. Today’s doctor’s visit with my mother didn’t go well. I’ve just about gone crazy, and I’m pretty sure that trend is going to continue until I do.

People will tell you not to worry and that things happen as they are meant to but when nearly your whole life is at risk, plus the literal life of someone else if you don’t risk your own situation (in my case, my little farm), it’s really hard to keep your sanity.

It’s really hard to keep your faith in a Creator that doesn’t seem to be paying attention and in a system that has proven over and over again it doesn’t give a single fuck.

It is becoming very clear to me just how emotionally draining caring for someone can be when you’re doing it on your own – and by that I mean not a finger of help from anyone else being lifted, including so called medical professionals.

Caregiver depression is a very real thing, made much more difficult by being invisible not only to those who know you but also by the one you are caring for. I truly don’t know how long I can continue on like this mentally…

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Yesterday was the worst day. I don’t know why, but life always seems to implode (or explode) with everything at once. Yesterday I battled with my own body and began to battle again with my mind and my thoughts. I laid down in the afternoon to nap and I missed a phone call from my mom.

About two hours later I was awakened by a phone call from the hospital. We rushed up there and were told that she had been wandering again (not so much wandering as making more poor decisions, having it in her head that it was a good idea to walk 3 miles to a store, which she has attempted to do several times since the beginning of this year). She has so far not fallen on these little escapades but this time she made it about two or so miles before she did fall.

I believe that she passed out because she refuses to eat properly and she’s also very weak and feeble to begin with, so I am not surprised. I have begged her not to do this, making that very argument and explaining how dangerous it really is. In fact, the last time, a neighbor picked her up around the same place she fell yesterday and she was walking IN THE MIDDLE OF A TWO LANE ROAD with curves and fast traffic.

I also believe that she hit the pavement so hard that she had to have knocked herself out because she hit the pavement hard enough to bust her chin all the way across and knock all of her teeth out of line as well as broke two teeth. She has a major swollen bruise on her temple and severely bruised ribs as well as scrapes and contusions on her hands, arms and legs. Today she looks like she lost a fight with Mike Tyson.

I’m not sure how long she laid there before she called me because, again, I don’t feel like anybody could take a blow like that without being knocked out for at least a short period of time, but eventually she tried to call me and I was asleep. #guilt Three people passed by to offer help – she refused help so the first two just drove on without even calling an ambulance, while the third person refused to move her and called an ambulance but then left before the ambulance arrived.

There was at least a 40 minute time frame between the time that she fell and the time that an ambulance arrived which means that she laid on the side of the road (possibly in the road for a period of time) for that long miraculously not getting hit, robbed or otherwise hurt.

This is the final straw for me and I can no longer accept the fight that I have been fighting for so long to prevent her from living alone. I will no longer allow – regardless of the fight to come with her – her to live alone. I will be raising hell with the doctor and I will sue on my own if I have to for guardianship. I have had DHR on my mother‘s case for over a year and two months and still have had no appointment with a lawyer – nothing.

The state is a waste of time and the American medical system is a waste of time. The doctor at the ER understood my concern and tried to find a way to hold my mother for at least 72 hours whether it be a psych eval or a need to be monitored physically but because she answered three or four questions correctly like “what is your name,” “what year is it,” and, “who is the president?” and because her vitals were good and her test results were negative for any breaks or internal damage, she could not be held against her will.

Now, go back and read this story again and tell me why, just because she says “I’m OK,” she could not be held. What kind of decision making and what kind of serious ridiculous danger does a person need to put themselves in – she is clearly a danger to herself and needs to be evaluated – yet there is no ability to hold her? She needs to be given the proper care and I do not have the power to make that happen because I have no legal power when it comes to my mother.

She refuses to offer me any leniency or cooperate with me and I am done with being put in the position of a doctor telling me “you need to take care of your mom” and me knowing I need to do certain things to take care of my mom, but yet being pushed away and out of the picture by my mom and the doctors – it’s a total cluster fuck and I am about to lose my mind.

If I thought I was losing my mind a year ago, well I had no idea how bad it could really get – and I know it’s only going to get worse.

Hello depression, extreme and uncontrollable anxiety and overwhelm. Welcome back.