Warning: self pity ahead… At the start of the year I started a ‘Happy Box’. It was for me to place a record of each happy event in, so at the end of the year I could look back and remember special times.
I look back at 8 months of this year and know I have less than 10 items in my ‘Happy Box’. If I’d created a ‘Sad Box’ I would have had over 200 items and I’d have to have gotten a bigger box!
As your caring responsibilities increase your ‘friends’ decrease. You can only refuse so many invitations before they just stop coming. You are no longer exciting, you have nothing meaningful to discuss except your Ma’s medical conditions and your latest fight with bureaucracy. You start to become invisible or rather you start to just disappear. Your world revolves around work, and trying to keep your job, to caring for your loved one. It’s hard to find the energy to hang onto the people you need the most.
Meaningful conversations disappear… I used to love having a spirited discussion on just about any topic. It didn’t matter, as long as it was an exchanging of different ideas. As time goes by, communication between you and your friends decreases until you suddenly realise you’ve dropped off their radar and you can hardly find the energy to fix the problem. And so you move on, a little bit sadder, and sorry for their absence from your life. After all, there isn’t any other choice.
In the last few days Ma has alternatively slipped between paranoia and hallucinations to moments of complete lucidness. I slip between moments of joy, when she is with me, to absolute despair when she’s not. The roller coaster continues…
aged carer experience 