Lately I’ve been caught in a strange vortex of hope and dread, oscillating between moments of genuine happiness and a sensation of bleak stasis–each day like the day before, carrying this numb, hollow ball inside, plodding along through the hours, doing nothing important, nothing meaningful, nothing significant.
Have I ever done anything significant? I suppose I should give myself some credit for getting Angelic Daughter through the worst of her grief, then the pandemic, and now the success of coaxing her to agree to a few activities just to give her a chance to talk to humans other than me. I’ll give myself that.
And there are moments of happiness when I look forward to the day, coming soon, when I will “graduate,” as Angelic Daughter says, from work.
But that little burst of joy is immediately smothered by dread. The fear that I don’t really have enough saved to retire. The anxiety about getting Angelic Daughter prepared for a different living situation, which she is completely unmotivated to consider. The worry that I’ll loose this mortal coil before I know she’s safely settled, and before she’s ready.
OK, one thing at a time, old girl, I tell myself. Get the taxes filed. Apply for Medicare. Buy the supplemental plan. Do the Swedish death cleaning. Finish a novel.
I hosted two MeetUps this weekend. The first featured descriptions of expensive and fabulous travels (plus the disasters that occurred during and after), and both involved discussions of neurotypical adult children off living their own lives, grandchildren, and caregiving for elderly parents.
The fabulous travels look unlikely for me in my upcoming “graduation” (retirement), unless I can make arrangements for someone I trust to stay with Angelic Daughter or for her to stay with such a person. Plus, where’s that money coming from? No luxury European rail adventures for me, no Mediterranean cruises.
My caregiving years are mercifully behind me but that doesn’t keep me from beating myself up every day about how I could have done it better, the things I should have said, how I could have been a better advocate. The fog of it all, the grief leading up to the grief, and my damn OCD brain constantly worrying about whatever I was doing, trying to help, trying to love, and certain I was screwing it up. No matter what I did, I’d be certain I screwed it up.
I will never have grandchildren, either. I suppose at least some of my feelings of dread stem from having no idea what would happen if I became incapable of taking care of myself. Where’s that help coming from?
Not that I need it right now, mind you. I’m fine and dandy. Have all the recommended scans and tests lined up (this is the last time I’m putting myself through it, though, unless the results dictate otherwise). I put on more holiday weight than I should have, but my clothes fit OK and I’m still lifting my dumbbells and doing my squats without a problem (unless needing a heavier set of dumbbells is a problem).
Angelic Daughter has taken to napping after lunch, leaving me clickety-clicking away at my work laptop until logoff time. There is something very calming about working in a quiet house, knowing she’s upstairs, safe and sound, asleep.
And then I queue up my “cryin’ songs” playlist, and “things fall apart, the center cannot hold.” The tears start as I look up at the picture of Mike I keep in the hutch above my desk, and I enter a fruitless loop (HA!) of “shoulda, woulda, couldas” that get me nothing but more regrets about time we’ll never have and things I’ll never do.
That then morphs into anger at myself for caving in to my Mom’s relentless criticism, her single-minded focus on squelching my dreams with her “you can’t do that!s” and her devotion to tearing me down, instead of building me up. Every time I hear some Oscar winner or reality show singing competition champion credit their Mom’s unconditional support, I get pissed off. But I’m tired of being angry at my Mom.
So I resign myself to things as they are. OK. So this is the life I partly chose, and that partly just happened. Deal with it, I tell myself.
A resident pair of cardinals showed themselves today, out the window toward my dormant raised beds in back of the house. It looks like they’re already getting started building a nest. I’m not ready for spring, when we’ve barely had a winter this year. “Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.”
But the birds will keep building their nests. And I’ll keep muddling through, grasping those little moments of joy when they come – the few minutes in the car when I get to sing along with tunes I choose, instead of Angelic Daughter’s lightning round of changing the radio stations constantly. The sound of her singing in the front room when I’m working in the morning. A good bowl of blueberries.
I have learned to appreciate those little things, as one must when the big dreams and the life you imagined for yourself are reduced to dust and ashes. Time to go hoist some dumbbells and do some squats.
“Strike the bell and turn the glass,” as Captain Jack Aubrey would say. Sail on. “There’s not a moment to lose.”
Trying to keep the wind at my back, I remain,
your muddling, waffling, wavering, oscillating, up, down, and all around,
Ridiculouswoman
I, too, have a “Crying Songs Playlist,” songs that I know will make me cry. I rarely play it, though. I save it for those rare occasions when I really want to cry, like when a friend dies. There’s an old expression, “You are what you eat.” What we feed our mind also changes us dramatically. We’re all different, but I play my “Happy Songs Playlist” far more often than my “Crying Songs Playlist.”
Every day I repeat five affirmations that I wrote. Here’s one of them I call The Road to Happiness.
Happiness is something you’ll find
That must first exist within your mind,
Because if you don’t find it there,
Then you won’t find it anywhere.
It’s easy to get to this emotion,
Without a guru on a mountain or a yacht on the ocean.
To find true happiness, here’s where to begin.
Put a smile on your face and just let it sink in.
Worry for your daughter is of course front and center in your mind. I don’t know what programs are available in Ohio since my daughter wants to remain in NY state as long as the good support she has there is working for her. It is hard to picture a future without concrete structures to build on. I hope your reaching out to the world around you will bring new ideas and people to support her needs..I hear you confronting that internalized mother voice and reframing it to the present day. Yes! you are doing as well as you possibly can under your current circumstances and yes! you are successfully tackling one issue at a time. I worry about the birds already building nests i in February but it is more springlike here than not and perhaps they and the emerging tulips know something I don’t know. Perhaps the universe knows more than we know and everything is moving along in an order that I can only surrender to. I am glad you are finding joy in the small things- I try to write them down every day or at least make note of them when they come as they always do. A jar of joyful scraps of paper on a gray day goes a long way to change my tune.🎵
I totally get the grieving part. Grieving for the life you wish you had, you almost had, you wanted to have, but didn’t. Being a carer makes it even harder. I have a good friend who has an autistic daughter in her 20s. It took a great deal of time, it seemed, but she found her a group home. There, she made friends. It helped my friend immensely…although the process wasn’t easy. She, too, lost her husband and had found herself in a place she didn’t expect. Bit by bit she managed to gain her social life back. It’s not perfect, but it’s improving to the point where she has at least some time to take a vacation with friends (nothing extravagant, mind you), or a day or two to do something she likes.
I was a carer for my parents, my husband and my son. The parents died, the husband left me for a younger woman and my son grew up and left the nest. Then I was alone with no one as well. Oh, man, did it take a loooonng time to find my way again. But I did. Not completely there yet, but I’m on a path now.
From what I’ve been reading in your blog over the years, you’ve made some nice strides in that direction. Winter is a gloomy time. January always sucks. Your mom can’t make criticisms about what you do or think anymore. If nothing else, that’s something to smile over. We’ve all made decisions that, in retrospective, make us crazy. The past is bridge going backwards, leading to nowhere. Be kind to yourself. You are making friends. Don’t judge yourself by what you perceive others think. Take each day as it comes, with an eye to the future of good things to come. Because they will, I promise. They have for me, and they will for you, too.
Thanks, wise words!