Entry 4 – November 14, 2024
Today was an especially difficult day as a caregiver. I’m losing my sense of self and I’m falling into a very dark place.
Monday marks one week since returning home after the second hospital visit. Although I’m happy to be sleeping in my own bed, I’m emotionally exhausted. I don’t think I’m strong enough to keep doing this alone, but I always have a tendency to isolate myself when things get hard.
Illness seems to press a wedge between me and others. As if this is happening to me, and I am being punished.
If I’m being punished, I don’t know what I have done to deserve this fate.
It’s a Wednesday night and I’m making pasta for one. Standing in the kitchen waiting for my water to boil. Watching the tiny little bubbles form on the bottom of the small pot and rise to the surface to dissipate into steam. I can feel the heat on the back of my hands.
This time of year would usually be filled with gym sweat followed by dining room conversations and a casual stroll around the block in the brisk autumn breeze. I’d give anything for that kind of evening tonight.
Ryan has lost confidence in his body. I see progress in his movement daily, but he’s convinced it’s over and taking too long to heal. In a week, he’s got an interview for a job with a company that he’s been trying to get in with for years. He doesn’t think he will be able to sit or stand for the three hour zoom interview. His unemployment ends in 5 weeks. Adding him to my insurance is $500/month.
It seems that all I’m doing is complaining and spinning my wheels in the mud. I feel like a burden for even speaking about this, but I don’t know what else to do.
The world is on fire now, but mine has been ashes for weeks.
I genuinely don’t know what to do. Without a doubt, I have cried as much and as hard as I did when Kris died. At least I have Ryan here, enough to tell him all the things I couldn’t bring myself to tell Kris. They say that love is left in the unsaid and missing, but I don’t want him to ever feel like he’s alone or unloved. It would be too much to make the same mistake twice in the same lifetime.
With everything that is in me, I cannot give up no matter how hard this gets.
The past few weeks have given me a lot of time to reflect between the intermittent panic. Maybe it’s partially sleep deprivation, or maybe it’s the constant feeling of someone needing me at all hours of the day. Either one would have reaffirmed my feelings to choose team no babies. I don’t want anyone to depend on me, except for me. I’ve also realized that I’m clinically depressed and I probably always have been.
A friend recommended I try a sleep aid, because my insomnia is back. The one I decided to ask my doctor for a sample of was also an antidepressant. I’ve never felt more like myself. It could be that for the first time in weeks, I got a good night’s sleep. However, I’ve had good sleep in the past and it’s never made me this productive or clear headed.
Good sleep doesn’t make the crisp autumn air feel less lonesome when you’re walking through your favorite path without your favorite person. The echoes of the crunchy leaves are louder than they should be. The wind is colder than it should be. Everything seems to be a little less bright and a little more dull. Yes, this could be temporary because Ryan is still bedridden, but something tells me that this ache has been here for longer than this crisis.
There is somehow a familiar pain of loss resurfacing with every day we face this challenge, and the longer it presses on, the lonelier life becomes. The lonelier I become, and the more used to it I feel. As if this is my new life, and I should accept it.
How many times must I be broken and reformed?
As many as it takes, I reckon.