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A Walking, Talking, Robot

My elderly mother is reasonably stable now. Of that I am glad.

But this entire summer has been a futile, demoralizing, and desctructive one as far as my own health and psyche is concerned. I am not sure how to even discuss or describe it. When I can think of nothing else, it seems a list helps me sort out all this crap:

1. My elderly mother's two major (the second one extremely stressful) hospitalizations. Both made time and day-to-day routines go topsy turvy. Both drained and depleted energy from my soul. The second hospitalization was ten times more harsh than the first because of her harsh and wretched cursing me out repeatedly. Even though she does not remember any of it now, it still hurts. Even though I realize it was due to her medicine/illness, it still hurts.

2. My wife is in what is best described as a rather late onset menopause. She had been slowing for quite a while, so we had presumed those earlier years were menopause. Wrong. The nastiness and the vehemence when she gets into a "mood".... it cuts away my very soul. Again, I know physiologically it is a result of hormone changes. I understand that intellectually.... yet, I do not need or require or deserve to be ripped a new rectum, nor do I need to be denegrated or demoralized. ESPECIALLY WHEN I DIDN'T DO ANYTHING WRONG.

3. Illness in children. Be they adults or not, it still hurts like hell when your kid of any age gets hurt. This summer, my oldest son was in an accident and received a skull fracture. The worry and fear felt, the pain and anguish that permeates every bone, muscle, and sinew. He has made very good progress, but we will worry still for several more weeks for a final resolution of the fracture.

4. Pressures from a bunch of wonderful "eager beaver" type students wanting to get involved in research with me. These students, normally just what I want, are instead only an added stress and worry in my life. I feel the rest of my day-to-day life only serves to make me seem inept and incapable, and so I feel shame and frustration at my work refuge as well.

Please do not think I am over reacting. This has been constant.... a continual rotation of horrors throughout the entire summer. Menopause, Elderly Mother's Illness, Menopause, Son's Accident, Menopause, Elderly Mother's Second Illness, Menopause, and on and on and on.

I am depressed, and angry, and find no joy in life. I miss me (as I stated before), I miss having even the illusion of control over my day-to-day activities. I miss being a professor.... for instead I have become a caregiver for an elderly woman, a menopausal woman, a son in an accident, and a bunch of very needy students.

Who am I? Do I ever get a life back? Do I ever get to feel back to where I was... my "norm" where life seems to have a modicum of reliability, where I feel loved, where I feel I can contribute? I do not know.... I am truly beginning to doubt it. Thinking about nothing, feeling nothing, expecting nothing... all those things help in the short term.... but it is so easy to fallout of soothing lack of thought back into thought... thought that includes hopes and dreams and desires.... all of which will only become smashed under foot again by those whom I love... yet they do not get or understand this. I have told them, I have had crying seesions, I have had arguments... all to no avail.

If I could just avoid any hope, any plan, any goal, and any desire in life, I could cope. That is why I need to simply become a walking, talking, robot. Subjugate my soul, my well-being, my life so as to keep the family going, all the while I slowly die inside.

PipeTobacco