I’ve Been Avoiding You

Love, Guilt, and the Fear of Losing Myself While Caring for My Mother — The Soul Curriculum I Didn’t Sign Up For

I’ve been avoiding you. Avoiding writing. Avoiding emails.

I haven’t been my positive, optimistic self lately. I’ve lost my general awe of the small things that make me smile. The days feel dull and gray, a repetition of the day before. It’s winter so literally that’s true, but I mean more of how my life feels to me right now, like a colorless pallet. I have no real wisdom to share in the moment. Except, I can (must) do hard things. Oh wait, someone said that already.

Being a caretaker for my mom is taking its toll on me. I feel like she’s taken possession of my mind, body, and soul. I go to bed thinking about her, wake up thinking about her and manage her health and wellbeing during the day. Her negativity and anxiety have infused my pores and live deep in my cells. Smudging might help. An exorcism might help more.

She has anxiety and lives to worry, truly. The first call comes in every morning between 9 and 10. Dyanne, she proclaims, and then lists the things on her mind that come out like demands. Never a conversation. I soothe, placate, and provide solutions. I get a call back a short time later going over the same thing or a variation of it. She usually rejects every option I provide. At night I make dinner, eat, then sit down to watch the news, and like she sets an alarm, another call or two come in. Those are on the days I don’t go to see her.

My mom does not reason the way normal people reason. She is the queen of alternative facts. If she believes it to be so, then it is. The doctors say she should not live alone and shouldn’t be driving. Despite the evidence presented to her, she thinks she can live by herself. We just need to drop her off and forget about her, she says, she can manage. I ask how are you going to do that if you can’t drive? Well, I AM going to drive she says. Like dropping her off and forgetting about her is real option.

Or, she says, her sister can come and live with her. Her sister is 86 and not physically well. Mom doesn’t see this as a problem. My mom minimizes her problems. In fact, she says, she doesn’t have any and is completely healthy. Mostly she just can’t remember that she does have health issues. She covers her memory lapses by saying she doesn’t want to talk about them. She also doesn’t want to tell the doctor anything personal.

I’m paying bills, doing her taxes, and arranging her personal and health care. I make her decisions. When she must decide something, she says, I don’t know what you’re going to do. She is a full-time job. Where she ends and I begin got lost along the way.

I wish I could say I’ve navigated it with grace every day. I haven’t. Some days I feel like a well of compassion. Other days I feel trapped inside a life I didn’t choose. Most days, I am holding both at once, the sacred and the suffocating.

At times I feel resentment and grief. I want my old life back. And then feel the guilt and shame of even admitting that.

I know what I need to do psychologically and spiritually. Set intentions and manifest a mom who enjoys life more. Make decisions without emotions attached. Create boundaries like not always answering the phone and visiting when it works for me. Trust all is happening as it should and all will be well. Know this is scared work being a mama doula. While I know this is true, I also find it hard to mentally stay in this zone when she is throwing fire-tipped spears at me. I’m at the bottom of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. And I was to so close to self-actualization. Not really, but I’d like to think I had it going on.

It’s become a kind of soul classroom I never consciously enrolled in.

The soul curriculum I didn’t sign up for.

Mom gets angry and is argumentative. She’s never just happy to see me or excited about going to lunch or getting her hair done. There’s always a problem, and if I would just take her home, she could get everything done so much cheaper. She is relentless in her quest. There’s never a thank you, not that I need one, but it would be nice to feel appreciated. Just once.

A friend told me, remember, this is not who they really are. I told her that’s the problem. This is exactly who my mom is and how she has always been, amplified times 10. 0r, 100.

It’s been a year since my dad died. A year of taking care of her. And counting. This is not how I imagined things to be. I thought we would enjoy each other’s company and have the opportunity to get to know one another on a deeper level. Maybe even I would get some honesty and contrition for not being there for me growing up. That’s a lot to expect, I know. But at the very least I thought we would be laughing more. I need to laugh more.

Caretaking is disorienting like getting lost in the woods on a path you could have walked before with your eyes closed. It’s identity-shaking.

It’s forcing me to look at the different parts of myself. The duty-driven parts. The resentful parts. The grieving parts. The fiercely loving parts.

All of them asking to be held without judgment. I said in another piece that every self-judgment is a request from your soul for love. My soul is working overtime.

I’m back at the beginning reexamining the places where I abandon myself, the places where forgiveness, love and compassion are the only possible answers yet so hard to do.

It’s the soul curriculum I did not sign up for.

And now you know. I am not a Saint. I fall from Grace. I get angry back sometimes. I am not always as compassionate as I could be.

I am an imperfect daughter to an imperfect mother.