....and repeat

When my father was ill and my life was centered around caring for him, in retrospect I had something of a blinkered and perhaps naive view of the future it would seem now.

I suspect that in an effort to cope when the going got tough I cultivated a mentality that didn't see beyond his inevitable death, I was completely focused on the day to day practicalities of the care regime and on trying to keep him as comfortable as possible whilst supporting my mother and I just didn't look beyond that.

Looking back I think I imagined that whilst we all dreaded my fathers demise, as any family would, somehow, once it was over my life could return to some semblance of normality, yes, we would grieve and we would feel the loss acutely but among that I assumed I would be freer to live my own life, to try to find a job and begin to rebuild myself some kind of acceptable way of life.

As it transpires that assumption was pretty naive or ill informed on my part for my mother, who very sadly seems not to have coped with the loss of my father as we had imagined, now takes at least as much caring for as my father did, albeit in a very different manner.

It would be unfair of me to go into details here, aside from myself my family are very private people and I have to respect that but since my fathers death, things for me have become even more challenging, as they have for my siblings, but it is me who is here 24/7 coping with the aftermath and me who's life once again is on hold.

That may all sound pretty harsh and selfish to an onlooker and perhaps it is but believe me, unless you have been where I am at right now, you have no idea.... or at least I didn't. We all hear about those that are carers by default for family members, we see the support groups advertised, we think we know but we really don't.

My life is completely taken over again, it is stressful and heartbreaking and frustrating.... but maybe it was better that I was blinkered when my dad was dying in seeing this coming, because I suspect if I hadn't been I couldn't have coped at all.

We are as a family attempting to improve the situation but as with so many of these things it's a long slow process with an as yet unknown outcome.

I feel like all I do is moan lately, grumble about 'my lot', I know I have been judged for it and I know people go through much greater difficulties in their lives but I am not a saint, very far from it, I am just another individual with my own weaknesses, my own foibles and my own dreams and if that makes me appear selfish or unable to cope very well at times then so be it but I defy anyone to live the last year of my life and not have a few moments struggling!

I am stuck for now in a mire I can't find a way out of, I have well meaning people assuming they know what's best and I have others making hurtful judgements of me which is less than helpful. I do have my low moments, I do lose my motivation at times and I'm sure I make mistakes but I am not superwoman and I don't need added pressures and upsets, I'm doing my best in the only way I know how, enough already!

Really, the option of packing a small rucksack, getting a cheap flight somewhere and just never coming back is sometimes becoming a very tempting prospect.