Healing Overload

Dementia sucks.

I’m so scared. I am not responsible enough to care for someone with this condition. I don’t want to do this. I want to scream in desperation.

I feel so helpless. Yet I am the one who has to help. I have some people around me that contribute where they can, but she is so anxiously dependent on me that it is hard to even leave the house most of the time. I can’t travel to see my daughter anymore. I barely go into stores unless it is to take her to buy groceries. Every trip out is an ordeal.

I am ill equipped. I am lonely. I am angry. I feel like the whole situation is giving me mental and emotional whiplash. I get retraumatized by old forgiven wounds that she caused in the past because her memory causes her to rewrite history, completely invalidating so many of my experiences. Then I feel guilty because she can’t help it, and I think I should be stronger and more grateful for the time I have left with her. But honestly the woman, the mother, I knew is mostly gone, and I have no idea how long this stranger will linger with me.

I love her. I am trying to love me. It feels like I am losing the battle most days. I have to fold all my instincts up and place them into a tiny box and pretend I am ok with how I have to handle the day to day. I simply have to keep answering the same questions over and over. I have to resist my need to explain things in full detail because it just causes more confusion. I don’t correct things that she is wrong about because it is pointless, and insisting on doing so would only be for my benefit and would possibly hurt her only to then be forgotten anyway. I just go into obedient helpful daughter mode while being told some version of “I’m glad I have you”, “thank you”, “well yeah, I already know that” (even though she just asked), and “you did it wrong” simultaneously.

It is so frustrating because this isn’t some disease that could possibly go into remission or have treatment miraculously heal it. Hell, she refuses to see a doctor for us to even know exactly what kind of dementia she has. Different kinds of dementia have wide and varied timelines that are pretty unpredictable. There’s goodish days and bad days. I never know when there is going to be a decline or how steep it will be. I simply take it one day at a time, knowing that it will only get worse.

I am in constant flux about when, what, and how to make decisions for another human being. What choices do I make without consulting her? What choices do I involve her in? Did she eat today, or do I need to prepare food because she has forgotten how to comprehend doing that on her own? I literally had to remove her from getting any electronic communications from her bank even though I have to get them in order to make sure everything stays in order. It causes her so much stress to get a text or email, yet she refuses to let me make her phone more elderly user friendly and can’t stop going from app to app to settings to look at every single thing in the phone, none of which she understands or ever remembers seeing before.

I’m sorry. I am just ranting because I did not know any of this would be this way. I hope someone reads this and feels seen because I rarely do. I was unprepared, but even if I was, I don’t think it would be easier. There are just so many aspects and layers to this whole thing.

I heard a therapist say the other day “you can’t heal while you are still in the midst of your trauma.”. So here’s to surviving today’s trauma in order to have the opportunity to heal in the future.