It’s been a tough few nights for me, doing the night shift with mum. She doesn’t sleep much and last night was particularly brutal, she has kept me up for three nights in a row. From 2am in the morning she was shouting and screaming at me and made me cry. I ended up calling my husband back home in tears.
It’s moments like this that I think to myself why the fuck (excuse my language) did I fly thousands of miles to look after her and get verbal abuse?
I don’t actually do this so I can spend time with my mum. I do it to support my family, to give them much needed respite and rest from being her full time carers.
The life of a carer is hard, even if you have a good relationship with the person you are caring for.
Caring drains your energy, your sleep, you constantly worry and think you aren’t doing enough. You pour so much of yourself into caring for someone with dementia or a long term illness and it hits you hard. My best friends are in similar situations, we are broken, we are tired and we message each other and leave voice notes to hang in there, that it will not always be like this.
I know those of you who have a great relationship with your parents will find it shocking that I have no love for my mum. I have been scared of her since I was two when she began her lifetime of hate and cruelty towards me after my dad died.
My mum has had mental health issues for many decades. It has never been treated properly, she refused to admit anything was wrong even though all the signs were there.
My mum makes my anxiety skyrocket, and yet I have to fight through my own emotions and symptoms to make sure she is safe, clean, comfortable and knows we are with her so that she might possibly get some sleep, no matter how fleeting.
This is so hard.
Last night I felt like giving up, but I can’t. This is one of my biggest life challenges, I will get through this.
I have to, for our family’s sake.
健康 Jiànkāng 