Unwell

I am not well. Physically, I’m fine; I don’t have a cold or anything antibiotics will fix. Inside, I don’t feel right. My thought processes and emotions seem to have a life of their own.

Perhaps the day after Mother’s Day isn’t a good one to take emotional inventory. I sent my mother a card. It’s hard to find cards that aren’t for The Best Mother In The World Who Always Took Care of Me. Inevitably I purchase a card that’s in the “For Anyone” section – a nice picture of flowers and a wish for a nice day. Why do I even send a card, you might ask. It’s just easier to send a card, with its empty sentiments, than it is to deal with the fallout of not sending one. Is that disingenuous? Dishonest even? You bet.

Yesterday we took D’s Mom out for lunch and a bit of shopping. She is 85 and is feeling the brunt of her age. She has fairly advanced arthritis, but other than that is in pretty good health. She uses a walker to walk even the shortest of distances, and has a wheelchair for longer durations. She is also losing her hearing but hasn’t gotten to the point of needing a hearing aid (or maybe doesn’t realize how bad it’s getting), so you have to repeat a lot of the things you say to her. Everything is such a struggle for her. Getting the just-purchased sheet set out of the plastic zippered packaging was a 10-minute exercise. Half the time when I am around her I feel sad that her life is so difficult and painful, and the other half I am waffling between impatience and guilt for said impatience. Instead of taking every opportunity I have left to make our visits fun and interesting, I can’t stop thinking about her death. I know someday soon we will get that phone call and D’s world will come crashing down, and that makes me very sad too.

Next on the inventory list are my feelings about one of our dogs. He had two benign cysts removed from one of his front legs, and the incision was right near the wrist joint. After a week the vet decided the wound wasn’t healing with just a wrap and put on a split to keep the leg immobile, which required basically a soft cast to be built up around the split. We’ve taken him back twice now to have the wound looked at and today again they decided to re-do the split/cast and told me to bring him back on Friday. By then he will have been on antibiotics and a mild sedative for three weeks, not to mention having to wear what the vet calls an “e-collar”, better known as The Cone of Shame. He hasn’t been able to play fetch or even go outside in the sunshine for two weeks. If you knew this dog you’d know why we have to keep him mildly sedated – he LOVES his ball. It just breaks my heart to see him this way. We made the decision to have these cysts removed and now he’s been suffering for weeks. Good grief, maybe it’s a good thing we could never have kids – I’d be a basket-case all the time.

I feel like I’m withdrawing. I get headaches almost every day. I used to loathe all the time I’d spend by myself at home, now it’s all I want to do. If you’re not my husband I generally don’t want to be around you. When I go to the gym I have my iPod earbuds in even when I don’t have music playing, because I don’t want to interact with anyone. I’m sleeping a lot, more than I need to. I can’t get excited about anything, despite the facts that the new job at the financial consulting company is going great and we have two vacations planned this summer. I can keep up a false front indefinitely, its how I got through the years I lived at home. I guess that’s what scares me.