Marsia's Diary

Thanks so much Cate and Amy! It helps a lot to have someone understand!

I am really happy we will start couple's therapy in the end of July - I think it will help a lot. J doesn't understand the extent I am frustrated with my mom and really doesn't have a lot of time to dwell on it either. The crux of it is that I think it's utterly unfair that someone take such abysmal care of themselves and leave it to the next generation to take care of them. I am so mad about this - I told her and told her for probably 40 years this was what would happen and she laughed it off. And I need to stop taking her insulting behavior personally. If there is anything I learned from the Alzheimer's support group it is that that sort of behavior is not character assignation, it is a very scared person acting out of sorts and having messed up cognition. And the same can be said of my mom's personality before the Alzheimer's - she has always been like this with me, so I do need to get a better perspective. There's a video series people keep recommending to each other for coping with the bad behavior, and I need to sit down and watch it.

I think I am going to make some notes to go over with J about things coming up that we need to address about this - from dealing with someone who may not be able to give me legal consent soon (for health care and financial issues) because she will be too far gone, to how to address the hoard and how to deal with the fact that no one is allowed to touch it. That really, really stresses me out. A hoard organized by someone with dementia - there are worse things in life, but this one is really not a pleasant reality.

I think it helped my mom a lot bringing her on vacation - she is in much better shape physically and emotionally from going, but it really wiped me out. I have to start doing major stress relief and take that seriously so J and my daughter don't suffer from my stress, too.

I have to put an exercise schedule up - those really help me. And I have to find a way to feel that I can do this. J has really been a big help with my mom recently and I am utterly surprised. I need to start acknowledging that he really does care about me a lot to do things like he is doing.
 
All of the above is really good :grouphug: I am sending you lots of these for a while xoxo
 
Marsia said:
I really have to stop trying to explain myself to people when I am upset. I am just too emotional and the conversation usually goes very wrong.
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Maybe a simple: "I´ll explain later, I´m too frazzled right now and need to flee"? If you tell someone in a calm moment that you may use a phrase like that sometimes when things get too much they may thing it a little odd but they´ll likely accept it in the moment.
Marsia said:
I don't think I am the easiest person to live with as a partner because of my social anxiety, and so I need to be extra kind and patient with J.
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Or, you know, he needs to be extra kind and patient with you... How would you feel if J was in a wheelchair and he´d tell his best friend he needs to be extra kind and patient with you because it´s so hard for you to live with a disabled person? Wouldn´t it break your heart? For the record: I think we ALL need to be kind and patient with the people we love.
 
Can you spread the responsibility for you mother around a little? Do you have siblings or other family members who could help? How much can she still do on her own without help? At some point she will qualify for hospice, take that as soon as you can get it, I suggest talking with your local hospice now to see what the criteria are. We put both of my parents into hospice before they died, it was really helpful, my only regret is that we didn't do it sooner with my father.

Best of luck with it.
 
Thanks so much LaMa and Rob! I am having trouble wrapping my head around the idea that my social anxiety is like a disability, but I guess it is in a way. I think you are right about being patient with myself about it. It's hard because I have had it so long I just view it as a nuisance part of myself. This is what I would like to work on in therapy because I do think it could be cured at least partially, especially if I am not so hard on myself about it. I'll work on that!

Hi Rob, I am an only child and my mom's friends who helped her out are on the east coast where she lived before we moved her here with us, and they are now so old, they need help. She can still do a lot on her own, I mostly drive her everywhere like to grocery shop and to all her doctor's and therapy appointments, and take her out places so she gets exercise and intellectual stimulation. I also clean her house as much as she will let me and make healthy food for her sometimes if she is not being critical - if I start to do too much for her, she criticizes how I am doing things and is a big pain in the neck.

It's mostly that she lives in an adjoining part of the house, and if I walk by to our car to go somewhere and don't take her with me, she looks so sad and dejected, yet she is often rude and mean, so I need a break to do my own things and be happy. So I feel stuck in either neglecting her because she doesn't have her own life, or doing things so I get to have a life too. My husband J is helping more now - he takes her to speech therapy every week for memory therapy, and that helps a lot because he can get her to be positive and agree to things she won't do if I ask her. Mostly my problem is that we never got along, and I am 90% of her source of social interaction. My daughter does help with talking to her and showing her things on the computer, which I really appreciate.

I loved hospice when we used them for my grandmother. I will definitely do that when the time comes. What is so annoying is that I loved doing hospice with my grandma. She was sweet and nice to me and we got along so well, and it was tiring taking care of her, but it was also a joy. With my mom, I have a sense of dread because she does not see me as a person with feelings, so whatever mood she is in she just expresses without thought for others, and she is getting depressed and extra critical, and just unpleasant - well she was always like this, but now it's definitely worse. And it is in-between being nice and happy and her interesting normal self who I do like and feel sorry for.

Yesterday was so nice. I had planned to take my mom and daughter to Ikea to get some dome terrariums for my daughter's birthday. But my mom didn't feel well, so just me and my daughter went. We had a good time shopping and then window shopping in Palo Alto. Then we went to Stanford University to the Rodin Sculpture Garden where the Gates of Hell sculpture is, then to the bookstore which is phenomenal and I found fantastic art books. My daughter K found a penguin joke/comic book, and she adores penguins and loves comedy. We went to get a portabella mushroom sandwich at this nice old fashioned pub on campus, but we didn't quite have enough money to cover the tax on it, so K decided to go wading in the fountains for coins. She found a nice Chinese coin and some really cool bugs, which she saved for her collection. I rooted around in my purse and found enough quarters to get the delicious mushroom sandwich, which we had with cups of hot water because the person at the counter was not a native English speaker, and heard "tap water" as "hot water". We put ice in it and were happy. Then we walked to the New Guinea sculpture garden and got lost and ran into someone who knew the person who had the sculpture garden built. It was his master's thesis, and the university just gave him a piece of land, and he got all these incredible sculptors from New Guinea to come out and make an amazing garden with huge carved totem poles and massive carved lava rocks all done in amazing details. It's one of our favorite gardens, and was so nice to see again. So we got lots of walking in yesterday and had a blast. I feel a lot better!
 
:grouphug: - Just because, xoxo
What a wonderful day with your lovely, full of life daughter. I feel that your time spent with her & her alone is the best battery charge you could possibly get. I love how good you are for one another :beating:
PS Can you look the other way or "madly" look at your watch next time you want to go out on your own? You need this Marsia time. Reading your last post really made me smile. Take these moments, hon. Make them happen more often.
:grouphug: -one more for good luck!
 
Thanks for all the hugs and nice suggestions Cate and Amy! I think you are right - more outings and more fun together! And I can park in one spot which is a little harder to get out of (you have to listen hard for the cars you can't see come around the corner), but my mom can't see me go from there. I think I may park our car there more often! I do think that's a big part of the depression feelings I get - I had a 7pm curfew in high school and I feel similarly with my mom living here - she is watching and I can't go have a life. I think you nailed it!
 
We celebrated Independence Day with friends yesterday. I made a surprisingly good Mac and cheese with chick pea noodles and also ribs and Ceasar salad. It was at my daughter's friend's house by the ocean, and we walked down and watched all the illegal fireworks at the beach and it was better than an official fireworks show. It was their first year living there, so no one knew it would be that spectacular. The wife is very artistic, and her daughter loves to draw, and the husband plays guitar, so we'll have them and our other mutual friends over for a game night and polymer clay baking night and also we can do some music. I need to mow the path through the meadow so we can all take a walk through the redwoods on the road at the lower property (which I don't do often because of all the poison oak). So I have a bit of making the house nice - I need to get my house plants in their new pots and see if I can figure out the wood chipper we bought that needs assembling and get some brush chopped up. Anyway, I am happy that my social anxiety was minimal and I made a new friend with a family my family really likes.

One thing that makes me feel like I am not doing too bad with my mom is that one family brought the grandma of the family who couldn't walk far and was too cold to go down to the beach at night, and it made the parents bicker about how to accommodate her or not. We do a lot better at dealing with my mom and her demands, and my mom's demands are a lot more demanding and a lot less polite. I actually got along well with the grandmother and we had a really nice time talking about her travels. So I am not doing that bad with my mom!
 
I totally relate to your feelings with the strain one partner's social anxiety (mine) can put on your relationship with your partner, especially when they can't really relate or haven't experienced similar feelings themselves. I'm glad you seem to be feeling a bit better after 4th of July!
 
Thanks so much Amy, Cate, and MLB! MLB, it helps to know other people are going through this - thanks for letting me know! Hopefully we can support each other through this!!

I actually got freaked out that I did so well I got overconfident and invited everyone over to our house soon. I had this feeling that J enjoys hanging out with everyone and I get so stressed over it, especially if I have people over because of my mom being a hoarder and growing up and having people over with all the crap everywhere was so stressful and embarrassing. I just get freaked out having to have people in my house although it is probably a normal level of messy most of the time. But I had a mini-meltdown about having to be strong and let people in our house so K has a normal childhood. J let me know that he will help me through this, and that he agrees it is for K for having a normal childhood. He also let me know that he feels it is a lot of work socializing with K's friend's parents and that he also does it for K. Not that they aren't lovely people, but they don't really have a ton in common, so trying to talk to one parent while still including the other is hard, as we are from different schools before junior high, so we have all this history with one family and not with the other, though I probably have more in common with the new family. I think having activities like making a bon fire and doing games and polymer clay will help. I love doing things with people, just have trouble with talking about things.

So here's to being brave and doing better at seeing that J is really on my side and really does support me. One thing that I finally realized - my ex-husband was so critical of my social anxiety and put me down over it, so I feel that J will do the same thing. But he finally gets how entrenched the anxiety is and he really is trying hard to help now. I don't know what changed in our relationship, but he is trying so hard on so many fronts. I am really amazed. Now I just have to relax and stop thinking he is thinking critical things of me, and our relationship should be ok.

I am doing ok eating-wise. I am back down to within 4 pounds of low weight and don't have much of an appetite for the last few days, so will take advantage of that.

We are having game night on Sunday with our friends J and J who are very introverted brothers and mellow and so intellectual and interesting. I can just relax and be me around them because they are fellow introverts. I am looking forward to it.

I feel happy today. And my mom has been in a good mood since vacation - amazing!
 
Thanks LaMa and Amy! I am really happy I have J's support. It means the world to me!

Ate great yesterday, but bought very ripe delicious mango for everyone and made mango lassi last night and had a glass late at night so broke my fast. Darn, but it was sooo good. I would be losing if I would just stick to fasting. Have to work on that.

Feeling a little overexposed because I have been writing about my social anxiety and how weird it makes me. I've been thinking about how a lot of what people do isn't really thought out and conscious, and how I want to become a lot more conscious of the social anxiety and not just keep holding my breath and hoping it just goes away. I was very skinny and fit during periods of my life when this went away on its own, and I know a large part of the weight issue is stress eating or now soothing myself with food instead of fasting, mostly just because I feel the social anxiety there, and I don't want to deal with it. So I have to find a way to work on this that doesn't cause more stress and I don't keep just hoping it will go away, because it seems like it's time to really deal with this. Ok, time to get ready for nice company!
 
I struggle with social anxiety and anxiety in general. I find exercise helps a lot. It's not a simple thing for me by any means. It has been truly debilitating and affected all areas of my life. I used to take medication for it but that didn't end well. If you'd like to share, I'm interested in hearing what things you're trying. I have read a few of your later posts but I have not read them all.
 
Anxiety is awful & I suffer from it too. Most people don't know as I appear confident (I think). Dealing with it, talking about it & getting such good support from J is such a good thing. Good for him & good for you, hon :grouphug:
 
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