How the Caretaker’s Survival Guide Idea Started

by Monique Colver
When I wrote the following, on April 6, 2003, I had no idea that I was seriously in need of establishing, first of all, support for myself, in order to be able to help Stew. And to do that, I had to consider myself as an issue. I had no idea.

Prior to that, I was all about extending myself. I needed no help, I needed no support. I don’t know why I didn’t feel a strong bond with my family — perhaps it was me, perhaps it was them. More likely, it was a combination. Friends and family were unlikely to understand why I’d kept taking care of Stew. Some of them disappeared. Some of them became distant, or I became distant because I was ashamed.

I was ashamed of my situation and I was embarrassed.

But there comes a time when you have ask for help, when you need support, and when you must learn to take care of yourself, before there’s nothing left of you at all. That’s how I started with the “Caretaker’s Survival Guide.” I’m still figuring it out.

April 6, 2003 – Turning Over a New Leaf

So I say. A new leaf. Hmmph. Indeed. Why not? Another day, another leaf.

The dog did not want to cooperate this morning. Took her downstairs for her morning activity, the one she does upon first arising. That time of day, I’m barely coherent myself, and stumbling no less, so we just go to the bottom of the stairs for a few minutes while she takes the opportunity to relieve herself. Then we race back up the stairs so we can ponder the wisdom of climbing back into our respective beds (which may be the same bed, if she’s in the mood) while we instead begin to work. I do, anyway, Dog is notorious for being a slacker.

Anyway, there we were at the bottom of the stairs. And she looked around.

She sniffed the grass, she looked underneath the stairs, certain there was a cat lurking about (she’s been highly suspicious of cats ever since she found out there was one entering the premises while she was away), she turned her nose up in the air and looked off into the distance, as if the smell of a big juicy steak was in the air.

And she did not relieve herself.

I pulled her over to the ivy. That usually does it, the promise of soiling fresh green ivy, but not today. She just looked down at it, scoffed, and ambled alongside the border.

We moved back towards the stairs. Well, I moved back towards the stairs. She had no choice but to follow along. She looked under the stairs some more.

She sniffed. She looked at sections of grass as if each inch were different and worthy of notice.

She did not relieve herself. I entreated her to just go about it, just get it done, just move on with it. I am notoriously impatient at that time of day. It’s one of my character defects. She ignored me altogether. Sometimes I think she’s part cat.

I gave up. I moved her towards the stairs and she moved up them, sluggishly, but up them all the same, which she wouldn’t have if she did feel the need to relieve herself. Upstairs she asked to go back out on her deck so she could go back to sleep. She’d slept there most of the night, after first falling asleep with me before deciding my snoring was too obnoxious.
And I sat down here to ponder the 12 million things I need to do before I see my first client in a few hours. Okay, perhaps that’s an exaggeration. I am prone to exaggeration, to hyperbole, to overstatement, to histrionics. Not only prone, but addicted.

Back to my new leaf. I am, in addition to my penchant for drama, a serious overthinker. I think too much. I ponder. I think. I turn things over and over in my head until I’ve made a complete mush of it and don’t know anything about it at all. I doubt. I am seriously thinking that people tolerate me. That in the overall scheme of things, I am unwanted, unlovable, unliked. I wish to turn over a new leaf and stop thinking this way. But what, I ask myself, if I’m RIGHT? Well, that just changes everything, doesn’t it?

See what I mean? Too much thinking. Dog thinks too much too. Instead of just taking care of the matter at hand, she has to examine every blade of grass, every slight breeze, every motion within fifty yards to determine if it’s worthy of notice. But then she forgets about it and does what’s next on her agenda, and I’m certain that whatever she was just doing is gone from her mind altogether. This may be a function of being a dog with a short-term memory, or it may be a function of a devil-may-care attitude. I have no hope of being a dog, at least not in this life, but I could adopt her attitude.

I’ll work on it. After all, what if people don’t like me? Dog does. Well, when she feels like it. When she’s up for it. When other pressing matters aren’t intruding.

Sigh. I’m overthinking my DOG.

Will someone please stop me?

Later that same day:

This time I’ll have to go to the ER, I say no, I won’t go, I won’t, but there’s nothing left of me. I am nothing, and there’s nothing there, and the only people who want to be around me are those who I’m helping or who want something from me without being connected to me. No one wants to be connected to me because there’s nothing there to be connected TO.

There’s nothing left of me. I won’t go, of course, though he says I have to, but I won’t listen. There’s nothing left of me, and there wasn’t much to begin with, and now there’s nothing at all. And it doesn’t matter. There are no words of encouragement, blank endorsements, nothing. In the end, it’s all the same. No one seeks me out.

And no, I’m not suicidal. I just want to not care anymore.

I’m empty.

There’s nothing there.

Damn, I sound bad today.

I think I’ll call my therapist, the one I can’t afford.

(Said therapist eventually fired me when I couldn’t pay my bill.)

Not such a good day, overall. Pinging emotions. Decisions to move on, to get things under control, to regain perspective, kept being made. And forgotten. And made again, and forgotten.

Later, during the summer, I couldn’t stop crying. I couldn’t think straight. I could barely function. I felt alone, I was alone. I couldn’t cope. I fell apart. I had to seek help.

And I recovered, and I started learning how to take care of myself first. It was not an easy thing to learn, and it was not a quick process. But I had no choice.

I knew that I had to help myself. Calling the crisis line was all well and good, but I was the one who had to do something, I was the one who had to get moving and change my perspective. It was up to me.

My first visit with the crisis intervention specialist went about as well as one could expect. I promised not to hurt myself (not intentionally – harming myself unintentionally is a fact of life because I’m clumsy), to follow up with my psychiatrist on my meds, to work at regaining my sanity. Stew wanted to help me, of course, but he was in his own private hell, and I felt as if there were no one I could call on. There was no one. Perhaps there was, but at the time all I knew was that it was up to me, and there was nothing anyone else could do. I had to keep working, I had to support myself, even with my concentration substandard and my motivation purely financial.

Advertisement