Struggles with Being Part of the Human Race

 

I have in the recent past, in a massive oversimplification, compared the vagaries of life and caregiving to a river.

The imagery is perfect, life is the river and the world with all its people, is moving down the river at various speeds and depths. When you become a caregiver or a care receiver it feels like you are forced out of the river as the water and people continue to roll on without you.

You watch as family members, friends, colleagues, acquaintances continue to ride the river past where you and your cared for pulled off to live a separate life from the rest of the world.

There comes a time when you, as a caregiver or ex-caregiver, start to shove your boat back in the river. Your boat has been beached for a while, so it’s stuck in the bank, and you have to use extra energy to even get it started moving into the river. 

You push off, jump in and start rowing to the middle of the water only to find, after straining with all you have to get there, it seems way too busy and overwhelming for your new entry so you veer off to the side and start drifting because you are scared of the speed and the chaos and you are exhausted because you haven’t used those rowing muscles in years.  You just sit there and drift until your energy, your confidence, your social skills start to revive.

And then of course we have a pandemic.

The pandemic gave, gives a perfect solution to the energy suck of being in the middle of the river with and talking with other people. Covid is the perfect excuse not to get in the deep end, you can’t because you are being a responsible citizen and quarantining. So, you take your little dinghy and put it into the shallowest, slowest moving part of the river and sit, content to ride along watching as the world keeps moving.

It’s taken me a couple of years to figure out what I’m doing. That’s where I miss Marty the psychologist, she would have had me diagnosed and fixed me in a week.

When you are caring for someone in an intense chronic illness situation caring becomes your single focus. Good, bad, indifferent, it just works that way, that’s where all your attention is and belongs. You don’t really socialize outside of very close friends and family, and you certainly don’t accept any obligations that might run afoul of your caregiving duties. You are singularly focused.

Now that I’m back to getting my feet wet and feeling the spray of the water I often find myself feeling a little out of sync and more than a little awkward around rooms of people. I am completely out of shape and out of practice when it comes to interacting and playing well with others.

I’m not a complete idiot, I know not to burp in public, I know which fork to use, but my ability to hold meaningful conversations with people is not great. I don’t have my A or B game, I’m clearly out of practice and to improve I must work those muscles but there’s a whole commitment thing I struggle with, and life is a lot easier if I don’t challenge myself.

Status quo anyone?

That’s where I am. I can sit out at the lake, not asking others to visit and not going anywhere and feel mostly contented. People, and I’m one of those, are pack animals, we need to be engaged with others, I need to be out, I need to be engaging, I need to be open and unafraid to make mistakes.

I would never claim to speak for other people who find themselves in an intense caregiving situation for a long time. These peccadillos may not affect others like it has me. Heck, I didn’t know I was struggling with this stuff for two years.

My guess is, like a lot of things caregivers deal with, this out of shape, out of step, out of the know feeling happens to many. I suspect Covid has exacerbated the whole thing by giving us a convenient excuse not to push ourselves into uncomfortable situations. Somehow we gotta get out there, see and touch real people and start to learn again how to relate to others out of our caregiving role.

It took me a while but with self-reflection and Marty whispering in my ear beyond the grave, it’s clear I need to focus energy on getting back in the river.

I’ll let you know when I figure out how to do that.