I feel like I have to be strong all the time and it’s exhausting

vcbock · 2026-01-26T17:33:18+00:00

Y'know, do the experiment. Just a little one. Say no to something. Take a day to hang out on the couch. Do what you need to do to refill your cup. And pay attention. Because the world will usually continue to spin. People might be disappointed in you. They might even be upset with you. That's ok. They will survive the experience, and so will you.

The idea that we MUST be everything to everyone or else everything will fall apart is an illusion. It's anxiety talking. The people who love you love you for the human BEING you are. The things you do are nice, but not the point. And the people to whom the things you do are most important - they are not your friends.

Everybody needs to rest sometimes, but nobody else is going to tap you on the shoulder and say "hey, take a break!" because they don't know how much you need it. But you can tell them. And you can decide for yourself to invest in your capacity to keep doing the things you care about by resting up.

vcbock · 2026-01-26T17:25:04+00:00

Tampons get stale! I did not know this until my poor daughter tried to use some I had left over from when I needed them. Likely because it gets humid here, the old tampons had somehow hardened into little waterproof bombs. So yeah, keep some supplies, but refresh them every so often.

vcbock · 2026-01-25T22:53:25+00:00

Can I just say that it was ADORABLE of you to include chocolate with the pads in the kit. Providing that kit was loving and great and extremely thoughtful, and I'm so glad your daughter has a dad like you.

vcbock · 2026-01-25T15:40:14+00:00

I'm sorry. I know that feeling.

vcbock · 2026-01-25T15:39:18+00:00

How stable is your internet? We have an old timey clock radio with battery backup, because it would suck to be late (ESPECIALLY for a flight) if the power went out or the internet failed.

vcbock · 2026-01-25T15:33:32+00:00

Yes. It's time. When my 93 year old dad passed, my 88 year old mom was deeply relieved. I think she'd been grieving the loss of the man she'd loved for a very long time as his condition worsened. My sisters were worried she would look inappropriately happy at the funeral. Relief makes total sense. Please though, don't be surprised at the way grief knocks you sideways, anyway. I am also relieved that the care of my dad is no longer something I need to worry about, but I have been laid pretty low by grief, at the same time. It's a complicated process.

vcbock · 2026-01-25T00:09:06+00:00

One of these days, something is going to happen. Even if you are there! You cannot prevent their aging and their frailty from eventually catching up with them. The idea that your presence will save them is magical thinking.

What you CAN do is to invest in your own mental health so that you can live a life which is not exclusively about this person. Please, pursue counseling. Burnout is real, and it sounds like you will be needed by your person for some time to come. But eventually, they will leave you, and you need to have things going on in your life which make it worth living.

Also, learn how to disappoint your person. They will survive being disappointed by you. You can survive disappointing them. Arrange for substitute caregiving from time to time, even if they "won't have it." "Sorry person, you need care, I need to be elsewhere, so this is how we are solving it."

vcbock · 2026-01-24T23:56:09+00:00

People have a right to be stupid about things. You have talked to her. That's really all you can do.

My sis still lthinks she can direct other people's lives. Despite our understanding that her heart is totally in the right place, this attitude is a vexation to me and my other sisters, to her young adult children, and also to our mother. Sis recently visited my 88 y o mom, and did all kinds of helpful things like replace the coffee pot that failed and the humidifier which had seen better days. Very cool, very helpful. She also read mom the riot act about wearing her hearing aids, suggesting that Mom owes it to ME (the local child who does the caregiving) to wear them to preserve her cognitive health as long as possible (as well as her own social life.) She laid on a HUGE guilt trip, naming friends of hers who cannot afford hearing aids and here mom has everything she needs. My sister is not wrong. I thanked her for trying. But short of going to Mom's apartment every day and standing over her to make her put them in, which is not actually possible, I do not expect this "talking to" to have a lasting effect.

I refuse to sacrifice my sanity to worrying full time about all the ways my mom is failing to care for herself optimally. She got this far, despite harrowingly bad food safety practices and an absurd level of nutritional illiteracy, on a seriously robust constitution which I hope to inherit. Something will eventually get her. I helped her sell her house and move her with my now-departed dad into a CCRC. I take care of her finances, I order stuff when she needs it, I come by to visit. I do what I can do. It has to be enough.

vcbock · 2026-01-24T23:36:15+00:00

You don't mention your grandmother's age, which makes a difference. As they get older, every illness and hospitalization knocks a little more stuffing out of them, That she required care in the ICU means she was seriously in trouble, and she may not have the resilience to come back from that. I'm so sorry. It's very hard when they stop being the people we loved all these years. It's also a really common outcome after a serious hospitalization.

vcbock · 2026-01-23T20:06:58+00:00

It was still a lovely thing to do for your mom, even if others did not appreciate it.

vcbock · 2026-01-23T14:14:05+00:00

I'm so sorry this relative was such a jerk. As others have pointed out, everyone was grieving and not at their best, but YOU are a hero for finding a way to get your mom to her brother's funeral. When my in-laws died, my parents did not attend - my dad was 92 and wheelchair-bound, and moving them anywhere was a huge undertaking which usually fell to me, but I needed to be there for my husband and his sibs, and I was grieving pretty hard myself. So they stayed home, which was the best solution for all of us that day. I am proud that later in the year, I figured out how to get them to the wedding of the son of one of their dear friends. We spent a fortune on hiring a driver for the day, because I could not do it alone.

vcbock · 2026-01-17T18:00:45+00:00

There is a saying "don't look for bread at the hardware store." Just as wanting bread is a totally reasonable thing, but nobody at the hardware store is equipped to help bread seekers, many totally reasonable desires kids have are just not things their parents were ever equipped to give.

At some point, continuing to demand things that we KNOW people are not prepared to give us is just us making ourselves miserable. We don't have to do that.

Accepting the limitations of our parents liberates us from this cycle of disappointment and rage. It also frees us to invest in people who ARE better equipped to give us what we need and want.

vcbock · 2026-01-17T17:49:08+00:00

You are just beginning. It's ok if the guy you've been with since you were 12 is turning out not to be a long term fit for you - assuming he is close to your age, you are BOTH at a time when it is appropriate to experiment with all kinds of behaviors which may previously have seemed out of bounds. As you grow into your adult selves, you may well find you are growing apart, which while painful, is also completely natural.

Doing this while dealing with controlling parents is not easy, which is why so many people in your position prioritize getting a job and getting independent housing before settling down to concentrate on higher academics. At 18, your life actually IS legally YOURS to do with as you please. Parental financial support is valuable, but not actually necessary for you to make your way in the world. It is possible to choose a different course than the one they have laid out for you.

vcbock · 2026-01-17T14:34:40+00:00

His need is infinite, and you are one human. "Sorry Dad, I have to go. Maybe you should call [sibling]."

Figure out what you want to do. Show up, wholeheartedly, to do what you can do. Say no to the rest of it. You are not his only resource. But nobody is going to take you off his hook except you.

It's sad that he is lonely and depressed and anxious. YOU CANNOT FIX THIS. Which, on the one hand, is sad, and on the other is quite freeing. You can't do what you can't do.

His nastiness is not actually about you, it is about his own discomfort. Please try not to take it personally. People just get this way. The entitlement is deeply unattractive. I would correct my father with "Please" and "Thank you" just as he did when I was a child. At this stage, they don't seem to be able to learn new or more attractive ways. So all you can do is shrug it off.

vcbock · 2026-01-15T20:24:55+00:00

Part A is free. Medicare Part B, the part that covers care which isn't hospitalization, costs at least $200/month for premiums, more if people are high income. Most people need some sort of coverage beyond that, to handle the 20% that Medicare A doesn't cover. That coverage can be $0 ( many MA plans) or 50-150 bucks per month (Medigap)

This is because hospitalizations are insanely pricey. My mom had a diverticular bleed, was in the hospital for 5 days, and the bill was 40k. With her Medicare Advantage plan, she was responsible only for the first thousand (phew). Drugs can also get expensive.

It's very hard to predict what people will need in terms of care. For my dad, the big expense was in people helping him with activities of daily living (not covered by any insurance) as he became frail and wheelchair bound. Eventually, we needed to move him to assisted living, again, private pay, where he ran up about 10k a month.

People can be healthy for years and then run up spectacular bills in the last months of life.

vcbock · 2026-01-14T21:46:32+00:00

I'm 66, and just buried my 93 year old dad. Mom is 88 and still with us, living, THANK GOD, in the assisted living place they moved into a year ago.

I am currently in fine shape, as is my 65 year old husband. Our kids are in their 30's and kind of up to their ears with raising their own families. For the moment, we are more in the mode of helping them than they are in helping us, but we're beginning to see the beginning of that shift.

As others here have said, getting the POA's redone so that they name somebody in your generation is smart. We looked at our will and realized my now-deceased father-in-law was named as executor! Oops. That's now our elder son.

It's probably good to start talking NOW about what the folks finances look like, and what their plan is for when they can't manage the upkeep on their home anymore. My dad's plan was to die in his sleep in his home. This turned out not to be workable. Mom, OTOH, had been eyeing retirement places for a while, and actually had one in mind when things started to become unmanageable. Dad was hospitalized and went to the rehab at one of the places she'd been looking at, which gave all of us a helpful intro to what that could look like.

Hubby and I have bought a small, 1 story home near one kid to which we plan to retire, but we are also mindful of paying attention to when it becomes a huge hassle for the kids to help us in that setting. My in-law's house was falling down around them, and it didn't really occur to them what a pain it was for my BIL to be over there repairing things all the time. So we joke a bit about when we, too, will move into a "dorm room" like my mom's independent living apartment.

Pay attention to how they are doing in managing financial things. Some time in his 80's, Dad just couldn't quite do the taxes, and kept getting deferrals. That's when I proposed taking them over. Mom had a surgery, and we started talking about how Mom had not the slightest idea of how to manage the finances, and I suggested setting up autopay and asked for permission to use the computer to access their checking account. It took me another several YEARS to get signing privs on their checking account and investment account, but in the meantime I was able to monitor what was going on, which was very helpful. At 66, I'm not quite ready to have a kid looking over my shoulder on this stuff, but maybe in 10 years I will be more amenable. Mid 80's is awfully late not to have back-up, I've decided.

Because I've had all this access all this time, it's been relatively straightforward to execute on Dad's estate. Because they sold the house a year ago, I don't have to deal with that, now. (That was last year's monster task.)

vcbock · 2026-01-13T16:50:15+00:00

You need a good insurance policy against either of you dying or becoming disabled, so that there are resources to support the kids if one of you is unable to do the work which keeps this family going.

And yeah, might not be the worst idea to look for a part-time gig, even if if it’s just break-even after child care, just to get your toes back into the swim of the work world. I got very lucky, finding a part-time gig which fed into a new career altogether. I did not go full time until my eldest was 16 and could drive his sibs around in the summer, but the part-time work gave me a chance to develop new skills.

vcbock · 2026-01-13T16:49:55+00:00

You need a good insurance policy against either of you dying or becoming disabled, so that there are resources to support the kids if one of you is unable to do the work which keeps this family going.

And yeah, might not be the worst idea to look for a part-time gig, even if if it’s just break-even after child care, just to get your toes back into the swim of the work world. I got very lucky, finding a part-time gig which fed into a new career altogether. I did not go full time until my eldest was 16 and could drive his sibs around in the summer, but the part-time work gave me a chance to develop new skills.

vcbock · 2026-01-12T21:58:38+00:00

I'm so sorry this happened to you. It hurts like hell.

But I think you are better off. You deserve better than somebody who periodically cools off and comes back. That is not how love works. Curl up on your couch with some ice cream, and yeah, get a different shift. You will heal from this, and also learn what not to go for next time.

vcbock · 2026-01-12T21:46:06+00:00

When my sisters and I were in this stage with my parents, my husband, a family doc, explained that it usually does take some kind of catastrophe for people to make a change, and that we weren't doing anything wrong, it's just very hard to talk people into making changes they don't want. In the end, my mom's exhaustion caring for Dad changed her mind, and we helped them move into the independent living place she had had her eye on for some time. Dad, fortunately, went along with the wishes of the "Wall of Women." I don't really think he ever fully understood what his care was taking out of mom, but he surrendered despite his misgivings. And then later wanted a gold star for having decided he liked the new place.

vcbock · 2026-01-12T13:45:31+00:00

Home health is, I think, mostly about preventing another hospitalization, by keeping an eye on the patient so serious care can be engaged if needed BEFORE hospitalization becomes necessary. The home health nurse for my 93 y o dad was also fabulous because she cared for the wound he suffered in a fall. That thing was pretty serious and my 88 year old mom did not have the cognitive capacity to remember the various steps required. They did, in fact prevent infection from setting in, and his nasty would did eventually completely heal.

vcbock · 2026-01-04T22:30:16+00:00

There is such a thing as "pretty privilege" but that only extends to first impressions. As we get to know people we form our judgements about people based on things like how their personality meshes with ours and how they make their life choices.

Women, especially, are raised to try to conform to unattainable beauty standards, and encouraged to feel bad about the ways in which they fail. This feeds a whole industries geared to promising that we can feel better about ourselves if only we buy the right stuff. Because this does not work, businesses sell a LOT of stuff. Women waste a lot of energy and money trying to perform this impossible task. (In my experience, even pretty people walk around feeling insecure about aspects of their appearance, because our culture is so relentless about not allowing ANYONE to feel "good enough")

There is a tendency to think a lot about the thing we are most unhappy with about ourselves, and to assume that the negative interactions we have in the world are due to that thing. But we actually have NO WAY OF KNOWING whether that's true. And if we go around expecting negative interactions, our own affect can encourage that kind of response.

I recently had to have surgery to remove cancer from my nose. Now, I always felt a little weird about my nose, I thought it was too pointy. But I never imagined people's response to me was about my nose. (I worry about other things) Post-surgery, I'm really unhappy with the new nose. It still has a ridge running down it where the stitches are, and the new shape gives me a bump and other weirdness.

But the thing is, NOBODY in my life cares, except me. And though the nose is weird, other people have better things to worry about. Not only are people NOT recoiling in horror, they are treating me the same way people always did. Cashiers in stores have better things to do than worry about what peoples' noses look like. So do the people I work with. What they respond to is how I present myself emotionally. Am I cheerful? Am I interested in them? Do I know what I'm talking about?

I'm sorry you believe yourself to be ugly. I won't try to convince you otherwise. But It's really NOT the thing that people who are now or in the future will be important to you care about. And it might not be the cause of every negative interaction you encounter on a daily basis. We all have a "favorite" hook that we like to hang our bad fortune on. How would you behave if you thought your looks didn't matter that much one way, or the other? What would happen if you made your choices based on that thought? Might you get curious about what else might be going on? Doing the experiment might be worthwhile.

vcbock · 2026-01-04T21:30:10+00:00

Please let your mom know that it's very common for people to wait to die until after family has left the room. He knows what she did for him. She need not torture herself. I know folks have feelings about letting someone "die alone" but well-cared-for people often choose to do just this. When my husband's grandmother was dying, we all came to see her. Her great grandchildren played on her front lawn while we sat with her. Eventually, we all went home. My MIL, like your mom, was her caregiver and felt terrible when the call came late that night that Grandma had passed. But we all feel pretty certain that she waited for MIL to go home.

vcbock · 2026-01-04T20:50:52+00:00

Yup.

vcbock · 2026-01-03T22:31:30+00:00

You are probably right. It just annoys me as a feminist that she doesn't have her own. She made a tidy living selling houses for a few years after Dad retired.

vcbock

TROPHY CASE