I care for my mother, so two hours is the most I have
Posted as two_hours_at_most
- Looking for
- something real built inside a very small amount of time
- Experience
- Ten years, two dynamics, both before my mother became ill.
- Around
- Stockport, Manchester
My mother has dementia and lives with me. There is a woman who sits with her on Thursday afternoons and another who comes on alternate Saturday mornings, and outside those windows I do not leave the house for longer than a shop takes. That is the shape of my life and it will be the shape of it for some time. Forty eight, Stockport, submissive, ten years in, though nothing at all in the last three.
I nearly did not write this. It feels absurd to advertise for anything when I can offer two hours a fortnight with a hard stop. But I have realised that what I miss is not the hours. It is being someone's, in a way that carries on while I am doing everything else, and that part does not need me to be anywhere.
So: rules I keep at home. Something expected of me daily that has nothing to do with her. A voice that is not the district nurse or my sister. And occasionally, when the Thursday works, two hours where I am not the person in charge of everything.
I am tired, I am not depressed, and I am not looking for someone to rescue me from any of it. This is not a hard life, it is just a small one at the minute.
Not looking for anybody who wants spontaneity. Not looking to be told I should be putting her in a home. Not looking for a person who will find a fortnight of quiet insulting.