Caregiving the job that you love and hate!

[pipboy]

I have been a caregiver to my better half for nearly 25 years out of our almost 31 years together. It is a job that I love and it is a job that I hate.

There are those times when I hate it with every breath I take. Please do not misunderstand, I love her with all my heart and soul and will forever and ever be there for her and will do whatever it takes.

There are times when her pain is over-whelming and I cannot take it away from her. I am suppose to protect her, be her knight in shining armor and this monster that is pain has taken that away from me and instead gave me the title of caregiver.

I want to take the pain away, I want to see her dance again and run again and ride bikes with me and do all those things that we planned on doing so many years ago.

I hate seeing her crying because of the pain. She try’s so very hard not to cry in front of me or let me hear her crying from another room but I do see her and hear her and it breaks my heart over and over again.

I will be her caregiver for as long as I have breath in my body. I will do whatever it takes. It doesn’t matter the day, time, month or year I will be there. She is my world, she is my heart, she is my soul.

There have been and are many times that I get angry, frustrated and downright nasty because of the struggle to help her, to make her all better, to relieve her pain. I am not angry at her, I am angry at the pain and what it has done to her and what it has done to us. I use to hold it all in because I was so afraid that she would think I was angry or frustrated with her.

Then one day it happened I yelled at her, I said unkind things to her and I hurt her. In those moments I failed her so bad. However, she didn’t see it that way, she took the hurtful things I said and agreed with them. She took the anger, the frustration and the nasty and accepted them as if it was normal. I was filled with guilt and remorse for failing to maintain myself and she was happy that I had lost it.

That day I learned an important lesson about love, hate, anger, frustration and how our mind, body and soul can only handle so much before it explodes. Instead of being hurt and angry at me she comforted me, the caregiver became the one that needed care-giving.

I won’t bore you with all that was said but I want to share the most important thing that was said about being a care-giver; “it is okay to be angry, it is okay to be frustrated, it is okay to not be okay!”

It is better to let it out then to let it build and explode in a nasty way. It is better to share all our feelings with those we are care-giving for then to hide it and let it fester into something nasty. It is okay to be human — it is okay to hurt — it is okay to love and hate the job of being a caregiver!

My best to all,
PipBoy

[Noki4]

Thank you for helping us to understand what our spouses may be dealing with. Sometimes I think we forget that our pain can and does affect our caregivers directly.

Noki4

[jaswindersingh]

Thank you for posting this.

[Author]

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