Is anyone else just completely losing their mind over things that are absolutely not their problem (but somehow still are) I swear I’m going to SCREAM the next time my mom asks me for the fifth time if I’ve finished “her” essay (like it’s hers) or if I’ve called “her” editor yet (also apparently hers now). This woman has been a freelance writer for like twenty-five years or something crazy and suddenly she’s completely incapable of remembering what she’s even working on let alone actually completing it. I get it she has dementia it’s not her fault (it’s not her fault is it) but it’s making me absolutely insane because now her deadlines are MY deadlines and her clients are calling ME when she misses them and her entire income is hanging on by a thread because I am now apparently her personal assistant slash memory bank slash entire executive functioning system. And I’m just so angry. So so angry. Not at her I try really hard not to be angry at her because it’s not fair she didn’t ask for this but I’m so angry that her entire life has just…stopped. Like a car sputtering out of gas on the side of the road. And now I’m the one pushing it trying to keep it going when I have my OWN car to drive (my own career my own life I guess). I’m twenty-six and I feel like I’m fifty-six trying to juggle my own work which is hard enough with her work and her appointments and her sudden outbursts and her forgetting how to use the microwave. Just last week I lost an entire afternoon to her insisting that the oven was talking to her and that it was telling her secrets about the neighbors (it was just the timer). It’s just…everything is so much slower now. My own writing takes twice as long. I used to be able to bang out an article in a few hours now I stare at the screen for an hour before I even type a word. It’s like her slowness is contagious or something (is that a thing). I’m so tired all the time even when I get enough sleep I’m just perpetually exhausted and my brain feels like mush. And then I get mad at myself for not being faster for not being better for not being able to handle all of this with a smile on my face like some kind of saint. My brother hasn’t called in weeks (not that he ever helped anyway) and my sister sent a gift basket which was nice but completely useless. I just wish someone would tell me how to do this. How to keep going when every single thing feels like slogging through mud. How to not resent someone you love more than anything for something that isn’t their fault. How to make my own brain work again when it feels like it’s been taken over by someone else’s broken one. I just sit here sometimes after she’s finally asleep and just feel this overwhelming rage bubble up. And then I feel terrible for feeling it. Am I the only one who feels like this or am I just a really terrible daughter. I just want to be able to focus again. Just for five minutes.