Member-only story
I Love You. I Just Don’t Like You Anymore.
My caregiver story is summed up in one title.
These are unsaid thoughts I have when I’m in the bathroom. You probably think that I pee a lot. You don’t know I’m meditating.
I didn’t sign up to be your caregiver. I fell into it the same way you fell off your motorcycle and wound up with a severe traumatic brain injury. The shit storm that followed was unplanned and unwanted.
You didn’t speak for three months. I couldn’t stand the silence. I played your favorite music on an iPod in an attempt to make you aware of your surroundings. I lived in and slept in your hospital rooms for seven months. From a dead sleep, I would wake up at the first sound of a beep coming from your heart monitor, run to the nurses’ station and scream for a nurse. We were in tune with each other in a weird way. It wasn’t the way we planned.
When you were finally able to speak, you needed to work on your cognitive skills. We were blessed that you had a fabulous speech therapist. She wasn’t afraid of you. She was kind, understanding, and patient…things that wore me out. I couldn’t understand why you were happy so see her and angry at me all the time.
You blamed me for your stay at the VA hospital. It was my fault that you needed occupational, recreational, speech, and…
