August was brutal. Or, if I make myself be "less dramatic"... it was a lot.
My Mom tripped and fell at the end of July and the repercussions from that have been intense and difficult and draining all month. With no real end in sight. It highlighted some ongoing (not new) issues that needed to be addressed and no one seemed really comfortable doing that so last week I broached some really difficult topics and had an incredibly long and emotional and hard conversation with my parents.
I've always said that my parents are young and healthy and mobile for their age. I still believe that. But in saying that there is a bit of burying my head in the sand around their age and the decline that is inevitable with that. They are older. They will continue to age. As, let's be real, we all will. But bodies and minds decline. They age. And sometimes that becomes more and more concerning.
I'm not a doctor, none of us are, so I/we can only guess at the worst case possibilities (we're talking about memory/brain/mood stuff here) and hope for something less.... awful.
But I'm a mess. Not always. I still, like the rest of us, need to function. But if I think about the conversation I had to have and the things that were talked about and things that were said in times of distress and I add that to some of the longer term realizations I've had about some deep wounds... well, I'm "triggered" as the youth might say. Or... whoever might say. I'm pretty raw and vulnerable.
I don't know what's coming with my folks. None of us do. And yes we touched on that. I guess I'm proud of the honesty I brought to the conversation even while wishing I didn't have to have that conversation and that we could freeze people at a certain age and just have them in that decent/good state for ever. But I also do know what's coming with my folks. I just don't know how it will look or progress or change or worsen or what. And that's hard enough without deep anxiety and fear and layers of my personal sh*t.
So yeah August was, wow, a lot. And I know I've said that about months before. This feels different. Because this is family. This is core. I don't know. Talking about it and talking about the stuff I went through has been putting me straight into a pretty intense panic crying spiral so I'm trying to be gentle with myself and I'm probably also kind of ok with distraction. Until I have my next counselling appointment and stuff.
This might be rough. This might be bad. I'm kind of my only support here. Something else to bring up (my difficulty leaning on others or feeling like I can't "put my stuff on someone already struggling")
Anyway, yeah... rough, hard, heavy month. Not resolved. Not a fixable thing probably. Hard times. Pushing through.