Just Say No

“He probably just couldn’t say no,” my mom said about my husband today. I’m sure she was right. He can’t say no to a child who needs him or to a caregiver who needs a break. I know she wouldn’t say no either. I know she worries and wants to protect us. I know she herself would do the same in this situation.

“Just say no,” my other mom told me today. Tell them what you can and can’t do. 

I agreed, but inside me I knew. I knew that I wouldn’t have the heart to refuse for a while yet. It’s fairly easy to set boundaries on the weekend from the safety of my home, but when life gets real on Tuesday and 3 children call my name from 5 different directions while I’m trying to walk out the door I won’t be able to look into their eyes and tell them I’m not coming back. I know my mil knows that, too.

It’s exhausting to be a carer. Also, it’s exhausting to care. Some of my friends tell me the same thing. I will paraphrase.

“I need a coping mechanism,” one friend told me in the middle of a long busy week. She’s a very capable person, and like she says, her parents did a good job of preparing her to deal with the things she’s dealing with. Even so, being a carer is overwhelming sometimes, especially when the situation or the people are difficult. She asked me if she could say no. I didn’t tell her that she should say no, because I have a different perspective than she does. From a distance, I see that if she doesn’t do the things, they will fall onto someone else’s shoulders, and maybe those shoulders won’t be as strong as hers. So, even though she has really wanted to on so many days, she hasn’t said no.

Another friend told me she was tired of working with people. “I’ve done it for so many years, and now I’m tired.” She didn’t say she didn’t love her job. She didn’t say she was tired of her job. Caregiving is difficult, emotionally more than physically often. But she still doesn’t say no

“Taking care of a newborn with medical needs is difficult.” These words came from friend who is a new mom. “But BabyBoy makes it so worth it,” she concluded. She’s a mother, she’s responsible for this child. She can’t say “I don’t want to take care of you now,” and walk away. She can’t just say no.

This is from the perspective of women in their 20s. Kids these days assume we’re major adults Cos we old, but some of us know otherwise. From conversations with friends, and my own real time experiences, it appears like we’re still learning how to care and be caregivers. Many of us will make that our life’s work, but  right now, in the learning stage, we  haven’t figured out how to take care of others and ourselves. We sometimes give too much of ourselves away, sometimes too little. Sometimes we feel like we’re caring too much but in reality we’re not caring enough. Sometimes the opposite. Myself,  I often feel both. 

Does being a caregiver get easier as a person ages? Do you learn how to compartmentalize so this work doesn’t take over your whole life ?  Maybe it’s meant to take over our lives. Maybe it’s mostly personality. Some of us probably handle caring better than others. Some of us probably avoid caring when possible.  

The disclaimers come near the end:

To be fair to my mom and mil, I have to say that neither of them say no to children or to caring either. They are just looking out for us like moms do.

I wrote this a few weeks ago, but never managed to pull it all together to form a cohesive post. It still isn’t very cohesive because I haven’t figured out how to blend it all seamlessly, but seamless isn’t what I’m trying to portray here. Real. Raw. That’s life, my life, anyway. I didn’t think I’d post this one every but Today it’s so relevant, once again, that I have to. 

Today I think I can’t do another day of zoom school with hyperactive third graders with fasd who can’t read or write, of feeding the hungry children from empty cupboards, of trying to keep the marijuana-smoking preteen from killing his little siblings, of pouring out every single ounce of love I have into a dark hole of need sometimes only to have it regurgitated and hurled back in my face in the form of anger. 

But I can’t say no. 

I’m not sure what little things that keep you caring and caregiving when you think you honestly can’t do it another minute. For me today it’s Small boy picking a single perfect dandelion for his teacher. The angriest boy who now lets me give him hugs/comfort even when he’s upset, a relatively new development. The weed smoking preteen making a point to talk to me in the mornings and open the door (after first slamming it) to yell  LOVE YOU at me instead of slinking off to school without a word. The little girl who treasures the tiny birthday gift I gave her and who calls me 3 or 7 times every day, even the days that I’ve  been there, because she needs someone. It’s the pure delight of a circle of children when we make a recipe they found on tiktok and it turns out perfectly.