Just One of Those Days !!

We all have those days when even our coffee needs coffee. I just seem to have more of them in the last eight months. I'm so used to having someone to discuss my decisions with. I feel pretty confident that I know what I'm doing to get through all this, but it sure would help to have an ear to bend, a second opinion, or at least a high five. Sometimes you just need someone in your corner, even when you know you can handle things yourself. It's strange. I've realized that depending on Tony or my older sister has not served me well in the sense that I'm having to learn how to navigate life without them. I was really independent at one time. The emotional breakdown changed so much of my life. I lost the ability to go anywhere in public by myself. It's hard to explain that to someone who has never experienced it. When I started working at the hospital, I would literally talk to myself the whole drive there and continue talking as I walked into work. Once I got inside and was around my coworkers, I was fine. Funny how the mind works, isn't it? When they asked me to change from first shift to third shift, one of the conditions was that, since I worked alone in the tower, I could sit in the nurses' area whenever I didn't have a room to clean. That way, I wouldn't be by myself all night. Eventually, I quit sitting in there so much with them. Mostly because I became obsessed with cleaning and sanitizing the water fountains on each floor. That was eleven floors of fountains! Kept me busy and out of trouble. 🤣 I took early retirement because of the pandemic, and at the same time, Tony's dementia was advancing into another stage. I no longer felt it was safe to leave him alone at night. Being his caregiver eventually became a 24/7 job. There wasn't much room left for anything else. I discovered that living with someone who has dementia requires a whole lot of patience. You learn to adjust, to find new ways of doing things, and to accept that some days won't go according to plan. Now I'm learning to have patience with myself. I suppose we're always hardest on ourselves. We expect ourselves to carry on, make the right decisions, and somehow figure everything out, even when life has turned upside down. We forget that we're allowed to have a bad day, feel uncertain, or simply wish we had someone to talk things over with. I'm still finding my way. Some days I feel like I've got this, and other days, well, that's when my coffee needs coffee. But I'm still here, still figuring things out, and still managing to laugh along the way. Maybe that's what moving forward looks like. Not having all the answers, but learning to trust yourself enough to keep going