LIVING IN THE SHADOWS OF GOODBYE.

Welp, I should have started this years ago. I always have a lot of say, but rarely put my emotions on paper. I am not afraid it will make me weak. However, I am terrified of the weight of feeling the hard stuff. I often think I won't be able to mentally handle one more piece of bad news.

So how do I spend my days? In fight or flight mode. Constantly. It all started when I was 13. But after about 18 months it got bad. REALLY BAD. This is when I realized something was majorly off with my mom. She was doing bizarre things like waking up in the car at a gas station, or running down the road screaming my dad was going to kill her. The sad part is, for a lot of those months I believed her.

My dad isn't the easiest person to get along with and she would tell me horror stories of what he was doing to her. I believed every word of it. Little did I know she was physically able to get around, but mentally the toxins from her liver disease were destroying her mind. I believed her. Her friends believed her. And even worse, medical professionals believed her.

It would go something like this.

She would be convinced my dad was going to kill her. She or he would call 911 because she would get so violent. I would be called. He would be banned from seeing her at the hospital. I would go be with her thinking he was the devil. We would get her out of the hospital and moved in with me. Then, she would decide she hated me and call someone to come and get her. I could not understand what was happening and tried everything I knew to have her live with me and keep her safe. Until I couldn't anymore. I decided if my dad was trying to kill her, APS had not uncovered it yet and by this time I realized something wasn't adding up. This cycle finally ended when the right Dr. suggested that she was safer living in assisted living. Assisted living lasted a month before we realized she needed to be moved to memory care and put on hospice.

The crazy part is by the time we found out she had liver disease, she already had Cirrhosis of the liver. She was not eligible for a transplant because of her uncontrolled type 2 diabetes either. So here we are now with what feels like an hourglass that we can see sand emptying out of, but we can't see how much sand is actually there.

I lost my grandfather a year ago and that was absolutely devastating. This is relevant because it was during this time my mom was in and out of the hospital. So guess where they left me? Having to make the decision to put him on hospice alone with no one by my side, and then running to my mom who was out of her mind in the hospital across the street. The best part? My dad was banned from both places. So it all fell on me. All of the hard, shitty stuff. I was with my grandfather the night he passed and that has mentally fucked with my head so much.

It was during the funeral planning and taking care of the responsibilities in the will that my mom ended up in a mental hospital. The wrong Dr. intercepted her at the ER and she told them she was in danger for her life and didn't want anyone to know where she was. He concluded she was crazy and shipped her to an entirely different city. We did not find her until days later in Austin, TX in a psych ward. So what did I do on Thanksgiving day of 2022? I sat at home, cried, and wondered where the hell my mom was because we had not found her yet. That was the moment her attorney deemed her not competent to be the executor any longer, I became the executor, and, well that really equated to a lot of painful responsibilities like cleaning his house out and selling it. Something I still have trouble thinking about.

So here I am riddled with anxiety of what phone call I will get each day. Hospice, a nurse, the cops, my dad telling me she has died, her yelling at me....... it has been a shit show every day for a solid 18 months. I have been on edge and about an inch from a mental breakdown. All while trying to be a mom, wife, and lead a massive team. Not to mention grieving my grandparents being dead like crazy.

All while staying sober.

How? I honestly have no fucking clue.

But I am committed to sharing the good and bad with you. The highs and lows of my life, in hopes that it keeps you hanging on to your sobriety or promises you made to yourself for just one more day. That you don’t let your circumstances become your excuses. Instead of thinking life is a bitch, you make it your bitch.

Here is to spilling my guts and hoping if you are walking through a storm, you keep going.

Until next time,

KG