Today was a good day for my LO and a strange one for me. I only have here to vent!

My grandmother the last few days has had her best stretch in weeks, almost like going back to a prior stage. Her memory remains very limited but she’s pleasant again, self feeding more, interacting, having small talk and asking for food/water/people. We’ve been on a high all week and its been wonderful.

However today she received a message from another grandchild in the middle of dinner (who hasn’t visited in a year and refuses to do any caregiving tasks) that she’s expecting. It was clearly a call for the attention it garners but it affected me in a way I didn’t expect.

I’m in my 30s, successful but very single and I’m often rejected by men because of my caregiver role. I’m seen as the “good one” throughout my immediate and extended family which is such a heavy role, and its come with so many trade offs that my family doesn’t understand. Its not just hard work and reward. I don’t get to date, travel, or have much time for self fulfillment outside of work. I’m not interested in being a mom but I would like my own family one day as well as to see the world, explore a crush, and do all the things I probably should have done in my 20s! Right now, for the last decade plus, and I hope for as long as possible in the future, I’m a caregiver.

I don’t sit with this reality often but today I did because it was like a mirror was shone on me, and it was a low for me. The longer my grandmother lives the less likely it is I will have my own family, whatever that may look like, and less of my present family will be around. I wouldn’t have it any other way and I have no regrets but it’s very strange to accept that making all the “right choices” still leaves something to be desired.