Care

The word care has many meanings, and today I am feeling them all.

Noun
1. A burdened state of mind, as that arising from heavy responsibilities: Work, which keeps piling more and more responsibilities on me.

2. Mental suffering: My alcoholic mind strolling hand in hand with my clinical depression.

3. An object or source of worry, attention, or solicitude: My children, one who is struggling with mental illness, the other who is struggling with a changing body and all the mental, physical, and hormonal anguish that brings with it.

4. Caution in avoiding harm or danger: My marriage, which is so fragile that one good blow could shatter it, so instead I walk on eggshells and keep everything bottled up inside.

5.
a. Close attention; painstaking application:
b. Upkeep; maintenance: My sobriety, maintained through meetings and sometimes by the skin of my teeth.

Verb
1. To be concerned or interested: The girls in my Girl Scout troop, my friends, my family.

2. To provide needed assistance or watchful supervision: Again, my troop, who I care for, even though at this point I resent it very much.

3. To object or mind: The crappy people and parents I have to deal with on a daily basis, the ones who I try not to care about their actions, but I can't help but get worked up over them.

4.
a. To have a liking or attachment:
b. To have a wish; be inclined: The things I would care to do: sew, sing, attend services, play with my kids. Right now I'm only managing to do one of those 4.

5. To be concerned to the degree of: For the most part, I don't care what people think of me. I don't care if I'm being a bitch to people. I don't care if people like me or not. Not in a healthy, 'what other people think of me is none of my business' way, but in a 'screw the whole world' kind of way.


Care is a big issue for me right now. I don't care what people think, and I don't care how I treat people, for the most part anyway. I'm TIRED. I don't want to do what I do anymore. I'm angry. I'm overburdened at work and seriously, extremely under paid. I'm overburdened at home, there is just too much to do for one woman to take care of it all. I resent my commitments, and I resent the people I have to deal with in the course of meeting those commitments. I'm numb. A few weeks ago I felt like a bomb about to explode and I was barely keeping all the crazy in. Now I feel dead. Which is worse? I know I need to open myself up and let myself feel again, but I'm scared so I tell myself I don't have the time. In small moments I fear that I am so busy that I'm missing out on my life. I'm going to wake up one day and find that I'm 50 and I'm all alone, with nothing but broken relationships and resentments on all sides to show for my years of running from one thing to the next. I need to take care of myself, I need to let myself care before it's too late.