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Today's Keyboard Smash
Aug. 29th, 2020 06:47 pmAfter a whole lot of sleep, I feel marginally more like a real person. Not good. But not just a wraith of pain and confusion anymore either. Possibly this was triggered by time spent picking pumpkins--physical exertion and sun exposure? But damn, I wasn't out there that long and I thought I was careful.
Every time I get particularly sick, it throws into stark relief how fundamentally shit my parents are at taking care of someone (who's not a horse, I suppose). I woke up from today's nap to the vacuum running. Which I'm sure was well-meant--mum was cleaning up the cobwebs and shed leaves from where I moved the plants onto their new rack in the office. But...vacuuming while I'm taking a sickness nap? The second time I woke up, dad had NASCAR on at maximum volume, a sport that consists exclusively of large, repetitive noises. (He's got a lot of hearing loss, so all television is an exercise in maximum volume.) Then mum started up the spice grinder. It was just...noise-a-palooza today, while I felt like my skin was going to melt off my body if I had to listen to anything more.
If I tell mum how poorly I'm feeling, she tells me about whatever ailment is vexing her at the moment. And I know, I KNOW, that this is intended as bonding. This is sharing misery. But all I hear is, hey, everyone else has problems too, so there are no resources to spare for you. Since childhood, I've needed to look after people with chronic health conditions with very little adult support. Now that I have my own collection of chronic conditions and have my own bouts of needing to be cared for, there's...nothing.
No, that's not fair--mum would make sure my animals got fed and my garden got watered. Chores are how she shows she cares. It's just she cannot, will not, does not know how to do anything to help me directly. And sometimes, I just want someone to ask me what would make me feel better. What I need right now. To offer me an ice pack or a warm blanket. To be comforting. Neither of my parents came with any comforting software installed, unfortunately.
I'm curious how households with multiple disabled people manage these issues, making sure everyone gets whatever sort of support they need even when everyone else needs things too. It would probably help if I had friends who were local who could do the comforting thing, though the pandemic would render that useless at the moment anyway. It would also help if I knew how to ask for what I need.
What probably wouldn't help is my mean-spirited desire to buy an airhorn and set it off in the middle of the night to teach them how unpleasant it is to be confronted by a wall of noise when trying to get rest. It would need to be an airhorn on account of the hearing loss and mum's ability to sleep through a fucking bomb going off. It wouldn't help and it probably wouldn't make me feel any better, but goddamn, this afternoon, it feels like they deserve it.
Every time I get particularly sick, it throws into stark relief how fundamentally shit my parents are at taking care of someone (who's not a horse, I suppose). I woke up from today's nap to the vacuum running. Which I'm sure was well-meant--mum was cleaning up the cobwebs and shed leaves from where I moved the plants onto their new rack in the office. But...vacuuming while I'm taking a sickness nap? The second time I woke up, dad had NASCAR on at maximum volume, a sport that consists exclusively of large, repetitive noises. (He's got a lot of hearing loss, so all television is an exercise in maximum volume.) Then mum started up the spice grinder. It was just...noise-a-palooza today, while I felt like my skin was going to melt off my body if I had to listen to anything more.
If I tell mum how poorly I'm feeling, she tells me about whatever ailment is vexing her at the moment. And I know, I KNOW, that this is intended as bonding. This is sharing misery. But all I hear is, hey, everyone else has problems too, so there are no resources to spare for you. Since childhood, I've needed to look after people with chronic health conditions with very little adult support. Now that I have my own collection of chronic conditions and have my own bouts of needing to be cared for, there's...nothing.
No, that's not fair--mum would make sure my animals got fed and my garden got watered. Chores are how she shows she cares. It's just she cannot, will not, does not know how to do anything to help me directly. And sometimes, I just want someone to ask me what would make me feel better. What I need right now. To offer me an ice pack or a warm blanket. To be comforting. Neither of my parents came with any comforting software installed, unfortunately.
I'm curious how households with multiple disabled people manage these issues, making sure everyone gets whatever sort of support they need even when everyone else needs things too. It would probably help if I had friends who were local who could do the comforting thing, though the pandemic would render that useless at the moment anyway. It would also help if I knew how to ask for what I need.
What probably wouldn't help is my mean-spirited desire to buy an airhorn and set it off in the middle of the night to teach them how unpleasant it is to be confronted by a wall of noise when trying to get rest. It would need to be an airhorn on account of the hearing loss and mum's ability to sleep through a fucking bomb going off. It wouldn't help and it probably wouldn't make me feel any better, but goddamn, this afternoon, it feels like they deserve it.
