From the vortex of grief: Walking a tightrope

Before this happened, I have felt many times that my life was busy. Hectic. It was hard to prioritize between so many things- work, hobbies, personal responsibilities at home, spending time with my husband, parents and in-laws. But now, all of that seems like a piece of cake. Because I had agency over most of these things. I could say to myself- Oh, I have 3 deadlines at work this week. I'm not going to visit my parents. Or I'm going to prioritize spending time with my husband this weekend, so no work for a couple of days. Of course, there would be the unpredictable interruption every now and then. My parents would call asking for something during a busy period, or someone would fall sick, and so on. But on other "normal" days, things were manageable.

After my dad's stroke though, I feel like I have zero control over my schedule. From one day to the next, I have no idea what will come up. And that makes me feel powerless. Especially because I don't want to compromise on things I have already committed to. I constantly juggle, and I try to stretch the little time I have by so much, trying to fit in a bunch of unrelated things. Sometimes, just the context-switching leaves me exhausted. I keep thinking about all the things that I have left to do, and it leaves me feeling so daunted. 

I honestly don't know why I'm writing this. For weeks now, I have shied away from writing because the words in my head are a jumbled mess. I cannot make any sense of them, so how can I expect my Reader to? But today, I feel like that is part of my problem. I expect everything to be perfect, to be predictable. But life seldom is, right? Even when things seem outwardly normal, we're only a step away from the cliff's edge, and life as we know it can descend into chaos. It's just that we have this illusion of control. And having seen this transition now, I can't go back to that illusion that I live in a predictable world. Anyway, writing about the mess, both in my life and in my head, will help me. 

I remember this string of incidents from my Dad's hospitalization vividly. I was working day and night for a deadline, and my Mom called to tell me that the speakers on her phone weren't working. I tried a bit of remote debugging, then quickly tired of it and asked her to use earphones. A day later, she called me to say that she'd lost access to the internet and that her mobile data just didn't work. I gritted my teeth. There was just a day before my deadline, and I couldn't even afford the 3 hours it would take me to go to the hospital, debug it and come back. I asked for time, and she agreed. A day later, when I felt completely exhausted and ready to collapse, I forced myself to function for a few more hours. I went to the hospital and fixed her phone.

A weekend after that, I was again focusing on a work deadline when my Mom told me that my dad had asked to see me in his diary entry for the day. She urged me to not come right away and prioritize my work. I had not gone to the hospital the previous week as well, and I was filled with guilt at this. What if I lost him in the next few days? How would I feel about not having gone to see him, despite the fact that he asked? I worked till evening and again hurried to the hospital. Squeezed in another visit. Came back home even more tired and a little less guilty.

The next week, I knew I had an exam coming up. I had planned the few days before that meticulously so that I could manage everything else. But a couple of days before, my Dad's phone stopped working, and I had to attend to it because it was linked to the bank account, and the money to pay the hospital bills was in that account. I lost an entire day, and I almost cried to my therapist. (A related story is that I canceled therapy for three weeks because I couldn't find that one hour)

I recall telling a close friend that I'd be there for her wedding. I even planned out the logistics. And then, a couple of days before, my Dad had a heart attack. I didn't go to the wedding of course, but I felt this sense of powerlessness kick in again. After that, I never promised anyone that I'd be there for any functions or weddings. I also stopped planning trips or vacations ahead of time. What was the point in planning anything when I had so little control?

My life has been like this for one and a half years now. I attend to what needs to be done immediately, either on the work or the personal front, and I never seem to have time to think about the long term or plan for it. I always live with this feeling of uncertainty, feeling like something could go wrong from one moment to the next. And when things happen unexpectedly and upturn my life, I feel overwhelmed. It just feels like I'm surviving one day at a time. From reading about other people's experiences, I understood that these feelings are common for people who have gone through a tragic event. 

After more than a year of therapy, I have started accepting that this is how life is for me right now. I have cut back on many events and people and put my physical and mental health first. I open up to a very small circle of people and am very careful about who I let into that circle. I fully own my choices and decisions, and I feel very little guilt or regret about not being able to meet societal or personal expectations. I am kinder to myself and am able to find moments of peace within all the frenzy. I have bad days or even bad weeks where everything seems to go wrong at the same time, and I wonder if I'm making any progress at all. But I look back on the person I was 2 years ago, and I feel so grateful for all that this journey has taught me.