How Shall I Care For Thee? Let Me Count The Ways

Hello again everyone!  So nice to see you  and to be up here again at M3.

I do see most of you everyday anyways but down there.

It’s a whole other world up here, not that it is better than down there amongst you.

Just different POV and sometimes it’s good to get out and look a different way. 

Red is on a much needed break  – she has been working super hard and I worry about her and care about her well being. She cares about me a lot and I don’t get to do the things that say I care as often as I’d like.

So when she asked me to fill in for a bit while she is gone, to amaze and amuse you , I of course said yes.  It’s a good way to let her know I care right?

Those of you that are familiar with my place Running Naked With Scissors, I see already have your thinking caps on and your Mental States ready for a moment because you know what my presence usually brings….  (which is a little odd because I am not always sure myself).

What?  Nuh uh not always .. I don’t always bring  a Monkey with me. Sometimes it’s an ape.  You have to look at the tail.

Silly Monkey

Mental Moments.

Silly monkeys.

and

The M3 Mental Moment

…sure does have a lot of M’s, maybe a monkey and that makes it M3MM good.  Hopefully…

is about caring.

Did you already guess that?  What gave it away?

Darn that monkey!

Not just caring like giving a damn about matching socks, caring about people, for people and caregivers.

I am going to go out on a limb, for the sake of explanation and whatever else needs to be saked, and say that we all have people who care about us and whom we care about.  If it’s not people plural, we all have at least one.  So I can make the leap to when we care about someone, their happiness and well being is important, we are considerate of their feelings (most of the time) and for the most part we would go out of our way to do something nice for them or to cheer them up Or if they ask to do something for them, we would say yes whereas a person who we didn’t care about as much – that really isn’t as bad as it sounded – or not at all, we would be less likely to accommodate.

There are different levels of caring just as there are different types people who care more or less than others.  Some people have an enormous capacity to care about all kinds of people, things and they just .. care.  Some care but don’t really show how much because they are too caught up n their daily grind to realize that they haven;t taken the time to ask someone they care about how they are.

I believe that we all have about the same capcity to care, it is the abiltiy to hide that which differs, as well as the level of denial we allow ourselves.

OR

How thick our skin is because an easy, and most likely early, lesson in the how to be human journey teaches us that caring can be a vulnerability.  Oooh  yes a weakness.  And so many people act all stoic and cold and uncaring when inside you are all big gooey marshmallows.  This is especially indicative of men because for some reason we consider caring men too uncaveman like.  Yea I haven’t figured that out yet.

Now if I was over at RNWS right now I would be putting up a clip of Batman explaining to Wonder Woman why he doesn’t date. It is a pretty good way to make the point and ya know what?  If I am sucking still as in I got lots of space and not enough words at the end of this.. I am gonna post it.

What?

Well she won’t care & she would do it if I asked her and put on my sweet she can’t resist me face.    She would too post Batman!  He’s hot.

Gonna be a moot point anyways if we don’t move on…  no more peanut gallery comments, that is what the comment section is for.

(The important part is from 2:24-2:53, just so you don’t have to watch it all.)

See? I told you she would.

Where were we?  Oh ok ….**ahem

When we care about someone, we are interested in them and want their happiness. If they care about us the same in return, well its a nice warm fuzzy feeling all around and having someone care about you can make all the differnce in the way you see the world.  Who isn’t a little happier knowing they are cared about?

Ok so we have – let’s  say we have a nice couple that care about each other and they go about their daily business with an equal capacity to care and show it for each other Everything is superdy duper and then one day … let’s say the girl just out of the blue…cracks.

In other words let’s say she gets sick, I mean real sick, mentally, physically, you pick.  A debilitating illness, like MS, a serious mental illness, like um..I’m not too up on my mental disorders – maybe bipolar disorder, a terminal illness, like cancer.

One of these, any of these will change lives and the person who is afflicted suddenly finds them selves in the position of needing to be taken care of.  Even in very basic ways eventually if they will progressively get worse.

You think it’s hard to get the initial diagnosis of something like any of those?  Wait until it sinks in that you need care givers …It’s not easy I am here to tell you.  Not today, Today I am here to tell you about the caregivers themselves.  Let me just say that  you might as well get yourself a team and buy them t-shirts.  It makes it more fun.

Now let’s look at the other half to this fine couple.

Oh, no he DIDn’t… did he? 

OH, there he is phew!  Thank goodness.

See he has just been made the captain of the team, the one who will have the most responsiblity, the one who will be giving the most and probably feeling the least cared about, and for sure cared for.

A care giver is anyone who gives care to anyone who can’t fully care for themselves for whatever reason.  We all at one or another point in our lives, even if its only for a day and only making chicken soup for our friend who has a cold.

Some make it a lifelong commitment by choosing to care for, give care to, and take care of a person who may be fine now, but may deteriorate over time and eventually die from the affliction that requires that they have others care for them.

Some never know when they are on duty because their charge may not have a physical, illness but a mental one and it may become life threatening in an instant without intervention and surely disrupting when there is a lack of stability.

I think any of us faced with the question of knowing you love someone and being at a crossroads, you maybe aren’t married so could leave but you deeply love and care about the other person and you find out they have an illness that either will in the future or even does now require that you will be the caregiver, that there will be an imbalance of give and take at some point that you may lose them no matter how well you care about them, would like to think and hope that we would say

“Yes, I will not only care for you, but be your caregiver.”

Without thinking through all the implications saying yes is easy.

After examining the implications and really searching your heart and considering it all, saying no doesn’t make you a bad person, if you know you can’t do it.  It is a hard thing to think about leaving someone that is ill (again we are speaking not of long time committed relationships or even parental or familial… those kids have some other considerations too).

If you are positive you can’t do it, you are doing the right thing and I think there should not be any penalty for it.  That just causes people to say yes because they don’t want to look bad and it won’t end well for either of them.

What about if you aren’t sure?  Maybe you think you won’t be good at it but you would be willing to try and you just don’t want to mess up for goodness sake.

My kind of fairy tale, that has a happily ever after is when the prince, upon discovering the dragon isn’t really the bigget of his worries but that his princess is coming undone, sick, a loony maybe, and at first thinks he can’t handle it, decides that whatever he has to do he will becasue he loves her and he goes riding back to her to care for her ’til she psses away then goes back to fighting his dragons until he joins her in the great beyond.

They made it a movie.  If I remembered the name of it, I would have skipped the above narrative.

I cried at the end – heck the whole last 45 mins.  Anne Hathaway, Jake Glynnynhall.  He chased the bus in a little car and after saying he didn’t think he could be who she needed, which was why she was in the bus and him in a car chasing it down..  decided he couldn’t live without her.

Anyways, my point …

Consider This

Well over all my point is that is takes a really special person to be a caregiver for some one who is sick, mentally. terminally or with a long debilitating illness.  Any of the caregivers will be witness to the demise of someone they love and that is really really scary to think about facing.

If you love them and are willing to learn how to be not just a partner but a caregiver, you may find that you are rewarded with something you never dreamed of to try to help with the hurt and frustration, the helpless feeling that accompanies as you do all in your power  and still must watch your love deteriorate, possibly die.

I mean, if you were on my team, you get to color all day, we go hunting midgets that are flashers,  there are Fantasia High Def butterflies, we go dancing around the room, to recess, eat donuts with sprinkles, watch veggietales and speak to aliens when we take off our tinfoil hats.  There is lots of laughter and love to help balance out the harder parts, and I got an opening for the full time Knight.  And T-Shirts.

Where else would you have that much fun? 

And one more little secret that I just think might be true, not sure exactly how I know it but, you maybe should ask the person who is ill what they want and need from you.  Don’t expect them to be able to tell you right away, after all this whole need someone to care for them maybe new and they may think they shouldn’t burden anyone with their care and maybe think of leaving….even though you are the love of their life or best friend or someone they value very much.  They may be thinking, while you are thinking they need someone who knows what they are doing, that it’s not fair to burden you with what they have.

If you love each other, you can care for, in some way even if there are some things you cannot do.  stay and take a hand and hold a heart.  She or he, needs the comfort of your presence

If your friend has cancer and is bedridden and lonely, go over and reminisce and talk to them.  He needs the laughter of a friend.

Ok how about this one…

If the person who you care about and help care for has a SMI and calls to tell you there are midgets in the backyard and that since the music playing won’t stop the next logical step was the volume and all that happened is the error message “but these go to 11”  then they ask you if you find any of it alarming or if you hear the alarms.

Tell her you will be there to hunt the midgets so keep an eye on them.  Oh, and that you are bringing squeezy cheese.

She needed  to know that it was ok to call them midgets.

Don’t forget the crackers 🙂

 

To your Mental State, Whatever it May be,

 

 ~~~~~~~~~~


Talk back like Red is here. She will be so proud of us if we have a real live M3 discussion for her to read when she gets back. Say something already. What?

(c) Red Dwyer 2012
Original text (c) Lizzie Cracked
Images provided by Lizzie Cracked
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