Two incidents that changed my life

Years ago. I used to be real dependable. I was always doing yard work at my families houses. They also depended on me to house sit for them when they flew places, sometimes more than a week at a time. And I was always driving them to the airport and picking them back up.

I mean my dad lived in Sacramento and he would depend on me to take the train from San Jose so I could drive him and my step mom to the airport and house sit and walk and feed their dogs and water their yards. A lot of responsibility.

Then about 6 years ago my sister booked a flight to Spain. She planned it out 8 months ahead of time to fly to Spain and hike this pilgrimage trail. And she arranged ahead of time for me to drive her to the train station so she could take a train to the airport. I completely blew it for the first and last time. I had just gotten a new GPS for my car. I knew how to get to the train station on my own but I depended on the GPS to get me there sooner. Big mistake. I kept taking the wrong turns and having to reset it and got totally lost. And at the last minute I called my sister and told her I was going to be late. She freaked out. I almost made her miss the train and she would have missed her flight and she would have had to cancel her whole trip. Luckily, she was able to call a friend on short notice and get a ride and made it to Spain.

But that ended my family depending on me. I didn’t get asked to house sit anymore, in fact they didn’t ask me for anything. It was depressing, I liked being dependable but they didn’t trust me anymore. That was 6 years ago, it’s only recently that my middle sister trusts me to drive over and feed her cat when she leaves town. I’m glad I can do that much.

The other incident is when I got asked to leave my housing 7 years ago. The lady and her husband were going to help me move but I had to drive across town to meet them . I had a real nice bed & dresser set that I couldn’t take to the board & care home so my sister sold it for me but the person needed it delivered up to San Francisco, a 40 mile drive. I just assumed I would be the one driving it up. I didn’t feel up to it, I had a lot going on.

I had just been in the psyche ward for a couple days after staying out for 25 years. My mom had died and I got suicidal and I was looking at moving back into a board & care home after living independently for 20 years. I was in bad shape but I always managed to rise to the occasion when something was asked of me. I was a little leery of driving to San Francisco but if I had to I would have done it. But my older sister had my 28 year old nephew drive up. I was kinda crushed, I felt I had let myself down and that now my sisters wouldn’t trust me anymore. My sister explained though. She told me I had too much on my mind and I was scattered. I took that to mean she knew I could do it under ordinary circumstance but this time I shouldn’t do it.

Well, those two incidents changed my life and my standing with my family. I wasn’t normal and dependable anymore. I always figured somehow I could do anything but now it made me look bad. And maybe they blamed my mental illness on it. They treated me normally before that. Now I’m not as much a part of their lives because of two mistakes.

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Maybe its a good thing you don’t have to run all these errands anymore I’m sure your family loves you all the same

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Yeah, maybe you’re right. It felt good to be depended on but it could be stressful.

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I have trouble with understanding why things like that happen. It’s like you had to feel worse. Your life with your family took two big hits.
I hope that maybe you will feel better and then you can go back to the old ways.

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