Sometimes, it feels like I’m drowning. Like I’ve been pulled beneath the surface and am simply taking on water. When this feeling hits, frustration with whatever I’m doing ensues, and I just want to explode – let it all out in a big Shrek-like roar.

Neither option is available to me at present – neither holding it in nor letting it go in that manner would be healthy for me or any around me. I’ll have to find a healthy vent, because “just keeping busy” isn’t working anymore. I keep busy by adding things to the list. The drowning feeling prevents me from focusing on anything properly, resulting in just another incomplete project on the heap of things to do, which increases the suffocating stress.

And then there are outside influences – the demands of the parents, the poor performance of my mom’s healthcare team requiring that those of us in Michigan spend extra time with her because the company doesn’t manage their personnel well – we’ve been having multiple incidents where there was no coverage, and their management is, frankly, ineffective. Having to spend extra time with mom seems innocuous enough, but it, too increases that stress and that pile of things not getting done, and carries stress of its own due to mom’s condition and the things that I cannot do for her if needed.

Sigh.

Life, in general, doesn’t stop, even if mine seems to have.