Compensation: Receiving a reward for one's services
Condumbdroms -- people who irritate you with their ways that seem stupid and irrational.
I'm entering phase 2 of work.
Phase 1 was - yay, I have a job.
I was pretty involved with the job at that point - doing many a bathroom call, and learning about aging and my grandmother's strange perspective. I was learning things like, what an old body looks like naked, that I won't always have my physical faculties, how to communicate better, how helpless the human body is without being able to move - you still have to eat and poop, and you'll need assistance. We got along badly at just a times, but for the most part, it was tranquil and I was okay with doing the job. I mostly just sloth around, the entire day, which works for me.
Now, I was not okay with doing the job one bit in the first two days. I was up all night, every two hours, having a voice on the radio call me out of my angry poor sleep dreaming to walk her smelly self over to the bathroom. I don't get it- I was exhausted the next day, and she was just fine.
At this point, the work I was doing, was not worth the compensation I receive - $100 a day.
Then, things settled, my roommate took over at nights, and since our radio's weren't working anyways, my grandmother went to the bathroom alone at nights.
So, I was fine with it.
Phase 2 is, I am sick of this job. I am doing this nearly all day. I feel prisoned in that I can't leave for a period of time. I'm not on a schedule like I wish I was, because my grandmother just drifts between the bathroom, some exercises, eating, laying down, in a boring and undefined way. I'm not getting any social stimulation since I don't like my grandmother and am not interested in telling about myself or asking about her. To me, this doesn't feel neutral, it feels negative, because my wish is to talk with people I am with. I feel dull (All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy) and I'm unhappy and sluggish much of the time.
Here's one of the problems: Its really hard for me to communicate well - talk loud enough or clear enough to be heard - when I'm unhappy, which is how I am without social stimulation. I just lack the energy to come across well, and lack the goodwill to try, and then somehow I become angry and everything becomes my fault. For example, I know that I should say aloud 'I'm going to take you in backwards', when she asks to the living room (left) and I start bringing her out so it seems that we are going forwards into the other room. But I don't say it, and then I get a 'NOoo, I need to go to the living room'. Never mind that I'm doing her request, not making her wait, and taking her backwards, which works better than forwards when we go over a bump. Its all my fault, that I'm not communicating well, and knowingly goading her confusion.
So this happens every time: My grandmother calls me for something like 'Marissa','yes','Marissa I need the radio turned on' That first yes was hard for me because I don't like calling loudly. I know her request is supposed to be answered. Now, if I hear her say a request, I"ll always come over and do it. But, too late. Unless I yell back 'Okay, I'm coming' right then, she thinks that I'm not coming, didn't hear her, or didn't understand. She thinks I'm stupid by this point, because I don't automatically respond out loud. Whenever she repeats herself, 'Marissa, I need the radio turned on' I am irritated, and I say 'yes, I heard you', but she never comments on me for saying 'I heard you'. She acts as though she didn't hear me say that.
Add to this that I'm here all the time, and that she just keeps talking about her condumbdrum family members, and my conflict grows. I did a stupid thing - I asked to leave, and didn't say that I was leaving for the day, not just going briefly. At this point, I was frustrated, felt unneeded since she'd just lay down the rest of the day, and I have trouble communicating when I'm withdrawn, frustrated, and unhappy.
The problems that built up put me into conflict and then with the conflict, made me strongly question the compensation of $100 a day, which added to the brew.
Now, my less than exemplar work is not going to give me any stronger ties with my family, any happiness, or any more money. However, I start harping on the fact that 'this isn't worth the $100 a day', when I was continually missing opportunities to go with meetup.com, and it become alot about the money and lack of fair compensation.
So what if I received $150 a day, would that be any better? I don't know. But I feel so underpaid.
I asked for more money, feeling like I'd be less pissed off about everything if I was paid more. I asked this when I don't deserve it, the day after my absence.
One of the things that is making this harder, is feeling underdeserved. I'm not given any feedback that I'm doing a good job. She probably doesn't realize that I'm attentive, that I hear all her callings the first time, that I'm washing all the dishes otherwise we'd run out.
Much worse, rather than just being unhappy, I really want to leave now, since I overheard my grandmother told my dad about me 'there's something wrong with her, its like you said '.
These are pretty bad words to hear.
But then I realized who I was hearing them from. My grandmother told me today, that its better to be underweight than normal weight. She continually speaks of things that happened in the family over 30 years ago - her ex stealing money. She is obsessed with health. She eats healthy but doesn't cook, ever, and doesn't eat vegetables, and doesn't wash her fruit. She believes that 'if something is good, too much of it will be best'. She believes everything she reads in these natural health tabloids, such as that annual exams are bad for you, with no discrimination. I've watched her take things out of context and repeat them over and over, such as 'this man said that Israel will be finished in only a few years', and her impression that the hard of hearing gate guard is 'nasty'. She also doesn't seem to realize being a burden, such as asking my roommate to go out shopping for her when the roomate was sick ('its okay, its not far'). She keeps talking about how badly the nurses treated her and how bad it is to be on medications. She thinks she will get sick from being cold when she was in the shower. She has a minor panic attack every time the phone rings - 'uh-oh! Marissa, the phone!', that its ringing and won't be answered. She thinks she know which doctors are just out to make money, and she thinks that looks really matter; that people will like you if you are attractive. She thinks she is going to die from anasthestia on the operating table, and tells everyone this.
I feel sorry for myself hearing those words, knowing they are the result of my behavior when I spend time with and am uncomfortable around others. My reaction to lack of social connection is that I feel slow, angry, and my ability to act socially drops. Its a horrible state to be in. I even kept being jealous of my grandmother for her body being longer than mine and hairless. When she said it, 'there's something wrong with her', before I remembered whose words they were, I fully believed them. At that point, I was fed up with myself, and with my growing conflict and withdrawnness, and also had done something wrong by leaving without notice and had been berating myself over that. She was correct, something was wrong with me. So this is why I don't have a job, why I have so much struggle. Aspergers?
No, of course it isn't right. Its bloody wrong and I feel sorry for myself for having believed it just then, not to mention all in my past. I was just with people who didn't support me how I needed, and I withered because of it. I took myself down without a way to stop it. As in most mental anguish, opportunities for compassion, or just neutral objectivity got thrown aside and kept out of sight, out of mind, in the mental onslaught of inadequacy.
One thing that comes up while thinking about these words is, that 'there's just something wrong with [him]' has been my main description of my dad when asked what he's like. He's just always unlikeable, has his forehead furrowed, lacks loving thoughts, just seems to eat and not be interested in taking care of himself, always wants to help but is always in a rush with a short fuse, and then will laugh easily, it looks mean to me, at some people's jokes and not others. So, I deserve this a little - I have thought it enough times that its coming back at me (if I remember right I haven't said it out loud though, and it really hurt). Most of that description could just as easily be me in his view, and we both have come to the conclusion that there is something wrong with the other. We each don't respect each other, don't like the others behavior, and have written it off as something being wrong with the others attitude.
Except that I came to believe that there was something wrong with me. And doubtless that self-perspective has lead to more suffering. In contrast, I don't think my dad thinks that of himself. In fact, when I brought stuff up with him at my last trip home, he said 'YOU, Marissa', 'You are the problem, not me. I don't have these issues with anyone else' (neither do I, I thought). I was pretty appalled but it made me feel more right, too, that I was not so close minded as him.
So as far as staying on with this job having its stated issues in hand, I don't know what wins out. Being my grandmother's caretaker allows me to live without paying any expenses. I was really getting financially worried before this. Since I'm sleeping at home or at her house, I don't have to pay rent, pay for food, or gas, and I get to eat fruit from home, which I usually don't treat myself to. I also get to play piano a bit, read (which I wouldn't do when I was living on my own, its hard to explain, but when I am working I can get a lot more done), do weights, and there's a large open floor for me to do my body meditative stuff. And I have a role, so I don't have to worry about having no reason to be where I am when I wake up in the morning. Plus its given me a computer to use and lots of time to spend on facebook, which has been self developing since I realize that I am being read / paid attention to.
$100 a day is minimum wage, and I did end up getting much less time relieved from caregiving than I had originally bargained for, and had to sit out some opportunities I might have used to socialize with people on meetup.com. But I probably wouldn't have gone to those things if I'd just been sitting around all day with no job, because I would have to explain myself to people, etc. I've never babysat, but know that it pays terribly and of course a babysitter would want to be doing something else, or at least earning more money at her task. How do babysitters feel about their work? What about when you're a kid and taking care of younger siblings, and not getting paid anything?
But the more the conflict grew, the more it became about how unfair this was, that I wasn't getting paid enough to make this worthwhile. Then I got more obsessed with food out of frustration, and so spent more money, further disappointing myself in my situation. But as soon as I start complaining about it, I will probably be relieved - between my dad and the other caretaker, Iris, there will be less time I have to spend here.
And you know what? I don't want the time without work. I don't know what to do with myself except for go home and eat. I usually forget that I could play with my dog. I've been a little better about letting myself just watch TV without feeling so disappointingly self conscious in my lonely activities. So the problem is that my time off isn't a huge breath of fresh air that I can rejuvenate myself with - I'm still unhappy.
And you know whats confusing- I don't think either of my parents strive toward self improvement, at all. Or my grandmother. They just go about their lives, not up in a rut, and not trying to get to another level of anything. They seems pretty neutral, not particularly happy or unhappy. Next post on issues with generalizations.
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