My mother is in hospital, admitted and operated on yesterday. I spent the day there, and it was pretty grim. It's awful seeing her in pain and distressed and not being able to do anything about it. My father was completely acopic so he needed looking after as well.
When I finally came home last night, I collapsed in a heap of self-pity and panic. I'm an only child and there is just me to deal with things like this, which will only get worse as my parents grow older and more infirm.
To make it worse, all day at the hospital I missed A. He was never really good at moral support but there's no-one to beat him at practical support in a crisis - and we had a few of those during the life-span of our relationship. And he loved my parents, particularly my mother, and she and he had quite a rapport. A is also the only person, apart from my parents, from whom I felt able to ask for help. I'm not very good at asking for help, preferring to muddle along on my own saying "I'm fine" rather than admit to being very far from fine indeed. And because I'm a novice at asking for help, I made a rookie mistake. When I got back from the hospital (early evening) I sent S a text asking if I could go round to his place for a couple of hours and offered to cook supper in exchange. He, predictably, declined (I don't blame him, he works weekends and would have been tired, and it was quite a random request from someone he's only been dating for a couple of months). I shouldn't have asked, I knew that as I pressed "send" but there's no way to recall a text and now I have given him the impression that I am needy and clingy.
Arggh! Dating is hard!
