STRESS

Stress is - pardon my French - quite the fucking bitch.  I am overwhelmingly stressed.  To the point of being unable to make simple decisions - like, what laundry should be washed next.  I am alternating between spacing out, being all out cranky, and crying.  I'm sure Wayne is waiting for my head to start spinning, Linda Blair style.
Don't expect a lot out of this blog, btw.  It's kind of a random, stream of consciousness thing.  More for me than you...
See, my mom's back in the hospital.  She spent 10 days here - sleeping mostly on my love seat, dozing day and night, sitting up.  She has countless medical issues - lung disease (at one point she said emphysema, but then COPD - of which emphysema is categorized - but we aren't sure; definitely asthma and chronic bronchitis), degenerative hip and disc disease, rheumatoid arthritis, diabetes, borderline personality disorder, panic disorder, PTSD, clinical depression... It's a long, long list.  (You should see my medical forms!!)  On top of all of that, mom decided to have lap band surgery (it was supposed to "cure" her diabetes and help with the back/hip pain).  So she's supposed to only eat 4 ounces of food.  And she's sick to her stomach all.the.time.
Now, here's where I get judgy and, most likely, am a bad daughter.    She eats the most horrible things - given that she's diabetic and had lap band.  Like, seriously.  Chocolate cake and a bottled Starbucks frap for breakfast.  Cheetos and Cheez-Its.  Ramen soup.  Sure, she had a salad here and there, but really, it's all about the carbs.
Plus, she almost always has this terrible cough that she says is allergies.  But it's not.  Dude.  You can HEAR her wheezing.  And then she can't lie down to sleep because she coughs so bad.  But she can't sit up because her back hurts.  So, her idea is to smoke.  Cigarettes.  All the time.  ALL. THE. TIME.   She literally checked her watch to be sure she was smoking half a cigarette every half hour.  While she was coughing her lungs up.
Do you know how HARD it is to watch someone kill themselves that way?  I mean, yeah, we all know that smoking kills but this is actually happening right in front of my face.  And there's nothing I can do to stop it.  If I try to talk to her about it, she says her doctor told her to continue smoking.  (Which, if it's true, he should definitely lose his license.)  Or she becomes defensive and mean (part of that borderline personality disorder thing).  Or she has a panic attack from the ensuing argument.
This is a place where I can say what I want and have no repercussions, right?  (HAHAHAHA!!!)  Well, she was in and out of mental hospitals for over 5 years - for suicidal thoughts and depression.  I moved to California because I thought she was going to kill herself and leave my little sister and stepdad to fend for themselves.  And because she was in the hospital so much I wanted to help out with my sister.
I honestly thought I was ready for her to die at anytime.  Not like "Oh, sure, go ahead and do it."  But more, "Okay, it always seems to be on the verge of happening so I won't be taken by surprise."
But she's in the hospital - 2 days after leaving here - with double pneumonia and God knows what else and I'm not ready.  I mean, maybe I'm being dramatic and overreacting but when someone with that many health issues is that sick and not getting better... What else am I supposed to think?  Especially me - a recovering over-thinker.  (Definitely relapsing here!!!)
What helps me is information.  And control, but I know I can't have that right now.  To self-analyze, I'm suffering from control and anxiety issues - which generally go hand in hand, anyway, right?  There's nothing I can do but pray and hope and wish and send as much love and positive energy as humanly possible.