Full Time Care

This has been bugging me for a couple of days now and, combined with my connection going toes-up again, has restrained me from blogging here. It’s a combination of an email and living as a FTC, as I do. So what’s the problem? I feel like a second-class citizen.

The feeling’s been there for a while and has regularly been simmering, without a proper name, just below boiling point. A couple of days ago, it boiled: firstly, I had an email from the people at Today following their regular, 3-day review of content. They go through regularly to look at “quality, productivity, popularity, and potential” and basically decided that this blog isn’t good enough on one or more of those fronts to warrant the dollar-a-day payment.

This is, in many ways, understandable. Although I would like to believe that the first two criteria are not a problem, personal blogs rarely get a large number of followers and, of course, are unlikely to bring in vast quantities of advertising revenue. That’s the main reason that the advice to people wanting to make a living through blogging is to pick a commercial subject rather than a personal one.

In my case, however, this rebuttal attached itself to a moment of introspection, when I was looking at why I often feel so stressed and annoyed. On further reflection, it occurred to me that I feel unappreciated. No, not that - I feel as though I don’t exist in the same way as my partner does. Let me explain.

If she wants something, she only has to ask. If she’s doing something, I don’t interrupt. If she’s tired or sick, I take care of her. When she talks, I listen, often for hours. I cook, I clean, I shop and so on. Now, the other side of things: if I want something, I get it myself. If I’m doing something and she calls, I drop it for whatever she wants. If I’m tired or sick, I take care of her. When I talk, she listens for thirty seconds, then starts talking again. She doesn’t cook (except occasional masterpieces in the form of chocolate cake or omelettes!), she doesn’t clean unless the house is a tip, she doesn’t shop or whatever.

Heck, I once left an empty sachet of cat food exactly where she’d left it in the kitchen, to see if she would throw it away. Three weeks, it sat there. In the end, I chucked it in the bin, before it grew legs and tried to take up permanent residence!

Now, I don’t mind looking after her. I’m a carer, that’s what I do. But I need things as well. I need to do stuff for myself, to have her do things for me, to share and exchange. I don’t want to be her parents and watch her live like a teenager, always counting on me to do whatever it is that she doesn’t want to handle. The list of jobs I have to deal with at the moment is well over twenty items - and it rarely gets any smaller. I guess I have to stop sacrificing quite so much and slowly teach her (not literally) that she’s an adult and can do a lot of these things for herself. That she needs to stop treating me like a combination of whipping boy, housekeeper and personal assistant. That she has to let me be more than a second-class citizen.

If she doesn’t, and this carries on much longer, I won’t know whether I even exist.