Episode 246: Navigating Caregiver Envy During Spring Break
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Show Transcript
The other day I decided to mindlessly scroll through social media in an attempt to disconnect from the overwhelm of my day. What I found was videos of people I know sharing their vacation videos in real time and posts from people I don’t know talking about preparing for their vacation, sharing their vacations and others mocking the vacations people were taking because they couldn’t go on one themselves. Since I was in a particular mood and very low energy I began to feel something uncomfortable.
Let’s talk about spring break.
Now I have to be honest, spring break didn’t pop up on my radar until adulthood. I went to a big city high school and college in the NorthEast and none of my friends went on spring break trips because… well quite frankly because we were broke.
However, as I grew older I began to find that I had friends who traveled mostly only in March. Some took their kids on their spring break trips, others took time off to just go on their own with friends. I mostly looked at this phenomena with curiosity.
I’ve traveled a lot with my husband and daughter over my lifetime with them. We just don’t usually go anywhere in March because, we don’t want to fly and sit on a beach next to a bunch of people on Spring Break to be honest.
Usually when people I know have posted about their trips in the past I’ve been genuinely interested in their experiences mostly to see if they are in a place I should consider going to in the future. Are they at a beach? What does it look like? How crowded is it? How big is the drink someone just brought to them?
Other times I flick by them with as much disinterest as when they post videos of their child’s talent show performance.
Either way other people’s vacations have never been a thing.
Until this week.
I think this week was a combination of feelings that all led to a moment of being exhausted, really. And let’s face it, I wanted a social media dopamine hit and it back fired. I found myself increasingly irritated as I swiped through and of course kept swiping in hope of finding something that would just make me laugh… which usually involves someone falling.
After far too long I stopped. Because I realized vacation content was actually pissing me off which is new for me. I began to feel jealousy and felt like I was being left out of some kinda fun I never had the urge to be a part of in the past.
This time of the year is difficult for many of us. I’ve always known this. Spring Break comes after you’ve finally recovered from the holidays from the end of the year followed by valentines Day. By the time spring break rolls around you hopefully have the holiday decorations put away and you’re starting to see some signs of the weather changing which brings some hope in a way.
Right when you feel like you’ve found your emotional balance (however unbalanced that might be in your caregiving life) you’re hit with something new. Everyone else’s vacations. Ads for places you can go to on vacation. People talking to you about their vacations.
And as you sit next to your spouse awake at 2am because the condition of their health scares the shit out of you, or you are trying to sleep on the hard sofa in their hospital room or you’re on the floor beside your parent or child’s bed because you can tolerate being woken up every half hour and you decide to do the same thing I did… scroll through your feed. You find yourself watching a video of someone jumping into a pool or walking on the pristine sand of a beach and you find yourself filled with emotion. Not anything that feels good either. I feel like it’s sometimes hard to describe because it is a special caregiver mix of feelings.
It’s a combination of jealousy and anger and feeling left behind by the rest of the world. It’s needing a break and wishing you could be on that beach but not only be there but also feel what you think you’d feel while there. The release that you’ve been dying for and the relaxation you think you’d actually have. While at the same time just maybe, maybe not have to be a caregiver for a day or two which then pulls in the guilt and the shame and the feeling sorry for yourself and moving into not feeling like anyone really sees you or even knows all the things you do for your loved one and maybe it slides into a little passive aggresivity - why didn’t they invite ME to go with them. Or a mix of “must be nice” and “I know they can’t afford that trip” and then back around to the anger, and the loneliness and then just pure sadness…. The tears pulling up from the depths of your soul and you just cry with so much emotion that you feel like the muscles on the side of your neck will break and you look at that video or picture again and just maybe for a second you play with the idea of giving up the hope of ever having a moment of fun ever again. And then you find yourself exhausted, put your phone down and cry yourself to sleep.
All because of someone else’s vacation.
Then you wake up with an emotional hangover and realize you can’t tell anyone about how you feel because they won’t understand and you’re convinced you’ll be judged.
So you try to bury it deep inside you and try to make it through the whole month of March without falling apart or blowing up. Maybe you try to ignore the posts. Maybe you delay phone calls from people you know were just on trips because you really don’t feel you can be civil with them right now.
Maybe you name this feeling as anger or disgust. Eventhough you and I both know it’s more than that.
Either way it’s all aimed at someone else. Someone else’s vacation. For a month we finally have a villain in our lives we can blame for how we feel. I know. I’ve felt it.
Let me be clear… if that is how you’re feeling right now or how you’ve felt in the past… it’s ok and it’s normal. So many caregivers feel this.
We just keep it to ourselves because we don’t want other people to think we’re assholes. Especially because the very same people that we are envious of are the one’s we also call friends. The one’s we would share our feeling with if it weren’t for the fact that what we feel was caused by them enjoying their lives.
That is what it is, isn’t it? You see someone enjoying their lives and it reminds you of what you feel you aren’t having right now. Something you’ve experienced or felt before but don’t have access to at the moment.
It’s hard to see someone have something you feel your life won’t let you have.
It’s infuriating, it’s unfair and it highlights the state of your caregiving.
You can list why you don’t go on trips. I know.
You can hardly pay medical bills let alone budget for a vacation.
There is no way you can take your parent away from their normal routine.
They are too sick for you to plan a trip.
They’re doing chemo for the next 3 months.
The list goes on.
These are real reasons to not be able to get away.
And let’s be clear on how vacations work. You have the stressors of travel to get to a place you want to relax in. Sometimes you can disconnect and relax while other times you are irritated by the people you’re traveling with or are around. You plan on coming back a different person, rejuvenated and refreshed, and some people do. But you always come back to the same life and same problems you had before you left.
Vacations are just a break from your real life.
Maybe that is what upsets you the most. You are watching people have the break you really need.
Or maybe that was the life you thought you’d have at this stage and it’s a reminder of how much caregiving has changed how you thought you’d be living by now.
Or it’s a reminder of the life you used to have.
So it’s understandable that March can be a rough month. I just want to let you know you aren’t the only one that feels this.
As I put my phone down that day, completely irritated and feeling worse off than before I started it really took me a while to figure out what was going on. I was uncomfortable with this cocktail of emotions. It wasn’t until the end of the day when I sat down with my phone again that I realized what was going on.
I needed a break and the only reason I didn’t see that earlier was because in my overwhelm I forgot to check in with myself and see what I really needed.
All of the emotions you feel when you see other people going on vacation are valid but they were there before seeing the pictures or videos. And they’re a complicated bundled mess of feelings you can’t separate easily.
And it’s ok.
It’s ok to feel them. It’s ok for them to exist.
Most importantly you’re not alone in having them.
When I realized what was going on I put my phone down and realized I needed to have a little break. I grabbed myself a cup of tea… went off to a quiet corner of the house with a book I’ve been wanting to read and disconnected for a while.
Will those feelings come up again in the future… of course. At least now I’ll know what they’re trying to tell me I need.
Take your break. Thanks for listening.
