I’m all out of give-a-shits.

I’ve been fighting the coffee wars for the past week – seems coffee availability is at a premium. So are the prices. I’m not going to go into a big convoluted story about my problems obtaining drinkable coffee – it’s tedious, boring and I just don’t give a shit about it anymore.

My husband has COPD and I’ve been nagging him to quit smoking for years. His health has taken a precipitous decline in the last 6 weeks which has finally convinced him to quit smoking. At 75 years of age. Oh yes, and I smoke too. Never as much as he has and I’ve quit smoking for years at a time since taking up the nasty habit in my mid-20’s.  It’s been hard for me to quit when he wouldn’t. Having cigarettes available, even when you really don’t want one but habit says it’s time to light up – big problem for me.

Anyway, we have both been smoke free for a little over a month. The nicotine is out of our systems. But here’s the thing – smoking is NOT about the nicotine. It is about the habit. The comfort from the habit. Even an oral fixation. It is the “hand-mouth-kick back and relax”  routine that is hard to break/get over.  It is about wanting, not needing.

I have what could be called an e-cigarette. No nicotine, vegetable glycol, tobacco flavor. Not much help. One because it does not feel like a cigarette in my hand or mouth, two, because it is not finite. Somehow part of the whole cigarette smoking thing is that it is finite – there are only so many puffs in one cigarette then it’s over, done: crush it out, move on, the whole activity/experience is complete.

Smoking has jack-all to do with nicotine is what I’m saying.  My husband and I both agree on that.

I’m tired. Mentally and emotionally tired. Physically too but that doesn’t bother me as much as the mental/emotional tiredness. I’m really not cut out to be responsible for/in-charge of everything. There are folks who would say differently. They think they know me. They don’t. They only see me BE in charge, they don’t know the why of it.  They don’t know that in the early years of my marriage, when I wasn’t in-charge of everything, nothing got done. Bills didn’t paid, debt piled up. And other stuff. Some of these people, who like to judge, meaning my husband’s family, knew he was always somewhat irresponsible; one sister having spent years bailing him out financially and practically (the man has NO common sense).

But even my husband’s doctors probably think I am some kind of overbearing bully – my husband’s pulmonologist refers to me as “the boss”.

I am the boss because someone has to be; someone has to be responsible. Someone has to be practical. My husband never was. His whole life people did for him. His first wife didn’t, but I sure did.

OK, so being a caretaker seems to be my innate personality. But it’s not. It’s the personality I developed in response to my childhood. I was forced to be a responsible adult at a young age and it became hard-wired into my personality.  Every personal relationship I’ve had had me in the caretaker role; every job I’ve ever had had me in the caretaker role.

And I have resented every single relationship and job. I am angry with myself for putting myself in these situations. Because I know it is MY fault. These situations are MY choices. There have been times, going into them, early on, that I recognized the situation as being unhealthy for me, but all to often it took too long for me to get out.  I recognize the pattern, too late. And then I just keep on repeating it.

And I’m tired.  I want out.

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It’s not like this is a new whine – I just discovered this post from 2020. Same song and dance re: caretaker mode. I’m nothing if not consistent. And boring.