My family is such a fucking hassle. Yesterday, after a three-week hiatus (due to my Rolling Stone and all), I call my mother. She’s shuttling around in Taiwan again, and this time I find her at my aunt’s house in Tainan. My aunt and dad do this annoying thing where they talk about my mom like she’s not even in the room. So my aunt hogs the phone and tells me that my mother isn’t doing so great. In fact, in the last couple of weeks, my mother has come to believe that my father impregnated her caretaker. Yes, the caretaker who busts her ass every damn day, cooking, cleaning, bathing, doing EVERYthing for my mom and grandmother.

I’m immediately pissed off by yet another outrageous accusation. I then talk to my mother. She tells me that one night many months ago, before my dad came back Stateside to do his taxes, my dad went with the caretaker to Costco to buy a shit ton of bottled water. That is another story onto itself… bc why would they need a fucking pallet-full of bottled water? Bc my parents bought the condo several years ago, and it sat vacant for months at a time. The built-in water filtration system died, and it was “too costly” to repair. So instead of getting that shit fixed, my father decided to use bottled water— for cooking and drinking. Never mind that he has the money to get the filtration system fixed. Never mind that maybe he can order a water delivery service where they bring the tanks to your door? I mean, we’ve seen this bullshit behavior before with the goddamn garage doors, right?

Needless to say, my mother insists that the bottled water outing was the time when my dad knocked up the caretaker. And now she’s convinced the woman is preggers. Mind you, the woman is like 55 y/o and has two grown kids plus a family in Indonesia whom she can only visit once every 3-6 years (welcome to migrant labor in Taiwan). So last night, my mother tells me the whole story, and given that my dad gave me zero context or warning about any of this (typical), I fucking went ballistic. Like full on Shock and Awe, Operation Desert Storm.

Yes, I know she has Alzheimer’s, and my aunt explained that delusions like this are part of the disease. The thing is, this kind of bullshit is not entirely from left field. All while I was growing up, my mother had fears like this— that my American grandmother was in love with my dad, that dad’s registered nurse at his private practice was in love with him… you fucking name it. And let’s not forget the time she accused me of having a freakin’ affair with my own cousin!?!?! The lady has a history of cray. So back to the present. Yeah, I basically went around in circles with her. First off, no one wants to bang my father. I mean, please. Second, the caretaker is well beyond child-bearing years. Third, the caretaker has been so good and hardworking for my family— she’s not trying to entrap us. Utterly exasperated, I finally told mom that if she’s going to make up whatever story, let’s then wait to see in the coming months if the caretaker is in fact preggers, and heck, maybe I will end up welcoming a new baby brother/sister.

As you can imagine, the call did not go well. And every time there is drama with my family, I wish and pine to ditch them and get an entirely different family. Seriously, I am not a dramatic person— sure, I am opinionated and fervent and judgey, but I ain’t about creating drama out of thin air!! When this bullshit happens, I just think back to all the arguments and fights and crap I had to deal with since forever. Between the conditional love parenting and the constant comparisons with their friends’ kids and the crap with my brother, I’m just done! Enough is enough.

Speaking of the little emperor, now that dad is Stateside, my brother has started coming around visiting my mom every weekend. I’m telling you: what the heck happened to her from one month ago when I had a great lucid call with her to now where she’s batshit crazy again? I’ll tell you what happened. My brother is back touting his Apricot Seeds of God poison, colonics, anti-microwaving-lifestyle onto my 72 y/o mother. In addition, he’s forcing her to not sleep during the day and to walk miles and miles to the goddamn Costco in the Taiwan heat and humidity. My mother has no history of exercise. She’s a sedentary person, and now you have psycho drill sergeant bossing her around. WTF. This is where I’m like: WTF is wrong with my family?

So the call didn’t end well. The next day, I called my dad, and he just explained it’s part of her disease. Just tell her it didn’t happen and move on. Um, move on to what? Meanwhile, my dad starts asking me about the Doordash order I placed for him. $50? So expensive! Then, I lost it again. Stop asking about the cost. It doesn’t fucking matter.

Oh, it’s so much trouble, he says. ARGH!!! I mean, look. Life is full of tedious tasks. You take a dump, and you have to actually wipe your asshole. Sorry, life takes effort. You just take the few seconds, and get that shit done. With DoorDash, it’s a couple of clicks and we can throw money at the problem. Voila! Fresh food at your door, so you’re not eating frozen fried rice and nuts every goddamn day. Why is it so hard for you to live a little? Does every day have to be like you’re at a goddamn monastery? Enjoy one or two meals a week. Why am I even having to talk to you about this???

After those two calls, John suggested that I look into therapy. Ya think? Admittedly, the triggering was through the fucking roof, for sure.

So today, I call Kaiser to speak with a therapist. I mean, nothing earth shattering. Chalk it up as part of her illness (even though she had these ridiculous proclivities before Alzheimer’s): do not escalate, detach. Here’s the thing: I do not have fun, lighthearted conversations with my family. It’s either a massive to-do list of stuff that has to get done or it’s work-related. We don’t just call each other and shoot the shit. So now if I can’t “fix” this situation, what the hell is there to do? Nothing. Detach with compassion, my mental health friend suggests.

Then the therapist tells me he thinks I have GAD – general anxiety disorder, and I need to learn to let go, especially with things I cannot control, like her irrational thoughts.

Now, this ain’t my first rodeo with therapy. I’ve had many sessions in the past. It helps to tell stories and give the chain of events and analyze things that have happened, but at the end of the day, I feel like the only conclusion of therapy is always this: suck it up. Not exactly in those words, but that’s the gist I get from it— you can’t change others; you can only change yourself and your reaction. To me, that just means, no one else is accountable, no one else has to make their adjustments— it’s just you.

For someone who believes in self-determination, I get it. You are the one in control. But for someone who is also highly critical and judgey (of myself and of others), I can’t help but feel like there’s some element of other people getting away with shit and not being held accountable for their crap. Is it that I want an apology from my parents? No, but it’s like they are totally clueless that they ever did anything wrong with their parenting approach. Is that ok for them to continue to think they did everything right and somehow they just had bad luck with shitty ass, loser kids??? I dunno. C’est la vie.

After my session, I looked up GAD online. I disagree that I have this disorder, characterized by excessive worrying and an inability to deal with uncertainty. I am a doer and a fixer. In trying to find solutions to situations and problems, I play things several steps down the road. I have to anticipate shit possibly going wrong, so that I can prepare a contingency plan. It’s who I am and it’s also part of my role and my job… I consider it a form of risk assessment. How is that “excessive”?

The therapist says he considers what I term “risk assessment” to be worry. Ok, fine. I won’t argue over semantics. But I still disagree. With my mother and her illness? Yes, I worry and sure, I can’t control her illness.

And I definitely lose sleep, for example, if Bentley is sick or if I don’t know who will care for my parents as they age. It’s not as if I’m worrying about stupid, unimportant bull like I had a conversation with some random person at the store, and I’m replaying it a gabillion times in my head, all while getting sweaty palms and trembling and shit. I dunno. I feel like I know people with anxiety and excessive worrying (including my mother), and my shit is different. People with excessive worry are like paralyzed and compulsive. Like she used to stress about me living with John before marriage. She would always fret, “What are the office ladies going to think?” Um, what? They don’t fucking care. No one is even batting an eye about it except you. How is this even a concern?

Anyway, after 45 minutes, the therapist said he wasn’t going to issue a referral or anything— he was just handling triage with me today. He advised I look into GAD, see what I thought, and consider joining a virtual GAD group led by him. That’s where things were left.

Now my next focus is to stay calm on the phone with either parent. I’m going to have to call mom again for Mother’s Day and sigh, I guess I’ll just try to suck it up and keep my cool. Maybe it’ll help if I remind myself that she is sick— I’m interacting with a vessel, as the therapist explained. And even if her current thoughts bring up past memories/interactions with her, I can’t punish her now for what happened in the past, bc the person now isn’t even her anymore.