This month, I’m not sure of the exact date, I will have been a carer to my grandmother for six years. This fact takes my breath away.
I feel an overwhelming sense of waste – of valuable years of my life gone. I feel trapped. I want to scream and run, get away and escape. Being a carer wasn’t my choice but, through others’ decisions and the UK’s weaponised incompetence on social and healthcare matters , I am stuck in this situation. Over the last six years, my life has dwindled down to an existence.
Some say there is beauty in what I do. To accompany an old lady at the end of her life. I don’t see it, if it does existed.
I don’t see the beauty in my constant back ache that disappears the moment I leave the country in the rare escapes I get; or in the depths of my loneliness. What’s beautiful about my ever-shorter fuse or exhaustion? I don’t see the beauty in my lack of appetite – for anything. There is no beauty in my constant tearfulness either.
I’ve become invisible, weighed down by shouldering my caring responsibilities alongside my work ones on my own with no help, day after day. I’m not important to anyone, the work I do is, but my worth as a person has vanished. I only matter in relation to the person I care for. Our society chooses to bury its head in the sand over the growing care crisis, and I’m out of sight and out of mind for most of the people in my life.
I also don’t want to see any beauty in this situation. We shouldn’t glamourise care when it is at the cost of the carer’s life. This shouldn’t be OK or normal – for anyone. No matter what their circumstances are or how they became carers, nobody should have to give up their lives completely for others. My reluctant devotion is now normalised, there is no gratitude or concern for what I do from my family. What’s the point? Laura will handle it. She always does.
And I do. Everything gets done, on time and to the best of my ability. But at what cost?
I’ve come to realise that the cost is me; I’m the price tag.
Number Eighteen, in the corner 
7 responses to “Costly anniversary”
oh Laura this made me cry, because it is so true of you and I and so many of us. Your words hit home and speak what so many of us feel. The cost is you, and all of us . in August it is 8 years for me …
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I’m sorry- didn’t mean to make you cry. Just felt I had to express how it felt to. 8 years is such a long time… I’m glad it at least resonated with you. Have a massive hug. XX
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I see you, Laura.
This is such a sad piece. You can hear the fatigue and despair oozing out from between the lines. That the system wears down carers in this way is a disgrace, and the human cost is rarely recognized.
(I had 2 years of solo caring before the person I cared for died. Nearly a year later, I am still trying to recover from the burnout that period of caring induced.)
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Thank you for reading and sharing your story. I hope you can recover soon and rediscover how to live life. I might come back to you for tips when I’m no longer a carer. xx
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September is my care-versary for one of my now adult children; this year will be 9 candles on the cake, with one more to be added each year until I’ve no breath left to draw to blow them out anymore…
Like all of us here, the lives we thought we’d be living before ‘that moment’ are now lost to us: either because, like me, the person/people we care in relation to us means we’re lifers; or as ValW shared, because the cost to us while we were doing it has changed who we were (and can now be) forever…
But there’s some assurance (and comfort?) we draw from seeing, and being seen by, each other – so thank you for giving us this opportunity to stand together in solidarity (even though it otherwise always usually feels like solitude).
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That is beautifully said! I agree, there is definitely comfort in that…and maybe even a little beauty.
L xx
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I totally agree but the toll is that for every carer two lives are lost. I have on 27 March 2026 done this for 21 years. I am not complaining as sometimes you have to stand up for the people who cannot. But at nearly 68 years old I don’t matter anymore to a society which people are now £ signs. The value of their lives comes down to how much will it cost. I don’t even feel like i exist anymore. The only things that would miss me has four legs and a tail. They hold it together for me. Yesterday I had a bad asthma attack the worst I have had for a while. And then 20 mins latter was toileting my son.
we are not valued until we’re are no longer able or as son said one day “ mum you are like the queen,” I said why because I could do with a palace and loads of servants. he replied “ no you both will die on the job”. That’s his insight into my life I regularly work over 500 hours a month
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