The cost of someone else’s chaos

A story about how constant interruption shapes a life, and how care, guilt, and dependency slowly erase your own path.

Sometimes it seems like it’s all just isolated moments: a leak, a blown fuse, a dog that needs to go out. But anyone who has lived through what we carry each day knows these aren’t incidents. They’re a system. A pattern. And a life that somehow never gets to be ours.

Sometimes the final straw feels almost random. A puddle of water beneath a boiler. A dog needing to go out at 3:30 a.m. A fuse blowing just as you’re about to wash your hands after using the toilet. But these aren’t isolated things. They form a pattern and that pattern is why we’re worn out.

My mother’s boiler is twenty years old. Her previous installers have been warning her for years that it needs to be replaced. Not out of meddling, but out of concern for safety. She never did. Partly because the technician also said it should be relocated, and she thought that wasn’t possible, or would be too expensive. Or maybe just because everything has become “too much” for her. Like everything these days seems to be.

Nothing happened for years, until the leaking started. And only then did she casually mention that her boyfriend Rick had been topping it up occasionally. Something we didn’t know. Something we, once again, had no say in. So we decided to do it ourselves – not because we wanted to, but because we really didn’t want him coming upstairs again. So there we stood, placing a container under the leak (which somehow hadn’t occurred to her…?), with a floor already soaked through and a system way past its expiration date. We did what needed to be done. Like we always do.

The next morning, the lights went out just as I was about to wash my hands. The main safety switch had tripped. Nothing in the house worked. My heart was pounding in my chest, as the fear of fire has lived in me for years, and now it was right there again, under my skin. I called Mart, panicked. He calmed me down and said he’d unplug the boiler when he got back. He did. And then we were able to reset the main switch. But the sense of threat didn’t leave. Not from my mind. Not from my body. It was like something had switched on and didn’t want to switch back off.

I was on my period. Dizzy for days. And later that day I saw a black-and-white dot in my vision for hours that just wouldn’t go away. Meanwhile, messages from my mother started flooding in: “I didn’t know.” “It was the first time.” “I mess everything up.” She pulled back into guilt and helplessness, which, once again, made it our job to take over. Because things still had to be done. A new installer had to be found. A boiler chosen. Photos taken. A quote requested. And then she would have to make the phone call, because phone calls are the one thing we absolutely can’t do.

By the afternoon, the payment had to be completed before 3 p.m. The quote finally came in, after a delay. I handled the transaction using her phone, which she never takes with her to my grandmother – moving money from her savings to her regular account so the down payment could be made.

We also had to open the fuse box to figure out which group had failed. The air that came out was suffocating: full of cleaning products from the mop she stores there. My nose, my lungs… everything tightened. I feared a hyperosmia attack. But we had to push through. There was no blown fuse. Everything seemed to work again after half an hour of messing around. But I felt it: nothing really worked, except for my nervous system, which wouldn’t shut down.
Then we found out there was only one fuse left. She hadn’t bought new ones for years. Yet another thing dumped on us. Another urgent task that had quietly waited for the right moment to become our problem too.

By late afternoon we still hadn’t managed to settle. We just wanted a few minutes outside. Let Fannar pee. Be in the now. Watch the bees on the flowers and the birds in the sky. But even that was too much to ask, because my mother came back at her usual time. As if nothing had happened. No thought of: “Let me give you some space.” She carried on with her day as if it was like any other. And we adjusted; like we always do.

Dinner ended up being much later than usual. And that has its price. Because our bodies can’t take this kind of chaos anymore. Not at this level. Late dinners mean restless nights, and a body that has to catch up again. That’s getting harder and harder.

Later that evening, just before my mother left for her boyfriend’s, we tried to calm ourselves. We had to. Because if we don’t, we don’t sleep. But settling down is impossible when someone keeps moving in and out of the rooms. She kept going upstairs to fuss with her stash of coins, or tidy something up – as if the boiler technicians will care what her house looks like, or she was in the bathroom doing her hair. She left later than usual, and even that alone overwhelmed me, knowing we had less time to do more before we could finally rest.

That morning, we were actually supposed to go somewhere. To Belgium. To that piece of woodland where we might finally be allowed to build something. Not just a structure, but something real. Something that’s ours. Something not dependent on anyone else. We were going to get up at 4:30. But at 3:30 her other dog, Buddy, needed to poop in the garden. She had taken them out at midnight. And still this happened. I woke up instantly. And I knew: this was another day lost. My body couldn’t settle anymore. My head was already spinning. So we didn’t go. Not that day, not the next. Because everything had shifted again. Like always.

And that was the last straw. But the cup had long been overflowing.

Because this has been going on for years. Every time we try to build something, something gets in the way. And that “something” is rarely truly something; more often than not, it’s her. Not out of malice, I think. But out of fear of the unknown. And maybe because she knows she’ll soon be living here alone. But it happens. Her rhythm overrides ours. Her helplessness makes us indispensable. Her delays become our burden.

We eat on time. We guard our rest. We take care of our bodies. Not because we want to be perfect, but because it’s the only thing keeping us upright. But as soon as her life touches ours, everything falls apart again. And we can never be sick. Or tired. Or fragile. Because no one steps in. No one says: “Take a break. I’ve got this.”

So we do it. Always. Until we physically can’t anymore. Until there’s nothing left of us. Until even our dreams of Belgium have to wait. Again.

We live in a world that confuses care with sacrifice. Where responsibility always lands on the one with the least space. Where recovery is something you have to organize yourself – right in the middle of the mess someone else left behind.

But I don’t want to collapse. I want to leave. Not quietly. Not with permission. But fully. To space. To solid ground beneath our feet.
To a life that doesn’t keep getting interrupted. To days that, for the first time, might actually belong to us and us alone.