My loved one of many years, much older than me, was recently fired from her job. The day she was fired she came over unannounced and said, “I tried but I couldn’t do it, they fired me”. After 7 years, being the reliable one, the one always on time, the back bone – she had finally been fired.

Over the last 2 years she said she had been waking up angry, sad and didn’t want to work there anymore. It was the management, the customers, they all sucked to her. It was a familiar sentiment from when she first relocated here from Chicago back in 2017. Back then she didn’t want to be in Chicago, so she left to come here to New Mexico. Back then it was Chicago that was the problem and today (10 years later) New Mexico is the problem.

Over the last 2 years, Trumps presidency, the media and how Hispanics were being perceived really started taking a toll on her. She is older, lives a lone and spends most of her time doom scrolling on her phone. She began to be consumed in conspiracies and hidden agendas – and it eroded her peace. Along with pre existing mental illness like cognitive distortions, anxiety and eating disorders, the weight of the world began to bear down on her. Because she was not financially free, the job became her ball and chain to what little she had to hold on to.

She convinced herself that moving to Mexico would be her next big idea, he get out of jail free card. If she could just leave here – the place of all her problems she could be free again. She cried a lot in passive convos. When I asked her to maybe see a therapist she responded “I would if I thought that would help me”. In her world she is a perfect rockstar, nothing she does is wrong. She’s always the smartest and best thing in the room. How dare anyone try to impose on her. Eventually in day to day quarrels at work, she eventually told her boss “don’t worry about me I won’t be working here much longer because I am moving to Mexico.”

Now that she has been fired it’s been almost 2 months now, it’s complete sabotaged any hopes of successfully and skillfully planning a move to Mexico, which we were in the process of and I worked so hard to help her in this process – I spent many hours and nights calculating and rationalizing the move. I even put her in contact with my banking folks to help her pull some cash out of the equity of her home, and helped walk her through the process, which took 4 months longer than it should have – more on that in another post.

So, here she is, fired, defeated but still not willing to admit. She made me and maybe even herself believe the job was the issue, that people were the issue, that being here was the issue. But now she was free to be at home, not bothered by work or customers any longer. But the sadness and the worry got deeper, and days got darker. When asking her if she wanted to hang for a while she would decline and say, “no, I have laundry and dishes to do”. Chores that any healthy person could easily schedule. Very basic tasks had now become the things that defined her and her day. If she was meeting the bare minimum she was winning.

In the meantime, she’s still waking up mad, she spends her day moving sand around her back yard, she calls it yard work. It seems she has been doing yard work for years but somehow the yard is never finished. She’s mutilated the trees and shrubs and stone walkways, as well as the garden areas. If you ask the neighbors they would say the yard looks worse amongst their manicured front and back yards. Her day filled with endless house chores, that somehow never result in a final clean and organized home. Chaos is never fleeting.

Today she comes over, visibly flustered from the walk as her body is begging her to give it a break from the jagged life she’s been living, from the denial she’s been charging to her body. I ask her how the packing is going, she lies and says it’s been going good and that she recently, just reorganized the two tubs she filled of meaningless items. And swept the garage. Again, small, nominal tasks that any healthy person could run laps around then some. She mentions she was chatting with her neighbor and he asks her how the move was going. She asked if I told him and I said yes, they were wondering when the yard would be finished since it looks so bad and I told them she was moving soon and would have it fixed soon.

She anchors onto this as this will be the thing she chooses is the problem. The reason for her terrible life. She said she is taken a back and that she doesn’t want the neighbors knowing her “shit”. She hyper focuses on being mad at me for telling the neighbors that she would be moving soon, knowing deep down inside that it’s not me it’s her, and the thought of it makes her skin crawl, so she latches on to this being my fault. I spent the rest of the afternoon crawling out from under her rubble, and then being the jester of her day. Gave her information for a work from home job until her Mexico plans fall in place, I even looked up the actual places for her to apply and desperately scrambled to defuse her lack of rationale and tried to be the hero once again.

A denier, someone so deep in their own denial they drowned and grasps at anything either to blame or float on. It could never be her problem, it could never be her who needs help. The problem will forever be the people around her, she will gaslight them to oblivion, hold on to grudges. Her coworker of 7 years, a sweet old lady who always gave me warm grandma vibes asked if they could get lunch to catch up, because she honestly missed her. She said no to her because she thinks she’s just doing this as a way of espionage and she thinks she is going to gossip about her.

And the story goes on and on. And has been going on and developing since the 1990s. This just the lastest chapter. This is one episode of dealing with a loved one who is in denial.

I’ll talk about this more, live on Rumble Wednesday and Friday 7:30 mt time. I’d love for you to join, comment or help with advice or suggestions. Here’s a link to yesterday’s show. Feel free to follow my page to be notified of new live episodes. Ty for reading.