Member- Nov 1, 2022
- 179
- Tinnitus Since
- 09/2022
- Cause of Tinnitus
- being a caregiver for an elderly lady who is hard of hearing
Apologies in advance, I'm afraid this post is going to be long.
My suicidal thoughts are at an all-time high because of a paradox that I still can't resolve.
I'm trying to cope with the knowledge that the lady who caused my acoustic injury is mad at me because I quit working for her, due to the injury I suffered as a direct result of working for her.
I can't wrap my brain around her lack of empathy. Her twisted logic is like a Mobius strip of narcissistic entitlement.
If you don't know who I'm talking about, here's the short version of my backstory so you don't have to read the lengthy introductory thread I made on Tinnitus Talk last autumn:
I have tinnitus and noxacusis because I worked part time for a nearly deaf elderly woman who shouted repeatedly at me while in close range. It happened in my car (because she could not drive), and it happened while we were walking (because she could not walk without assistance and I had to take her by the arm). It also happened inside her house because she was a hoarder with tall stacks of boxes in every room, including both bathrooms and her kitchen.
Helping her declutter her house meant that I had to stand next to her for hours at a time, trapped between stacks of boxes, with our bodies brushing up against each other while she yelled orders like "ECP, open that box! ECP, show me what's in it! Now ECP, put everything back inside that box and move it over there!"
The day that I experienced a sudden onset of tinnitus and noxacusis at her house, I was holding both hands to my ears and cringing and begging her to whisper, but she wouldn't take my pain seriously. As I was getting ready to leave, she was afraid she would never see me again, so she screamed, "DON'T QUIT ON ME!", which was her customary way of ending every one of my visits. I'm not joking. At the end of every workday, she begged me to not to quit.
She was fearful of being abandoned because most of her friends and family were dead. In fact, that's how she guilt-tripped me into working for her in the first place, by telling me that she had nobody in her life and that her lazy, selfish granddaughter doesn't do enough for her.
She would cling to anybody who was kind to her, but if you disappointed her even once by failing to smile at her or by failing to do a favor for her, she would hold a grudge. She divided the world into only two kinds of people: "good" ones who exited her life by dying, and "bad" ones who exited her life by all the other ways a person could exit, like going out of town or being too busy to deal with her. Those people were labeled as "lazy" and "selfish."
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
So that's the end of the backstory, and here's what happened when I had to quit:
I didn't want to hurt her feelings, so I tried to be tactful. First, I sent a carefully worded email to her granddaughter. (I didn't know her well, but she and I had crossed paths, due to our efforts to coordinate her grandmother's caregiving.) Later, I typed a carefully worded letter directly to her grandmother because she doesn't know how to email or text.
I didn't think she'd read my letter if it I put it in the mail, for I knew she had piles of unhandled mail lying around her living room. So after I wrote the letter, I put on my Peltor earmuffs and delivered it personally.
I handed the envelope to her on her doorstep and gestured to her that she should read it, but all she did was clutch the envelope to her chest while telling me that she had been plagued by chronic diarrhea and constipation ever since her granddaughter had given her the news that I would not work for her anymore.
My jaw dropped. I couldn't tell if she was simply stating a fact, or if she was deliberately implying that I had made her sick by quitting.
I gestured again to the envelope in her hand, but she ignored me because she wasn't done sharing all the gory details of her diarrhea and constipation.
Eventually, she noticed the Peltor earmuffs and said, "Why are you wearing that thing on your head? Is it because I hollered at you?"
I burst into tears and pointed again to the envelope in her hand, but she just stared at me coldly. That made me cry even harder. I could see from the dead-eyed look on her face that there was no hope of her reading the letter that day. Maybe she would never read it and it would disappear into the clutter that filled her house.
I threw my hands into the air in frustration, wiped the tears from my eyes, then walked toward my car, sobbing. She made no attempt to follow me or call out to me. As I got to my car, her granddaughter coincidentally arrived at the house in her own car. She probably saw me crying too. How awkward. I drove away in shame.
I waited for months to see if either of them would write me back or leave me a voicemail, but I never heard from them.
It bothered me not to have a feeling of closure, so I decided to follow up with a phone call to her (the grandmother, not the granddaughter).
Preparing for the phone call was nerve-wracking. I knew that I would have to shout at the top of my lungs in order to be heard, so I took NAC before and after the call. I also knew I needed to make the phone call at a time when my husband and my neighbors wouldn't be home so that nobody would be frightened by my shouting.
Well, when I finally made the call, it was a disaster. She was so cold and distant that she wouldn't even say my name. She referred to me only as "the one who used to help me." Emphasis on "used to."
I asked her over and over again if she read my letter, and she wouldn't give me a straight answer. Then when she reluctantly admitted to reading the letter, she wouldn't tell me how she felt about it, or why she never responded to it.
At that point, it was obvious that she resented me for quitting. Now I wanted to know just one more thing: Why hadn't she and her granddaughter ever acknowledged the severity of the injuries I sustained, or offer their wishes for a full recovery?
I steadied myself and said, "I have permanent hearing damage because I worked for you. How do you think that makes me feel?"
Either she couldn't hear me, or she was pretending not to. So I repeated the question over and over again until I was blue in the face.
Finally, she said to me, "I'm old and I have high blood pressure! What do you want from me?"
That was exactly what she would say on the phone to get rid of telemarketers, so when she said those words to me, I knew once and for all that I was a worthless human being in her eyes.
Since then, I've been spiraling downward. I have already come close to making one carefully executed suicide attempt, and I keep thinking I should try again. I hate being reminded of her every single day when I hear the "eeeeeeeee" inside my head. If I can't make the sound go away, and if I can't make the memory of her and her granddaughter go away, then I want to make myself go away.
Someone suggested I file a personal injury lawsuit, but I'm too scared to even look into that. How would I even provide proof of what happened? Nobody would believe me, and I'd probably be blamed for not knowing I should have worn two layers of hearing protection.
My suicidal thoughts are at an all-time high because of a paradox that I still can't resolve.
I'm trying to cope with the knowledge that the lady who caused my acoustic injury is mad at me because I quit working for her, due to the injury I suffered as a direct result of working for her.
I can't wrap my brain around her lack of empathy. Her twisted logic is like a Mobius strip of narcissistic entitlement.
If you don't know who I'm talking about, here's the short version of my backstory so you don't have to read the lengthy introductory thread I made on Tinnitus Talk last autumn:
I have tinnitus and noxacusis because I worked part time for a nearly deaf elderly woman who shouted repeatedly at me while in close range. It happened in my car (because she could not drive), and it happened while we were walking (because she could not walk without assistance and I had to take her by the arm). It also happened inside her house because she was a hoarder with tall stacks of boxes in every room, including both bathrooms and her kitchen.
Helping her declutter her house meant that I had to stand next to her for hours at a time, trapped between stacks of boxes, with our bodies brushing up against each other while she yelled orders like "ECP, open that box! ECP, show me what's in it! Now ECP, put everything back inside that box and move it over there!"
The day that I experienced a sudden onset of tinnitus and noxacusis at her house, I was holding both hands to my ears and cringing and begging her to whisper, but she wouldn't take my pain seriously. As I was getting ready to leave, she was afraid she would never see me again, so she screamed, "DON'T QUIT ON ME!", which was her customary way of ending every one of my visits. I'm not joking. At the end of every workday, she begged me to not to quit.
She was fearful of being abandoned because most of her friends and family were dead. In fact, that's how she guilt-tripped me into working for her in the first place, by telling me that she had nobody in her life and that her lazy, selfish granddaughter doesn't do enough for her.
She would cling to anybody who was kind to her, but if you disappointed her even once by failing to smile at her or by failing to do a favor for her, she would hold a grudge. She divided the world into only two kinds of people: "good" ones who exited her life by dying, and "bad" ones who exited her life by all the other ways a person could exit, like going out of town or being too busy to deal with her. Those people were labeled as "lazy" and "selfish."
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
So that's the end of the backstory, and here's what happened when I had to quit:
I didn't want to hurt her feelings, so I tried to be tactful. First, I sent a carefully worded email to her granddaughter. (I didn't know her well, but she and I had crossed paths, due to our efforts to coordinate her grandmother's caregiving.) Later, I typed a carefully worded letter directly to her grandmother because she doesn't know how to email or text.
I didn't think she'd read my letter if it I put it in the mail, for I knew she had piles of unhandled mail lying around her living room. So after I wrote the letter, I put on my Peltor earmuffs and delivered it personally.
I handed the envelope to her on her doorstep and gestured to her that she should read it, but all she did was clutch the envelope to her chest while telling me that she had been plagued by chronic diarrhea and constipation ever since her granddaughter had given her the news that I would not work for her anymore.
My jaw dropped. I couldn't tell if she was simply stating a fact, or if she was deliberately implying that I had made her sick by quitting.
I gestured again to the envelope in her hand, but she ignored me because she wasn't done sharing all the gory details of her diarrhea and constipation.
Eventually, she noticed the Peltor earmuffs and said, "Why are you wearing that thing on your head? Is it because I hollered at you?"
I burst into tears and pointed again to the envelope in her hand, but she just stared at me coldly. That made me cry even harder. I could see from the dead-eyed look on her face that there was no hope of her reading the letter that day. Maybe she would never read it and it would disappear into the clutter that filled her house.
I threw my hands into the air in frustration, wiped the tears from my eyes, then walked toward my car, sobbing. She made no attempt to follow me or call out to me. As I got to my car, her granddaughter coincidentally arrived at the house in her own car. She probably saw me crying too. How awkward. I drove away in shame.
I waited for months to see if either of them would write me back or leave me a voicemail, but I never heard from them.
It bothered me not to have a feeling of closure, so I decided to follow up with a phone call to her (the grandmother, not the granddaughter).
Preparing for the phone call was nerve-wracking. I knew that I would have to shout at the top of my lungs in order to be heard, so I took NAC before and after the call. I also knew I needed to make the phone call at a time when my husband and my neighbors wouldn't be home so that nobody would be frightened by my shouting.
Well, when I finally made the call, it was a disaster. She was so cold and distant that she wouldn't even say my name. She referred to me only as "the one who used to help me." Emphasis on "used to."
I asked her over and over again if she read my letter, and she wouldn't give me a straight answer. Then when she reluctantly admitted to reading the letter, she wouldn't tell me how she felt about it, or why she never responded to it.
At that point, it was obvious that she resented me for quitting. Now I wanted to know just one more thing: Why hadn't she and her granddaughter ever acknowledged the severity of the injuries I sustained, or offer their wishes for a full recovery?
I steadied myself and said, "I have permanent hearing damage because I worked for you. How do you think that makes me feel?"
Either she couldn't hear me, or she was pretending not to. So I repeated the question over and over again until I was blue in the face.
Finally, she said to me, "I'm old and I have high blood pressure! What do you want from me?"
That was exactly what she would say on the phone to get rid of telemarketers, so when she said those words to me, I knew once and for all that I was a worthless human being in her eyes.
Since then, I've been spiraling downward. I have already come close to making one carefully executed suicide attempt, and I keep thinking I should try again. I hate being reminded of her every single day when I hear the "eeeeeeeee" inside my head. If I can't make the sound go away, and if I can't make the memory of her and her granddaughter go away, then I want to make myself go away.
Someone suggested I file a personal injury lawsuit, but I'm too scared to even look into that. How would I even provide proof of what happened? Nobody would believe me, and I'd probably be blamed for not knowing I should have worn two layers of hearing protection.
