Today has been miserable. Not the day, really, just me - I've been miserable. At the VA most of the day, and my boyfriend's swallowing problem isn't responding too well to treatment. We separated some years ago, but I've still always helped him with his health problems. I have to stay with him until tomorrow because he is still loopy from anesthesia.

Even after tomorrow I can't leave him alone much. I come by almost every day to try and put something together for him to eat. It's hard because he has so much trouble swallowing and has little interest even in foods he could swallow.

I'm with him so much that it's like I'm back living with him again . . . and I'm starting to hate it. I'm his housekeeper, his chauffeur, his nurse, his companion, his cook, his secretary. I guess he would have been placed in a nursing home by now, if not for all the help I provide that keeps him going in his apartment. Tommorrow I'll have to take his laundry to the laundramat . . . pick up his pain med at the post office . . . get him some more groceries. He also needs a shower tonight or tomorrow and clean sheets on his bed. It's an argument to get him into the shower, which he can't do without help. I'll try to get that done tonight.

I'm sick of being cooped up with him in his small apartment. I'm sick of being with him. I'm sick of doing everything for him. If being with him was nice, I'ld still be living with him. It's over 7 years since we last lived together. We were both glad to split up and move apart. He gets to have his cake and eat it too. He lives alone, but has me available to do everything I would be doing if I was still living with him. I was kind of glad to have this "job" to do. Now I feel like a perfect fool. I'm just sick of it. I don't feel appreciated or cared about.

I am depressed. He can do nothing for me. He asks me all the time, "How are you feeling?" (about 7 times a day.) He doesn't really listen to my answer. He'll stare at the TV for the remainder of the evening. He'll be quite content. Then he'll get tired and go to sleep. I'll be up half the night unable to sleep. He'll never say, "Gee, I'm lucky to have you around. Thanks for pushing me all around that hospital in the wheelchair today."

I'm just completely taken for granted. I'm very depressed. He's always told me he doesn't understand anything about depression. Well, he might feel different if he found himself sitting in a wheelchair in some dive nursing home on Medicaid. I felt so bad that he could end up that way if I didn't do everything to help him manage at home. It's like I stand between him and the miserable existance he's done everything to deserve. For years, when he drank, he stole from me, lied to me, verbally abused me. I left him . . . but I never completely left him. I thoight some connection to him was better than me ending up completely alone . . . which kept happening to me.

Now I don't want to leave him and I don't want to stay. I just wish I was dead.