Actually, I don't have to provide all his care alone. He is in the Medicaid Waiver program. So, thanks to that, Medicaid pays for an agency to send a home attendant 28 hours per week. Plus he gets the VA Pension for Aid and Assistance. That will pay for about 15 hours per week additional home health aid. So I can get about 40 hours per week of help. That still leaves over 100 hours per week that he is in my care. It is manageable. I don't mind doing it, if he is reasonably nice to me. I even enjoy doing it a lot of the time. I like having dinner with him in the evening. I like watching movies with him. I like being with him. I can even tolerate the occasional peevish outburst. It's just when those outbursts sound really mean/rejecting and start happening too often that I get emotionally overwhelmed. When it's a tone of voice that conveys, "Rose, I'm sick to death of you." and I'm hearing it multiple times per day, or day after day after day . . . and there's a lack of affection to balance it off, then I feel so criticised that I just want to get away from him. I can only take so much scorn before I can demoralized and depressed. I expect him to get irritated now and then . . . even often. But I won't be a target of really ugly disrespect sucker-punching me everytime I turn around. And this business of harshly berating me in front of people becomes intolerable. Were he sweet-natured most of the time, the work wouldn't bother me at all.

Visiting him in a nursing home can feel worse than being with him at home. I don't like being in nursing homes. I live in a poor state. The facilities here can be quite grim.

I like to believe that he really does love me, and much of the time I trust that he does. That trust starts to crumble, when he keeps jumping ugly at me too much. I get depressed and feel bad about myself. Then I want to just get away.

I'm going to hope that, by objecting as strongly as I have, his consciousness will be raised enough for him to see that I'm a person too.

So we will see.