What I find is that I don’t care so much about how I am perceived from the outside as much as I do from my inside.  I guess with age comes wisdom.  It is easy to say as long as I feel I am a good person, it doesn’t matter what others think, only what I think.  But it took me years to live that.  At first it was a step in understanding the statement, then it was a step in wanting to live it and then  it was forgotten and then a realization that I am living it and it really doesn’t mater how I am perceived from the outside.  I see me as I see me and I try hard to please me.  When I do things for myself, my family, my coworkers, I truly am doing it for the feelings I get from within, not the recognition from without.  I hear of a place in heaven for taking care of mom.  Though the intention of the remark coming toward me is heartfelt, that person doesn’t know this.  Is this supposed to give me a reason to continue.  Have they sent a note to heaven as a point a head of me.  I think not.  I take care of mom, simply because she is my mom and it is what I feel inside me I should do.  I am not always nice.  I am very human and sometimes run out of patients with her.  I know she is stiff from the Parkinson’s, but at 54 my shoulders are not what they used to be.  I am sore.  I can say outside and inside that the sisters have to lay their head down at night and do what they feel they must for her which is nothing or sometimes very close to nothing…but I too am human…am I a bit jealous they have the ability to say this is my life and I want to live it…yes…but she is my mom…I want them to please give me one weekend a month…that is two days of their lives every month.  It would afford them the privilege of spending time with a woman that loved and raised them.  It would afford her the opportunity of spending time with the families of those she loves very much and it would afford me the time to work on my own life or not work on it…to rest and sleep and heal my aching bones…it would…but it won’t they won’t I would love every other weekend…I would…but they won’t and on weekends like memorial day when it is more than difficult just to take her for an outing, which I do…I would love to run barefoot on the beach like them…to get up in the morning and have nothing more to do but to sit in the sunshine with a cup of coffee and read a magazine…then the guilt seeps in…I love her…she does well as she can…she asks not for much…a roof, food, a tender heart and a place to call home…with loved ones…we afford her this…but she had three, not just me…..I care not what others think of me…I care of what I think of me…yet…I have the human error of judging others..them…that doesn’t seem fair of me…they are probably very pleased as to who they are on their insides too…rotted tomatoes…sorry…couldn’t help it…lol…hugs, Sassy