The “Unhinged” Caregiver Diaries: Saving Her Peace in Alzheimer’s Memory Care

Read Before You Rage‑Text:
This is a personal Alzheimer’s caregiver diary. It contains strong language, descriptions of emotional abuse, and stories drawn from years of memory‑care chaos. Posts blend multiple moments over time and are not about any one person, text thread, or fight. If you see yourself here, that’s reflection—not accusation. This is not medical or legal advice; it’s my lived experience protecting one woman’s peace in a world that keeps trying to shatter it.

Dearest Dazey Diary,

Today is May 17, 2026. We’re returning to the earlier style—the one that made it irresistible. The stream-of-consciousness writing that made the Others and their buddies spit fire at this diary for all the Dazeys’ of memory care—the kind of writing that makes their necks blotchy, their thumbs rage-text, and group chats like a Cat. 5 hurricane coming ashore.

“Quick note before we go any further: this is not, and never will be, an advice column on what you should or shouldn’t do. This is my diary—a record of what I’ve done (and still do) to survive this wild, embarrassing crew of “Others” while keeping one sassy woman as safe and at peace as humanly possible. Record keeping, and if you are able to use it as a way to cope, cool, cool. Find a way to say, “ Oh, maybe I should revisit my actions outside the memory care in-home vibe, cool. Growth is acceptable, too. I’m no saint; I just care for one 24/7. Think it’s fictional or embellished? Hey, however, the cookie crumbs.” ~L

About ten days ago, I was asked to step in and address the issues the Others had introduced—the status quo, the calm they all pretended was real~ shattered yet again. One of them asked me to help stop her. Oh, the discombobulated bullshit I deal with each day…this one hit a new low.

I was asked to help stop her rage‑texting the people she loves—the same people she cannot live without, the same ones she believes love her, whilst they are torturing her with texts and calls,

• telling her she fucked up,

• should be ashamed of herself,

• and needs to stop playing mind games.

I was asked to stop the memory care madness that slams into us when one of the Others amps up (3 am phone calls and texts) and drags her out of her little Bubble of safety and no worries—the Bubble that protects the mind of what was from the reality of what is, a reality she rarely participates in, nine years into Alzheimer’s.

• The “fix” :

• was to strip their vile words off her phone and tablet so she couldn’t reread them and stay stuck in the Loop—the memory of what was, without the details of why it feels so heavy and hurts so damn much. #thefeels

• I refused to walk her back through why it hurts, what was said, or what the fight was even about. I chose the Reset. #strength

I chose to erase the details so they would evaporate for her. I was asked to take her devices away from her, but that would look like punishment to her, and she didn’t do anything to start this, but damn does she have the gift of logic and words when she’s in fight or flight…she decided to fight this time, and so here we are.

I’m being asked to shut it down. Not by her, but by one of the others, who enables their bad behavior and disrespect toward her and the life we provide for her.

The fix helps her.‍ ‍

Hell, it helps them.‍ ‍

And it destroys me. I am not allowed to share that often because that gets the others talking about how I’m mean to them and how they are the victims. Their entitled bullshit of 'sneering ‘ok, caregiver,” like it’s a dirty word and a lesser than them job.

• I am the one in charge.

• The villain.

• The vicious, childish bitch they hate.

The control they say I have is the same control that lets them live in her perceived shelter of a Bubble that protects them from the drama of WW3 vibes.

Caregiving support groups tell me I need to communicate, but my particular cast of outsiders doesn’t like that brand of truth. I am told to get a restraining order by professionals, as if that wouldn’t emotionally shatter her.

I am told to ignore them, but then my phone lights up with demands to fix it, to make her stop fighting them. Them. Always them.

• I comfort her, pull her back into peace, and they get rewarded because she doesn’t connect to the now.

• She doesn’t remember the events.

She even said it felt like a nightmare she had—how weird, how vivid, how impossible—because “they would never disrespect me like that.” For her, it dissolves into nothing. For me, it’s everything.

Welcome to the ick of memory care,

You can’t make this shit up.

They act and fight like there’s some giant inheritance waiting at the end of this, like they’re jockeying for position in a will reading that’s already been cashed.

Newsflash: they got all of that in the early years of memory care—not that there was much to get.

But god forbid I say anything about that without the backlash and the chorus of “You’re unhinged,” plus the full performance of being somehow victimized by me.

I am the villain in their group chats, the dragon guarding a pile of coins that’s already been spent on everything except keeping her alive and safe.

I did what I was asked to do.

• I did what they always accused me of.

• Blocked them.

• asked them to block her.

• Limited communication

• got control with extra medication and downtime

The controlling, unhinged, villainous bitch, who is now considered childish, too, fixed the issues so they had peace and absorbed the anger and frustration from her. They have to become saintly or void.

They asked me to manage the narrative and address the chaos. “Take the phone away,” was the order—cut her off, shut her down.

But since that wasn’t an option without breaking her heart and her tiny sliver of independence, I went into fix‑it mode.

I told them to block her if they couldn’t handle her truths.

I apologized to one of the Others for what she sent while she was furious at another.

I played translator, bouncer, firefighter, and janitor of everyone’s emotional mess while they sat back and acted as if they’d never lit the match.

The one I reached out to claims the last several posts were written specifically about them, as if their drama owns the copyright to dysfunction.

I am here to say that is absolute bullshit. #ifthestillettofits

The latest blogs are restructured versions of posts from the past four years. No telling what you’ll find in one—stories, quotes, and bits and pieces from the early days of this chaos—blended. Back then, everything was a constant crisis: phones ringing, accusations flying, her crying because she couldn’t tell dream from memory, past from present, cruelty from “concern.”

Time stamps matter for this crew; they’ll scroll back, take screenshots, and build a conspiracy out of a paragraph I wrote in 2022. It is 2026, and I haven't seen or barely communicated with these humans in 4 years, other than updates on mental health and physical… ps, alzhiemers’s in medical assholes.

The here‑and‑now reality? This shit still happens once or twice a month, on damn near a repeat basis. The script doesn’t change; only the date stamp does. It just doesn’t stay confined to a select few anymore. It bleeds out to the who who ever is still in the contact list. Some are outside of the group that traumatizes and has a listening ear… some are the others, and I won’t help again. The fix is difficult for her and stressful for us to watch. The fix is super ick.

Most of the Others get to live their lives believing she is safe and that nothing would ever intentionally rock the perceived independence of a sassy‑ass matriarch who refuses to surrender to short‑term memory loss.

They get the pretty version: the smiling photos, the holiday visits, the “She seems great!” while I’m in the hallway deleting text threads like I’m cutting detonator wires.

She’s blowing up the world, one unpredictable fact at a time. Fight‑or‑flight is still strong—but we have been successful in this bougie memory care facility with one spicy‑ass woman whose tragic story involves emotional abuse at her most vulnerable.

Her mental health, her past, and her present collide when the Bubble explodes and the world she built crashes into the ocean—one 50‑foot wave at a time, times ten. I stand on the shore with a mop and a life jacket, pretending this is normal while everyone else complains about getting their shoes wet.

You cannot have it both ways.

Either:

You believe she has Alzheimer’s, and you accept the way that works—nine years into the diagnosis, plus two or three years of “quirky” bad decisions before that. You believe she loops, forgets, confabulates, clings to the feeling, and loses the facts. You accept that she will not remember the full fight—just the burn it left behind.

Or:

You claim she’s of sound mind, knows exactly what she’s doing, and somehow I’m aiding and abetting—orchestrating and masterminding this sick, illogical tale of woes. In that story, I’m the puppet master, the evil step‑whatever, the controlling harpy who keeps you from your perfectly healthy mother because I’m bored and need a hobby.

You don’t get to switch between those stories depending on who you’re bitching to.

You can’t have it both ways while you’re out there spewing, “L is such a childish bitch.”

Maybe. But I’m a childish, vicious bitch who knows how to shut it down and take the small wins—like when she wakes up thinking, “I had a nightmare where so‑and‑so and I were in a horrible fight,” instead of spiraling for days.

Do you have any idea how many digital breadcrumbs I have to erase for it to become just a dream?

How fast I have to move to delete, mute, block, redirect, soothe?

How many times I’ve watched her reread a text and crumble, only to start over—phone in my hand, heart in my throat—whispering, “It’s okay, it’s done, it’s over,” until her brain finally lets go?

That nightmare you’re mad I wrote about? I walked her through the fire and then scrubbed the ash off the walls so she wouldn’t inhale it again tomorrow.

She hasn’t heard from you in months because…why? Oh, right, I “make it difficult” for all of you with my boundaries, routines, and insistence on consistency. You want access without accountability, visits without schedules, calls without limits.

You want to drop a grenade at 3 a.m. and then sleep like a baby while I pace the floor with a woman whose nervous system thinks the war is back on.

Energy for energy.

I have said from the day it became clear how this would play out that I would stand on every fucking word. And I still do. I have written through the panic attacks, through the accusations, through the nights when her cries ricocheted off the Bubble walls while you typed paragraphs about how I’m the problem. I still hit “publish.” #burnbaddieburn

Not everything is about your entitled asses using me as your excuse to cut and run. You can amp it up if you want—twist posts, misread metaphors, turn my diary into your evidence board. We will still suffer together, because the fallout hits her nervous system and my body first, no matter what story you sell yourselves.

Don’t text me asking for help, accept my help, and then get all pissy about something I wrote in a blog that follows the story of my life.

You don’t get to outsource the hard parts to me and then clutch your pearls when I tell the truth about what it costs. If you don’t like your reflection in this diary, maybe stop making the faces that show up in the mirror.

I’m supposed to have empathy, but I never receive it. I am expected to be the soft place to land for everyone—her, you, the staff, the friends who “mean well”—while no one asks what it does to my body to live on red alert. #unhinged

I’m supposed to be sympathetic to everyone’s needs—as long as they’re not hers or mine. I’m supposed to shrink my voice so yours can sound reasonable in the group chat. I’m supposed to swallow the rage so you can feel like the stable ones. #asyouwishaf

I’m supposed to “keep the peace” without sending a group text begging someone not to call her at 3 a.m. I’m supposed to silently absorb the fallout when she wakes up shaking because her phone lit up like a siren in the dead of night.

And yet I’m the “childish vicious bitch” who has to remove one person from the group so another will stop bitching about who’s even in the fucking group text. I am the hall monitor, the bouncer, the complaint department, and the villain, all rolled into one exhausted human.

GROW THE FUCK UP. She retired from y’all for a reason—that line is on repeat, too. Yes, in a group text. Yes, with receipts. Wonder why that would possibly happen, hmmm? Maybe because the Bubble finally did its job and pushed you outside the blast radius, and I’m the one standing at the edge, arms out, making sure you don’t get to wander back in just because you’re bored, bruised, or curious about the inheritance that’s already been spent on her survival.

I’m asked to make this into a book because no one thinks it’s real; they swear it’s fiction. No one understands I’m not creative enough to make this shit up. I write because the discombobulated life I live is not so much about the challenges in Alzheimer’s memory care; it’s about how I’m asked to do what they blame me for doing.

They ask me to shut it down, as they always assumed I started it. I haven’t started shit for her; I consistently fix it for them. It’s just that I can no longer keep it from bleeding into real life—for them, for my life, and for the outside world to experience with us.

It started as a private online blog for my sanity in an insane environment of the entitled and the handouts that had to ease up. Boundaries, routines, and structure helped us stay the course and set the stage for the later years, knowing it was gonna get much worse if it didn’t calm down. This is more of the same behavior that, for the last 50 years, has been behind closed doors.

Today, the best way to keep them from experiencing what we get often and a lot is to block them.

Block her, and you won’t receive her thoughts, but I won’t unblock her either.

I’ll let you slide into the category of who she doesn’t remember. That list is long and getting longer every day that goes by.

If you realize it’s one less day, not one more day, you’ll know it means make today count—not “one more day and tomorrow always comes,”

Here’s what not to do:

• Don’t send horrible, vicious texts.

• Don’t use a woman with Alzheimer’s as your emotional punching bag.

• Don’t weaponize her confusion because you’re bored, bitter, or broke.

• Don’t pretend you’re protecting her while you burn her nervous system to the ground.

• Stop sending horrible, vicious texts.

• Calm it down.

The ick is too much, and I won’t repeat their words to her again. Four years of fixing, and I’m so done. The Others’ can fix their own mess 9 years in and you still don’t get it?? #fuckit #asyouwish

I don’t have relationships with this group of Others; it’s obvious that the relationships of once before were transactional at best and proper Southern bullshit with underlying hatred that was always felt but never this blatant. Today… block me.

I don’t give a rat’s ass, but when you do, block her too and keep it so.

Emotional abuse of a woman for nine years in memory care must stop. And if you know, you fucking know—and you are culpable if you don’t stand up for HER, stand up and fight for her peace.

I don’t give a fuck what is thought of me—fight for her. Fight for peace, kindness, and understanding, and you all fix your own temper and turn.

She will and can say whatever she fucking wants to—that’s her given right. And let’s be real, she’s more than accurate, more than the Others are: hyper‑aware with short‑term memory loss and, honestly, quite brilliant.

Not stupid, not insane, not playing mind games, and never ashamed of who she is or how she moves—pure of heart and blunt in her words.

Author’s Note: Block me, don’t unblock her or me… that’s real peace for HER. I don’t give a fuck. Dazey entry 15 days after it started and with an offical reset that is back to calm days… for now. ~Dazey