<p>Growing up and becoming an adult includes accepting that you have responsibilities that others don’t have. What you should be experiencing during college is an education: the rest of it is great and I hope you get it, but when you view it as an entitlement, that’s not an adult attitude. And if you stop viewing it as something you are owed, you’re probably going to feel a lot less horrible about not having it.</p>
<p>Having said that, I can see that you and your mother (and your grandmother) are stretched far too thin.</p>
<p>Find your local center for independent living (also sometimes called an independent living center) and enlist their help in trying to find and fund people who can help with your grandmother so that you and your mother can both be out at the same time sometimes. The magic phrase is “personal assistance services” and the National Council on Independent Living (ncil.org) should be help you find the CIL nearest you. If you live in an area with an ADAPT chapter you may want to contact an ADAPT organizer (adapt.org/context.htm). The magic phrase with them is something like “We don’t want my grandmother to have to go to a nursing home, but we need help supporting her while she lives in our home.”</p>
<p>There should be a section for government services in your telephone directory. See whether there are programs for elders in your area that might interest your grandmother and that you could get her into. See whether they can help your grandmother with “in-home supports.” Even see whether there is any assistive technology they can help you get that will allow your grandmother to do more for herself so that you can be doing other things while you are at home with her. </p>
<p>If your grandmother practices a particular religion, see whether there might be people from her church, temple, mosque, etc., who might be willing to come out and spend a few hours with her a couple of times a week. You might even try to find local high schools that require community service to graduate – even having someone in your home to sit with your grandmother while you and/or your mother get work done that is hard to do while you are caring for your grandmother might free up some time. If your grandmother is likely to die in the near future you can also look into hospice care. I think that sort of thing should be more easily available to everyone, including those who expect to live for a long time but who need help, but at the very least people who are in the process of dying can get some help and their family members can get a break. Ask the financial aid office whether they can recommend any scholarships you can apply for to help pay for help your family needs at home so that you can have more time at school. Ask someone at the library to help you figure out how to look for the same thing. If your mother has siblings who don’t contribute to the physical care your grandmother needs, maybe they’d be willing to kick in some money. (My father’s mother was cared for, in her own home, by one of my father’s sisters, who was also a single parent of a large number of children, raising them in a house nearby. My father and his other sisters did not do their fair share of looking after her in any sense of the word, but they did at least help with money.) </p>
<p>Since this is clearly so hard for you, it might even make sense to take out loans for the same purpose (although you’ll probably be saying on the application that money you would have spent on school has had to be spent on your grandmother’s care and now you need loans so you can pay for tuition and fees). Obviously you want to be careful about accumulating debt, but not so careful that your entire college career is spent being miserable.</p>
<p>Sit your mother down and have a talk with her about what you need, what she needs, what you want, and what she wants. She’s probably a lot more aware of what can happen to your grandmother if you and she aren’t willing and able to care for her at home than you are, and she’s probably stretched thin and tired, too. What you’re looking for isn’t independence; it’s freedom, and she could almost certainly use some too. Don’t just complain about what you want and need: that will land the two of you in a zero-sum situation where you only win if she loses. Talk about what both of you need, what your grandmother needs form both of you, and how all three of you can get your needs and some of your wants met. See whether you can rework the schedule so that you have more time on campus but outside of class – while still meeting your mother’s needs and giving her some time off too. See whether she can come up with some ways to get other people to help with your grandmother’s care (your grandmother would probably prefer to receive all her care from family members, but she needs to be an adult too, only being cared for by family is a want rather than a need, and if she can receive care in a safe and respectful way from other people sometimes, she may need to just accept that. I don’t recommend phrasing it that way, though).</p>
<p>At the very least, try to get yourself to a point in your relationship with your mother where both of you can talk about how hard things are for you, about the sorts of things that you worry about, and about what you both want your lives to be more like. If you are able to do that, you’ll probably both feel better about what is a very difficult – and likely very temporary – stage in both your lives.</p>
<p>As far as having more friends on campus, it’s largely a matter of putting yourself in situations in which you are likely to meet new people and making yourself available to spend time with them. I know that’s hard, and it’s especially hard when it’s difficult to find time to be on campus. I wish I had a magic solution to give you, but I don’t. If you and your mother can work it out so that you are able to spend some evenings on campus, that will help. On the other hand, if you can meet people who are far from their own homes, maybe they’d like to spend some time at your home on occasion too.</p>
<p>I can tell you that later on, after your grandmother has died, you are likely to be grateful that you had time to spend with her during this time. Everyone I know who was close to a family member and had that time with them at the end of their lives is, including quite a few who were pretty resentful about all the sacrifices they had to make (in fact some feel very guilty now that their family members have died, because they did resent it so much. But that’s obviously not something to feel guilty about. It was hard for them and their family members were real people who were nicer to be around some times than others). It’s really lousy that this sort of thing is so rough on families, and I’m sorry it’s happening to your famly.</p>
<p>I hope you find solutions that work for all three of you. I really do. And I hope that some of my suggestions turn out to be useful to you.</p>