The Low Hum of Catastrophe: When Anxiety Becomes Your Full-Time Job
The phone vibrated on the polished conference table, face down, silent to everyone else in the room. It was that specific, short buzz-not a text, not a calendar reminder, but the sharp, insistent call that steals the air from your lungs. For the duration of that 1-second vibration, the meeting, the budget review, the polite smiles, all dissolved. There was only the cold, concrete possibility that the world had just cracked open 1,201 miles away.
The Invisible Labor of Waiting
That’s the thing they don’t teach you about long-distance caregiving. We talk endlessly about the visible labor: the logistics of travel, the physical tasks of moving heavy things, the exhausting rotation of prescriptions. Those actions are measurable. They appear on a spreadsheet of effort. But the real weight, the insidious, soul-draining burden, is the invisible work-the constant state of anticipatory anxiety, the emotional and mental hypervigilance of waiting for the next catastrophe.
I’ve tried to explain this feeling before. It’s like living under a storm cloud that never actually releases its rain, just sustains a perpetual, oppressive humidity. You are never, truly, off duty. Every unknown number, every unusual silence when you call, every vague complaint from the primary caregiver, initiates an internal emergency sequence that drains reserves you didn’t know you had.
The Mental Energy Drain
We confuse diligence with hypervigilance. Diligence is making sure Mom has her medication and that the bills are paid on time.
