Every day this week seems to be slightly agonizing. The pile of things to do seems to get taller and taller, and every work day has to end with a dreaded phone chat with my mother, who has been extremely miserable and dramatic pretty much every day this week.

I was telling my friend what the situation has been like with my parents this week, and she said to me, “Are you sure you have to call them every single day?” She then suggested, like pretty much everyone else I’ve ever spoken to about them, that maybe I should just deliberately cut back on the calls for my own health.

I’ve been calling home every single day since I moved away for college in 2004. The only exceptions to this have been when I have been traveling abroad and didn’t have the easiest international dialing access. I’ve thought about calling less every now and then, but whenever I have suggested it, my mother gets wildly angry or starts crying. It hasn’t ever elicited any positive emotion. Particularly now, when my mother’s sensitivity has been even more heightened, I’m even more scared of breaking out of what is “normal” for her. There’s really no way to win.