I’m having a meltdown before a vacation I was super excited about and I don’t know what to do

I don’t know why everything came to a head today, the day before I fly out for my exciting 2-week international family vacation.

I’m the eldest daughter (if that explains anything) and I’m in charge of everything. My family didn’t have to lift a single finger for this trip — in fact, they actively tried to hamper my ability to plan it. For example, my mom gets nervous around travel so she would actively shut down and get angry about any conversation about it leading up to it, making it really hard to plan any sort of itinerary. And my brother is MIA half the time and leaves me on read.

On top of that, I have a full time job where I’m up for a promotion, and a freelance gig on the side, and many social hobbies (which is my choice, I know, but still a responsibility). Usually I’m able to juggle it all fine, and I was.

I’ve been excited this whole week. Especially today, it’s such a beautiful day outside and I was so excited for my last day of work before travel. I even wanted to take my mom out to lunch. Then somehow, all of a sudden, it went south.

There was some confusion around when to pick up my brother tomorrow (it’s very easy for him to come to us, but he refuses. He needs a personal car pickup service). And so I got upset. I also had some unexpected last minute work sprung on me which didn’t help.

So I asked my mom if she could help out. My therapist and I often talk about how there is so much on my plate, and I should try to take stuff off of it where possible. I thought maybe my mom could help. Of course, life doesn’t work out nicely. My mom got super angry with me for even asking for help. She said this was my responsibility. And was even angrier that I didn’t have everything figured out already. Now I’m being dramatic and also completely useless and unprepared.

I don’t know what to do. I just kept sobbing, attending my zoom meeting, sobbing, delivering my freelance work, sobbing, making sure my dad has his boarding pass ready, etc… I feel like absolute shit.

I paid more than anyone else for this trip, because I didn’t want to financially burden my parents. AND I’m having to plan every aspect of it, because if anything goes wrong it’ll be my fault. I got the IDPs, I researched every single transportation method, I booked the Airbnbs, I booked the rental cars, and my mom’s hair appointment, and I don’t get to do horse riding bc apparently nobody else is interested (so much for “leaving it up to me”)… THIS IS MY VACATION TOO. I WANT TO JUST PAY MONEY AND NOT THINK ABOUT ANYTHING AND ENJOY IT TOO!!!

But here I am, still with a mountain of things to do and realizing that “communication” and “asking for help” wasn’t the problem. There is nobody that could help me. Nobody that wants to help. Nobody that would know how to help.

What’s the point?????? And most of all, how can I somehow feel perfectly happy and excited again before I get on that flight? Because there’s no way I’m going to let them ruin the entire vacation for me. I still want to enjoy it. But right now, I just want to lock myself up and cry and sulk for the next month.