complex feelings on estrangement

[lowbudgetTV]

With recent events in regard to my family, I have felt triggered by the presence of the Holidays.

In the shortest explanation possible, I've been thinking of my very complex situation (though, most situations with relationships are going to be complex and not "textbook"...)

CW: illness, dementia, usual parental CPTSD stuff mentions...?



My mother haunts my waking moments, and on occasion my sleeping moments too. I hold no capacity for love for her anymore. I don't really want anything to do with her. Of course, that being said, I feel immense pity and understanding for someone to be so stuck in misery. It makes me sad. I would not want to become like her. I don't believe in her capacity to change. She is also ill, and will be until she dies, and she is in her 60s. Before I cut off modes of communication, her cancer was often used as guilt. I never felt pity for her plight in turn, because the guilt filled me with rage and resentment, for I was neglected throughout my entire life.

However, what I have been feeling recently is for my father. I do love my dad. He feels like a flawed human being while my mother in my mind is a monster I have detached from. I feel guilt for having to abandon him because they still are married/live together. However, I keep trying to disassociate from this guilt by thinking of his clearly existant dementia.

The dementia is a layered thing. My mother refuses to get him treatment or diagnosed because if he does have a condition, she's afraid she'll have no one to take care of her. My father is also a retired first responder career (probably has PTSD; we all agree) and is a super bad alcoholic. In regards to that, I will never sleep in the same building with him due to a bad experience. I am so angry at my mother for telling me her "inability" to help him because of her predicament, because the alcohol+mental issues is going to get someone killed! She used to... I don't know, trauma-dump talk-at-me about this fact? "Your father is going to kill someone one day! Oh well! I need to get to chemo."

Not to be political (and I won't go into details nor proselytize) but with family issues in this sad age there oft tends to be a political element, so I also feel a pit within me knowing she angrily argued with me and votes against her own needs due to hatred of others. Never her fault, always someone else's--such is the inability to reflect in these abusive people.

Yet here we are, my father, flawed as he is and still complicit in my upbringing, and I feel so evil for being powerless. I cannot bare the torment of my mother any longer. I have nothing I can do to help my father. They are stuck within their own monsoon of misery. I can't be there with them because I have tens and tens of more years left in me and I need to live. But I can still feel bad for my poor, beloved dad, because I also care for the ill people all over who have no resources or respect... I only hope I am not lost one day.

How do you cope with this complex problem? To help yourself, it feels as if you must hurt the ones you love?