Dear Friend,
I read and re-read your letter a number of times and each time, I could almost feel your sense of entrapment, defeatism, hopelessness and anger. Yes, anger, an emotion I don’t think you were conscious of feeling. Anger can cloud one’s thought process and one’s ability to make proper judgment calls. Running away was just a temporary fix; it does not solve anything. You cannot run away from your problems, they tend to come back to haunt you just when you think you’ve outrun them. So, let’s see if we can’t come to some sound and logical conclusions that will resolve your angst and allow you to get a life.
First and foremost, abandoning sick, elderly parents is unacceptable. Unacceptable as well, is that you were the sole caretaker of two such highly-in-need people. It would be a formidable job for health professionals who are trained to care for such individuals on a rotating basis, let alone for an adult child to carry the load 24/7 for all those years, without any relief, break or help. Medicare is in place to help with these needs and one of the steps you should be taking is to get in touch with their office or a social service organization to determine what your parents are entitled to. This will afford you greater freedom to seek out your future. There is absolutely no need to do this all on your own.
That being said, understand that your parents are elderly and infirm and having you care for them now gives them comfort and a sense of safety. I’m sure that they don’t realize how their behavior and words hurt you and you need to find a way to put all of that hurt aside.
Please do pick up the phone and call home, just to find out how they are and ascertain that, hopefully, someone is looking in on them, if for no other reason than to give you peace of mind. Should you decide to return home or even if not, make arrangements to have help relief come in to take over most of the day and at night, so that you can attend to your own well-being. And yes, you need to talk to a therapist and resolve the pent-up, long-festering anger and resentment you harbor against your parents. It is detrimental to your well-being to overlook it. These feelings are not what you want to carry with you into another relationship; anger is a silent destroyer that inhibits one from moving forward.
I hope you’ll get the help you need and that your parents are entitled to. But most of all, I hope you’ll find the courage to make that call!
