After 6 months of a tumultuous living situation with my father, he was moved into his new house on May 1st. He did a complete 180° by suddenly putting his place together & has no signs of dementia or inability to walk. (It's a miracle!🤣) I feel it's because he is a hoarder and is now with his "things" he is suddenly normal again. But now I am getting daily phone calls with "demands".
My dad has guns, which his doctor told us to keep from him, as he admitted he was suicidal. Dad rents storage, and we keep his lawn mower, shovels, rakes & snow blower in our shed, as his rental has no storage space for lawn equipment. The rental storage place doesn't want gas powered tools in the units.
He called yesterday & got very rude. Demanding his guns & yelling at me that these are "his property" & he is "75 years old".... Then said he will also come to get his "tools" (lawn equipment) from our shed. We have told him repeatedly that we fear those things would get stolen off his back porch. I told him we want permission from his doctor before giving him access to his guns.
Dad also interjected that he "hasn't seen a dime" of his money in months. Mind you, he gave me his banking cards to "fix his mess" & I caught him up on being 3 months behind on bills, got him a rental since his credit is ruined, moved him to this town from 3 hrs away, multiple trips with a uhaul to get his belongings, bought washer/dryer, new mattress, dvd player, phone, microwave, since his belongings were covered in filth. Plus he lived with us for free, I only had him buy some groceries 2 of the 6 months he was with us. Drove him to doctors appointments etc...
I don't feel comfortable with what he is now alluding to. So I told him today, once we get his car here, I am going to relieve myself of all bill paying & errand running, as he can do this himself.
We took his guns to the storage & will also take his lawn equipment. He doesn't have a key yet, due to doctor's order & that he has a gun safe in there that we cannot even open. I will wait to see what his doctor says. I am so tired of being treated like garbage. After all we've done for him after finding out my brother abused him. Then he says, "I miss my son." I am tired.
I told him he is going to have to get help from the agencies here. My dad has been demanding things, not even asking nicely.
Am I being too harsh? I just feel so used.
I too was the family scapegoat and servant myself for a long time.
I sought out help and went to therapy and highly recommend going to anyone who grew up in a family like mine.
No shame in my game.
I truly believe that people who grew up in abusive homes like we did should not be caregivers to their abusers when they become needy.
Many of us make this mistake because there had been years of abusive conditioning.
It's always a mistake though and the abused child/caregiver is always the one who suffers the most.
My experience was that nobody really talked about these things, it was all kept in the family, people just accepted someone had their 'quirks'. I still felt that stigma, that protection that I couldn't disclose anything, after being an adult for decades. Even after, I dunno.. 6 councelling sessions. Silly I suppose. I have mentioned it on the forum (our safe space) & only recently mentioned in passing to my Doctor that my Mother had always been.. pause.. "unusual". The look on his face was *interesting*. He gently probed like he wanted to get a feel of the damage under the surface... We parked that convo there as not any immediate threat to anyone's health (but probably wrote "family nuts" on my file or something LOL.
I recently unloaded to my doctor about my daughter's crazy actions. Don't know what he scrawled in my chart, but we had a good conversation about parenting adult children with challenges, boundaries and the like.