I'm trying

Thank you. Love to you too. Everything happens for a reason. I am meant to learn a lesson from this. I am really making an effort now to live more for me instead of other people. I will still try to help those who actually want my help but otherwise I will just try to remember that everyone is on their own journey and everyone is their own person and will make their own choices. I have to accept that and move on. My other goal right now is to start responding to pain rather than reacting to it. I get so emotional when something negative happens and instead of trying to understand and logically evaluate why that happened I just react and start crying and trying to find outlets for all my emotions (like venting on here) I will work on being more mindful so that I don't ever fall on the same crutches as my parents.

 

I am not saying to not be caring of friends or family. But what you've described sounds so bend over backwards on your part, you've robbed yourself of your own life. I'd also suggest not even trying to logically understand negative happenings, such as your parents' alcoholism. Some things can't be figured out. I mean, what is the logical reason people don't get help for alcoholism. It's NOT logical. I'm not clear on your statement "responding to pain rather than reacting to it". If you respond to pain, you are reacting to it.. Maybe you meant how you respond to other people's pain. You can choose to emotionally react to it, or distance yourself from it, according to who it is. Being mindful of how someone's pain affects you may be a very good yardstick for you. If you're crying and throwing your hands up in the air and overwhelmed, that's a red flag. Keep your distance. If someone's dear pet has died, you can offer comfort. Not to minimize how much people love their pets, but that seems far more manageable than dealing with trying to "save" two alcoholic parents who seem to allow you to keep rescuing them with no thought for how it affects you. Good luck.

 

from someone that's been in a similar state with similar people... the lesson I had to learn was about drowning, and it came from someone who was a lifeguard.

'you can't save everyone'

some people, you can keep them from drowning, and get them back to shore. but some people, you get close, they start thrashing, they'll elbow or kick you in the head, and you'll go down... or they'll grab on and go dead weight, and you'll go down. And if you go down, so will all the future people that you might've been able to pull back to shore.

as horrible as it is, you'll have to make the choice between saving yourself, and all the people that'll truly benefit from your life after, rather than someone who's going to drag you down with them. And there are people who would gladly throw you under the bus to save themselves for one more day... until they find someone else to do it to. (your father sounds like a prime example of this)

Please - get yourself away from toxic people. I know you love them, and feel obligated to make sure they're ok... and people like us, it's part of the makeup of who we are... since we're going to do it... to try and take care of someone, at the very least, we owe it to ourselves to spend the energy on someone who cares about us as deeply and equally. We deserve better than to be someone's crutch, or someone's only anchor, and we deserve our own happiness.

I speak from experience - someone can only be helped if they truly want help. And if they truly want help, their actions will show that, and they'll be trying on their own as well.

don't sacrifice yourself - because, and as much as I want to believe the best of humanity and the people I care about... people are greedy, selfish and often assholes that care nothing about how their behaviour troubles someone else, but the world ends over how someone else's behaviour mildly inconvenienced them..

people don't value a gift freely given. of time, of energy, of love, acceptance or charity. people treat things freely given as worthless, and only value what they had to put in the work to achieve and earn. make them earn you. earn your respect. give them a fair chance to, of course, but for them to care about and value you, they must earn you. and once that happens, they'll actually respect you to guide them, and might actually listen to you. Those that won't? they've made their choice, and you should not offend yourself to prevent offending them.

There are, on occasion, people that come along that accept your gifts without having to jump through the hoops, but they're super rare.. unfortunately, our loved ones are flawed, but that doesn't mean we let them break us and pull us down. After all, if we're facedown in the muck with them, blind and can't breathe... how can we help them up, aside from being pushed down further so they can use our struggling corpse to push themselves up a bare couple of inches, only to fall back down again?

don't lower yourself to drowning in the muck just to save someone who really doesn't want it. They'll resent you for not letting them do what they're wanting to do, and they'll quit out of pure contrariness. Sit back and laugh to see how long you'll struggle to hold them up while they try harder and harder to run themselves out.

I wish you the very best, and I offer you a hug and a cup of tea.

 

Thank you guys for the wisdom. I guess my biggest issue now is I want to start living more for me but I feel so stuck. I feel like I don't have a choice because I've already started down this road it would be so hard to go back and find a new road..

My grandma just passed away a week ago Monday and my dad is now about to be homeless. I promised her as she was dying that I would help take care of him and make sure he was okay. She was suffering so much and was fighting and holding on because she was so worried about who would take care of my dad. I promised her I would do everything I can to help him. I have been trying to help find him a place to live but he keeps pushing back against my efforts. He is mad at me because I can't afford to pay the mortgage on my grandma's house so I have to rent it out which means he has to move. He is about to have surgery because he has a double hernia and was screaming at me saying that because I'm kicking him out he won't have a place to recover form his surgery. Yet when I try to help find him places to live he tells me to stop trying to live his life for him. It's like he wants my help but he doesn't want my help. (his MS and alcoholism make him really crazy) Im trying to keep my promise to my grandma but I am also trying to be careful now. I know that my grandma would understand that I can only do what I can do and if he pushes back and doesn't take my help, then at least I tried to keep my promise.

One big issue right now is my fiance. I love him so much and have always been so understanding of his anxiety and depression but at the moment I feel really pulled down by him. I have so much going on right now with my grandma passing. Im dealing with my dad and finding him a place to live and getting all his records and things in order, I'm having to clean out my grandma's house and get it ready to rent (thank goodness my aunt and uncle who are thankfully 100x more responsible than my parents are helping me with the house or I think I'd just callapse from exhaustion) and I'm still working at 2 of my 3 jobs through all this on top of losing the number one most important person in my life, yet he still can't seem to help me with household stuff. He's still not working. I pay for everything for him because I know his anxiety makes it really hard to work. But he just is one of those people who will always try to find the easy way, instead of the right way. He's not a bad person but honestly he's just lazy. And it's exhausting for me. But he and I have literally built a life together. Granted I did most the 'building' but the point remains. We have animals and a home and our lives are just so intertwined that i don't feel like I have any other options. He's the only person I've ever dated. We have been together for 8 years now. I keep hoping that one day magically he will mature and start contributing more to our relationship but I realize it might just be wishful thinking.

I feel like I know that all the advice everyone is offering me here is for sure correct and the best thing to do but I just don't know how to take it, if that makes sense. I will keep trying to figure it out but I just feel stuck. But the one good thing about all of this is that it has made me decently strong and very strong willed so I know I will be fine.

 

Sorry that you lost your grandma

I wonder if selling it might make more sense. Renting can give you regular income while you retain ownership, but there can be a lot of headaches that come with renting, including having tenants that trash the place.

There's also risk involved in holding a mortgage. If the economy tanks again, and the tenants can't pay rent, you'll have to go through foreclosure.

If you really want to go through with renting, I'd recommend talking to someone who has some experience doing this.

 

I think there's special housing out there for disabled people, maybe that would be a good place for him to go.

 

I really want to try to keep the house. I might end up having to sell it. I'm planning on using a property management company. I think I will be able to break even and have a little left over to put aside in case of any maintenance issues. I guess I'm just thinking to try it out and see if I can manage and if not then I will sell. I will admit I'm a little sentimental about the house. :/

 

Also thank you. ❤️

 

I'm currently trying to get help from our local veterans assistance foundation. I am taking him to talk to them on Monday. We'll see how that goes. I will look into that though thanks for the advise.

 

I hope they were able to help. You might also try calling 211 or visiting 211.org. They can help connect people with housing, and provide a variety of other services (healthcare, employment, and food, for example).

I'd advise charging first month's rent, last month's rent, and a security deposit equal to one month's rent to move in, if the law where you are allows that. That's the maximum allowed in some states.

That will screen out a lot of prospective tenants, but people who can't pay three months rent up front seem to be much more likely to not be able to pay rent, and to trash places. Charging that much may make it harder to find a tenant, but it's worth it, imho.

A lot of first-time landlords get burned by bad tenants, so I'd recommend caution.

You're a very soft hearted person, which is a good thing, but there are lots of people who will take advantage of that. I'm not sure how you'd feel about having to do some of the things that landlords sometimes need to do, like evict people and take them to court for damages.

Even if you have good tenants (or especially if you have good tenants), you might feel pressured to keep renting to them even if selling is in your best interests.

My experience is that Ph D students make good tenants. They seem to be able to pay the rent, and also don't cause trouble. A bonus is that they are usually planning to leave after they get their degrees, so you'd have a built-in opportunity to sell without evicting anyone.

This only works if you're in a college town though.

 

You're welcome!