Knocked off kilter

Hey.

So I've been doing great for the past 6-monts to a year. I've been mostly out of the depression and had a pretty good life.

Yesterday something happened with my family that knocked me right down, and even if I don't feel the same blackness I still have a lot of anxiety and dread for the situation unfolding atm. I feel so exhausted. I can't go backwards. I just don't have the energy.

My father and mother are married. My father isn't great with money. He has some old debts he's still paying off and such.

He's also 80 years old and not really great behind the wheel. He really shouldn't be driving. So for the last 6 months him and my mother has been in isolation due to covid. I don't think he quite understands the danger he's in with diabetes, high blood pressure and clots in the lungs. My mother isn't letting him leave the house without propper precautions.

But after 6 months he's angry and frustrated. My sister need some advice on a building they are building and suggests he stays with them for a couple of weeks. So my mother drives 6 hours to drop him off.

A week in he my sister (who I haven't spoken to in 16 years, not my doing.) Drives him to the station so he can take a bus! If there is one person who should NOT be on public transportation it's my father. He disapears for 24 hours. Doesn't answer his phone and no one knows where he is. The last thing he told my sister was that he bought a car.

So last night, as the more levelheaded doer of the family, I spent a lot of time on the phone trying to calm down my mother and make a plan with my brother at the same time as I try anything I can think of to make sure he's safe.

More of the same this morning. Add to that a whole day of meetings at work and I'm exhausted. But there is a whole nother shit storm waiting for me when I get home.

He's returned to my sister with a car that cost a lot of money. Racking up more debt, we think... We're not sure how he paid for it. So to protect my mother from being buried in debt they might have to get a divorce.

So I put on my big girl panties and contacted my estranged sister (not the same mother) to let her in on whats going on since she doesn't know about the debt and everything about his health.

I tried going into the conversation with a mild agreeable attitude but right of the bat she was hostile and defensive. I tried keeping everything about his needs and what we could do to help him but she was not pleasant at all. The image of her that I've built the past 16 years just got very confirmed. The thing is now I can't stop wondering why she hates me and what I've ever done to her. I was 14 when she severed all connections and she was close to 30.

I want to write to her and ask but I don't think it's a case of miscommunication or a misunderstanding. I honestly think that she's a toxic personality in general. When I raised my concerns about our father traveling on public transportation her answer was more or less "if he dies, he dies".

Now he can't return home until we know he wont infect my mother with covid, but my sister wont stop him if he decides to leave so we need to find a safe place for our mother to stay at. And my father really, really shouldn't be driving for three hours. He falls asleep a lot, have trouble with his bladder and has slow reactions.

My mother is considering transferring all her savings to us children so they cant take it when the debt can't be paid which breaks my heart. Luckily the house she lives in is owned by my brothers.

There are no good solutions here. I'm exhausted trying to mitigate this catastrophe and I just want to go to sleep but I dread tomorrow so I don't really want to wake up. There are a lot more details in this that makes it even more difficult but I can't go into all of it.

I have support from my brother who is a lot like me and a levelheaded doer who takes quite a bit of the burden regarding my mothers predicament. He has a different father though so he can't really help me that much with mine or my sister. I feel like doing a table flip and just give up in general. Give up on friends, family, work and what not. I can't go backwards. There really, really, really is no graceful way out of this that wont leave at least one party wrecked and in trouble, and there is no one else but me to break it to whomever gets the short stick.

Just give me a break. I was doing good. It felt nice for once. I climbed out of the blackest of pits. Found my way back from the very edge of sanity and it took all the f*cking energy I have.

I can turn my back on all of this and watch my parents destroy each other which will wreck me as well.

Or I can do my best to steer the problem to the least harmful outcome which will still be brutal. Either way I can't win and it feels like shit.