conflicted feelings about my parents(pretty long post)

[conflicteduser]

ok, i'll start with the background first. I'm a 19 years old and living with my parents. My dad is a doctor and my mom stays at home, and we are pretty wealthy (live in a 4 million dollar home). My parents have always cared for me and done their best, and i couldn't wish for better parents which is the overlying issue that is causing me to be so conflicted.

Over the past 3 or so years, my mother went deeper and deeper into deppression. She was always a little quick to get angry, and shes has just been getting worse. Keep in mind that she started going into depression as i was 15 and 16 and going through my teenage years, so you can imagine that we clashed heads a lot. I tried to do as much helping as i could though, trying to get her to go out and be active and social, being a shoulder to cry on even though she really didn't have anything to cry about. Eventually she lost all social ties and spent her days at home, alone without anyone. I found myself avoiding her, because we easily entered arguments (she has a volatile personality), and through avoiding her so much, i found myself starting to feel completely neutral towards her. I didn't hate or love her, i just didn't care, whether she was sad, whether she tried to commit suicide. I feel i closed myself off to her because i was scared she would commit suicide and i was scared it would hurt me to see her go like that, so i selfishly and cowardly closed myself off.

anyways, i'm not the only one who it affected. My Father has always been good to our family, and has provided for us and loved us, but he and my mother started getting worse and worse. She would get angry at him and berate him when he tried to correct her for things she did wrong (like ironing shirts on the kitchen table), and she would go off on him. they eventually started sleeping in different rooms. I felt really bad for my father throughout this entire phase, and i always tried to do my best for him, to be with him, so he wouldn't feel alone.

This year however, i realized my father was cheating on my mom, when i confronted him about it he was honest, and told me it had been going on for about a month, and that he just didn't feel like he loved my mother anymore. Of course it hurt that he did that, but i am a logical person, and i couldn't blame him for feeling unloved by someone who was just never there, even though i still think he could have done more to help my mother through her hard times. I told him that it was his choice to make, if he felt lonely, that i wouldn't judge him, but i did mention that maybe he should get a divorce if he felt that way, not just have an affair.

And this is where everything pretty much went to crap. my dad told my mom about the affair, she demanded he stop seeing the other woman, and when he said no, my mother tried to commit suicide. And it wasn't attention seeking suicide, she drank a full bottle of pills and ran out of the house into the woods before he could stop her, we had to call the police and had a 4 hour search before we found her. it still chills me to this day that throughout that entire event i did not feel anything. I didn't cry even when i thought i was going to find my mother dead on the ground, i was simply ready for what happened. The two weeks that she was at the hospital and the suicidal rehab place, my father was tucking my sister in, then leaving us to go to his girlfriend's house and spend the night there.

this is what made me start to feel like my father was abandoning my sister and I, but i kept thinking that i was 19. A 19 year old guy! i should have been able to take care of my sister alone, so why did i feel like a 10 year old who's dad walked out on him?

when my mom came back, my dad moved out, i barely see him anymore, except for when he comes to visit my sister. My mom cried a lot the first few days, even tried to commit suicide once more (this second time my sister was there to witness, i felt so bad for her, she is only 12). I have done my best to care for my sister, and keep her happy, and tell her jokes. While at the same time to keep my mom sane and ease her pain.

The problem arises in that i love both my parents, and yet i feel i also hate them. My father has done so much for me, and even now he pays all the bills, and for my college, and i had so much respect for him and what he does. And at the same time i feel like he abandoned me, even though i am 19 and should be living on my own i feel abandoned. I feel like my mother is so nestled into her own depression that she has forgotten about others. I have to pick my sister up from school because if i ask my mom "could you pick her up today?" she starts yelling about how her son can't do her a simple favor and that she wants to die.

i feel fed up with my family (been to the ER 3 times this year, twice for both my mom's suicides, and once for when my dad was found overintoxicated in his car on the side of the road), but i can't leave. I have friends that would be roomates, and i want to experience freedom, move into an appartment, but i feel i owe not only my parents but also my sister, my time. I feel that moving out would be failing my mom and sister, and leaving them out to dry so soon after my dad did. At least i know now that i do love my mom though, and i want to help her. My dad is a different story. He tries to keep in touch, invites me to go fishing or to eat out, he thinks everything is normal between me and him, because i told him that logistically it was normal for him to want to have an affair. But i just can't be around his girlfriend.

Admittedly i haven't met her yet but i feel that someone who would break up a marriage, be with a man knowing that he had a family, is just not a good person.

 

and worst of all is the feeling that im just a whiny kid. I feel like i should just be sucking this up and moving on. There are people who's parents beat them or do horrible things, and here i am with a father who still provides for me, and parents who have never harmed me in any way, whining about it. I'm extremely conflicted and i just don't know what to think about things anymore. I'm surprised i can still manage to get A's and B's in school with all this going on =/.

[conflicteduser]

haha, in all of that venting i forgot to put my actual question. which is; Do i have a reason to be angry at anyone? i just don't know what to feel. When im angry at my dad, i think, and convince myself it isn't his fault, then i feel guilty for being angry at him. I do the same with my mom. And i end up just being angry at myself. Its a viscous circle and i don't know what to do.

[dongkong]

It really is alot to take for any human being. I do blame your dad for abandoning his kids most of all. I mean financial support isnt everything, your acting like more of a father to your baby sis than your actual father. Then the situation with your mom is also very tough, she should get some professional help. You cant go on like this and your baby sis cant either. Even if shes a kid, this kinda stuff (attempted suicide, parents splitting up) still affects her. Im sad to say that in your family between your parents and you, your acting more like an adult and your parents both of them are acting like the irresponsable children in there own ways. Most of all my heart goes out to your baby sis, it has to be so tough on her. But, its good to know that your trying your best to keep her happy, keep it up.