Dad's Caregiver. Don't Think I Can Take It Anymore
I'm in a really tough spot. I'm 24 years old and I'm my dad's caregiver. My mom got diagnosed with brain cancer when I was 19 and I was her caregiver for a year up until she passed away. This really did a number on me mentally since I had to watch my mom deteriorate each day until she passed away. I had to drop out of college at the time, but was happy to do so to take care of my mom.
My dad got a heart attack about 1 year after my mom passed away and was just doing awful at the time. I dropped out to work full time to help out. My dad ended up getting a severe second heart attack a couple months later and ended up in the hospital in a coma with most of his organs failing. The doctors thought he wouldn't even make it the night, but thankfully fought through one very tough year in the hospital. I was in a long distance relationship at the time and my boyfriend ended up moving to my state and living with me(we ended up having to move apartments since my rent was insanely high) to help me with the rent and become my dad's caregiver once he finally came back home. My whole family ghosted on me during all of this.
My dad is also only 59 btw.
Well my dad finally came home and is doing much better health wise. He's on dialysis, but doctors are absolutely shocked at how well he recovered and even admitted they didn't think he would do this well. My dad has always been a very kind person, but since moving back home it's like I've been living with a stranger. He does not appreciate anything I do for him.
Everything is a huge fight with him (I've never even heard him raise his voice before this heart attack). It's been almost 2 years since he came home and I'll be honest, it's been hell for my boyfriend and me! Before he got his disability pay, he was constantly fighting with me over how little money we have after our rent/bills. He would yell at me to just skip bills constantly despite trying to explain to him that we can't do that. During that year by myself, I took care of everything financially and began to realize my dad had been absolutely awful with budgeting and his money! Almost all our bills were 2-3 months behind despite us having enough money to pay and more at the time. He also was getting so frustrated with me over not letting him be in charge of the bills/finances and constantly referring to me as a child and how he's my father. No matter how much groceries I was bringing home, he would still complain saying how he wants to eat steak or these elaborate meals that were just out of our budget. I finally grew so fed up that I let him take control since we were fighting every single day after I got off a 12 hour shift of work. Well it didn't take long before we we're again 3 months behind and almost every bill and being threatened with losing our electricity/internet/my car/etc. My boyfriend and I maxed out our credit cards just trying to please my dad since he would buy expensive groceries that wouldn't even last him and start crying how he didn't have food.
I thankfully, after 1 year, managed to get through to his head that this isn't working and I need to take the budget back. I told him I would let him help me, but he needs to cool down on how much he's spending on groceries. He finally agreed, but every now and then he will go out to get groceries (I'll tell him to spend a certain amount) and he'll come back telling me he spent $50+ more. It's extremely frustrating and I'm trying to keep these slip ups as minimal as possible. He won't let me go get groceries since he feels like he's not allowed to do anything in this house.
I should also mention...he has a ton of medications, but will not let me help him manage them at all! We've had nonstop fighting about this and he absolutely will not budge. He's shoved me before when I tried to take his medication bottles away from him and then will claim he did no such thing. The reason why I am so concerned about this is that he is constantly taking more of his painkillers and anxiety pills than he should. He's slowed down the last couple months and keeps claiming he's using it responsibly now, but every now and then he'll say he's stressed out and take a couple more than he should. When I suspect that he used more than he should, he flat out lies to my face. Since he's not abusing as hardcore as before, it's difficult to tell sometimes. I'm still very concerned though since last year he ended up in the emergency room twice from overdosing. I've had so many talks to him about it, but again ...it's as if I'm talking to the wall since he will keep blaming his nodding off on being sleepy/tired or agitation on being stressed out. I should mention he also took my car and crashed it from nodding off while driving last year. Thankfully, he was unharmed and did not cause harm to anyone else, but I just couldn't believe that this was my dad.
I'm trying to go back to college next year and I'm starting to feel like that it's pointless to get back to focusing on my life. My dad is constantly screaming about how little money we have and making it 100% about him. He's embarrassed me beyond belief in front of my boyfriend with constantly picking at him/cursing at him in the past while being high or just fighting with me nonstop right in front of him. Any little money my boyfriend and I have for ourselves, he demands for us to use it towards his groceries since he's constantly running out early.
He doesn't even have teeth right now due to poor hygiene!! I have no idea why he's even buying food that he can't eat!! He's constantly yelling at us about how his disability money is HIS and he can use it all on groceries if he wants. We have so many bills and all of us are chipping in. I don't understand why he's being so selfish. I haven't spent money on myself in months. He uses such a large chunk to groceries and then will deny ever doing so or just say he bought all those groceries for my boyfriend and me(we've told him already a 100 times to not buy groceries for us).
I'm at my limit...I feel so bad, but I want out of this before I have absolutely no relationship with him. He puts pills before me and I've told him countless times how it effects me. He's very selfish with money and then will blame my boyfriend and I for not bringing enough money. Any extra money we ever get goes straight to his groceries. We don't see eye to eye and I'm getting to the point where I feel like I'm just enabling my dad since there's been times where he just spent all the money and came to me to go get more by either getting a loan or working overtime. Since my mom got sick, I feel like I've been deprived from a life. My boyfriend and I never go out due to money and fear that my dad might get hurt (he almost started a fire before in our kitchen from falling asleep)... The thing is, I don't know how to tell him I want to move out with my boyfriend. I feel very unhappy/depressed.
I'm terrified something bad will happen to my dad if I'm not there (will go back to not paying bills/fall/etc). I don't want to put him in a retirement home since he's only 59 and deemed that he can take care of himself. I tried to kind of bring this up yesterday since he went and spent money again despite us barely having any on groceries. We ended up in the worst fight possible and I ended up leaving the house because I couldn't take it.