My dad left home for his now wife of 50 years when I was 8 years old and they by and large lived their own very comfortable lives together, seeing me around 4 times a year until my teens, then we saw very little of one and other aside from speak on the phone twice a month or so. My mother raised me in relative poverty with not much financial support from my dad at the time he used to claim he didn’t have the means and we only discovered in recent years that he and his wife were far better off than they said they were. My mother passed away nearly 10 years ago from a long illness and I was her main support, although she tried very hard to maintain her independence and not lean on me unless absolutely necessary mainly in order to protect my emotional and physical well being.
I started to see more of my dad since my mothers death and increased communication considerably during lockdown. In the past few months his wife has been diagnosed with cancer and they now both absolutely expect me to provide all sorts of support and care for them both as my dad’s health is also poor. I am starting to feeling incredibly resentful. I worked hard on myself following my mother’s death, getting a new job, social life, etc, but I am still deeply affected by the loss. The level of support my dad and his wife expect from me far exceeds the support my mum expected (or received) from me, I get calls and messages about the health condition of both, several times a day irrespective of what I am doing, demands to drive to and from appointments, visit the house, messages that seem urgent and can’t wait only to just want to chat about themselves, and so on. How can I draw boundaries now before I am completely consumed by them and their needs to the detriment of my own?