I have posted before about my family. I am now at the point where I can't sleep. Every night I wake up with my heart thumping. I feel like shit all the time.
My widowed elderly mum lives with her twin sister. Its a 4 hour round trip. I've facilitated the move, tried to get on with my aunt and to support her in what is going to be a huge undertaking, but she's been against me from the start. She puts on an act but in private she can be vile. She has told me she dislikes me, and has done so since I was a little girl.
My mum has dementia but her sister won't accept this (I privately spoke to their GP). She also has frequent falls. However, I'm not welcome at appointments, to the point where my aunt cancelled an important GP appointment because I was planning to go.
My aunt has also taken my mum off to solicitors without my knowledge even though I'm her active attorney and when my mum was happy for me to go, and has encouraged my mum not to trust me with her money, telling her I shouldn't be involved.
I sold the house and now I take care of my mums money. My brother legally shares responsibility for this but is a total nightmare. He does nothing to help, but undermines me with the family by saying I never tell him anything or involve him (this is simply not true! What is true is that I communicate by email, as I have learned from bitter experience that conversations are 'forgotten' or 'didn't happen'). He has also put a lot of pressure on my mum to do what he wants with her money, a plan which is unsuitable for her circumstances and which would be a disaster on every level. This has upset my mum a great deal and given everyone else plenty to be legitimately disgusted about. The disgust seems to extend to me. This incident left me traumatised enough to take time off work.
I am now getting independent financial advice with the support of the solicitor but my mum is upset about the fee and seems to think I'm up to something. My brother attended the meeting and used the opportunity to try to get the advisor to back his crazy plan even though we've been through this all before and ruled it out. Ten minutes after the meeting my brother was shouting at me in the street.
Over the last year my cousin has made it clear that she doesn't want her mum upset but has made no attempt (that I'm aware of) to help. I get told off fairly often, though I can never quite work out what I've done wrong. In the beginning I called her when things got tricky in the hope of sorting things out together, but I've stopped doing that because she just laid into me and reduced me to tears on several occasions. I also asked my brother for help and he said he'd help but only if I backed him on his business plan - he denies he ever said this.
My brother seems utterly oblivious to the distress he has caused and refuses to discuss any of these events with me beyond saying I have obviously done something terrible to upset my aunt.
So, one of my Uncles is visiting from another country at the moment and I really wanted to see him as I thought it might just bring the family together a bit, but despite hints and stronger hints and then an outright request for an invitation or failing that his contact details, I have been excluded from this visit.
It's like my relationship with my family is completely broken. There is no-one I can talk to.
I feel I have a legal (and moral) obligation to stay with it, certainly in terms of looking after my mums affairs, but it's making me ill.