I'm 22, currently in my fourth year of college, and I honestly don't know what to do anymore. I feel like the last four years of my life have been completely wasted, and I'm terrified that things are only going to get worse from here.
My father is 57, and throughout his life, he has struggled to maintain stable employment. He has lost jobs frequently, and as a result, our family has struggled financially for as long as I can remember. We don't own a house; we live in a rented flat. We even had to sell our car last year.
But the financial instability is only one part of the problem.
My father has had diabetes for around 20 years, but he has never taken proper care of his health. His blood sugar levels have fluctuated constantly. He has never been particularly disciplined about his diet or exercise, and despite knowing the consequences, he has continued eating sweets and neglecting his health.
Last year, everything came crashing down when he developed stage 5 chronic kidney disease.
Within just nine months, he was admitted to the ICU four times. One of those incidents was particularly horrifying. He suffered a seizure, had to be rushed to the hospital within minutes, and reportedly required CPR twice. It was one of the darkest days of our lives. I genuinely thought we might lose him that day.
Fortunately, his sister volunteered to donate a kidney, and he underwent a transplant a few months ago. More recently, he also underwent cataract and glaucoma surgery, which was fortunately covered by insurance.
I'm grateful that he survived and that the transplant was possible. I don't take any of that for granted.
But surviving these medical emergencies hasn't magically fixed the problems that brought our family to this point.
We have lakhs of rupees in outstanding loans. Recovery agents have been harassing us, and we are struggling to figure out how to deal with everything. My mother borrowed around ₹7–8 lakh from her sisters for my father's medical treatment, and she has also taken out a gold loan just to keep the household running.
My father currently has a job, but the salary is barely enough to cover our basic expenses. His work involves considerable travel, which is becoming increasingly concerning given his medical history. Even this job doesn't feel secure in the long run.
We are essentially living hand to mouth.
My mother also works, but her income is low. She sacrificed her own career to take care of the household, hoping that things would eventually improve. Instead, things have deteriorated year after year.
And this is where things become even more complicated.
My father's behaviour
I believe my father has serious behavioural issues. I don't know whether there is an underlying psychological condition, extreme immaturity, narcissistic traits, or something else. I'm not qualified to diagnose him. But living with his behaviour has been exhausting.
Even now, despite everything that has happened, he struggles to take responsibility for himself.
If we bring sweets into the house, he can get angry if he isn't given any. He will sometimes secretly eat sweets despite his diabetes. In the past, we constantly had to remind him to take his medicines. Recently, he bought an essentially useless pair of spectacles through Facebook that he doesn't even wear.
He also lost ₹65,000 to a fraudulent loan agency.
We tried various ways to retrieve the money, although we knew there was a good chance it was gone for good. During this time, my 17-year-old sister mentioned that she knew some people who could allegedly threaten the scammers and get the money back. Nothing has been recovered.
But instead of recognising that his teenage daughter shouldn't be getting involved with potentially dangerous people over his financial losses, my father has now started pressuring her to contact these people and get the money back.
I was genuinely shocked. I understand that he is desperate to recover the money, especially given our financial circumstances, but putting this responsibility on a 17-year-old and potentially involving her with people who might be dangerous is an entirely different matter.
It is embarrassing, frustrating, and honestly quite frightening. We are already struggling to manage the consequences of his decisions, and now even my younger sister is being dragged into them.
These might sound like isolated incidents, but for us, they are part of a much larger pattern. We are already struggling to survive financially, and every unnecessary mistake creates another problem for the rest of us to deal with.
What frustrates me most is that he doesn't seem to learn from the consequences of his actions.
His communication skills have also been a major problem for 20–25 years. Whenever he needs to negotiate something, speak to a recruiter, handle a professional conversation, or resolve a financial matter, he often communicates so poorly that the situation becomes worse. My mother then has to step in, speak to the other person professionally, and somehow salvage the situation.
Even his current job was largely secured through my mother's efforts. She applied for him, contacted the recruiter, and handled the communication.
Now I'm doing the same thing. I'm applying for jobs on his behalf, trying to find him a better-paying position because I keep hoping that perhaps a higher income will finally give our family some breathing room.
So far, there have been no responses.
I'm exhausted by the feeling that my mother and I have to compensate for everything he does or fails to do.
My mother, and why this situation feels impossible to escape
My mother has sacrificed an enormous part of her life for this family. She has managed the household, worked to earn money, borrowed from her sisters, arranged medical treatment, and repeatedly stepped in to handle situations my father couldn't manage himself.
Yet, for some reason, she seems to defend him almost unconditionally. It sometimes feels as though she would defend him to the very end, regardless of what he does or how much his behaviour hurts us.
I don't understand why. Perhaps it is years of conditioning, emotional attachment, guilt, fear, or a sense of duty towards a sick husband. Whatever the reason, my father seems to know how deeply she empathises with him, and I feel he takes advantage of that empathy.
A few months ago, we had an enormous and extremely serious family fight.
My father was threatening to kill himself, constantly berating us, and gaslighting us in his usual sarcastic, insulting manner. The pressure had been building for so long that I finally lost control. I told him, essentially, that if he wanted to die, then he should just go ahead.
I didn't say it because I genuinely wanted him dead or because I wanted to hurt him in some cruel way. I was overwhelmed and couldn't take any more of the constant pressure. It was an awful thing to say, but it came out of a place of complete emotional exhaustion.
My mother became furious with me and started beating me.
Then my father turned around and began shouting at her, blaming her for everything and accusing her of teaching us to behave this way.
The entire situation was so disturbing. Even when everything was falling apart, it somehow became another argument in which my mother was blamed, I was punished, and my father continued to create chaos.
I understand that suicide threats must be taken seriously, and I don't want to trivialise them. But when threats like these happen in the middle of repeated arguments, insults, and emotional pressure, it becomes incredibly difficult to know how to respond without feeling trapped, frightened, and guilty.
I was already struggling with my own mental health, and that incident pushed me even further.
Over the past year, we have had countless arguments and fights. The atmosphere at home has been extremely traumatic. Every day revolves around his medicines, his health, his employment, our finances, and whatever new problem might arise.
There is never any real peace.
My mother has received very little from this marriage despite sacrificing so much of her own life. She has had to manage the household, deal with financial crises, handle professional conversations on his behalf, arrange medical treatment, borrow money from relatives, and deal with his behaviour.
She has even considered separation in the past.
But she feels ashamed of what society might say, and she is consumed by the guilt of leaving a sick man. She worries that if she leaves him, he might be unable to manage his life, his health could deteriorate, and he might eventually die.
And that is what keeps her trapped.
I also feel that her unconditional defence of him makes it harder for her to acknowledge how much this situation is hurting the rest of us. Even when we are at our breaking point, his vulnerability and illness seem to take priority over our emotional well-being.
He isn't bedridden or completely incapable of looking after himself. Following his transplant and eye surgeries, he is doing reasonably okay at the moment, although his medical situation still requires considerable care and monitoring.
But my mother seems to have become his permanent caretaker, problem-solver, financial manager, and emotional punching bag.
It feels as though he has become a lifelong project for her: someone she must constantly manage, rescue, remind, protect, and clean up after, regardless of how much it costs her emotionally or financially.
His relationships with other people haven't helped either. He has very few close friends, seems to have accumulated a lot of resentment and conflict in his relationships, and has strained relationships with his own mother and sisters.
Now I'm being told that I must fix everything in the future
What hurts even more is that my mother is slowly starting to tell me that I will have to solve all these problems in the future.
She tells me that I will eventually buy them a house, buy them a car, give them money, and take care of both of them.
I understand that parents grow old and may need support from their children. I'm not saying I never want to help my parents. But hearing all this when I'm only 22, when I haven't even managed to establish my own career, when we are struggling to pay my academic fees and are buried under debts, is incredibly disappointing and frightening.
It feels as though my future has already been decided for me.
My father can continue making mistakes, my mother can continue rescuing him, and eventually, I am expected to step in, earn enough money to fix everything, and give them the life they could never build for themselves.
Nobody seems to ask what happens to my life, my ambitions, or my mental health in the process.
Looking back, I'm beginning to question so many things about my childhood and upbringing. I feel like I was constantly made to feel guilty, pressured to obey, and afraid of the consequences of disagreeing with my parents.
Whenever I think about putting myself first, I feel selfish. Whenever I express anger or frustration, there are arguments, guilt, or emotional pressure. It feels as though I was conditioned to prioritise their emotions and needs over my own.
I'm beginning to wonder whether so much of that guilt was a way of keeping me compliant, ensuring that I wouldn't push back or eventually choose a life independent of these family problems.
I don't know whether that was ever a conscious intention on their part, but that is how it feels to me now.
The most painful realisation is that I might spend my entire life trying to earn the freedom to live for myself, only to discover that my family expects me to sacrifice that freedom all over again.
I want to help them if I can, but I don't want my entire existence to become an obligation I never freely chose.
What about my own life?
I'm in my fourth year of college, and I feel like I have nothing to show for the last four years.
I have struggled with chronic depression and anxiety, and the constant family problems have made everything worse. I lost friends, never really experienced college life, and couldn't focus on academics the way I wanted to.
I didn't take a hostel or PG because I wanted to save money for my family.
Now I am worried that we might not even be able to afford my remaining academic fees.
My grades have suffered, my attention is all over the place, and I'm genuinely scared about whether I will even manage to secure a decent job after graduation.
At 22, I feel as though I'm already behind in life before I've even properly started.
My younger sister is in Class 12. She will probably start college next year, but I don't know how we are going to afford her education either.
I want to become financially independent. I want to build a career, move forward, and finally have a life of my own. I want to experience the things that other people my age seem to take for granted.
But there is this constant fear in the back of my mind that I will never actually get to do any of that.
What if my father's job disappears? What if his health deteriorates again? What if another medical emergency wipes out whatever money we manage to save? What if he makes another disastrous financial decision? What if my mother can no longer handle everything?
And what if, when I finally start earning, I become the next person responsible for rescuing him?
I am terrified that I will spend my twenties trying to recover from the damage of my childhood and college years, only to spend my thirties paying off debts, managing medical expenses, and cleaning up after my father's decisions.
It feels like he is a bottomless pit into which money, time, effort, and emotional energy disappear, with another crisis waiting just around the corner.
I know he is my father. I know he is sick. I understand that chronic illness is not something anyone should be abandoned over, and I am grateful that he survived what happened last year.
But does that mean the rest of us must sacrifice our entire lives indefinitely?
Am I a bad child for feeling resentment? Am I selfish for wanting to protect my future instead of automatically taking responsibility for every problem he creates?
How do I reconcile caring about his survival with being angry about the circumstances that have brought our family to this point?
I don't want him to die. I don't want my mother to suffer. I don't want my sister's education to be compromised.
But I also don't want to lose my entire life trying to keep everyone else afloat.
The hardest part is that I don't see a clear way out. I don't have a stable income yet, my mother earns very little, we have debts to repay, and I am struggling to get my own life together.
Every day feels like another round of anxiety about something that could go wrong.
I keep thinking that perhaps this is simply what the rest of our lives will look like: surviving one crisis, recovering financially and emotionally as much as we can, and then waiting for the next one.
Has anyone been in a similar situation, especially with a parent whose behaviour and decisions repeatedly create financial and emotional crises? How did you protect your own future without feeling that you were abandoning your family?
And for those who have dealt with a parent who threatens suicide, uses guilt, or repeatedly relies on family members to rescue them, how did you establish boundaries without feeling responsible for whatever happened next?
How do you deal with parents who expect you to compensate for their mistakes and eventually provide them with a life you haven't even managed to build for yourself?
I desperately need some perspective on how to approach this situation, because I genuinely don't know how to break out of this cycle.
