I (26F) am hitting a wall being a caretaker for my very mentally ill mother(63F) and I feel so lost.

I am my mother's full time caretaker. She has a variation of paranoid schizoaffective disorder which means she trusts no one, constantly talks/plots with herself and is overall out of this reality. My dad works in a city several hours away and so he's gone 6 days a week. Without his job we could not afford her care, medicines or therapy.

I can't get a job because she requires constant supervision, and our insurance has deemed her currently inelgiable for a home aide. I am certain she isn't taking her meds, but I lack the authority to enforce anything. She lies to her therapist, family and everyone attempting to seem victimized and forsaken since we refuse to let her drive anymore. By the way, it's because she "can't remember" if she fell asleep at the wheel and hit another car with a 6 month pregnant woman in it. That was the final straw in a string of accidents related to her sickness.

Oh, the tales I could tell. But, as I type this little bit out I realize that it's already causing me to grit me teeth, hold back tears, take shallow breaths. I'm in great pain. I am helpless trying to care for a person I don't know anymore.

This woman is not my mother and I do not love her, making it near impossible to truly care for her. I don't even know what I'm looking for from this post, honestly. I'm just alone and lost and unsure of what to do.

BIG ASS EDIT : Words fail me trying to describe how your responses impacted me. First off, knowing others have not only survived a situation like this but thrived after is a ray of hope I haven't seen for a while. Second, your capacity for kindness has blown me away. I felt scared and unsure of myself and my feelings but now I trust myself more. This situation is obviously very complicated but a lot of you were able to navigate that without me giving my whole life story. I have much to consider, and I don't know how I'll ever be able to express my gratitude to you, all of you. I'm just glad this is a text post so none of you saw me ugly-cry at how moved I was. Not pretty haha. Thank you, community, for helping me when I could not help myself ❤️

tl;dr - Being a full-time caretaker for my cray-cray mom might be killing me and I genuinely have no other options and I am blindly reaching out for any help or advice.

Submitted December 30, 2018 at 09:30AM by annelikesotter http://bit.ly/2QUrkmJ