I did call the VA. His VA visiting nurse will come for a meeting with the daughter and me at his apartment while she is here. Maybe this can clear the air a bit.

Sophiesmom: the VA nurse gave me nearly the same advice as you. She told me to tell the daughter I had some appointments and make myself scarce for part of the time that she is here, so daughter gets some hands-on experience with dad's needs. I've got to make myself do it.

I know that part of the exasperation I am feeling with his family is misplaced. It's he who does not have a great relationship with me, and that's why I don't live with him. I can cope with the chores I do for him, but he's often not very nice to me and I come home feeling hurt. If he were a really good guy to me, I wouldn't care what the children did, or didn't do. They can't fix my rocky relationship with him.

The other side of it is that I am not related to him and have no legal responsibility. They are his next of kin. If he is in a home situation that is untenable, the VA and Adult Protection Services have a right to ask for family involvement. (His daughter recently asked me, if I would like to be his legal guardian, and I said, "No thank you.")

So, now I am not as depressed as yesterday and earlier today. The past 6 months were the best I've done in 4 years of trying to recover from Major Depressive Disorder, which occurred when I lost a good job in 2010 and could not replace it. I'm on my own and was suicidal by 2012. This past year, I've improved so much. The past few days have been a major nose dive, and I don't want to get bad again. So I'm okay this evening, and I have to not let myself get set back.

In 2005, I was hospitalized for very serious depression with self-harm. That was when I was still living with him and he was emotionally abusive. I managed to get out of that living situation and it's been a long climb up for me. I've lived by myself for 7 plus years, and, now, I just love being alone. I need to remind myself that this man has little claim on me going to any heroics for him. Living with him just led to me being in Partial Hospitalization for months, by 2004, and in a domestic violence shelter by 2005 . . . then the serious self-harm episode, which I have no history of prior to that, or since. Neither his family, nor mine, knows about these things. I was too ashamed.

Then he got ill and, suddenly, became very handicapped. I found him an excellent place to live, in a handicap-accessible apartment, in a nice senior complex. And I found where I live now, in a different part of town. Over the past 7 years, we have managed to be friends, and I don't mind assisting him. But I'm so glad that I got out of living with him, and I need to remember all that led to that. Lately, I was forgetting a lot of things, just worrying about him.

Maybe, I'm bipolar, as some pdocs have suspected because, after being laid very low the past few days, now, I feel ready to get up and get going. But I have my own theory that my swinging up and down has been because I've tried to make some impossible situations work, and then I have to think my way out of what I am doing that is no good for me. Once I get it figured out, like I think I just did, then I get energy to burn, and seem fine, and get a lot done. (Somehow, I got convinced, in childhood, that I had to take care of other people's problems and could never abandon anyone. That can get me in a lot of trouble.)

So I'll take a shower, and go buy some food for my house, and clean the place up. I'll probably stay up all night cleaning the mess that developed while I was so despondent, but then, maybe, I can go back to feeling okay for a while, like I was doing these past few months, so successfully. I'll listen to music on the Internet, and cook something nice and try to be enjoy how good I do feel, when I am not depressed. Tomorrow, I will drive someplace fun that I will enjoy, maybe along the river, beyond the city, looking at the leaves turn yellow . . . browse in some stores, etc. . . . walk around a little town, somewhere . . . enjoy an ice cream cone, visit a strange library. I can't have my soul held hostage by this man's difficulties.

I really do know how to enjoy myself and not be depressed . . . . but not when I'm entangled in someone's woes that I can't fix by myself . . . . not when I'm waiting for crumbs of warmth from someone who really doesn't think all that well of me. I would love to use my time to do things I like, and I have a ton of interests. I want to be free. Maybe I've been keeping myself shackled in a way I can get out of, if I just make up my mind that my welfare is important, too.