I’m trying to reality-check myself here.
One of my parents is currently in rehab after a serious injury. They’re older, scared, and clearly want me to come visit. If this were a normal relationship, I probably would.
But it’s not.
This is a parent who raised me mostly alone, so there’s a lot of guilt and loyalty wrapped up in this. But there was also a ton of parentification, emotional enmeshment, guilt, inconsistency, and what I can only describe as emotional manipulation. I learned really young that I was easiest to love when I needed nothing. If I had needs, boundaries, anger, or hurt feelings, I got painted as selfish, cruel, or “too much.”
The most recent blowup started because they forgot my birthday. Not just forgot it, but then skipped right over it and went into this whole grand, guilt-heavy thing about old wounds, mortality, how they’d “be fine without me,” how I have all the power, how they won’t beg, etc. There were also attempts to pull my spouse into it. I took space after that.
Then came the injury.
Now the message is basically: I’m hurt, old, vulnerable, and scared, so will you come see me? But there still hasn’t been what I would consider real accountability or a normal repair. It feels like the medical crisis is being used to fast-forward past the actual relationship problem.
What’s messing with me is that when I imagine going, I don’t feel loving or relieved. I feel dread. I feel obligation. I feel like I’ll be trapped performing comfort, minimizing my own experience, and getting pulled right back into the same dynamic. I am sure they will 1.) expect some subsequent act(s) of service, and 2.) use the opportunity to say something hurtful to me, in order to emphasize their own feelings about "my behavior." I already have A LOT of that to remember; no need for more examples or opportunities, from my end.
I feel pity, but not trust. I also don’t feel good about this person’s behavior around my young child, so that complicates it further, though of course, my child is additional emotional leverage for them against me.
So I guess I’m asking: if a parent is genuinely hurt and vulnerable, but the relationship itself feels emotionally unsafe and deeply painful, do you go out of mercy anyway? Or is it fair to say that someone being injured doesn’t erase the damage that made you pull away in the first place?
I’m especially interested in hearing from people who have dealt with narcissistic parents, enmeshment, parentification, etc., because I think this probably sounds very different if you came from a healthier family.
I’m not trying to punish anyone. I’m trying to figure out whether not going is cruel, or whether forcing myself to go would just be another version of abandoning myself.