Dear Sugar

(I don't know if you still read things as Sugar. Maybe you do, maybe you don't. Either way, I've been reading your book and I needed to write to you)

I'm 33, single and unemployed. I don't have children, or a stable partner: just a cat. I still live with my parents and I want out of my life as I know it.
My mother was recently diagnosed with early Parkinson's disease and we're doing all we can to help her out: I've spent hours with her, taking her to the doctor and all that she has needed forgetting about getting a better job, going out or just taking better care of myself.

When she was feeling better, I begged her to do things on her own and not depend on me or on others as much. She entered a period of depression when I lived out of the country for two years a while ago and hasn't been the same since. She lost herself on the way, and at the same time I lost myself too.

Now, things are spiralling out of control. The depression won't let her go, and she's lost the will to do things. I understand her because I also have depression too, and have had it for years (I've never been treated for it, and every time I get depressed or enter a period of it I just tell myself to man it up, to be strong because nobody is going to help me out. As you can see by now, I'm incredibly self-deprecating and have low self esteem and image issues. Do I care much about it? Not really anymore)-but then again, I can't understand her.

All I feel for her now is anger, and sadness, and hurt. I'm angry because she could withstand years of emotional and psychological abuse but now she won't do anything to help herself out of the fire she's in. I'm hurt because I've needed a mother for so long and I turned out to be her mother all of a sudden, managing responsibilities that were not my own and that she just left there one day. I'm angry at her for not being stronger than this while telling me to be brave. I'm hurt because I've seen her go from a person who would have a life of her own to one that depends on everyone else for the smallest tasks and she just won't do anything to stop it. I wish I could have my mother back, but I can't force her if she won't accept help-not from me, not from my brothers, not from anyone. I've asked her if she wants to die: she says no, but I don't believe her anymore.

I've said awful things to her. I've wished myself to be dead and her to be gone from my life as well. I've told her that I don't feel love for her but rather a sense of duty. Time and time again, she promises that she will get her life back on track and make me proud of her again in front of every shrink and doctor, and time and time again she fails. I've given her too much, and I've given everyone else the chance to have a life, but me. Every time I say I want to live away from them, she begs and pleads and I end up giving in and staying in a place I don't belong anymore. Not with her and not with my father either (the emotional abuse? About 80% is his fault, and he doesn't believe it)

Please help, sweet pea. I'm a monster for saying things like these to her, but I don't know what to do anymore. I'm scared to make a life of my own. I'm scared of being more of a failure than I already am. I'm too afraid of falling in love again and being treated like shit because I allow it, because I don't know how to respect or to love myself and therefore, I can't love anyone in return.

How do you pick up the threads of a life that's been laid bare for you? How does one pluck the courage to go on, when said one is too scared and too depressed and too fucked up to even want to go on? And, more importantly, how can I feel love for my mother again? For myself?
Am I a monster? Please Sugar, please tell me.

Love always,
C.