My Dad has multiple sclerosis and he's in a wheelchair. All my life I've lived in the same state as him and we're close.
Toward the end of my years dancing, I began to spiral down into a dangerous path where I was drinking and taking anti-anxiety meds together to quell the debilitating anxiety I had about the job. Stripping became something that was not good for me, the drinking brought me a DUI, but nevertheless I could not break free of the job and my habits surrounding it. I finally moved to California with the guy I've been dating for 3 years. He lived with me in Massachusetts for awhile and hated it. Similar to my situation, there were no decent opportunities for him either. So we left and with a ton of hard work, actually ended up making decent lives for ourselves here. My Dad and the rest of my family (aside from my brother and my Dad's brother who constantly give me guilt trips about my move to Cali) are very happy for me. Upon moving here, I managed to straighten out my life and finally break my stripping cycle and the habits that centered around it. I finally like myself and my life again.
One month after I left Massachusetts to move to Cali, my Dad's M.S. relapsed into a progressive phase. He lives by himself in an assisted living community and has a nurse visit him twice a day. When he is alone he smokes marijuana to "help the tremors" from the M.S., but he is a hard core addict who smokes all day every day, and sometimes makes himself physically sick. His brother (my uncle) and his wife are always the ones to go and clean up the mess, and sometimes they tell me that it is downright unsanitary. When he smokes, he loses all motivation to care for himself, forgets to use his catheter, and sometimes falls asleep and falls out of his wheelchair.
You can imagine my guilt for being across the country when all this is going on.
My uncle believes that my father would be more capable of taking care of himself if he were not so stoned all of the time. He also has dementia with the MS, and the smoking makes him even more forgetful. Finally, my Dad has admitted he needs to stop the 40 years of being a burner. To help him, I called his doctor to see what kind of help my Dad would need to quit his addiction. I could tell immediately that the doctor didn't like me. I am sure he thinks me being away from my father in his condition is a really shitty thing because he abruptly told me that he felt the weed wasn't the problem. He felt my Dad needs support to help him. He also said he believes he should to go to a rest home for people with M.S., and then told me the MS would eventually kill my Dad and that didn't seem too far off. I didn't ask him to specify. He told me this and our conversation was over in 2 minutes.
So what do I do? Do I give up my life, my job, my relationship and go back and do what my brother and uncle want me to do and just live in Massachusetts? There were no opportunuties for me there but right now I feel guilty for even thinking about me. I feel so fucked up and sad and confused. I know going back to Mass could eventually bring me back to dancing and back to a life that was not beneficial for me mentally or physically.
My dad and I communicate every day and he believes I should stay here and live the life I have worked so hard for. He fully supports me but, I just don't know what to do.
Any advice or thoughts would be greatly appreciated.



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