There is a particular internal turmoil when a child becomes the responsible adult for an emotionally unreliable parent. The appointments are real. The decline is real. Someone has to call the fraud department or the specialist, remember the medications, and check the credit card bills. That someone is often the daughter who learned early that emotional need was inconvenient. You can manage the logistics and still be spoken to like a twelve-year-old. You can be relied upon but not feel trusted or respected. 

What people outside the family see is devotion. What they do not see is the old math starting up again. If I handle this well enough, maybe this time it will be different. If I stay kind, maybe I will finally get the parent I did not have. That hope is human. It is also how you end up emptying yourself into a relationship that still cannot hold you. A parent who could not meet your needs then will be less able to now. Illness and decline do not produce insight. 

You are allowed to take care of the practical pieces without rewriting history. You are allowed to limit the conversations that only go one way. You are allowed to feel rage and still show up when they need you. Duty does not require delusion. Love does not require you to create a new story.

If you are holding a parent who did not hold you, you do not have to pretend it is simple. You can talk about the bind without being talked out of your lived experience. What we can do is find ways to make the bind more manageable for you, right now. Certain elements of a situation cannot be changed. Your experience of it can.