Undeserving...still

There once was this guy...he worked his butt off all his life to help his family.  One day, his father died and left him to deal with all of the emotional turmoil he left behind.  After a time, things calmed and life regained some sense of normalcy.  He still wasted his life helping others and making sure that all was good.  For a little while, he stepped away and decided to do something for himself.  The others stepped in and helped out during his hiatus.  Soon after he finished what he set out to do, he was summoned back to help out more.  Nevermind that the time was being used to better himself, he selflessly stepped back into the support role and put his own life on hold...again.  After a little while, he began to have issues dealing with life and his feelings of uselessness.  He entered a program that promised to help him learn to deal with stuff.  While in the program, he had a couple physical issues that rendered his little hiatus useless.  He began the arduous process of proving that the issues would prevent him from doing what his training led him to do.  Meanwhile, his mother began her spiral toward her eventual demise.  One day it happened.  She left.  He was left alone.  The one that put his life on hold so that everyone else was able to have a life was left alone.  Without the daily requirements of taking care of an ill person, his life became devoid of purpose.  He was left to fend for himself and rely on others for his upkeep.  The sad truth of it is that he hates depending on anyone for anything, but his own illnesses (both mental and physical) prevent him from being able to do anything about it.  Living this way, he has managed, getting ever more despondent and feeling ever more useless. 

It is said that actions speak louder than words, and that words can cut like a knife.  It is easy to say that one will be there to take care of another, and a completely different thing to have the fortitude to place one's life on hold and do it.  The story above is not only my story, but the story of many people in my age range.  Parents that were born in the boomer age, are now getting old, sick, and tired.  I was never asked to take the role of caregiver, I just felt it was my duty.  I wish sometimes that I had not been as honorable and tried to live a life.  Now I am getting older.  My body is not as pliant as it once was.  My emotions are out of control and I feel like I don't deserve anything.  I don't deserve to be happy...or to love someone...or to have friends...or to even exist anymore.  I feel like the old person left at the nursing home.  The one that spent his or her whole life taking care and sacrificing for their family that they did not get to live.  Now they sit and wait to die, their purpose completed.  I am not suicidal (my mother would come out of the grave and beat me bloody), but some days I wonder why I feel the way I do and if things would have been different had I been able to be who I was.  I guess I will never know, nor would it make any difference to anyone anyway.