I feel as if I've been at this "guilt game" forever, and it's certainly been many years - and we're talking decades, all revolving around my mother. Yet I still feel it would be disloyal to say too much about that, so I won't. I have people to unload to, so I'm very lucky there, and I have already been able to communicate with some wonderful people through TP in private messages. But this has been one of those days when my mum has not ceased to complain at me because she's all alone. She's not alone at all, she has a lovely lady there, but the only time my mum admits she's nice is when she's trying to say "at least someone is", meaning not me. I won't go into things, but the awful fact is that in some ways it's taken AD to free me just a little, in that from the day she became a danger to herself and others and officially needed care (she's still at home, luckily - Direct Payment working again), I became suddenly psychologically more free to lead my own life. And I know there's nothing wrong with that - on the contrary. Yet there's still the guilt about it, because I can't cope with her for long any more, and if anyone had told me just five years ago that I could turn my back on my mother when she feels she needs me the most, I would not have believed them. In some ways, TP makes me feel even guiltier. I read about so many people in far, far worse situations than mine, coping so magnificently. More guilt, and I know it's such a wasteful emotion, and perhaps self-indulgent, but ah, well. I'll stop now, but I just thought I'd start a new "guilt thread" to see how others are coping with their own.