Between a Rock... and Crawling Under One

I hate to keep posting stuff under the heading 'progress', but that seems like getting small things done towards a more peaceful tomorrow is all I have been doing.  And however much, it never seems like I am making any headway.

With the recent occurances of my Dad giving my brother more money, I decided to step up my game in the war against terrorism (i.e., my brother).  This past week, my brother waited until I left the house and proceeded to start to call my Dad's cell phone number every two minutes for about 14 times.  When my Dad turned it off, he then proceeded to call the house for about the same amount of times.  Then he showed up at the door.  When that whole episode passed, a few days later, despite me telling my Dad not to give him any more money, my brother lied and pretended that he was on the phone with me and that I said it was ok to give it to him.  Instead of checking with me, My Dad just took his word for it and went and got the money.  I used to be able to tell my Dad that, because we have a joint account, that he couldn't go to the teller and get money out without me... but he found out that that wasn't true and has been going around me, mainly because he doesn't want to bother me with it and feels like he created the monster that is my brother.  With his pension check going into the account and all sorts of bill auto-pays coming out, it was hard for me to figure a way to keep him from getting at the money, especially with the pension check having to be deposited into an account with his name on it.  Yesterday, I set up a trust account at my bank, where his check goes in and the proceeds from the house will go in, but he can't take any of it out any way... only I can.  I have set up another account where my Dad will have an ATM card where I will put $10-20 in via internet, and that's it.  Once my brother realizes that my Dad has no control over his money, he will have no use for him.  And he doesn't dare call me, because he knows better.

Unless you have been through this stuff, you can't imagine what it feels like to be under constant attack.  The worse part is not hearing from my brother for a couple of days, since you don't know what he's up to.  My brother is a master at lying, badgering and coming up with some situation that pins you to the wall and you have to question if he's actually telling you the truth... and by not helping him, are you hurting his recovery?  Because he has no sense of remorse, I think he can just forget about all that he has done to us, which accounts for the balls that he has to keep coming back.  My Dad, being the good man that he is, holds on to the idea that he will somehow rehabilitate and turn himself around, but that will never happen.  Peace to any party involved will not come until one of them passes away, and that's pretty sad.

For me, the stress of dealing with my brother and Dad, and actually my nephew as well (since I found out that he tricked my Dad into co-signing for 3 school loans and one line of credit, and isn't paying on any of them), brings on a myriad of emotions... anger, frustration, disappointment, anxiety... and I am really hoping that the recent fixes to the problem (phone number change, bank accounts) will provide some sort of peace, because I never signed up for this.  One of the hardest emotions to deal with is the overwhelming guilt that I feel... when I want forget about protecting my Dad and move very far away from here and live my life.  That makes me a bad person... to abandon my Dad... but my Dad is the one that I need to protect him from (i.e., himself)... and I'm not sure I can actually do that no matter how much I try.  When our lease is up in May, I will have to seriously think about setting my Dad up in his own situation and get my own place.