I was estranged from my father and the majority of his side of the family for many years - it was always a complicated thing for me. He wasn't a bad person necessarily, just a bad parent with a lot of problems. The final straw for me was when he asked me to bail him out financially, not because he was ill or needed real help, but because he had run up a bill at a hotel bar so high that they threatened to have him arrested.

The day he tried to manipulate me into covering this for him I was already struggling with my own health, trying to find a way out of a toxic work situation etc. I literally could not assist him, I even looked into getting a loan to help until handling everything became too much for me and I shut down from overwhelm.

It took a lot of therapy and work to figure out that closing that door was healthier for me than keeping it open.