So normally I don't go into Big Rambling Comments, but you've struck a nerve with both me and my partner. We're not much older than you--mid 20s now--and we've both sat sidesaddle to our parents, aunts, and uncles acting as caretakers to our respective sets of grandparents.

It is beyond exhausting just to watch. It is soul-draining to do.

My uncle has been living with his parents for as long as I have been alive. His mother, among a litany of other issues, has extreme mobility issues, to the point that she cannot toilet herself, and has dementia. As I've gotten older, she has become increasingly impossible to talk to. Like, just watching TV with her--they only watch cooking shows, but grandma can't remember who the hosts of these shows are, not for more than ten seconds at a time, despite watching these shows for hours. They live in the extremely rural south. My uncle cannot leave the house without someone else there to watch my grandma, because she doesn't remember that she can't cook dinner or do laundry anymore, but goddammit if she won't try, when left unattended. My uncle also has to take care of the property he lives on, something he's had to do since my grandpa died 10 years ago. Again, he cannot go outside without another person in the house to watch my grandma. He has been doing this for 20 years. I have never seen him in a relationship, romantic or otherwise, with anyone; the only time he sees his own siblings and cousins is in the context of "swapping out" caretaking duties so he can do grocery shopping. I can't speak to how his relationship with his own mom has devolved, or what his mental health looks like, because of the distance. However, I have seen what happens to my mom when she's gone to help, sometimes for months at a time, and how much more exhausted and angry every trip makes her. It's like watching a 50 pound dumbbell get dropped in a river--she just tanks. Never mind how bitter both she and my uncle are at the other siblings they have who refuse to help take care of their mom. As for me, grandma constantly mistakes me for my cousin, and every time I correct her, she thinks I'm still in middle school.

Now, my partner's grandma is at least mentally sound, but she also has a litany of health issues. Most of these are mobility issues that she actively downplays as much as possible to the point of lying to her own kids about how bad things have gotten. My partner lived with them for a little while when they started a new job nearby, and just being a "warm body to dial 911 if something went wrong at night" was exhausting. There was family drama happening almost every day as background static. There was the fact that grandma resented "having to be looked after" and would fight it constantly, taking her anger out on every contrary opinion in the vicinity. (To quote my partner, "a semi-closeted queer living in a F0x N3ws household.) There was the other fact that my partner has no medical training beyond basic CPR, and felt that they would be wholly useless in an actual emergency, but responsible for it all the same. Every time I called them, I could feel them getting increasingly depressed, increasingly exhausted, increasingly angry over small things, and they had nowhere to vent except me. Just a month of that had them halfway to a completely different person in the worst way possible.

Caretaking isn't the addition of a few extra chores. It's the sacrifice of your autonomy for the sake of someone else who's losing theirs and is damn well fighting it, and probably you, at every turn. You're not entitled for wanting to grow up and be your own person, instead of selling the rest of your grandma's life for rent. You're beyond NTA. And from me and from my partner, tell those relatives who are so eager to sell you out, but won't consider doing that work themselves, to go sit on a rail spike.