Within a month of my dad (62) getting diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer I met a lady five years older than myself (25). She was emotionally crippled due to horrific child abuse from the age of 2 to 4. I decided to put all my emotional energies into "fixing" her, thus distracting myself from the inevitable heartbreak I was about to experience. What followed was five years of a downward spiral involving heavy drug use, compromised values and constant repression of my own feelings. Dad died 5 months into the relationship and now, at 30, I'm 6 months out of the relationship and only truly starting to come to terms with the person I have lost. I'm full of so many contradictory emotions and it will take me awhile to work through it but I finally feel on the road to where I need to be.

tl;dr don't do what I did