Parentification programming

[Widdiful Falling]

As I read threads here, and on ootf, I've begun to realize that reading stories about what parents will not do for their kids triggers guilt in me. I realized just now, that it's because I feel bad for not doing those things for my mother. I feel bad for not taking care of my parent. 

I think this is a big step for me. The realization that I am actually younger than my parents, even though I don't act it. Shouldn't they be the responsible ones? The ones with drivers' licenses, and steady work, and comfort for their children?

I need to stop comparing my relationship with my M to others', especially because in our relationship, the roles are reversed. I hear about mom's sending gifts and money to their daughters, and I immediately feel guilty because I haven't done this for my M. I'm just starting out. There's no way I have enough disposable income to support myself, and her.

The way the expectation that I'm going to take care of her is there, too, gives me pause. Of course I would have no problem taking care of her in old age. But she is an able-bodied individual. I shouldn't have to parent her.

It makes me wonder if anyone else who is NC feels the same way. Or what other subtle (or not-so-subtle, as it were) signs of parentification I'm missing.

[C.]

I am not NC w/my parents but have simply stopped initiating any contact or responding to them, so they've stopped as well.  I guess it's LC.  I often feel mildly guilty that I'm not more of a companion/friend to my mom.  Like spending time doing things w/her, talking, listening, etc.  Similar about my dad.  But I feel worse when I am around them, so I'm not.  Intellectually, I know that parentification programming me to meet their emotional/social needs is inappropriate, but they don't have many friends, had difficult childhoods, and are not healthy in their own relationship with each other.  Its sad.   So at this point in my recovery my mind knows one thing but my feelings are a bit stuck.  I'm not sure how to push past it and have been contemplating that for the past week or so.  I suspect I need to feel some anger, but I just don't.  I'm hoping that the steps I begin to take around remembering help me to feel more of the grief stages about my lost childhood and the parentification programming.  And I'm not so sure I even would want to take care of them in old age...sad, but true...