About a month ago my dad was diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia.

He's 48 and, working with the timeline the neurologist came up with, it most likely started around 10-13 years ago. We don't know how long he has left, life expectancy ranges from 2-19 years i think, and I don't really know how to feel.

I don't have the best of relationships with my father, if we really have much of one at all. He is currently living with his mom by the recommendation from the Ministry of Children to remove him from the home after an incident and has been since Nov/Dec.

I understand that how he acts has been affected by the atrophied sections of his brain but it doesn't mean they didn't hurt and that I don't still have to deal with how they've affected me. I've come into this situation rather apathetically, I suppose I don't really know the man behind the dementia, haven't for any time I can remember and don't necessarily want to.

When he was home I was scared of him, of the things he'd say and do and I was wildly uncomfortable around him, I can't imagine that it would be any different when he comes back. It's only going to get worse and I'm having trouble balancing my respect for my safety and my healing with the sympathy and care I should have for him to have to go through this.

I turn 18 soon and have been verging on moving out for years despite not really having the means. I think when he comes home sometime this summer I'll actually do it though, I don't think I can live like that again but I can't help feel like I'd be abandoning my mother and my siblings to care for a man I can't quite bring myself to anymore.

I feel so incredibly guilty for planning to run like that and leave my mom to yet again take care of someone until they die a slow and ugly death like she did with both her parents but I don't want to live with him there again, don't know if I can.

I guess I'm looking for advice here. We'll be set up with support groups soon and I will be going back to my counselor but I want to know if it's okay to move on with my life without bringing my father with me when he's going through something so terrible.