I (17F) feel like I’m in an emotional chokehold, and I really need to know if I’m in the wrong. My parents got divorced earlier this year after a lifetime of fights. My dad has severe diagnosed anger issues (he’s on meds for it), and growing up was like walking on shattered glass around him. He was barely around (working in another country five days a week) and when he was home, he’d yell and explode over the smallest things. My mom always tried to shield us, and most of their fights were her defending us from him.

Since I was a child, I’ve been terrified of him. I literally can’t even look him in the eyes. Even now, just hearing him raise his voice sends me spiraling. The other day, he yelled at my younger brother in that same tone he used to yell at us with, and I started crying and couldn’t breathe. He wasn’t even yelling at me, but I was genuinely scared. That’s how much he still affects me. Because of him, I now have a deep, irrational fear of loud noises. It’s like my body flinches before my brain even processes what’s happening (even during classes when my teacher raises their voice at another student I start to cry).

But here’s the thing: when I was a child, he wasn’t just angry. He was terrifying. He would ground me for not wearing slippers in the house (he would take away my devices and make me sit in a dark room and think about the answer to the question “what next?” For an hour but I never understood what that question meant so I would get yelled at for not having an answer after an hour). One time, he made us food and proudly said he made everything from scratch, and I jokingly asked, “Even the cheese?” He flipped out, screamed at me, and threatened to disown me on the spot for “mocking” him. He told me over and over again that I was the reason he fought with my mom. At 5 years old, he bought me headphones before a family dinner (which were very rare because they always ended badly) to “prevent” me from causing problems. When I got slightly upset at the restaurant (because I didn’t like the cuisine that the restaurant offered but I didn’t even throw a fit I just looked sad the entire time), he exploded and said I ruined his life and said that he even bought me headphones to keep me from making a problem. Once, when I was 7, I flicked sand at my brother during an argument (accidentally), and my dad dragged me behind parked cars and slapped me across the face repeatedly for five minutes straight.

I started cutting in 4th grade, but my parents didn’t find out until 6th. When they did, my dad hugged me and cried and my mom beat me. But the worst was when, during the year we lived away from him, my mom beat me so badly I had red spots of internal bleeding on my face and my hair was falling out for weeks. I messaged my dad, thinking maybe he’d protect me, but instead, he yelled at me for “snitching” and “badmouthing” her. So I was always confused about how he would react to situations. Would he be loving and hug me? Or yell and cuss me out? But either way every time he would show me a bit of love I would instantly ignore how he hurt me and get manipulated into believing he genuinely loved me.

When I was 14, my mom took me and my siblings and moved us to another country (due to some financial issues and the debt that my dad had and didn’t mention that started a huge argument between him and my mom). He stayed behind, and we didn’t see him for over a year. He barely called, but when he did, he’d cry and say he missed and loved me. It was confusing because he didn’t try to stay in touch, but he acted like I meant the world to him.

Then when I was 16, he moved back in with us, completely unannounced. And surprise surprise, the screaming matches started again. A few months later, I organized a charity event and asked him to pick me up after it ran longer than expected. He waited an hour, then screamed at me in the car and cussed me out. When I got home, I tried to hide the tears from my mom so they wouldn’t fight, but my mom noticed when she said she was proud of me, and I broke down. She tried to talk to him calmly, and he started screaming and swearing at her, so me and my younger brother yelled back at him for talking to her like that. He packed his bags that night and left for his sister’s. A few months later, my parents got divorced. Since then, everyone in my family has told me, in fits of anger, that it’s my fault they split up. After they split up my dad sent my mom a long letter accusing her of many things such as being a gold-digger and a liar and he hurt her a lot.

He treated my mom terribly for as long as I can remember. He never appreciated anything she did, she cooked, cleaned, took care of us, took both the father and mother role and tried to hold the family together while he barely lifted a finger. He’d scream at her in front of us over the smallest things, call her names, accuse her of being a bad mother, and constantly make her feel worthless. She was always the one trying to calm him down, trying to protect us from his rage, even when it meant taking the blame for things she didn’t do. When she cried, he mocked her. When she tried to explain how much his anger was damaging the family, he gaslit her and made her feel crazy. She spent years walking on eggshells, sacrificing everything to keep us safe, while he tore her down emotionally, mentally, and financially. And even now, after the divorce, he still finds ways to hurt her, like dragging her into fights, using us to guilt her, or acting like she’s the reason everything fell apart.

Even now, my dad barely reaches out. I see him once every couple of weeks, usually at family events where he’s surrounded by his siblings and barely interacts with me. He says seeing me makes him sad, or he’s “too tired” or “not feeling well.” Yet every time, he tells me he loves me, that I’m the only one who cares about him, that I’ll be the only one to take care of him when he’s old. He cries and says I’m his whole world. And I still believe him every time despite his actions.

Still, I can’t bring myself to hate him. I’m the only one of my siblings who talks to him now. He always treated me as the favorite, but with that came suffocating expectations. Every time I try to pull away or set a boundary, he pulls me back in with love-bombing and guilt.

Recently, my school counselor found out I’d been self-harming (my principal noticed scars during a check before an exam where they had to lift my sleeves up to check if I had anything written). I’d been coming to school looking like I was done with life. Clothes with holes, unbrushed hair, terrible eyebags. The counselor pulled me aside (after being told to do so by the principal) and I just exploded and told her everything. A week later, without telling me, she called my parents.

Suddenly my mom started buying me my favorite snacks, letting me sleep in, not yelling at me. Even my brother (who constantly fatshames me, calls me a pig, once handed me a knife and told me to kill myself) hugged me and said he loved me. I later found out the counselor begged my mom on her knees to take me to a psychologist, fearing I might kill myself. I genuinely thought my mom started being nicer to me because she saw how stressed I was because of my upcoming exams but turns out it was just pity and now my whole family treats me like I’m a fragile piece of glass and I hate it so much because I don’t want them to pity me.

The next day (after my dad met with my counselor), he let me drive for a bit which I’ve always wanted to do (it was in a secluded area with no one around), then promised to take me to dinner. I was excited, until my brother asked him for money to go out with his friends that day, and my dad texted my mom demanding to know where all the child support was going. That triggered another fight between them, and my mom told me I should cancel my plans with him to show loyalty to her. But I didn’t. I felt like he was trying to make me feel better, and I didn’t want to hurt him more. My mom was really upset. I cried so much that night when I came back because I felt like a horrible daughter because I genuinely enjoyed my conversations with him (whenever I had a nice conversation with him I would feel disgusting for actually enjoying it) and for not being able to confront him about how he treated my mom and how I couldn’t hate him or cuss him out like my mom and older sister did (my older sister hates him for how he treated my mom and admits to it on a daily and I feel disgusting for not hating him as-well).

That night out, my dad told me again how much he loved me. He said his sister cries and talks about me all the time (I didn’t even know her name until recently). He begged me to go on depression meds. But I said no, because my mom thinks mental illness is shameful, and I don’t want to upset her more.

And yet… every time I see him, he’s texting someone called “My Love” right in front of me even though my parents haven’t been divorced for a year. My mom had a suspicion that he was cheating on her before the divorce. I don’t even know who he is anymore.

After everything he’s done, everything he’s said, I still feel like I can’t be mean to him or hate him. I’m scared of hurting him. I feel like I’m betraying my mom by not treating him the way my sister does: with contempt. My mom has done so much for me, even if it wasn’t always in the right way. But I’m so tired of being the only one trying to keep some kind of peace.

So… AITA for still being nice to my dad after everything he’s done?