Back Story: My father was a horrible and despicable man who's still alive. Before I was born he had bent my mom's car key to prevent her from leaving his parent's house and take a 2hr drive home. He never backed her up on anything and blindly followed his parents. His attitude to me and my mother never changed over 18 years. Some of the earliest memories I have of him are him holding me down and forcing me to do stuff. Near the end of their marriage he tried to bludgeon my favorite, now dead from natural causes dog, to death in front of me in anger. The only thing that stopped him was my mom physically standing in the way of my dad and my dog. Once they got divorced he called CPS on me and my mom multiple times which only traumatized me to this day. When he left he took 1/3 of a house he never paid for and moved into his apartment he'd already had. In moving out my father tried to legally take me away from my mom which would've caused me to grow up for 9 years without a mother because he thought trying to homeschool me and us sleeping in the same bed fully clothed on rare occasions was being a horrible parent. Because of this mentality he was able to get the court to put in writing that I was not allowed to sleep in the same bed as my mom or move outside of the state for any reason. He ripped the rug out from under us by literally telling me and my mother 20 minutes apart at the end of a school day he was moving out and then subsequently moved out 10 minutes later. Me and my mom were told so close to each other that when I saw my mother after talking to my dad she was still crying a lot. For the next 9 years he would continue to be a horrible person to me. He refused to let me dye my hair, get piercings of any kind, and literally barged into the bathroom on one occasion because I slammed the door after he asked me not to. From that day on I lock the bathroom door. This is a normal thing for him like taking the door off it's hinges to prove he could get into the house after an argument and getting so angry one time me and my mother hid in her room and almost called the police.
Story: I was lucky to get a car around when I could drive because my grandparents are well off and very generous. I got my mom's 2009 subaru forester. I had been seeing him after I turned 16 and had a car because there was a stipulation in the divorce agreement that I had to keep seeing my dad until I was 18. So a week or so before I hit 18 on a random Monday morning when he was at work and I should've been at school or at my mom's house I executed my plan. I went over to my dad's and took everything that was mine. It only took me an hour or two and I was out. I locked the door behind me like nothing happened. My step mom got scared that I'd do that again despite it only being my stuff that I took so my dad changed the locks so I couldn't get in. I think it was my dad who actually wanted to change the locks but he still doesn't have the heart to tell me. I still went over for my birthday just to get my presents because I knew they probably still got me presents and I wanted to take all I could from him. I then blocked him. Other people in his family started reaching out seemingly on his behalf so sadly I blocked them too despite them doing nothing wrong. My dad had been taking me to therapy to try to get me to stop taking medication for mental health because he thought that it was wrong and the therapist did too. In those sessions I said multiple times that I was going to go no contact with my dad for a year since our relationship isn't good and I feel the only way to fix it is to burn it to the ground and start over. The therapist of course didn't like that but that's exactly what I did to my dad's surprise. After a year of no contact he hadn't tried to reach out to me outside of sms and email. Since he put little effort behind trying to contact me and I didn't miss having him in my life I didn't reach out after a year. Almost another year passed when he asked my mom how I was doing while asking her about tax information. I knew the relationship between them was barely civil at best so it showed that my dad really cared and went out of his comfort zone to try to know how I was doing. My mom gave him some rudimentary info on me like that I started HRT and got in a car crash.
Current Day: After my dad contacting my mother I reached out to him and talked to him more in depth about my transition and the car accident. He has been accepting of me as well as my step mom. I organized a walk for us around my neighborhood with my black lab who I knew he'd be scared of since he's scared of dogs. The reason for doing a dog walk was so that I could feel safe knowing that I have a big dog with me an if anything felt off I could say the dog wants to go back home and it'd all be fine. Ultimately the walk went well, I reconnected with the rest of the family and invited everyone to the pride parade in the city since everyone could take a train to get there. About a month later I went over to play games together, get some lunch, and hang out a bit. It went well but I'm still on edge around him and it feels like I have to do all the work in the relationship but I'm glad we're trying to have an adult relationship.
Question: Am I The Ass Hole for pulling the rug out from under him like he did with me and my mom and leaving him in the dark to suffer. I wanted him to understand the absolute betrayal we felt but also nuke our relationship back to zero so we can build a better relationship on friendship and love and not fear and control.
PS: This is obviously after everything went down but I was just curious if others agree that this is the right choice or not. I made the choice that I think was right and I'm living with the outcome of it good or bad. If you read this all thank you so much and despite the outlandish nature of this story it is 100% true.