TW Abuse as well, but I don’t know how to add more than one tag? I’m not really sure how to word the situation I’ve made, so bare with me here. I (19F) grew up being emotionally abused, neglected, etc all the things by my dad. He never hit me, but he was incredibly manipulative and had bursts of rage where he would abuse our animals, break things, and be verbally abusive to us (me, my mom, my little sister). Then around middle school, when I developed sentience and started to realize what he was doing and speaking out about it, I became his target and the black sheep of the family. My mom would tell me to “just not say anything”, “just forgive him”, or tell me that it’s my fault for talking back/being disrespectful when I was actually just standing up for us. That’s a whole lot of my life summed up into one paragraph and there’s plenty of more context but I’m gonna leave it at that. Anyways, since then I’ve graduated and still live with them trying to save up for the future. My dad has gotten both better and worse in different ways. I don’t think he could be called abusive anymore, probably just manipulative. He’s unemployed now and a textbook deadbeat dad who does nothing all day except fix our car occasionally. Hes actually pretty nice on a surface level and seems like a normal person even behind closed doors now most of the time. He’s always buying me small gifts like candy or soda and doesn’t belittle me or try to intimidate me anymore. But I have found it impossible to forgive him. I have forgiven him countless times in the past, hugged him crying after he told me to kill myself, hugged him after he “held himself back” from punching me….you get the gist. I’m leaving out some of the worst stuff because I’m not a regular on reddit so I don’t know what flies here. I feel like I’ve forgiven him for so much that any kindness from him feels like a trick. Every time I would forgive him before, it would take about a week of him being a perfect sweet angel of a dad before he went back to being scary. It’s been a few years since he was that bad, but somehow my hatred for him can only grow. Every time I see his face my skin crawls, when he touches me i have a near-uncontrollable urge to get away. I feel like his presence has a physical effect where I become the worst version of myself and start to get so stressed that I’m not even aware of how rude im being. Anything as simple as him asking me a question about dinner makes me glare at him and be disrespectful when I talk (i’m not throwing insults at him or anything i just tell him to leave me alone or that i dont care) I know its bad but any time I’m even accidentally nice to him it makes me shudder to think that he might try to get closer to me or talk to me more because he sees an opening. It’s started to affect my mom and little sister because when I’m rude to him he takes it out on everybody around him. Basically just yelling and being mean to everyone instead of just me. I feel horrible for causing chaos in my house and my mom has literally asked me to please stop because when I’m nice to him theres peace. But I struggle to even control the disgust on my face when he talks to me. I know this sounds totally hyperbolic and emotional but like thats how I feel in this house all of the time. I’ve even wondered to myself if this is some kind of post-traumatic stress from his actions during my entire childhood or something but im not trying to self diagnose or anything. I could probably make this situation a million times better by just forcing myself to be nice to him, but I REALLY dont want to. The stress that I feel is so overwhelming that sometimes after a simple conversation with him I feel so confused and anxious that I start to cry. I probably sound like a big baby for being a young adult that cant control or regulate her emotions, but keep in mind who raised me lol🫠. Anyways, tldr, my dad used to be awful and now I’m awful to him even though he’s gotten better and my mom wants me to stop. would I be an asshole if I just kept my distance from him like I do now and tell him to leave me alone?? I don’t see why the peace of my household has to rely on me being kind to my abuser. (also as a sidenote I want to make it clear I’m not using “abuse” as a buzzword, I’m just trying to be vague about his actions.) I’m genuinely open to feedback if the internet thinks I should suck it up and be nice, so please tell me your thoughts.