I (M 22) Don’t Want To Go “Home” For Christmas

This post will discuss various forms of child abuse and alcoholism.

I (M 22) have a horrible relationship with my parents (M and F, 50s).

My father was verbally, emotionally, and physically abusive. On one occasion, when I was twelve, he threatened me with a firearm during an argument. I later learned that the gun was unloaded at the time, but that doesn’t make it much better. My mother is an alcoholic. When she was drunk, she was often physically violent towards my brother and I. I spent my childhood dodging them and parenting my younger brother (M 17).

When I turned eighteen, I moved three hundred miles away for college and began the long, agonizing process of going low contact. I read a lot of Captain Awkward, got a therapist and a PTSD diagnosis, and slowly started to heal. After my father behaved extremely badly during my 2019 winter break, I stopped visiting home altogether.

My mother stopped drinking when I moved out, and my brother, who still lives with both parents, tells me that she is now a pretty decent parent to him. She has apologized to me. My father seems to have taken my distance as a sign that he needs to change, and is seeing an anger management counselor. My brother tells me that his outbursts are lessening and he has generally become a more tolerable person.

This year, one of my scholarships dropped me somewhat abruptly, leaving me with a ~9k gap in my financial aid that I needed to fill quickly in order to stay in school. After a talk with my college’s financial aid office, I reluctantly called my parents to ask if they would be willing to co-sign a loan. Out of the blue, my father offered to pay the amount in full. Gifts from him historically come with strings, but I wanted to stay in school. I accepted the money.

On the same call, my father told me that his father is developing dementia. He said he misses me. And, for the first time, he directly acknowledged that he had abused me as a child and apologized. He asked if I would consider visiting my parents’ house for Christmas.

I haven’t seen my brother in person since 2019, and I wanted to believe that the change in my father was real. I agreed to a five day visit over the Christmas holiday.

In the last two weeks, my father has bombarded me with phone calls trying to convince me to extend my visit, sometimes up to a month. I began having nightmares, and all the old PTSD symptoms my therapist and I have been working to settle began to come back in full force. This morning, my boyfriend (23 M) sat me down and told me he was worried about me. He reminded me that I was allowed to cancel the visit if I didn’t feel comfortable with it. I realized that I don’t feel comfortable.

This evening, I called my parents and said that I wouldn’t be able to get enough time off work to visit them after all. They seemed to take it well, and it felt as though a tremendous weight had been lifted from my back. We’re planning to arrange a one day lunch meeting in a town between the places where we live. I’m comfortable with that, but I’m not comfortable sleeping in my father’s house. Ever.

I desperately want a relationship with my brother and extended family. I would like a cordial relationship with my mother. I am willing to entertain the notion of a relationship with my father. I don’t expect him to become a perfect person, and there is a very real possibility that he will return to his old patterns of behavior.

How can I navigate future invitations to stay with them?

Tl;dr: My parents abused me when I was a kid. They’re trying to be better, with mixed results. I want to make it clear that I won’t visit their house for holidays without torpedoing my chance at *some* relationship with them.