My (28m) family has never been picture-perfect but most of the time growing up things were okay. Most of my issues growing up revolved around my sister's behavior and my father's drinking/bpd. In her teenage years my sister (30) was always screaming and yelling at my mom and to a lesser extent my dad. When my sister would leave the house my mom would then tell me how she wanted to "get up and leave the family because nobody appreciates her." My sister was never nice to me, I hated her and we were never close. When she moved away for college I was only relieved and never missed her. In our adult years I have made an effort to be closer to her, but every conversation I have with her returns condescending and bitter remarks. Example, I told her I broke up with my gf last year and she scoffed at me and said she was "surprised I was the one to break up with her." I have recently offered to help her with her finances and even during those conversations she was bitter. She has never apologized or taken accountability for the things she's done. She will bend over backwards and walk on eggshells to appease my father.
Now for my father – he was diagnosed with some sort of bpd when I was in middle school. Overall he is an intelligent man and was supportive of me, and overall proud of me. He has always been a heavy beer-drinker and would occasionally overdo it (2-3 times a year) and have scary angry screaming episodes. One time I had to call the cops on him. One time I was out with my highschool gf and came home and he apparently just went missing for the night. My sister confides in me how anxious she is all the time that he is going to have another episode and needs constant reassurance that he is not drinking. I had accepted that he will never stop drinking but she drags me into her anxiety on a weekly basis. He confides in me about how "annoying" my sister is for constantly being on top of him for his drinking, which is horribly frustrating because I hate his drinking as well and my sister is right to want him to stop.
Lastly, my mother. She is a nice woman but never been in good physical health. My entire childhood memories are littered with her complaining about back/knee pain and also drinks too much. I feel for her because she has put up with a lot of my father's/sister's bullshit over the years but again, the burden comes back to me when she talks about how miserable she is. This has been going on since I was a kid and I never knew what to say (because i was a child).
Every conversation I have with my family members anymore is just negative speak of each other and I hate it. My dad thinks that being mad about trump is a unique characteristic and will go off on angry tangents about how stupid republicans are which is exhausting when he is just as mindlessly gung-ho for biden. I just want to talk about life and stuff that has been going on, literally anything positive. They're all so unhealthy in so many ways and cannot for the life of them figure out why they feel shitty all the time.
I do love my family, but everyday I wake up with a pit in my heart that is centered around them. I think about killing myself hourly from this stress. It feels like something is going to "pop" soon and frankly I kinda wish they would just go away. I can not live my life feeling like this, waiting for people who don't want to change to do so. It has only gotten more negative and draining in the last ~8 years since the trump presidency and covid. I do not know what to do. I want to go no-contact but I am afraid that they will explode and I would feel horrible putting more of an emotional strain on my parents. I want to set more strict boundaries but again I am afraid that it will cause and explosion and I don't want them to resent me. I just want to have the emotional space to fall in love and enjoy what I can in these complicated times. Therapy sounds awesome but I can't really afford it and I am confident that it would be framed to make me look like a bad person because it would cause a family explosion.
If you read all this thank you, I am desperate.