My mother (50sF) is upset that I (27F) don’t want to forgive her

My mother was with my father for almost 10 years before she had me, her first child. During that period he had issues with explosive anger and was addicted to prescription drugs/alcohol. My mother often takes credit for “straightening him out” which entails fixing his credit score and him keeping a stable job. He still kept the anger and addiction problems.

A few years after I was born they had my sister. My mother raised us while our father remained largely uninterested. He would go to work and then watch television until he went to bed. During this time we had to remain quiet and leave him alone or he would scream at us. As I got older something changed, and while he remained almost oblivious to my sister’s existence, he started to absolutely hate mine.

My father relentlessly bullied me my entire childhood and still tries to to this day. If he was angry at something (which happened constantly) and I was in the vicinity I would become a target. He would attack my appearance, my intelligence, the way I did things, absolutely anything he could. Eventually I started fighting back (verbally) which escalated things. He moved to physical intimidation and would trap me against walls/objects and scream in my face.

My mother would always make excuses for his behavior. She would say he didn’t mean it like that, you’re being too sensitive, or would sometimes resort to saying it flat out didn’t happen. If she wasn’t present when an altercation began she would say that she can’t do anything because she wasn’t there to see who started it. Occasionally she would see him do something aggressive towards me and would shrug it off and tell me he shouldn’t have done it but I needed to let it go.

I moved out at 18 to go to college. I was at a breaking point mentally and I knew I had to do whatever I could to leave. I lived at home during the summers and holidays for 2 years. When I came home it felt like the targeting was even worse. At 20 I sought out therapy after almost having a mental breakdown. It was at that point I realized that my family’s dynamic was not normal.

I spoke to my mother and sister about what I had learned in therapy and that my father was emotionally abusive. They both ridiculed me and told me that I was the problem and that my father behaved much better (but still had frequent outburts, still an alcoholic) when I was gone. This really hurt and started a period of low contact between me and my family for two years.

Eventually my mother found out my father was cheating on her with a coworker. Suddenly her opinion of him changed. She became more clingy towards me and would always talk to me about how horrible my father was. They began fighting more often than usual. Soon nearly every conversation we had was about how my father was being terrible to her.

I currently live with my parents because my life is honestly in shambles. I am so mentally unhealthy that it’s hard for me to function. I have medical issues now that I can’t afford. I’m taking steps to fix what I can but it’s difficult.

Recently I got fed up when my mother came to talk to me yet again about my father. He has become increasingly volatile, threatening her and acting erratic. His alcohol and drug use has never been worse. I do my best to completely avoid him. My mother says she wants to divorce him but can’t right now because of financial and health reasons. I understand, but honestly I can’t take being her therapist anymore really. It’s all we ever talk about now.

I ended up expressing that I was still upset she essentially sacrificed me as a child. She knew I was being abused and did nothing because it would make life difficult for her to acknowledge it. She told me she had no choice but to stay with him and try to keep the peace so we wouldn’t be poor. She asked me what I wanted her to do because she’s apologized before. I told her sometimes things are too broken to be fixed.

She got angry and told me I’m doing the same thing because I still live with them, that it’s the same thing as her not leaving my father when he started abusing me. I disagreed because I’m not subjecting helpless children to this environment, that it’s just affecting me. Im getting things ready to leave and hopefully I will be well enough soon to do so.

Should I forgive my mother? She has apologized but I just don’t know if I can. There’s years of torment that I feel she enabled, and some she outright inflicted herself. I don’t usually bring up this topic with her, but I’m to the point now where I’m just so fed up.

TLDR: mother wants me to forgive her for enabling my father to emotionally abuse me