My (21f) family believes that because I was a horrible kid to raise, they deserve all of my time now that I have calmed down. I don't know how to go about it.

Tldr: Wild, problematic teenage me finally matured and ended up 3 hours away from home with the love of my life. My family believes they deserve all my time now that I am calm for having dealt with me being bad for so long. Going home not only stresses me out so much, but kind of threatens my sobriety. How do I go about the holidays?

My personal history is what brought this conflict with my family on and so it is most important to explain it. I will try to do it as minimally as possible.

There was a lot of chaos and trauma in my early to mid childhood that I let turn me into a wild teenager. I started experimenting with smoking and drinking earlier than most kids and liked the way being intoxicated helped me forget and put me at ease. I always felt isolated and so different than my mother's family who raised me - I am visibly and behaviorally just like Dad. My brain interpreted loneliness as being excluded and I hated them for everything that ever happened. A 14 year old kid already following in her addict father's footsteps obviously caused a lot of turmoil in my home between my family. But I was so unpleasant to be around that I think they were almost glad to send me off to friends' houses, despite knowing what I was going to do. 

Anyway, this is not a sob story. I was always a perfect student and I graduated high school with a 4.2 GPA and already had writing published several times. Acceptance into university was not a trying task so I first accepted entrance into college in the first big city over from our small town. I lived with friends and did well in school, my mother became my best friend. By summer I'd moved my stuff back to my mom's but spent a majority of nights in the city partying. I reconnected with a tough guy I'd hated from high school and somehow ended up living with him during the fall semester, only showing my face at home if we had gotten wasted and fought. I left him that Christmas and went home for winter break. I was set on abandoning my love for alcohol that had been dragging me down since early high school but tried my best to be friendly and helpful during the holidays. Everybody thought I was finally grown up and I did, too. 

Somehow over winter break I had managed to transfer schools to a university in the mountains two hours away from home. I wanted to be alone so I rented a cute house alone on the edge of campus with a beautiful view from the front porch. I didn’t know a soul there and the culture was so foreign I felt like I had left the continent - but somehow, it felt more like home than home did. I loved to wake up early with the sun and sit on my tiny front porch with coffee watching the fog untangle itself from the trees spread across the mountains. I stopped drinking liquor and kept my house spotless and would sit for hours soaking in the silence. There was a lot of journal writing in hot baths. There was a lot of baking and watching documentaries and reading literature that took hold on my brain. I felt myself healing.

Then a friend from high school popped up. He lived in another mountain town about an hour away and when he introduced me to his best friend that my world changed. I knew the minute I laid eyes on him that he was the love of my life (and more importantly, that I was finally deserving of a mature and fulfilling relationship). The way he smiled at me, his calmness, his gentle gaze, his subtle attentiveness. It was everything I needed the whole time I was living among chaos as a child and creating it as an adult. Our story has been a whirlwind but not the kind I'm used to; we moved fast but only in relationship milestones. It's been eight months and I live in his town now. It's about an hour from the college I go to, but I only have one semester left and two classes on campus next semester. 

This man really has just been the answer to every unspoken prayer anybody has had for me. My family sees it too. The problem is, we are young and in school and working but still short on money constantly. I think this isn't abnormal for early twenty somethings starting out. We live 3 hours away from my family and visits that direction are few right now. Going to my hometown and being around all of the people who helped me destroy my life also makes me nervous regarding my sobriety, as well as being around my inevitably drunk sisters and cousins.

My mom says her friends and other family are asking where I am; they want to know why I think it’s fair that “becoming a good person means that they don’t get to experience it”. They are rude and raunchy and hateful everytime I speak with them. Part of me feels like this is payback but the other part feels that as an adult you should understand children are going to have difficult times - especially ones with experiences that I faced as a child. We’re going to spend Christmas Eve with my family and spent the weekend with my mother helping her move. I know I was a brat and evil and probably ruined their lives for close to 15 years but I am trying to figure out how to live (healthily and comfortably) on my own, independent of my family, for the first time. This requires space. This requires emotional work. This requires patience on their part interacting with me. I keep in constant communication with them and worry all of the time that they are unhappy or hurt. I don’t know what I can do to help them feel like I haven’t just healed and left them after mistreating  and relying on them for years while not upsetting the fragile balance I am trying to maintain in my life at this time.

Submitted December 23, 2019 at 01:33PM by snc299 https://ift.tt/2MiLRgr