should I [25M] tell my mom how much I was traumatized by her fucked up relationship with my dad growing up?

this is a really long and heartbreaking story, but I'll try to sum it up as best as I can

growing up my parents would have bitter fights that would verge on violence (from my dad) on a regular basis. they would argue in the middle of the house where voices boomed so you couldn't ignore it. my dad would get drunk, punch holes in walls, storm out of the house in a fit of rage and get in his truck and disappear for hours without his cell phone, be verbally abusive while my mom would break down into tears every time. I remember specifically traumatic shit like waking up to arguing before school and peering over the balcony looking at my dad holding a coffee table over mom who was on the floor doing crutches like he was about to smash it on her until I (10 y/o at the time) screamed and he dropped it. another time I called my friend (around 10-11) from school sobbing because I didn't know what to do about my dad who was getting violent, and my dad took the phone out of my hand, ended the call and wouldn't give it back.

I turned out fine for a while, no mental health issues at all until coronavirus hit, but that's a different story. my sister, on the other hand, was extremely fucked up by it. she had severe depression at the age of 15, for no apparent reason (though looking back her home life was surely the number 1 factor), and we ended up having to send her to the psych ward multiple times because she was talking about killing herself. Now, at the age of 21, she's not so much depressed anymore but she is clearly still fucked up in the head. she is very inarticulate, has severe problems expressing her thoughts and feelings, and acts like a 5 year old in certain situations. to me, she's a permanent reminder of the trauma that we both had to endure, she is the end result, the final product of a family broken beyond repair. the only reason I didn't turn out fucked up too is dumb luck.

now for the really heartbreaking part. to my mom family is everything, the most important thing in the world. she moved back home at the age of 26 to care for her dying dad for 2 years, and she would expect the same from my sister and I. she constantly tells me whenever I come back home (I moved out for college and haven't moved back, only short visits during the holidays) that family is everything, that it's the only thing that matters at the end of the day. she goes on about how all she wants is a Leave it to Beaver, Hallmark channel-style big happy family. that's why she insists that dad and my sister and I all go through the motions of holiday family gatherings, even though my dad hates every minute of it and lets everyone know how much he hates it indirectly by slamming everything and drinking.

basically, going home for me triggers this trauma and I fucking hate it. If my childhood home burned down tomorrow, I wouldn't give a shit. my family is a curse and every time I go back I'm reminded of the trauma.

So now for the question I'm asking you all. every time I come home, it's always the same. mom and dad eventually start arguing in the middle of the house, and I'm stuck reliving my childhood trauma over and over again, every single time I come back to visit. guilt is the only thing that makes me come back for the holidays, because my mom would be utterly devastated if I refused.

my mom is torn apart by the fact that I'm leaving the country next week for an indeterminate amount of time, so I expect nothing but sorrow and gut-wrenching conversations in that hellished cursed house that was my childhood home.

my question is: should I tell her how I really feel? should I explain to her why I want to leave home and never come back?

part of me worries that she'll kill herself. I'm the most important thing in her life, she has no friends or hobbies, I'm all she talks about with everyone at her job. she's feigned attempts to kill herself before, multiple times, but my dad thinks it was just for attention (he had to knock pills out of her hands, both while growing up and after I had moved away from college).

on the one hand, I feel like concealing my feelings is disingenuous, and she's always been so disappointed in the fact that I didn't just stay at home and settle down close to her. I feel like she deserves an explanation for why I hate coming home so much, because deep down I have a seething hatred for where I grew up everything about it is hellish to me. also we've never really sat down and talked about her relationship with dad and how it affected my sister and I, because that conversation would be enough to send all of us over the edge.

on the other hand, if I tell her how I feel and she ends of killing herself, that's going to fuck me up seriously mentally and that I'll be haunted for the rest of my life.

I'm at a complete loss. I've been repressing my trauma for years and it's been largely successful, in the sense that I was able to find success educationally and career-wise early on without any mental health issues whatsoever. but now that 8 months of social distancing has me locked in a social prison with a shitty friend group and a hopelessly tragic family life, I've been forced to confront my feelings like never before

tl;dr - I have repressed childhood trauma from fucked family life and I'm wondering if I should tell my mom how I really feel about it before I leave the country for a while

Submitted November 25, 2020 at 07:31PM by seppo420gringo https://ift.tt/3nVu1As