Which one would be worse ? To have them being horrible to you in person or being pissed off at a distance ? The best part of growing up is that you don ' t have to deal with any of that shit anymore . Not even with them being pissed off you can hang up , for example . I ' m sorry your parents suck . Do what ' s best for you . Surround yourself wish people who don ' t think you come second to your sister . BTW , my dad loves to compare me to my older , beautiful , accomplished sister . He is not as bad as your parents , but it can be annoying and it was damaging to my selfesteem growing up . Whenever he is suggesting , directly or indirectly , that I should be more like my sister , my to go answer now is I ' m not older sister . I don ' t know if that would work for you . You could try to use variations of it . Or not , if you think it ' s a lost cause . In your situation , I would just be letting them know I ' m not going home for Thanksgiving and why .