My father was heavily abusive growing up. Mental, physical, and sexual, controlling, and manipulative as hell. Despite this I have tried for years to make a relationship work between us to no avail. About 3 years ago it was feeling incredibly one sided so I just stopped contacting him to see if he actually had any interest in speaking with me of his own volition and in maintaining the relationship. Communication dried up for those years.

My sister doesn't know about the sexual abuse and as her older brother I took the physical abuse for her because I saw it as my duty to protect her, but she lived through the mental abuse maybe even worse than I had it. For a while this rightfully (in my mind) turned her against him. But then her husband threw her out in the streets on another continent and my father was the one she called and the one who came and got her through it. Good on him doing the right thing.

Where this gets more complicated is now in her eyes my dad can do no wrong. I was having a conversation with her about how much I wished I could have a normal relationship with him and her new view of him on the pedestal colored her words highly, but I didn't realize that at the time. After a long conversation between us I had the ridiculous idea that maybe it was all a misunderstanding and we just needed to communicate through it. That did not go well as I'm sure you can imagine.

2 years ago I broke no contact with him and sent him a text. He is a multimillionaire and I live in poverty and have no insurance. I got test results that pointed to a high likelihood of cancer. I had no way to pay for any treatments I might have needed, was scared, and needed a father. I asked if he could loan me some money to help pay medical bills. He refused to help me at all if I did not move back into his house with him and claimed I was entitled for rejecting his "help" and asking for a loan, in many colorful words.

(With no money to pursue further treatment or testing I still have no idea if I have cancer so maybe I'm dying? I don't even know. I've lost over 100 lbs in that time, albeit coming from obesity, but still it doesn't exactly seem like a good sign that I'm now underweight without trying to be.)

When I spoke to him again after talking with my sister, I tried to explain how that previous conversation impacted me and that I wanted to find some common ground and try to move past this. At this point he throws my mental illness in my face and says I am not capable of knowing what I need and he knows better than me (despite knowing absolutely nothing about my life). This is where I snapped.

My entire life he promised to pay for my college education and he didn't even though he could have easily. No big deal under normal circumstance, whatever, it's his money. But I was pissed. I threw it in his face, hard. I chewed him out for every major and minor slight I could think of. I said I wish I didn't love him. I told him he was an awful parent and maybe if he had been successful in his suicide attempt when I was 4 I wouldn't be so fucked up with all the mental problems I have from his abuse.

My sister won't speak to me and I can't really blame her. She definitely sees me as the asshole. And even if she wasn't wrapped around my dad's finger, after saying something like that to him I don't know that there is ever a scenario where she wouldn't. But I'm sitting here thinking if she really knew the extent of the sexual abuse I suffered (or maybe even just knew it had happened at all) she might understand why I snapped and why the thought of just being around him gives me nightmares. But I want her to get a chance to have the kind of relationship I know I will never have with him and I don't want to ruin that chance for her by telling her.

I know I shouldn't have said what I said. That's not even in question. It was a horrible thing to tell anyone. But given the context of our relationship and everything he has done to me I don't know if it makes me an asshole or just a guy pushed one step too far.