Is it selfish to completely cut ties with my family the second I turn 19?
I’m currently 17(F) and I’m not happy with my living situation. My parents divorced when I was very little, and my earliest memories are just being thrown back and forth between my mom and my dad.
For a period, I lived at my grandma’s house, but it was a nightmare.
To make some examples , when I was a kid I had to use the bathroom, but my grandma had no wipes; since I hated the feeling of not cleaning myself, I grabbed a clean, unused tissue off the floor(I thought nothing bad would happen). When I honestly confessed it to her later, she called me pig as a nickname for an entire week.
Another time, I lost control of my bike in our parking lot after hitting a small rock and accidentally scratched a parked car while trying to break my fall. The boy father(whose I was playing with) comforted me and said the microscopic scratch wasn't a big deal, so I honestly confessed to my grandma again.
Instead of checking on my bleeding knee, she beat me up and lifted me in the air to smack my face better, and she only stopped because the boy's father physically intervened. In the end, the car owner made her pay less than €50 because the damage was basically nonexistent.
My dad was present during the first year of the divorce, buying me dolls, but he never actually tried to be a real father. Now that I’m 17, he has a new family, we haven’t seen each other in about 4 years, and whenever we do meet, it’s just for 5 minutes in a random parking lot.
We only talk through text, but I don't even want to speak to him anymore because he calls me a "bill" due to child support and claims I'm a bad, rude daughter. On top of that, my extended family constantly makes racist comments about him and his background right to my face, laughing as if it’s a joke.(PS. he’s not from a different ethnicity, my family treat him like he is from a different planet entirely. I really do look like his side, and my family doesn’t like that. Especially grandma.)
When I was 8, my mom remarried, and I thought I could finally live a normal life. My stepfather had a daughter from a previous marriage whom I accepted quickly, but over time, I noticed clear favoritism.
My relatives treated her with more care because she was quiet and calm, while I was more playful and rebellious. Even though I was good at school too, my parents and relatives always treated her like she was better than me.
My mom eventually enrolled me in the same school as my stepsister, but I started getting severely bullied for being "fat and ugly." Because I was rebellious, I would always fight back.
The teachers clearly saw who was hitting me, pulling my hair, or throwing food at me, but they only opened their eyes when I defended myself, and at the end of the year, they claimed I wasn't suitable to advance to the next class.(labeled as aggressive and my grades were not suitable. But in the end I passed because my mom insisted).
At home, my mom made things worse by screaming at me over the dumbest reasons, like a droplet of water on the floor or taking five seconds to bring her a pillow, and her version of "helping" with homework was just screaming at me when I couldn't memorize a paragraph on the first read**.**
By the end of age 8, I was already depressed and having suicidal thoughts. By age 9, I started having an identity crisis as I realized I had feelings for the same sex, which was terrifying since my extended family is homophobic and racist. When I tried telling my parents I was bisexual at a resort when I was 9, they took it so poorly that I had to claim it was just a joke. Over time, as I started dating girls, my mom slowly realized that opposing me or bringing up church wasn't going to change me, and today I identify as a lesbian.
Eventually, my mom moved me to a different class for my final year of elementary school, which I stayed in through middle school. The physical bullying stopped, but I didn't have many friends and stopped trying at school. My mom enrolled me in an after school program to get extra help, but the teachers there were deeply homophobic.
When I started dating a girl there, her homophobic parents pulled her out, and my teachers told me my behavior wasn't normal. They even forced me into conversion therapy with a creepy man who asked me invasive questions about masturbation while drawing a line to see if he could pull my attraction away from girls and toward boys.
While at that after school program, they also falsely diagnosed me with dyscalculia, dyslexia, and disorthography, treating me like I was stupid. Teachers started speaking to me painfully slowly during middle school and my first year of high school, completely destroying my self-esteem**.**
Even though I started working out in middle school, lost weight, and developed muscles and abs to get rid of my physical insecurities, I still wasn't happy. I was constantly mocked and genuinely believed I had a low IQ a belief reinforce by a fake, unofficial paper from my old teachers claiming my IQ was 84. Feeling completely hopeless and stupid, I attempted to end my life at age 13 by poisoning myself and claiming it was severe food poisoning, which spent me six days in the hospital before being discharged.
I later started going to real therapy, and while I never confessed what I actually did to my therapist, I started getting better. My therapist and psychiatrist have since completely debunked that fake IQ score, assuring me that given my ability to write poetry, speak three languages, understand complex texts, and process abstract logic, my actual intelligence is far above average.
High school hasn't been easy either, and I still deal with intrusive thoughts where I want to end it or feel completely empty. I don't even enjoy my hobbies like drawing, combat sports, working out, or gaming anymore, I just force myself to do them because deep down I want to live. I have an amazing girlfriend now who I love deeply, and I keep myself focused by self studying to get admitted to university for Biology next year so I have a purpose to stay distracted and live.
However, my current high school teacher makes my life a living nightmare. While she is hard on everyone, she actively targets me. After I offered an incorrect theory about a poem in class 2 years ago ,she stripped away my ability to speak for the rest of the period and began mocking me, asking how I could ever handle scientific subjects that require logic when I don't have any.
Recently, when correcting a test where I got a 6- (a C-, this is the average grade I got the whole year in her class), I folded my arms to listen to class corrections(PS, she even invented some grammar mistakes to lower my grade in my opinion, so I told my friend next to me).
The teacher accused me of being petty and complaining about my grade. When I got overwhelmed and started crying because I wasn’t complaining and screaming at her, she called me a "performative victim" and said it was useless talking to someone who "can't mentally understand."
My home life remains exhausting, and my mom calls me lazy and selfish, claiming I have no love for my family and that I'll come crawling back to her if I try to leave. It makes no sense to me given that I maintain high academic credits (around a 3.5 GPA for those outside europe), practice two sports, attend extra classes, and handle cooking and cleaning the house every day.
My dream is to finish these last two years of high school, leave for university, get a job, cut ties completely, and build a brand new life maybe even change my surname since my dad officially “abandoned” me after he refused to pay child support. Is it really selfish of me to hate my family and want to leave everything behind the moment I turn 19?
(PS. I’m not saying my family is like this everyday but most of the time is. I feel guilty about venting because I kinda feel like a spoiled brat. There are people who surely go through worse than me. Please be kind..)