Little backstory- I’m 17 and my parents are divorced and have been since 2016. For the past two years now my father lies to me and has tried to manipulate me several times(almost monthly or when I’m with him). I know when he tries to manipulate me but he still ends up making me question things I shouldn’t, makes me feel awful about myself, or makes me question my own personality.

Since I am not of legal age yet my father still gets me on weekends and the last weekend I was with him something came up. My mother sent my dad a email saying how he makes my anxiety worse(which is true), badgers me, lies to me about things, yells at me and doesn’t give me a chance to talk and doesn’t let me recharge and is just always going going going(I’m a introvert who’s social battery gets drained even around family so I always need times to be by myself). All that was said in the email was 100% true things I’ve told my mother because I come back home from being at his house and am always exhausted or just more depressed than usual and my mom gets worried about me, so she thought she should address it with him.(she’s also witnessed some of these things as well and even told him to stop but he really wouldn’t)

My mom is aware he tries to manipulate me because he has tried to do it with her, my sister and even my grandparents, but he always claims he’s just doing things because he’s a “good parent” so my mom thought emailing him these things would maybe get him to think about what he’s doing and how it’s effecting his daughter, but he didn’t.

He sat me down and turned EVERYTHING around on me to where I felt like a horrible human being for simply having feelings about things. He told how the email really hurt him and his GF’s feelings, but also brought up something with my brother and told me I hurt him too. I have depression and have had thoughts of suicide before but hadn’t had them in almost a year until he said those things and I immediately had the thought “maybe if I just died I wouldn’t be hurting anyone” but I then got angry at him for making me think suicide is a answer to things and made me angry myself because I shouldn’t feel that way, but I couldn’t blow up at him and try to defend myself because a lot of the things I say get twisted around so I’ve learned that I have to keep my mouth shut around him, which is awful. Nobody was around when he was talking to me, so if I did try and defend myself I wouldn’t have any type of witness to back anything up. I did mange to keep a steady voice without just breaking down into tears(like what happens most of the time), and was pretty emotionless about the whole thing and even kept emotion out of my voice(which I’ve never been able to do since I wear my heart on my sleeve). I just gave him short answers to things, repeated stuff I’ve already said before, said idk or stayed silent.

During the end of this 1 in a half long conversation, he asked me once I turn 18 if he’ll ever see me again and I wanted to flat out tell him he won’t, but said idk instead and he said if that did happen, he would still love me anyways.

Since the topic of me not seeing him again got brought up, I now want to tell him that I don’t want to have anything to do with because being around him takes a major toll on my mind and emotions, and I don’t want to be around someone so toxic, but at the same time I feel bad for wanting to do this. It’s something I need to do for my health, but now that the opportunity is right in front of me to do something, I can’t take it. And I feel so conflicted about it all but I feel I shouldn’t feel this way because it’s something that should happen for the best.