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The original was posted on /r/AmItheAsshole by /u/Ok-Principle-948 on 2023-08-07 11:17:18.

My (33M) parents divorced when I was 17, I’m the eldest. We were pretty much always a dysfunctional family. My siblings and I were just about geeky enough to not wonder the streets and get into too much trouble when my parents were either working long hours or just napping and not caring about us. My mom made domestic abuse accusations against my dad, and made me testify against him. He got community hours, and he cut ties with the family around the divorce. I haven’t seen or spoken to him since.

I got a severe depression, realizing later through many therapy sessions it was due to my guilt, and it took me a few years to get more balanced and cut the meds. The depression led to cutting ties with the few friends I already had, and to this day I’m pretty lonely. My mom also cut ties with her parents (which later passed away), her sister and many other family members due to many unsound reasonings, so we were pretty isolated.

Following the divorce, we continued as even more dysfunctional. I won’t spill out all the details, but it wasn’t great. Luckily, I started college, met a girl, moved out, got married and tried to keep in touch with my family as much as I could, although it didn’t feel right, and part of me always wanted to cut ties, but I fought to keep in touch.

When we had our firstborn, I happily told its name to my mom, and she reacted hysterically, saying it’s a bad name and will ruin its future and that we must change it. I got really offended, and she reacted by refusing to apologize (even though I didn’t even ask her to), and later she just stopped talking to me, along with my siblings who stopped talking to me too. Mind you, she just had her first grandchild, who was less than a week old, and she cut all ties altogether. I tried to get in touch for months through calls and texts, but nothing.

Later, when we had a one-time phone call, she blamed it all on my wife, accusing her of hating my family. When in reality, my wife always tried to make us come together, even when I didn’t want to. My mom blamed me for siding with my wife, and said they stopped talking to me due to my “decision of being my wife’s bit*h”. Even after they cut ties, my wife wanted to try to make it right but I prevented her, realizing it was a lost cause.

Now, a few years later, with resurfaced depression and emotional damages from feeling like an orphan with living parents or at least an unwanted child, after many therapy sessions and self work and many issues I had of my own, I worked extremely hard to have a happy family of my own. Now one of my siblings are engaged to be married, and their fiancée invited me to their wedding. They haven’t spoken to me since I became a parent a few years ago, along with the rest of the family.

I’m fearing falling back into depression after I got it together, and I honestly don’t want to see or talk to any of them. I suspect they invited me only to appear as a more normal family. AITA for not wanting to go?