Becoming an adult with an emotionally abusive mother

Hi,

I am 20 years old and am a sophomore in college. I grew up with both of my parents living at home and a younger brother. My entire life my mother has been emotionally abusive towards me, sometimes crossing the line into physical abuse. She was and still is a very good abuser in the sense of how well she is at hiding it. Most of the time my father was very much unaware of what was happening under his own roof. Things took a huge downhill turn when I was a freshman in high school. My brother was in 7th grade. My mom decided that she was going to go back to school to get her teaching degree. She quit her job and started at the local community college to get her associates. She already had an associates degree but she thought she should do it again. It is at that point I lost what little remnants I had of a real mother. She whole heartedly threw herself into school. She left her marriage, her children, her home, in a figurative way at least. I raised my brother and did a very poor job of it. But what can I say, I was just a child myself, one that was insanely emotionally insecure because of the past abuse I had suffered from. I was responsible for getting food on the table, keeping the house clean and making sure my brother was taken care of. Most evenings no one came to pick us up from school until well after dark so my responsibilities at home usually didn't get done. I suffered huge amounts of berating and yelling for this. I was also expected to make perfect grades. After all my mother was an adult in college and had a perfect GPA. I was never good enough, nothing I did was right, I was an embarrassment to my family. All of these stresses made it next to impossible for me to make friends. Wouldn't you know it though, I would get in trouble for that too. I had insane rules all the way up through high school. I was never allowed to go out and do anything. I was too scared to rebel. The closest I came to rebellion was joining the varsity soccer team. I graduated from high school...the same year my mom graduated with her four year degree, with a 4.0. I had a 4.3 and a full ride scholarship to college but it still wasn't good enough. I got so sick and tired of hearing her congratulated and no one ever telling me they were proud. She even made a point to send out her grad invitations before me so people would send her gifts and not me. She spoke about how proud she was that she was finished while she balanced a family. There was no balance in that whatsoever. At 18 I was solely responsible for keeping up the thing veneer of a "nice family". We lived in a small town and so I could turn to no one to help because everyone saw and still does see my mother as a great woman. I moved to college that fall...my mom started grad school while working full time as a teacher. Once again I had unwelcome competition and suffered even more abuse because of it. Admittedly it wasn't as bad this go around because I was far from home. However I felt guilty. I wasn't at home to care for my brother, with no direction he was failing classes and starting to drink. The house was in shambles and my dear dear Daddy missed me. I missed him too. Not to mention those horrible weekly phone calls I got from mom. The guilt that followed me to school was unbearable. So I got into a horrible habit of going home every single weekend. I started dating a guy from home and so it made my trips home a little more excusable. He is wonderful. He supports me and is trying to help me heal from so many scars that I have from my childhood. He is even starting the college I am at in the fall and we are engaged. Here is my dilemma. As much as he tries he can never understand the horrible memories and flashbacks that I have from growing up I feel as if I can't fully heal but I have no idea how to. I know with him living close by I can easily never go home again. However I still have the guilt of the rest of my family that I care so deeply about not being cared for. What about in the future too? I want my children to know their grandfather and their uncle, but I can't go around my mother. She yells and screams and causes problems everytime we are together. How can I learn to not only heal but to balance? Leaving my family permanently is not an option. My Dad would suffer tremendously. I need help.