I just noticed this thread.

(((((((Kiya))))))) (((((((Rapunzel)))))))

Thank you both for sharing your private, really, conversation like this. I have no practical advice to offer either of you but I get where you're both coming from.

By way of other-than-practical advice: I say it's going to end up helping both of you more (and differently) than you can possibly anticipate, just to keep looking at those very issues the way you have been and sharing about them as you just did. [/other-than-practical advice]

I grew up in a situation generally like both of yours, left it less than gracefully -- and before long found myself stuck with no very attractive options in a strikingly similar situation. The second time, I eventually started thinking of leaving but expected that if I announced it as my idea, the people I was living with would try hard to make me pay dearly for my slighting of them. I was surprised to discover, though, that as soon as I started standing up for myself and telling it the way I saw it instead of the way I was supposed to -- they told me I was leaving, then agreed to pay me to leave. (I found out later that it was only a few more months before everyone else opted to scatter too, but that's another story.)

I have no idea, of course, whether any part of what worked for me in this situation would work for anyone else in theirs, but I'm quite sure that if I had it to do over, I'd do it the same way only a whole lot sooner.