Hey everyone,

I wasn't sure where to go with my problem..and I know I should probably be going back to therapy, but insurance is rough right now and I really just need someone to vent to and try to figure out if I'm really losing my mind or it's the environment around me. I guess I should start with me. I'm 23yrs old and currently finishing up my last year at a university, hoping to live my dream and fighting every day to tell myself I'll be okay after I get my degree. My parents divorced when I was 7, it didn't really effect me because my father was rarely in my life to begin with.

My grandparent's on my mother's side raised me while she went to school to better herself so she could get a career to support me and put me through school because my father thought a woman's place was at home and refused to watch me so my mother could do these things. Needless to say, I'm much more closer to my mother's family than my father's and I haven't seen him or any of them since I was 18. My grandfather and my uncle Roy were my male role models in my life & my aunt Maggie was always making sure I was happy. My relationship with my family was and still is always constant. I live next door to my grandmother/aunt/little cousin and my uncle Roy, his wife, and 4 children live a few blocks away. We're always together.

However, there's 1 uncle who has just recently started popping up into our lives and this is where my problem lies. My uncle Bill was the only one who moved out of state and lived a life away from us. He came home every once in a while and was a bit rough when he'd play with me (he had a tight grip or got carried away), but treated me relatively nice. I remember him handing me $20 bills as a child on holidays every time I'd walk by him. The only problem was, no one else in my family liked him and my mother & him were the worst as far as their relationship went.

For a few years, my uncle Roy wouldn't even come to holiday events at my grandparents with his family because of my Uncle Bill treating their house like his own personal storage and trying to break in once while they weren't at home. He'd had enough and was done. This lasted around 5 years.

So we fast forward a bit into my teenage years. My grandfather got sick with cancer a few years ago and that's when my uncle moved closer to home. This is when I started to notice a rift for the first time between my uncle and I. First and foremost, my aunt Maggie lives directly below my grandparents and works a job where she's off all summer so she was the primary care taker of my sick grandfather. She complains a lot about being the only one who does work, but always tells you not to worry about it when you offer to help. My uncle Roy started coming back for holidays to please my grandparents who would often cry about the rift between the two brothers. He tolerated uncle Bill to make them happy and it worked.

My grandfather within his last few years told me to focus on school; education was of paramount importance. I'm the oldest in my generation of cousins and an only child -- uncle Bill is the oldest in his, my mother being the 2nd, Maggie being the 3rd, and Roy being the 4th. In our family, up until I went, my uncle Bill was the only one to get a college degree. I specifically recall him telling me college wasn't a big deal when I started going. He also started getting angry at me for no reason, telling me I never did anything to help the family when he only seemed to show up for holiday events and the occasional period of time where no one else could help my grandparents so he was the last resort. Keep in mind he's now living 35min away from us.

My grandfather passed, but the relationship with my uncle is still the same. This Thanksgiving I tried to breach the gap between us and start a conversation with him. I confronted him about a problem occurring in my work life because everyone in the family always said he had a ton of experience with the subject I wanted to ask and he started off by asking me what I'd done to research the subject and that my generation had google. When my uncle has a conversation with me, he doesn't let me get a word in edgewise and if he asks a question you're only allowed to give a 1 worded response. If you say "Yes, but..." he'll interrupt you and put his hand up. If you say "Well...." he'll say "Yes or no, I asked you a question."

He shifted the conversation at some point relatively quickly, not really giving me the advice I was seeking and instead asking me why on God's green earth I thought he would help me when I've never done anything for him. He told me he'd lost all respect for me since the summer when my grandmother was bedridden and he offered to pay me $3,000 to care for her. I told him I couldn't as I had other obligations with school..and to be quite honest, I didn't trust him. He then proceeded to tell me he heard I didn't want to wipe my grandmother's backside after she went to the bathroom and asked me if I thought anyone else enjoyed it. He told me I think I'm smart, but I actually don't know a damn thing.

He told me everyone in the family was pissed off at me for it and that they secretly thought I was a "female dog" (for lack of better language), but no one would tell me to my face because they wanted to spare my feelings. He repeated again and again, "that's my mother..and you're not doing jack for her". What I didn't understand was why he was pinning this responsibility on my younger cousin who lives beneath my grandmother & myself. He didn't seem to ever, EVER bother Uncle Roy's kids. I asked him if it was because I was the oldest that he was telling me this, and he looked at me as if thoroughly confused and said that HE was the oldest, to which I responded "No...I'm the oldest in my generation.."

He didn't seem to have an answer to this. He changed the subject, pulled me close and whispered that he thought I was making excuses not to do what I needed to do and I needed to straighten myself out, get myself together, and start doing things I didn't want to do because life is a struggle, not about being lazy - which I was.

I just agreed with him. I didn't give him any kind of reaction. I nodded, told him he was right, and kept an intrigued face...but I cried for two whole days after it when I was alone. I think it was even more demoralizing to me that he pulled me in and said he loved me then got up to go over to my Uncle Roy's oldest boy and tell him to keep up the hard work, he'd really make something of himself one day. I'm so close with that cousin, but the way he did that with him makes me almost hate him. Especially when he laughed and thanked him for it. I texted the cousin about it later and he said he was just glad Uncle Bill didn't chew him out and he was trying to stay out of it.

Everyone in my family seems to just reply "That's how he is. He's just an asshole." but they don't actually do anything about it. Heck, my grandmother was sitting there next to him while he did that to me and didn't even tell him to stop once. When I told Aunt Maggie that night she got angry and told me not to listen to him because no one thinks that way, but to accept it and stay away from him. The problem is...the house is small, and every Christmas I'm the 1 person he doesn't get a gift for and I have to sit there and watch everyone else unwrap his presents and thank him while I sit in a corner and feel like crap.

What should I do...? I'm starting to realize that I won't ever get along with him from that 1 conversation, but I don't know how much longer I can take going up there every holiday just to make my family happy. I haven't been happy during a holiday for 5 years because of this.