Apologies if this is too long.
I am 20 years old and currently in my second year at Oxbridge (don't want to specify which one to retain some anonymity).
It is currently the vacation period after the first term and we are set to return to university in a couple of weeks.
It was recently my birthday.
I have narcissistic and toxic parents, who through my entire life have emotionally and sometimes physically abused me. They are my adoptive parents because I was adopted at a young age, and I have three older adoptive siblings and the nature of our adoption seems to have scarred my older brother since he was old enough to remember while I was just 15 months old. This has meant through my entire childhood, he would act up. He did drugs; got a girl pregnant underage; got expelled from school; caused fights in the house; the police were called many times; he went to jail at 17 for assaulting a police officer; and one time my adoptive father hit him with a brick during one of their altercations and was arrested but then my adoptive mother guilt trip me and my siblings into writing 'letters' to the judge at his trial, pleading with the judge to show my adoptive father leniency and stressing how much we needed him. I was 12 at the time but I recall it vividly. My adoptive mother later claimed they didn't need the letters at all, so I don't know why she would make us write them under such pressure, but that's what she did.
Eventually, my older brother was kicked out of the house after he assaulted my adoptive mother and he has been no contact with them since. My parents often bring him up as a scare tactic to talk about how 'bad' he was and how he is probably 'lying on the street' due to his behaviour and how I will end up like him if I don't behave better.
Aside from my brother, my household growing up was always toxic and dysfunctional. i didn't know I was adopted until my brother blurted it out in an argument with my parents when I was like 10, and my parents never admitted we were adopted until I was like 17. However, they would frequently taunt us by saying ' I wish we never had you'; 'Your real parents must be so happy to not have to suffer with you' whenever we misbehaved or they thought we had misbehaved.
My adoptive parents - as mentioned - are both very toxic. My mother is a covert narcissist who acts like a saint in front of others but is manipulative and loves to cause drama. She regularly triangulated me and my siblings, thus causing us to hate each other. My dad (due in part to his poor and toxic upbringing) is usually someone who just lets my mother behave in her toxic ways, but he has horrid mood swings and at one time can be nice and friendly - and at others extremely volatile (like the brick incident I mentioned). There was also one time when I was 12 when he was angry at me for simply saying I didn't like the clothes my parents had bought me (not in an ungrateful way, just expressing a preference), which escalated into a heated row with my mother and him intervening and getting physical and chasing me out of the house with a bat and then when I phoned the police for safety, my parents were so angered that I had dared to call the police on them that in the middle of the night after the police left, my dad stormed into my room and was so violent that he chased me out of the house and kicked me out for 10 days. I had to live in a hotel in another city to avoid him and my mother came along because usually what she does is, she pokes and prods and then when he explodes, she tried to calm him down to act like the peace-maker.
Besides all of that, there was constant turmoil in the house amongst other family members with constant swearing, shouting every day etc.
This left me to grow up very socially awkward, introverted and to be a people-pleaser at school. I had no friends and was bullied all the time. This left me very depressed but my one escape was academics. Because I was quite academic, I was able to do well at school and eventually felt that doing well academically was the only way that I could escape.
My parents claim that they aimed to send me to a grammar school but could not because they were preoccupied by my brother's behaviour at the time, so I went to a terrible, low-performing school in our deprived neighbourhood, but luckily still managed to achieve all 9s at GCSE and all A-Stars at A-Level. This is what helped me get to Oxbridge. I was given no support by my parents/family to achieve any of this - rather their dysfunction often hindered me with arguments occurring into the night and with me lacking a safe space to be in between the school bullying/isolation and the home dysfunction - and my school (which hadn't sent anyone to Oxbridge for a decade) was of little help either. But, I managed to get in after doing online research on tips to improve my application to Oxbridge and other universities.
My brother (who was kicked out) never went to university and my two sisters (neither of whom are academic) got nowhere near as good grades as I did and went to non-Russel group universities. I'm not necessarily saying this to be insulting as not everyone is academic - just to put this in context. Also, my adoptive parents are both immigrants with my adoptive mother immigrating upon marriage while my adoptive father moving to the UK with his family at 5. Neither went to university, both were brought up poor and my dad is a bus driver (but makes extra money renting some properties) while mum is a housewife. This meant I didn't have a very prosperous upbringing. Both are also very religious.
So, based on all of this, getting into Oxbridge to study a subject which I hope will lead to a successful career (don't want to specify what to retain anonymity), was a dream come true to me. Obviously, my parents bragged to everyone as soon as I told them, even though they played no part in me attaining any of this, but they seem to love people praising them for having been such good parents.
At Oxbridge, I have really loved my time. This is as (although it may sound weird), I have come to view my tutors as sort of parental figures. This is as they have been much kinder and more understanding of me than my parents ever were and I feel like I can confide in them about things that my parents due to poor English or a lack of knowledge wouldn't get. This is as Oxbridge/university tutors and professors are obviously well-educated and learned and tend to be middle-class unlike my working-class parents so tend to be sympathetic to me about things like my harsh upbringing and understand the psychological and emotional impact of my upbringing.
When I was at school, I did often feel this way about my teachers as well and often preferred being in the company of teachers rather than students or my family. I was often told that I was 'mature for my age' but probably this was because I had to grow up fast.
So, that's the context.
So, my parents due to being religious, coming from a poor background, and due to their culture, have never really celebrated birthdays. Our neighbours always had nice birthday parties with cakes, candles, balloons etc - we/I never did.
This had made me feel resentful for a long time, so this year, I asked my parents if we could do something for my birthday to celebrate it. At Oxbridge, many of my friends had celebrated, but my birthday is in early January so this isn't possible. They reluctantly agreed, but didn't let me invite anyone, saying that they were busy on that day. (I had made some friends at university due to me liking how more open-minded people were, but most of my friends were either international students or lived far away from me anyway).
They bought me a small cake (in a flavour they knew I liked and had asked them not to buy, but I just ignored that misstep to maintain the peace). They didn't buy candles or balloons or anything like that. All they did was hand me a paltry 'HBD card'. No money, gifts etc.
It's not even the case that I necessarily wanted money or a gift like clothes or a phone or some other gadget. It's just the thought that would count and how I felt so unappreciated for the achievements I had made (i.e. getting into Oxbridge, being so well-behaved at home unlike my brother), but they just didn't seem to care while being more than happy to boast about which university I went to to their friends and relatives and while regularly badmouthing my brother for how bad he was.
This led me say in a spite of anger that I was so sick of how they had robbed me of my childhood. This wasn't just about the birthday - it was resentment about everything. When I explained all the years of abuse, tension etc - they dismissed it, saying I was lying or exaggerating and that I was in the wrong. My mother then gave me the silent treatment for a few hours which angered me because I felt like she was ruining my birthday (though it was not so much about the birthday, just the fact that this one, special day I supposedly had, she was ruining without remorse). She then came back to, pretending like our recent spat hadn't occurred and acting pally to me. When I rebuffed this, she got extremely angry and involved my dad, who sided with her, started swearing and slamming doors and saying how much he regrets adopting us and comparing our family to those of his friends and saying how he is so shocked and disappointed that his friends' families are so peaceful not dysfunctional; how he has suffered for years because of us; how he wonders why we act like this unlike other teenagers' young adults.
Then, he said, 'well why do you need a birthday now, you're 20, you should have grown out of this?'. Not that I ever had a birthday celebration before. Then, he started swearing and saying that in his religion and when he was growing up, he never had a birthday, doesn't see the worth of it, and so I am selfish and ungrateful for everything they have done for me.
When I mentioned how other children like our neighbours had birthday celebrations, my dad angrily said, 'why are you comparing us to other people?'.
As you can tell, my frustration is not just with the birthday issue - but with my resentment for all of the years of tension and dysfunction I have had to go through.
He then went on to say, 'if you don't like it, you should leave like your brother'.
I would love to. I have £25k in savings but am still at university. I was saving up, by holding my breath and hoping to brace myself through the next few years so that i could have enough money to afford a decent deposit, rather than become a 'beggar' like my brother or to waste the money I have now.
Coming back to my small house in this deprived area with my toxic family contrasts so heavily with the well-educated, open-minded, understanding Oxbridge environment that I have come to love.
While I know if I keep working hard, I will be able to,, hopefully land a good job, and leave and never have to contact the again, 1) I don't know what to do for right now; and 2) I don't think I will be able to stop grieving the lost family/childhood I never had.
I'm worried that if I did 'leave their house now', it'd seriously harm me. I mean, they are the sort of people, to harass me at my Oxbridge college/accommodation since they know where it is or try to tell the staff/porters how bad I am and to defame me.
I don't want to harm my education either.
So, what should I do and AIBU to feel this resentful or was I being ungrateful about the birthday gift?