I'm the youngest of 5 children and I was raised in a pretty dysfunctional family, 4 siblings, all drug addicts and heavy drinkers. Growing up all I remember is arguments, fighting (like actual fist fights, they even stabbed each other once) and chaos. I'm 36 now but when I was 18 I decided I needed to get the hell out of there and joined the military.

I did 6 years in the military and all that time I was made to feel guilty for "abandoning my family" and that I only cared about myself. None of my siblings worked (mum and dad died when I was 13) so nobody ever had money except for me, they were all on benefits. They'd hound me all the time to "lend" them money, which I did because I felt guilty, they'd never pay it back.

Even when I did sometimes ask for it back I was met with responses like "You have a job, do you even need to money, you can't wait until next month!!?". Over those 6 years I must have given out about £10,000. I remember once my sister asked me for money and I said no and she was like "you wanna get off your high horse you think you're better than us because you have money but you're not" etc.

Once I left the military, I decided I was going to slowly distance myself and move on with my life but I was scared, I mean once you go down that path it kind of feels like a one way street. So over the next couple of years I used to visit less, answer my phone less and pretend I didn't have money and was poor like them. But this was draining, the constant lying was so much effort.

Anyway almost 10 years ago today I decided I was going to disown them all. I legally changed my name, moved to another city, new email, new phone number, deleted all social media and didn't make new ones, literally a completely clean slate. Then I sent a letter to them explaining my decision to move on with my life and go my own separate way, that I loved them as family but I just needed to break free and live my life without feeling like I have an anchor attached to my feet dragging me down.

Since that day I've not heard a peep from them and I've never made any attempt to contact them, and honestly it's been incredible, amazing, my life is great in every single way it can be.

But part of me wants to contact them, not out of a desire to rekindle the family or because I regret my decision, but because I kind of feel guilty. I sometimes ask myself if they really deserved to be completely disowned. That they don't even know if I'm alive or not. That one of them may be seriously sick and they'll die without me visiting them in the hospital even once.

But at the same time I know my family members and in reality they probably don't even care that I've gone because they're probably too busy fighting about money trying to get their next fix.

The logical part of my brain is telling me that contacting them after 10 years will probably do more damage than just continuing the path of no contact. But the emotional part of my brain is questioning whether I was too harsh on them.

Have any of you made similar choices, what was your result?