How can I save myself from the things that I see?

I was sick this past week.
It was no fun at all.
One of the worst parts of my being sick was that on monday night when I was getting sick I had a nightmare of murdering my father.
This dream was intensly real. It had me being maniacal and beating my father to death with a fire poker while screaming "You were never there for me!" Over and over.
I think the reason for the screaming in the dream was the fact that growing up on a farm and having parents with the mentality that my parents do is the fact that I was constantly forced to be their support system. Both in terms of slave labour and in terms of mental support for their work, my father was always forcing me to listen to him as he talked out loud. He never wanted my input, he just wanted someone to talk to besides himself. I always hated that.
It meant that I was being dragged around from place to place with him, being forced to ride on the side of the tractor with him or whatever else, just so that he could have a captive audience. And because I was afraid of him, I was always doing it.
My fathers behaviour showed complete disrespet for my time and for ability to fill my time. He so firmly believed that i would be what he wanted me to be that there was no question of whetehr or not I should have my own time. I should not! That was his answer.
So after a lifetime of no emotional or mental support for him I can not help but wonder why I continue to try to make things better. I believe now that it is because I still need some sort of father figure. That just because I have given up on my father does not mean that I still do not long and want for a father figure to give me the love that I so deeply need and lack.
But I do not want this to be one of those "A Father figure must be what I want kind of things." I do not think that my need for a father overflows into my being gay. I think that my being gay just makes the need for a father more complicated than it needs to be.
I am trying to decide what to do in my relationship with my parents. I had this long overdue conversation with my mother about why she avoids having real conversations with me. Why she never asks me about men, or who I am dating, or what I think about mu job or any other myriad of questions that would actually engage my personality. I do not want to talk about the weather or my grandmothers shingles, those really have nothing to do with me. But at the same time it seems that my mother is more comfortable with the insincere and unsignificant in this world and I am not.
During this conversation I asked her what she would do when the rest of the family found out I was gay, I guess we could say that it would be confirmed and not found out. I am guessing that most of them have figured it out by now. And my mother tried to pull this that I am not to tell anyone since it would probably kill my grandmother to find out and then once she has passed that all of these family gatherings will most likely end. Soo . . . essentially no one is to find out since she does not want them to know, yet there she is telling me that she has no problem with my being gay. Uh huh.
I feel like I am Sisiphus and that I keep pushing that rock up the hill and I hate it. I have been trying to save my relationship with my mother, but what is the point of my continuing when I am the only one? I don't want to have to keep pushign her and challenging her as it states that she obviously does not want change her. But I do.
So what am I to do?