I grew up with Indian parents, who despite their issues and shortcomings, were very loving and kind. They’ve supported me so much, i feel very blessed. However, they are extremely conservative. I, on the other hand, am the complete opposite. I despise being constrained, I’m very open minded and have a desire to live my life with pure freedom and a lack of convention. But this has led to me living with immense guilt and fear. If my parents see a picture of me wearing clothes they deem too revealing, see me with a drink in hand, find out that I’m sexually active- everything comes crashing down. I fear I’ll be disowned or that the shame will destroy them. If they knew who I truly was, I dont know if they’d want to call me their daughter anymore. That’s why their love and support doesn’t feel like a cushion or a pillar, it feels like something that could come crashing down at any second.
I’ve also struggled in the past year because I was in an extremely toxic/ emotionally abusive relationship with a man who wasn’t Indian. There is no way I can tell my parents about any of this but im back visiting home now, crying everyday about it but hiding it from them. There were so many times during the worst parts of the relationship that I thought, I need my mom, but knew I couldn’t call her. I was also struggling with substance abuse issues that I wish I could tell them about because I need help but I know I cannot.
This guilt and self-hatred for being a disappointment to my parents if they knew me for who I really was is turning into resentment that im taking out on my parents. I don’t want to feel like that, it’s making me short-tempered and irritable and closed off. What do I do to fix this? I don’t want to be like this