Parent Issues

The past two days I've been hanging out with my sister and staying out of the house, and that's been great. However, last night was a nightmare for me once we got home.

We returned home during the middle of a "meeting" of all the local Republicans my parents are friends with, which was basically a loud gathering of a bunch of loud drunken adults. I was okayish at first, I had taken some food and hid up in my room, but then my mom called me out to our upstairs balcony asking me if I was registered as a Republican and then telling me that I need to register as one so they could count on my vote in primaries and for when their friends were up for election.

This really really bothered me. It upsets me that my parents think that they can just use me as a pawn to rack up another votes and that they think that I'll just blindly follow along with whatever they tell me politically. In general the fact that they restrict me from being myself causes me a lot of pain. How do you BEGIN to talk to your parents about that?! I have no autonomy over myself, and I freaking should already! I am a legal adult, I am in college, and I am a good person so why on earth do my parents think they have the right to take away all my freedoms and my ability to express myself?!

At first, I was really really afraid about having to talk to my mom about this, but then, I saw it as an opportunity. This could be my chance to come clean and maybe establish some sort of meaningful relationship with them. I want to tell my parents that I'm not gonna sell myself short anymore, I WANT to tell them that I don't believe in God and that I don't identify as a Republican and I want to show them my work and have them be proud of me for how far I've come in just one quarter at school, but I'm really fucking scared. I'm afraid that they'll be furious with me, I'm terrified that they'll reject me as their daughter and cut me off and that I won't be able to go back to DePaul, I'm scared that they simply won't love me anymore. 

But for all of the potential negative outcomes, there's the chance that none of those things will happen. There's the chance that I've really been torturing myself over nothing and that I'm going to be okay and that my parents are going to love me even more for being honest with them. That's what I'm hoping for, at least.

I decided that i would only say something to my parents if they brought up the issue to me first. While I was afraid of this happening, a big part of me was hoping that they did so I could just get this over with. This morning, my mom was acting like nothing had happened last night, although she was extremely terse and there was a lot of tension in the room. There's been a ton of tension between us today though. Like I'm feeling sick so I was having some saltine crackers for breakfast and while I was eating she says to me "Tuesday is a holy day of obligation." in the coldest way possible and gives me a look that could probably kill an animal slightly smaller than me. It made me feel awful, like she already knows or has her suspicions about me and is hoping to force me into changing back into some good Catholic girl. It made me so uncomfortable that I've been balking at the idea of talking to her in general.

For the first time, I feel ready to come clean. However, I am NOT ready to make the first move, it has to be my parents. I just don't want to be depressed whenever I'm home, that's not how home should be.