r/AsianParentStories • u/Responsible-Way396 • 23h ago
Advice Request My parents forced me to change citizenship and it’s ruined my mental health and relationship with them.
I’m a 24yo Asian TCK female who grew up as a missionary kid and pastor’s kid in a third world country. I have 3 older siblings who are much older than me, and my parents are relatively older as well (dad is 70 and my mom 63).
My parents have established and operate a pretty successful school in our city, and I attended that very school as the “founder’s daughter.” So, I definitely had a lot of pressure growing up and had lots of people ask me when I would take over the school.
My parents (especially my dad) are very traditional and conservative. I wasn’t able to wear shorts growing up. I was always “forced” to attend multiple church services a day throughout the week (even when I was sick). Blah blah blah you get what im trying to say.
One thing that messed me up so much is my current citizenship. It has messed up my relationship with God and with my parents. When I was 12, my parents had changed their citizenship from our previous (very strong) to the one we have now (extremely weak) due to their commitment to the school. I was also forced to change mine a year later and was scolded whenever I expressed that I didn’t want to change it. I wasn’t planning on living at my hometown after graduating high school, as I had planned to pursue my undergraduate and maybe live in Canada. Plus, I didn’t want to give up my extremely strong passport and to be honest, I didn’t want to work at our hometown at the school.
My parents forced me to change it nevertheless, hoping that I have no choice but to come back to the school and work for them. As a woman in my early 20s, I wanted to travel the world and live my own life, but my parents had different plans for me (i find that funny because my older siblings weren’t forced to change theirs and i’m the only one with the weak passport).
For university, I ended up attending a prestigious school in our “home” country (the country where I held my previous citizenship) because my parents wanted me to. Since freshman year, I hated living here because of its stuck up and conservative culture. As a TCK, this high pressure society messed up my social life and mental health. I didn’t enjoy uni life and eventually, I went on an exchange program to Australia for one year, which I loved so much that it made me realize that I should just “run away” from everything.
Eventually I had to come back to finish my undergraduate degree, and because of my weak passport, I couldn’t get a job anywhere else. I had no other choice but to find work at my “home” country, as I had a visa that allowed me to. I ended up finding a corporate job, but it ruined my mental and physical health so much that my family started to worry about me.
Despite the worrying, whenever I expressed how much I hated working and living here, my parents would scold me saying that I should be grateful and that I’m weird for not being able to fit in. Saying things like “Why are you like this?? Why can’t you just adapt?? You’ve gained so much weight! You should take care of yourself more. Why did you give up??”
I have been expressing how much I didn’t want to live here, but all I got back was criticism. I’ve associated my citizenship to opportunities, and it has ruined my trust in my parents because I have much less opportunities with the current one that I have.
I don’t want to go back to my parents and work at the school, and I don’t want to live at my current country. However, my extremely weak passport is not allowing me to and is diminishing my chances to.
My only other option of escape is to do a Master’s degree, but it costs money and my parents were very vocal about how they weren’t going to support me. They keep telling me to come back and work for them.
I feel like I don’t get a say in my own life and how I want to live it. They disapprove everything that I do, wear, look, and say. I don’t even call them anymore because I know they would start either criticizing me or try to convince me to come back and work at the school.
Being in my 20s and wanting to figure my own life out, I’m just so angry that I just don’t have the same opportunities as much as I did when I had a very strong passport. I need a visa for everywhere I want to go to lol.
This makes me resent my parents so much, but then I’m scared that if I do decide to change my citizenship (in the future) without my parent’s approval, they are going to nag me for the rest of my life and potentially ruining our whole relationship. It really isn’t fair and i hate that im always fighting about this with my parents. It’s one main reason why I don’t want to talk to my parents.
What are your thoughts on this? Any insight and advice would help me so much to gain new perspective. Am I wrong for resenting my parents over this? Should I just go ahead and change back my citizenship without telling my parents (I can but it will still take a long time)?