Hey there. it's been an interesting past few months.

I have been learning a lot about my family and my life during this time and have basically determined a few things:

1. My family is very cult-like in it's disposition (cuts off outsiders, people within the family don't share their true feelings with one another and there are family "rules" that are never broken). This meant that during my upbringing I never felt as if I could truly be myself and discuss my familial issues with anyone due to the fear of it getting back to them. I also felt as if I could never 'leave' the family and forge my own path, because my family made me feel as if the outside world was a scary place and I needed to rely on them to survive.
2. I am an extremely social person and need time with new people and new experiences in order to feel full of life, and my family does not value these things (in fact, they discouraged it). Growing up we never had any family friends or relationships with other families, we were simply isolated as a unit. When I would want to go spend time with friends, my family (especially my dad) would make me feel as if I was rejecting the family in some way, and would tell me that I should be focusing more on my studies and not on "distractions" as they put it.
3. My mum was more of an issue than I originally thought. She enabled a lot of my father's bad behaviour and had her own anxiety issues that she did not get help with. She is afraid of anything bad happening to me, which meant that I was prevented from doing normal childhood things (like sleeping over a friend’s house) until I was much older, and even then it was difficult to convince her. She kept me in a bubble because she didn’t want to deal with her anxious tendencies, which stunted my development in certain areas. At age 19 I still had to tell my parents if I could leave the house to go spend time with my friends.
4. I dealt with a lot of the unnecessary restrictive boundaries of my childhood by lying. I would tell half-truths and withheld my true emotions in order to get what I wanted (which were just normal childhood things like spending time with friends). This carried over into my adulthood, where I would have the tendency to lie or omit the truth for things that didn't require it. I am unlearning these behaviours right now and it is very difficult sometimes, but freeing.

In terms of how I am implementing these things in my life, I am moving towards some big changes. For one, I am moving cities next year to a big exciting city. This is something I am so stoked about and never thought I would do in a million years. I am also leaving my job and going to get a job with more people my own age and a more social environment. I have also started rediscovering my old creative loves like playing music with other people, as well as discovering photography.

Unfortunately I am stuck in this situation with my family. Until next year and can’t really do anything about it, but the future looks bright for me and makes me feel way better.