Back when I was 18 I enlisted without clearing things with my folks. It wasn't the career path that they wanted me to follow, 1 sister a doctor, 1 sister a lawyer 1 sister a engineer.
Anyways I went and did the elistment stuff while continually telling my parents I was planning to go to school and get into law. So for a long time my parents were happy about having all of thier kids in high end professions.
The truth of the matter is I had just graduated and was sick of school, and I wan't great at it anyways, good enough to have decent grades, but socially I was a disastor.
My reason for joining the Military at the time was to go somewhere where I wasn't known, to have some adventures and to shoot things (j/king on the last one)
Anyways my parents started getting suspicious due to the fact that there was no correspondance coming from any of the schools that I was supposed to apply to. So a week before I left for basic, I screwed up the courage sat em down and let em have it.
Of course they were upset, there was yelling and screaming and the whole your throwing your life away for under 18k a year type of stuff. I left swearing that my folks didn't understand me, and that I was out of the house and wouldn't have to deal with them again. And for two years, a lot of letters from my mom went unanswered. My dad didn't really want anything to do with me. He'd grown up poor, and an orphan and wanted better for me which was understandable, and when I threw university back in his face it hurt his feelings.
After I got over it and started rebuilding the relationship, my mom was fairly eager to let the past be the past, but it took about 10 year to get to a point where my dad was willing to deal with me as more than a occassional visitor into his world who would come to his house and eat his food.
The moral of the story is if I would have been straight with my folks right off of the bat and given them a proper reason I wouldn't have had to rebuild the bridges that were burned down on both sides. It would have stung a bit to do it early but they probably would have accepted my reasoning. Instead I snuck around on them, lied like crazy, and made them feel like they didn't matter.
Get it out and over with man, there might be some bruised feelings at the start, but parents are human beings and deserve the right to react to whats going on in your life. If you omit them, or ignore them, or lie to them because your afraid of the consequences. Everyone pays.
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My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
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