Grievances about parents

27 M here. For 7 years, I have been holding grudges against my parents, which led to me feeling very indifferent and apathetic towards them. As of now, I have not spoken a single word nor exchanged eye contact with my father for 6 months now, even though both of us WFH.

I am the happiest in the world when I am travelling.

7 years ago, I was 20 years old. I graduated from poly and my friends were planning to go on graduation trip to Japan and cruise. It was the 10 of us. However, upon telling my parents that I planned to go overseas with my friends, they forcefully said no, citing that I was too immature and did not how to take care of myself. They also kept shouting at me, saying how the world out there was dangerous. However, I was 20 and knew how to take care of myself. There were a lot of back and forth, and they were stubborn in their stance. I really hated them because when they were 20, nobody bothered about where they went and stuff. It got so bad that I worked outside from 7am-11pm every day just because I did not want to see their faces at home. Eventually, I listened to them obediently, and was really sad that my 9 friends went together on holiday and had a lot of fun. Later that year, 2 of my friends wanted to go to Taiwan, and I decided to buy the plane ticket first and went ahead with my 2 friends. During the morning that I flew to Taiwan from Changi, my father said "do you know how dangerous Taiwan is?" in the car. I just kept quiet and went on my trip and came back 1 week later. Although I went to Taiwan eventually, I was still upset about the fact that I did not go to Japan with my friends earlier that year. I still hated the fact that I was a young adult, and my parents denied me from doing the things I like, which was travelling. Note that whenever they started scolding me, I always kept quiet and stood there.

Over the past few years, my father made snarky remarks about me or scolded me for different things, which I just kept quiet. Examples include: "you are a damn weird person (because I was doing my uni assignment in the dark and did not turn on the lights" "why are you so lousy and did not choose a more practical major? (note that I was already doing really well academically in uni)" Eventually, I stood up for myself and complained to my mother that father is clearly biases as I was always the one getting scolded at home and my younger brother was never scolded once. That father of mine started screaming at me in the car saying that my accusation of his favoritism disappoint him, and that he had always been giving both of us allowances fairly when we were schooling. I said sorry in the end because he made it sound like I was entirely in the wrong for the accusation on favoritism.

Now, I have to highlight that working overseas for a short period of time is one of the things I really want to do. This is because I want to see the world out there in my 20s before I settle down as a family man in my 30s. Working overseas can broaden my worldview and I can go back to being stuck in boring Singapore once I am done seeing what the world has to offer. I was applying to jobs that I am interested in overseas, and the moment my dad caught news of it, he was like "why are you so childish?" "do you even know the concept of kinship?" and scolded me in front of the rest of the family. I was 26 at this point, and my POV was that he still treated me like a 16 year old, trying to control my life. My friends (also 26), were also working overseas, living life to the fullest. I want to live that life for once too. However, my parents still tried to control me and chided me for planning to work overseas, which imo is simply doing what a normal adult can do and what I am interested in. I saw them as trying to restrict me from doing things that I wanted to do and thereby, wasting my 20s away. Again, I listened to them obediently and ended up finding work in Singapore.

However, during the past few months, I developed strong hatred for them. I am already an adult, and they want to control my life, they want to stop me from doing things that I love, which imo are NOT unreasonable. Everybody else out there can travel or work overseas whenever they please, because they are already adults and they have the rights to do so. Yet, my parents are restricting me from doing the things that I like. During our last dinner together months ago, I told them straight in the face that I will not tell them anything I plan to do or what I am doing outside the house. I also told them straightly that our stances would never change, and I will do what I want no matter what. Because they have tried to restrict me from doing things that I love to do, I will NOT share anything about myself to them from then on. They did not fight back nor scream at me, unlike back in the past. The reason why I told them straight in the face was because for the past 7 years, they chided me and I always kept quiet because I thought that a child should be filial to his parents, and I realized that they were taking advantage of me and kept trying to have their grip on me because I always did not talk back. Now that I am older, I see that they are the ignorant ones who are always scared of the outside world and unreasonable people who impose their views on me, trying to restrict me from travelling.

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For 7 years, I had nobody to voice out my grievances to. Perhaps I am writing this now because I thought I would feel a load off my chest, having somebody from my generation understand the situation I am in. I want to seek opinions on this situation from third parties on this. I still think that my parents are toxic and kept wanting to control me from doing the things I love even though I am already an adult. I bore all these negative thoughts to me for 7 years, with nobody to turn to, and this has resulted in me feeling very negative about my parents. Thank you for reading.