My family have been forging their religion on me ever since I was little and it’s genuinely disgusting me
I grew up in a Muslim family, but instead of really teaching me the history of Islam or explaining to me the meaning of religion, my parents enrolled me when I was six years old in a Koran course where we simply had to read in Arabic and memorize, without understanding what we were saying. I, however, have never really learned Arabic.
In that course, the teacher scolded us and sometimes beat us when we were wrong, and this left me with a very negative impression of religion. Even though I was sick of it, my parents kept forcing me to attend the course without ever really explaining the reason: they only told me "because you have to” or "because it is so".
When I moved to France, the situation got worse. Growing up, I began to reflect more on my convictions and I realized that I no longer believe in Islam, nor in other religions. When I told my mother, she didn't take what I felt seriously and kept forcing me to pray.
In June 2025, tired of all this, I decided to stop praying secretly. When my mother found out, she started scolding me, insulting me and accusing me of "playing with religion".
At that point I talked about it with a psychologist, who told me that what I was experiencing was not normal. When he talked to me with such a comforting and worried tone, I started crying because no one ever worried that much about my situation. He then contacted the social workers, and my mother was accused of child abuse. After the intervention of the police and social workers, I thought my mother would finally accept my choice and stop forcing me to pray.
Instead, after a few months, everything started again as before. My mother started forcing me to pray again and also hired a new teacher to make me learn Arabic. She keeps telling me that, as long as I live under her roof, I will have no choice.
When I told my father that I didn't want to pray anymore, he told me that I could do whatever I wanted, but that in that case he wouldn't want anything to do with me anymore.
I'm only 16, but when I'm 18 I want to leave and finally live according to my convictions.
But if I really have to be honest all this pressure and psychological abuse it’s slowly making me lose my will to live. Knowing that my family won’t love me if I choose to be myself it’s genuinely draining. I don’t even know what to do anymore man…
I wish I could just not worry about this anymore. I started having suicidal thoughts around the age of 13, when my mother was pressuring me more than ever and that thought didn’t really change 3 years later. But at the same time, I always feel like an attention seeker for thinking of stuff like that, I always end up thinking that my problems are relatively small compared to other people. And I know its not a good thing to compare your struggles with others, but if I don’t it just doesn’t feel right to me. Am I weird for that?