Trying To Distance Myself From Religion

Hello everyone. My name is Majed and I'm 19 years old. I was born and raised in the religion of Islam. For my whole life, my parents have enforced religion in our household. Constantly ensuring we were being faithful to our religion and following all the rules to put it simply.

Ever since I was little though, I always felt a little distant from religion. I just never could grasp the text and understand it all. I also never felt all that connected to Allah. All of this led to me feeling like the black sheep of my family. I suppressed these feelings for the longest time until about 3 years ago.

During the summer of that year, it finally clicked that there may be a chance that I'm not religious. I gave it some thought and did some research before jumping to what I thought was an extreme conclusion. I found momentary peace after coming to terms with the fact that I just wasn't religious. However, I would soon realize this would just lead to more worry and anxiety in my life.

My parents slowly but surely realized that I was beginning to stray from the religious values we were raised in. Noticing things like I wasn't praying five times a day and clamming up once they started asking me about my faith. All of this has gone on for quite some time and I still don't think they have picked up on the fairly obvious hints I was laying out for them. I think they don't want to accept the possibility of that being true and just blame it on me being lazy. They also seem to think that this is all because I want to be more "American" and that I'm not proud of my heritage and where I come from. This could not be further from the truth as I have always proudly declared that my family and I come from Palestine and I wouldn't want it to be any other way.

I love my parents with all my heart and they have always done everything for me even if it meant sacrificing something of their own. But, I've come to realize that it may be quite difficult to officially break the news to them and tell them my feelings on religion. The thing is I not only haven't told my parents, but, I also haven't told any of my close friends. So they all still perceive me as religious.

Now this doesn't annoy me by any means, but it is a sort of barrier that I'm trying to break down. Now I might be overthinking it all way too much but, I've been struggling with finding the courage to break the news to anyone. I want so badly to separate myself from religion as it has been weighing me down for years.

Like with my parents, I sometimes drop subtle hints around my friends that I'm not religious. But the thought of that being possible hasn't seemed to cross anyone's mind. Now I know that dropping hints isn't gonna lead me anywhere, but I was looking for advice on how to approach this problem.

I just want to be able to be my true self around others and not always feel like an outlier. If anyone has any ideas or opinions on this it would be greatly appreciated!

I would also like to make it clear that I have no ill feelings or hatred towards anyone who is religious and more specifically of the Islamic community. I think finding comfort and peace in a higher power can be quite a beautiful thing. It's just I never really felt all that connected to religion which is why I feel the way I do. I've always thought that as long as you don't use religion as an excuse to discriminate or harm others you aren't doing anything wrong.

I hope this post doesn't sound like the ramblings of a stressed-out and anxious teenager. As I have grown older, I so badly wanted to find myself and be who I truly am. I always felt like telling people this would be a great first step in the right direction! Thank you in advance to anyone who takes the time to read this and leave their thoughts in the replies! I hope you all have a great rest of your day!