Poeple-Pleasing Parents Creating Second-Class Kids - AITA?

When I was a kid, my parents were in a constant state of being overwhelmed with that other people did and thought because they were everyone's doormat. Everyone's problems became their problems pretty quickly, and not a lot of people in our little church did anything. They were gossipers and not *doers*, so my mum and dad shoulder a lot of the burden. As any pastor's kid knows, this meant they were always waiting for the next shoe to drop from church members, jobs, or extended family. I was a wild child who was a bit of a square peg in a round hole in my area. Our town was/is very homogenous. Everyone my age is thin, green or chocolate-eyed, silky chestnut brown or butter blonde hair cascading down their backs, Snapchat and TikTok preloaded onto their phones, shit grades, and atheistic clothes. I know it sounds like I'm on the set of some dramatic, twisted matrimony of Mean Girls and HSM, but the public school hallways are clones of the same girl if different outfits. I was one of the outliers - stocky, short, frayed jeans from fifth grade, a lisp and slur, messy hair that never behaved, and continuously socially inept (my parents were from the south where autism wasn't really a 'thing' in the more high-functioning way and kind of thought I'd grow out of it until I didn't lol). I was excluded my whole childhood for reasons I didn't understand to the point where I quit a sport I loved because going was a nightmare. It didn't stop when I got to church, either. Wednesday nights were my personal hell. Public school girls (why is it always girls?) who all knew each other came in a pack of about 3-10 and were a constant disruption. They laughed at people with Down Syndrome on TLC while sitting on the back row during service, they got massive plates of food and ate two bites before throwing it at each other, and talked the entire time my parents were trying to teach a lesson. Again, I was giggled about and excluded from a place where I should have felt safe. I begged my parents to let me go somewhere else or to defend me, but they didn't and blatantly said they 'couldn't' and wouldn't. I was homeschooled, so on top of all the ways I was different, I also didn't go to their school. I didn't know what happened at lunch that had them on the floor laughing or who a student who had broken up with another was doing, and it was a new layer of 'you don't belong here'. I should have bloody belonged because it was my bloody church!

I was always told that someone was just having a bad day or that they wouldn't come to church anymore if we said anything (good riddance), so I grew up with this sense that my parents wouldn't do a damn thing if someone hurt me (Imagine the Gravity Falls meme of Dipper but it's just my parents lol). People perpetually had bad days, couldn't help it because they were autistic (17yo who can apparently drive and goes to public school with a minor IEP can't help insulting me for a piano piece I worked hard on and yes I'm still salty as Brunswick stew), or just somehow 'didn't know' what they were saying - yet they thoughts those words they didn't know were pretty damn hilarious. It was ingrained without my parents even knowing that I was on a lower class than those around me and anyone that could be would ALWAYS be put before me.

I've slacked on my license because my town is so small, but I'm close to getting it and I want to throw my finger in the air and hit the ground running away from this church. My town has 312 of them, so why shouldn't I? The college I'm going to is close to my hometown, but they have one of the biggest churches on the east coast! Still, I feel bad. Our church is under fifty members and they know me as the sweet pastor's daughter with a glimmering smile and a love of helping people. Leaving my church would hurt my family, making it seem like I never wanted to be at my dad's church and that I hate his preaching. AITA?