Choosing your own path might disappoint your parents for a while. Living their script could disappoint you forever.

Two disappointments are on offer and only one of them ends. Parents who wanted something specific for you usually adjust, because what they wanted underneath was for you to be all right. A life spent inside someone else’s plan does not adjust; it accumulates.

Be clear rather than defiant when you explain it, and give them time rather than an argument. Say what you are choosing and why it matters to you, once, and then live it visibly. Most families come around to the version of you that is actually present.