How do I explain my atheism and existentialism to my parents?

It seems that, over the course of however my parents, sane and highly intelligent, have raised me, I have learned to distrust them. It might be the way they have punished me in the past or something much more complex. I do not like their role as having dictatorial control over me. It is not that I do bad things, other than the occasional issues everyone has, like telling a lie, not doing a homework assignment, etc.

As a result, I do not trust them with my own personal life. I never talk to them, and when a confrontation is required, say for the purpose of discipline, I have no clue what to say or how to behave in their presence. I identify this situation as unfortunate and even pathetic.

If you are following this question, you might know a little about this bit: It was months ago, around January maybe,and I didn’t really experience anything out of the ordinary to trigger it, but I just decided that religion did not make sense. It was largely on the ground that there are so many religions out there, and each one proclaims itself as true. If Y cannot equal X, then how can they both equal 1? If there were any other reasons, it was probably the general ideas around the plurality of religion. I can’t remember the specifics.

So then I just sorta had to come up with purpose now. So I just decided, you know, it doesn’t really matter; after all, I’ve heard so many times “Be whoever you want to be.” I didn’t have a fucking. clue. what kind of deep shit I was getting into! I’m laughing at the event now, from this present POV.

So months passed, and nothing in particular happened that was relevant. I didn’t really change who I was. I was sincerely waiting for college for me to truly decide my own meaning.

That is how bad the connection is between me and my parents. I’d rather go the entire remainder of my “childhood” without explaining to them what is going on with me. I don’t want to explain now, I don’t want to explain then, I just want them to be out of the picture. I think that is sickening. But how am I going to talk to them now?! after at least 3 years of bullshitting my way around interacting with them, even hating the way they say things instantly drives me up the wall.

So I’m at a loss and on the verge of tears over this. I’m freshly read up on the subject, but I know I don’t completely understand what I’m going through. I need to talk to them, finally.

My train of thought is all over the place right now. I just have no clue how to handle this. Part of me is still saying to wait until I am gone, but why? Why don’t I trust them with me? They raised me.

Suddenly, I am laughing, because I just realized the two massive walls of text I created in the last couple hours.