Hi Leo,
I am 23, and detached from my family, or at least I have been practicing detachment. I haven’t held a conversation with my parents in 6 months, even though I have regular contact with my sister, and I plan on continuing that pattern. Hows that for them being strangers!? This isn’t at all by choice, but out of necessity. An unhealthy family system hijacks the lives of its individuals and entirely suppresses spirituality and love, I have found. I’ve been reading “Healing the Shame that Binds You” by John Bradshaw, which isn’t written in the Buddhist tradition, but it may as well be – given all of the parallels I can draw. A key theme of the book is the role that families CAN play in the denial of our basic goodness and perpetuation of Samsara.
All of that said about me and where I am coming from, I have two pieces of advice:
If I were you I would practice gratitude for your family. In that way, you will not take them for granted. Your family does not sound like the kind you need to run away from and turn into strangers. Where would we be if we rejected the love that flows freely to us? Does it make sense to dull our appreciation for life by “detachment”? We all suffer, but much of my path of suffering is built by my parents (and not maliciously, but mostly out of ignorance and the shame that their parents passed onto them). I treat my parents the way I do because I have learned that they have and will continue to sew wounds into me. They see me in the same dim light that they see themselves, and while I am busy relating with my own pain, they will generate more for those around them until they don’t (and hopefully they learn at some point in their lives).
My second piece of advice would be to be very skeptical of your desire to be like a monk. Why do you want to be like a monk? Will you escape pain that way? Why do monks want to be like monks? I have experienced firsthand the struggle for an ego enrichment that seems “correct” because it has a spiritual label. Wanting to be like a monk sounds very fishy to me.
ANYWAYS,
Good luck!