Why do I feel guilty for not being who everyone expects me to be?

Because you've internalized their needs as your responsibility. This is systemic, not personal. Sor Juana lived in a system that told her: be a woman, but think like a man; be a nun, but question nothing; be educated, but stay invisible; be Indigenous, but act Spanish. Every direction she moved disappointed someone. The guilt wasn't weakness—it was the sound of her own boundaries forming. Here's what shifted for her: she stopped seeing her divergence from expectations as failure and started seeing it as integrity. Not because she became selfish, but because she recognized that living inauthentically harms everyone, not just you. People who need you to shrink so they can stay comfortable aren't actually asking for your best self—they're asking for your absence. The guilt you feel isn't a sign you're doing something wrong. It's often a sign you're finally doing something real. What if you examined it differently: not as shame, but as the friction between your actual needs and what you've been told to want? That friction is where growth lives. Your responsibility isn't to make others comfortable. It's to show up honestly, and let them decide if they can handle that.