(no subject)

[verbminx]

Why don't parents seem to grasp that when you're stuck living with them in your mid-twenties through a combination of unavoidable circumstances, it's not easy and it's not fun and it's not a free ride? It's depressing and soul-destroying and you may have "free stuff" but you pay for it in other ways & nobody ever even recognizes it, casting it all in terms of money and submission.

Nobody I've ever known who was in a situation similar to mine has had parents who cottoned to the idea that really, their adult children need to be treated more like roommates and less like children, regardless of whether they could support themselves or not. It's a need for mental health, household peace, and peace of mind (IE sanity, self-esteem, whatever) for the slacker leech in question. It would seem a fairly simple concept, but noooo. My mother thinks that because she has a basic financial chokehold on me she should get to dictate all the details of my personality and behavior. She constantly wants to hear obsequious fawnings of how grateful and lucky I am. I feel like I've sold my soul. I'm nice, I'm not hard to live with, I realize that this doesn't have to be done for me, but I can't think of a single healthy reason that I should bow and scrape.

It's not that I'm ungrateful... it's just that the toll is higher than it needs to be. Why don't parents get that when they behave this way, they are doing as much to us as they are doing "for" us?

Comments

[ragdoll.livejournal.com]

Ah try it when you're in your thirties and you have two degrees and have been away and back on several occasions and they *STILL* treat you like you're 12 years old. Parents don't think -- they fall into this bizarre little time warp and refuse to see that you're a grown up at all. The attitude is that if you really were a grownup, you wouldn't be here at all (regardless of the fact that both of them went directly from their parents homes to being married, that everytime I was working full time I never made enough to afford my own apt., that they sabotaged my previous live-in relationship to some extent, etc.).

[verbminx.livejournal.com]

yes... your parents sound like my stepfather. "She has a job, why is she still here?" bleh.

Re:

[ragdoll.livejournal.com]

Ah, my mother never wants me to leave. My father can't decide if he wants me to stay or go.

[thehangedman.livejournal.com]

Parents will always treat their children exactly as that: children. There's this alternation of being treated with love, and being treated as if you're this great burden. Then if you should so much as voice an opinion about the matter, how dare you be so ungrateful. The worst part is when you start believing them, and the thoughts of "maybe they're right..." come to you.
My sympathy. I've gone through it, and still go through it on occasion, though it's lessened a bit since I'm now living with family other than my mother.