The Rent for the Rents

I live at home...

(pause)

I still live at home...

(bigger sigh)

I still live at home with my parents. There. I said it. I'm just one of many twenty-somethings who due to various reasons (most of them financial) are currently co-habitating with her folks. It's not that I'm complaining. Well, that's untrue too. I am complaining in a way but I really don't have a huge beef with my folks. It's just that when you're a young and foolish teenager, you imagine your adulthood in a particular way. You just get pretty damned surprised when you find yourself as a supposed-adult, and you are still living in your childhood home. This just wasn't the life I pictured. Of course, I also imagined myself to be tall, blond, and dating a Hollywood movie star. Such is reality.

I love my folks. They are kind, generous, and I get free laundry facilities. So many of my "independent" friends are jealous that I get to save lots of money since I don't pay rent. They tell me that I'm living the good life. They also seem to forget that I actually do pay rent.... just not the money kind of rent. I like to call it emotional rent.

emotional rent e-mo-tion-al rent, noun.
1. state of mental agitation or disturbance used as payment, usually of an amount fixed by contract, made by a tenant at specified intervals in return for the right to occupy or use the property of another

Unfortunately, I do not pay my emotional rent at intervals that I'm aware of. I have yet to see this "contract" that I'm bound by. I have this sneaking suspicion it's written in blood... my stupid-genetically-related-to-them blood. So I pay, and I pay, and I pay. Sometimes more than once a day. For example, my folks have this crazy habit of wildly changing their perspective on me, their oldest child. One day, I'm their baby and I need to be treated as such, and the next, they look to me as if I'm the parent. I like to call it the "sucky-baby syndrome".

My folks like depending on me to do things for them. But they do not ask me as they would any other adult. They ask me by whining to me in a "sucky-baby" voice. "Honey! Tomorrow is daylight savings, and I don't know how to change the clock! I can't do it by myself!" My crazy thought usually at this time is: how in the heck did these people raise me? Didn't daylight savings pre-exist me? It's not just the stuff with technology that irks me. I can maybe sympathize with that, but it's also sheer laziness. My father will call for me when I'm in the kitchen, into the living room where he's watching television, and ask me to change the channel for him. Usually, I'll spot the remote not sitting a mere foot from his position. Moments like those... I feel like I'm the family dog who needs to fetch his master his slippers and the morning paper. If I wasn't living with them, I'm absolutely sure they would go on with life without me. But because it's convenient, and because I owe them for my life's breath, they get away with telling me to do all sorts of tasks that they can do themselves.

It just doesn't end at home. My parents have no boundaries. My absolute favourite is when my mom is at home making something from a recipe she's never used before, and feels the need to call me at work to ask me to interpret aforementioned recipe. "Honey, what do they mean by 'mix the marble cake batter with a knife'"? I recall putting the phone down very quietly, and doing my best impersonation of Edvard Munch's "The Scream". My manager gets a kick out of these phone calls. Thank God someone at the office has a sense of humour about it. When I got my cellular phone, I tried my damnedest to "keep it secret, keep it safe". Eventually, my parents' keen senses picked up its existence and now they can reach me 24/7. I am only surviving due to the miracle of call display and voice mail.

I know these are little things to deal with in one's life ... but they do add up. To my "independent friends": try and remember WHY you moved out before telling people like me that we have it good. So needless to say, I look forward to the day when I'm able to at least place some distance between my parents and I. In the meantime, I will force myself to enjoy the time I have with them.

Living with my parents has made me insane.... but damn, it makes my writing a heck-of-a-lot more amusing.