I’m beginning to learn that growing up can really be tough. You’re a kid and everything is so simple… you love your parents, your parents love you, and the biggest trial in your life is that you can’t go out and play as long as you really want to. And then you get to be about fifteen and you’re really a teenager… thinking that you’re falling in love or thinking that you’re really too old for all of this nonsense… when in both counts you’re really not.
And then you’re eighteen with younger kids at home… and you’re getting more and more responsibilities. Your parents lean on you a little more to help bring up the preschoolers, but when you act on your resposibility, “you’re not the parent.” It’s a total and complete time of limbo… too old to really be a teenager and run around being stupid, but too young to really fit in with the adult crowd. Too old to be worried about the daily life of high school, but too young to be a true college student.
You already realized that your parents weren’t perfect… that one shocking day when you’re getting to almost be a teenager and you realize that your parents aren’t exactly God and sometimes they do things wrong or just not right… but as you’re starting to enter their world you realize that there are a lot of things your parents do that you don’t agree with. But since you’re in limbo, there’s not a whole lot you can do about it. Too old to sit there, mindlessly agreeing, but too young to truly do something about it.
And there’s certain rules that were made when you were a rebellious young teenager that maybe no longer apply, but nobody is making a move to abolish them. Yes, it made sense when your father said no to makeup at eleven, but maybe now that you’re eighteen you think you’re old enough to handle it. And now that you are eighteen, you have no clue what to do with it, because there really is more important stuff to worry about right now.
Like how all of a sudden you’re being thrust into this adult world you’ve been existing in but never really a part of… you have to make lifelong decisions all of a sudden and your parents expect you to take full responsibility and act on your own initiative and be totally prepared for life in general, but yet they still treat you as a child and make these insane rules and are still generally controlling… eighteen in a time of limbo.
And all of the stupid things start piling up… like how they want you to strike out on your own and have a job, a liscense, and a car, but yet they’re too busy to take me driving or to take me somewhere to pick up job applications.
I love my parents, don’t get me wrong, but when something stupid crops up, like the fact that I truly want to be able to be friends with and help the only daughter of a family we’re practically having a feud with… I just want to scream.
