I’m sitting in my car, which is parked in the Tom Thumb parking lot, and Andrew Peterson is singing about the rain. My laundry sits in the passenger seat… and that’s okay, because I’m not alone. This is the first time I have been alone, but not felt alone.
I didn’t see Christmas lights this year. I realized that on my drive here. I didn’t have my best friends to go with, as we are all so engoirged in our own lives sometimes we forget to slow down. I didn’t go alone because I was afraid it would upset me. I didn’t go, because I lost something in 2015. I lost my childhood. It has nothing to do with transitioning from 19 to 20. It has everything to do with the fact that I’m paying off a $14,000 loan. It has to do with the fact that I have spent $800 in medical bills for my cat over the last week and a half. It have everything to do with my hour/two hour therapy visits once a week for seven months. It has everything to do with my crippling anxiety. It has everything to do with the current state of my relationship with my parents.
For several years my relationship with them has been on the rocks. For several years, their relationship has been on the rocks with each other. In 2015 I stopped acting like a child, and became the adult my parents needed me to become.
My parents have always done what they think is best for my sister and I. They have sacrificed so much, to make our lives easier than there own. I’ve put off for three years the full acceptance that my parents aren’t always right, and sometimes they make mistakes.
Growing up, I never questioned my parents judgement. They are my parents and want what’s best for me. …But being an adult I realize that I am selfish sometimes. I am opinionated, and I’m wrong. So what makes my parents so untouchable? Nothing. They aren’t untouchable. They are human. They have made mistakes, and so have I.
I have to make my own mistakes from now on. I have to fix the poor choices I have made of the last few years. I have to apologize for over exerting myself into people’s lives, because that’s all I want from everyone around me.
I have to get over feeling abandoned, because it may have been true at one point, but it’s not now.
Uninformed Jargon 