Living Under My Parents' Roof

I live under my parents' roof. And on their floor. And in a bed that belongs to them. I use their hot water, their electricity, their washing machine. I eat their food. Sometimes I steal sour gummy worms from my mom's secret stash above the KitchenAid. I drive their cars which guzzle their gas which they pay for with money from their jobs. I use their wireless internet and their toilet paper (and it's the nice kind, not like the sandpaper stuff my friends and I bought in college). When I mail letters, which I do often, I take stamps from the drawer in the office.

When I was little, I didn't think twice about this. But now the cost of it all is weighing on me.

I'm twenty-two years old. Twenty-two. When I was in high school and I thought of myself as a twenty-two-year-old—well first of all, I rarely stopped to think of myself as that old, but if I did—I pictured apartments and classy blazers and herb gardens on a window ledge, probably in some trendy urban neighborhood near my purpose-fulfilling job. Mostly the vision was a blur, but I know for certain I did not picture my parent's house, a FedEx truck (did I mention I'm starting work for FedEx in a few weeks?), or a floundering social life. I did not picture my brother's old blue bedspread, my little sister's raspberry shampoo, a precariously balanced bank account.

But for better or worse, college graduate that I am, I live with my parents and my younger brother and sister in the same neighborhood I played in when I was eight. I'm not the only one of my friends in this situation, but in this case, a sense of solidarity is not particularly reassuring.

I've discovered that it's awkward to be an adult but live in the house in which one grew up. I'm not sure if my parents know how to handle it either. How much do I help with chores? Should I pay some sort of rent? Do I still get $10 when I mow the lawn? I'm grown up now, I suppose, and my parents took off my leash a long time ago, but in some ways I feel like I've voluntarily put it back on. I'm trying to be a child and an adult at the same time, and it's not working. I keep accidentally reverting to the maturity level I had the last time I lived in this house full-time, back when I was in high school—fighting with my siblings, holing myself up in my bedroom, leaving my unwashed cereal bowl on the kitchen table. Maybe things will improve once I start working full-time in October. Maybe when more is expected of me, more will be delivered. But at this point, I feel like a less-social version of my 17-year-old self.

These are times when I don't mind constantly being mistaken for a teenager. Because if I were a teenager, people wouldn't expect me to have my life figured out, or at least have a solid start on it. As it is, I'm almost embarrassed to tell people I've graduated from college. I dread their inevitable next question: “So what are you doing now?” The true answer is more complicated than the one they want from me. Simple responses given to such questions are rarely entirely honest. How can they be? People don't ask desiring to hear the whole story, particularly if it is depressing or involved. So sometimes I let people assume I'm still in high school, because it's better for both of us that way.

This strange child/adult dynamic is something I'm going to have to figure out, though, because it doesn't look like I'm going to be moving out any time soon, not as long as my parents are willing to have me and I still have student loans to pay and a nearby job. It's the right financial move right now, as unglamorous as it may be. I know this and so do my parents. So unless I want to be moody and miserable for the next year or so, I need to learn how to live like an adult in my childhood home. I need to re-imagine my city and my house to fit my current stage of life.

I think I also have to learn that it is ok to be dependent on people at times. No one was meant to walk life alone, and if family, friends, or even strangers want to aid me as I stumble my way through this transitional time, who am I to scorn their help? There are a lot of people out there smarter and more experienced than me, and it would be foolish to doggedly insist on doing everything myself. So if my parents want to help me in this way, by offering their home rent-free, giving me the gift of additional time to figure out my next step in life, there is no shame in accepting it. In fact, sometimes refusing to receive such an offer is a symptom only of pride. A friend reminded me of this once when I complained about my distaste for accepting other people's money and my desire to provide entirely for myself. “Britta,” he said, “sometimes people give us things that we don't deserve, but we have to learn how to accept them. That's what grace is. We can't earn everything that is given to us, and we shouldn't try to.” He's right, of course, and I've been reminded of his words time and again over the past few months. So often I think I need to earn everything that is given to me, but if I earned it, it wouldn't be a gift. It wouldn't be free. Learning how to accept the graces of others is a first step in learning how to accept the grace of God.

So maybe growing up, in a counter-intuitive way, means learning how to be dependent again. Dependent in a proper sense. Not needy and ungrateful and helpless, but humbly accepting the fact that I need the help of others and knowing that I probably never will nor should be in a position of absolute autonomy. Financially, maybe, but not in other ways. And there's no shame in that. God designed us for community after all.

I don't plan on living in my parents' home forever, nor do I have any desire to. Obviously it is important for me to learn how to support myself on my own dime in the not-too-distant future. And I want to do that; I want to be more independent. But right now I need to accept the gift my parents have given me, be grateful for it, and find a way to embrace my life.

I feel twinges of guilt and self-scorn sometimes when I think of all that my parents are doing for me and how little I'm able to contribute to the household. I still have trouble unashamedly telling people I live at home. And I definitely haven't figured out my new role in the family with two younger siblings still around and in school. (Do I go to family events? Are my responsibilities the same?) But I'm trying to accept these graces. Because even if I were living on my own in an apartment somewhere, even I were married or in a secure job, this would still be a strange period, a time of learning about myself and what I want and where I want to go. Just because I haven't physically left the house yet doesn't mean I'm not moving in a direction.

This is real life, I remind myself. I'm not still waiting for it to begin.