I know that I'm unhappy here. I don't know how much of it has to do with living with my parents, much as I love them, "familiarity breeds contempt" and "distance makes the heart grow fonder" are the best phrases to describe this situation.
I am extremely grateful that they have given us a place to stay where we pay a much lower rent than the norm around here. I am grateful that we have our own situation and we are not all living on one floor.
The problem is, being grateful and being happy are not the same. Once we move, wherever it is we land, I need to remember all the bad because I tend to put a postive, rosy filter on everything once I no longer have it/ am in that stage. This is why I went back to relationships that didn't work. This is a chronic issue for me and I want to remember exactly how I felt at this point in life so I have no regrets once we move on.
1. My relationship with my mother becomes very strained when we are consistently in close proximity. We bring one another down and I know we are both happier when we are not constantly around one another.
2. My relationship with my brother actually improves because when we don't live close by, we'll make the time to call one another to chat. Here, we live in the same home but NEVER talk.
3. I feel guilty that my parents aren't relaxing in their own home. Having "the kids" home means they still play the "Mom" and "Dad" role and we all revert to the dynamic of our growing up years.
When J and I lived in OK and my parents came to visit, they treated us like peers. Things have completely changed now that we're living together.
4. My mother is very clear that she doesn't give a damn whether anyone, ever, likes her or not. Her strong behavior and comments to me (and my brothers, and my father...) are one thing, but it puts me in a weird place when she gets on J about stuff. I want to defend him. It'll just be little things all the time... "Ahem...you're not planning on wearing a baseball cap at the table, are you?" or when chickens somehow got into the yard here, "Is this redneck enough for you? Hahaha!" (He's from the South.) It's not like she doesn't like him- she does. It's just this way that a lot of my family interacts, where basically everyone tears each other down with sarcasm and jokes.
5. I hate living in a place where I can't tell whether it's day or night because we have basically no sunlight.
This is our bedroom. Guess what time it is!
Answer: 3:30 in the afternoon.
6. I absolutely hate the winters here.
7. I immediately gain weight here. It's always the same amount and I'm not sure why it is. People assume it's just "home cooking", but my mother is not a big cook. In fact, pretty much everything is microwavable if she decides to make dinner at all. So no, the weight has nothing to do with consuming comfort food.
8. The bathroom floods.
Constantly.
As in, I'm in the shower washing my hair today and the drain stops working and water is collecting. I open the curtain to realize that the toilet has also overflowed, and the feeling of being clean is officially over before I even step out.
ugh.
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