sMothered

To: HookerJones and The Butler - this one's for you.

Living at home as a twenty-something...think of all the money you get to sock away! Buy nice things, save up for your own place. Ha, what fantasy world are you living in?

As if it's not enough to be establishing yourself at the bottom of the corporate ladder, go ahead and try fitting back in to your family. I believe my mother's welcoming words were, "Now, your brother and your father and I already have our routine." Ah, home sweet home. It wasn't so bad when you knew that your longest stay home would maybe run three months (summer), and holidays were always just grand! But now you're graduated, now it's a marathon.

At the corporate watering hole, the associates gathered this morning. Amidst the tales of weekend intoxication, I noticed that HookerJones, The Butler and I are the only ones under house arrest. Stellar. The Butler was on the verge of freedom, but unfortunately the lease fell through - bad leasee/land lord relations (she dodged a bullet though, nothing worse than starting out on the wrong foot). HookerJones can be credited with the inspiration for this post: Living on her own for 5 years and is now back, being suffocated, by her parents. Can't really blame our parents, they just want to mother and father us again and it's gotta be hard to let go - but it turns into sMothering (suffocation + mothering). Just this morning my trainer, Julie, said to me, "Saw your parents walking yesterday, they looked like they were in a serious convo. They didn't even hear when I beeped the horn - is everything okay at home?" Haha well, I was up until midnight scrubbing the bathroom tub and sinks - does it sound like everything's okay? I went from "High-achiever first born" to "Mom's punching bag".

I work 40+ hours a week, wake up at 4:15 every morning to work out, I do freelance ad work, attempt to have a social life...sometimes other tasks get tossed under the mental rug. It's like she thinks I do nothing all week. Funny how, "NLSts, you didn't clean the upstairs bathroom," is the high crime when she didn't go grocery shopping all week. I thought that was one of the responsibilities under the 'stay at home mom' job title. But please, treat yourself to another day at the mall.

Wouldn't it make sense for us to find a bachelorette pad? What's holding us back? The Butler's got bills, HookerJones is in debt, and NLSts wrecks cars (I wonder who will snap first).

Additionally my 19-year-old sister is failing out of her private college. By December, we'll just be ONE BIG HAPPY FAMILY again. Somebody's going to lose an eye.

Survival? There's nothing to do but grin and bear it. Christ. Prepare yourself for an ulcer.

These past 6 months have been the most tumultuous - insane growing pains. Lots of change, lots of excitement. But I think we're all settling in, life is good. The hardest thing to do is buckle down in order to save money and not to burn bridges (and when all else fails...drink heavily.).

At least I know that when I'm living out of my car in March, I'll be saving on rent and on therapy.