A few months ago Stu proposed a little experiment: to post to his blog through postal mail. Being the eager volunteer that I am and always delighted to get international mail, I e-mailed him to say I wanted to participate. A few weeks later Stu sent me an e-mail saying the letter had been written but not mailed. I have to admit, after that I was just dying to know what was in that letter. It finally arrived last Monday morning, in a square, white envelope, my address hand-written across the front. I cut it open with scissors and there was the much-anticipated letter, written on a sheet of notebook paper in handwriting I can only describe as messy in the way that guys' handwriting usually is.
I have to say, as personal as a blog can be, it really can't match the personal quality of a hand-written letter. How cool to imagine Stu writing this on the train that he has written so much about. And he has a strange way of forming his t's that threw me for a loop at first but which I found quite charming after awhile. The content was also definitely more personal than what he usually writes about, though unmistakably in the format of one of his blog posts, this one categorized under "Life".
The topic I asked him to write about was "living with your parents". I chose this topic because I'm going to be 24 soon and I still live at home with my mom, so I thought it would be interesting to get his take on this since he also chooses to live at home with his parents. Despite the personal and potentially embarrassing nature of the topic, he agreed to write about it, and I found his reply to be open and honest and very relatable.
From my own perspective, I don't feel a lot of shame about living at home. It is, after all, a bona fide cultural phenomenon. I have cousins and friends my age or older who live at home and it's not a big deal. But I think nearly everyone in this situation (including Stu) wishes they could be out on their own and independent, and I'm no exception. My own reasons for living at home: First, the financial. I don't make enough money working part-time in a newsroom to pay for a place of my own, and I don't want to get a full-time job I hate just for the money. I want to take some time to explore job options before I give up the financial safety net. The second reason is for my mom's sake. I like being here to pick up the slack, to make dinner for her after a hard day, to help her figure out how to use Microsoft Word. I wonder, what would she do if I weren't here? I'm sure she could manage, but for now I think it's a nice partnership. And the third reason is the one I don't really want to admit to myself, which is that maybe I want to stay in this extended adolescence, that I don't want to grow up. Stu mentioned being sort of psychologically stunted by living at home, and that's about how I feel, too. I mean, some people at my age are married and starting families of their own, and I often feel like I'm still in high school, still defined by my role as the dutiful oldest daughter.
I haven't always lived at home. For my junior year in college, I was able to rent an on-campus apartment, and it was probably one of the best experiences I've ever had. There's something exciting about being on your own, about having complete freedom to venture out and try new things. It's something that forces you to define on your own terms who you are and what you're about. And not to say that I don't ever try new things or try to go further in terms of personal development now, but it's just different. Say one day I want to paint my room orange or become a vegetarian, that gets to be difficult when I know I'm going to have to explain it to my mom. Not to mention the effect on my social life. I'm already a shy, introverted person, and living at home doesn't help much as far as social development. Sometimes I wonder about the life I'm missing out on, and I worry that I'm becoming this sheltered, inhibited person versus the more independent person I might become if I were out there on my own.
Living with your parents is not all that bad, but I agree with what Stu wrote in the last line of his letter, that he is looking forward to the day when he is "working to earn and earning to live." Definitely. Thanks to Stu for the fantastic letter and for thinking up yet another cool idea.
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