Brief Diary Entries on Living with My Parents Again at 25

April 5th

The first day back. Day one. Up until the drive to Oregon, I had forced myself to remain toxically optimistic about being 25 and having to move back in with my parents, as one must do in this scenario. I guess I had other options— I could’ve gotten yet another job to make it an even three, managed my time better, managed my money better, found a cheaper living situation, couch surfed, taken out even more loans because what was a few more thousand dollars of debt really going to do anyway. I probably really should’ve stopped being so anxious and mildly depressed, or as they say, should’ve stopped being so lazy. But truthfully, letting all of the things I had been trying to juggle just drop to the floor and splinter into fragments of stress relieving peace sounded nice. So I did. I admitted defeat and let it all drop. Everything except school and my dog of course, and packed my things into a 10 by 10 feet box, storage unit 743, and drove back up to the place of my origin story. I’m told I should be grateful to have parents so willing to take me back in and support me through even more unnecessary higher education and I guess I probably should be that, too— grateful, that is. It’s not that I’m not, I am but it’s embarrassing to admit that I couldn’t do it all. I never really felt like I would live up to all the potential I was told I had as a kid. And now, here was hard, cold, indisputable truth that I hadn’t, wouldn’t. Didn’t. Oddly, this realization was okay. Like the valve on a pressure cooker had finally been released and I could stop holding my breath, wondering when I might feel like enough. There was relief in the failure.

The last time I visited my parent’s house before moving back, I noticed I felt taller. On this particular visit, it had been awhile since I had last been up, my visits becoming less and less frequent the more time I spent away. But standing in the kitchen of my childhood, noticing how close my head seemed to the ceiling, I thought I had significantly grown in height. Or maybe the space had seemed smaller now. I wasn’t sure if this meant that I had outgrown this home or if I had learned how to stand taller, more firm in spaces, especially ones designed to make me feel inadequate. The contour of my spine bent down to occupy the boxes my parents expected me to fit in. Conservative, Catholic, Competitive, Detached, Obedient. Their Perfect Girl. Being away, living elsewhere had allowed me to stand up straight, to stretch my shoulders, elbows, fingertips up and away from the safety of my core, arms raised above my head, reaching up to some ideology contrary to the rigid rules I had followed since my genesis.

April 10th

Most days, I have to find a reason to leave the house. I make up an excuse, think of an errand that I have to take care of, take my dog to a park across town for a walk, anything to force myself into my car and to drive elsewhere. My parent’s house is almost twenty minutes from any place of significance, creating a new level of isolation in this pandemic that I hadn’t fully thought was possible. So I put on pants, an illusion of having some normalcy, and grab my keys and mask. The drive to town varies— sometimes I take Old Stage to Scenic to 99 then to the freeway, depending on where I’m headed. Other days I’ll take Old Stage all the way to Beall, then right onto Hanley, following its winding path to the stop sign near the Alpaca farm and then make a left onto Rossanley. The long way, the back roads way, the roads that outline the remaining open space and farmland in a valley that’s being swiftly engulfed by housing developments and marijuana grows. My mom is furious everytime a new hemp grow pops up. Did you see that new grow by the Martins? She says to my dad. He asks where and she repeats herself, Right by the Martins. She says it's time to move, she can’t stand the marijuana and that “demographic” in this Valley anymore. But I roll my eyes and say a quiet thank you to whomever for keeping the expansive fields I grew up imagining were quilted pieces of Earth untouched by identical townhouses and HOAs. However, no matter which route I take from the false sanctity of the house I’m living in to the semblance of society, there are still, five months post-election, Trump signs everywhere. Trump flags on trees, on flag poles, on fences, even a billboard still stands in someone’s yard. I see the symbol of 45 and his demonic sidekick and I suffocate myself a little more so I don’t scream. I see Make America Great Again and I flinch. My stomach turns so much that now it's just a consistent, sharp ache and I don’t know when I learned how to make myself numb to these emblems of hatred and bigotry, of the environment I was raised in. I assume it's out of survival. Self preservation.

But I wonder, where do I fit in in this environment? I get to exist in this space in anonymity. My appearance fits into a category of safety— I present as a straight, able bodied, affluent white woman. Phenotypically, I fall in the 40-55% of white women who once again said fuck you, we don’t give a fuck that 45 is a racist, sexist pig. If I fold back into that privilege, all of this struggle, pain, frustration exists only in my head.