After my college graduation, I drove straight home to Indy and then straight to work. I barely had time to stop at home and change my clothes. Then, I had four days before I started my internship and in those four days I attempted to unpack, clean, rearrange my bedroom, start and get established in a schedule for running a few miles a day, check out my grad-school options and see everyone back home who I hadn’t seen in a few months or years. It didn’t even cross my mind that I was moving back in with my mom at twenty-two. What occurred to me was that I had so much to do that I would never get it all done.
Then I started working both jobs, and now it’s three months later and I’m still trying to run every day, trying to save money while also have fun each weekend and meet new people, still tossing the idea of grad school back and forth daily and I’m still living at home. The only thing that has changed now is that I’m painfully aware of that last fact. I see my friends who have jobs in their desired field. I see my friends who are married. I see my friends who have children. I see all of them who don’t live at home with their parents. I see this, swallow my pride, smile and tell them how happy I am to see how well they’re doing.
And I am happy; that’s not inauthentic. I’m genuinely happy they’re doing well and they’re happy. There’s just a nagging voice in the back my head while I’m having these conversations that says: What are YOUdoing?
And I think, I don’t know. I don’t have a place of my own, or an awesome, full-time job using my hard-earned degree, so probably not the right thing.
Then, I go home, go to bed, wake up at seven, drive to work, help on the urban farm, help build a transition house for homeless men to live in, help grow produce to beautify a run-down community, drive home, eat dinner, drive to my second job, and scoop ice cream until ten thirty, go home, shower, go to sleep, and wake up at seven to start over the next morning. The whole time I’m following this schedule, rushing place to place, enthusiastic, but exhausted, my mind is wondering on repeat: what exactly am I doing wrong that it seems like everyone else is doing right?
And that’s exactly the problem.
That’s where I’m going wrong. I’m holding myself to standards I didn’t create and I don’t need to be held to. There’s no guidebook that tells us exactly when we’re required to move out of our parents’ house after high school, college, etc. There’s no defined standards for the exact time we need to have an amazing, fulfilling, full-time job and to be married and to have children and to have our own home and to have a timeshare and to go on family vacations to the Cayman Islands and to establish a retirement fund and a college fund for our children and buy life insurance and large, matching headstones. Those standards are created by our view of those around us. It seems like I’m supposed to be ready for marriage right now at twenty-two because lots of people my age that I know are married. And it seems like I’m supposed to have a high-paying job using my degree because I have friends my age who do. And it seems like I’m supposed to not live at home anymore because so many of my friends don’t.
Holding ourselves to these standards is just making us more exhausted than we already are, though. And it’s not fair. It’s so completely, devastatingly, disgustingly unfair to constantly be telling ourselves we’re not where we’re supposed to be and we’re not doing our best and we’re not working ourselves up to our full potential and we can’t live in our parents’ home. It’s unfair and unhealthy.
To all of us still living at home after graduation: we’re where we need to be. We’re saving money. We’re being smart. We’re not doing anything wrong. We’re going where we need to be going. And we shouldn’t be embarrassed to admit it. Just because we see people at different stages in life, doesn’t make our stage the wrong one to be in.
To anyone still living in your parents’ home after college: you rock.
