The novelty of moving away to university has not quite worn off yet. The fresh-felt freedom that sits at the edge of your fingertips on the drive up to your first year halls is a brand-new feeling full of opportunities and excitement. What you do with your time lies entirely in your hands, with no one breathing down your neck about things that you consider overdramatic or unnecessary. You indulge in the luxuries presented to you: coming home at all hours of the night, eating pot noodles for dinner five times a week, and using your free will to its utmost simply because you can. Granted, your health may go out the window, but at least it’s a window in your own flat, with your own rules, and a life that is solely yours.
It’s not just the practical aspects of it that make living away from home seem lavish. You begin to question yourself – who you are. There is finally space to grow and understand the person you are becoming, separate from the pressures, and judgmental innuendoes, of your parents. There’s room to rely on yourself and your judgment without constant uncalled-for opinions or questions. You evolve, cultivating newfound facets of yourself that at first feel terrifying, but eventually become the norm. These changes occur gradually, spread out over time so that you barely notice they’ve even happened. And just when you’ve managed to pick apart all the pieces of yourself and glue them back together into someone who is perhaps more generous, loving, and educated, the summer rolls around and home awaits you. Except it’s not necessarily home anymore. Of course, it looks, smells, and seems familiar, but you are what’s different now.
The train drops you off at your hometown, you step in through the front door of your childhood home, and you quickly become unrecognisable. All that growth and maturity suddenly dissipate, and you’re transported right back to being sixteen and perennially irritable. It feels like you’ve finally stretched your arms out enough to catch a glimpse of who you are and then the structure you once detested forces you to mould yourself back to fit its regulations. Almost immediately arguments arise, tensions bubble, and petty, snarky comments are shot out. These are followed by immediate regret and confusion about why you acted that way. It seems to be a universal experience to be irrationally frustrated with your parents for little to no reason, yet still feel entitled to your freedom – resulting in you blaming absolutely everything on them. Or maybe that’s just me?
Home becomes no man’s land. You become irrevocably stubborn, thinking about how at your big age of 21, an 11pm curfew is ludicrous. Your parents make the most insufferable point they possibly can: “our house, our rules.” Someone shouts, stomps upstairs and slams the bedroom door, and the new and improved mature version of yourself is nowhere to be seen. But these rules aren’t simply a limitation on your independence — they are more a reflection of your parents’ adjustment to the fact that you are no longer a child. In giving grace to your parents, whilst still maintaining this reinvented version of yourself, it is important to name the discomfort before it escalates into a full-blown argument. A quick conversation, a negotiation, or a simple “I don’t think that’s fair” can go a long way. Parents may be unreasonable at times, but it is their job to care too much. Despite how this may feel overbearing, it is important to navigate this in order to preserve your independence and agency. At the end of the day boundaries suck, your parents love you, and if it really goes south, you can always book that train back up north.
Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash
