Thank for posting this, Rigamarole. I have more sympathy than some of the others.
I was spoiled in some ways, not in others, and 23 years after leaving home I still don’t have the standard of living I had as a kid. I probably never will, because homeownership is no longer something the middle class can take for granted.
I think the answer to the question is to realize that as a kid you were living on borrowed time, and that you didn’t deserve any of that. You were lucky to have an extended vacation, and now you’re living in the real world. It seems like your parents are still on that vacation without you, but would you really want to live their lives rather than your own?
I don’t believe that - at least on paper I don’t. But my father absolutely believes that and is quite adamant about asserting at every opportunity that everything in life is a perpetual competition, up to and including life itself. I don’t like that mindset at all and I chose to reject it long ago. But it wouldn’t surprise me if all those years of exposure to it has seeped in and I’ve internalized it to some degree without being fully aware of it. And going from having a lot to having a little (and having to work damn hard for those scraps) feels incredibly demoralizing as a result.
Yeah but you can shape the direction of where you wanna go without any parental interference, plus, not wanting to live in the situation you are currently in should give you the impetus to search for a better quality of life, something if you gain will be 1000 times more rewarding than harking back to the days when you lived with your parents.
I went through a long phase in my post-college days where I had less than I did as a child. That made perfect sense to me: If each child start out with everything their parents had we would all be rich. This is sort of true in America.
Anyway, as tdn said, the autonomy was worth it. Now, years later I have a higher standard of living than my parents did and now I worry about my kids getting stuck and unable to obtain a similar living. Since they already know everything that should be easy but for some reason it is not.
I’m your age. Any time I feel bad about my middle-class, young adult issues I try to think about all of the amazingly awesome stuff that I take for granted. I live in a stable, modern society. I have food. If I don’t have food, society will make sure I don’t starve. I’m healthy. If I get sick, I can receive life saving medical care.
Stopping right there, I have a better existence than 99.9% of all human beings that have ever lived. Probably better than 85%+ of people alive right now! From that perspective, complaining about not being able to go to the bar to watch the game on Sunday because I have to get up for work the next day is absurd. Nearly everything in my life is a luxury not afforded to almost every other person that has ever walked the earth.
I agree with your post but I want to concentrate on this part.
What you’re talking about is an emotion. Emotions can be changed given a different context. Right now you’re demoralized because you actually have to work for what you want. But eventually you’ll start to appreciate that everything you have, you earned on your own. There’s not really any other feeling quite like it. What’s demoralizing now will become empowering later. That alone is something to look forward to!
Yep, and while intellectually I know I should feel extremely grateful for that (and I do to some extent), thinking “there are a lot of people worse off than me” doesn’t make me feel much better about the transition I described in the OP. Because at the end of the day, I only have my own experience to compare to. And I’ve traveled through the Third World (yet another luxury my background afforded me) which I could say “opened my eyes” but I don’t think it really can without actually having to live their lives, which obviously I haven’t.
That being said, I don’t expect or want sympathy from anyone. I just want better ways to cope and gain motivation that I’m lacking (even though I haven’t lived with my parents for 8 years, I’m still jarred by what I see as a heavily downgraded standard of living despite working harder than I ever had to work before). I think most replies so far have been constructive to that end.
See yourself as the protagonist in a coming of age story.
The first part of the story is about you in your youth, overindulged and pampered and taking everything for granted.
The second part is about you now in adulthood, coming to terms with yourself as an independent entity and yet being discontent with what comes with that.
The only reason why you look back and see your earlier life as better is because you’ve experienced life on the other side. But when you were younger and spoiled, were you actually happier than you are now? Probably not. You’re unhappy now, but I think it’s highly likely you were unhappy as a kid too and your memory is glossing over that. This tells me that material possessions aren’t the true issue here. That’s just a proxy for some other void and I think you need to figure out what that void is.
Then you can envision the third part of your story, which will hopefully consist of you discovering that the best things in life are simple pleasures that are made all the more pleasurable when they are earned by the sweat of your brow, not given dutifully. Hopefully you will get to this stage before the age of 70.
It really sounds like you have internalized the negative aspects of this belief system (self worth tied to externals) without the positive side (motivation to achieve). Sucks it does.
Not to put too fine a point on it, one pulls up one’s big girl panties and gets a grip.
I know that sounds flip and snarky and utterly unhelpful, but it’s the truth. If you’re ever going to be happy as a grown up, you’re going to have to grow the hell up. That means understanding that just like a good dinner isn’t all the ice cream and gummy worms you can shovel down, a good life isn’t necessarily getting a bunch of stuff and never having to lift a finger.
I didn’t exactly have a dream childhood but the reality of adulthood still pisses me off, so I can sort of get behind this rant. I’m 28, I’ve been independent for a little over a decade, and I’m still annoyed that I have to do things like work and take care of petty shit I don’t care about just so I can keep a roof over my head. I’m pissed off by the massive scam of higher education that is nonetheless necessary just to keep my head above water. I’m pissed that everybody in this country seems to worship at the altar of work, exalted work, for which we are expected to cast aside our meaningful relationships and our health and children and whatever other irrelevant things get in the way of work.
And the truth is, we have it damn good compared to a lot of others - I bitch about salaries some people would kill to have to support their families. But this is the reality of life in America, a damned sight better than what it used to be, and nobody ever promised me a rose garden.
So I guess you deal with it by just accepting it, and indulging in the things you can’t as a child, like ice cream for dinner.
When I was about your age and struggling with things, I found it helped to do volunteer work with people who were way worse off than I was and who had fewer prospects and no parental back-up. Perspective helps so much.
You didn’t have to work before because you were riding on your parents’ work. They were well-off; you had virtually nothing, and what you had, they gave you. TANSTAAFL isn’t just a science fiction meme; it’s a reality - there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.
Does it help your motivation at all to realize that you were a status symbol for your parents, too? That all the stuff they gave you was so they could show off to other people - “Look at how much we give our children! Envy us!” If it had really been about loving you, they would have prepared you better for the reality you were going to have to face. In my opinion, of course.
Count yourself lucky that you had a spoiled childhood. Not many have had that luxury. Sometimes I get bitter that I’m 26, still living at home, no decent job for my private college bachelor of arts degree, working minimum wage while I go to graduate school and up my loans to a total amount of ~$100k on the gamble that this new degree pays off.
I could always be bitter or jealous, but where will that get me? Stuck here in the same routine but with no way out. Or, I could work hard, be miserable for these next two years, and have the hope that this new degree will give me a push up and further my independence.
Adulthood is like a rebirth. It’s like learning to walk all over again, without the help of others. Sitting and pouting will only leave you slowed down as the others push ahead.
This. I need to remind myself of that at times.
Also this. One of my favorite things I like to tell people is “I’m an adult. That means I can take naps whenever I want and eat ice cream for dinner if I want!” Somehow just saying that makes me feel better!
Actually, you’re right. Your parents owed you an education on how to take care of yourself and be an independent adult. They owed you the ability to do your own laundry, cook your own meals, pay your own bills. They owed you the knowledge of how the world really is, not the fantasy playland you grew up in.
I think your entitlement has some basis in fact, deep down inside. And yes, the responsibility of adulthood is bitter medicine if you had a carefree childhood, but you really need to start focusing on the autonomy if you’re going to be happy. Move. Start a new hobby. Do something crazy that your parents would never approve of (but nothing permanently life-altering). The freedom of doing that will lift some of the weight off your shoulders.
That’s a pretty fascinating insight, and not an angle I’d considered before. It would explain a lot, actually (since I felt they prepared me for independent life pretty poorly, as they would jump in and take over on every project I ever tried to work on in my youth).
Huh. I guess that comes with having indulgent loving parents. When I moved out into a two-room flat (furnished quite nicely, by me, with yard sale finds and cheapest-of-the-cheap household items) I was so glad to be away from home I felt like a princess in a fairy tale. No one treated ME like a special special snowflake.
I would stop the pity party, blinking back tears like deposed royalty, and go work in a homeless shelter or something a night or two a week.
Heh - this made me think about what it would be like to be the one guy in the world who has it worse than everybody else. “It’s me? I have it the worst in the world? Shit.”
Also, in case it helps: my parents prepared me for the idea of being independent, but not the reality. I couldn’t cook, or clean, or do laundry, or fix my car, or calculate the interest on my student loans, or any number of other basic skills. Every time I taught myself something new, it was kind of a “take that!” to my parents.
It also helps to really look at the deficiencies in their lives: I love my parents, but I can also see that they are very, very broken people in some ways, and there’s an extent to which they can never heal. I can.
