I may have mentioned that I was laid off on December 3rd 2010; exactly 90 days later, I got a job offer from an A-list consulting company and I accepted. I signed a lease on an apartment later that week, and I officially "moved in" on March 19th. In the span of three weeks or so, I’ve gone from owning a computer and a mountain bike and a desk chair to owning most of the stuff a household needs to operate effectively. Don’t have a couch yet, so I’m sitting on the floor of my living room, having just finished watching a movie on my 46" TV, writing this post. Still slowly wrapping my head around the changes that have taken place. It’s not the first time I’ve lived away from my parents, nor the first time I’ve lived alone, but it is the first time I’ve been completely self-supporting. Am I a grownup now?

How does it feel?

I remember my first apartment. It was the very first time I came home at 2am.
I walked in the door. Turned on the light. Watched TV for 20 minutes.
Then I had an epiphany.
It was 2am. I had just walked through the door, turned on a light and watched TV and there was no one that was going to come down the stairs and give me shit for it. I wasn’t keeping anyone up. Tomorrow morning I wouldn’t have to answer for it.
It felt great.

At that moment I never wanted to go back again.

It wasn’t that I didn’t love my parents, I do. It wasn’t that the standard of living there wasn’t better then at my apartment – oh my god it was. I didn’t have a telephone. There was a payphone around the corner, but I walked farther then that cause I was convinced it was infected with diseases.

It just felt so goddamned good to know that I was answering to myself and no one else. It felt better then having any of that petty shit I had to give up by moving out of my parents house.

But even better then that – I knew that one day I would have those things again. And when I did it would be different. I would have really earned those things.
How does it feel? I dunno, it’s hard to say. Like I said, I’m still wrapping my head around it. Mostly I’m looking at all the stuff I have and I’m thinking what an incredible pain it will be to move it all when the time comes for that. In addition to the computer and the bike and the chair, I also had clothes and a TV I never use and tools scattered all around the garage, but even moving that stuff pales in comparison to the effort that will be involved in moving an entire apartment full of stuff. (king-size Sleep Number bed, oh my god…)

Like I said before, I’ve lived by myself previously, but my experience was not like yours. I was living in a rented house during my last semester of college — I had to stay an extra semester to take some classes that had been pushed back due to other classes I had to re-take — my friends had all graduated and were looking for jobs or already working full-time, I was 400 miles from home, it was heading towards winter, I only had class two days a week, and I had never lived completely by myself before. By halfway through the semester I was sleeping on the couch in the living room with the TV and the lights turned-on, because it felt like the rest of the universe had forgotten I existed and I would vanish if I didn’t have anything to interact with. It was sort of like the question "if a tree falls in the forest and nobody’s there to hear it…" If Shawn falls asleep in the dark and nobody knows he’s still there, will he still exist in the morning? It was enough to scare me away from wanting to live alone for several years afterwards.

I’ve been answering to myself for years now; my parents never really played the "as long as you live under my roof…" game like some parents do. When I was a teenager I demonstrated an ability to ignore their rules to the point of having all my possessions taken away with no effect on my behavior, so they knew it was pointless anyway. After my first semester in college, my mom tried to tell me to be home from my friend’s house by midnight, and I told her that I’d spent the past four months doing god-knows-what with god-knows-who at god-knows-what-hour-of-the-night and I was still alive. She conceded the point and it never came up again. The most I’ve gotten since then is a phone call to find out if I was okay and when I’d be getting home.

I probably just made myself sound like a squatter who won’t go away, but in reality, ever since I got a "real job" I’ve helped with household chores and repairs, groceries, and bought things I knew my dad needed but he’d never buy for himself — stuff like that. I roto-tilled the entire yard one summer so the lawn would grow properly. I didn’t pay rent but I did contribute appropriately.

Moving out was long-overdue and was delayed by other factors in my life that placed significant demands on my income; other than that, while the second childhood was nice, I became consciously aware over a year ago that it had outlived its usefulness. So I guess what it feels like is that I’ve finally caught up to where I ought to be, more than anything else.

I suppose there is one other feeling, though it’s weak for lack of use: when I was a kid, people almost never visited my house, and I almost never had friends over. The reason for that was because my mom is very picky about dirt and tends to treat everyone outside her family as being at least slightly dirty, along with other subliminal expressions of distaste for them. As you can imagine, that turned off a lot of people to ever visiting more than once. Really her issue is that she needs lots of well-defended personal space, but whatever. So now I have 850 square feet of space in which I have sole authority over who can enter and who can’t, and I can have friends visit whenever I want. That is one of those things that’s slowly sinking in, because I have absolutely no precedent for what it feels like.
congrats. i remember when i first moved out of my parents. i had a roomie but still felt pretty good about myself.
when i bought my first home i was married. felt even better.

now ive purchased my second home… all by myself. it fucking feels great!

You are if you wanna be. This is the exact same question I asked myself. Then the following day (saturday) I got up early and ate cereal while watching saturday morning cartoons.
It’s been said that it’s better to take responsibility and independence onto yourself than to have it forced on you. Your parents, it sounds like, allowed you to take on responsibility at your own pace, instead of forcing you to move out on your own right after college, and when you were ready to handle more independence, they pulled back the controls. They must have sensed what you were going through living on your own that last semester at college. They allowed you to grow up at your own pace. That is rare.
Congratulations and good luck in your new place.

I don’t think anyone can be a grownup just because they have the whim to ask the question of themselves. I think there are certain base qualifications that need to be met in order for the statement "I’m a grownup" to be believable. I don’t think that preference in visual entertainment is not one of those qualifications, but I suppose if I knew what the qualifications actually were then I wouldn’t have asked "am I a grownup?" in the first place.

Sometimes I wonder. Being allowed to grow at my own pace was certainly more pleasant than the alternative, but within reasonable boundaries growth can be accelerated by increasing the pressure to do so. I’m not complaining that my dad didn’t kick me out, but I do wonder how I would’ve handled it had he done so.

To be fair (to myself), my parents pulling back on the controls was something I actively encouraged for years. My parents have always had about 5% more diligence than I have, and it’s resulted in many many many needless reminders and double-checks over the years, which has been a major (though fading) annoyance in my life up to this point. Things like calling me to see where I am when I’m ten seconds from pulling into the driveway, or reminding me about such-and-so responsibility five minutes before the TV show I’m watching will end, stuff like that. So, while I’m sure it’s not fair to say they’ve only backed off because I gave them hell for it, giving them hell for it was certainly a major factor in their backing off. I guess that’s all water under the bridge now, though.
This is the most uplifting thing I’ve read in the asylum in months.

Feels good, man.

Exactly. I don’t feel like a grownup. I don’t think I ever will. I mean… I’m sitting at my job, "working" and what not, but I know that when I get home I’m going to do some incredibly childish shit. I wish there was a barometer for what makes someone an adult. I have a sneaking suspicion that none of my adult friends are really adults. Part of the fun really.
Well, being an adult doesn’t mean writing off every single thing you used to enjoy as a kid. I mean shit, I still like candy. You’re simultaneously every age you’ve ever been; they question is, at what point have you accumulated enough adult-like skills and behaviors to be legitimately considered an adult?
When I was a kid I’d have said " when I have a car/house/bills" But now that I have that I’m wondering " this can’t be what makes an adult is it? I’m still enjoying my life and everything in it" I guess i’ve always envisioned being an adult as no fun, or soul crushingly depressing. But if this is what being an adult is ( the fun shit) Then sign me up!
I never viewed being an adult as being soul-crushing. As early as second grade I wanted to be done with school so I could go do something with my life — as in, I was actually speculating about how I would last another 14 years in the educational system. Working at a job each day seemed like a much better option. Now that I’m here, I still think so.

I like the underlined thought above! It’s sort of like building a brick house; you keep adding more, but you don’t lose what you built on earlier levels. I think you become an adult gradually based on the experiences that you have in life; some will be forced to grow up faster because of some traumatic experience. When you can foresee the consequences of your actions, take responsibility for your choices and forego some of your wants for the needs of others you love; at that point I believe you have reached adulthood. For some, that is at 15 yrs., for others it’s at 35 yrs.

It sounds like you were ready to take control of your life early. I’m curious who was your most admired hero you looked to be like at that age.
Captain Picard. Don’t laugh. He was everything I wasn’t when I was a kid: thoughtful, decisive, authoritative, considerate, knowledgeable, respectable, admirable, etc. When shit needed doing, he got shit done. (it helped that the character was played by an experienced Shakespearean actor.)

As far as the every-age-you’ve-ever-been thing is concerned, it’s important to remember that with each new kind of experience, you start off as an infant — you have no idea how to handle it like someone with lots of experience. A physically mature mind can use its ability for abstract thought to predict various outcomes and develop possible responses better than a physically immature mind can, but nothing beats firsthand experience for building good reflexes. Everyone trips and falls on their ass, figuratively, the first couple times they have to deal with something entirely new, and everyone will forget their most successful skills and handle a problem like a noob from time to time. Or as I like to put it: no matter how old you get, you never forget how to shit your pants.
I’m not laughing! Capt. Picard is an excellent role model! He certainly knew how to manage his human resources too, never let his ego get in the way of finding the best solution to a problem, even if the credit went to someone else. We need more people like that! He certainly models adulthood well!

When I was a kid, my dad bought me a book called "Make It So" written by Patrick Stewart. Not sure I ever actually read it. I should go dig it out and see how I’m doing thus far.
Congrats, grown-up means you make your own descions and choices, pay for own things, and are self-sufficent.. Sounds like your on the right path!
Giving it some further thought, I think another requirement for being a grownup is being able to fess up to your flaws and weaknesses. For a long time I simply didn’t tell anyone I was living with family because I didn’t want to know their opinions on the matter; I knew I was lagging behind in that respect, even if I was moving forward faster than average in other respects.

Halfway through my third or fourth week in the apartment so far, and I haven’t noticed any meaningful change in my outlook. By this time at the end of college I was already noticeably depressed. It seems things are working better this time around. I’m sure it’s a combination of factors, but having to go to work 5 days a week is definitely providing a social anchor.
I has a couch. Italian leather. Always wanted one like this.

I miss the days when I first moved out(18). Felt really good to take charge and be successful without the aid of my family. Good luck and never let your success lead you to spending money that will leave you in a financial situation if your success suddenly disappears.

This is true. Fortunately I have a good amount of savings to buffer the huge cost of setting up a nice apartment all at once.
I have a couple Tempur Pedic pillows. I never had neck trouble until I started using them, but afterwards if I slept on anything besides a Tempur Pedic pillow for even an hour or two, my neck would start throbbing. I ultimately decided that maybe the TP pillow was indeed aligning my neck perfectly, but if the tradeoff was significant pain if I slept on anything else, then it wasn’t worth the trouble. I finally gave up on them last winter when my neck started hurting no matter what I did. Also, TP foam is heavy as hell in large quantities, though I do agree it’s comfortable to sit on.

Anyway, Natuzzi buys its foam and elastic webbing from Pirelli, and their close ties allow Natuzzi to specify things like multiple-density foam in each cushion so the back edges of the seat cushions are softer than the front edges, and other neat tricks like that. I’m happy with it thus far.

Anyway, the significant thing is not so much what kind of couch I got, but that I got the one I wanted. For some reason it didn’t actually hit me until the delivery guys were carrying it through the door, but I’ve always wanted a full-size leather couch and for a long time I thought I shouldn’t want one. I remember telling my mom many times as a kid that I wanted a couch like this in my apartment someday; the response was always along the lines of "why on earth would you want one like that? It’s going to be big and bulky and designed for fat Americans and hard to clean and your legs will stick to it and blah blah blah," essentially saying I shouldn’t want one because she didn’t like them. (have I mentioned I grew up in a very codependent home?) Well, I damn well got the one I wanted anyway.

I guess it’s because of all those times I was told my preference for living-room furniture was invalid that I cared enough about the couch to post about it specifically. In a lot of ways it’s just piece of furniture, and the conversations I mentioned are probably decades old at this point, but every little bit of dysfunction I shed is a bit I won’t have to deal with anymore. Progress is progress.
Getting to buy what you want is definitely one of the silver linings of living alone; you don’t have to coordinate with anyone else’s opinions or preferences. Now you can make up your own mind about the leather couch.

Just to present an alternate viewpoint, as a parent, one tries to pass on to the kids lessons learned, sometimes sparing them pain of the learning curve. Of course, the lessons are much better learned through one’s own experience than through advice of others. Maybe your mom was just trying to tell you of her own experience with leather furniture! You don’t have to assign ill intentions to what she said. All parents try to influence their kids’ preferences.
My mom has never owned any leather furniture, and we never had any in the house when I was a kid; prior to marrying my dad she barely had enough money to park in front of a high-end furniture store, to say nothing of actually buying anything therein. Comes with being an immigrant, I suppose. Not her fault. Having strong opinions about something she’d never experienced is her fault, though.

I’m not saying she consciously tried to influence my preferences; giving advice is part of being the older person in a relationship, and in her mind, it is perfectly acceptable to give advice along the lines of "what on earth are you thinking? Are you sure that’s a good idea? I mean, don’t you think you could make a better choice than that?" There was a lot of guilt-tripping and second-guessing and other forms of psychological violence in my house growing up, almost all of it originating with her. When someone makes you feel like an idiot enough times (including explicit verbal insults against your intelligence) for making decisions they don’t approve of, you get to where you’ll start assuming you should be making decisions they like, when really what’s going on is you’re just trying to avoid further abuse. That is what makes codependence such a problem in relationships. That is why I found myself marveling at the fact that I’d actually made the decision to get the furniture I’d always wanted.

Having family members with strong opinions is not rare. It can be hard to stand up to a person like that. My ex and his father were like that and I was always a little afraid to have an opposing opinion. They had a way of making me feel like an idiot or ignorant for not agreeing with them. It’s also a trait that gets passed down through the generations, mostly subconsiously, so you’ll have to watch for repeating that pattern as well. Very likely your mother was brought up under similar circumstances and simply repeated what she learned from her family.
I am aware. I’ve always been very strong-willed, and I’ve also always had a great deal of similarity to my father. Between her and me, there has always been an undercurrent of resentment on her part that I’m not more like her. That undercurrent has come to the surface many times in my life as overt emotional abuse, both to try to make me more compliant, and to prevent my father from spending "quality time" with me. The codependent guilt-tripping that I mentioned is only the tip of the iceberg, I assure you.

She said to my father many times that if they ever got divorced, she would make sure he never saw me again, and that I would be taught to hate him. She said this to the guy who used to read me a bedtime story and give me a backrub every night to help me fall asleep.

She tried to cancel Christmas a couple of years because I got bad grades on my report card. (I only found out about this in the past couple years.)

When I was 25 years old (that’s only 3 years ago), she pushed me away from the stove while I was making a grilled cheese sandwich because I was "doing it wrong". There is precious little evidence to suggest that she understands how her behavior is unacceptable, or cares that it’s unacceptable, or has actually attempted to change her behavior to be more acceptable.

My entire childhood and well into my 20′s, she would invalidate my opinions about anything regarding family matters by saying that my father had brainwashed me to be on his side and I couldn’t disagree with him even if I wanted to. Do I even need to get into detail about how insulting it is to have a 1450 SAT score, a 147 IQ, and an engineering degree, and be told that I was someone else’s unwitting zombie with no independent consciousness of my own?

She refused to move to live in the town where my father worked, not once but twice, spending nearly a decade living in different states, first not wanting to visit, then not wanting to call, then not wanting to answer emails, and finally replying to emails with one-line responses like "leave me the fuck alone!!!" (I saw subpoenaed email records in the court documents.) Despite this, she was totally caught off-guard when my father filed for divorce, and nearly driven to suicide when he refused to try to patch things up yet again. (It was their fourth divorce attempt.) She is not right in the head.

Knowing that she probably wasn’t abusive on purpose doesn’t negate the effects that it had on me, and while I might be willing to forgive her for past abuse, there is no reason to risk further exposure to it since I know that I’m very susceptible to it and she’s very good at it.

People say things in anger and frustration. It’s possible he said something to upset her. Do you know what he said to her?
In any case, you can’t call your issues "resolved" as long as you hold such resentment against her. That’s my opinion anyway. It might be worthwhile to work on evolving your relationship with her.
Go back and re-read my edited post. There is not a single instance of abusive behavior; there is a long and well-established track record of it.

I seem to recall you mentioning in the past that you had a troubled relationship with your father, and whenever the topic of my mother comes up, you attempt to convince me that I must be missing some subtle-yet-important way in which my father is actually the cause of the problems I mention from time to time. I’m sure he said things to upset her, because I witnessed many fights as a kid and he is hardly blameless. That does not mean, however, that his inherited behavior patterns are as unhealthy as hers. I know from personal experience that the more I’ve sought to rid myself of behaviors that she exemplifies, the happier I am with my life. There are also a few behaviors that my father exemplifies that I’m better off without, but their number is far fewer.

I am tired of trying to convince you that my understanding of my own family is valid and correct, not least because it’s poking at the scars left from being told so many times by my mother that everything I thought about my family was wrong and I was helpless to understand things better. Don’t bring it up again.

I’m not trying to convince you of anything, but as an outsider I have a more distant perspective and what I see is that you are far more forgiving of your father’s shortcomings than your mother’s, even as you can see his flaws. Maybe your mother is trying to get you to see her perspective. What’s wrong with that?

As a recovering codependent I can tell you that initially one’s motivation for doing things or making choices is to get back at the person whom one sees as the source of one’s codependence. It is not until you can see their side of the story and learn to accept that it is their story and not yours, that you begin to make choices that are honestly "your" choices and when you are motivated by your own, separate needs and wants. Just something to consider…
It is my story insofar as it has affected my life. Beyond that, yes, it’s her story, and I’m content to let her keep it. I have never been completely unaware of my own separate needs and wants, which is to say I was never totally codependent, but there have been plenty of times I’ve stuffed them in a box because I felt guilty for having them. The "shopping for a couch" anecdote was just an example of pulling one of those "wants" out of the box and finally putting it to good use.

I am more forgiving of my father’s faults because, with a few exceptions, they only ever surfaced when he was around my mother. I can say that for sure now, because I’ve actually seen him around other women, and things are much different. The only really irritating thing he does on a regular basis is he looks at the glass not as 90% full but 10% empty, and I’ve rightfully gotten on his case about it. Other than that, his really bad behaviors were all reactions to things my mom did — and perhaps she was reacting to things he did in turn, but she was the only one who reacted badly to them.

I know my mom was trying to get me to see things her way. The problem with that is she’s crazy, and it’s impossible for me to see things her way, because "her way" is partly made-up inside her head. That wouldn’t have been such a big deal if she hadn’t gotten vicious about punishing both my dad and me for not understanding her point of view on things. The two behaviors combined, however, were a big and ongoing problem, and I will not apologize for having scars from dealing with it.

But either way, it’s water under the bridge at this point, since I no longer live with either of them.

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