i met up with one of my friends the other day for coffee. he recently moved to santa monica after living and going to school in ann arbor his entire life. although he did the typical dorm & apartment thing, he always stayed close to his family, visiting them probably around once a week. to me, this sounded like the best thing ever: independence while still having family close when you need them. & he agreed with me, until moving across the country.
he told me that the biggest challenge in moving to cali was not how different the people were, or how expensive everything is, but that he had to be his own person. he was so used to having his parents to steer him in the right direction through every bump in the road. he would follow every rule, because he knew that it was what his parents would expect him to do. & now, that’s no longer the case. he now does things that he wants to do, regardless of what his parents would think of it.
all of this made me feel like i just got hit by a bus. it scared me, because that is me. my mom knows every detail of my life (some even better than me). she even co-runs this account to pete’s sake! (off topic, but who is pete anyway? maybe my mom knows). i ask her every time i make any decision, & i can think of a truckload of times that she has persuaded me (unintentionally) to make a decision i didn’t fully want to make because she thought it was best.
& i can say that i am my own person until i bleed, but that doesn’t make it true. it’s like in the movies with the devil on one shoulder and the angel on the other, both trying to tell me what to think. i’m the angel and my mom is the devil, hehe. and now accepting that, i will somehow become fully me, even if it takes moving across the country.
