Living with My Parents… Again

Most of us lived with them until we graduated from high school; some of us continued to live with them through college or during those first few years spent “otherwise” after high school. There is a portion of us who lived with them even after college, before landing a job or getting our own place. Then there is the unlucky lot of us who has experienced the freedom of living alone, possibly even owning our own home, and then being forced by life’s unexpected events to do the “walk of shame” back to the shelter of our parents’ roof. I fall into the last category.

I graduated from high school in 1998 and went off to college in a town a comfortable two hours from my parents’ city. This was the beginning of an eternity of living on my ownâÂ?¦ or so I thought. I lived a happy four years of college in apartments with roommates, loving the freedom of doing what I wanted when I wanted, and not having to answer to anyone. When I graduated from college I moved back to my hometown, but luckily got a job right away and rented a place of my own. Freedom! This time I had not even roommates to deal with – it was just me and my pup, Milly, free at last in our very own half of a duplex.

A year later I thought it’d be a great idea to buy a house – a cute little thing just big enough for me and Milly. I bought it, built a fence for my pup, and the two of us lived there in peaceful serenity for three years. That’s when my life as I knew it began to change drastically.

I’d been unhappy in my job for quite some time, and thought it high time to change career paths. To make a long story short, I quit my job and moved to Spain to teach English to Spanish children. I put my house up for sale and thought it would sell in a month’s time – after all, the real estate market in my area had been booming for years. I was sure it’d sell in a hurry.

I have never been more wrong.

My house sat on the market month after month, and pretty soon drained all of the funds I’d saved for my new life in Spain, and I had to return home five months later, very unwillingly. This is where things got even more unfortunate for me and Milly.

Just before I left Spain, I got a contract on my house. It would sell at the end of the month, after just enough time for me to get my things packed up and moved out. On the day of closing, my buyer backed out of the contract. I didn’t have enough money in the bank to buy an ice cream cone, much less to pay my mortgage.

This is where my parents come into the story.

Without a bed to sleep on in my own home, I slithered to the home of my sweet parents, begging them to shelter me for a little while, until my house sold and I was back on my feet. Oh and by the way, could you pay my mortgage this month, too? And the fees for my storage unit?

Thankfully my parents had the financial means to take me in again, and I didn’t meet much resistance either. My dad hadn’t been terribly happy about me going to Spain in the first place, so he was elated to have me back in the States, and for me to live with him again after all these years was just fine by him. I am eternally grateful for his help at this inopportune and unforeseen time in my life.

Living with my parents again isn’t all that bad. Yeah, I feel like a major slacker when I sleep till 11:00 (I work in the evenings these days), and I definitely hate coming home late at night with beer on my breath and a stumble in my step. But I get to eat good food, get to spend quality time with them falling asleep in front of the television, and we’ve gotten to know each other better than we have in the past eight years since I moved out the first time. The worst part is that Milly couldn’t come with me. My folks have two cats who are terrified of her, and they just weren’t willing to sacrifice the cats’ sanity so that Milly and I wouldn’t have to part ways. My aunt and uncle were kind enough to take her in, but she now lives about two and a half hours away from me. For me, this is an immense deal and the number one reason that I must get out of here soon – I miss my pup more than I miss my privacy.

Other than that, the worst part of living with my parents again is just the plain and simple fact that, well, after all these years, I’m living with my parentsâÂ?¦ again.