The Parent Trap

We leave home at 18, go to college, and four years later we’re true blue adults. In between, every trip home we try to exhibit more and more how much we’ve grown and changed, and how we have become so much more evolved then the family we left behind. Simultaneously, we may grow closer to our family, finally realizing the sacrifices they made for us while growing up, and recognizing they are more than just our mom and dad, our sister and brother, but are humans themselves. Nevertheless, being around our family at times can bring us back to that state we so desperately wanted to leave behind: the angst-ridden, petulant, dissatisfied, and naïve teenager just dying to emerge as a fabulous, and self-assured adult.

We all know the joys and pains of having our parents come to visit us in New York. We think it will be the opportunity for us to show them just how strong we are and how well we’ve adapted to surviving in the most expensive and biggest city in the nation. They will surely be impressed with our ability to cope with ever changing train routes, crowds, and overpriced, well everything. More often than not though, our desire to impress them with just how much we deal with on daily basis is met with nothing more than vague acknowledgment of our accomplishments. In turn they envy us for our youth and ability to keep up with the fast-paced environment that is so incongruous with the quiet life they’ve retired into.

Their indifference to our struggle, instead of bolstering our resolve to further prove to them just how much we’ve matured, can sometimes send us sliding right back to that state of dependency we thought we’d left behind. These visits are also marred by our desire to rehash the grievances we harbor against them when they are far away. I consider my parents to be two of my closest friends, my biggest cheerleaders, and allies, but while in cose proximity they become the enemy, the ones most at odds at understanding the real me. Every discussion of my job or personal life becomes combative because I assume they truly can’t understand just how hard I’ve struggled.

While enjoying a delightful dinner with my mom and her friend, the conversation eventually filtered down into my personal life. They wanted to know the kinds of guys I met, what ones met with success and why so many ended up as failures. Every attempt at explaining the fierce competition for attention and time that each new romantic prospect posed seemed to be met with bewilderment, as if I hadn’t been truly open to sharing my life with another. I tried to explain that social commitments, work, obligatory birthdays, housewarmings, and other ‘extra-curricular’ pursuits made it all the more challenging to meet and get to know someone in a significant way. But in my explanation I found myself realizing that perhaps I was the one who was offering all the excuses, and absolutely none of the solutions.

They wondered why I tried so hard to date and get to know these guys, when there were so many other demands on my time. I was young, why was I so desperate to find someone special? I argued that I knew it was what my parents wanted, for me to find the right guy, that would make me happy, make me settle down, thinking perhaps they didn’t realize that their expectations for my eventual monogamous partnership was one of the driving factors in my quest for a boyfriend. Only then did I realize that perhaps I was going about it in all the wrong ways. Though they came from a different generation they never had to try so hard to find the one they were meant to be with, it merely happened when it was right, and that lasted them a lifetime.

It was refreshing and eye-opening to learn that though their desire for my happiness was unending, they also understood that perhaps it wasn’t going to happen overnight, something I had forgotten myself. Though they wanted to see me settled, they knew it wasn’t as easy as it looked. They knew I was no longer the teen whose problems they had to try to solve, as much as their parental instincts told them they had to. I will always be their baby, but if I could make it in the city that never sleeps, then eventually I wouldn’t be sleeping alone, or at least not just sleeping around.

Posted Originally on homo-neurotic.com on 4/1/09