As you may or may not know, Luna and I have stayed with my parents since Dmitry and I separated. They had a couple extra rooms, and they were gracious enough to allow us to stay when we completely unexpectedly showed on January 18, 2022.
What a way to start the new year!
Originally, the plan was to stay for about 6 months until the lease at the house Dmitry and were renting was up since I couldn’t afford to pay for half of all the expenses there and another rent all on my own. However, as the time drew nearer for Luna and I to leave, my parents offered for us to stay a while longer. They were only asking me to help pay for utilities, so I was paying a nominal amount for Luna and I to live very safely and comfortably. Because of this, they encouraged me to stay longer, pay off debt and save up to buy a house.
It was not only very generous, but very wise. We all got along better than I thought we would, and I accepted their offer. And as a result, Luna and I lived there for over a year and a half.
During that time, I felt a great many things surrounding our living situation.
Guilt
I felt guilty for putting my parents in a position where I was staying with them, but I wasn’t paying them for more than utilities. I also felt guilty for getting along so well with my parents when my sisters wouldn’t have been able to. I felt like I was betraying the solidarity we all have as a result of our childhood traumas and sometimes strained relationships with our parents.
Especially my younger sister, Ronnie. Our father has been horrible to her ever since she got pregnant with my nephew, Giovanni. He’s treated her with very little respect, has accused her and her husband of abuse, and has all around done a complete 180 on how he used to be when we were kids. And the fact that he treats me so differently makes me feel guilty.
Shame
As a grown ass woman living at her parents’ house, I felt like a failure and a mooch, like I was living off of them for free. I felt like I was on track to be one of those people who are 40 and still living at home.
This, of course, was not true. I was in a transition period, getting back on my feet. I wasn’t taking advantage of my parents, they’d offered for me to stay before the thought had even crossed my mind. I simply accepted the offer. It’s also not as though they would have rented out the rooms or used them for something else to generate income.
And as for living off of them for free, while rent/mortgage payments are a big chunk of monthly expenses, it is not the only expense. I paid for utilities, knowing that Luna and I use up more water, electricity, and gas. I paid for auto, health, life insurances, food, gas, medical expenses, taxes, lawyer fees, clothes, Luna’s school expenses, the list goes on. I even paid my parents for helping take care of Luna when they’d accept money or gifts from me.
It’s nothing like a situation I know of where a woman named Geraldine pays through the roof for her auto insurance because her two sons in their forties are still living at home and on her insurance while getting into two or more accidents a year.
Poor Geraldine.
Gratitude
I am very privileged to
- Still have my parents around,
- Have parents who are well off enough to accommodate Luna and me, and
- Parents who are willing to allow us to stay with them.
They have been nothing but supportive throughout the entire separation, divorce, and now custody case. There were exactly zero times when either one of them tried to tell me to go back, to stay for the kids, to get my act together, none of that. It was all love and support, and I can’t tell you how much that means to me.
I know that there are many parents who are gone from the world and can no longer support their children in that capacity. There are some who don’t have the means, even though they want to. And the worst one, there are so many parents who are simply unwilling to support their children. I follow a lot of childhood trauma and toxic relationship healing forums/threads online because of my own experiences, and I see so many people who don’t have loving parents in the least. And it’s so sad.
Those are the main ones, but of course emotions are complicated. There were many other minor emotions I felt surrounding the living situation.
Safety in knowing that there was no violence, no verbal, mental, or emotional abuse in our home. No Dmitry to hurt us anymore.
Frustration at times with lack of control over the space.
Ease and comfort of not being the only one responsible for household chores.
Warm fuzzies of seeing Luna with her grandparents every day.
Mild annoyance over the inability to wash and dry clothes whenever.
Appreciation for my parents shoving food at me when I wouldn’t eat for days, knowing that if I lived alone there would be no one to make sure I don’t starve.
The list goes on.
So it will come as no surprise to you when I tell you that when I decided that it was time to move out, there were many more emotions that came along with it.
First off, the decision to leave was a very emotional one with a rather dramatic context. Ronnie was over with Giovanni, and our father once again stepped over the line and asserted his own opinion into how she cares for and disciplines her son.
Mind you, Ronnie is a very mindful parent who provides structure and order in Giovanni’s life. He has ADHD, and his ability to cope with certain situations is much improved by a little quiet time and decrease in stimulation. Our father likes to insert himself into the situation whenever Giovanni has big emotions that he needs his mother’s help processing.
Our father’s very presence makes it extremely difficult for Giovanni to employ positive coping mechanisms because he undermines Ronnie’s authority, thereby causing Giovanni to disrespect her and rendering her interventions useless. It is an extremely frustrating and maddening thing to witness. He is utterly convinced that Giovanni is emotionally handicapped (his words, not mine).
News flash, father: you are the one who is emotionally stunted. Stop projecting just because you can’t handle the big emotions your 5 year old grandson has.
The worst part of all of it? Our father doesn’t do that to me. Ever. Either with Luna or with Giovanni. If I am there rather than my sister, my word holds weight. On the day that our father so blatantly disrespected Ronnie again, she left before she said something she regretted to him in front of her son and niece. As soon as she left, I gave Giovanni direction to go find a quiet place to breathe and find his center, and not only did he immediately comply, my father also wordlessly followed him.
He didn’t argue. He didn’t accuse me of being emotionally abusive. He simply respected my authority with the children and went with it.
The incongruity was painfully stark. The injustice ate at my heart like acid. My insides boiled at the mistreatment of my baby sister, and I suddenly felt as though I had betrayed her. I felt that I had consorted with someone so unbelievably toxic to her, and things I had quietly ignored came bubbling to the surface.
The time when our father ignored my crying infant daughter, whom I had left in his care, so that he could go yell at Ronnie for allowing Giovanni, not even 2 at the time, to cry for 5 minutes.
All the times when he ignores Luna while he is on the phone with Giovanni for hours on end. Even when it’s time that he assures me he is available to take care of Luna while I work.
All the times he allows Giovanni to play unfairly, placating him with distraction and rewarding unkind behavior. All the while Luna watches on, being taught that she needs to walk on eggshells around her cousin so that she doesn’t upset the delicate balance of his emotions.
The time when Ronnie asked him to please respect her and allow her to parent Giovanni the way she knows is best for him, and his response was straight up, “No.” Knowing that in that moment, Ronnie ran out to her car, and if she’d had a gun, she would be dead.
When he yelled at her, saying that he never should have sent her to college because it ruined her life. Her education didn’t ruin her life. She didn’t take long to graduate with her bachelor’s degree, just 2 and a half years. And I’m sure the experience she gained as a head tutor didn’t ruin her life.
So, oh I see. Getting pregnant with Giovanni, the very object of his sole devotion, that is what ruined her life. I see. What a hypocrite.
My blood boiled as these thoughts raised to the surface, and I felt suffocated. I felt so much anger for how unjustly he’d treated Ronnie. What had she ever done to deserve that?
Get pregnant, I guess.
So I told him off. I don’t hardly ever speak my mind to my father because he is so emotionally distant, so unwilling to have an open and honest conversation, that it isn’t worth the effort. He simply retreats, stone walls, and gets sad later. He is so fragile, none of us wants to ever say anything to him.
But not that day. I gave him the what for. I told him that it’s his fault that Ronnie, Q (her husband), and Giovanni moved across the country. I told him that Giovanni isn’t emotionally handicapped, he is. And I told him that the way he treats Ronnie is sickening, and the fact that he thinks he is being helpful to anyone by behaving the way he does is maddening.
He once again insisted that Ronnie and Q are emotionally abusive to Giovanni. How he could possibly think this, I have no earthly idea, and I said so.
I cited my older sister, Elyssa, moving across the country, and Ronnie following suit, insinuating that he is part of the reason why they left. I then asked him if he has any idea what’s going on in his family, or is he too emotionally stunted to even pay attention?
I didn’t stick around to hear the answer.
Luna and I went upstairs, while he left the house. Ronnie and Giovanni had long since gone. Later my mother came home to no one but the two of us and asked where father was. My angry “I don’t know, and I don’t care” response caused her to call my father to find out what happened. Apparently he was crying.
She immediately took his side in the entire situation, including butting in on Ronnie. This struck a chord given that the very evening before, she had told Ronnie and me that she supports us and knows that the way that he handles any emotion is severely lacking and immature. She told us to keep doing what we’re doing and to ignore his shortcomings.
I confronted her about this, and she said that of course she took his side, he’s her husband, and he was crying. She asked me, “So what should I have said to him? ‘Go kill yourself, you stupid idiot’?”
I asked her why the only two options are to either praise him absolve him of all responsibility or to tell him to kick him when he’s down? Why was she incapable of a balanced approach where she tells him, “I love you, and I will always love you. But you messed this one up. You need to fix this.”?
She had no response, of course.
The rest of the story is more family drama going back and forth and round and round. I will spare you the details. The important thing to understand from this is that it spurred my decision to move out.
I decided that I no longer wanted Luna to be ignored by her grandfather while he sat on the phone with Giovanni for hours.
I decided I didn’t want to take advantage of the kindnesses that had been afforded to me when the very same people drove my baby sister away with their disrespect and unkindness. I couldn’t do that in good conscience. It would have eaten me alive.
It’s already eating me alive that I stayed so long, ignoring the things that I knew had hurt my sister, my nephew, my daughter for so long.
I am eternally grateful to them for helping me get back on my feet. For supporting me throughout my divorce.
But how do I reconcile that with how unbelievably awful they’ve been to Ronnie? How can I sit by and accept generosity, respect, and kindness from them while they pour out the opposite to Ronnie?
I can’t. I simply can’t.
And so even though it was before the time I was planning to move out, and it will push back my timeline for buying a house, Luna and I moved out.
And as I said, there are many emotions surrounding this decision, this next step, this action.
Excitement
Even though the lack of control over the space was starting to really wear me down, I was willing to remain patient for another 8 months or so. But now that I will have my own space again, I am impatient to make a space my own.
To quote Charlotte from the 2005 Pride & Prejudice film, “It’s such a pleasure to run my own home!”
Please don’t get me wrong. It is so wonderful that Luna and I can each have a room at my parents’ house. And it is even more wonderful that we can have a bathroom to ourselves rather than sharing it with my parents.
But to be able to cook my own meals again, and have control over how much clutter is in the house, and to have a dedicated space for sleep, work, play, and exercise respectively will be amazing. And to be able to have company over without feeling a little embarrassed that I’m having them over at my parents’ house will also be fantastic.
Oh and to be able to turn down the AC to below 79°F will be bliss itself!!!!
Fear
And as excited as I am, I am also afraid.
I have never lived on my own in my life. I had Julian, then Dmitry, then my parents. This is the first time I will ever fly solo. And I have little Luna to take care of as well.
It’s a tall order, and I know I’m up to the task. It’s just a little scary.
Anxiety
I’m anxious about a couple of things.
Firstly, finances. I make decent money. But costs pile up, and I have no one helping me. Not even Dmitry because he doesn’t pay his child support or help with his portion of expenses. Which has been fine and will continue to be fine because I have made it a point of being able to fully care for my baby Luna without his help.
However, this means that I won’t be able to save up as quickly, and that makes me anxious. Part of providing for Luna is providing her stability in a forever home that she can grow up in. I don’t want to move from house to house. In fact, I intend to stay at the house I rent out until I purchase a house.
Secondly, the emotional toll the move will take on Luna. She has become used to having her grandparents around every day after Dmitry and I separated. She is very excited to move to our own little home, but I know she will miss her grandparents. I also know that being in a new space would already be enough to knock her off balance. But no longer seeing her grandparents every day will make the shock of the move even bigger.
I have already brought this up with her counselor in anticipation of the double blow of the transition, and I know her counselor will help. I continue to worry as her mother, though.
Sadness
As upset as I am with my parents, I will miss them. I will worry about them as they transition to being empty nesters again. I will worry how they will cope with this, especially given that neither of them is particularly in tune with their emotions. And thinking about them being sad makes me sad.
Did I mention that my emotions around this are complicated?
Similarly, I now have to face an empty house. When Luna goes to school, I will be here alone, working away in my office. In the mornings, I will be alone as I prepare for the day while Luna sleeps. In the evenings, I will be alone as I unwind from the day as Luna sleeps.
I will feel Dmitry’s absence like I never have before because I always had my parents around to fill the space in the house. There is no one to fill the space here. And that makes me sad.
As awful as he was to me, as painful as our relationship was, as much as it’s so great that it ended, I lost something and someone who was dear to me. Someone I cared so deeply for, something I poured all of my time, love, and energy into. I chose to lose it, but I lost it all the same.
And my grief is palpable.
I am now truly starting over. The time spent at my parents’ house was more of a transition than really starting over. I was gaining my footing before taking the next steps forward.
And now, well… now I’m doing it. The dust has settled (mostly), and I’m back on my feet. It’s time to take steps forward, to restart.
*Deep breath*
Here I go.
**READ ME (please)**
Two things!
One, please note that the names of everyone in this blog have been altered to protect the people I write about. My main goal is to explore my experiences and my growth, not air anyone’s dirty laundry out. Any likeness to people you know in real life are probably coincidental. (I mean what are the chances? It’s a pretty big world!)
Two, the thoughts and opinions I express in this blog are merely a result of my personal experiences to this point in my life. If there is anything I have misrepresented, overlooked, or have a blind spot for, feel free to leave a comment or email me at contact@livingbetween.net. (Yes, this includes typos. Let me fix my typos, please!) All I ask is that you always remain respectful.
Talk soon!
– Lynda –
Living Between 