At 33, I’d move back home in a heartbeat.
I’m 33 years old, but I would still move back in with my mother. Tomorrow. In a heartbeat.
For the longest time it was hard for me to even get those words out of my mouth, to even think it without feeling embarrassed. Me move back home? I should be settled down with two kids, a husband, or a wife. Or on the flip side, with a doctorate, a career, toting the torch of education and financial goals as a reason for not settling down. But I have none of these things.
I work overnight for HEB, a large chain grocery store located only in Texas. I go to the University of Houston, working my way, s-l-o-w-l-y, to a bachelor’s degree. I work an additional part-time on occasion, I volunteer, I design, and I write.
I was born in New Jersey, raised in a single-parent home with two brothers. I am a female. Like the rest of my neighborhood, growing up in the 90's, I picked up a part-time job while in school to help afford things like a cellphone, new clothes, money to eat out, etc. Soon enough I needed a better job to cover a car, college, insurance, etc. Soon after that I was stuck with several jobs having to pay interest, medical care, help my mother with cable, the mortgage, etc. It only goes on from there. You see, where I came from, work was a necessity you got pushed into because there was never enough money around.
I didn’t get financial aid for junior college. I paid for my associates degree out of pocket. I paid for all the mechanical repairs that came from having to own a car, to drive everywhere, to continue a better paying job which paid for the car and college. I wish I knew then to stick with a crappy minimum paying job within walking distance from my home, but we never want those. We want to move up in life. More importantly we want others to get the impression that we have moved up in life.
So why would anyone readily admit to wanting to move back home? It isn’t the pandemic. And it has nothing to do with being unemployed. I can pay my bills, I save, I take vacations. If I fall behind or if I notice my checking account balance dwindling, I manage where my money is going and make necessary cutbacks, like an adult.
So maybe you’re thinking I want to move back home just so I don’t have to work so many hours, or just to go without paying rent, or utilities, or food or clothes, etc. That’s not the case. Lucky you if your mother will take you back in at 33 yrs old and feed you and clothe you and pay your bills for you. But if I move back home it’ll look roughly like so — I’ll still have every bill I have now except I’d get that good ol’ family rent discount.
I don’t know about you but I was forced to grow up early.
Many of my close friends from the same generation, and many from our small neighborhood in Passaic, NJ, had no other choice but to grow up early. Our parents worked two, sometimes three jobs growing up, and if we didn’t learn how to cook, clean, and balance a checkbook by the age of 12, we’d be shit out of luck. Not to mention, many of us had other brothers and sisters to raise.
So maybe it’s hard for many adults to admit, it’s hard for me to, but I would love to just come home, say “hi mom,” kick off my shoes, turn on the TV, and wait for dinner to be ready — where my only responsibility for the day would be to get up for the day and go to sleep at a reasonable hour. I readily admit that I would love to go back to the time when I didn’t have to be an adult and make decisions, and worry about feelings and manage expenses, and network, and worry about layoffs, or deal with someone cutting me off on the highway, etc. I would move back home tomorrow to feel a minuscule amount of that childhood reassurance, for however brief, that someone else is taking care of these adult things.
But moving back home isn’t considered glamorous. Nobody is going to shout it out into a crowd and expect mass approval.
In fact you might just get the opposite response. Don’t we all know at least one friend who still lives at home with their mom? Isn’t that the reason why we move out in the first place, so we can avoid being that one friend? Or do you defend them?
Well, I’ll raise my hand to the opposite because secretly I’ve told them to grow up. I’ve had my opinions, bad ones, and even my share of handing out the benefit of the doubt. It wasn’t pretty. Who was I to pass judgment, especially since living at home, up to whatever age, could be for any number of reasons, and none of which I may know about. But before I get off topic…
Why does moving back home at the age of 28, 35, 42, get such a bad rep? Is it because we assume that something bad had happened or that the person failed at life? Let’s be real — they — feel like they failed at life. I used to feel that way. At 28, I feared so much being that one friend who still lived with their mom that I loaded my things and split. I was determined to move just to avoid the moniker. To me it felt that crazy.
Now I think differently. I’d move back home tomorrow, despite what anyone thinks it makes me look like.
Because moving back home doesn’t mean that I failed at life. Moving back home doesn’t mean that I never figured out how to budget money, or say no to things, or prioritize, or develop a verbal filter, or inspire others, or build a business, etc. Because I have. In fact I began learning these skills at my mother’s, where I had to learn to compromise, respect boundaries and belongings, learn how to call a company and request information without trembling. All these little things that we forget makes up adulthood. If it weren’t for the time living at my mother’s I wouldn’t have moved out in the first place. I’d be incapable of handling the real world.
We move out, without realizing, to put these skills to the test. To learn to adapt and survive. And it must be noted, surviving isn’t having it all figured out, it’s about knowing yourself, knowing what you’re good at, knowing when to ask for help, and especially who to ask. So I’m not embarrassed to say I’d move back home tomorrow. I have become a functional, successful adult. I suck at so many things but I know how to reach the people who do these things well. I fall into problems daily but I don’t hide under the covers pretending they will go away. I have proven myself in the world.
So I know that if and when I make the move back to New Jersey, and head to Passaic with a small U-haul, and park my car in front of my mother’s home, she will be there, not thinking that she had failed at raising me, not thinking that I have failed in adulthood, but simply happy to see me; functional, successful, and happy to be home.
