Honestly I really appreciate having a throwaway account to ask these sort of personal questions to other comrades in a well-meaning community.

Here’s my living situation, regardless of current disability (still not gone btw if anything it’s morphed now lol)

I’m 31 and live “at home” in that the house is technically my parents’. However, they themselves work and live abroad, so it’s just me and my 2 brothers living there for most of the year. Parents come back once in a while to see family and hang out.

When people ask I try to remember and say my brothers and I are housemates, basically. I feel the word housemate/roommate has a more ‘serious’ tone, like more grown up lol than saying “I live with my brothers”.

– Before proceeding, what are your thoughts on this so far? –

I ask because now at 30 I feel that I’m “stuck” there, still living with my parents, even though they only come back a few times a year. I feel like I should outgrow this at my age, do everything like an adult, so I’m wondering what the good people of lemmygrad think when they hear about this living situation. Is it off-putting, is it smart, or do you just not care?

I feel like I’m still living in my childhood home, in my childhood town, with my parents, even though as a kid I only lived in that house for like 3 years before we moved away for work lol. I came back in 2012 and have been living here non-stop since then, I have never rented my own place or tried moving out. I think some part of me is scared of doing it, but that’s another topic lol.

I guess it’s a source of shame in some aspects to still be in that living situation at my age. It feels like people my age are having their own families, have been living alone and working since their 20s, and I’m here not ready to take the plunge at 31.

Despite this I remind myself that I’m otherwise completely independent, aside from the rent situation. Well, I don’t pay all the bills but people don’t need to know that lol, and it wouldn’t be a huge dent to split the internet bill three-way. But I pay my personal bills (groceries, phone, health insurance etc). I also get access to the car they leave here but I fill the gas. I guess that’s another source of shame, when I drive and friends ask about the car and they learn it’s my parents car lol. I’m not sure they even care, but I feel like I’m not performing up to expectations, you know? Like I’m seen as a kid, or someone who refuses to grow up and take responsibilities.

  • amemorablename@lemmygrad.ml
    8·
    6 days ago

    I’m in a similar kind of situation, early thirties, still living with parents. Without going into a bunch of personal detail, I will say for various reasons it has been difficult over the years to have done differently. Given the forum we’re on, I feel compelled to point out the larger context of a thing like this. I live in the US, for example, and given how many people are struggling, how bad rent is, how much of “people don’t want to work”, yet “we won’t give them jobs to work at, much less ones that pay a fair wage, so maybe we’re a little full of shit”… in that context, it shouldn’t be surprising that someone like me is a thing. I could view it as a source of shame and have plenty of times over the years, but is that being fair to me?

    If I were actively refusing to take responsibility for things, refusing to contribute anything where I can, or generally being a combative problem for those I live with, at that point, I’d say yeah, go ahead and judge. But I’m not like that and you probably aren’t either, and I don’t know which country you live in, but if it’s anything like the US, it is a shameful system. I still remember all the stuff about evictions that was going on during the height of covid. I don’t think I’ll ever forget the stories I’ve read about homeless encampments being bulldozed. The capitalist treatment is brutal and the people who do “succeed” in the stereotypical sense of stable job and family are often struggling even within their “success”, whether because of finances or relationships issues or health problems.

    So there is how people perceive you, or potentially perceive you, and then there is who you actually are, in context. And sometimes the people who are judging you are not in any position to judge in the first place. There are liberals and conservatives alike who would no doubt judge me for my political views, but I have strong conviction about them and so they can shove it. I don’t have “conviction” about my housing and finances situation and would rather it be different, so it’s easy to feel insecure about it, but that’s the difference, is how vulnerable I feel and how inclined I am already to be down on myself about it, not that others are suddenly more qualified to judge me about it compared to my political views.