Living alone is an extraordinary feeling. Finally, after all the years you’ve succumbed to your mother’s rules and your father’s authority, you get to do whatever you want without anyone telling you what to do.
You can eat ラーメン (Ramen) or 牛丼 (Beef bowl) whenever you want, even opting to eat it once a day since you know you suck at cooking and no one’s forcing you “to eat your vegetables”. You can even opt to eat dessert as dinner itself without anyone telling you that “sugar is bad for you”. You can leave the dishes in the sink knowing no one’s going to tell you to wash it right away. You can put your dirty clothes in the washing machine without anyone telling you to separate the colored ones from the white ones. You can leave your things scattered everywhere; all those handouts and books in nooks and crannies you never give a thought to look at. You can do endless shopping sprees through Amazon since no one will judge you on how much you spent. You can finally take those long warm showers until whenever you like since no one is knocking on the door shouting “You’re wasting water!” at the top of their lungs. You can leave home without someone telling you to bring your umbrella because you never know when it might rain.
You can stay up all night watching a new series on Netflix without anyone telling you to sleep and turn off the computer since the lights illuminating from the screen will not make you sleep. And after finally being able to sleep at 5 in the morning after the series you’ve watched, you can finally sleep peacefully without someone waking you up at 8 in the morning, telling you to eat breakfast before it gets cold. Finally, you can go home at any time you like without getting a message asking “where are you, its 11 pm, do you plan on going home?” every minute, with every new message having an extra question mark.
Living alone is the best thing you’ve ever experienced after dealing with the trouble your parents gave you. You get to be the independent person you want to be. Finally, you create your own rules and choose your own decisions, which makes you more ecstatic than ever before.
Photo from Pixabay
But it doesn’t last as long as you may have expected, and the once the ecstatic feeling suddenly dies down, you’re faced with problems you had never imagined.
You get sick of ラーメン (Ramen) or 牛丼 (Beef bowl) in about a month, always feeling sluggish from the lack of variety of food you’re eating. And when you only eat dessert for dinner, you suddenly feel the sugar crash of eating too much sugar in one meal. You notice that the grease marks on your plates and bowls are tougher to clean, your white clothes turn into pink while some black shirts have lint, and the handout you need to read for your next class is missing. You run out of money from all your online shopping sprees, eventually leading you to go broke. You notice your water bill is too high, and you panic while you search your bags for extra cash to pay for it. To makes matters worse, the weather changes drastically, and the rain pours heavily while you run to your house, your clothes and books soaking wet. Then you watch more series on Netflix but your eyesight gets worse and you have to buy new glasses again, despite having no money to spend. Nowadays, you oversleep so much that you can’t even have breakfast anymore since you’re always running late to school.
Photo by Cuncon from Pixabay
Little by little you’ve noticed how you’ve been waiting for this your whole life but you’re finally regretting all those things you’ve taken for granted. You were so eager to get away from your parent’s control that you never appreciated the care they always gave you, the words they always said, and the rules they carried out. In an instant, you are willing to trade your life now for to the life you had with your parents, with all the love and affection you got in unnoticeable ways.
Looking back to those messages of, “where are you, it’s 11 pm, do you plan on going home?” you would’ve replied with “i’m on my way home, i’ll be there in 5” to let them know you are thankful for everything they’re doing, and you’re willing to deal with it as long as you possibly can.
Photo by Marcino on Pixabay