The Curse Of Supportive Parents

 I have been blursed ( a blessing and a curse) with extremely supportive parents. 

I mean it. They have never once told me I couldn't do something, never even told me I shouldn't if there was something I wanted to try. They never gave me a time limit on when to figure out what I wanted to do, who I wanted to be. In fact, without fail they will always tell me to take my time.

"You can take as much time as you need to figure it all out. There's no rush."

Those are some of the most stressful words that ever come out of my parents mouths. They are so damn supportive of everything. It made it nearly impossible to be rebellious when I was younger, but don't worry, I figured out a way around it pretty well. 

My parents never told me who to be, what to believe, or who to love. None of those really helpful restrictions that everyone else around me seemed to have. They didn't teach me "right and wrong". They taught me to ask myself "Does this feel good? Does this feel right for me?"

I mean, I couldn't have anything in my rebellion. There was no outlandish idea of who I wanted to be or what I wanted to do that they weren't okay with. There was no line drawn. No, "You have the freedom to do what you want under our limitations of who we want you to be when you grow up." 

My parents have never told me to do anything. And now, God bless them, I have no clue what I'm doing, what I want to do, or who I want to be when I grow up. No clue. And they refuse to tell me either. Can you believe them?

But what they did give me was a good head on my shoulders. They blessed me with eyes to see and ears to hear the truth. And in turn cursed me with indecision because I see all sides of the story and never know which side I should choose.  

Even when they tell me, "It's okay, you don't have to know right now. You have all the time in the world to figure it out, you're only 20." I still hear the truth in their words, no matter how much it makes me scramble for a grip on something that is always eluding me.

The funny thing about that though, is my parents got married when they were 20. They had what feels to me like a huge chunk of their lives figured out. They knew they wanted to experience their lives together. 

And I don't even want to get married.

It's strange, when someone tells me I have all the time in the world to figure something out, it makes me feel certain a meteor is about to crash upon us and the last thing we had was time. 

It doesn't feel like I have all the time in the world, and as a matter of fact I'm pretty sure that's a lie. The time is now. All the time I have is right now in my hands. What am I going to do with it? It feels like a bomb, going to go off any second now and the message on the screen tells me "Make the choice before it gets made for you."

I'm scared of making the wrong choice and yet even a wrong choice sounds better than all the time I'm  sure I've wasted wondering if the time was right, even wondering what the right thing to do was.

Oh my captain, what should I believe in?  

But I don't blame my parents for all the things I don't know. I'm not angry at them for not "helping" me along in my journey. I figured out the things I needed to in the time I needed to without them poking and prodding me along, seeing if I was ready for this or that yet. I am eternally grateful that they let me figure some things out on my own, even though sometimes I wish they'd thrown me a line and told me what was the right thing to do. But thinking back now I wouldn't have liked them telling me what to do anyways. I guess that's where the not knowing "right" from "wrong" comes in a little. What is right for them is almost certainly wrong for me. 

Growing up the way, I did I think I'm spoiled now. Not by money or material things but by the real riches in life like happiness and love. I know that sounds silly but it's true. Throughout all the rough times we had I never once doubted that I was loved. And even if we had nothing we still knew how to laugh. 

I know that sometimes there are things we have to do just because it has to be done. But I also know if I'm not doing something that makes me happy it's not worth all the money in the world. I wasn't raised to meet the quota and chase dollar signs, I was raised to follow after the things I believe in, to chase the thing I open my eyes for every morning, the thing that makes me heart wrenchingly happy. 

And to never let anyone tell me I can't do or be anything I want. 

"I think that one of these days... You're going to have to find out where you want to go. And then you've got to start going there."  - J.D. Salinger