Home Sweet Whatever, posted by Kellie
Prompt: Start with this plot: A liberal activist daughter has to move back in with her parents.
Deep down, I always knew it was going to happen this way. I knew I was going to graduate from college, and move away from home. I also knew that several years (or, perhaps mere months) later, everything was going to fall apart, and I was going to have to move back to my parents’ house . . . in Indiana. Instead of taking some time, saving some money, and creating some kind of long term plan, I left as soon as possible. Even though I knew better.
It’s not so much the idea of Indiana that puts me on edge. It’s the prospect of small-town, closed-minded, republican Indiana that makes me want to kill myself.
My mother says she is happy to have me. That my room at their house will always be my room, just in case I ever wanted to come back and stay for awhile. It looks exactly same as it did the day I first left it. She is thrilled. Thrilled. She is happy to be able to give me a place to fall back on. Deep down I believe she’s been sending prayers out into the universe so I would eventually have to come back here. She has succeeded. She will ask me endless questions about my life in New York, about the guys I was dating (read also: casually sleeping with, sans emotional attachment), about the projects I was working on (and I will have to explain, for the millionth time, the meaning of the words ‘pro bono’). She will tell me that everything happens for a reason. She will tell me this is all a part of God’s plan for me, right before she invites me to go to church with her on Sunday. She will try to get me to attend “events” with her and her group of friends; they will get together to glaze bowls and to learn how to knit and to exchange recipes. I will wonder if they have ever thought about their lives beyond their realm of homemaking.
My dad, it seems, didn’t really notice I was gone, since he hasn’t made any sort of mention that I have returned. Typical.
But, here I am, after exhausting all other possible options. Great. Home sweet whatever.
Deep down, I always knew it was going to happen this way. I knew I was going to graduate from college, and move away from home. I also knew that several years (or, perhaps mere months) later, everything was going to fall apart, and I was going to have to move back to my parents’ house . . . in Indiana. Instead of taking some time, saving some money, and creating some kind of long term plan, I left as soon as possible. Even though I knew better.
It’s not so much the idea of Indiana that puts me on edge. It’s the prospect of small-town, closed-minded, republican Indiana that makes me want to kill myself.
My mother says she is happy to have me. That my room at their house will always be my room, just in case I ever wanted to come back and stay for awhile. It looks exactly same as it did the day I first left it. She is thrilled. Thrilled. She is happy to be able to give me a place to fall back on. Deep down I believe she’s been sending prayers out into the universe so I would eventually have to come back here. She has succeeded. She will ask me endless questions about my life in New York, about the guys I was dating (read also: casually sleeping with, sans emotional attachment), about the projects I was working on (and I will have to explain, for the millionth time, the meaning of the words ‘pro bono’). She will tell me that everything happens for a reason. She will tell me this is all a part of God’s plan for me, right before she invites me to go to church with her on Sunday. She will try to get me to attend “events” with her and her group of friends; they will get together to glaze bowls and to learn how to knit and to exchange recipes. I will wonder if they have ever thought about their lives beyond their realm of homemaking.
My dad, it seems, didn’t really notice I was gone, since he hasn’t made any sort of mention that I have returned. Typical.
But, here I am, after exhausting all other possible options. Great. Home sweet whatever.
1 Comments:
I don't get it.
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