Learning to sail my ship

by Taylor Charters, editorial assistant

We all think that we are perfectly capable of living on our own until we are actually out in the real world, away from our parents and truly on our own.

I will admit it. When I was growing up, I was completely sheltered and spoiled.  I never had to do any chores. I mean, literally, never. I started doing my own laundry when I was 17, and who knows when the first time I ever had to unload the dishwasher was. I think it was probably somewhere around the same time that my mom told me “I think that it is time you start doing some things around the house and help out. You need to learn since you will be going away to college soon.”

Let’s be truthful here. I’m pretty sure she spit that one out sometime around the end of my junior year in high school. There were the occasional times when I had to clean my room or make my bed. However, I learned how to play my parents’ game early on, and I knew that all I had to do for my mom to break down and do it was to procrastinate.

Except for the one month of my life when I volunteered to do housekeeping at a summer camp, the last time that I cleaned a toilet before last week was, well, never.  And bills? I don’t even know how to read a bank statement.

I, along with a lot of other people my age, have been spoon-fed in one way or another. I never even had to make decisions on my own. Sometimes that was convenient; sometimes it wasn’t. But I always had my parents to tell me “no” before I made a bad choice.

A few weeks ago, a close friend and I decided to lease a house and moved in together. Life hit me hard.  My now-adopted Texas mom advised us to clean the house before my friend and I moved in. I honestly wish that someone would have had a camera or a recorder, because I’m sure that the episode of  “windexing” a fly to death and then waiting for a friend to come clean up the remains would have been an entertaining life highlight for the grandkids.

Bugs are just one great feat that we are taking by storm. As simple-minded as it sounds, we find great entertainment in the toilet bowl cleaner and more satisfaction comes out of cooking dinner for ourselves rather than coming home from a practice of some sort with it on the table than our parents will ever know.  My parents aren’t there to remind me to feed the dog, or even myself sometimes, and they aren’t there to pay my bills and make sure that I eat healthy. I am completely and totally on my own.

It’s an awkward feeling. I no longer have to ask my parents for permission to go out on a Monday night, and if I don’t come home that night, nobody cares. I don’t have to answer to anybody. I mean, of course parents are always there to fall back on. I have recently learned that more times than not, they really are the best people to give you advice. Sometimes they are going to give it to you anyway, whether you ask for it or not.

I have a new right wing now, a best friend and a roommate. I’m not saying that we leave our families in the dust. I’m just saying that they expand. I have found someone here to learn the same life lessons with me, side by side.

Being on your own, in your own house, 2,000 miles away from everything you know, requires you to take leaps and bounds into adulthood.  I thank God every day for the fact that I have someone who will stay in step with me, and that I have the ability to have these experiences and to make mistakes. I’m not alone in this one. Sometimes I wish that my parents would have given me more responsibility when I was growing up. But I realize that I need to be thankful for everything that I was taught and to put it to use, because by no means was it useless.

Helen Keller once said “ I am not afraid of storms for I am learning to sail my ship.”  Parents can’t teach you everything that you need to know before you dive into the big scary world. Sometimes you have to take one step back to take two steps forward and learn from your own mistakes rather than hearing about it from someone else.