Okay, so this is going to sound ridiculous, and maybe it IS ridiculous, but I just… I don’t know. I can’t stop thinking about it. Anyone else ever feel like they’re simultaneously a completely rational adult and also just a big child in an adult body who wants to stomp their feet and yell? Because that’s where I’m at right now. It’s 2 AM and I’m stewing over… well, over my parents. My fifty-something-year-old parents. Who are perfectly fine, by the way, they’re not like, in danger or anything. But I’m still just SO ANGRY. And I know, I know, it’s not really anger, it’s probably something else entirely that my therapist would have a field day with, but right now it just feels like pure, unadulterated rage. It started a few months ago, I guess. My older sister moved to the city for a job, which, good for her, she always wanted out of this one-horse town. My brother, he’s already been gone for years, married, got two kids, doing his whole thing. So that just leaves… me. And my parents. In a town where everyone knows if you even LOOK at someone else’s mailbox the wrong way. And dinners. That’s where it really hits me. When we were kids, dinners were this whole production, right? My mom would make some huge thing, always too much food, and my dad would be booming about whatever local drama was going on, and us three kids would be elbowing each other and complaining about school or who got the last biscuit. It was LOUD. It was chaos, but it was… full. You know? Now? Now I show up, usually once or twice a week 'cause, like I said, small town, limited options for social interaction, and I genuinely *like* seeing them, but it’s just… crickets. My mom will ask me about work, and I'll tell her something incredibly riveting about spreadsheets, and then there's just silence. My dad will clear his throat, maybe once, maybe twice, and then he just… eats. And stares at his plate. It’s like they’ve forgotten how to talk to each other without a buffer, without us kids as their designated entertainment. They've been married thirty years! And suddenly they’re eating in silence, night after night. I mean, my mom mentioned it to me the other day, completely casually, like "Oh, your dad and I just eat in silence now," and she even GIGGLED. Giggled! Like it was a charming little quirk, not a giant, gaping void where conversation used to be. And that's why I'm so mad, I think. Because it’s like they just… gave up. They just decided that this is what their life is now, this quiet, almost mournful existence, and they’re fine with it. Or they pretend to be. And it makes me want to scream at them, like, "WHAT ARE YOU DOING? YOU’RE STILL ALIVE! YOU STILL HAVE EACH OTHER!" But then I don’t, obviously, because that would be insane. Instead, I sit there, pushing my peas around, and making polite small talk, and then I go home and rage internally at my own parents for not having enough… *oomph*. For letting their lives get so small. Is that awful of me? To be mad at them for how they’re choosing to live their perfectly harmless, if incredibly dull, lives? Am I the only one who feels this way about their parents, like, ever? Because it feels really, really specific and probably deranged. I just… I don’t want to end up like that. Just… quietly existing. It scares the HELL out of me.