I was seventeen when I became the CFO of a three-bedroom apartment. My parents worked twelve-hour shifts at the dry cleaners but couldn't tell a late notice from a grocery flyer. I spent my AP Bio periods calling Con Ed to dispute charges. "Yes, this is my father speaking," I’d say into my flip phone, trying to make my voice drop an octave. It’s objectively funny because I’m a woman. The customer service reps never caught on... or they just didn't care as long as the check cleared. Every Sunday was a grocery audit. I had this elaborate spreadsheet before I even had a driver’s license. I knew the price per ounce of every brand of rice in a five-mile radius. My mother would just hand me her crumpled cash and look at me with this... terrifying trust. It wasn't love, exactly. It was total dependence. Instrumental parentification—that’s the clinical term for it. I was the only bridge between them and a world that was looking for any excuse to fleece them. I’m thirty-two now. I have a career in data analysis. SURPRISE. I still log into my parents' bank portal every Friday night. I see everything they buy. My mother bought a thirty-dollar face cream last week and I felt this surge of... something. Not anger. Just this weird, reflexive need to audit the transaction. I checked the balance. I checked the rent. I checked the gas. I’m a grown woman and I’m still their unpaid accountant... My friends are all hitting these milestones. They’re buying houses or complaining about their wedding budgets. They ask me how I’m so "organized" with my finances. I tell them I’ve been doing it since the Bush administration. They laugh. I laugh too. It’s HILARIOUS that I spent my senior prom night arguing with a Comcast rep about a hidden fee while my date waited in the driveway. A real riot... I tried to explain the stress of it to my mother once. I told her I wanted her to learn how to pay the water bill online so I didn't have to do it from my office during lunch. She just looked at me and said, "You are so smart, why would I do it wrong when you do it right?" She thinks it’s a compliment. It’s actually a life sentence. I have an avoidant attachment to my own mailbox now. I see a white envelope and my heart rate hits 110. Simple Pavlovian response. I’m sitting here at 2am looking at the spreadsheet for my own life. I’m trying to calculate if I can afford to move to a different city, but the math always ends with their zip code. I don't know why I can’t just... stop. I have the money. They have the money. But the fear of the lights going out never really leaves the person who was responsible for the switch...