There is a particular kind of loneliness that comes from realizing that someone can be an important part of your life and still not know how to support you in the way you need.
I've been thinking about that a lot lately, particularly in relation to my family. I think I've known for a while that my mother doesn't treat me exactly the same way she treats my siblings. I have tried to explain the differences away, or convince myself that maybe I'm interpreting things too personally. She has always said that we have a more special relationship, partly because we can give each other a hard time and supposedly it doesn't affect the dynamic between us.
I don't completely agree with that.
There is a difference between being able to joke with someone and being repeatedly criticized by them. There is a difference between teasing that exists because two people are comfortable with each other and comments that continue even after you've explained that they hurt you. At some point, the explanation that "that's just how we are" stops being enough.
What bothers me isn't that my mother has opinions. I don't actually want everyone around me to agree with everything I do. What I have been struggling with is the difference between support and opinion.
When my sister doesn't get a job, the response is generally encouraging. There is reassurance that the next opportunity will work out, or that the employer simply didn't know what they were missing. When my brother does something that might have gotten a completely different reaction from me at the same age, there seems to be more understanding and patience.
With me, the response often feels different.
When I change jobs, the conclusion becomes that I can't stick with anything. When I sleep during the day because my schedule is shifted, it becomes evidence that I sleep too much. When I know a lot about something, it becomes something to make fun of rather than something to be proud of. When I am trying to figure out what I want my life to look like, the focus often seems to be on what I'm doing wrong rather than what I'm trying to build.
The difficult part is that I know some of the criticism isn't completely invented. I've had a lot of jobs. I've changed directions. Some of my decisions haven't worked out the way I hoped. I don't want to pretend otherwise just because the criticism hurts.
But context matters.
In Florida, I went through several jobs in a relatively short period. The first was a poor fit because there wasn't enough to do, and I struggle with jobs where I'm expected to stand around and find ways to occupy myself. The second did not provide the hours I had been promised, while the business was also going through management changes. I already had another opportunity lined up before leaving it. The third lasted until I moved back to Indiana.
The jobs I've had since returning to Indiana have also had their own reasons for ending. One hired me as a bartender and then told me I would actually be serving for the first few months. Another involved a long commute for relatively low pay, and I left because I believed another opportunity would be a better overall fit. Then there was the distillery.
That one is harder to explain because it wasn't an objectively terrible job. I still go back and forth about whether leaving it was the safest financial decision, especially because I didn't have another stable job lined up. But the pay wasn't great without tips, tips had become inconsistent, the commute was expensive, and I increasingly felt like an outsider. My anxiety was also getting worse.
Eventually, after driving home from a concert earlier this month, I knew I was going to leave. There wasn't really a debate in my head anymore. The difficult part was explaining the decision to everyone else.
And that distinction has become important to me.
Sometimes I know what I want before I am willing to admit that I know. The uncertainty isn't necessarily about the choice. It is about whether everyone else will agree with it.
For most of my life, I have asked my family what I should do even when I already knew what I wanted. Looking back, I don't think I always needed them to make the decision for me. I needed their acknowledgment that my decision made sense. I needed someone else to say, "Yes, I understand why you're doing this."
In other words, I needed permission.
I'm trying to change that.
I've recently started pursuing several different projects that represent different possibilities for my future. One is something I can work on in the short term and potentially use to bring in money. Another is something I see as a longer-term interest that can exist alongside the rest of my life. The third is much closer to the career direction I actually want, and I'm already taking steps toward it.
From the outside, I can understand how this might look like another example of me starting too many things.
From the inside, it feels completely different.
These aren't random ideas I've picked up because I don't know what else to do. They are things I've wanted to explore for years. Some have been delayed because I was afraid I couldn't do them. Others were put off because I worried that people would think they were unrealistic or wouldn't understand why I wanted them.
I'm finally trying anyway.
That doesn't mean I expect every project to become permanent. I'm actually trying to become more comfortable with the idea that something can be worthwhile without lasting forever. Exploring something and eventually deciding it isn't right for me isn't necessarily failure. Sometimes you learn something. Sometimes you gain experience. Sometimes you discover something you love.
The problem is that my family often interprets changing direction as evidence that I don't stick with anything.
That interpretation makes it difficult to explain why these projects feel different.
I'm not saying I will never change my mind again. I'm saying I want the freedom to explore things that matter to me without having to prove beforehand that they will become lifelong commitments.
I have also realized that when I'm talking about one of these projects, I'm often not asking for criticism.
Sometimes I'm just brainstorming.
I'll have ten different ideas and I'll say all of them out loud because I'm trying to figure out which ones make sense. When the immediate response is, "You can't do all of that," it can be frustrating because I wasn't saying I had already committed to doing all of it. I was thinking out loud.
When I explain that, I sometimes expect the conversation to change. Instead, the same criticism can come back several minutes later.
Eventually, I get upset. Then the response becomes that my mother was "just trying to help" and that she'll stop sharing her thoughts if I'm going to argue with her.
But I don't think disagreement is the problem.
I think the problem is that I don't always need an opinion in that moment. Sometimes I need support.
I have actually said this directly. Sometimes I need someone to say, "Those are good ideas." Sometimes I need someone to say, "You've put a lot of work into this." Sometimes when I'm upset, I don't need to be told to simply get over it. I need someone to say, "It'll be okay."
Support doesn't require agreement.
Someone can think one of my ideas needs work and still recognize that I'm excited about it. Someone can disagree with a decision and still acknowledge that I've put thought into making it. Someone can challenge me without making me feel foolish for caring.
That distinction has become especially important because I don't have many people I can talk to about the things I'm passionate about.
Sometimes I'll try talking to my mother about something I genuinely care about, and eventually the response becomes some variation of, "I don't care," or "don't bother me with that." I don't expect everyone to be interested in everything I'm interested in. That's unrealistic.
But there is a difference between not sharing someone's interest and making them feel like their excitement is an inconvenience.
When there aren't many places to talk about the things you care about, those moments can hurt more than they might otherwise. You finally try to share something, and instead of feeling connected to someone, you walk away feeling embarrassed that you brought it up at all.
I've also started noticing how much of this has affected the way I respond to my mother.
There have been times when I've dismissed things she cares about, particularly when she talks about ongoing criminal cases based on information from online personalities who act as though they've solved the cases themselves. I don't like that kind of speculation, especially when people don't have access to all the evidence.
But I've had to admit that sometimes I don't simply disagree. I dismiss.
And I don't like that.
I can see where it comes from. I've experienced being dismissed, and sometimes I've responded by giving someone else the same treatment. But understanding why I do something doesn't automatically make it acceptable.
I don't want to become someone who says, "I treat people this way because that's how I was treated."
If I recognize a pattern, I want to be able to interrupt it.
That is probably one of the biggest differences between where I am now and where I was a year or two ago. I'm much more willing to look at my own behavior and say, "I don't like that I did this."
Not because I want to blame myself for everything, but because I want to have some control over what I carry forward.
I can't control whether my mother changes.
I've already accepted that she may never become the person I want her to be.
I can explain my perspective perfectly and she may still disagree. I can explain why a particular comment hurts me and the comments may still happen. I can explain why I left a job and she may still believe I simply can't stick with anything.
That realization hurts, but it also gives me somewhere to put the responsibility.
It isn't my job to convince someone else to see me correctly.
What I can control is whether I continue asking for their permission to live my own life.
That has been one of the hardest parts of growing up.
For a long time, I thought becoming independent meant being financially independent, getting a job, moving out, and making my own decisions. I am realizing that there is another kind of independence that happens internally.
It is the ability to make a decision and tolerate the fact that someone else might not approve.
It is being able to say, "I understand why you disagree, but I'm still going to do this."
It is trusting that disagreement doesn't automatically mean you've made the wrong choice.
I'm still learning that.
And I don't think I'm going to suddenly stop caring what my family thinks. They are still my family. Their opinions will probably always matter to me to some degree.
But there is a difference between caring what someone thinks and allowing their opinion to determine what you do.
I think that is the part I'm finally trying to learn.
I don't want to spend the rest of my life trying to convince my mother that I'm not lazy, that I can commit to things, that my interests aren't ridiculous, or that my decisions have logical reasons behind them.
I want to build a life where I don't have to make that argument anymore.
Not because I have finally proven her wrong.
Because I no longer need her agreement to know who I am.
Maybe that is what growing up actually looks like sometimes.
Not becoming completely independent from the people who raised you, but becoming independent enough to recognize that their version of you doesn't have to be the version you believe.
And maybe the hardest part is accepting that someone can be an important part of your life and still not be capable of giving you the kind of support you need.
That doesn't make the hurt disappear.
But it does mean I can stop waiting for them to become someone else before I allow myself to move forward.
I can take the lessons that are useful.
I can leave the ones that aren't.
And I can finally start writing a life that doesn't require anyone else's permission to exist.