It's True and They Should Say It

[rynling]

(Here's a link) to the Buzzfeed article if you're interested. Although the writer doesn't come right out and say this, it's mainly about how people in their twenties and thirties can't afford to live in cities anymore and feel intense loneliness and anxiety about feeling forced to relocate to the suburbs.

While I completely understand that it's horrible not to have the agency to choose where you live, and while I understand that it's emotionally devastating to be torn away from your friend group, I agree with the artist that the specific anxiety concerning "living with your parents" is largely based on an ideology of "independence" that's socially constructed by a very small subset of people.

I don't think this is a "white" thing, necessarily, but it's definitely an American thing. A lot of other cultures, including most cultures in Europe, see the American insistence on single-generation households as not just absurd but actively pathological, and honestly, I tend to agree.

Comments

[runicmagitek]

Very lovely read. Also agree it's not 100% a white thing, especially when I run out of fingers to count my non-white friends also feeling this struggle.

I saw a post the other day on Tumblr that was pretty much "fuck independence" and talked about how it's ok to be interdependent, because we can't do EVERYTHING on our own, like run a farm for food, sew our own clothes, etc. It was really heartwarming, because it's hard when you're not privileged enough to move out and live wherever.