Dear Captain Awkward,
I am working towards going on a year-long trip around the world. Besides the fact that it’s just this dream I’ve always had, I’m doing this for a few reasons.
1) I hate my life where I’m living and who I’ve become. It’s nice enough, if you’re already married with children. But I was recently in Berlin and I loved being in a city that had 24-hour public transport and interesting artsy things to go to all the time. I felt wonderful there, like I was an interesting, capable, sexy person, and I didn’t want to come home. Here I feel stagnant and boring. I moved across country to live here after college because my parents live here (big mistake, although at least now I have my own apartment).
2) I’ve always wanted to have children, and in particular adopt children. I’m 32, so I’m hitting the age where I have to start thinking of that as a serious goal if it’s going to happen at all. But I want to travel the world first, because after I become a presumably single parent it’s going to be a lot harder to travel. Possible, but harder.
The issue is with my parents. I have a troubled relationship with my dad, who is neurotic, has used money as a means to control me, and constantly orders me around like I’m his employee, so I knew he wouldn’t be on my side. But I had high hopes that my mother would be more supportive. That’s not what happened. They both recently held a little intervention in which they basically told me not to do it. Specifically, they said that they thought I should have a job lined up when I got back. I feebly told them what my therapist told me when I expressed worries about that same thing, that this trip was going to open doors for me and that it wasn’t important to have everything set in stone just yet. That did not go over well. I’m planning on having an extra $10,000 saved up as a cushion when I get back to the states. They don’t think that’s good enough. They don’t think that $20,000 is enough for the trip budget even though I have studied the budgets of other travelers who have succeeded to do this. They told me that I should just keep the soulless job that I have and travel somewhere for two weeks every year. I’m nauseous even thinking about that.
There’s a familiar pattern when it comes to my parental interactions: I want to do awesome, scary thing. They disagree with the thing, most of the time bringing up money or them not wanting to support me as the reason why it won’t work. I either do what they tell me or come up with some sort of compromise. Eventually, I realize that I should have just done what I wanted and become regretful and bitter. I don’t want to keep doing that. I’m tired of trying to manage their anxiety over my life choices on top of my own worries. When I was in Berlin, they insisted that I email them twice a day, once when I woke up and once at night like I’m on curfew or something. What the hell? I know they do this because they love me and they worry, but their worries really trample all over my self-confidence.
Compounding my problems is that, aside from my therapist, I don’t really have a lot of people that I can talk to. Many friendships from college have faded due to distance, and I haven’t made any new ones. I have a night job, so social stuff that is usually held at night is off limits to me now.
So I’m asking for 1) scripts to deal with my parents, because when they get into intervention mode I tend to shut down and not say anything, and 2) avenues to find emotional support for making my travel dreams happen.
Sincerely,
Wants to be Nellie Bly (she/her pronouns)
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