Moving Out

by Marian Klatt

I didn't move out of my mother's house until I was twenty-four--that's five years ago now--so true independence came a bit late for me. Technically, it wasn't my mother's house, because we rented, and my grandmother and I paid more of the bills than my mother did. She was a single parent, though, and I an only child, so to keep this simple, I'll say I moved out of my mother's house when I was twenty-four.

It was the most difficult transition I've made in my life. While I was really looking forward to being able to have whole evenings without a television on, cooking even when it was hot out, taking a bath with absolute peace and quiet, it was harder to leave because I had stayed so long.

We had settled into a solidly co-dependent relationship. She had a lot of health problems, which kept her from working, and I was resentful because I had to go to school full-time and work full-time to help pay the bills. I was resentful because I couldn't leave, because she needed me. When I learned that being independent meant that you had to allow other people to be independent, too, it changed everything. I learned that what I had seen as my responsibility had actually enabled her to continue living the way she was, and to not take charge of--or even take basic responsibility for--her own life.

I told her two months in advance of my move, and at first she didn't believe me -- I had said such things before. As it became clear it was true, her emotions became increasingly unpredictable. She varied so widely between the angry and sad fits by the time she pulled the big move--leaving a journal open to a page describing how she was planning her suicide--that I knew exactly what I was going to read before I picked the book up. Her manipulation had become so predictable I could actually roll my eyes at it. While I knew I had to accept that she just might follow through and kill herself, I knew that if I made the mistake of putting her life ahead of mine at this crucial point, I would never, ever, live my own life again. It was very difficult to imagine having to deal with my mother killing herself as a result of something I'd done, but there was also a cold, self-preserving part of myself that knew I would be able to deal with it if it happened. It seemed much better than the alternative of living as a prisoner of her wants and needs.

I took only a few things to my new apartment -- a one-bedroom, third-floor garden apartment with a balcony. I had only five pieces of furniture, my clothes, and some dishware from Wal-Mart. When it actually happened, she was okay. She seemed resigned to the fact that she had done everything she could to get me to stay, and now she was on her own.

There were still some bumps, of course. She wanted me to take her somewhere nearly every day, and finally I just started saying, "No, I'm busy." Without me to support her, she was able to start working and find her own way around town. I still helped out here and there, but I set the boundaries as firm as possible. I had to take care of my own life first.

It has all worked out really well so far. I live the life of an independent woman. I have those long, quiet evenings I wanted--whole weeks, even--without a television. I can have a hot, quiet bath whenever I please and I bake bread even when it's 95 degrees out. It seems strange and foreign to me now even to imagine the time when I didn't have these simple, sometimes silly, little blazes of independence scattered about my life trail. What a difference a few years can make.