Maybe they’ll learn from my example that they don’t have to sacrifice their futures for their parents’ convenience. As for my parents, they’re finally learning what actual parenting looks like, and it’s expensive, exhausting, and thankless work. Who would have thought? The irony isn’t lost on me that they spent years telling me I needed to be more grateful for what they provided when the reality was that I was the one providing for them.

Unpaid labor, free child care, and a convenient scapegoat for their own failures as parents. But that chapter of my life is closed now. I’m writing a new one.

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