8th May 2022, this is the day when I've finally said enough is enough!
I am a middle-aged man (but young at heart) who isn't married (at least not in my home country) and I've always been very good to regularly visit the parents. I try to do it once a month.
It is a more than 2 hour drive for me to visit my parents.
As they've got older and older, they get more and more boring. I've started to dread going to visit them because I just know I will be bored out my mind. I don't watch TV in my house (don't even have a TV license) but that's all they do, watch TV. And they watch TV very loud too (because they are going a bit deaf), and the constant inane prattle from the TV drives me crazy.
Because of the distance, I've always stayed a night with them (used to be 2 or maybe more, but I've been finding it harder and harder to stay with them.) Now I have decided:
I will only visit them for a day trip!*😎
* Unless there is some very pressing reason.
Reasons:
- I miss my home.
- I miss my own bed.
- I miss my own things (and things in my own bed 😉)
- I don't like their home (it's a 2-bed retirement flat)
- Sharing 1 bathroom (with no lock on the door) between 3 people is a bit gross.
- They bore me senseless.
- I can't stand to be around them because I don't ever want to be like them!**
- Sometimes I think I was an adopted orphan, because they are so unlike me!
- If I ever end up in a routine - wake-up, watch TV, go-to-bed - please shoot me!
- It feels like a waste of a weekend, and I work a 5 day week, weekends are so precious.
- I will be happier in my time with them (rather than feeling "I can't wait to get away").
- Maybe we can plan to do something in the day I'm there.
- More quality less quantity!
- I love my freedom!***
** I definitely don't want to end up with the boring married couple syndrome (where two people get married, they want to please each other, to the extent of not doing what they want to do, because they think it will displease their partner, so they end up doing nothing except watching the f**king TV!)
*** I often have a very great desire to just be by myself. A great desire to be alone. A great desire to get away from people. Especially to get away from people who have a negative (downer) effect on me. I want to get away!
Don't live you life for others!
Image: Boring Old People - "What Shall We Do Today?" - "Let's sit on the sofa and watch TV all day, then go back to bed..."
