The mystery of the boomerang generation

At least to me, anyway

I’ve always thought of myself as a pretty typical kid. As a little girl, I didn’t like wearing dresses, but I liked playing with dolls — I even made clothes for them — as well as hopscotch, jump rope, marble games, and an imaginary game called “House” with the neighborhood boys. (You can guess how that game goes). I could be a little bratty sometimes, with temper tantrums, but for the most part, I wanted to please my parents. So, I went to church diligently and did all the things that other little girls do — respect the elders, prayed to God, did well in school, and hoped for a bright future.

It’s no surprise then that as I grew older, I thought I would go to college, graduate, get a good job, and live on my own. The thought of a departure couldn’t be more bittersweet, so off to college I went and into dorm life, where I had roommates but was also on my own for almost a year. Then I transferred schools and moved back to Portland, lived with my mom during this “transition period,” which only lasted for a few months before moving in with my then-boyfriend-now-husband. I thought that was what you were supposed to do. Before the word “adulting” became normalized in American culture, I was doing what I thought everyone else from my generation was doing — growing up and spreading my wings.

Little did I know that many years later, what I’ve been doing is not so common anymore. It wasn’t until several years ago (or perhaps last year) that I began to see evidence…