A few drops of rain never killed anyone

My mum is very preoccupied with everything, always has, always will. My dad worries about safety in virtually every situation imaginable. Thus, my parents are overprotective of me. I can´t not eat a lot in every meal, I can´t step on the cold stone floor at home barefoot without someone ordering me to put some shoes on, I can´t go on our backyard – fully circled with high walls and an alarm system – at night otherwise I “would get a bad cold”, I can´t get out of the house without a jacket in the slightest sign of a colder day, I can´t generally go to places other than malls, I can´t stay up too late – too late being after ten – or my mum will start screaming about the “night rituals she has to proceed in order to get me to sleep” and sometimes mention my total lack of responsability. My dad will only tell me that´s not a smart thing to do and I´m a smart girl, which works better because it makes me feel bad specially when he speaks calmly and low – it takes a bit to make him mad, but once you do you either look at him with the same wide-eyed expression, like I do, or you tell him some utterly juvenile comment and a complaint on how much you´ve been doing, like my mum.

Every time I have seen the rain it was through a shut window or under an umbrella. Usually I´m with my mum, and she always manages to find some kind of umbrella to get us safely in the car, perfectly dry. Always. Problem is, sometimes I want to get soaked from the rain. The first time I got to do that I was in a school field trip and we were getting out of the bus when the rain started to pour, three years ago. We were dripping wet by the time we got to the museum. It was bloody fantastic.

Truth is, it wouldn´t kill me to dance in the rain, walk barefoot, go out in the cold, eat just enough to supply my nutritional needs. It might even make me happier. But I have found it is of no use to discuss the matter with them – I will always be their little girl –, even if I´ve proven to be responsible enough to take care of myself since I spent five days away from home in the Graduation trip, being outside in the rain and in the beach as much as I could, and did not come back sick or traumatised in any way people expected me to be. Another major issue with being overprotected is that people – including your parents – trust you to be a total idiot with no sense of self-preservation. They don´t think I can survive on my own, even if I am surrounded by employees, restaurants, and medical help. And I can fend for myself, thank you. I am well aware that people will not treat me like my parents do (read: spoil) and therefore am not surprised by whatever unfamiliar situation I face. I´m polite, I smile and say all the right things and usually manage to work things out.

Though I love my parents more than anything in the world, being this protected makes me want to live on my own, to get an appartment next to the university I get into and stay there, do things my way for a change – use see-through breakable glasses and white plain ceramic plates! I would come back for family dinners on weekends anyway. And that future is two years away. I take some comfort in that, eventhough mum is full of stories of how she suffered when she moved to a bigger city in a little sorority or something much like that, how she was always nervous and how Grandma had spoiled her. I guess I will suffer too, but I trust it won´t be so bad – I am less naïve than she was.

Dec 21^st, 2008