Hello.
I'm writing this to get something off my chest, something that's been on my mind for a while. Something that I know is going to hurt you, but that is hurting me, and that I can't live with anymore. And I want you to know that I am sorry, right now, that it will hurt you.
Many of the things that you've done -- telling me to go to bed at night, telling me to get up in the morning, making me breakfast, making me dinner, making choices for me in what I wear, where I eat, how I interact with the world -- they're fine things to do, and sometimes I enjoy them. But, I'm older now. I don't need them, and when I'm trying to learn for myself why to do the things that you tell me to do (by breaking the rules, for example), you come down on me very, very hard. Harder than the world itself would come down on me, I bet. (I don't know, because I've never been able to find out.)
I don't need you to watch out for me, to watch my actions, to try to control my everyday life into your personal mold of perfection -- there are things that I have not tried, things that I don't know if I like, things that I don't understand the consequences of. And I need to learn these things. I need to find my own path, I need to find my own likes and dislikes. I need to find my own individuality.
I want to find out, from the horse's mouth, why some people take drugs. I want to know what it's like to be homeless, what it's like to try to survive in this world, what sex is, and what it's like, and how to fall in love. I want to do many, many things that you won't let me do, because you care for me and don't want to see me hurt -- honestly, telling me that I'm going to get burned if I put my hand on a hot stove isn't going to help me learn, since I don't even know what being burned is like! That's how it is with everything you tell me -- you say that something bad is going to happen, but you don't tell me what that something bad is like. You don't tell me what that something bad -is-, other than its name. "Getting burned" is a euphemism, but I can't believe that everything is a "burn"...
I don't even know what I want to -do- with my life, because I haven't been able to see what's bad in the world, or what I'm most interested in fixing. I mean, I hear all the time about how horrible the legal system is (you've told me about it, yourself), but without the process of going through it I don't know what it's currently like, I don't know the attitudes of the people within it, I don't know if it's something that I feel I can change, and I don't even know if it's something I'd -want- to change. The same with social support, welfare, anything having to do with government... or utilities... or anything that I hear complaints about. I want to be a problem-solver. I don't want to do something with my life that means nothing... but I don't know how to be a problem-solver, except that I have to find the problems I want to solve.
So, no. I don't want you to get me up at the right time in the morning -- let me oversleep, sometimes, and let me see what it does to my life. Don't tell me to go to bed -- let me stay up late, and let me see what it does to my life. Don't make me breakfast -- let me make my own decision whether to eat, or not, and see what THAT decision does to my life. Don't "mommy" me. I don't need it, I don't want it. I don't want you to nurture me.
I know it's painful, but I have to make it clear. I'm older, now, and have to make my own decisions, and my own mistakes, to learn what I need to learn. So, don't you dare nurture me! I don't want it. I don't need it.
Not anymore.