Soliloquy: Why Do I Care?

I keep forgetting I'm supposed to be an adult.

I was one of those kids. The smart ones. The weird ones. The ones who still live with their parents through "college." But I'm an adult. It's a weird place to be in; between caring about what your parents expect from you and what you expect from yourself. I'm not one to care much about peers, because in the end, who are they anyway? But I still seem to care so much what my parents think, no matter how much I don't want to.

I'm a Grey's Anatomy fan. Seriously, I've been watching since season one episode one. W and I often talk about who's who and she decided long before I accepted that I'm a Meredith. I'm whiny and romantic. I have trouble admitting when I need help. I have a strange relationship with my parents and I only have one "person" in the world, even when she's a bitch and that's W; W gets to be the awesome Christina, and I'm stuck being the misty-eyed Meredith.

In any case, Meredith is this whining, moody, but very effective and logically illogical doctor. She falls in love with the most imperfect perfect man, and she makes a living by saving lives. Sounds awesome, but then life gets complicated. And then you meet her parents. Her father is this ineffective man who she can't connect with and her mother is this domineering super-surgeon with Alzheimer's who she still craves affection from and secretly idolizes and dislikes immensely.

While I'm not saying my parents are like that, I am saying I understand what it's like to be on the cusp of responsibility for your own life and realizing that you've got to be accountable to the people who raised you. It kind of sucks a little; you're just taking the reins on your life and now someone else's expectations of you are misguiding what you know you want to do, and who you know you want to be.

 I'm spoiled, and elitist. I think I know a lot when I really know I know next to nothing. I'm scared of everything outside of my comfort zone and I don't like to share. I know who I am without people telling me repeatedly, but my parents always seem to hit me right in the ribs with their criticism care and their guilt love; they tell me all the time, with and without words who they think I am and who they raised, not realizing I'm making my own person. I'm making myself, despite the fact that they've already laid down the foundation, I'm building my own house. I want to not care what they think, but I just end up feeling guilty about my lack of caring.

So the question I keep asking is why do I care? I never cared about friends in high school. I never cared about co-workers on a job. I never cared about much of anything outside of myself except for my parents. I guess I could say that, being an only child with a military background, they're all I think I have and I should value them. But the real part of me, that selfish, not-yet-grown-up part of me just says "Screw it, let them think what they want" while I go on and live my life the way I always wanted.

Where's the balance in that? Where's a survey that I can take every day to ensure that I'm giving at least 5% of care and attnetion to what others, including my parents, think? Why don't I care as much as I think I should?