Call your mom and dad.

Please. And cut them some slack.

They are waiting for you to call them even if they don’t tell you. You’re either 10 miles or thousands of miles away from them and either one is too much for them to bear. I know the freedom is fun and we don’t like to be on the phone for too long when there is so much to explore, but hearing their voices will never hurt.

I feel like as young adults we sometimes forget our parents are people too

We forget they cry at the sad parts of movies and that they’ve felt most of the pains we feel now

And most importantly, that they want for us more than we will ever want for ourselves

Most times, these words they struggle to say sound more like, “I’m big and you’re small, I’m right and you’re wrong.”

But what they really mean is “I wish you could see this the way that I do, I wish you were 5 and depended on me to make decisions for you, I wish you could see the world I want to give you.”

It’s very hard to hear this when your wants and needs are above everything

When you care more about your happiness even if it means the sadness of others

Valuing your own opinion is by no means terrible

But sometimes in doing that, we forget that their voices were the ones that taught us how to walk, leap, and in some ways, think

We forget that the older we get, their voices will form an inevitable harmony with ours

We forget that they are parts of ourselves

And while we must one day grow out of these parts, we must not completely discard them