I'm nineteen, and my parents pay my rent.

Living in my own little bubble for the last week (and how heavenly that week was...) has meant a serious lack of blog reading and media interaction. This morning, I woke up, blew the dust off my laptop, and got ready to read everything I'd missed (oh, and avoid the ninety-odd emails waiting for me). This little beauty of an opinion piece, and its five hundred comments, is what caught my eye.

http://www.mamamia.com.au/weblog/2010/12/im-23-i-live-at-home-and-heres-why.html

                        I was trying to put the actual piece on this post, but blogger is being a pain-in-the-arse

So, apparently Lucy is lazy, spoilt, ungrateful and a whole bunch of other names which basically translates into a no-hope-Gen Y-leach-on-society.
Guess what? She's not.

I'm nineteen and I live at home, most of the time. At home, I live with my Mum, my Dad, and occasionally my twenty-one-year-old brother. When I live at home, Mum or Dad cook dinner, Mum does my washing, and if I want to go out for dinner with the girls and have a few drinks, Dad will drive me. I don't pay board, but I can stack a dishwasher and I can follow a recipe.
I usually have a hectic Monday-Friday uni schedule, so I also live in a small, two (kind-of-three) bedroom, flat about five minutes away from uni during the week, with my brother (who pretty much lives there full-time). And, my parents pay the rent.

No, I don't come from an insanely rich family.
No, I don't demand money from parents. It's actually the opposite. The number of times I've started to pack my car to drive up to house #2 for the week only to have a fight with my Mum about the groceries she's bought for us, is off the scale.

I'm in a crappy $14 an hour job that I've had since the end of school. I come home on weekends to work, AND to see my parents, because let's face it, I have the best relationship with both of them. I've tried to get a better job, to help my parents out with money, but no-one wants to hire a basically unavailable uni student who lives in two places.
My brother earned (he doesn't have a job at the moment) quite a bit more than me, so is able to help my parents out with bills, and he also gets rental assistance from the Government, money which goes to my parents.

I'm not stupid, I do realise how lucky I am. But, do not call me spoilt, ungrateful or a "typical Gen Y".

I come from a close-knit family on both sides, and it was a natural instinct for my parents to offer all the help they're giving their children. They don't live in poverty whilst my brother and I live in 'luxury'. We ALL live comfortably.

We live in 2010- an era where people are so different and unique that you can't stereotype them to their generations. So what if my parents what to help me and my brother have the best start to adult life as we possibly can? It's their choice and they're happy to do it. I'm driven, I work hard, and I'm determined about the path I want to take, so why can't I accept the help my parents want to offer me, without being labelled something I'm not?

When uni is over, when I have a hex debt that will make me ill, when I have a career, when I fully move out, when I become an adult, I have no doubt my parents will be by my side, ready to help. When will that be? It could be in a few years, it could be in ten years. But nobody is pushing me, especially my parents, who are happy to take it as it comes.

So before you go to call me spoilt and naive, and you continue to hassle Lucy, how about you don't? Because you're not us, you're not our parents, and you don't decide how we live our lives, just like we don't decide (or judge) yours.

Now, I'm going to sip Martini's beside my insanely huge pool and light a cigarette with a $100 note, all whilst my parents clean my room and do my laundry.
*If you don't realise that last statement is sarcasm, you have to get out more.