For a person such as myself, it's realizing that your parents are no longer the upstanding moral guardians you once looked up towards to help you out of the stickiest of situations.
As for mine, most of the sticky situations I was in...I wish they'd let me stay with them.
Sending your child away to places to treat their troubled mind is one of the most neglectful things a parent can do, in my personal opinion. And with each place I was sent to, my love for my parents...faded like a dwindling fire.
So sometimes I can't help but feel like my parents really have failed me, that no longer can they truly justify their actions by saying they did some of these things because they truly thought it was best for me. The more they try and justify, the more annoyed I become.
It's getting harder for me to communicate with them, as I grow out of this rotten shell of a teenager that was traumatized in his youth, and slowly into a man that sees the world for what it is, and his parents for what they are; flawed human beings.
Should you all live long(er), it'll change several times, quite possibly for the better, quite possibly seemingly permanently unto last breaths.
My dad mystified me of my life. But then my mom passed a couple decades ago, and I got to witness him living and making choices out of the context of being with my mom - the only context for him I'd ever known.
He surprised the heck out of me freed from that relationship - and there's was well above average good. And, yet, of course there were shackles, just like there are shackles called the opinions and/or potential reactions of others in public posting spaces that can alter one's public posting anywhere from subtly to "making" one abandon ever doing so again.
Turns out we're not only a lot more alike than I thought, but I'm actually envious of what I'll call his "ongoing vicissitude response": shit just rolls right off of him. I want that badly, and am grateful I've still a living example of what that looks like, so that I might figure out how the fuck it's done in real circumstances.... :-)