My in-laws were visiting for the weekend. One of the major sources of conflict in my relationship with my husband is and always has been his parents and how much time we spend with them, and this weekend was no different. Part of the reason I moved away from North Carolina was to get away from both his family and mine, and yet there they were, in my apartment. They're not bad people. They are, like everyone else, just people, living out their lives and doing the things they want to do. But it's when my father-in-law is listing out and commenting on every single ingredient in a bottle of water, or is listing out and describing every relative he knows in a three hundred mile radius that I just hate myself and wish I could be anywhere else. At least they didn't talk about Trump to me, though apparently the first thing they said to my husband upon getting off the plane was "Don't go to Europe."

More than any of that, though, is the sense that they're part of a world that I'm no longer a part of. They talk about things happening where I used to live and in a university I used to go to, and I don't care. I'm not a person connected to that place anymore, if I ever was in the first place. It's also that as soon as they arrive, I'm put back into the role of "child," which I'm not. I am twenty-five years old, and while I know I'm not a proper adult in any sense of the term, I'm also not a child.

I think what also didn't help was that two of my husband's siblings were there too. They're both in high school, and it's a bit fascinating to be able to look at a teenager and recognise both that that was me, and how far I've come. They're still at an age where their interests are their parents' interests, and where their concerns don't extend beyond the boundaries of their high school walls. They're still at an age where "tampon" is too naughty a word to play in Boggle. It's kind of fantastic to remember what I was like a decade ago, see where I am now, and look forward to what I'll be and how much I laugh at myself in another decade.

But I'm glad the visit is done. I can go back to being me again.