I am 60 years old.
My son is 33… and he never left.
He’s still in his same old room.
The same closet.
The same bed.
The same life… frozen in time.
He doesn’t work.
He doesn’t study.
He doesn’t look for anything.
He wakes up late, turns on the TV or the computer…and lets the day pass as if it had nothing to do with him.
If I don’t serve him breakfast, he doesn’t eat.
If I don’t wash his clothes, they pile up…until he has nothing clean left.
And the hardest part…is that it didn’t start like this.
I built this.
When he was a child, I never let him do anything on his own.
I tied his shoes… even when he could already do it.
I did his homework… “so he wouldn’t get stressed.”
I spoke to his teachers, solved his conflicts, avoided his problems.
I always thought: “He’ll have time to suffer when he’s an adult.”
But that moment… never came.
At 18, he didn’t know what to study.
I gave him a year.
It turned into three.
I never demanded that he work.
I never pushed him to be uncomfortable.
If he needed money… I was there.
If he wanted to go out… I paid.
While others moved forward… I said: “Everyone has their own pace.”
But he never had a pace.
Because he never had a need.
At 25, he tried to study something technical.
He lasted four months.
He said it was too hard.
I withdrew him.
Yes… me.
I told him he would find something better.
But the truth is… he never looked for anything.
At 30, an aunt offered him a job.
He lasted two weeks.
He complained about everything.
He came back home…and I welcomed him as if he had returned from a war.
I made his favorite meal.
I told him something better would come along.
It never did.
Today his life is an empty routine: he sleeps at dawn, wakes up at noon, eats, watches screens… and repeats.
And if I ask him something as simple as taking out the trash…he replies: “later.”
If I talk to him about work… he gets upset.
He says I pressure him.
Recently, I told him I no longer have the same strength…that my back hurts, that I get tired.
His response? “Then let’s hire someone to help you.”
Two months ago, I got seriously ill.
Three days in bed.
I thought… that would make him react.
The first day, he ordered food.
The second, he left the dishes dirty.
The third, he asked me when I would get up…because he had no clean clothes.
That day I understood something that broke me: he doesn’t know how to live without someone taking care of him.
And that someone… has always been me.
My sisters say I should kick him out.
That he’s already a man.
But when I see him sleeping…I still see that five-year-old boy…hugging his pillow.
And the truth is this: I left him there.
I didn’t prepare him for life.
I protected him from everything.
And now…the world for him is this house.
And I…am the only thing he has.
Sometimes, love without limits…doesn’t protect.
It destroys silently.