Just when I think I'm the only one who knows how to live between a rock and a bigger rock. Yeah, man.

Awww, P-C, I'm sorry. You need to go to a temp agency and just get some income even it's not career related for right now.

You're going to be dead miserable if you let your folks make decisions for you. You're going to have to assert your autonomy if you want to keep it.

{{{{{{{{{{{{{{P-C}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}

PC, David is wise. Register with a temp agency -- just start bringing some money in. You can totally do this!

I suck at life.

No. I'm not usually big on blaming mom and dad, but it does sound as though your parents left you profoundly ill-equipped to cope with stepping off the track they laid out for you. I can understand why you're freaked, and I hope things start looking better for you soon.

Gah, I'm so sorry this is becoming so hard, PC.

And she said the thing was it was easy for her to void the new lease, which would force me to leave by August 18, but once I entered the new lease, there was no provision to get out of it. I would be stuck with it for the full twelve months. If I left, I'd have to find a subletter or pay double rent. I told her I'd let her know after I looked at my options. Someone better me a job RIGHT NOW.

Wait - there's no "leave everything as it was yesterday" option, with your lease expiring in November?

Life is hard, P-C, but you are doing fine. Really. This is a very difficult situation even if everyone is doing exactly the right thing, and that never happens.

Doesn't your curent lease go through November? Why is all this happening around the nexus of August?

It sounds like the best solution is to get a job. Not the job, not even a good job, necessarily, but a job that you can get some income from and that you can use as a bit of a shied from your parents. Even if it's a job they don't think you should have because you should just live at home and/or get your PhD or whatever notions they want to throw at you to solve what they perceive to be yoru problems, it's something that you can say you have made a commitment to, that you can't just leave. For that matter, volunteer somewhere if you have to. Just to give yourself something concrete to hold on to when your folks start in on you.

((((P-C))))

A few thoughts. You may want to skip the rest of this post for now and read it later.

he reminded me that everyone ever sees their family

Bull. I haven't seen anyone in my immediate family since June 1993. In fact, other than the cousin who invited himself to our place one afternoon in November -- 1994 or 1995, I forget which -- while he was doing training about 2 hours away, that's the last time I saw any blood relative.

Someone better me a job RIGHT NOW.

I know it's a stopgap, keep-from-draining-the-bank-account suggestion and not a long-term, use-the-degree idea, but now would be a good time to get a part-time job in a student hangout. You're in a Major College Town, correct? A restaurant-manager friend in Chapel Hill once told me that early fall was the most difficult time for him. The students were back, so business was up to school-year levels -- but they still had money from the summer jobs, so they didn't look for jobs there until about October.

And asked me if I still wanted to be in the family.

Anyone who'd put that kind of guilt trip on you deserves a brutally blunt answer of the kind they don't want to hear.

Register with a temp agency -- just start bringing some money in. You can totally do this!

I think I already said this, but what David and sumi said. Register with a temp agency, or get a retail job, or take some nothing office job in Ann Arbor just to have something on your resume, or void your lease and move to a city where you might want to live and do one of the above once you get there.

You do not need to solve your entire life at age 24, although I also believed that at the time.

P-C, do you know any professors who might be able to give you a line on short-term local work in or near your field?