Some parents go all out for graduation. The speech, the dinner, the crying, the whole production. And then the kid moves into a dorm and falls off the radar entirely

College is rough for a lot of people, and having parents who respond to actual crying phone calls with «you’ll figure it out» and then hang up is a pretty efficient way to communicate to the woman who shared her parents’ «shenanigans» that she is on her own.

So she figures it out. Handles everything herself, stops reaching out, adjusts her expectations, and becomes genuinely self-sufficient out of necessity rather than choice. Character building, sure. Also just kind of lonely.