💼 Lost my job three weeks ago, still haven't told my parents

Three weeks now since the layoff and I still put on office clothes every morning and leave the house at the same time and sit in the same coffee shop near Ameerpet refreshing job portals like that counts as a plan, because my parents spent the last family wedding telling everyone about the hike I got in March and I have no idea how to walk that back without turning it into a whole extended family conversation about what I did wrong and what I should do next, my father especially tends to spiral about money the second anything sounds uncertain and I keep telling myself I am protecting him from that when really I think I am just protecting myself from having to say the sentence out loud, I have enough savings for maybe six more weeks if I stop ordering coffee at that shop and start bringing my own thermos which is a small and slightly stupid thing to be calculating at this point in my life, two interviews so far, one went well and then went quiet, the other was clearly never going to work out but I said thank you for your time anyway because what else do you say, some mornings I think today is the day I tell them and then I get to the kitchen and my mother is humming something while making breakfast and I just cannot be the one to stop that, so I put the shirt on again and I leave at the same time again and somewhere around week five of this I am going to run out of both money and plausible reasons to be gone all day, which is not a great plan, if you can even call it one, but here we are, still pretending, still refreshing the same three job sites, still coming home at six like clockwork like a man with somewhere to be.

Kept a layoff quiet from my parents for almost five weeks once, same routine of leaving the house at the usual time and sitting in a library nearby most days. Telling them was nowhere near as bad as I had built it up to be in my head, my father mostly asked practical questions about savings rather than reacting the way I expected. The maintaining part was more exhausting than the job search itself.

Two interviews already after three weeks is a decent pace, worth remembering on the harder days. I waited until I had nothing left to report before telling my family about a similar situation, and looking back I wish I had said something earlier instead of carrying the coffee shop routine alone that long. It does not need to be a big dramatic conversation, just a short update is usually enough.

The detail that got me was your parents having just told relatives about your recent hike a few months back, that timing alone explains why this feels so much harder to reveal than the job loss itself.