It feels awful to try to communicate meaningfully with my parental units, like pushing through endless chest deep mud, & seemed to almost never have any effect, no matter how hard or how many times I tried.

In pieces, realized that this is not normal. And it's not my failing, it's theirs.

That they put so little effort into communicating with me isn't a sign that they're better at it than I am. It's a sign that they just don't care about communicating with me.