I couldn't figure out who was checking my email. My junk mail was untouched, but emails from friends, guys or financial institutions were no longer in bold, as if to say, "Someone's had their nose in your business but wasn't savvy enough to mark Unread."

I had recently moved back home, and apparently Mom had made a habit of peeking around my office (okay, my brother's old bedroom) before I woke up every day. At 14 I might've accepted my mom's obsession with my online activity (okay, probably not) but at age 28, after a decade of living on my own, this was not cool. Answer: How To Deal With My Mom?

Apparently I'm not the only person my age encountering serious threats to their personal space. Recent studies estimate that "boomerang kids" are an increasing 21st-century trend, with somewhere around 40 percent of young adults living once again under their parents' roofs immediately post-college or after a temporary stint in the real world. The economy and unemployment rates are major factors, as is the Generation Me belief that an individual should never have to suffer through an unhappy job or relationship (which I reported in a recent YourTango article). What it adds up to is a mass exodus—back to childhood bedrooms. Watch: Recession-Style Dating

For many boomerang-ers, the toughest part is getting back the personal space they had when they lived on their own. When I went off to college, I was free to make my relationship decisions without Mom saying, "Oh honey, even if you're mad at him you should call him back. Don't be mean." My roommate never told me my attitude sucked when my college flavor of the week upset me; instead she said, "Oh well. Hey, there's this party tonight..."In my young adulthood I learned to bounce back quickly from love letdowns because my decisions were my own, and because my feelings deserved respect and I could enforce that with self-assuredness. And financially I learned to manage things too, living for four years in New York City while paying my own rent, and even traveling in Europe for a year. I'd evolved into a pretty self-sufficient individual (and if I could just get a book deal, I'd be totally independent!).

So imagine how humbling it was to go back to sharing space with Mom and Dad (though God bless them for taking me back in). I cheerily jumped back into my old role pitching in with chores, sharing the day's successes over dinner, and even helping with bills. But when it came to my personal life, I had to defend my turf with an iron shield. Finances and my career choice were as much a target of conversation as my love life had always been, and believe you me, there was no shortage of romantic coaching now, either. In the last ten years my role in the universe had changed, but my role in the family had not. Despite the fact that this was who I'd been since birth, it was not me at all.