If you are being shuffled around, then you should feel shuffled around.

A lot of support gets withheld out of fear of awkwardness and misspeaking.

The most reliable ways to make oneself miserable are attempting to change people and not attempting to change circumstances.

I'm not a big fan of the white lie.

You need to make plans for your future, so plan your own future.

There is a difference between your parents' not reporting to you everything they do and keeping secrets from you.

Of course the thoughts and awareness are there, but it's all incomplete and often fanciful - kids know there's something to know, and they fill in a bunch of the blanks with their imaginations if their parents haven't had the conversations and/or established themselves as sources of information. It's rare that the kids know nothing at all, and the somethings they do know are often only partially right or flat-out wrong.