Townies is a series about life in New York, and occasionally other cities.

The last time I slept alone, it was in a crib. Ever since then, I shared a bed with my mother. And this was in Washington Heights, a Manhattan neighborhood known for its relatively affordable and spacious apartments.

I guess our place, with its four bedrooms, is considered big by many standards. But with only one bathroom, it definitely wasn’t meant for eight people.

There’s my mother, 61, and my father, 82, and my Uncle Ramon, who has lived with us since he got his green card back in January 2000. Then there are the twins, Elaine and Rosemary, my 30-year-old sisters. And last year my 27-year-old sister, Vanessa, was laid off from her job in Virginia Beach and wound up moving back home with her 3-year-old daughter. She is pregnant, due this August. We’re like the Dominican Kardashians, with all of the drama, but none of the wealth.

Brecht Evens

According to 2011 census data, 10 percent of women (and 19 percent of men) age 25 to 34 live in their parents’ homes. I’m 24, and for women in my age bracket the figure is 50 percent — though that includes college students living in dorms, something that wasn’t an affordable option for me. Demographers say that the trend is rising — that it started going up before the recession, and has only continued since.

But I don’t feel like part of a new trend. It just seems normal to me. Since the age of 13, I have been waking up early to prepare breakfast for my family, anything from farina — basically Cream of Wheat — to eggs, bacon and mangu, a plantain mash. My father never went to school and my mother only went to third grade, so reading and translating were also my responsibility. I wore hand-me-down clothes from my sisters. There were times we slept on the couch because there weren’t enough mattresses. Our lives were based on traditional values about the importance of family, values many of our neighbors shared. I love my parents, but it was hard taking care of them when I was still a child myself. I got really stressed and cried at times.

Later, it was hard to date, because I didn’t want to bring a guy to my house where he could see how crowded it was. Most of all, I didn’t want anyone to find out that I had to share a bed with my mother. Because she was a noisy and restless sleeper, my father refused to share a bed or even a room with her. He had his own room, and so did my uncle. Since I was the youngest girl, I had to bunk with my mother, while my sisters shared the last room. It meant that, even at 3 a.m., when everyone was asleep, I still didn’t have any privacy.

In the last few years, I’ve been taking night classes, which means I have some quiet time at home during the day and also that I can take a long shower in the afternoon, instead of fighting everyone for bathroom time in the morning. But a few months ago, I found out that our apartment was going to get even more crowded. Uncle Ramon’s wife and his five adult children, who all have kids of their own, have always lived in the Dominican Republic. In October he was finally able to get visas for them. We were their only immediate relatives in the United States, which meant they were going to move into our overcrowded apartment. With 13 new people arriving, our apartment would soon look like an urban soup kitchen, like a clown car where people just keep popping out.

Just when I was about to reach my breaking point, my mother came to me with the news that Uncle Ramon’s family wasn’t moving in after all, that they’d found a place in New Jersey. Even more surprising: my uncle was moving there with them. Suddenly, for the first time ever, there was a vacant room in our apartment. I was sure my sisters and I were going to fight for the available space, and that it would probably go to Vanessa, her daughter and the new baby. But Elaine, who has always been a thoughtful sister, convinced my mother to give it to me, saying it was finally time for me to have my own space. Everyone else agreed.

I immediately decided to mark my territory. I painted one wall pink and the rest a pale silver to make the room look bigger. I bought a television and a new mattress, all my own. But my first night in the new room, I kept waking up every hour, nervous and sweating. After all this time, I didn’t know how to sleep without my mother! It felt like I was going through withdrawal.

It took a month before I could sleep the full night, but now that I’m used to it, I feel like I’ll never be able to share a bed with someone else again. When I graduate this month, I’ll be the first person in my family with a four-year college degree. I’m trying to line up a full-time job, and I have already started applying for apartments in Chelsea, Hell’s Kitchen and the Bronx — anywhere but Washington Heights. Until then, every night in my own bed, I find peace, stretching my arms and legs out as far as I like.

Townies welcomes submissions at townies@nytimes.com.

Gisselle Perez, a senior at the New School, is working on a memoir.