Moving On
Uploaded by Scrumptie17 on Sep 25, 2001
Moving boxes make me think about the time my parents just got divorced. It was second grade and just after Christmas. (I guess spending Christmas of '91 together was a kind of gift from my parents to me.) I lived in Cheyenne, Wyoming, at the time, and it was freezing. Snow blanketed the grounds and the air was crisp. My mom and I were moving out of the apartment that we lived in with my dad.
I remember being angry, confused, and hurt. I was mad that my parents were splitting up. Why couldn't they just stick together? Didn't they love each other anymore? I was seven years old and dazed. I couldn't believe that we weren't going to be a family anymore. Like most kids whose parents are divorced, I had the naive idea that maybe I was to blame for my parents' split. Maybe something I did caused them to not love each other?
I was so hurt. I didn't know what it was going to be like to live with only my mom. I didn't want to come from a "broken" home. I didn't want the other kids to think I was weird because my parents were divorced and their parents were still together.
I was angry at my parents for putting me through this. I remember helping my mom pack up out stuff. My dad was out somewhere. He was either at work or with my future stepmom. I recollect telling my mom that I hated my dad, that I thought he was an a$$hole. I didn't actually say the word, but spelled it out. In fact, I spelled it with a "wh".
A couple days later, when all our stuff was packed, we loaded up my mom's small brown Toyota Corolla and left. I wasn't only leaving that apartment. I was leaving my father, my childhood, the good ol' days, my sense of family security that I will never have again for a long time. In a sense left behind my innocence. Until that day I didn't really know how cruel the word "divorce" could be. Divorce meant separation and immense heartache. Divorce brought torrents of warm, salty tears.
My new home with my mom was a small, two-bedroom apartment across town. It was weird moving in there. Moving wasn't new to me, but moving without my dad was. It was odd to only have my mom and me...