Moving On Essay, Research Paper

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$. 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 there. Just us girls. It wasn’t hard for me to get readjusted. After a while not having my dad walking through the front door and saying, “Hi, pumpkin. Who’s daddy’s little girl?” was okay. I learned to live without the little things that make life so special and precious. Things like watching movies with my dad and eating ice cream or just sitting on the couch together and playing video games.

Some people get dealt pretty bad hands in the game of life. Sometimes you just have to roll with the punches, suffer your losses and hope for the best. I know that it’s easier said than done. Aren’t all things, important ones anyway, like that? Divorce is a pretty touchy, sensitive subject for many people. Many might choose to ignore it altogher. The fact is, it still exists. Divorce is a part of life, albeit an unpleasant one. Like all other unpleasant things in life–death, crime, injustice, hate, split ends (just kidding), etc.–people have to learn to deal with them and let go, eventually moving on in their lives. Divorce is just an obstacle. It was an obstacle in my life, one that I did not allow to hinder me. I conquered that obstacle. I persevered. I moved on.