This is what it's all about. This blog is to get my feelings on the page. The web page. I hate that. I miss pen and paper. I miss coloring. I miss coloring with my dad. He's an awful drawer. My mom's an artist, though. In my eyes, anyway. I used to get so frustrated because I couldn't draw like her. I tried and I tried and well I still can't. Maybe when I become a mom. (Whoa there, five years in the future, hello.)
My dad sings. He's my favorite singer. And I have about 30,000 songs combined in all of my music libraries. Another thing I hate... why can't there just be one? He's on number seven of change of groups. That group is actually just him this time. He's even better when he sings with just himself, if you as me. And I would know.
My mom does a lot of stuff. She used to work in retail, and now she works in laser hair removal and skincare. In between those she worked in makeup. Man, can she do great makeup. Anytime I go home I make her do my makeup every day that I'm there. Before we go to Starbucks and run errands.
They were perfect. A blonde haired beauty who did no wrong but was a tad spastic, and black haired singer who loved his kids. The fairy tale life. The model family. We made all the right faces and said all the right things. Almost.
It was 2009 and my life was perfect. I had just switched from advanced English to regular because, well, it was two weeks from junior year of high school starting and I obviously had no time to read the three required books. I was lazy. And I was good at it. I still am when I really put my mind to it.
Zach and I had been together for two years and five months. We were happy. We'd been through the rough bumps. His dad died only two months into our relationship, and that was hard. It still is some days. He's strong. Much stronger than I am. I'm just really good at acting like it.
My dad lost his job with the singing group he was with at the time. It didn't seem like the worst thing to me, though, because he had lost singing jobs before. That's why we were where we were. He lost a job in Tennessee, we moved to Georgia, he got another job, and then got offered an even better one in Virginia.
I was hopeful even when my mom looked me straight in the eye saying that we would have to go back home. Home meant her home. That meant Georgia. That meant seven hours away from Zach. That meant bad.
I tried to convince her to let me live with Zach. His mom was just as strict so I'd take the bedroom next to hers and he'd stay downstairs. All would be well in the world. I tried living with a close friend who I had a falling out with but will always be like family to me. I thought it could work.
But in the end, the sixteen year old must follow her family. I made the sacrifices. You might not think that was a sacrifice. You might think I didn't have a choice. But you don't know my mom. She would have let me stay. I was so close. On my last day at school, the day I was to get in the car and follow the completely filled U-HAUL to Georgia, I was still telling my friends that I might not leave. I left.
It was one rough few months when we got there. We lived with my grandparents. No internet, two bedrooms, and one bathroom. There were seven of us. I found myself lowering into a depressive state, but I wasn't going to be like my father. Well, the summer and winter version of him anyway.
It was fall. The high before the crash. He was hyper. He wasn't worried. He was lying. She was lying. She was hiding. They both were. His disorder was his crutch. It was also hers.
Another month passed and we found a house. What is this? A room to myself? I'm confused. I forgot what this was like. What's that across the hall? My mom is rooming with my sister? Hmm. That's odd. Well, I hate my new school and my best friend of five years is hardly paying any attention to me so I'm going to focus on that instead.
She told him. She finally told him. She was through. She'd been through. For four years she'd been keeping this from him. For four years she was lying to him, to herself. The decision had been made. It was their twentieth wedding anniversary when she told him she wanted a divorce.
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