Personal Narrative: My Life Changing Experience With Divorce

From the ages of 8- 14, I lived in a very volatile home. Coming home from school, I never knew if it was going to be a quiet day in my house or if the entire house would be engulfed in screaming. I dreaded the weekends, that meant that everyone was going to be home. Everyone home meant that things could easily go up to flames in just a millisecond. I tried my best to never be home, I would spend the days with my friends. I knew that when I got home there was a 90% chance of everyone fighting. One day in the summer of 2012, things got too heated, and my mom finally decided to move. We packed up everything in a few hours while my stepfather was at work. We moved into my best friend’s home for a few days until we found an apartment within the school district to move into.

Six years ago, a summer afternoon, my dad hugged me and I said “I will be gone for three days, I have a job in Austin, but I promise that I will be back before your birthday. I promise.” Days, weeks, months almost two years passed by and I did not receive any phone call or text message from him. Throughout that time my dad was gone, my mom told me that she was getting the papers ready to divorce my dad. I was noticing that the last three-four years that I was living with both of my parents, their relationship was getting worse. It was not a healthy situation for anyone in the house. What I mean about not being healthy is that my mother and father were damaging one another, emotionally and verbally, which my brothers and I would watch everything. Every day was the same routine, we forgot how it was to have a peaceful home. Around that moment, I honestly never thought divorce was going to be their solution.

My mother and I began to pack the following week after my step-father broke the news. I call all my close friends to tell them the devastating news. We planned to hang out the last week of my stay. Every day, our apartment would get emptier and emptier by the minute. I was still in disbelief that we were moving. You never know how much stuff you have until you move. My

When I was 13 years-old, my parents would always get in big arguments. When they argued I didn’t even know what they were arguing about. Until one night my mom decided they wanted a divorce. That night all I could remember was yelling, crying, and depression. I personally have no Idea why my parents decided to get a divorce, I just hope it was for the right reasons. When this was happening I kept blaming it on myself. I thought it was my fault and I had to fix it, but it wasn’t my fault and there was no way I could fix it. The best thing I learned from this situation was to keep my head up and keep positive, those things helped me jump over the obstacle of divorce. This situation made me be more kind to people, because most of the time in life

We were doing all of our tasks perfectly fine now. But, it was time for another family meeting……. we were going to move in two weeks. Disbelief at first, then sadness, then anger, then sadness again.

In my life there have been many personal challenges I've had to deal with. Many of these challenges circulate around my movement with my mother as we've been all over the United States as her job wasn't as stable five years ago as it has become recently. We lived in Iowa for four years, 1,000 miles away from my father and the house I grew up in. We became two separate households. I knew, most of all, it would be a strain on my parents, who would only get to see each other on holidays or whenever they could scrounge up enough money for the journey.

A month before my mother was due, they moved back to my Godparent's house in Mount Airy, North Carolina. I could

One the way into the horrible apartment, the stairs that we were using had risers that where to high. So it makes walking up the stairs seem uncomfortable due to not being the normal sizing. We didn’t let that bother us, it was something that we could all get use too. So we continued to look around, when all of a sudden Kyle yells, “guys come look at this kitchen.” I had to admit that the kitchen was huge, it had plenty of cabinet space for 6 people. Also including a dishwasher and two refrigerators. Next, the landlord showed us the bedroom each having a nice closet and were bigger than the previous apartments we had seem. The thing that really threw the majority of us off from being really interested was when Lindsey asked. “how many bathrooms are

Seeing your parents apart and not getting along when they’re together is hard for most kids specially when you’re 8 years old and you don’t know what’s coming next. The day my parents got divorced changed my perception of what a normal family was.

Little things crossed my mind like, how I wouldn’t have to deal with the awkward interactions of former classmates at the grocery store. As exciting as that was, if I wanted to see someone back home, it meant driving a minimum of 2 and a half hours, one way. I recognized that I would lose a lot of casual friends and acquaintances. People do not volunteer to drive 5 hours in order to catch up if you did not already have the closest of friendship. I thought about the great many things I had taken for granted that would shift to memories of the past. I’ve had the same hairdresser and dentist for my entire life. I have never known anything different. I have a horrible sense of direction to begin with and I grew up driving the same 15-20 square miles. I wondered how much more would I struggle with a whole new set of roads. Outside of myself, I thought a lot about what this move signifies for our family. This change felt like a major step into the future of our family. It seemed as if my generation started taking over the role that my parent’s generation currently holds. Initially, the biggest difficulty revolved around the fact that I wouldn’t have my own room. My parents would have a guest room that I would stay in whenever I returned home, but it still held the title: guest room. Another realization I had was that my parents bought this condo with not only retirement in mind, but grandchildren. They planned to grow old

I started to red in the face, did not want to help, I wanted to start putting at the boxes in the car bringing it to my old house, and I was not listening to anyone because I loved the old house. Then I started to get over it because I knew I would like this house, but my little sister crying and I told her it would be fine. Later in the day I was thinking that it had more room, colorful space, bright, loving, that we weren’t done with it,

Our family was moving from our old house in the county into a new house in the city. We had to do this, because my mom had just given birth to my younger

At first, I was hesitant about moving into a new house. I was mostly happy about not having to share a room

Whenever I hear people talking about divorce, or hear phrases such as “broken family” I want to either comfort or correct the person. I am able to set aside the sliver of pain that resides in the back of my head and realize all the wonderful things that have come out of my parent’s separation. I was pretty young when my parents started to have constant arguments but never really put the pieces together on my own. My worst childhood memories are not of scraped knees or broken bones but a broken heart. What had happened? What had I done? I can now confidently say that all the difficult times my parents’ divorce put me through have helped to bring my family together, separately. It left me with countless life lessons and the realization that things can always be worse. My parents’ divorce not only brought me severe pain but strength. It’s helped me to grow as an individual and I want to always remember that this is how things were meant to be.

Devastated, I ran to my room gushing my eyes out. All these emotions going through my head of how my life would be without my parents in the same room or even house. From what I remember it all started about mid-June, the weeks before that were crucial. My parents would always argue over how to deal with a situation between me and my brother, Skyler. They hardly spoke to one another, but when they did they would just start bickering. I remember, one night after dinner they both went into ''their'' room with the door locked yelling at one another. Skyler and I didn’t know what to do, so we went downstairs and tried to figure out what was going to happen. With a scared tone I asked if mom and dad were going to get a divorce?" He answered back '' No, they love each other, they wouldn’t do that to us." That following night, was a school night everything was quiet except for my crying. I couldn’t sleep; all I was thinking about how it's going to affect my family.