I was thirteen. Life was good; it seemed. That summer day in 2009 was just like any other. When my mom told me, the first emotions to hit me were sadness and contempt. I ran down to my room, not knowing what to think. I didn’t know what was going to happen next.

The day my mother told me was normal, nothing different or special about it. Then, after my dad left to get groceries, my mother told me, “Your dad and I have hit a bump in our relationship, and we just can’t get over it. We are going to get a divorce.” Tears slowly moved down her face. I started to cry like I never had before. Not even when my grandmother died, did I cry that badly. I ran down to my room and sat on my bed. I didn’t go upstairs again that night; I didn’t want to see my parents. My baby brother, too young to understand, didn’t really care. He sat on the couch and watched T.V. My joyous sister had the happiness drained from her in seconds, and she just stood there. The whole house was masked in a blanket of sadness.

The next two weeks went by slowly. I knew my parents didn’t love each other any more, but we all still lived together. A constant sense of tension filled the house. As long as my mother didn’t find a place, nothing would change. Life still seemed unchanged, and I didn’t want that to stop. My family would make a joke here or there about the divorce, but it didn’t seem real. While my mother lived there, they still seemed to get along well, and I had a sliver of hope that they would work out their problems. Maybe this is just for a short amount of time, I thought to myself as I sat in my room. I saw it on T.V. shows before: the family would work out their differences and get back together, and everyone would live happily ever after. Not in my case. Not in real life.

A week later, my mom ended up finding a house to rent. This isn’t that bad, I thought to myself as we checked out the little house in town. The quiet neighborhood seemed peaceful. One problem was that we couldn’t keep our pets, as the landlord wouldn’t allow them, so the pets stayed with my dad. I moved all my possessions in and prepared for the new school year. Luckily, the divorce happened at the start of the summer, so it didn’t disrupt my school year.

I still wanted my parents to get back together, but there was no chance. My mom started to date a new guy. This short and fat man’s voice filled me with rage. I didn’t know what my mom saw in him. My sister and I went to our rooms as soon as we saw his smug face walk through the door. He was the devil.. He would cuss in front of my little brother and didn’t care about our mother. He didn’t help my mom financially in a time when she needed it, and I couldn’t stand him anymore. I told my sister, and we tried to tell our mom what we thought about him. “Why can’t you see what I want?” she said. She became mad at us for saying that we didn’t like him, and she continued to date him.

Except for the problem with my mom’s boyfriend, life was good; it seemed. I was ending my eighth grade year. Because of his job, my dad had to get rid of our family pets, which hit me pretty hard. I cried the most I had in a long time. I couldn’t believe the divorce still affected me a year later. I adopted an attitude of not caring about my parents or family as much. I didn’t trust them anymore. My friends became more important than family, and I spent as much time with them as possible. I focused on school and having fun with my friends.


After a year, my mom became pregnant. It was the child of the man I hated, and this meant he was going to be in my mother’s life for the rest of the foreseeable future. About eight months passed, and then suddenly the baby was on the way. My sister drove my mom to the hospital, and there she had a C-section so that the baby wouldn’t die. It ended well, and the baby lived. A month later, my mother started to fight with her boyfriend because he wouldn’t help pay for the child. They broke up, and I was so happy that she was finally done with him. Eventually, she met a new man later, and I actually like him. In fact, they were just married last week. They decided to move out of state, so I started to live with my dad. I like my father, and I could tell that my mom and her husband really love each other.

The repercussions of the divorce were many for me, but I have adjusted. I love my new baby brother, but I only get to see him and my mom once a month since she lives in Indiana. I still love my parents, just not as much as I did before the divorce, and I’m more pessimistic now. Looking back, it was not nearly as bad of a situation as I thought. The divorce definitely caused some permanent changes in me, but life is good.