The only things I know from before the divorce are captured in photographs. I was too young to remember anything else. My parents divorced when I was around four years-old. I can't even remember exactly how old I was. My two older brothers and I lived with our mother and would visit our dad in his apartment every other weekend. I was a Daddy's girl, so for a while, I would cry when he brought me home after one of my weekends with him. Mom worked hard to ensure we had a good childhood. She even homeschooled us for a while.
A couple of years after the divorce, they both remarried. Mom married my step-dad, who had never been married before and never had kids. I liked him fine and soon grew to love him as a second Father. It took my oldest brother a bit longer to warm up to him, and my second brother held animosity towards him for years.
Dad married a woman with three kids of her own, two daughters and a son. I was ecstatic. I had two older sisters now and a brother my own age. They moved into a larger apartment for a while and eventually built a house on a nice plot of land out in the country. It was like a dream. We had a pond to go fishing and swimming in. We had horses, dogs, cats, ducks, and even chickens. Dad had somewhere he could build. He built a treehouse with a zip-line going across the pond. He built a fire pit in the backyard where we could all roast marshmallows. He installed an in-ground pool and built a deck around it.
I loved this new family as much as a little girl could. I remember being the girls stand-in flyer so they could practice their cheerleading stunts. I remember nearly getting trampled by our two horses and having to jump into a pile of sticks. I remember playing the game sardines in the dark. I remember the "haunted trail" at our halloween party. I remember riding four wheelers, playing with dolls and Legos, learning to jump rope, playing video games, building pillow forts, swimming in the pond and pool. But there is so much that I do not remember too, because I blocked a lot of it out after the divorce.
This one was much harder than my parent's divorce because I was a little older. I was just in fifth or sixth grade. I didn't even get to say goodbye really. The house and land were foreclosed on, and they were gone. I have not spoken to them since. Sometimes I wonder how my step-siblings have grown. What type of people have they become?
Still, there is so much more to this story that is not mine to share. My parent's divorce is now just a part of life. I am the intermediary between the two. My mom and step dad are still married. My dad has moved to Nashville and remarried. While being a child of divorce is very frustrating and stressful, it is a part of life that I have learned to deal with. As heartbreaking as these things have been, they have shaped me into who I am, and I like who that is.
