#divoriced

When most people think of home, they think of a home base. A place where everything feels safe, a place you can always go to. I had that in half of my life, the other half I felt like just a guest. 

My mom moved once after the divorce to a duplex where I shared a room with my middle brother, who is 13 years older than myself. Next was the upper duplex closer to my dad's house, my room was small with the slanted ceiling, basically was meant to be for storage. Honestly, I was afraid to sleep in it because it felt like a room for punishment and usually slept in my mom's king bed with her or the couch. Then moved to a place further from my friends and school, a one bedroom loft...her plan was for me to have a hammock as a bed on the bridge leading from the loft room to the balcony. I slept on the 15-year-old couch or the floor. After that, she moved to the town my dad lived in, close to all my friends, by that time I was already done living with her(will explain later).  She got an apartment with two full bedrooms, but “my room” was never really my room. She had most of her stuff in it, still had baby clothes of mine in the closet. Decorated it in a way that wasn’t me at all. My mattress was a futon mattress I brought over from my dad's house.   

I knew what home was for 18 years. My dad’s house was my home. My best friend since I was three lived across the street, she would come and go as it was her own home as well. Majority of the time everyone always came to my house, I often referred to it as everyone’s Switzerland, or safe zone. The set-up was great, it was basically my dad had one side of the house and it was like the other side was to myself and my friends. One summer in high school, one friend basically lived with us to the point of my dad calling her parents to ask for help with food and what not because of how much she was there. 

November of 2009, it all changed. I graduated in June, and November everything I knew for 18 years came crashing down.  The place I knew as home was part of the housing bubble and crash in 2008. My dad got his real estate license right before the crash, didn’t have a steady income for really the 5-7 years before that. I was working for minimum wage at a dry cleaner.  We moved into the lower of a duplex, I hated it, it simply wasn’t home and the resentment for my dad began. We didn’t make it a year before we were evicted because my dad couldn’t pay rent. Still had boxes packed and there we were moving again, this time 45 minutes away from everyone and everything I knew. That didn’t make it a year either. But we had nowhere to go this time, my dad was dad broke, still not a steady job.   

I was 19 and unemployed, started dating someone that lived an hour north, we were only together for four months and I felt as though I had no option but to move in with him at his parent's place. It started as it was only going to be for a month. Within a week of living there, I got a full-time job. Then it turned into two months, by three months my boyfriend and I ended up looking for our own place. January 2011 J and I had our first apartment together. There was no other option. That's when I started to feel stuck in that relationship, not a lot but just enough. 

In the past 24 my parents decided to be super cute and lay their life plans on me.

1) Mom’s getting married next month to the man she’s known not even a year, who she CHEATED on my dad with... 2) annnnnnd my dad wants to move to Belize.