When I was younger I never thought my parents would separate. My friends would tell me that they need to go from one house to another, but they still seem happy. But then my dad decided to do something and this made my mother end everything. We gradually started moving things to my uncle’s house and slowly I was gone from “home”. You see, in my head things would still be fine, I would just need to switch from each house every other week and although we are not a family anymore, we still had a bond. That was not the case. I never saw my dad again. When he called me, I was not allowed to answer. I understood that what he did was wrong and I hate him for doing it. Because of what he did, my life flipped around. No more family days, no more family dinners, no more happiness. I am not saying I that I do not feel happiness, but because of this, a part of me was gone, the family happiness was gone.
My mom would say things like “I only stayed with him all these years for you and your sister” I know she said it out of anger but it hurts. I blame myself. But no matter what happens at home, once I step out of the house I put a mask on. At school, everyone knows me as the one that smiles all the time. It’s a way for me to feel loved. Obviously, no matter how good my friends become or how close I become with teachers, it’s not family. I get jealous when I hear my best friend talk about her family. I feel guilty feeling jealous because I should be grateful for still having my mother and my sister. I don’t want my dad back, but I just wished my family was normal. I wish we didn’t fight. I wish we had family days. I wish we were still a family. The worst feeling was when one day, one of my friend said her parents separated as well, but her situation was so much more amicable that I was jealous. It feels so wrong to be jealous about something like that, but I felt that way because it’s what I thought my life would be but didn’t get.
I don’t like making people worry about me. Which I think is why I wear the mask. I’m pretty sure I have depression but I just keep everything to myself. Sometimes I cry, sometimes I think and sometimes I just sleep. Sleep is the only way I can escape. But because of this escape, my grades suffer. And it all comes back to my family. Because of what happened I can’t concentrate. Because of what happened, I don’t have my old room with the desk I’ve been using for the past two years.
Every time I tell my family that I’m stress, they will always just say something like “we’re all stress, you just have school what do you need to stress about” which is true, but I don’t think they understand the amount of stress I put on myself. They don’t understand how I feel. They may be stress, but I have stress as well. On too of school, I have what’s happening at home. I think they forget how the situation affected me, in the mental sense of way. Which is probably why I feel like studying in another city after high school. I think it will allow me to escape a place that brought me happiness but at the same time sorrow.
This is only the beginning and the middle of my story. I don’t know where it ends or how it ends, but it scares me. I don’t want what happened to me, happen to me again. I don’t want to feel lonely again. I may have friends, but it’s not the same feeling. I don’t want to be alone.
