Growing Up: Family

Since I was a little girl, I grew up with two parents and my brother all under the same roof, that was all I ever knew. For 14 years of my life, I had two people to talk to when I had good news or when I was going through a tough time. You don’t always realise it however; your family will be the most consistent people you will have in your life. Nothing can compare to the support they give you and the life they created for you, in my case, my parents were very young when they had my brother and me. It was not always easy for them and with them being young, as I was growing up and learning new things, so were they. When you learn new things, sometimes this can mean making mistakes along the way. I will never understand just how hard it was having us so young, having to mature so quickly and missing out on the younger years when you had to change nappies and buy school uniforms, when you should have been living it up in beefa LOL :)

Around 2015, my parent’s resentment for each other was starting to become visible and things just got negative very quickly. They would try and hide it from my brother and I although, we were just watching it unfold in front of us. When two people you have so much love for fall out of love for each other, how do you console them? Your parents going through a time like this is not an easy thing to go through especially in your teenage years. Your old enough to know what’s going on but not old enough to know the details or to ask questions. When I would spend most of my time in proximity of them both, I would sometimes worry about having to take sides or who I would choose to console in an argument. My brother was still very young at the time and was sheltered a lot from what was really going on. What do you tell your brother when your mum is sad or your dad’s in a mood or when your parents won’t even look at each other? The next few years after that were horrible and I tried to make the best of a bad situation. I was lucky enough to have two parents who loved me and would do anything for me so, the least I could do was keep spirits high.

While this was all going on, I had to move schools and start all over again. I went from living with my dad to hardly seeing him and being at home with two people rather than my normal three. Starting a new school was hard as I knew hardly anyone and had so much going on, I refused to be myself. Nothing felt normal anymore, my mum was having a hard time bringing us up on her own; to this day, I will never be able to thank her for everything she done for us. She handled things so well and I will be so happy if I turn out to be half the woman she is. How she managed to graduate from university, work and look after us, I will never know but, she did it and she killed it. I idolised both my parents then more than ever, not only for giving me the best upbringing they could but for reminding me to keep fighting until the end. Based on my own experiences, I found it hard to talk about how I was feeling because I always felt guilty for being sad, especially when my parents were going through worse. When you feel down, you don’t want to rub off on other people or for them to ask if you’re okay because you know you’re not, but if you speak things into existence, you realise the reality of it all.

Growing up, I had strong relationships with both my parents however, I had more in common with my dad whereas, my brother was more for my mum. You can imagine how hard it was to see my dad the way he was and to go from seeing him all the time to hardly ever. My dad is the worst for talking about his feelings, you see where I get it from LOL!! I will never know exactly what was going through his head at the time but just from my judgement, I know it was the worst time of his life. If I could go back, I would never have been so hard on him. I used to take my anger and frustration out on him because he wasn’t there and I blamed that on him, even though it was a joint decision. How lucky am I that he has forgotten about most of it :) My dad and I are so close now and he has taught me how to improve myself as a person. He turned his life around and I am so proud of him for that. Watching them move on with new people was difficult at first but it grew on me eventually!! Divorce is not an easy event and it can make or break a family. For a while, it broke us, and it was tough on all of us. Like anything in life, you must learn to adapt to new scenarios and work with what you do have. As horrible as it was for the first few years, I can honestly say I am so happy it took as long as it did, because everything worked out perfect in the end.

For anyone who has experienced divorce, I’m sure you can understand this blog and relate to the way I was feeling. Not every divorce in a family is plane sailing and new challenges are faced, even to this day. It was a huge change in my life that made me realise a lot of things that I took for granted. I didn’t realise the importance of my parents until something rocked the boat… Be strong today because things will get better, it might be stormy now, but it can’t rain forever.