WIth Family Like these who Needs Enemies

I shouted, kicked, screamed, tears streaming down my face. The young seven year old me felt nothing but the fury and the injustice that had blindsided me. How could this happen? Mommies and Daddies are supposed to live happily ever after. Although now I know that my temper tantrum held no contest to the reality that I bear. This was before I realized my kicks, pleas, and tears had no chance of changing what was happening. My fate.

“Divorce.”

Such a hard word to understand.

Most look at it as the end of a marriage. Sitcoms look at it as a beginning of a great middle aged TV show. My seven year old brain saw it as the shocking secret you had wished no one told you about. After about a month the word completely lost its meaning to me. I guess I should have expected it. If Mom was around then that meant Dad wasn’t and vice versa. After the news had settled I was shoveled into my dad’s care. My mom was scarcely around, she was probably busy I told myself. Too busy to deal with her rambunctious seven year old daughter who couldn’t sit still and had a serious addiction to the rush she got after running around non-stop. That was how I saw it, every day for at least two years. Until that fateful spring day.

“Gabi, Courtney, get your shoes on. We’re going out to eat.”

My sister and I leapt to the closet and found our prettiest shoes for this special occasion. Then, we were on our way. The car ride seemed to take hours. I couldn’t handle it. I wasn’t used to being in the car longer than an hour at most. This car ride stopped just below the forty-five minute mark. Where were we? This was the strangest looking place I’d ever seen. It didn’t look like the base housing I had been used to my entire life.

They were apartments. And I was being lead into one that my mom kept calling “ours”. She also kept calling it a house. I was so confused. The white walls of the apartment seemed barren, with nothing much but a few pictures here and there. The ceiling was speckled with the little white dots I had only known to be called snowflakes. Little did I know this would become my home.

After that night, I rarely saw my dad again but I got to say my goodbyes as we packed up our house and were shipped off to the apartment.

Life became very different. Growing up on a base you become accustomed to everyone basically being the same, every girl wants to become a doctor, nurse, or an amazing mother. Boys turn anything they can into the MK87s that they hope to someday carrying being a mirror image of their fathers. Here everything was so impossibly different. It was like going from Pleasantville to New York City. I had become the pawn in a never-ending, always moving game of chess.

Just as I began to catch up to everyone else I once again was shocked with yet another one of my parents’ genius ideas.

Ripping my life I had begun to build to shreds. New rules. New furniture. New ideas on how I should be raised. A new authority figure. Dad was moving back in. Which made even the winds mark the change as I tried to remain calm and quiet.

Since Dad had moved in Mom definitely wouldn’t be around. I kind of felt relieved, Dad was not a disciplinarian.

The lack of rules and structured bed times became quite convenient for me. Normally I was forced into roles I hadn’t wanted to play, do things I didn’t have the slightest inclination to do, and deal with the other demands my mother forced onto me.

As we began to prep my sister Courtney for the departure to college financial struggles proved stronger than the temper between my parents. For the first time in seven years I am living under the same roof as my parents. Only now I don’t have the rainbows and sunshine that were so popularly televised and forced into my once innocent mind. Now I had the reality. The reality that instead of rainbows and sunshine was full of stress, worries, fears, and depression. But, most of all resentment.

I resented my parents for all that I had been through. I had no one to turn to. Except for my sister. Courtney was the one I could count on. That is, until she left for college. Three thousand miles away. She was the only person who wouldn’t try to reason with me as I vented and complained and yelled at the injustice. She understood me, or at least she used to.

Tears streamed down my face I could hear the cabinets slamming and the curses being muttered in hushed tones. My mom and my dad. The house became a boxing ring.

In this corner we have a 5”3’ Samoan female whose strengths are verbal abuse , guilt trips, and fiery bouts of anger.

In this corner we have a 5”8’ Caucasian male whose strengths are his anger, high temper, and ability to outsmart opponents.

This match needed no gloves, no contact. The venom of their words seemed to bound from each side of the house. But, with every slight remark and vicious dig that was muttered I seemed to be the only one affected.

I reached my breaking point and poured each detail out to my sister.

I sobbed and whined. But, this was different. She wasn’t the same. She was trying to reason with me. She was taking their side! How could she do that? She knew exactly how I felt; she knew that I had no options.

Feeling sick of the disappointment I decided what I needed was alone time. I flocked to the shower. After a while I began to stop thinking about my parents’ indifferences. I calmed down and relaxed in my room.

KNOCK! KNOCK! KNOCK!

“Come in.” I chimed.

“Gabadab, we need to talk.” My dad’s disappointed look penetrated me and I just began to cry.

Courtney betrayed me. She turned around and told him everything I had said. My cheeks burned bright red with humiliation, anger, and betrayal. She just had to. She had to take away my only chance to release any type of pain I had been feeling. She sent me to a deserted island to deal with my insanity without help.

Months passed. Days faded and I grew more and more irritated. More hushed curses, more angry actions, and more silence.

Dad and I still can’t stand each other. But, I can’t stand a lot of people. I just manage to avoid contact with him as much as possible.

Some days it seems like Mom is the one to avoid me. She would much rather be off anywhere but here. With anyone but me. I'm simply a burden in her life.