My parents are divorced. My mom is remarried to {obviously} my step-dad. My dad has been dating someone for a lonnnnng time but they're not married - yet.
The summer between fifth and sixth grade is when we moved out of our house. My mom took us and we moved closer to school, my dad moved to another town.
To say it was a messy divorce is putting it lightly. It was the kind of divorce that you hope you never see - mom and dad putting the kids in the middle, nobody is talking to anyone, the kids are old enough to know what's going on but still too young to be independent. Ugh, it was messy. Like massacre, blood dripping down the walls, scream your head off kind of messy.
To top it off, I started middle school. Kind of an awkward time, no?
It took a year to get settled in the new life - middle school and only seeing Mom for dinner... and then towards the end of seventh grade my mom decided it was time to move again!
This time, we moved an hour away. New school, new people, new city, new places to shop, new places to eat. New, new, new. It just so happened that I kind of really liked my old friends. I was part of the popular crowd and I thought I had figured out how to navigate the tween and early teen years.
So I was plopped down in a town that I hated before I even got there. My mom's boyfriend {now husband} taught at the school that I was going to for eighth grade - even worse than I ever expected it to be - and I had to emotionally hide myself from my peers so they wouldn't find out.
Oh, what a challenge that was. I can't say that I have too many memories of the school I attended for one year and the ones I do have aren't too great.
Moving far enough away that my old friends couldn't visit was bad enough, but the new city, new people, and the new school put me over the edge. My brain just blocked most of it out. It's like I have a black void where those years are in my mind.
I can't say that I bounced back and recovered right away in high school. It probably took a good six or seven years for me to come to terms with the transition and the choices my mom made for us.
My takeaway from all of this? Don't uproot a kid when they're going through so many changes on their own {body wise, friend wise, and school wise}! That single change of switching towns and schools has completely changed me - completely. I never would have met my husband if we wouldn't have moved and I never would have graduated early from high school if I stayed in my old town. Some really great things came from it, but it takes hindsight to see it.
This post is part of the Summer Blog Challenge. To see more posts inspired by the challenge visit my Summer Blog Challenge page!
