Walking back into the house for the first time in three weeks felt strange, especially since it wasn’t the way I left it. Where once stood my dad’s flat screen television was a dusty one that flickered red and sat on a wobbly coffee table. The round table we kept in the family room was gone and soon so was my certainty. My sister looked around the house and then at me for some kind of explanation, but I knew someone else was about to give her one. Our small garage that barely fit both of my parents’ cars didn’t have to anymore.
My sister let out a nervous laugh as she asked, “Where did everything go?”
My mom walked the four of us into the living room. My dad sat on one end of the couch with his gaze locked on the floor and my sister and I uncomfortably perched ourselves on the arms of the loveseat. My mom began to talk about how she and my dad had decided that it was best she move into an apartment for a while, and I quickly drowned out her words with salty tears. I laid in my bed after saying goodnight and for the first time, goodbye to my mom as she went to her empty apartment. Thinking about her by herself there made me feel guilty, as if there was something I could have done. I didn’t know then what my life would be like now.
It took me a long time to accept that my mom no longer lived with me. It took a long time for me to accept a lot of things. I felt like our family was falling apart. I was falling apart. It was a while before I realized that I didn’t have to; that I had a choice. I could choose to look at it as an ending, or I could choose to look at it as a new beginning. It made me realize that we have to decide that for ourselves a lot in our lives. How I choose to look at things plays a big part in its impact on my life, for better or for worse. As time went on the apartment began to feel less and less like the fragments of what home used to be. It was under these new circumstances in my life that I realized home is where the people you love are. I walked my sister home from school one day, and I came back to the house to see both of my parents standing together in the living room. It was moments like that where I knew things were going to be okay, and as I saw them talk like the friends they were once afraid to be to each other I felt at ease. I came over to both of them and gave them a great big hug. They both gave me a confused smile and humored me by returning my hug. The smiles on their faces were proof that things would be okay, and now I could start believing it.