Saving Grace (On Hold)

Moving

I never realised how much one little word could affect something. Take, for example, ‘love’. It’s a word we throw around every single day. I love my cat. I love those shoes. I love being with my family. Honestly, I don’t really know how it still holds its true meaning anymore but I’m getting off the point. Anyway, some tells you they love you, that one little four lettered word can change how you feel, how you see, how you… well, everything. Not necessarily all the time, but just go along with it. 

I suppose this word isn’t all that little. Seven letters long and pure evil. Okay, so maybe not pure evil but that’s beside the point. You’re probably thinking how a mere seven letters could change your life and that I’m completely crazy. I’m not. Not even one little bit. Those seven letters are something that are very common, in today’s society anyway. Those seven letters are uttered probably somewhere around 5 million times a day. Those seven letters are what changed my life. 

What are those seven letters you ask? 

D.I.V.O.R.C.E. 

See. Seven letters of pure evil. Okay, so it wasn’t me personally getting a divorce. I’m only seventeen, not exactly legal to get married and my ex? Lets just say no one would want to be married to him. Nope, not me at all. Worse. My parents.

It wasn’t like the word hadn’t been shouted around for the past seventeen years of my life; because honestly it was the one word I would be guaranteed to hear every single day. Waking up. Eating breakfast. On the way to school. Text messages. On the way home from school. Dinner. Supper. Before bed. Hell, that one word even haunted my dreams. My parents didn’t exactly have a happy marriage and I knew that. In fact, I was even happy they were finally divorcing. Happy? Yeah, it was that bad. 

I was happy about the divorce. I was happy that my mum and dad finally stopped fighting. I was happy my mum and dad were finally happy. I was even happy when my dad introduced me to his new girlfriend. But what I wasn’t happy about was the move.

Your parents get divorced and you move. I knew that, I did. I thought maybe I’d live with mum during the week and stay with dad on the weekend, their separate houses maybe three hours away from each other at the most? I could live with that. What I didn’t suspect was the space between the houses to be so vast I’d have to get on a plane for a ten hour journey just to visit my dad. That’s right. Ten hours. On a freakin’ plane. 

Now, I’m not one to moan or argue. At least, I don’t come off that way. I’m sweet little Grace Michaels, the girl who doesn’t ask questions, the girl who doesn’t argue, the girl who does as she’s told. The girl who now is regretting her decision to never cause a fuss. Because despite whatever I felt inside I was now sitting in a beat up old truck with suitcases piled high on the back seat, my mum singing along to the radio (badly, might I add) on my way to my new house. In America. As in the U.S. As in the United States of America. 

My mum’s American though when she married my dad, a Brit, she moved to England. England is my home, where I was born and raised. It was what I knew. I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprise when mum wanted to move back to what she considered to be home but I couldn’t help feel somewhat let down. I was leaving everything, my dad, my pets, my friends. Why? Because when the court asked me who I would like to live with, mum’s hazel eyes pleaded with me to pick her. My dad told me he didn’t care as long as I was happy and made sure to visit as often as I could. I knew I couldn’t leave my fragile hair brained mother, she needed me. So, I pulled on my big girl knickers and dealt with it.