Brett Guillaume
Janel Spencer
WRT 101S
17 October 2019
How My Parents’ Divorce Helped Me Prosper Into Who I Am Today
I grew up with both my parents in their dream house they bought out in Vail, Arizona. Vail is a very small community located outside of Tucson. I would describe Vail as a very quiet place, if something were to happen in the community, everyone would know about it. The house I grew up in, and still live in today, is four bedrooms, located on 2 acres of land in a very small neighborhood. Walking into the house from the front door, you are immediately greeted with the living room and a big arce dividing the living room from the kitchen. Truly a masterpiece of a house
I would describe my childhood as great, I am very fortunate to be where I am today, but I wouldn’t be who I am today if it wasn’t for my parents’ divorce.
I remember the day like it was yesterday, my parents sat me down during the end of my summer break and explained to me that they were going to split up and eventually divorce. I remember my stomach shrinking in, realising what my parents meant at the time. I was still fairly young at the time; only 14 years old going into my freshman year of high school. I could remember them fighting mostly every day after my mom arrived home from work. However, I couldn’t comprehend why they didn’t want to be together anymore. My father moved out of our house in vail up to our other house in Pinetop. I was left in Vail with me and my mom. However, it wasn’t always like that forever, my mom let her new boyfriend move into the house only weeks after my father moved out. My father is very vocal about his opinions and every night I would call him, and I remember never telling him what was happening at the house, because I didn’t want to light the fuse. Deep down in my heart I hoped my parents would get back together, but as the days progressed, my dreams crashed down in front of me, leaving me heart broken.
As a result of my parents divorce: when I started my first semester of high school I got terrible grades. I remember failing my economics class half way through the semester and receiving D’s and C’s in most of my classes.
At the end of my first semester of high school, my mother moved out of our house in Vail and moved to Corona instead, leaving my father to move back into the house. I remember telling my dad that day ‘I don’t want to go to school anymore…I just want to drop out.’ I could see the disappointment and anger in my father’s face after I told him those words.
See from my Father’s previous marriage, he had three kids, a girl and two boys. All three of his kids dropped out of high school, and he was depending on me to be the first kid of his to complete highschool. Granite I didnt think about how my father would feel about the situation, I immediately heard his raspy voice he received from smoking cigarettes all his life.
“You can’t do that” he yells at me “you can’t let what happened between me and your mother bother you for the rest of your life,” he explains. One thing lead to another and I received an hour long lecture, and during the lecture I learned a lot, and soon realised that I have to complete school for me, no matter how hard it was going to be. School has always come hard for me because I have Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD). But I wasn’t going to let that and my parents divorce ruin my future.
My second semester of high school, living with my father, I received mainly B’s and C’s, a huge improvement from my first year of high school.
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