Today’s prompt is:
Describe a distinct moment when your life took a turn.
I’m sure I’ve talked about this moment before. The moment where my SD (aka biological father) ended up in jail.
It was a few weeks before Christmas when I was 8 years old. We came home from school to my mom crying and then learned he’d gone to jail. Of course we didn’t have the money to post bail, but I remember trying to scrounge up every last but I had in order to ‘get him out.’ It always seemed so easy to get people out of jail on TV! So it had to work, right?
Nope.
I remember when he called that night via Collect Call…
Then I remember him not coming home… and not coming home… and not coming home.
I remember our couch (which was being rent-to-owned) being taken back by the company we were RTO’ing from. Then we had to leave our school, and the house we’d lived in. As well as all of the pets we had. Frogs, cats, chickens, dog, all that… just gone so fast.
I remember having to lie, or feeling the need to lie about where he was. As suddenly I went from a ‘little princess’ to absolutely nothing at all. From having two parents to one. Having everything we needed and many of our wants, to moving to a house on a busy road with roaches, no hot water for a bit after we moved in, and a lot of stress and tears.
For me my emotional state went downhill from there. I think that was the first giant hit that spiraled me from just being an emotional person to being full out depressed.
It was also the reason we had to move from sunny So.Cal to the North-Eastern part of Washington state. We left behind most of our belongings and everything we knew.
My entire world shattered that day and it took me many years to overcome the hurt of it.
I’m not sure any of us kids (well my oldest sister and I probably remember it the most) will ever fully recover from it. But I know I am doing my best even if I do talk about it from time to time.
Really, aside from each time I have given birth to a kiddo. That’s likely the most distinct and significant life turning moment I’ve ever had.
Do you have any any distinct life turning moments you can remember?
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