How To Be A HoRRiBle Person ✅ #TheWattys2017

Ch.9- Divorce

Ch. 9 - Divorce

When we talked about the divorce, the plan was very relaxed. They painted it as like this fun kind of thing. My dad coming over every weekend to mow the lawn and like make pancakes and stuff, it actually sounded really great. "Yeah you guys will actually probably see me more" We were kids so we didn't question the math on that statement. But It seemed like a good thing is what I'm saying, and I was happy for the fighting to be done. I think we all were happy for the fighting to be done.

What ended up happening was a little different. In reality, we could only see him on Tuesdays and Thursdays after school for a couple hours. Mom spent all day locked in her room and we never had food because that meant she had to go to the store or something. She would scream if he came by to drop off food and it was like just this shitty cycle of that for a long time.

I remember there was always this fear around food, because obviously we needed to eat but we never had food. If we asked dad to drop off anything and we were caught after it was a deal, even if we weren't caught there was this guilt for hiding it.

I have a very distinct memory of me and Rikki on the floor of our kitchen going through the cabinets and gathering things to eat. We discovered the condiments drawer, and it was the best thing ever. We did lines of ketchup that night. Not even in a sad way, we were actually super positive and happy for the ketchup packets. It's a little sad now that I'm an adult and know that I would never want my kids on the floor eating ketchup, but we were like really into us finding that at the time, and being able to have something that night without calling dad "If you close your eyes it kind of tastes like your eating a hamburger" I said smiling, we were literally so excited. Rikki also discovered if you closed your eyes coffee creamer tasted like a milkshake. It wasn't bad like that with food all the time, I mean we definitely ate ketchup on the floor a few nights, but I don't want to misrepresent the situation, other people had it worse, we made it work, and we had something I would say 70 percent of the time.

The catch was when we did have food it was like an over amount of one thing, like mom went to costco and just spent all the money on 25 boxes of pot stickers. Or she knew we liked lucky charms so she bought 20 boxes and figured that was enough to keep us alive for a week while she slept in her room. So we couldn't see our dad and our mom was a complete stranger. This wasn't the fun filled pancake weekends with dad we were promised.

Also I fucking hate lucky charms now. Jury is out on pot stickers, but they remind me of that time for sure. That's how she showed us love back then though, In her haze she would see the one thing we liked and push it until we hated it. It was a sweet idea gone wrong. A good example of this is me liking the pieces on bacon that were a little softer, like the fat parts. My mom after discovering that would make me plates and plates of just undercooked bacon, she would even save them in the fridge. I'm going to tell you right now when you have nothing to eat but ketchup or undercooked bacon you're going to eat the bacon fat. A million percent. I only eat extra crispy bacon now.

So lucky charms, Wendy's, gross bacon, and pot stickers aren't the go to meals to get me in bed guys.

About two weeks before we had the divorce talk with mom and dad, I accidentally found out myself that my parents were getting a divorce. My mom had a friend that worked at their bank. She was trying to get this lady to give her access to my dads personal accounts or something super sketch. I wasn't really paying attention but they were arguing when her friend yelled "Well it's not my fault your getting a divorce!" then immediately covered her mouth remembering I was there. My mom yelled "I haven't told her yet" I said "What?" After no one said anything for a solid minute, I figured it wasn't a joke and like most kids that dont know what to do, I started to cry.