For most people, home is a place that they want to come home to. A place where they feel safe. But for 16 years, that was not my reality.
My relationship with my mom was never the stereotypical loving mother-daughter relationship many know and have. I accepted this idea years ago, something that I knew there was no changing from a young age. On the other hand, one thing I never thought would come along with that was that when it would come time for me to speak up for myself to get out of a toxic— and what I considered to be an unsafe— home, my voice would be completely disregarded and twisted by the adults in my life.
The process of moving out of my mom’s home to live with my dad full-time didn’t start well. In October of 2023, I had gotten into a huge fight with my mom on my ride into school one day. After months of dealing with the toxic environment that she cultivated in her household, that was my last straw. That morning as I waited for my first class to start, I typed out an email and sent it without a second thought. The next thing I knew, my parents were in court talking about where I should live. They had the email that I sent to my mom and the stories of everything that had happened in the years preceding. But apparently that wasn’t enough for a judge to realize I shouldn’t be in that house— even after I told her to her face, just the year before. I was forced to go back to my mom’s and was given the biggest ultimatum of my life at the age of fifteen. That next night I went back to my mom’s house in tears. All I could think about was how and when I would be able to actually move out as soon as possible.
Under a year later, I decided once again in June of 2024 that I wanted to try and move in with my dad full-time again. My mom, along with my brothers and grandparents, were going away on a cruise. This left me about a week and a half to decide how I was going to go about doing this.
“Morgan, I can’t have a repeat of last time. If I do this, there’s no turning back. I’m not going back,” I said to my best friend Morgan.
“Write a text. Send it. And go from there. You can’t predict the future, but don’t get your hopes up. You know how this court and judge have been,” she responded.
That was something that I had to truly take into consideration. Would a judge who lied about what I told her regarding where I wanted to live just two years prior actually help me?
I decided to go forward with it anyway. That day, I typed up a page-long email that I would send to my mom when I went to speak to my therapist later that week. But, at this point, it was a waiting game. Waiting for the day I decided to send the email were the longest few days of my life. I couldn’t talk to my dad without getting him or me in trouble. I couldn’t talk to my brothers about it and be sure they wouldn’t tell my mom what I was planning. I was alone.
When the day finally came, I was walking into my therapist’s office with the email pulled up on my phone. There was no backing out at this point. I had to send this email. A million thoughts were running through my head. What if I am just sent back again? What if she doesn’t let the boys come back when they return from the trip? But none of these things were within my control at that moment. I had to do what was best for me. And in that moment, what was best for me was to get out of the toxic home I was being forced to live in fifty percent of the time. The music in the waiting room played in the background of all my thoughts.
“Hey Kaylen! How are you?” I hear my therapist, interrupting the thousands of thoughts running through my head.
That’s when I look down at the draft on my phone. The “send” button was right there. I had to send it. As I walked back to her room with her, I hit it. There definitely wasn’t any going back now. And I certainly was not going back to that house now that it was sent. There was nothing that I could do until she responded.
It has now been nine months since that day. Nine months, and I haven’t stepped foot back in that house. Going through with sending that email and not letting the questions and thoughts in my head stop me has changed my life. I no longer go home fifty percent of the time to a house I don’t feel comfortable or safe in. Throughout the last four years of dealing with my parents’ grueling divorce, along with this ongoing conflict with my mom, I have learned that I can’t trust people to do anything to help me. I need to take every situation I can into my own hands. Just because someone is expected to and has the power to do what is right, doesn’t necessarily mean that they will. The only person who I can depend on to do what is right for me, is me. That day is the day I finally broke free after months of being completely disregarded by every adult— whether it be the judge on my parents’ case, my assigned Guardian Ad Litem, my old therapist, or even my mom. They all had the power to do what was right for my brothers and me these past four years but decided to do what was best for them.
