To be the person that I am now, I had to reflect a Essays

To be the person that I am now, I had to reflect and accept accountability of my past actions. My past is one that many would love to erase from their memory, a past that involves a divorce, counselling, court ordered restraining order, supervised visits, 2 mental health diagnosis in high school, and much more. I try not to let the negative events and situations in my life define who I am today but it would be naive of me to say that they didn't impact my life and push me to become who I am here today. My life seemed completely normal until the divorce, I don't remember the fighting or the court proceedings but I do remember missing my dad like a part of me was missing. I was four years old when my parents first separated, and I don't remember very much from that time but the memories I do have aren't the happy family memories that we all read about and see on television. My parents did their best to keep the divorce proceedings as civil as possible to keep me as oblivious as possible, and with a four-year-old it was pretty easy. I may not remember my parents going through the actually divorce but I do remember the questions, supervised visits and blaming myself for almost 10 years for my parents failed marriage. I remember at the age of three I was sitting on the kitchen floor looking down the hallway listening to my parents scream at each other, then my mom walked out of her room picked me up and took me to the living room to play as my dad snuck out the back door to go for a dri ve. While my parents were in the process of separating, my father made some very serious threats against my mother which resulted in a court ordered restraining order against my dad for myself and my mom. The restraining order against my dad put the supervised visits into play. What is now called Firefly, was then called The Patricia Centre for Children and Youth (PCCY), and that is where I could see my dad. Now at the age of four I didn't understand why I could only see my dad in an office building but I didn't care, all I cared about was the few hours a week that I could spend with him. The supervised visits were arranged by the court and the PCCY, and the way it worked was I would be able to see my dad once a week for a few hours one day in a room where there were 2 social workers in the corner of the room watching us and taking notes, I was only allowed to see my dad under these conditions. The supervised visits were going very well and I raised no questions regarding the reason why I could only see my dad under those conditions, this was all until one day in Walmart. My mother and I were shopping and as I turned around a corner and walked down the aisle I looked up and to my surprise I found my dad at the other end of the aisle, and just like any other child I ran up to my dad giving him a huge bear hug and with tears in his eyes he had to push me of him and walk away. That is a memory that has stuck with me for the past 17 years, a memory that I will never forget. As it was, my life was being turned upside down and I couldn't even have imagined how it was going to affect me and my life years down the line. I am not sure exactly when I moved out of my now broken home but I do remember the strange feeling of packing my life away into boxes and moving into my aunt's house down the street. I wasn't aware until later that my mom didn't have enough money to support herself and I living in that big house on a single income and it wasn't until recently in my lif e that I have been able to understand the true burden of lacking