Change, Chance, And The Evolution of Identity

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Although my palms were clammy tucked into one another, my fingertips felt cold and numb. My stomach felt like it was trying to pull itself through my throat. I wasn’t sure if I was nervous or just suddenly feeling the guilt of my actions falling onto me all at once. I sat restless on the wooden bench outside of the windowless room I knew I was gonna be pulled into at any moment, tapping my toe anxiously on the cream-colored linoleum flooring. My eyes were pinned on the white fluorescent light hanging above me, surrounded by off-white paneling that seemed like it’d be more suitable for a high school band room than a court house. The door next to me swung open as the judge peaked her head into the hall before calling my name to come in.

I sat down in a hard plastic chair across from the judge, with nothing between us. Her typist sat behind her, eyes glued to the laptop in front of her. My eyes stayed attached to my feet as she began to speak. I could recognize the fact that she was speaking, but her words weren’t registering much at all. My brain went on autopilot as I responded to her questions in quick, silent succession. No, my dad never hurt me. Yes, I liked my step dad. No, I didn’t like my step mom. Yes, I did miss my mom. No, I didn’t like my school. The deeper she got into the line of questioning the more it felt like I was slipping into some sort of an odd dream, as her words faded out of recognition more and more and the keyboard clicking behind her faded out into a dull hum.

“So?” She said, snapping me out of my own thoughts, “Who do you wanna live with?”

I couldn’t even bring myself to meet her eyes. I rested my hands in one another. The words sat on the tip of my tongue for a minute, hesitant to come out. Finally, “Mom. I wanna live with my mom.”

My dad’s eyes looked sad and hurt when I saw him after. I wanted to tell him that it had nothing to do with him and I just needed to get out of that town and that school, but I knew no words I could say would sufficiently catalyze the healing process for him. After all, it was my decision to go to court and get the custody reversed, and he knew it. There was no ambiguity in my actions. No excuses I could make. This was fully my burden to bear; his sad gaze rested softly on me, his throat flexing slightly like he was holding back tears, or he just couldn’t bring himself to say what he wanted. Instead, he bent over and hugged me tightly. Like he wasn’t sure if it would be the last time he’d be able to do that. To be honest, at the time I wasn’t so sure myself. I told him goodbye before stepping into a separate hallway to leave with my mom. I had nothing to say to her, despite knowing how happy she likely was. I didn’t feel happy, even though it was what I wanted. I was almost sure of it. Almost.

Much of my childhood was composed of biscuit and gravy mornings, baseball games, and long bike rides down the trails that were paved over the old rails that used to cross through what felt like nearly every town in Michigan, but had since been decommissioned. I lived in a good area, I had a handful of close friends, all the time in the world, and nearly everything a kid could ask for. Still, I wasn’t happy. Things hadn’t been the same for years. Not since mom left. I often found myself romanticizing aspects of my time with her and longing to be back in Philly, back in that tiny, 2 bedroom apartment up on Spruce Hill, spending time with her and my sister. Playing board games, going for walks, watching movies, just the three of us. I longed for that, especially in an environment where I really did feel so alone. I had my friends at school, but my nights and weekends were spent simply sat in front of a TV waiting for my dad to finish working so we could eat, or sitting in my room in dim lighting, drawing for hours on end with a terrible local radio station playing beside me. As I got older, I found myself growing into myself more and more, and I felt less alone over all, but I began to feel like I was disconnected from the town we were in, like I was just meant for a bigger city with people who were more like me, in a school that challenged me. I guess that’s when the idea of changing custody first began.

After 7 years of going to school in Michigan and Philly being somewhat of an afterthought being reserved for school breaks exclusively, in late June of 2013, 4 months after I went to court to testify to get it changed, the custody order was reversed, with my mom being granted primary custody. It was a pretty happy day for my mom, sister, and I. We began to make plans concerning high school and where we would be living. West Philly was a home to me and my sister, but not so much for my mom, who spent most of her time in Center City with her boyfriend of 8 years, Robert. In what seemed like nearly sudden succession, I was thrust into a new school, a new home, and what felt like a new family.

The funny thing about moving to a spot that you view as almost a vacation destination is that once the honeymoon phase is over and the real world sets in, the novelty disappears very very quickly. After being put into a higher pressure situation of a prestigious preparatory school, with my mom now being the one who had to take responsibility for my grades and such, her true parenting style began to reveal itself. Her emotionally driven anger when things weren’t falling in place as she wanted them to, her lack of empathy towards me and the constantly morphing environment around me, her long lists of rules. It was somewhat of a shock to my system compared to my dad’s near laissez-faire parenting. When she didn’t have to deal with the pressures of things like school and how they affected me, she was a great mother. But when she tried to interject herself into my school and social life it just complicated things and made me feel like I just was never good enough. It was nothing like what I had expected or hoped for, and absolutely nothing like what I was used to. The new school that I was placed in was a complete shift from the terrible public schools I’d been going to, but I soon found that the workload was just barely manageable and I was unlike the vast majority of the students who attended there as well. It all took a major toll on me. I felt more alone than ever, suffocated by my home life and new school, spiraling into depressive patterns, crushed by the weight of my constantly evolving environment.

I could do nothing about the situation I went through as a kid, but this situation was one that I intentionally and deliberately manipulated to get what I thought I wanted. Why then did I feel so absolutely out of control? In essence, I believe that it boils down to the relationship between oneself and the changing world. When things are out of your control, you have no choice but to let go and accept it. When things are in your control and need to be changed, you can simply just hope that you have the strength to change it. But what kind of a person chooses to do something for no reason other than selfishness that didn’t need to be changed, knowing they’d potentially hurt someone in the process? Nothing reveals who you are as a person more than the decisions you meticulously plot out.

“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.” - Leo Tolstoy