Why couldn't everything be the way it was supposed to be?

I am ten years old. This is the first time I've realized that not everything ends happily, or even stays that way for very long.

I am ten years old and I am helping my mom unpack boxes in our new house, move from our old one. These houses are very different. The old one was bigger, friendlier, ours. We owned it; Mom put thousands of dollars into fixing it. This one is small and cold and we don't own it. It's a rent house, from the lady that works at 'The Beauty Shoppe' on Monument Street. I hate this house.


I am ten years old and I am crying because every time I think of the old white house I think of the door I painted the stairway to the moon on. That was my door; that was my room!


Why did he make us leave?


As a small child with limited knowledge of the real world, I couldn't understand how things had gotten so had that my mom and step dad no longer wanted to live in the same house. I couldn't understand 'arguments' and 'legal ownership,' and therefore resented the effects these two things had on me.


All I understood was that I was moving. I had to deal with less stuff, with a little room, with blank walls that I wasn't allowed to paint on our nail things to. I didn't know the kids in this neighborhood, and my step dad was gone.

I couldn't look ahead; I wanted the past. This inability to let go hurt me and made me a different person.

Why doesn't he love us anymore?

I am fourteen years old and I still don't understand. The one thing I know is that thinking about what could have been doesn't help. Wondering what went wrong and wishing I could fix it--that doesn't help.


Moving has changed me, made me realize that yesterday's mistakes shouldn't change your outlook on today. I've learned to take things one day at a time, to feel for, but not dwell on, the past.