After My Parents’ Divorce, They Abandoned Their Daughter: How I Was Thrown Out, Forced to Start Over Alone, and Eventually Forgave a Family That Had No Room for Me

I pleaded, but my mum was resoluteshe swiftly bundled my things into a rucksack, handed me a few notes, and ordered me from the house. My family had once been terribly ordinary, just me, my mum, my dad, and Grandad Walter. Life seemed grand, until one day Mum stopped caring, let herself drift, and Dad met someone else.

Dads new love was much youngera willowy girl who soon carried his child. Mum could not abide the betrayal, so Dad left to start fresh with his lover. Both my parents took up new lives, ones with no nook for me.

I was just finishing up my last year at secondary school when Mum brought home a chap who was far younger than herself. I protested as fiercely as a storm on the moors. After that, I began mingling with the wrong crowd: drinking cider, chopping off all my hair and dyeing it bright pink, as if to vanquish any trace of who Id been. Mum barely glanced my wayher disinterest left me adrift, so I clung to my strangeness. After the first year of college, another blazing row ended with Mum tossing me out into the chilly darkness.

She said, Listen here: youre a grown girl now, and like your father, I want my bit of happiness. Pack up and go live with your dad!

With nowhere else to turn, I begged for forgiveness, my voice hoarse, but she ignored my pleas, stuffing the rest of my things into the rucksack and shoving me outside. When I got to Dads, hoping for refuge, he pointed at the door and said, You see, love, this flat belongs to my wife and she wont have you living under her roof. Best head back to your mum and make your peace. And with that, he shut the door with a sound like the end of a play.

Lost, I bought a train ticket with the last of my pounds. Time flickered and twisted after that. I ended up in a little town in the north of England, started at technical college, and after graduating, took up work as a cook in a poky restaurant by the seaside.

Later, I met a boyfell in love as if being swept by tidal currentand married him. We managed to buy a tiny flat, just ours. My husband often implored me to forgive my parents; hed grown up in an orphanage, had never known the warmth of a mothers arms, and understood the ache. To him, my reluctance for reconciliation was a strange pride.

He said one day, Youre a lucky soul, youve got a mum and a dad, but your pride keeps you walking the lonely road of the orphan. None of us is perfect; we all stumble. You must go to them and find peace.

So, we journeyed back to my home town, the landscape somehow warped with the surreal glow of dreams. At my old doorstep, we rang the bell. The door opened to reveal both my parents, their hair silvered by years. Mum fell to her knees, begging forgiveness. In that queer moment, I sensed that Id forgiven them long ago, but stubbornness had sealed my lips.

With my husband at my side, I entered their house, introducing him formally, then announced theyd soon have a grandchild. My parents shared how theyd found their way back to each other by searching for methey had rediscovered their bond while wandering the windy streets of England, looking for their lost daughter.

Dads second wife, catching wind of Dads sorrow, set him free before marrying the man with whom shed had an affair. Dad had assumed her baby was his, but it turned out nobody, not even she, knew the childs father. The truth surfaced after the divorce, when the paternity test said otherwise.

Now, my parents nest under the same roof again, and I am happythe kind of happiness that feels like sun through stained glass. Life folded back onto itself in the strangest way, just as Id once dreamed when I was a pink-haired teenager: my mum and dad, together again, and me, no longer lost.