My mother was depressed. That’s what they always told me. That’s the story they tried to pass of as the entire truth to me. They said she became very depressed when I was two years old, and after the incident the judge had sent her away to some mental hospital in Arizona. I don’t know if they thought I wouldn’t figure it out, or if I wouldn’t ever ask if I did, but I knew enough to be almost certain my mother wasn’t at a mental institution in the desert. After what she’d done, no one in their right mind would send her there. I knew where my mother was, and I hated her because of it.

I was nearly sixteen, and for as long as I could remember it’d been just me and my father. He had been my best friend when I was younger; my knight in shining armor. As I got older, though, things got harder. I was at the age where I didn’t know the meaning of a true friend, and I repeatedly made a fool of myself. I was the only one of my friends who hadn’t had a real boyfriend yet, and I’d never even been kissed. It was the type of problems I knew other girls all went to their moms with for advice. The worst part was hearing all the other people complain about how their moms drove them crazy, and they wished they could just leave them alone. Then there was me, who sat there silently hoping just one day I’d get to meet mine again. Don’t get me wrong, my dad was wonderful. He truly was my hero, even in my teenage years. I looked at the other fathers around. The ones that worked all day, came home and ate, went to bed and then did it all over again the next day. My dad was the bravest man I’d ever met. He’d raised me, all on his own, with very little help from anyone else. Just after it happened, and my mom got sent away, my dad sold our house and moved us to a smaller, two bedroom and two bathroom house right off of Main Street. It was the house I’d spend the next sixteen years in. He turned his bedroom into his office, too, so that he could stay at home and take care of me. I don’t remember those days. Mostly due to the fact that I was around two to three years old, but also partly due to the fact that I had so many people trying to distract me from my mother’s absence. My aunt says I asked for my mom a lot in the first couple of months, but after a while my world got filled with so many other new things my mother, who’d now just become a distant memory, slipped away from my little brain. I don’t really remember what she looked like. We don’t keep pictures of her around, and I don’t blame my dad for not wanting to see her. I wouldn’t either, but I guess there’s a small part of me that wants to believe that she would never do the awful things I’d been told she did. Maybe if I could just make myself remember it then things would be easier. My dad was always really supportive of everything that I did, and I knew that he tried his best to give me the best life possible. Dad knew that I was the only one I knew without a mom around, and he tried to make up for that in every way that he could. Everything changed when I was sixteen, though.

It was just a simple parent teacher conference. My math grade had gone down from a low A to a C in a matter of about two weeks. It was my own fault, granted, but I didn’t want to have to face it. I begged my dad not to come talk to her. I promised I would raise my grade, and that he didn’t have to worry about it. The truth was that sometimes I zoned out when I was in class. I had always had a short attention span. I was a dreamer, and the thought of bigger and better things would get stuck deep down in my brain and before I knew it I’d thought about it all through class and the bell shook me from my daydream. Sometimes I thought about my mom, though, and how much different life would be if she was here now to see me grow up. I didn’t want to tell all of this to my dad, though, because I knew that if he knew the truth he would decide I needed help from someone else. Once when I failed a French test he suggested we needed to talk to the school counselor. Truth be told though, I just didn’t pay attention like I should’ve. School was boring to me, and I didn’t always try as hard as I knew I should’ve. This time was different, though. I hadn’t taken the time to go and talk to my teacher about my slacking grade, even though I knew it was there. I knew dad would have a cow, but I didn’t bother to fix it. All in all, I brought the whole thing on myself, and I often thought about that in the years to come. I was the one who set the whole thing in motion. Me, and my carelessness changed my life. Dad scheduled a conference with Ms. Jones on a Friday after school, where we had to sit down and talk about what was going on and what were all the possible solutions. It sounded like a form of torture to me, but dad insisted that I was going and didn’t have a choice in the matter.

At four o’clock we sat down at the long rectangular table near the window in Ms. Jones’ classroom. I’d already been there once that day, and I was already bored by the time I stepped foot in the door.

“Hi Emily,” She greeted me with a friendly smile and turned to Dad, “Hi, I’m Sara Jones.”
Dad shook her hand and smiled in his usual politeness, “I’m Tom. It’s nice to meet you.”

“Likewise,” She said, and went around the other side of the table, “I’m glad we could all get together today. If you guys want to have a seat we can get started and talk about some of the things going on.”

I’d never seen my dad flirt before, and I quickly realized how glad I was that I never had. It made me want to throw up. He was terrible at it, too. Even worse, though, Ms. Jones seemed to be flirting back. By the end of the conference I knew what dad was about to say, and I felt my heart sink a little bit. The words that I knew he’d been fighting back escaped his lips, and he asked her out on a date that very night. She looked embarrassed at first, and especially when she looked at me, but she did say yes and dad took her to the movies at seven pm.

I guess they’d been dating for about a year, even though it seemed like so much longer to me, when dad popped the question. He had asked me first if I was okay with that, and I, of course, said yes because who was I to keep my dad from happiness? What was I supposed to tell him? That I didn’t want him to marry the woman he was in love with. That I didn’t want him to try to be happy after all he’d gone through with my mom? I couldn’t do that him. This was something he wanted, something he needed and I wasn’t going to stand in his way. I knew that he’d still love me and still take care of me. For some reason, though, my resentment for my once teacher seemed to increase that day when I watched them standing at the front of a church putting rings on each other’s fingers.

Life was never the same after that one moment. Everything at school was different, because everywhere I went I seemed to run into Sara. It was even weird to call her Sara, because for two years before she’d been Ms. Jones to me. Secretly, and for the first time in my life, I wanted to leave. I wanted to get out of the small town I’d always lived in, and get out and see the world. I wanted away from the same familiar faces I’d seen at school every day since kindergarten. I wanted to get away from my dad and from his new wife, because being around the both of them wasn’t something I enjoyed anymore.

When I was eighteen I graduated and a week later I left home for an art school in New York City. There was a world of difference between what I’d always known and the world I was experiencing in the big city. People were usually friendly, and life at a fast pace was a nice change. More often than I wanted, though, the image of my mother came to the forefront of my mind. It was only the image of her I’d created from years of wondering what she was like, but nonetheless she was on my mind. I wondered where she was, and what she’d think of my life now. I came to the realization, though, that I was just fine without her. I’d made it through the toughest part of my life without her. I’d learned to stand on my own two feet. Even though my father’s marriage was difficult, and even though school got hard sometimes, I made it through.