Facing the Music Read Free

girl how child custody works and how, if she had any choice, that things would be different. For the time being, I would have to try and understand that our lives were based on a court decision, not hers. The best she could offer was that when we were old enough, twelve years old to be exact, then the courts would let us choose.
    When I brought my anxieties up to my father, the answer was different. He never discussed our situation much: “This is just the way things are.”
    All this began to weigh on me in the form of agonizing guilt. When I was about six years old, I became aware of how grateful I was to return back to the routine of my father’s world at the end of our weekends away. I loved growing up on our farm. I enjoyed the excitement of going to school and all my friends there, but I also loved spending time with my mom. I had no clue as to how to manage the feelings of loss, watching her drive away eachweekend. If I loved her, wouldn’t I want to be with her? I loved my dad, too. I didn’t want to not live with him.
    With every visitation trade-off, I’d wade through the tears of my split affections. I loved them both. I wanted things to be different. I loved each life with equal measure, but I was a little girl, unable to put into words how difficult this was to manage.
    The cost of this emotional struggle was starting to creep into our family psyche. As the halcyon days of my father’s new marriage faded into everyday life and the visitation schedule taking its toll, my stepmother and I were clearly struggling with our new roles. The previous hopes that I had had about her acting as a kind of surrogate mother began to evaporate when we found ourselves in conflict.
    It started in the little, predictable challenges of daily life. Maybe, one night we might be stubborn in getting to bed on time or complain about picking up our toys. When it came time for parental discipline to be enforced, we often lost our way. I wouldn’t dream of challenging my father, but my stepmother was uncharted territory. I’d test her authority, childishly crying: “I don’t have to do what you say!”
    We would go round and round until our minor skirmishes eventually took on darker tones, and the language became littered with ugliness.
    I’d get to the point at which I would scream: “You are not my mother!”and my stepmother’s reply would be equally hurtful.
    Like a glass capsule of cyanide, we put it between us and crushed it. Our awful words leaked out beyond the boundaries of our goodwill toward one another. We found ourselves at merciless odds, with each of us willing to go the distance into a spiraling darkness. Me, with all the rage of a confused little girl, and shewith the constant reminder that I would never be her flesh and blood.
    It became our cycle of hostility to go toe-to-toe in a war of words, in the hopes that one of us would come out on top as the victor. Neither one of us willing to relent. When the slightest grievance erupted to pit my stepmother against my sister and me, it seemed to leave my father torn between the loyalties of the women in his life, his wife and his children. Who was he to side with? The adult or the children?
    It had to have been a difficult situation for him to navigate. Between my sister and me, I was often the confident ringleader, notorious for challenging boundaries. I’d fight until my last breath to stay the course of whatever path I had chosen, but I rarely came out the other side feeling as if I’d gained any ground.
    My stepmother’s account of contentious events usually won out, leaving me feeling crushed when my father appeared to choose her narrative over my own.
    Growing up, I would struggle to keep hold of how he loved me when it seemed he was powerless to change the circumstances of our home life. Between the hours when he seemed swept away by the current of our family brokenness, there would be times we could