Shahab Ali
Prof. Lori Alfe
English 101 D220
Rough Draft #1
24 February 2015
“Life Changing Event”
Divorce: the word itself illustrates a destroying mindset or an impact on a person’s life, which indeed shatters’ their confidence and solidarity. I unfortunately am no exception. I experienced the same dark side of my life during my childhood. “The sorrow for the dead is the only sorrow from which we refused to be divorced. Every other wound we seek to heal-every other affliction to forget: but this wound we consider it a duty to keep open-this affliction we cherish and brood over in solitude.” (Washington Irving). I relate my life according to this quotation that the wound I wasn’t able to get over was my parents’ divorce when I was 10 years old. At that beginning, I was completely unfamiliar with the impact of this wound over my life. But gradually the significance of this wound started to hinder my life and utmost became the most important factor in changing my life from teenage onwards.
I still remember the day when my mother was beaten up brutally by my dad in front of me for the first time back in 1995 and I wasn’t able to do anything because I was very young at that time. After that incident my mother lift me up and took me to her parents house. It was dark outside and I don’t remember the exact time but as she entered the house all her emotions broke out and she started crying. Few months later we received a phone call from my dad saying that “He is coming to pick us up and he missed us”, so my mother and I got dressed up and around 2 pm in the afternoon he came to pick us up though I was completely unfamiliar with the beginning of this new era in my life. Sadly several years later as I was growing up, I witnessed all these fights and it never stopped.
It was a week after my 10th birthday; I was playing in the backyard with one of my friends who used to live next door. While playing soccer with my friend, I saw my mother in her room packing her bag pack. So I ran into her room to ask what is she doing? Though I was curious about it. As I entered the room I saw a broke chair and TV lying on the floor and my mother’s forehead had big scares on it, for a that brief moment I was shocked and speechless, I couldn’t say anything. But eventually I hold my composure and I went closer to my mother and I asked her gently what happened? She looked at me and said: “I cannot bare the torcher from your dad anymore and now it depends on you with whom you want to live for the rest of your life”. At first I was quite as it was hard for me to comprehend what she exactly mean by it. Meanwhile she took me to my grand parents house and few nights later she called me in her room while sitting in her room she told me that she is getting divorced with my dad since she was tired of the fights and she said that my dad doesn’t exist in her life anymore.
The year 2004 was a turning point in my life as my parents get divorced and my custody was given to my mother since my dad was an alcohol addicted and was not able to bare my expenses. My parents divorced had adverse effect on my early teenage life especially my school life. My grades started to go down and I almost failed some of my classes and my confidence, motivational level was shattered. My teacher referred my mother to step up an appointment with a counselor for me since I was drawing myself into depression. I still remember that I never went to my parent teacher meeting after the saddest incident which happened in my life, seeing other