The Distance Between Us

The boxes stacked in my new bedroom looked like a wall I’d built against my own life. Each one was labeled in my mother’s careful handwriting—”Emma’s Books,” “Emma’s Clothes,” “Emma’s Sports Equipment”—as if organizing the dismantling of my entire world into neat categories could somehow make it acceptable.

I was fifteen years old, standing in a bedroom in a state I’d never wanted to visit, let alone live in, because my stepfather got a promotion and my mother decided that was more important than keeping me near my dad.

“Emma, honey, can we talk?” My mom’s voice came from the doorway, tentative in a way that made me angrier. She knew what she’d done. She knew, and she’d done it anyway.

“Not really interested,” I said, keeping my back to her as I stared out the window at a neighborhood full of strangers.

“I know you’re upset, but this is a fresh start for all of us. New opportunities, a bigger house, better schools—”

“I liked my old school. I liked my old house. I liked being able to see my dad whenever I wanted.” I turned to face her then, and I watched her flinch at whatever she saw in my expression. “But none of that mattered as much as David’s job, did it?”

David. My stepfather. The man who’d been in my life since I was eight, who had two kids of his own with my mom—my half-siblings, Jake and Sophie, who were six and four. The man whose career advancement had just become more important than my relationship with my father.

“It’s not that simple,” Mom said, her voice taking on that pleading quality I’d grown to hate over the past few months. “This job is a significant opportunity for David. It’s a thirty percent salary increase, it’s—”

“I don’t care about David’s salary,” I interrupted. “I care that you moved me five hundred miles away from my dad.”

The Court Battle

The legal fight had lasted three months. My dad, Michael Harrison, had done everything he could to stop the move. He’d hired a lawyer, presented evidence of his involvement in my life, argued that uprooting me from my established community and removing me from his daily presence wasn’t in my best interest.

He’d lost.

The judge had ruled that while my father was certainly an involved parent, my mother had primary custody, and her new husband’s job opportunity constituted a reasonable basis for relocation. The fact that David had two other children with my mother—children who would obviously move with their parents—had factored into the decision. Keeping the family unit together, the judge said, was important.

My family unit included my dad. But apparently that didn’t matter as much as keeping David’s kids with both their parents.

I’d sat in that courtroom, watching my dad’s face as the judge delivered the ruling. I’d seen something break in his expression, this man who’d never missed a soccer game, who called me every night even when he was exhausted from his night shift job as a supervisor at a medical supply warehouse, who’d taught me to ride a bike and helped me with math homework and been there for every scraped knee and broken heart and triumph of my entire childhood.

“I’m so sorry, Em,” he’d said afterward, pulling me into a hug in the courthouse hallway while my mother and David waited at a careful distance. “I fought as hard as I could. I’m not giving up, I’m going to keep fighting, I’m going to—”

“I know, Dad,” I’d said, my face pressed against his shoulder. “I know you tried.”

What I didn’t say, what I couldn’t say in that moment, was that I blamed my mother. I blamed David. I blamed a legal system that decided David’s career and his kids’ need to stay with both parents mattered more than my need to stay near my father.

The Move

The actual move happened on a Saturday in July. My dad drove up the night before, staying at a hotel because my mother said it would be “too confusing” for Jake and Sophie if he stayed at the house. As if protecting David’s kids from mild confusion was more important than letting me have one last night with my father in the home I’d grown up in.

We spent that Friday night together, just the two of us, eating pizza and watching movies and pretending everything was normal. Pretending we’d see each other tomorrow and the day after that, like always. Pretending this wasn’t goodbye to the life we’d built together over fifteen years.

“I’m going to visit as much as I can,” Dad promised. “Every other weekend if your mom allows it. School breaks. Summer. We’ll talk every day. This doesn’t change anything between us, Em. Nothing can change that.”

But it did change everything. Five hundred miles means you can’t show up for spontaneous dinners. It means when something goes wrong at school, your dad can’t be there in twenty minutes. It means your whole relationship has to be scheduled and negotiated and filtered through your mother’s approval.

The drive to our new state took eight hours. I rode with my dad, refusing to get in David’s car, refusing to be part of their happy family road trip to their exciting new opportunity. My mom had argued about it, said it didn’t make sense for Dad to drive all that way just to turn around and drive back, but I’d stood firm.

“He’s driving me or I’m not going,” I’d said flatly. “Pick one.”

She’d picked having my dad drive me. David had looked hurt, which I found almost funny. Did he really expect me to celebrate this move? Did he actually think I’d want to spend eight hours in a car with the man whose career had just destroyed my life?

We didn’t talk much during that drive, Dad and me. What was there to say that we hadn’t already said? That this was unfair? That it was wrong? That my mother had made a choice and that choice was him and his job over keeping me near my father?

When we finally pulled up to the new house—bigger than our old one, David’s promotion money already visible in the upgraded square footage—my dad helped me carry boxes to my new room. We worked in silence, and I could feel him memorizing the space, figuring out what it would look like when he FaceTimed me, imagining me living in this room he’d never been invited to help prepare.

“I love you, Em,” he said when it was time for him to leave. “That doesn’t change. None of this changes that.”

“I love you too, Dad.”

I watched from my window as he got in his car and drove away, and I felt something harden in my chest. This wasn’t just sadness. This was anger. This was betrayal. This was a decision my mother and David had made that prioritized everything except my relationship with my father.

And I wasn’t going to pretend I was okay with it.

The Boundary

The first test came three weeks later. School had started—a new school where I knew no one, where I was the awkward new girl joining established friend groups, where everything from the building layout to the class schedule felt wrong. I’d made the soccer team because soccer was the one constant in my life, the one thing that transcended geography.

Our first game was on a Saturday afternoon. I was starting midfielder, same position I’d played at my old school. I was good—good enough that the coach had been genuinely pleased when I tried out, good enough that my new teammates were actually friendly despite me being an outsider.

My dad had already planned to drive up for it. Eight hours each way for a ninety-minute game, but he’d never missed one of my games and he wasn’t starting now.

The morning of the game, David approached me at breakfast. He was trying so hard to be normal, to act like everything was fine, to pretend we were a happy blended family in our exciting new city.

“Looking forward to the game today, Emma,” he said, pouring coffee with studied casualness. “Your mom and I will be in the stands cheering you on.”

I looked up from my cereal. “My dad’s coming.”

“Oh, that’s great! It’ll be nice for all of us to—”

“If my dad’s there, you can be there,” I said clearly. “If he’s not there, you’re not welcome.”

The kitchen went silent. My mom turned from the stove where she’d been making pancakes for Jake and Sophie. David’s expression shifted from friendly to confused to hurt.

“Emma, that’s not fair,” Mom said, her voice taking on that warning tone. “David has been nothing but supportive. He wants to watch you play.”

“Then he should have thought about that before taking a job five hundred miles from my dad,” I replied, my voice flat. “This is my boundary. My dad is my parent. David isn’t. If Dad can be there, David can be there. Otherwise, no.”

“You can’t ban your stepfather from your games,” Mom said, her voice rising slightly. Sophie looked up from her coloring book with concerned eyes, sensing tension but not understanding it.

“Watch me,” I said. “Either Dad is welcome or David isn’t. Pick one.”

It wasn’t a tantrum. It wasn’t irrational teenage rebellion. It was the clearest expression I could make of a simple truth: David was not my father. He didn’t get to take my father’s place. And if they were going to force me to live five hundred miles from my dad, then they didn’t get to pretend David could just step into that role at my soccer games and school events and parent-teacher conferences.

My dad had earned his place in my life through fifteen years of showing up. David had forfeited his by prioritizing his job over my relationship with my father.

The Escalation

That first game set the pattern. My dad drove up, eight hours each way, arriving exhausted but smiling. He stood in the bleachers wearing his faded “Emma’s Dad” t-shirt from when I was in elementary school, cheering every time I touched the ball.

David stayed home with Mom and the little ones. She was angry—I could see it in the tightness around her mouth when I got home after Dad dropped me off at the house before starting his drive back. But she didn’t say anything that day.

The conversation came later, after dinner, after Jake and Sophie were in bed. Mom knocked on my door and came in without waiting for permission, which she’d started doing more often, as if my privacy was another thing she could take away along with my proximity to my father.

“We need to talk about these rules you’re setting,” she began, sitting uninvited on my bed while I did homework at my desk.

“They’re not rules. They’re boundaries.”

“You’re punishing David for something that isn’t his fault. This job opportunity—”

“Was more important than keeping me near my dad,” I finished. “Yes, I know. You’ve made that very clear.”

“That’s not fair, Emma. You’re acting like we had a choice—”

“You did have a choice,” I said, turning to face her. “You could have let me stay with Dad. You could have moved here with David and let me finish high school back home. Plenty of divorced parents do that—one parent moves for work, the older kids stay with the other parent. But you didn’t even consider it.”

“Of course I considered it! But you’re fifteen years old. You need your mother—”

“I need my father!” The words came out louder than I intended, but I didn’t care. “I need the parent who’s been showing up my entire life, who’s never missed anything important, who fought in court to keep me close to him. But that didn’t matter as much as David’s promotion, did it? It didn’t matter as much as keeping Jake and Sophie with both their parents.”

Mom’s face went pale. “That’s not—we wouldn’t have split up Jake and Sophie. They’re so young, they need both parents together—”

“And I didn’t? I didn’t need my dad? Or did I just not matter as much because my parents are divorced, because I’m just the kid from your first marriage who gets shuffled around based on what’s convenient?”

“Emma Harrison, that is not true and you know it—”

“Do I?” I asked. “Because from where I’m sitting, you made it really clear whose family was more important. David’s kids get to stay with both parents. I get ripped away from mine.”

The silence that followed was heavy. Mom sat on my bed looking like I’d hit her, and maybe I had, with words instead of fists.

“I love you,” she finally said, her voice thick. “I didn’t make this decision to hurt you. We thought—David and I thought—that this was best for the whole family. Better schools, safer neighborhood, more opportunities—”

“I don’t care about opportunities,” I said quietly. “I care about my dad. And you took me away from him. So no, David doesn’t get to come to my events unless Dad can be there too. David doesn’t get to replace him. And honestly, I don’t want to spend time with you right now either.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means I’ll do the minimum required. I’ll live here because I legally have to. I’ll go to school and soccer and do my homework. But family dinners? Family game nights? Pretending we’re one big happy family? No. I’m done pretending. And when I turn eighteen, when I have a choice, I’m going back home to be near Dad. And I don’t know if I’ll talk to you after that.”

I watched my mother’s face crumple. “You don’t mean that.”

“I absolutely mean it. You made your choice. Now you get to live with it.”

She left my room crying. I felt a twinge of guilt, but it was buried under layers of anger and betrayal that felt more justified than any remorse.

The Attempts at Normal

David tried harder after that. He started making awkward attempts at connection—asking about my homework, offering to help with projects, suggesting we watch movies together. I deflected every attempt with polite but firm distance.

“No thank you” became my standard response to everything he suggested.

Would I like to go to the hardware store with him? No thank you.

Did I want help setting up my new computer? No thank you.

Would I join them for a family outing to explore the city? No thank you.

He seemed genuinely hurt, which created an interesting dynamic in the house. My mom would get defensive on his behalf, which only made me more resentful. Jake and Sophie were confused about why their big sister didn’t want to play with them anymore, which hurt, but they were collateral damage in a war their parents had started.

The weekends my dad came to visit were the only times I smiled. He’d drive up on Friday night, exhausted from work and the drive, and we’d spend all day Saturday together. Sometimes just talking. Sometimes seeing movies or going to bookstores or getting ice cream. Sometimes just sitting in comfortable silence because we didn’t need to perform happiness for each other.

Those Saturdays became my lifeline. The thing I counted down to. The only thing that made living in this wrong city in this wrong house tolerable.

But they also became a source of increasing tension with my mother and David. Because every other Saturday, I had a soccer game, and every other Saturday, David was banned from attending because my dad was there. The weekends Dad couldn’t make it, I told David he still couldn’t come, because that was the rule: if Dad wasn’t welcome, neither was David.

“You’re being unreasonable,” Mom said after I refused to let David attend a game when Dad was stuck at work and couldn’t drive up. “Your father isn’t here. There’s no reason David can’t come watch you play.”

“The reason is that I don’t want him there,” I said simply. “If Dad can’t be there, I don’t want a substitute father in the stands. I’d rather have no one.”

“He’s not trying to replace your father—”

“Then he should stop acting like one. He should stop pretending we’re a normal family. He should acknowledge that his job is the reason I can’t be near my actual father, and maybe show some awareness of what that cost me.”

“This job is supporting you! It’s paying for this house and your school and—”

“I don’t want this house or this school! I want my dad! How many times do I have to say it before you understand? You chose David’s career. You chose keeping his kids with both parents. You didn’t choose keeping me with both of mine. So now you get to live with the consequences of that choice.”

The School Conference

The crisis point came three months into the school year. I’d been doing fine academically—not great, not terrible, just fine. Fine was all I could manage when everything else in my life felt wrong. My grades had slipped from the A’s and B’s I’d maintained at my old school to mostly B’s and C’s, but I was turning in all my work and not causing any problems, so I figured it was acceptable.

My mother apparently disagreed. She scheduled a parent-teacher conference without telling me, then informed me the night before that she and David would be attending.

“Dad should be there,” I said immediately.

“Emma, your father lives five hundred miles away. We can’t expect him to drive up for a routine conference—”

“Then do it over video call. Or postpone it until a weekend he’s already planning to visit. Or let me attend alone. But David doesn’t get to go to my parent-teacher conference. He’s not my parent.”

“He’s your stepfather, and he lives in this house, and he has every right to be involved in your education—”

“He has the rights you give him,” I interrupted. “And I’m saying I don’t want him there. If Dad can’t be there in person or virtually, then no one goes except me. Or Mom, I guess, since she’s technically my legal guardian. But not David.”

Mom looked like she wanted to argue but was too tired. “Fine. I’ll see if your father can join via video call.”

The conference was awkward. My English teacher, Mr. Bradley, clearly sensed tension as he sat across from my mother and me, while my father’s face appeared on my mother’s phone propped against a water bottle.

“Emma is a bright student,” Mr. Bradley began diplomatically, “but she seems disengaged. Her essays are technically proficient but lack the depth and enthusiasm I saw in her writing samples from her previous school. Her class participation has been minimal. I’m concerned that she’s not adjusting well to the transition.”

“The transition was forced,” I said flatly. “I didn’t want to move. I didn’t choose this school. I’m doing the work. That’s all I agreed to do.”

Mr. Bradley looked uncomfortable. My mother looked mortified. My dad’s expression on the tiny phone screen was heartbroken.

“Emma, honey,” Dad said gently, “I know this has been hard. But you can’t let it affect your future. Your education matters.”

“Does it matter more than being near you?” I asked, looking at his pixelated face. “Because apparently my education is supposed to be better here. Better schools, Mom keeps saying. So far I don’t see it.”

“That’s because you’re not engaging,” Mom said, her voice tight. “You’re going through the motions but you’re not actually trying—”

“I’m doing exactly what you forced me to do,” I replied. “I’m living here. I’m going to school. I’m turning in assignments. But you can’t force me to be happy about it. You can’t force me to pretend this was a good decision. And you definitely can’t force me to accept David as a replacement for Dad.”

Mr. Bradley cleared his throat. “Perhaps we should focus on concrete steps Emma can take to improve her academic engagement…”

The rest of the conference was a blur of suggested action items and strategies I had no intention of implementing. When it ended, my mother sat in the parking lot for a long moment before starting the car.

“You’re destroying our family,” she said finally, her voice breaking.

“You destroyed it when you moved us here,” I replied. “I’m just refusing to pretend otherwise.”

The Counseling Mandate

After the conference, my mother insisted I start seeing a therapist. She found someone local, a family counselor named Dr. Martinez who specialized in “adjustment issues and blended family dynamics.”

I went because I legally had to, but I made my position clear from the first session.

“I don’t need therapy to adjust to my new situation,” I told Dr. Martinez, a kind-faced woman in her fifties who had probably heard every teenager’s complaints but was clearly unprepared for my level of clarity. “I need my mother to acknowledge that she made a choice that hurt me, and that I’m allowed to have boundaries in response to that choice.”

“Tell me about these boundaries,” Dr. Martinez said, pen poised over her notepad.

I explained about the events policy—that David wasn’t welcome unless my dad could be there too. I explained about refusing family bonding activities. I explained about my plan to move back home at eighteen and potentially cut contact.

“Those are significant boundaries,” she observed carefully. “What would need to change for you to reconsider them?”

“Nothing can change,” I said simply. “We live here now. That’s done. I can’t be near my dad anymore, not the way I used to be. My mom chose David’s job over my relationship with my father. That’s not something that can be fixed. It’s just something I have to live with until I’m old enough to choose differently.”

“What about your relationship with David? He seems to care about you—”

“David seems to care about fixing what he broke,” I corrected. “He seems to care about his wife not being upset, about his stepkid not openly resenting him. That’s not the same as caring about me. If he cared about me, he would have thought about how his job change would affect me before accepting it.”

“Did he have conversations with you about the move?”

“After it was already decided. After he’d already accepted the job. They both kept saying how excited they were, how many opportunities this would create, how much better everything would be. They never actually asked if I wanted to move. They never gave me a choice.”

“You were fifteen. Children don’t typically get to make those decisions—”

“Children of divorced parents often do get a say in which parent they live with,” I interrupted. “The court asked me where I wanted to live. I said with my dad. Or if not with him, with my aunt back home, or with my grandmother. I gave them options. But none of those options worked for Mom because they involved her moving without me. So my opinion didn’t matter.”

Dr. Martinez was quiet for a moment. “It sounds like you feel your needs were secondary to the needs of your mother’s new family.”

“Not secondary,” I said. “Irrelevant. David’s kids’ needs mattered—keeping them with both parents, keeping them in a stable family unit. David’s career mattered. My mom’s marriage mattered. But my relationship with my dad? That was expendable. That was the cost of everyone else’s happiness. And I’m supposed to just accept that and be grateful for better schools and a bigger house.”

The Holidays

Christmas broke something in my mother. I’d spent Thanksgiving with my dad—my first holiday apart from her in my entire life. She’d cried about it, tried to negotiate, suggested we could do two celebrations. But I was firm.

“I’m spending the holidays with Dad,” I said simply. “You chose to move me away from him. This is the consequence.”

So Thanksgiving was at my dad’s small apartment, just the two of us, ordering pizza and watching football because neither of us could actually cook a turkey. It was quiet and a little sad but also the most at-peace I’d felt since the move.

Christmas, she insisted, had to be different. “We’re a family. We celebrate Christmas together. That’s non-negotiable.”

“Then Dad comes here, or I go there,” I said.

“Emma, David’s parents are coming. His whole family. You can’t expect us to invite your father—”

“Why not? He’s my family. More than David’s parents are.”

“It would be uncomfortable—”

“For who? For David’s family? They’ll have to acknowledge that David’s stepdaughter actually has a father who’s still very much in her life? How terrible for them.”

The argument escalated into our worst fight yet. Mom cried. David tried to mediate, which only made me angrier. Jake and Sophie cried because we were yelling. It was a mess.

In the end, we compromised, sort of. I would spend Christmas Eve with my mother’s family, but Christmas Day was with my dad. He’d drive up overnight, spend the day with me, then drive back. Sixteen hours of driving for maybe twelve hours together, but he did it without complaint.

Christmas morning, I woke up in my dad’s hotel room, where he’d gotten a suite with a fold-out couch for me. We had gas station coffee and vending machine pastries for breakfast, exchanged small gifts—I got him a new thermos for his commute, he got me a necklace with both our initials—and talked about nothing and everything.

“How are you really doing, Em?” he asked eventually, his voice careful.

“I hate it there,” I admitted. “I hate the house and the city and my school and especially David. Mom keeps acting like I’m being unreasonable, like I should just adjust and accept this. But Dad, they took me away from you. How am I supposed to just be okay with that?”

“You’re not,” he said gently. “You don’t have to be okay with it. But baby, you can’t let this anger consume your whole life. You’re so focused on punishing them that you’re punishing yourself too.”

“I’m protecting myself,” I corrected. “I’m setting boundaries so they can’t pretend this is normal. So they can’t act like David can replace you. So they can’t erase what they did.”

“I’m not going anywhere, Em. Nothing they did changes that. You don’t have to fight so hard to keep me in your life—I’m always going to be here.”

“But you’re not here,” I said, feeling tears threaten. “You’re five hundred miles away. I can’t just stop by after school. You can’t be at all my games. Everything has to be planned and scheduled and it’s not the same, Dad. It’s just not the same.”

“I know.” He pulled me into a hug. “I know, baby. And I’m so sorry. I fought as hard as I could. But this is what we have now. And we can either let it destroy us, or we can figure out how to make it work.”

“I don’t want to make it work with them,” I said against his shoulder. “I just want to survive until I can come home.”

He didn’t try to talk me out of it. He just held me while I cried, and then we spent the rest of Christmas Day watching movies and being together in the small, temporary space we’d carved out in a world that felt designed to keep us apart.

The Aftermath

The months that followed established a pattern. My dad visited twice a month when he could—every other weekend plus any long weekends or school breaks. I maintained my boundaries rigidly: David wasn’t welcome at any events unless my dad was there, which meant David attended nothing. I spoke to my mother only when necessary, keeping our interactions polite but distant.

She kept trying. She’d knock on my door to talk, try to engage me in family activities, suggest mother-daughter outings. I declined everything that wasn’t absolutely mandatory.

“You’re holding a grudge,” she said one evening when I refused to go to dinner with just her, without David and the kids. “You’re letting this consume you.”

“I’m not holding a grudge,” I replied calmly. “I’m enforcing boundaries. There’s a difference.”

“You’ve cut me out of your life—”

“You cut me out of my dad’s life. I’m just responding proportionally.”

“That’s not fair. I’m still your mother. I still love you. I still—”

“Still prioritized your husband’s job over my relationship with my father,” I finished. “Yes, I know. And now you get to experience what it feels like to have someone you love choose something else over you. Welcome to my world, Mom.”

David eventually stopped trying to engage with me altogether. He’d nod when we passed in the hallway, make polite conversation if forced to at the dinner table, but otherwise gave me space. I didn’t know if it was defeat or respect or just exhaustion, but I appreciated not having to deflect his attempts at connection anymore.

My relationship with Jake and Sophie suffered too, which hurt more than I wanted to admit. They were innocent in all of this, just little kids who didn’t understand why their big sister didn’t want to play anymore. But I couldn’t separate them from the situation. They were the reason Mom had argued we needed to stay together as a family. They got to keep both parents while I lost daily access to mine.

At school, I remained disengaged. I did the minimum required work, maintained my B-C average, showed up for soccer because it was the only thing that still felt like mine. I made a few friends—not close ones, just people to sit with at lunch and talk to in class. I didn’t let anyone get too close, because in two and a half years, I’d be gone anyway.

The therapist appointments continued weekly. Dr. Martinez never managed to break through my defenses, though she tried.

“You’re protecting yourself,” she observed during one session, “but you’re also isolating yourself. You’re so focused on maintaining these boundaries that you’re not letting anyone in.”

“Good,” I said. “Letting people in means they can hurt you. My mom proved that. I thought she’d protect my relationship with my dad. I thought she’d choose what was best for me. I was wrong. So now I protect myself.”

“What about when you turn eighteen?” she asked. “What’s your plan?”

“Move back home. Go to college near Dad. Rebuild the life they destroyed.”

“And your relationship with your mother?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “Maybe someday I’ll be able to forgive her. But not while I’m still living with the consequences of her choice. Not while I still can’t see my dad whenever I want. Maybe when I’m thirty and this is all in the past, we can have a relationship again. But for now? I need distance.”

The Present

It’s been a year and a half now. I’m seventeen, a junior in high school, counting down the days until I turn eighteen and can make my own choices about where I live.

My dad and I talk every single day. FaceTime, phone calls, text messages. He still drives up twice a month, still never misses my soccer games when he’s in town. We’ve gotten good at cramming a relationship into the small windows of time the distance allows.

My mother has stopped crying, at least where I can see her. She’s resigned to my boundaries, though she still tries occasionally to breach them. She’ll suggest family activities. I’ll decline. She’ll ask if we can talk. I’ll say there’s nothing to discuss. She’ll mention how much Jake and Sophie miss me. I’ll feel guilty but maintain my distance anyway.

David has become a ghost in the house—present but not engaged, polite but not warm. Sometimes I catch him looking at me with something that might be regret, but he never says anything. I wonder if he regrets taking the job, if he wishes they’d handled it differently, if he understands the cost of his promotion. But I’ll never ask, because it doesn’t matter anymore. The damage is done.

My friends from my old life have moved on. They have new friends, new inside jokes, a whole life I’m not part of anymore. When I visit with my dad, it feels like visiting a museum of my own past—familiar but disconnected, like looking at something behind glass.

But I’m surviving. I’m maintaining my boundaries. I’m protecting my relationship with my dad in the only way I know how—by refusing to let anyone replace him, by refusing to pretend this new family configuration is acceptable, by refusing to let my mother and David off the hook for a decision that changed my entire life.

Am I being unfair? Maybe. Am I holding a grudge? Possibly. Am I making the situation worse by refusing to adapt and adjust and accept?

Probably.

But I’m also being honest. I’m being clear about my needs and my feelings. I’m not pretending everything is fine when it’s not. I’m not letting them erase what they did or minimize its impact.

They moved me away from my father. They chose David’s career and his kids’ family unit over my relationship with my dad. They made their choice.

Now I’m making mine.

And if that makes me the difficult one, the unreasonable teenager, the one who won’t let go and move forward—well, that’s a label I can live with.

Because what I can’t live with is pretending this was okay. What I can’t live with is acting like David can replace my father. What I can’t live with is forgiving people who haven’t acknowledged what they took from me.

So I’ll keep my boundaries. I’ll keep counting down until I’m eighteen. I’ll keep choosing my dad, over and over again, the way my mother should have chosen to keep me near him.

And maybe someday, when I’m no longer living with the daily reminder of what they prioritized over me, I’ll be able to have a relationship with my mother again.

But today is not that day.

Today, I’m still that angry fifteen-year-old who watched a judge rule that keeping David’s family together mattered more than keeping me close to my father.

Today, I’m still enforcing my boundaries and protecting my relationship with the one parent who fought to keep me.

Today, I’m still waiting for the day when I get to choose for myself.

And that day can’t come soon enough.