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Etienne Waroquet

Amy Flick

ENGCOMP 0200-142530

October 2019

Growing up In Cleveland Heights had its many perks and benefits. It was my first home.

It was the first place I remembered growing up in and the first place where I had my best friends.

It was home and going to school was enjoying and I really remember a striving family with a

mother and a father who loved each other, or so I thought.

I would walk home from school every day. It was a short ten-minute walk. Sometimes as

I would come home, I’d hear my parent yelling at each other. It didn’t faze me at first but then it

grew increasingly concerning. A few months passed, and it was the same thing. Sometimes my

mom would leave for the weekend or even longer and not tell my brother or I where she was

going. One day, the screaming and fighting was so severe, I remember my mom storming out of

the house, with no conscious thought to look back. That was the last time she stayed home.

I felt abandoned by my mother. She would call to tell us everything was okay, but my

father was always there for me. There are a lot of underlying issues from this exact moment that

are portrayed throughout my life every day. I have many trust issues with people and issues

opening up with others and being friends because my mind doesn’t want the same situation to

happen again. It’s a conscious thought I’m unable to control.

I had so much anxiety to go to school because I was scared of what was happening in my

home life. Some days I would have panic attacks and I’d cry endlessly in my classroom. The

school would call home and the only way I could function was if my dad was at school with me.

I was scared of being abandoned again. I was too young to understand that school was a
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requirement and my parents couldn’t always be next to me. Overtime, I had to cope with the fact

that my dad couldn’t go to school with me. He would leave small notes for me in my lunch box

and in my folders saying things like, “I love you, Etienne!” or “You’re the coolest 6-year-old I

know.” These comforted me and helped pushed me through the school day. By this time, I was in

the first grade and still leaning basic skills.

One day at home, I heard knocking on the door. When my father opened the door, a

sheriff’s deputy stood. He had implied that we were being evicted from the household. A large

part of being evicted was that there was a massive housing crash in 2008 in Cleveland.

Essentially, houses were being sold to people who couldn’t afford them. So, a large group of

residents in the Cleveland area were being evicted. During this time, I moved away to

Pennsylvania to live with my mom while my father was searching for a new house and living

with some of his friends. It was a difficult time because I switched schools for a short while and

had to make all new friends. I was already prone to having difficulties making new friends and

moving made it all the more difficult. After a few months passed, I moved back with my dad to a

new town in Ohio. Things had slowly gotten back to normal and I was slowly becoming

accustomed to living with my father while I visited my mother every other weekend.

Even to this day, I still do not know why my parents had gotten a divorce. I have a strong

idea as to why they did, but It is nothing I want to inquire about because those are memories I do

not like to look back at. Not a day goes by where I don’t think how my life would be If I never

had to endure those instances.

Mental health is something that affects me to this day. I’ve seen many therapists and

talked to many people to hopefully better understand why I deal with difficult thoughts and how

to cope with them. For the most part, I don’t have many underlying issues anymore, but I have
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been sincerely shaped from my parent’s divorce. The positive experience I take from the entire

situation is that I am excited for my future. I have no issues with either my mother or father. I

understand that even during those times of fighting they endured while I was a kid, they still

wanted the best for me. Parents are not perfect people and they make mistakes. Despite all of

this, it makes me excited to have a relationship in the future and having a family. I’ve seen how a

family should and shouldn’t be, and I couldn’t be more excited to meet someone I dearly care

about and to have a family with that person.