When you become a mother or a father, (I am obviously not speaking from experience in this part) if you are in a healthy relationship, you never wish to have to split apart your family. As a child, you never wish to have divorced or split parents, because when all else fails, you want to have mommy and daddy to come home to, together. There are so many things that a child can learn from having parents that stay together for years and years, but I truly believe that there is just as much, maybe more to learn as a child of divorce or separation. Everyone's trip to being where they are right now is completely different, I totally understand that, but here and now is a time for me to share some of my favorite things about my parents being divorced (ya don't hear that everyday) and some of my not so favorite.

One very awesome thing that comes from having divorced parents that also decide to jump back into the dating pool, is when the time is right, or maybe not so right, maybe it's just a surprise, you get SIBLINGS! There is nothing better than having best friends by your side for your entire life, no matter what. There is a very bad connotation to "half and step" siblings. Which I don't quite understand, seeing how family is family. I have four siblings and at one point, I had four more. Of course, I still consider them family, but because I no longer see them and am not allowed to really, it makes it very hard to keep in touch. Regardless, because of having split families, I have made life long friends that I also get to boss around because I am the second oldest (YAY!). Now on to some of the crappy parts, which are still, not the worst things in the world.

Holidays. Weekends. Vacations. When I was younger I always remember my mom saying "You can't do it all Ashley, you are going to miss out on things and you just have to realize there is nothing you can do about it." At the time, I remember thinking, "I CAN do it all, just split me in half." Of course, no matter how hard I tried, that is not possible either. Haha. SO as I got older, it never got easier, but I relaxed a little. I just had to tell myself, yes they might be going to a hotel this weekend at moms and you are missing it but maybe when you are there next weekend, you will get to do something too. It's a really shitty thing for a child to have to want to be in so many different places at once that they just want to crawl away. But it happens. And you learn and grow from it. As for holidays, they were mostly okay, and you end up just alternating every other year anyways. But Christmas Eve was always, ALWAYS, the hardest. I wanted to be with my mom and my 3 siblings there, especially my baby sister cause "Santa" was so fresh. But I also have a little sister at my dads and I just wanted to be there for her too. I would hope and pray that somehow, someway, I could have everyone together, but I also knew it was stupid to even think about. So I just had to go with the flow.

Which is the biggest lesson learned from this life of mine so far. There is really nothing you can do about things that are out of your control, and if you just roll with it, you'll end up exactly where you are supposed to be.