From the time I was seven years old, even at such a young age, I could feel the durable bond between my mother and me crumbling. It wasn't until I moved out of my mother's house at the age of sixteen to live with my dad that I began to see the drastic change. For example, my step-father lost his job in October of 2011. He relocated my mother and two of my siblings to Athens, Georgia, where they still live today. .
The summer after my family moved, I went to visit my mother before I had to go back home to Lake Village, Arkansas, and begin my junior year of high school. My step-father worked during the day and would return home at 6:00 p.m. every night. I would go to my room and pretend to be asleep so I wouldn't have to talk to the cold hearted man my mother made me call "dad." My mother came in my room to let me know that supper was ready. Joey came in just in time to hear me say I wasn't hungry. Being the blind, heartless man he was, and still is, he felt the desire to tell me I needed to eat because I looked sickening, malnourished, unhealthy, and anorexic. My mother heard every word come out of her husband's mouth. She didn't speak a single word; instead, she just sat next to me on my bed. This affected our bond in a very negative way, because she did not protect me like I had always known her to do. This experience made me feel like my feelings were not at all important to her. I felt like she valued her husband's harsh opinion more than how much it hurt me. .
Furthermore, not keeping a successful bond with my mother has led my character to become more developed. The effects of a successful bond between a child and her parents help her grow in a very positive way. A child who did not bond successfully with her parents also has the opportunity to grow in a positive direction, sometimes, because of learning from experience, more than a child with a successful bond. The characteristics that I lacked before the downfall of my bond with my mother are now present and visible in my everyday life.
