I Shouldn't Feel This Way- Chapter 1

CHAPTER 1
Whenever I tell people how old my parents are, they usually end up laughing, thinking I’m joking or pulling their leg, and when I tell them I’m not, I get the following reaction;

“Oh…okay…” and then an awkward silence. Everything feels uncomfortable afterwards, like I have to explain how that happened.

My parents were really young when they had me. Most people ask themselves; ‘what the hell were they doing having sex at that age? What kind of households were they raised in?’ And well, when you’re a horny hormonal teenager and not practising safe sex…pregnancy can happen, no matter what kind of upbringing you were raised in. Emily Rose Thompson and Noah Mason Hunter welcomed their first child into the world on August 1 st , 1997. They had a beautiful baby girl that had her father’s ocean blue eyes and a full head of dark brown hair. They named her Aria Sophia Hunter. And that little girl…was me.

For the first four years of my life, I lived with my grandparents on my mother’s side. My father came from a very wealthy family and they were against the pregnancy when they found out. They offered my grandparents lots of money to force my mother to get an abortion, but they were strict god fearing Catholics, and although they were incredibly disappointed in my mom, they weren’t going to let her abort me, no matter how many added figures the Hunter family wrote them in cheques.

The plan was to give me up for adoption afterwards, but as soon as my grandma held me in her arms, she fell in love with me. My mom and dad signed their parental rights away and I was raised by my grandparents until I reach my fourth birthday. I rarely ever saw my mom, never saw my dad. Mom was too busy being a teenager and rebelling all the time, instead of taking responsibility and taking care of me. My nana kept telling me that I wasn’t her mommy, because I had gotten in the habit of calling her momma.

When my dad finally turned 18, he separated himself from his family and decided to take responsibility and marry my mom, but she didn’t want to marry him…because she was already engaged to someone else, my drunken abusive step dad Robert. Of course I didn’t know all of this at the time, because I was too young to even understand how the world worked.

My mom, Rob and I ended up moving to an apartment in New York because she wanted to pursue her dreams in the fashion industry and he made her all these promises that never came true. Mom ended up working in retail and Rob managed to hold down a job as a mechanic at some garage near the rough side of Manhattan. Life was depressing to say the least, I grew up having to take care of my four other half siblings, while mom and Rob constantly fought over money, his drinking, his failed promises and his extreme forms of discipline…I didn’t have a good relationship with my mom or Rob to say the least. He pretty much treated me as if I didn’t exist and whenever I did get noticed under his radar, it was usually because he was pissed and blaming me for not doing my chores properly or being a constant fuck up.

I knew nothing of my father. All my life I was raised to believe that he didn’t want me. It wasn’t until two months ago that I discovered the truth. My whole life had flipped upside down.

oOo 
I had been sitting on the living room sofa, wearing 2 sweat shirts because the radiator was broken and it was a cold autumn evening, literally raining cats and dogs outside. I was trying to cram for a calculus exam and watch over my obnoxious brothers and sisters who were glued to the television watching tunes, when the telephone rang. I was expecting it to be my nana because she usually called every Thursday evening to just check up on me and see how I was doing, but it wasn’t her. It was an unfamiliar voice that belonged to a man on the other end of the line, and he was asking to speak with me. When I told him who I was, there was the longest pause before he said;

“Aria…I’m your dad, Noah.”

Needless to say, I was in shock. Throughout all sixteen years of my life, I grew up believing that my dad never wanted me, that he abandoned my mom, and it didn’t help that my grandparents always trash talked him and his family.

I was in no way shape or form, prepared for that conversation, so I hung up on him, while my heart raced a mile a minute. Five seconds later, he called back and I found newfound courage to tell him off before I disconnected again.

I literally couldn’t study anymore, I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t do anything. I needed my mom to get home, and I needed to grill her about the truth and I did exactly that as soon as she got her foot through the door. She ended up confessing to me that she felt it was in my best interest to protect me from my dad and his crazy family. She said that my dad was pretty much a mama’s boy and his mother (my grandmother) Grace Hunter, was a vain and evil woman who was manipulative and got off on destroying lives, which is why my mom wanted nothing to do with that family.

She also said that my dad never pursued getting custody of me, which only justified her belief that she made the right decision getting away from him and his family. I still had so many answers, and no way of contacting my dad. He had called all but two times and I kept praying the he would call again so that I could have a chance to get his side of the story. I tried to 411 him, and look him up online, but I had no luck. He didn’t have a Facebook, Twitter, nothing. It wasn’t until exactly a week later that my mother got served with court papers. My dad was taking her to court to get custody of me.

Rob kept encouraging my mom to ‘dump me off’ with my dad, because it would be one less mouth to feed, and my mother was conflicted about it because she wanted to do what she felt was best for me. Regardless, my presence and my feelings were important to the judge who was going to make the ruling.

And a month later…was when I saw my father for the first time; a gloomy Monday afternoon on November 5 th , 2012 inside New York City Family Court.

I swear I didn’t even recognize that he was my dad; I thought he was some young rookie lawyer dressed in a dark grey suit, probably Armani, and he had short brown hair that looked freshly cut, a masculine square jaw, with the most intense blue eyes I had ever seen. The lines and symmetry of his face was flawless and he was very tall, probably 6’2. He could’ve passed for a model. Noah Hunter was definitely a hot shot lawyer alright (I found this out later), but he had someone else representing him that day, some old guy.

My estranged father kept glancing over at me and I was blushing like an idiot, for some reason, I couldn’t meet his eyes. It wasn’t until I took the stand, when the judge asked me what I wanted. I personally wanted to tell her that I didn’t feel safe at home, that my step dad was always drunk and had a history of hitting me, but my mother made me swear not to say anything and so I kept my promise. Although, I did express that I wanted to meet my father and get to know him, and I told the judge that I preferred they share custody over me. And so it was ruled; my father (who I had never met before), had finally obtained joint custody.