Moving to Spain

When I was a freshman in high school, I came home from school one day and found out that I was moving to Spain, that I had to pack right away. I took it about as well as any fourteen-year-old would, which is to say, not very well at all. It’s been six years, but I still think back on it all the time.

The summer before, my mom moved to Spain to be closer to her family, and I decided to stay in Connecticut with my dad and sister. It was one of the better summers in my childhood – in June I was out camping every weekend and in August we moved into a new house in Sandy Hook. Even before we had furniture or painted the walls it felt like home. It was definitely a quirky place – originally a summer home for people trying to get away from the New York City, the front was painted red while the back was white. It was charming though, and it was only a stone’s throw away from Lake Zoar.

Later, when I got a nice bike, I could visit my friends and explore town whenever I felt like it. I was also old enough that I could take the train to visit my brother Trevor in NYC whenever I wanted, which to me was a dream come true. That summer, I joined the cross country team and made a lot of new friends. After moving around so much the year before, I was mostly just excited for a new chapter where things would feel more calm and normal.

That’s not to say that things were perfect. I did miss my mom and brother Pau, I was still going to divorce counseling, and I was still a weird kid that did dumb things sometimes. In addition, my mom wanted me to live with her in Spain, so much so that my parents went to court over my custody.

This was all going on in the background during the fall, but I was so confident that my dad would win that I never gave the fight a second thought. On November 15th, my mom flew to the US for the final court hearing and they presented their evidence. The judge decided that my mom would have full legal custody over me effective immediately. It must not have been a very long trial.

Meanwhile, I was having a completely normal day at school. I joked with friends about the minuscule chance of moving to Spain and told everyone I’d see them on Monday. My plan for the weekend was to go for a long bike ride and build a secret reading space in the closet of my room. I took the bus home and when I went inside Trevor and my dad were waiting in the living room. I knew immediately and my heart sank. I walked down to the lake, started to cry, and eventually came home so that I could throw some clothes into a suitcase. We stayed at a hotel after that, I wasn’t allowed to sleep in my room at home anymore.

I don’t have any memory of what happened on Saturday, other than staying up late that night figuring out what my options were.

On Sunday morning, I was allowed to have one last breakfast with my dad, brother, and Madi before leaving. We ended up at some diner (I guess that’s a fitting meal). After eating, I locked myself in the bathroom, called 911 and told them that I was being abducted against my will and that I would hurt myself if they let me get taken away. It was a last resort, and I hoped that if they realized how desperate I was they’d change their mind and let me stay.

I ruined a lot of breakfasts that day and if they still recognized me today, I doubt I’d ever be welcome into that diner again. I left in an ambulance and spent the day locked in a hospital room with rounded plastic edges. It was a very, very, very long day. They asked me some questions before finally calling my bluff. Then, they took away my phone and said that I wouldn’t be able to talk to my dad for at least a few weeks. Each person that I was leaving was given one timed minute to come into the room and say their goodbyes, and then we were off to stay the night at a hotel by the airport. We got pulled over again that night because an officer at the gas station saw us crying in the back of the car, but the day finally ended. I didn’t sleep well that night.

On Monday, at the time when I would otherwise be getting ready for school, I was boarding the airplane. Just like that, it was over and I was off to a completely different life.

I don’t blame anyone for what happened that weekend. The judge was making what they thought was the best decision given the evidence they had available, my mom really believed that my life would be better if I lived with her, and my dad was confident that he could care for me.

What did hurt the most, and the reason that I still stay up at night re-living the moment, is that at no point during this process did anyone who had the power to decide my future ask me what I wanted with my life or what would make me happiest. I guess I wasn’t mature enough in their eyes to make the decision for myself. Had I decided for myself that I wanted to move to Spain, I think I would have had the rich experience that my mom wanted for me. But my heart and mind were made up, I was ready to spend my last years of childhood in Newtown with my friends, so it hurt that much more when that was taken away from me.

One final note about family. Growing up, my family had its problems. My parents fought hard after their divorce, I spent years hearing about how much they loathed each other while I sat in the car, and for quite some time, visiting my dad meant sleeping in my friend’s room that he was living at. I told my mom that all I dreamed about was having a normal family where we all sat down for dinner and talked about how our days had gone. She fought in court, I believe, because she wanted to give me that with her new home.

That same fall, I came to the realization that family is about so much more than just blood. My family would always be my family, but the people I spent time with while running in cross country, or camping in Boy Scouts, they had all become my family, too. So I had already figured out how to have the family I always wanted. Looking back, I cringe at the way I distanced myself from some of my friends at a time when I needed them most. Now, six years later, I worry that it’s too late to re-build a lot of these relationships, to treat them the way I wish I had.

So yeah… that’s the story of how I disappeared from Newtown and moved to Spain. It’s one of the craziest, most important weekends of my life, and now you’ve heard it the way that I experienced it.