My wanderlust started with my trip to Paris the summer between ninth and tenth grade. The official reason for my visit was to keep my cousin Beatrice company while her dad worked on a new film project and her mom taught summer classes. The real reason was my insides had been torn in two.

Six months before, on my last day of Christmas break, my parents had taken me to our favorite Chinese restaurant, a dim little spot with greasy menus and the best sweet and sour pork in Brooklyn. The server had just brought our drink orders when my mom said quietly, “We have something we need to tell you.” I looked up and noticed the way they were leaning away from each other, and I knew.

Families splitting are like earthquakes. Yes, they are happening every day all over the world, but that doesn’t make them any less shocking when they happen to you.

It took less than a month for my parents to divide our life up, and a little under five months for the divorce to be finalized. As far as I could tell, they didn’t fight against or for each other; they simply ended, their marriage dissolving as easily as a sugar cube in hot tea, a part of me dissolving with it.

I think the aspect that stunned me most was how quickly my mom and dad moved into their post-divorce lives. It was like they had both been building up energy for years, ready for the moment when they could take off down the runway. My mom’s luxury event–planning company suddenly became an enormous success that eventually resulted in her taking on a new business partner named Drew and relocating to Los Angeles, taking me (reluctantly) with her. I thought when we moved to LA that Mom and I would find a groove, start living out our mother-daughter dreams together, but all that seemed to happen was she got busier and busier.

Back home in Brooklyn, my dad started dating Chloe, a graphic designer he’d worked with for a few years. They were engaged and pregnant with triplets (yes, triplets) within ten months.

I’d like to say I handled all of this with grace, but the fact is, ages fourteen and fifteen were not my finest moments.

I yelled. I threw things. One night I went out with friends and didn’t come home until four in the morning. Worst of all, I stopped caring about everything. My parents’ divorce felt physical, like a giant, hungry monster had taken up residence in center of my chest, devouring everything that used to make me happy. I had a hard time eating, thinking, staying interested in anything, really. My grades dipped, and I stopped calling friends on weekends, or playing tennis, or combing through thrift shops on my way home from school. I felt lost and disoriented, shuffling from home to home, neither of them feeling right.