At 10, a young girl had no choice but to live with her parents’ best friends after they declared their plans to travel the world. From living in the busy city of Chicago, she adjusted to a slow country life in Montana.
Her parents arranged for their elementary school best friends, Pete and May, to be her temporary guardians. They lived on a horse ranch, and while that was a refreshing setting, the young woman couldn’t help but feel abandoned.
“I was (of course) really angry, depressed, and sad at first because I felt like my parents abandoned me,” she revealed. Initially, she thought her parents would return for her after a few months, but that wasn’t the case.
Pete and May tried their best to empathize with the teenager, especially in dealing with her negative feelings. They treated her like their own daughter and practically raised her during the most critical formative years.
After the first year of the young girl living in Montana, Pete and May realized there’d be a chance that her parents would never come back. They stepped in as her parents, and they became a true family.
They taught the girl how to help out with the ranch and how to ride horses. They would go horseback riding in the fields and the mountains each weekend.
Eventually, Pete and May gifted the young girl with her own horse to love and care for. Although it was not the life she imagined she would live as a child, it was the life that suited her so well. “I am genuinely enjoying every second of my life,” she admitted.
After the first few months of feeling abandoned, she stopped missing her parents. She saw Pete and May as the only parental figures in her life. Despite this, she would have semi-regular contact with her parents. They would hop on a voice or video call, and exchange postcards and e-mails.
Seven years after abandoning her, her parents suddenly wrote that they were done traveling and were ready to pick her up so they could be together again. They added that they missed her and couldn’t wait to see her.
The young woman, 17 at this point, was distraught. She felt it was unfair that they said this because they wouldn’t have disappeared for seven years if they had missed her.
She added that after building a life in Montana, she didn’t want to live in the city, nor did she want to abandon her horse. Most importantly, she saw Pete and May as her parents.
Through the years, Pete and May called the young girl’s biological parents to visit her whenever they had time. Even though they could have, they never did.
The woman took her story online to ask for opinions on how to tell her parents she didn’t want to move back with them. Many people suspected her parents could be criminals, especially since they hid away for so long.
Admittedly, the teenager never thought of her story from this angle. She didn’t know how to find out if it was true, but the thought of her parents doing something illegal scared her.
All she knew was that her parents had always been strange. People close to them said they had “very little sense of responsibility,” never took things seriously, and were always getting in trouble.
After discerning her situation for weeks, the young woman decided on her fate. She chose not to return to her biological parents, and she enlisted the help of Pete and May to tell them. They assured her they considered her their daughter, so she could stay as long as she wanted.
The young woman asked Pete to help her write a proper response to her parents’ message. “I don’t think I’d be able to write a message without getting emotional,” she said.
The teenager hopes the message will make it clear to her biological parents that she no longer wants to return home, especially after they abandoned her for years. Moreover, she was unsure of what kind of people they really were.
All those who read about the girl’s situation believe there’s more to the story than what the teenager knows. They urged her to follow her heart by choosing to live with Pete and May, who gave her unconditional love and care when her parents didn’t.