One ordinary day, the summer I was sixteen and a rising high
school senior, my parents told my younger sister and me they were separating.
I don’t talk much about my parents’ divorce. For one thing,
it’s been almost twenty-five years since my parents separated. My parents have
been divorced longer than they were married. This is my normal. And divorce is
so common that it, also, hardly seems worth discussing. But maybe that’s
precisely why I should talk about how it affected me – how it still affects me
– because being a child of divorce is an experience so many of us share.
Recently, my friend Julie posted a beautiful piece about divorce that left me in tears, as fresh pain from an old wound resurfaced. I
knew I needed to share my experiences to help me – and, I hope, others –
continue to work through this hurt. I do this with much trepidation, as I don’t
want to hurt my parents, whom I love and who were, undoubtedly, doing the best
they could.
These insights are born solely of my journey, so some may
resonate with you, friends, others may not, and you may feel like I’ve missed
big ones that are important to you. That’s okay. Divorce may unite many of us,
but everyone’s experience is unique. This is my story…
1. Being eased into the separation was brutal. After the big announcement, my father
moved out of the bedroom to the couch in the den and slept there for a few
nights while he looked for an apartment. It was excruciating to have my father
in the house, knowing it was no longer his home, aching both to rewind to the
blissful ignorance of a few days prior and to fast forward to my new normal.
There is no perfect, easy, painless way to make the transition out of one’s
home, but being in limbo was agonizing for me. I wish my parents had taken a
firm hold of the Band-Aid and ripped it off in one swift motion.
2. I didn’t want to be asked to do anything
that made me feel complicit in the separation. During those painful
days while the Band-Aid was ever so slowly being peeled back, my father asked
my sister and me to go furniture shopping with him. I have a vivid memory of
sitting on an ugly, blue sofa in the furniture section of a department store
while my father chatted casually with us about the pros and cons of various
pieces of living room furniture. I imagine my father felt free in a way that he
hadn’t in a long time, but I felt physically ill. I wanted nothing to do with
furniture shopping, packing boxes, apartment hunting, or anything at all that
might have been construed as my aiding a
parent in leaving the home and family. Please, no.
3. Things weren’t better post-separation, no
matter what anyone said. Parents, like children, may be feeling crushed
and may be trying to convince themselves, as much as their children, that
things will be okay, or parents may be feeling the newfound freedom of being
unencumbered by a dying marriage. Family friends may mean well with comments
like, “It’s for the best.” But witnessing my parents’ separation was
devastating, and there was no way to put a positive spin on that. Trying to
just made me angry. I wanted people to respect me and honor my feelings by fully allowing me to feel heartbroken.
However, comments like, “It will get better,” would have been welcome,
especially from those who knew, firsthand, the pain of divorce.
Similarly, nothing my father could have said would have made
his new apartment anything different from/better than what it was: the
embodiment of the demise of my parents’ marriage. He could have moved into the actual Taj Mahal, and his home wouldn’t
have been any less ugly or inadequate. I’m grateful my father didn’t try to
sell me on the merits of his new home.
4. I desperately needed acknowledgement of how
crappy the situation was (and is). I have one parent who excels at this
and another who I felt never fully acknowledged the enormity of my loss. Maybe
the latter is a coping mechanism; maybe the pain one’s child is experiencing
feels too close; or maybe the parent feels blamed and doesn’t want to throw
fuel on that fire. But it just added to my pain to feel unseen by a parent and,
in fact, made healing even harder. A long, fancy speech was never required. Something
as simple as, “I know this is hard. Thanks for muddling through with me,” would
have sufficed. Early in my grieving process, I needed the crappiness of the
situation acknowledged often. Now, I don’t. But it still helps when someone –
anyone – recognizes my loss. Twenty-five years after my parents’ separation, I
still feel an ache when I think about the family I lost, the childhood I deserved
and should have had. I even still occasionally cry.
Like right now.
5. Sometimes I needed my parents to back off,
and other times, I needed a gentle push. The day after my parents announced their separation, I stayed in
bed for much of the day. I called in sick to my summer job at the pool. I
didn’t eat much. I know now that I was depressed. But the next morning, my
mother walked into my bedroom, opened the shades, and told me I was going to
work. I couldn’t think of anything I wanted to do less, but she was right.
There is comfort in routine. My routine, my foundation, had been ripped from me,
so I had to find tiny fragments of it wherever I could. Going to work was hard,
but good and necessary. There are times to be sad and angry and times to pick
oneself up and carry on. I’m grateful my mother knew me well enough to help me
navigate this tricky balance in those earliest days.
6. Shame is an insidious enemy. The
first time I told anyone my parents were separated was in a tearful confession
to two friends fourteen months later. Fourteen
months. In the interim, when I talked about my family, I carefully chose
words that didn’t reveal my secret. Yes, my secret,
revealed in a confession. I wasn’t
being private. I wasn’t merely embarrassed. I was filled with shame. I could
have told you it wasn’t my fault, that I had nothing to do with my parents’
separation, that the end of their marriage wasn’t a reflection of my worth; but
I didn’t live like I understood that.
The day after my parents announced their separation, my
mother offered to call the mother of my best friend and break the news. I was
so grateful for that gesture, so relieved that I didn’t have to speak the
unspeakable, that I agreed. In hindsight, I suspect it would have been better
for my grief and healing to do this myself. Because my mother (unwittingly, of
course) had given me tacit approval to say nothing, to remain hidden.
But shame lurks and grows in the shadows, in the secrecy.
Even after that tearful confession to my friends, for many years, I still choked
out the words when revealing that my parents are divorced. It never should have
been like that. I never should have felt shame, and I wish my parents had known
how to help me talk openly about their separation. Because shame can’t survive being
out in the open. It can’t survive the light.
7. I had mixed feelings about my parents’
second marriages. My father
remarried less than a year after the divorce was final, and I was not in a
particularly celebratory mood. Yes, I
wanted my father to be happy. Yes, I dearly love my stepmother. But I was still
actively grieving the loss of my parents’ marriage. My life still felt like it
was in turmoil. So what, surely, felt like a new beginning to my father felt
like an ending to me. Witnessing my father marry someone else felt final in a
way that his moving out or my learning that the divorce was final did not. I’m
not suggesting that anyone needed to do anything different to accommodate me,
but I wish someone had simply acknowledged how crappy this time, in particular,
was for me.
My mother, on the other hand, got married eight years after
the divorce. I was in an entirely different place in my grieving process and in
my life in general (I had gotten married earlier the same year), and I could
whole-heartedly celebrate with her and my wonderful stepfather.
Similarly, watching my parents begin to date again was
difficult, at its worst, and awkward, at its best. I’m grateful that my parents
waited to introduce me to their significant others only after it was clear
relationships were serious.
8. At sixteen, I was just a child. My parents’ separation and divorce would
have been hard at any age, but being a teenager brought with it special
difficulties. I was sixteen when my parents separated, eighteen when they
divorced, and nineteen when my father remarried. I looked liked an adult. I felt like an
adult. I was definitely NOT an adult. And as such, I should never have been
expected to handle all that was thrown at me as if I had been one.
As far as teenagers go, I was incredibly responsible and levelheaded.
That actually may have made it even harder to understand why I sometimes
reacted more like a child than an adult to circumstances surrounding the
divorce. I’m not suggesting that my parents should have excused any blatantly
rude behavior, but there were times when I suspected my parents thought I was
acting in an intentionally cold and callous manner when my actions were born of something else entirely.
The most painful example of this came when I missed my
father and stepmother’s rehearsal dinner. I was at college an hour away from
home. I had to leave choir rehearsal early to drive home and catch the bus that
was driving all the dinner guests to an out-of-town restaurant. My beloved
choir was a haven from the storms that swirled around me during my sophomore
year (and there were many, not just related to the divorce). I waited until the
last possible moment to duck out of rehearsal, lost a few minutes in some
unexpected traffic, and arrived to a deserted home. I felt sick. I didn’t know
the name of the restaurant, no one had left me directions, and this was long
before everyone had cell phones. I gladly would have driven to dinner, but I
had no idea where to go. I learned later that the bus left thirty minutes
earlier than I thought it was supposed to, but I hadn’t left myself a
sufficient buffer to compensate for that miscommunication. No number of
apologies or explanations (not
justifications) seemed to ease the hurt I had caused, which compounded the pain
of an already crappy weekend. I so desperately needed to feel that I was being
met with some measure of grace and compassion – if not possible in the moment,
then later when feelings settled.
That said, I still needed to be approached in conversation
as an adult. Lecturing me was a strategy that always backfired; it always made
me angry.
9. I love you. Sometimes – often – “I
love you” was the very last thing I wanted to say to my parents when I felt
like they’d forever destroyed my world. But
I did love them. I do love them. I know this if for no other reason than
because, if I didn’t, their divorce would have been painless.
And when I couldn’t tell them, I desperately needed them to
tell me. Better yet, to show me. All the while remembering that I have always
loved them.
I loved you during
that first painful, post-separation holiday when everyone felt shortchanged. I
loved you when you remembered to say, “I’m sorry,” and when you forgot. I loved
you when you left. I loved you when you attempted that first awkward vacation
as a single parent. I loved you when I just wanted to be left alone. I loved
you when you were too spent to make dinner. I loved you when I remembered you
were doing the best you could and when I was certain you were doing it all
wrong. I loved you when you dragged me to counseling. I loved you when you gave
me exactly what I needed and when you didn’t. I loved you even when I was
thinking, “I hate you!”
Even then.
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I’d love to know what you think of My Story. What resonated? What didn’t? What did I miss that is part of Your Story?
