The “D” Word

“Not the “D” word!” *gasp*

“Wait, what’s the “D” word?”

“Divorce.”

Yup, I said it.

Divorce is something that has become more talked about than ever before. Psychologists are studying the effects of it, people are getting it, and others are dealing with the aftermath of it. Divorce may seem like something that is between two people, but when you have kids together, well, that idea goes out the window.

My parents got divorced in 1999, so that’s 20 years ago. I was around 3-4 years old so I don’t remember much if anything. I think I was lucky in that aspect. I don’t remember the good times like my sister does. I only remember having a step-dad and a Dad that would come pick us up some weekends and in the summer for vacation.

My sister, she wasn’t so lucky.

She remembers them being together and grew up with a lot of hatred and anger because she never understood what had happened. To a child, one day everything’s great and the next day her Dad is packing his bags and leaving and that’s not something they understand unless you talk to them about it. Not explaining what was happening was my parents first mistake.

To me, it was just a fact of life like ‘the sky is blue’, ‘the grass is green’, and ‘my parents are divorced’. But like those things, I never understood why. I eventually learned why the sky is blue and the grass is green but I’ve never gotten a clear and definite answer of why my parents got a divorce. Which was mistake number two.

As my sister and I grew older, our parents began letting a comment here or there slide.

“Your dad gets off too easy, I should raise his child support!”

“Your mother is too controlling, she has you right under her thumb!”
Then it turned into bad-mouthing the other and telling us to not say anything.

“Your mother cheated on me, that’s why we got a divorce but don’t tell her I said that.”

“Your father cheated on me, that’s why we got a divorce.”

My mom never cared if we told our Dad what she said, but Dad didn’t even want us to tell her about the things he was doing. When he bought a new car or went on a vacation with his new wife, he always told me to NOT tell my mom. This turned conversations with my father into secrets I wasn’t allowed to share. At 8 years old you don’t understand why your Dad won’t let you talk about the things he does, just that you’ll get into trouble if you do. If I even mentioned something Dad was doing, my Mom would always do two things:

1. Threaten to raise his child support

2. Go on about why does he think I should be keeping it a secret from her, she claims she doesn’t care about what he does.

She spends the next half hour bouncing back and forth between those two ideas. I didn’t understand the concept of child support but I would always tell her that if she raised his child support I would be really mad at her because, to me, it sounded like she was going to hurt him and I didn’t want that.

My dad would spend so much of his time trying to get us on “his” side that he never realized we just wanted our parents to be on our side. He’d say things like “why would I ever lie to you girls?” That was one of his go-to phrases. That sentence would make us feel ashamed for thinking that our Dad was lying to us, but we’d go back to Mom and she would say “that never happened, this is how it happened and you can go tell your father that!” That was mistake number three.

Guilty, that’s what I began to feel more of, year after year. Guilty, that I didn’t go live with my Dad because I wanted to stay with my friends and I had more family around. Guilty, that I didn’t call him enough because he would make me feel bad if I went a day without calling him saying things like “Oh! I didn’t know I still had a daughter!” And “I guess you just don’t love your Dad anymore.” Days would turn into weeks when I wouldn’t call him because I knew he was going to say those things and they made me feel terrible.

My sister experienced a different kind of emotion. She was always sad when she had to leave one parent for the other. Her little mind couldn’t understand why all of her friends’ parents were together and hers weren’t. She felt bad for leaving one, usually Mom, and we would end up leaving our Dad’s early (which cause resentment to grow in me towards her but that’s a post for another day). In her mind, she just wanted them together and for us to be a family. As both my parents got remarried, that hope was crushed and anger filled its place. My sister has been so angry for so long, and this was where that first seed was planted. She eventually stopped coming on vacations because she didn’t want to leave our Mom. She then grew jealous of the time my Dad and I spent together which just helped grow her anger towards our Dad and me.

I kept going on trips with my Dad until I got my first job at 16. Part of the reason was that a job wasn’t going to let me be gone for 2 months, but a smaller part of it was that I was glad I didn’t have to go because I wouldn’t have to deal with the things written above anymore.

Don’t get me wrong, our childhood was filled with vacations full of sunshine and laughter. There were good times that went with the bad. I’m not angry at my parents, honestly I never really was, I just resigned to the fact that was how my childhood was but there are some obvious issues that shaped us into the people we are today.