Divorce Taught Me Some Cool Shit
The gains after breaking through rationalization and repression.
My friend looked amazed. Dazed, even. It was mostly disbelief I heard in her voice. “How could you not know your parents were divorced for 10 years, Damian?” I had to give that a good think and in this blog I lay out what seems to make sense.
Back story: when shit hit the fan.
I was 10 years old and my younger brother, 8. We came home one day and Gran was flipping out. We could feel something was wrong. Gran fed us earlier than usual and put us to bed. Weird much. We heard raised voices in the lounge- undecipherable. We looked at each other. Gran wouldn’t let us out of the room. “Go to sleep, boys, they’re just talking,” she said. “OK, Ouma, Goodnight.”
Next morning. What. A. Fucking. Mess. Blood on the car. Shattered glass. The TV had quite a trip to the other side of the room. Many things were broken that night. Trust. Safety. Mental states. It’s a long list of things that break when something like that happens. The neighbors filled in things for us kids later on. “Mom, where’s Dad?” “Jail.” “Woah. Um yeah, so we have to go to school now?” OK…
Dad moved out and got himself a room. Here, there, and anywhere he could find something for himself after that.
This was really happening. Fuck.
My younger brother and I felt so confused about our father not being in the house and going to see him on random days was awkward for me. I knew the D word and I knew what it entailed and all that jazz. But I didn’t know how to handle it. We saw a therapist once and it wasn’t enough I reckon. So we carried on until one day Dad was back in the house and everything seemed fine and dandy. I put it out of my mind as just a tough time for my parents because now they were together again. As a 10 year old, I didn’t know how relationships worked. I didn’t really figure it out until after my 20’s. My world wasn’t crumbling around me anymore. Phew! I could go back to being a regular-nuts-about-cartoons-and-drawing-pictures-kind-of-kid.
Enter the teenage years and a cross-country move. Now things get worse. To say the least, it wasn’t the happiest of homes. Mail arrives from the bank with separate names. I’m thinking, “Hmmm. idiots at the bank got this shit wrong, well done dumbasses…”
“Hey, Mom, the bank fucked up your and Dad’s names on the envelope. I think you gotta call em to fix it.”
“……”
This happened for 10 years. It just didn’t click in my mind. I saw the divorce papers as well. Still no switch.
*cricket noises*
They seemed happy together, hell, they slept in the same bed and they cuddled on the couch when we would watch movies and they kissed goodbye and stuff. Then some more shit hits the fan around age 16. The kids have got to go to an aunt’s house cos Mom and Dad need to sort it out. It was a lock-down type situation. The relatives mean well and were awesome about it, but they seemed to have more info than we did. That pissed me off and confused me even more.
Enter 20. Dad likes a bit of a drink, he went out with a mate and came back hammered. Mom wasn’t happy; told him to leave the next day. So, he did. Then I asked Mom, “Are you guys going to be getting a divorce now?” and she replied with what you already know. “Um. Yeah. So, that already happened.” I asked my brother if he’d known all this time and he concurred. Um. What the fuck? Was there something wrong with me?
I understand why I like books with magic and dragons and wizards. I spent a lot of time trying to escape the real world. I repressed this vital piece of information and rationalized it in anyway I could to keep my fragile mental state intact. This led to a bunch of issues I’ll get into in other posts.
I didn’t want to accept this in my life for a long time. I know it hurt my parents more because they stayed together so long for us. They put their happiness aside so we could have a relatively normal family life and develop the right values. Its bittersweet knowing this now. Who knows what would’ve happened had they kept with the original decision all them long years ago.
What I’ve learned.
I’ve learned that our feelings govern us so much so that we don’t know how to use our heads and be rational about the important things. Love is a confusing thing. Magical. Dangerous. But hey, what a rush right?
Acceptance. This came to me later than I would have like in life, and only after my experimentation with marijuana and long walks in the dark nights of dangerous neighborhoods.
I’ve learned that objectivity is good for us, especially our brains. I am doing my best to work on this everyday of my life and its quite challenging. Removing ego from the situation and looking at a bigger picture.
I’ve learned that people deal with the world with the tools they have at their disposal. So I’m getting more tools and helping others to do the same.
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