One yells at another, the other yells back. The constant loop goes on and on.
I see the relationship between them slowly fall apart.
I’m there but it’s like they don’t care. I’m small, but I know something is wrong.
When I was 9 years old I loved to hangout with my family. One day my parents told me and my siblings we were going to get Italian ice. I remember being excited but something felt off about it. Once we got home they told all three of us they needed to tell us something. That gut feeling came back to me. “We are getting a divorce,” my parents said.
To this day I can remember every detail of that day, and the days leading up to it. Before telling us about the divorce, my dad was staying at his parents’ house for the week. I remember asking him, “When are you coming back home?” to which he replied “Soon.”
He never came back home.
It feels normal to tell people my parents are divorced now. But if you were to ask me back in fifth grade, I would still be in the mindset they were going to get back together, and they were not going to stay divorced for long.
I had to get used to the whole “two houses” thing. It wasn’t easy for me. Whichever house I was at, I would miss the other parent. What made it more difficult was seeing my parents date other people. It felt like everything was falling apart, and the world was ending in front of my eyes. I had to let go of them being together.
Eventually things got easier and I started to accept my new life. I started to hangout with friends more and more. I started to value school a lot. But to have to balance school, friends and going back and forth between houses is exhausting.
Ever since I started to hang out with friends more often I would see their families and how perfect they were. The laughs they would have at family dinner. The family dinners where they would ask about each other’s days. Just how happy and joyful it felt in their homes.
To this day seeing unbroken families gives me an ache in my heart I cannot describe.
Even though it’s not perfect, everything turned out good in its own way. Everyone will face challenges at some point in time that may seem like the end of the world. But in the end, this challenge taught me more about life itself.
