My Stories: My Parents Divorce

It’s something far too many children have to experience. It’s hard to be the string that connects them when they no longer want to be…

I remember the day very clearly that he left. My dad had been out of town at a work meeting he said and would be back Sunday afternoon. My mom must have heard his motorcycle coming down the street as we walked out on the front porch- my mom, little brother and I - just as he pulled into the driveway. He was wearing his black leather jacket and his Levi jeans. He took off his helmet and sat it on the seat and didn’t move. I think he must have known from the look on my mom’s face. She had been angry all day, I could feel it pulsating throughout her body. 

My dad took one step towards us and she told him to stop, “I know where you have been this weekend. Take your things and go.” My dad came to give my brother and I a hug and drove off back to her, back to my mom’s best friend. 

It wasn’t the first time. Something I should have never found out at only 6 years old. There had been many before her. It’s a big reason why we had moved from the sea to the mountains just a few months prior. I was glad to be near my grandparents, but I missed the beach so much. This one though  hadn’t been the one off. It had started before we moved and continued after- she followed us. He had even taken my brother and I to her apartment a number of times… Little did we know what they were doing while we were out in the yard playing with the neighborhood kids. 

My dad married her not a year after the divorce was finalized. The anger I felt for how they had destroyed our family lasted for years, I was told. Each weekend when I would have to go to their house for the weekend I would plead with my mom to not make me go. I hated it at their house, I hated him… 

Core Beliefs Established: 

Those I love and who say they love me will leave. 

Friends cannot be trusted. 

I need to be with my partner at all times to ensure they don’t leave me. 

“Another head hangs lowly,

Child is slowly taken.

And the violence cause such silence;

Who are we mistaken?

But you see, it's not me,

It's not my family,

In your head, in your head,

They are fighting.

…….

Another mother's breakin’,

Heart is taken over.

When the violence causes silence,

We must be mistaken.”

‘Zombie’ by The Cranberries

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