01/10/2013

i’ve spent so much time thinking about my parents’ divorce that i always figured i’d know exactly what to say when someone i loved came to me to tell me her parents were divorcing.

divorce when you’re older prompts an entirely different set of emotions than divorce when you’re young. i’m not saying it’s harder or easier, but it’s different.

emily, my favorite girl at work and the one person who has changed my view on friendships in the last year, came into work completely unable to keep herself together yesterday. i figured she’d had an argument with robert (her boyfriend who is twenty years older than her…crazy, right? so many coincidences), but she told me instead that her mom told her they were splitting. emily’s parents have been together through the deaths of three of their kids. one of their kids was stabbed to death by a stalker, one had a drug overdose, and the last was walking to school at 7:30 in the morning when he was hit by a drunk driver. emily is one of the strongest people i know. i can’t imagine how strong her parents’ relationship was to pull through all of those tragic situations.

but i had nothing to say to her. i could only hug her and tell her i was sorry and think about the day my dad told me.

i was on my way out the door when my dad, who was sitting at the dining room table, asked me to sit down because he needed to tell me something. i remember exactly what i was wearing, where i was going, how i felt. heath was coming to pick me up because we were on our way to austin. we’d just gotten back from seattle and my dad’s unrehearsed, "your mom and i are getting a divorce" hardly even phased me. i didn’t cry and i wasn’t in shock. i got in heath’s car and we were almost to the highway before i blurted out what my dad had told me.

he shrugged it off and we didn’t talk about it. i told him later that night i loved him and he never responded and that could basically be the abridged story about how involved heath was in what turned out to be one of the most traumatic experiences in my life.

emily was angry her mom spewed it out when emily was about to go to work. it was over the phone.

i still don’t know what to tell emily. it’s a long journey of understanding that your parents are people and they make mistakes. it’s understanding that your parents have spent twenty five years or more of their lives together and people change. they fall out of love. they lose things they once had in common. emily kept saying, "marriage is supposed to be forever", but it’s not. i can’t imagine loving one person forever. i don’t think love like that exists. i think about how much time my mom sacrificed because she didn’t want to disturb her kids’ lives and i sometimes feel guilty for being so angry at her for leaving.

but i can’t say that to emily. i can’t tell her that my parents’ divorce was a dive into adulthood. i can’t tell her that she’ll hate both her parents at different times and some days she’ll hate them both. she’ll blame herself even though it’s not her fault’, she’ll wish she would’ve seen it coming, she’ll feel naiive for not seeing the onset of it all. i can’t tell her that holidays will never be the same, her birthday will never be the same, she will lose trust in relationships and lose her faith in love that lasts a lifetime.

all i could tell her was that it’s going to take time but it all turns out okay.

because it does and i’m here and i’m a bigger person with a bigger family and a bigger heart and a more open mind. my parents’ divorce has made me into the woman i am. it has made me more empathetic and it has changed my most core beliefs. to me, the trade off between losing my family the way my life was and learning to forgive and love differently is equal.

four years.