MCTI never imagined myself being a child of divorced parents.
I always thought how awful it would be to have to spend my time with my parents separately, to have to choose whom to spend holidays with and ultimately decide which parent I wanted to live with.
Low and behold my freshman year of college I got the heartbreaking news that my parents were separating. I didn’t know how to even begin to wrap my brain around it.
I didn’t want to have to choose. I didn’t want to have to experience walking in my front door and only have one of my parents’ physical presence.
I don’t think people realize how much a divorce affects the children, regardless of the age.
I’m 20 years old and I still have a tough time grasping the fact that my parents are divorced.
I hate being angry all the time and I hate not having the family that I grew up in under the same roof.
I used to blame myself for not seeing my dad often. I used to think that he didn’t want to see me. I felt that his life that he made for himself without my sister and I was better than the one he had which is why he separated himself from us.
But things change and I’ve learned to cope.
I suppose I was na’ve and thought that my dad wouldn’t move on. But he did.
Accepting another woman into my life was an extremely difficult experience.
My mom is my best friend and cannot be replaced and I was so torn as to how I should go about adjusting to this new woman that has now become part of my life.
After a while, the distance between my father and I created not only a physical but more importantly an emotional space that sometimes either patches itself or ultimately leads to the breaking point of the relationship.
Unfortunately, I’ve reached my breaking point.
It’s an extremely disheartening feeling. I never thought I would have to experience a divorce, let alone face the messy break from a parent due to their change of priorities.
I have come to the realization that sometimes these things need to happen and that no matter how hard you try to salvage a relationship with a parent who has moved on – it just will never change.
It’s a sad realization, but one of the most real ones I’ve ever felt.
Divorces happen, obviously. It still brings to the surface things I never thought I’d feel but life keeps moving and I keep adjusting.
