We all have our memories, and the farther you get in your life the more they blur, change or even fade away. But there are these few shaping moments that are so intense that you get the feeling you could relive them over and over again. You can feel them, hear them and you remember every little detail. Mostly, these are positive ones, like the first time someone told you “I love you”. But unfortunately, this is not always the case.
My life changed on a sunny day in late spring. I just got back from university and was about to lay down for a little bit when I got a call, or I’d rather refer to it as the call. It was my father who, without making any fuss about it, just told me straight ahead that he is going to divorce my mother. Wait. What? Was that a joke? For a moment I felt like the world around me was standing still. I was barely able to think straight. I asked a lot of questions, like why and especially why now and if he really thought this through. I tried to convince him that it was a really bad idea and that there was a way to work everything out. But it was too late. The strange thing about it was that there were no indicators. I thought my parents were happy, I thought that everything was fine and this surely came out of nowhere and sadly, this was also the case for my mother.
I had a lot of friends in school whose parents were divorced. I always felt sorry for them and I knew it must be a strange feeling, but I could never really relate to it until I became one of them. I was a divorced child now. And it would be a lie to tell you that even now, after one and a half years already passed since that day, I am not struggling with it. I always thought that a divorce must be the hardest for young children. Children who need both their mother and father to grow up happily. But I changed my mind. I was 21, almost 22, when my parents divorced and my world fell into pieces.
“I cried hysterically and started pulling her back into the house, telling her not to go. And I was 20 years old.”
Dealing with a divorce when you’re already a young adult is not as easy as some people may think. People expect you to act like an adult, to be understanding and you feel like you don’t have the right to rebel anymore. Your parents won’t sit down and try to make you understand, you are supposed to deal with it, you are already grown up, you know about relationships and how they at some point just don’t work out anymore. And this doesn’t make it better, you feel the need to cry and scream and be angry. Am I not involved? It’s not just their relationship, it is my family that is falling apart.
The problem about already being a grown up is that you feel safe. My family was one thing I was proud of, I was one of the happy children who were lucky enough to still believe in true love. I thought we made it through the good and the bad times. When I was younger my parents were often arguing and sometimes I even wished that they would finally break up, but they worked out everything eventually so I thought our family bonds are indestructible. You know that you can work out everything eventually. Furthermore, I was in love with our traditions, our jokes, our way of life. I’ve been growing up like that and I knew this is the way it is going to be forever. I didn’t know any other lifestyle and I didn’t want to. Being a young adult, living on my own, nothing changes that. Days like Christmas are now very strange to me. Something will be wrong forever. Someone will be missing forever. Everything has changed.
“I felt like my whole life was ruined that night and that I would never get over it.”
Accepting that there are things in life that you won’t ever be able to influence can be really tough. We may try to do our best, but there are things that we just absolutely cannot control. I started to realise that while we try to keep up with time there will be many more things that will happen to us and sometimes we just feel helpless. Sometimes I wish I would wake up the next morning and everything was just a really long bad dream. But I know this is not reality. The worst part about a broken family is all the pain that comes with a breakup. Seeing your parents suffering, seeing your siblings suffering and trying to be strong- and not showing anybody how much you’re suffering yourself. We have to move on, try to learn to live with it and make the best of it. Things are the way they are, they won’t ever change again. And as it is said, when one door closes another one opens. Some girls I know slipped into bad relationships after their parents divorced. Many divorced children do not believe in the concept of “forever” anymore. I for myself have to say that, whatever happened to my parents, the family bonds we once had were not pretend and I am sure that one day when I’ll have a husband and children, I’ll be able to reestablish them again.