There will always be collateral damage in any sort of conflict that comes about. It’s unintentional, secondary – what gets caught in the crossfire. In the protracted war that was a direct result of my parents’ divorce, that collateral was me. This is the story of what it looks like from the wreckage.
In 2017, everything seemed fine. We did our first real family vacation: Disney World. I can still remember the Facebook posts that my parents posted of all five of us. To an outsider, it seems like the perfect family. It felt like that as an insider, too.
2018 was when things took a turn for the worse. It was like any other day in July, and my mom was a vendor at a festival, which she often did at the time when the weather was nice enough for it. I’m sure she had a nice time there until she locked her keys in her car.
She called my dad, asking him to make a 30-minute drive to help her get her keys out of her car. She has done this a dozen times before, and AAA can help you with that for free, so my dad thought logically and told her to call them. Seeing as if she waited for my dad to get there, she would be waiting longer than needed.
My mother was not happy with my dad’s answer. Now, this is the story I have been told by each of my parents, so I believe it to be true. My mom met a man while she was waiting for AAA to arrive, and of course, he did not see her wedding ring, and of course, she so happens to be alone, waiting for help, that my dad declined to give.
Some would say that if he just went there to help her, this would’ve never happened; but if my mom had this in her at this moment, I am sure she had it in her at a later point in their marriage.
My mom cheated on my dad, and he did not know about it for at least two months. That brings us to September. I still remember when my dad called me and my two sisters into the family room with him and my mom to have an important talk.
I was barely eleven. My dad told us that he and my mom were going to take a small “break.” I ran into my dad’s arms as we all cried about what we were just told, everyone but my mom.
My dad made the effort to try and heal their broken marriage due to my mom’s immature decision, but it was of no use. Their anniversary rolled around in October, and my dad took her out and did what she should have done: try and save their marriage. They went to a couple’s painting class, he took her to dinner, treated her nicely, even though she definitely did not deserve it, and they went home. I’m sure my dad thought that this might work in his favor, but it unfortunately did not.
A year and a half down the road, my parents finalized their divorce in January 2020. It needed to be done. My mom stayed with the same man that she cheated on my dad with, and she is still with him as of today. My dad has been happily remarried to an amazing woman since June 2022, and I love her, and I love that my dad is finally happy.
It’s hard seeing your dad struggle with such intense emotions when you’re just a kid. He fell back on my sisters and me for support during the rough time. I am glad that we could be there for him because without us, I am unsure if he would have made it.
Now, I know the last thing that my parents wanted to do was hurt me or my sisters due to the divorce, but it hurt me immensely. My mom’s boyfriend lived with us, as he still does, and it ruined the precious years I had left of my childhood. Her boyfriend is an alcoholic, and she had no issue with continuing to raise us around him as he screamed at us for every little thing we did wrong, especially me.
I still remember the way he yelled at me for saying I didn’t taste a difference between Heinz and Hunt’s ketchup. Something so stupid, so minuscule, and I got cussed out over it. I couldn’t have been older than 13. Once, when I was 14, at the dinner table, I was eating baked beans. He said he didn’t want to eat them because he didn’t want to turn gay like me. My mom was there for both of those. Why didn’t she do anything? I’ll never know. Maybe she was just as drunk as he was.
I went through so many years of watching my mom take the verbal hits from him, and she just put up with it for years. She still puts up with it. It’s hard to watch your mother allow a man to treat her that way when the one before would never do such a thing.
When I was 14, about two weeks away from 15, I went through the worst. He put his hands on my mom. Maybe he didn’t hit her, but he pushed her, pulled her hair and screamed in her face. Want to know what this fight was about? My mom letting me watch the Deadpool movie. Every fight is so meaningless. Every word to ever come out of his mouth is meaningless – I just wish I knew that when I was younger, because maybe then, just maybe, I wouldn’t struggle so badly with the things that I do.
I had to call the police that night. Of course, my mom watered down what he did and said that it was all just a big misunderstanding. I have never died inside so quickly. I left that night to sleep at my dad’s house. It was the only place where I felt safe. Ever since that night, my eating disorder came to life. I developed it to have a sense of control over something in my life, since I was unable to control my home life and my safety. Three and a half years later, I still struggle with eating. I don’t want to pin the blame on anyone for my developing anorexia nervosa, but living with my mom’s boyfriend for three years definitely played a factor in creating it.
I wish I didn’t constantly think about food, I wish I didn’t worry about my appearance with every passing second, and I definitely wish that my mom wouldn’t have put me in my sister’s care through that debacle. I remember that it took me being hospitalized for my eating disorder and mental health for her to remove him from the house for years for my sake.
I saw him again for the first time in over two years a month ago, and it went fine, but when I finally stayed there for five days this month, it all went downhill. I got reintroduced to his true colors, and while they didn’t come back with full force, I could see what he was really trying to hide: the fact that he hasn’t changed. He may be sober at times now, but it always comes back.
I’m always in that house. I’m always in that room. I’m always watching him scream at me while I’m sobbing, hiding on the other side of the bathroom door. I’m always by our locked garage door that he broke through, where the wall began to split, and where our doorknob broke. I’m still shaking, hiding under my covers as he breaks into my home. And I’m always that little kid again, praying to a god I don’t believe in, to have her parents back together.