Eclipsed & Angry: Standing in their Shadow

Parents don't owe their grown children an intact family of origin, that's fine. I'm not suggesting that anyone martyr themselves here; in fact, please don't. If things are chronically disrespectful and dysfunctional do us all a favor and have the courage one way or another to do something about it.

But what in the HELL does it look like when your parents split as you're getting married? Or birthing their first grandchild? I've seen enough examples at this point to say for sure that if there's a point in your adult life when you're more at risk of becoming an Adult Child of Divorce, you're either engaged, newlywed, or expecting a baby.

We're not supposed to take that personally? It doesn't have anything to do with us? Care to explain that to me?

I'm angry. Frankly I've been stuffing my anger all this time, and it's a major reason why despite being over 5 years in now I'm still so consumed by my parents' split. Nearly every time I write here I fear that  anyone reading who's new to their own ACOD journey will find my current position and lack of progress either pathetic or terrifying. I often feel I should be more "healed" than I am. That's the truth, but this is where I am.

I've mentioned it in passing I think, but I was knocked up when I discovered my dad's affair with the woman he would eventually marry.

Grin and Bear It

I got so tired of hurting and being uncomfortable that all I could think of was the placard on the wall of my elementary school gymnasium: "As you think, so you become."

Seeing my mom hurting hurt me; it sometimes exasperated me. Consequently my lack of patience with her grief, even as I was in the thick of it myself, shamed me. Seeing my dad's girlfriend-now-wife was even worse. The discomfort was profound. But I have performance in my lineage. We put on a brave face professionally. I'm okay. I'm okay. I'm okay. I'm okay.

I guess I must be good at it, because I swear to God I blinked, just blinked, just for a second when my dad left, and when I opened my eyes there was the woman he cheated with, hugging me and telling me that she loved me. There she was, crying on my shoulder. There we were, serving the dinner we'd made in my mother's kitchen, on my mother's dishes, sitting at my mother's table. I'm okay. I'm okay. I just want to get along. 

When my dad told me he was going to propose to her a couple of weeks before the divorce finalized, all I could say was that it was obvious that she's crazy about him. He probably sought my blessing. I probably said, "Sure, fine." Let's just get this all over and behind us, right? New normal?

What a delusion.

Divorce Marathon: The End as a Moving Target

The last picture, 14 months after their separation began.

Given that my dad left my mother for another woman, you'd think their divorce would have proceeded in short order. But they separated in the same manner as they navigated their marriage; the next 3.5 years were full of twists and turns. Slight hopes that the nightmare would end were repeatedly deflated.

I recently read an account of gray divorce where from separation to final papers was a space of three months. I'm sure the disorienting speed of that added greatly to their heartbreak. But the way it went for us was awful in the opposite way.

My mother had plugged away through other affairs - I mean, my dad was married to one of those women in between marriages to my mother, and yet even after that my parents managed to reunite.  It was an absolutely brutal time, but still, deep down I believed this could be overcome too.

I found out that my dad was leaving from my mother. It's taken me several days to recall that memory - I'd almost blocked it out. But I did finally dredge up the sight of her, shell-shocked on my couch, telling us that my dad had given her a pamphlet on mediation and that he was moving out. There was no conversation with my dad. He didn't want to witness our reactions, and for that act of cowardice, I didn't talk to him again for almost 4 months.

A full year into the separation, my parents still saw each other sporadically.

The Path to Separation is Paved with Separations - PART 2

YOU'RE READING PART 2. CLICK HERE TO READ PART 1.

A series of freak health incidences lead me to return home after college. Nothing had changed; my parents never talked to each other,  spent time alone together or spoke to each other in warm tones. But that's how it had always been, and they'd held on. The Poster Marriage for Commitment, even surviving infidelity. It wasn't functional, but it still existed. I'm sure that felt like quite a hard-won achievement, but I wonder at how they could have ever convinced themselves that was enough. Or even tolerable.

In early 2005 I told my parents I was pregnant with my son. It was not a planned pregnancy; I had not been with my boyfriend very long. On the surface they seemed to circle the wagons with such compassion as I'd never felt before. But it made my mother very very sad, and she couldn't hide it. It seemed to me that her sadness impossibly drove my dad even further away.

When she resurfaced, something odd happened: she went out and bought a bunch of new clothes. She got her hair done. She started courting my dad. The only memories I have of my parents being physically affectionate are from this time. I close my eyes and see my post-menopausal mother in a lacy tank top, sitting on my dad's lap at the dining room table. This time her instinct knew something that neither of our brains did.

The Path to Separation is Paved with Separations - PART 1

So here's what happened, the whole sordid history, the posts where I dump everything I'm tired of carrying and tell you how my parents wound up separating in 2005. I'll have to save the story of the 3.5 years between the separation and the divorce for another time, because this will be mammoth enough as it is, and I can only handle so much catharsis honestly.

When my parents met and subsequently married 4 months later, it was 1967. My mom had been a "stewardess" in the parlance of the day, my dad was her passenger. He asked for a pillow and she threw it at him. That's the story anyway. It was against company policy for flight attendants to be married,  so my mom gave up the job and globe-trotting she'd dreamt of and followed my dad to the other coast. Within weeks, if not days, of the wedding none of his family or friends attended, my dad told her their marriage was a mistake. My mom recently told me he was engaged to someone else when he proposed to her. Incredibly, somehow that ring was still around, and somehow, my mother got it in the divorce settlement. She's selling it and that's how that tidbit came to light.

At any rate, I believe my dad was seeing another woman while he was a newlywed in his marriage to my mother. I don't know that it was the same woman he was engaged to. I suspect not. But my parents soon divorced, and my dad remarried shortly thereafter.

Then that marriage ended. And then my parents started seeing each other again.