Growing Up As a Child of Parents Who Divorced… Twice

You’d imagine that the first time they learned it wasn’t working, they’d stay divorced.

I had the picture-perfect childhood for years: nice house on the corner of the street, loving parents, surrounded by friends, junk food for dinner on Friday nights. The stuff you see in every Hallmark family movie. So, when my mother and father sat me down at our living room table when I was 11, both holding my hands as they explained to me in the simplest terms, “sometimes mommies and daddies need time apart”, I really couldn’t comprehend the weight of that statement until later on.

“Later on,” arrived one scorching hot June afternoon during Summer break before middle school. I spent the day visiting a friend’s house, and they lived on the end of the road. The sun was beating down, hot on my head from bike riding. I stopped at home to grab ice-pops for everyone and change into my swimsuit for a cool-down in their pool. Our garage door was open, which I slipped into the house from. Distinctly, I could hear my father yelling. His voice was heavy, fierce, and his shouting always terrified me when I was being disciplined. I kept silent, tip-toeing through the house to the freezer. If I bothered to pay attention, or look to my right through the kitchen window, I’d see him shouting at my mother. I wish I thought to look, to say something, but I never connected the dots immediately. Couldn’t imagine the one he’d be calling, “an idiot”, was my mom.

More instances of this occurred as I entered sixth grade — middle school. I’d come home early or unexpectedly to the sound of my father screaming at my mother on our back patio. He’d use words I wasn’t allowed to repeat — “fucking bitch”, “you’ll never take her away from me”, and most often, “goddamn alcoholic”. Sometimes they’d argue in their bedroom behind a closed door. I rarely heard my mother ever speak, simply sit there with her head lowered. I was too scared to ever confront my father about what I heard, so I’d slink off to my room and cover my ears.

My mother had a drinking problem and that much was obvious. She learned it from her mom. Before their divorce and during my years in Elementary school, I’d often come home to my mother semi-sober. She drank just enough to welcome me home, and drank some more until she’d pass out. I was always relieved when she finally did, because her stumbling and slurring would terrify me when she was awake. My father would work long days and oftentimes play gigs with his band at local bars afterwards, so there would be large gaps where I’d not see him until 11pm, left home alone with my drunk mother unable to care for herself, and barely able to care for me. My father’s desire to divorce her was reasonable… to an extent.

I learned that before their divorce, when my father found out about my mother’s alcohol addiction, he tried convincing her to go to therapy. She went twice but refused to continue without his support and attending with her. My father was too proud of himself and didn’t want the neighborhood to know about his alcoholic wife, so he refused. Her drinking continued without his support, and he wanted a divorce.

It was messy, and I was trapped in the middle. My mother wanted custody of me because she loved me, and to this day, I don’t know if my father wanted custody of me because it would be cheaper than paying child support, or out of love. During the time they were filing paperwork, he’d try to earn my loyalty with gifts — such as a laptop and new cell phone. He made all the money in the house, so it was within his means. In the end, the judge was inclined to side with my father, given my mother’s history of alcoholism and her not working for several years to care for me. The judge asked me which parent I’d prefer, and I chose my mother. This decided my future.

Halfway through sixth grade, I packed up my childhood into bags. With the divorce finalized, my mother would be moving in with my grandmother an hour away, and I’d be coming with her. I remember visiting my dad on weekends, missing home, living in a condo where they smoked cigarettes indoors and being made fun of by my peers in middle school for smelling so awful. My mother’s drinking slowed down immensely, and she and my father kept in contact. I had a lot of trouble making friends at first in middle school. I was the weird kid who was using a map to get around halfway through sixth grade!

Dropping me off at my Dad’s on the weekend turned into my mom also staying during those weekends. I had no idea that they were trying to reconcile behind-the-scenes, and I was just genuinely happy to spend time with both of them together again. They became affectionate once more, and my mother finally asked me, after two years, if I wanted to move back home.

Before I began 9th grade, my parents officially got together again and were more excited than ever at this new, “turning point”. I came to discover that all the friends I made growing up in that neighborhood moved, so it was like starting over again. I began 9th grade at my new school.

Six months later, things went as far South as they ever have.

Unbeknownst to me, my mother was continuing to struggle with her alcohol addiction. It was much more controlled, but she had lied to my father about her recovery and he found her stashing bottles in spaces he’d never looked before. At this time, my father was having hormone issues due to medication, and would become excessively angry at little things, which added fuel to the fire. He gave her an ultimatum: quit drinking, or move again.

My mother quit drinking entirely. She stopped cold, and we found out in the worst way.

I recall sitting on our lanai, playing with a remote-control car one night, stomach full of pasta. My mother was cleaning up the kitchen, standing on a stepping-stool to put dishes away in the cabinet. There was the muffled sound of thumping, breaking, and my father yelling my mother’s name. I rushed out to find her shaking, thrashing on the kitchen tile. Blood poured from the back of her skull, streaking down the kitchen cabinet. My father shouted at me to call 911, and I did exactly as he said. He laid with her, propping her head up and cradling her. I ran outside to usher the ambulance into the driveway.

She experienced a Grand Mal seizure that night, falling back and cracking her head on the tile. There was so much blood, I could smell the pungent scent of iron before entering the kitchen for days afterwards. I recall sitting outside on the wet grass after the paramedics entered, sobbing.

I was so, so tired of everything - of moving, losing friends, feeling secure only to have that security torn away. I kept my grades up tirelessly through everything falling apart, and bottled everything up for too long.

When I went back inside, I tried to ignore the blood seeping into the kitchen tile between the cracks. The paramedics were asking my mother her name, her birthday, etc.,… and she couldn’t answer those questions. When I walked up to her and touched her arm, she pulled away, asking who I was. They whisked my mother away in an ambulance and she was taken by helicopter to the hospital. My father stayed behind to clean up the mess, awake all night bleaching the floor and telling me “not to worry”.

I went to school the next morning on autopilot, hardly sleeping at all that night, uncertain of my mother’s condition. I prayed for the first time in my life for her safety. That night fundamentally changed me somehow, shaping me into someone forced to grow up too soon.

Two days later, on a Thursday, I came home to the garage door open and my father’s car nowhere to be found. It was bizarre, because if he wasn’t home, I’d let myself into the garage with the automatic opener we had. When I walked in, moments after shutting the door, a female voice greeted me. Totally unfamiliar.

“I’m your dad’s friend,” she said, “He had to go in to work today and didn’t want you home alone after school,”. I was wary. I was wary because every person I had come to know left. I didn’t care to make friends. This bizarre woman was sitting in my home, on the couch, in the same area my mother had a seizure 48 hours prior. I would learn later that my father was having an affair with her.

That night, my father took me to visit my mom in the hospital. When I was opening up to her about the strange women in our home, she had another seizure. Her eyes rolled to the back of her head and she began convulsing. That night, after my father drove me back home, he tucked me in to bed and told me I needed the rest. I couldn’t sleep at all, and even less so when I heard the sound of him having sex with this strange woman in the same bed he shared with my mother, knowing she was hospitalized.

I made a decision that night.

I went to the bathroom, the one my mother and I once shared. Overwhelmed with anger, confusion, and sadness, I attempted to end my life. The world went black. Nobody checked on me behind the locked bathroom door, and it was like nothing happened when I awoke the next day. I breathed a sigh of relief, cleaning the mess left on the floor beneath me. I won’t get into detail regarding the attempt, but I continue to suffer stomach issues from it to this day. Walked to the bus stop in a daze, but otherwise, like nothing happened.

The following months, I don’t recall. I began self-harming to cope with the pain and inability to control anything going on. I’d have repeated stomach issues and sicknesses as a result of the damage I caused my body, oftentimes going right to sleep after my classes. Eventually, my mother was discharged from the hospital with many staples in her head. The day she was discharged, my father threatened to call the police on her if she came home. He gave her one hour to collect whatever she wanted and leave. That was the end of it. He was done with the stress and viewed her as the problem. I hugged her tearfully when she came home, and told her I wanted to come with her, but she asked me to hold out until the end of 9th grade — 6 more months.

A week later, I went to the doctor’s office for an ear infection. They saw the numerous self-harm marks on my arms and questioned me, as well as my father. I was given the ultimatum: be admitted to the hospital for inpatient treatment, or commit to outpatient therapy several times a week. I chose the latter.

I had become despondent and cold at this point towards my father, the woman who was moving in, and anyone else. When my father scolded me for, “wanting attention”, and, “making him look bad”, I simply took up promiscuity. I’d not only continue self-harming where nobody else could see, but spend my days out with older men who were grooming me. His girlfriend at the time was sympathetic and always warm towards me, but because of the context of the situation, I loathed her into my early twenties. I didn’t let go of that grudge for a long time. I viewed her as the woman who tore my family apart, who took away my home, my security, my friends, my sense of self. I had misdirected anger for so long.

It was relieving to move back in with my mother. Despite the environment itself we lived in, I wanted to be with the one person who never faltered in her desire to keep me close. I continued visiting my father on weekends, but he would skip taking me to therapy, believing my early diagnosis of depression was a cry for attention.

My mother and father continued talking, but cordially. Eventually, he had to sell the house I grew up in. Towards the end of high school, and after turning 18, I discontinued therapy entirely. Despite everything, I graduated high school with honors, and began finding the value in my own life. My mother’s alcoholism led to her developing pancreatic cancer later on, as well as her smoking.

Unfortunately, my father and I had a very unstable relationship. He discontinued paying for my healthcare and became distant, which I could only accept. Our relationship has improved marginally since I’ve gotten older. We talk twice a month for three minutes, maybe. The “strange woman” who I met eventually went on to become his sixth wife, and after knowing her for five years, I found myself opening up to caring for her.

It took a long, long time for me to forgive my parents. For what happened as a child and the roles they played. I stopped being able to remember parts of my childhood, and still can’t. I began to accept what I couldn’t control, and merely hope for better, because they are equally human and capable of mistakes. I ceased using my upbringing as a factor in my behaviors, and began taking accountability for shaping myself into a better person with healthier habits. At the age of 23, I decided to go back into therapy with the same therapist and confront the unresolved trauma from my childhood, among other things I have faced in young adulthood. It has made a monumental difference.

Every day, I am thankful for the life I tried to end years ago. I reminisce on everyone I’d have missed, and all the opportunities I’d never see. I wouldn’t see my best friend get married, my mom beat her addiction, my father find love, or meet those who I have. There will never be an opportunity I won’t take to share my story, because it could help someone else.