If you haven’t listened to this song, I highly recommend you do so. Even if you aren’t a child of divorce, it is still good music. It took me a few times listening before I actually heard what the lyrics said. And when I finally did hear them, they tugged at my heart a little. Actually a lot, they tugged at me a lot and they spoke to me. I’ve never known a life where my parents weren’t divorced, so I guess you could say that I don’t know what it would have been like to experience them being together. Even though I didn’t witness the all-out war that was my custody battle, this song seems to hit me right in the feels.
1. The song starts out by saying “hold onto me because I’m a little unsteady”. Woah... I can honestly say that has been my cry for much of my life. Whether that feeling of unsteady came from the divorce of my parents, or it’s just my own issue, I cannot say. But I think it’s fair to say that going back and forth on the weekends and always trying to keep both parents happy, can make a child of divorce feel “a little unsteady”.
2. “Mama come here, approach, appear”. That one really gets me. Maybe you are lucky enough to have parents who were very mature and civilized in their separation and both made an equal effort to protect you from the ill feelings that they had toward one another. And hopefully, both parents also made an equal effort to be in every aspect of your life. But for most of us, that hasn’t been the case. If you are one of us less fortunate, you will understand the weight that this line carries.
3. “Daddy, I’m alone, cause this house don’t feel like home”. Growing up with divorced parents automatically makes you not “normal”. Most kids don’t go to their “mom’s” or “dad’s”, they just go home. And even though you have a home, you don’t see it as the usual home, because you have two homes. I remember trying to explain this to my elementary classmates. Their parents were probably mad that I taught them the “d” word.
4. “If you love me, don’t let go”. I think most children of divorce can relate to this line especially. We feel like we weren’t enough to make them hold on and fix their problems. When in reality, it has nothing to do with us, and we are not to blame. But as a child we don’t see this, we just pack our bags for the weekend with dad/mom and carry on wishing that we didn’t have to go back and forth all the time.
5. “Mother, I know that you’re tired of being alone. Dad I know you’re tryin’ to fight when you feel like flying”. Unless your parents’ divorce was decided upon mutually and the separation was completely civil, the pre-separation period probably went a little bit like this. Rearrange “mother” and “dad” if you have to, but you probably saw something like this. You also probably wished you could have shown them what you saw through your own eyes, and maybe then they would understand what it was like.
Most divorces usually turn out to be for the best. However, that doesn’t make the process of them any easier. Parents tend to use their children as pawns throughout the divorce process and sometimes even after. And no, divorce isn’t the worst thing that can happen to you, but it definitely changes your childhood, and it has a major effect on how you grow up and who you become. Personally, I am glad to be a child of divorce. I know it made me stronger and I feel more prepared for when I enter my own marriage. Even though I am grateful for the separation of my parents, that doesn’t mean that growing up in the middle of it was easy or even the least bit desirable. Even as a 20-year-old woman, I still face the repercussions of their separation, and I probably always will. But being able to listen to songs like this one and relate to the lyrics reminds me that I am not alone, and there are other people out there who have fought my same battle and who have turned out just fine.
