It doesn’t make us any less adult, it doesn’t make us children.
Our parents are huge parts of our lives. Actually, as kids especially, they’re our whole lives. If they hadn’t come together we wouldn’t be here. They teach us everything, introduce us to the world.
They provided when we were most vulnerable by holding our head up because we couldn’t, and today when we’re struggling and just need to hear “I’ll always be proud of you.”
They taught us what love was.
They showed it to us through the years of marriage. When they’d hug in the kitchen in the middle of making a meal. When they’d act like teenagers in love, even though they were in their thirties. When they were drinking and their eyes would light up looking at each other, giddy.
But now they’re teaching us what it feels like to lose that.
We sat through the fights, through the threats of leaving for years before. We tried to interject the stupid arguments so they’d see how it was affecting us and our siblings.
But now it’s really happened. The end is actually here. For so many years of hearing the threats of separation we hadn’t prepared ourselves for when they’d actually file.
But we’re adults and everyone expects that our age means that we’ll take it with a playful fist to the shoulder. That we’ll be fine, because we don’t even live at home anymore, so it “doesn’t even really affect us.”
But it does.
Don’t belittle your pain, it’s a loss for us too. A family is torn apart. Lives may be ruined.
Divorce is hideous and it doesn’t only bear two victims, everyone feels the pain and emptiness that now resides in the absence of one less person in the house. Of the parent that isn’t there when we spend time with the other. The holidays spent juggling multiple families.
Just because we’re adults by the time our parents have divorced doesn’t mean we can’t feel that pain. It doesn’t mean we don’t find ourselves woken up in the middle of the night, sobbing, because we had a nightmare about what it feels like to live with our parents separated.
Little kids aren’t the only children who are heartbroken when a family breaks.
In a sense, they might not really understand what it means. They may not see that one parent’s life is ruined because the divorce took everything from them.
And I’m not belittling they’re pain, because the entire point of this article is that it doesn’t matter how old you are: divorce can rip your heart.
So the next time someone confides in you and tells you that they’re parents are divorcing in this 50% divorce rate world, just ask them how they’re doing. Ask them if they’re okay, need someone to talk to or if they want to watch sad movies as an excuse to cry the tears they have probably had bottled up for 20 years.
Don’t only offer that your parents divorced when you were young, because that can make them feel stupid for their pain. Instead, in addition to telling them that, let them know that you know how it feels, because you do. No matter the age you were when your parents divorced, you understand the pain.
And to every adult whose parents are in the process or are divorced, don’t feel silly or immature for feeling the loss. It’s your loss too and you’re allowed to be sad.
