Divorce is one of those world-shattering events that truly defines who you are. I'll always tell people for the rest of my life, "My name is Grace and my parents are separated." This became a fact of my life, the same as my name. Since then, I've had to learn, with the help of counseling, and most importantly time, to reconcile my new reality.
The tension in my family had been building since 2014 and had reached a point of being unbearable in the summer of 2017. Finally, on July 8, 2017, my mom and dad sat me down in our living room and lifted that crushing tension when my dad told me those life-changing words, "your mom and I are getting a divorce." It's one of those moments that play out in slow motion: what my parents were saying was background noise to the broken record thought in my head "it's finally happening."
Beyond that, I don't have any recollection of what was going on in my head. I can't tell you what exactly my parents said beyond a few key sentences, but I do remember my initial reaction was to get away for a brief moment. I locked myself in our tiny guest bathroom and allowed myself no more than a minute to cry. I looked my puffy-eyed self in the mirror and told myself to pull it together.
Even from the start of this process, I had a deep-rooted refusal to allow my parents to see how it affected me. I wouldn't understand why for over a year. When I walked back out, I hopped onto the couch as if it were another normal day and told them simply "I'm not surprised" and even gave them a smile. Internally, I was processing this shockwave; subconsciously, I was already hard at work to repress the effects. I made the automatic decision to protect my mom and dad from how much this broke my heart.
I spent the first semester of my senior year feeling utterly powerless. I broke up with my first long term boyfriend twice that semester, as I didn't know how I could possibly have a relationship if my parents couldn't even have one. I didn't know anyone whose parents got divorced when they were teenagers instead of kids.
On my drives home from school I would have private breakdowns and punch my steering wheel until my hand hurt worse than facing my reality. In October, my dad moved out officially, and it was a long time before I accepted that I now had two homes. I avoided the subject entirely with my parents and told them only the surface level details of my life, repressing how I felt every moment I was with them. I didn't know how to cope with the death of my family. Worst of all, I didn't know how to be vulnerable in front of my parents anymore.
Counseling is really the only life preserver I had at this time. I learned so much about myself in my therapist's cream-colored office, and I learned how much I didn't know about relationships. I'll never be able to recall exactly everything my counselor told me or our conversations, but I'll remember one fact she told me for the rest of my life: it takes two people to make a relationship work, and it takes two people to make it fail.
Learning (and accepting) this lesson set off a domino effect in my healing process. I was able to understand this wasn't just my dad's fault, which improved our relationship. This also made me realize how much my parents had changed to the point where they were no longer living the same life, which made it impossible for me to place blame.
I understood that it wasn't my job to protect my parents and that it was okay for them to know I wasn't okay. I was finally able to accept that my parents were better apart than together and that even if I didn't understand why that was, it was just a fact, same as my name.
I'm miles away from those months of anger, confusion, and sadness that followed that fateful day in July. True, the timing ruined my senior year, but it gave me the time I needed to work through the hardest parts so that I would be OK come college, and I'm eternally grateful to my parents for giving me that gift. I was better than OK when it came time for me to pack up my life and move to college. I was able to thrive my first semester because they gave me the time to adjust to my family's new normal and for the first time since that day, I had a reality I wanted to face.
I like to hope that no one will ever have to experience this, but of course, I know I'm not the only one who has separated parents. I hope me sharing a piece of my experience and how I worked through all the inner turmoil divorce brings helps someone who has been or is in the same position I was.
