My whole life the only love I ever knew was the one my mother and father had for each other. At the innocent age of eighteen, I stopped being able to know that love because they had fallen out of it. Divorces are heartbreaking and messy, it was a subject I couldn't seem to wrap my head around, even as a young adult, because I grew up with parents who loved each other with fire in their eyes. I found it so hard to believe that one day the flame between them died, but it did.
Growing up I watched my parents kiss each other in public and hold hands in the car. My father would bring home flowers for my mother and remind her how much he loved her. With age, I slowly started to notice those small, loving gestures diminish. Family dinners became less conversation and more arguments. I always thought me being a teenager was the reason for the distance between us all. I thought when I left for college everything would mend itself back together, I was wrong.
When you are old enough to understand love and even experience it for yourself, you are able to understand divorce at a whole different capacity. It sucks. I found myself tearing through my memories, trying to find warning signs, trying to find any clues I should have picked up on. How could I not have known? I blamed myself for a while. I became manipulative, like a child who wanted their parents to stay together would. I couldn't help myself. If they weren't going to try and save their marriage, I was going to do it for them.
After you get through the stage of denial, things slowly start to get easier. But this is not me saying divorce is easy, because it is not. The end of a marriage is like the end of your favorite story ending with and unfinished sentence. You want to hunt down the author and scream at them, how could they do this to you? You will want to scream at each of your parents from time to time, let it out.
Being an adult dealing with your parents divorce is so much more difficult than people assume. You're asked How did you not see it coming? and people will hit you with made up statistics trying to remind you that it happens to a lot of couples in this generation. But they weren't the ones who admired your parents love their whole life, that was you.
Now you are more skeptical of who you date, if you even do. Yet at the same time you search for love to fill the void of your parents'. It makes you afraid to trust somebody with your heart because you can see that even the truest of loves aren't always meant to last forever. The thought of being divorced scares you and sometimes you think you would be happier alone because then no one could leave you. You have to realize that not all marriages are like your parents. Remind yourself of this often and do not be afraid to fall in love, broken hearts always heal.
After your first year of two Christmases, Birthdays and Thanksgivings you will start to be okay again. You will notice a new light in each of your parents, and that light will make you smile. Sometimes you will think back to the days of slamming doors, cursing names, silent dinners and broken hope to realize that this might have been a blessing in disguise. Other days you will see happily married couples everywhere you look and wonder what it will be like to have unmarried parents at your wedding. Life does not always work out the way we plan, so become grateful for the love you were able to learn from your parents and apply it to your own relationships. Don't give up on love just because your mother and father fell out of it. All good love stories have plot twists.
