Adult Children of Divorced Parents

The pain of divorce continues into adulthood. People say it's painful for young and little children because they don't understand what's going on between their parents, but for adult children it may just be as painful because we do. We understand the dynamic change of the home we once knew and we understand the complexities of relationships. We understand the words exchanged between our parents and chances are it's been a constant ongoing thing. Because we understand we are often expected to pick a side, to just move on and let the parents make their own choices regardless of how it effects the kids, yes even kids who are well into their adulthood like myself. We don't want our parents to feel worse than they already do or experience more hurt, and so as adult kids we hide our devastation, we hurt internally and just try to move on with our day. We know tomorrow when we wake up, one parent will be out of the house. We can see the hurt in each parent's eye and experience their struggle trying to find and balance life again. And again for us adult kids, we pretend like we're balanced, like we go on with our day just fine. And because we're adults, parents aren't required to have us, to check up on us or make sure we're ok.

As it continues into today, I feel like I am a tight rope and everyday life pulls me tighter and tighter. I was already an uptight person and especially true after my parents divorce, I became a very tight and strict person for no apparent reason. I was craving to find any type of structure to my life, structure in my house that I was staying in because everything was such a mess. For those months that my parents left each other it felt like a deadpool, an old graveyard. It felt like a big tornado constantly fucking everything up inside the home no matter how hard I tried to keep structure or order. I think life and the universe was telling me to let go. To let go of things I cannot control and to understand that I am not my parents and they are not me. I am not responsible to keep them together nor am I responsible to clean up the mess the tornado made...

As adult kids of divorced parents, seeing my parents start their new life feels bittersweet. I should be happy for them but some days I am so angry at them. I felt the expectation to just be happy with it while they started their own lives, rediscover who they are and for some parents they become completely different people. They become someone who I sometimes don't even recognize. I felt and still do feel a loss of my family, like the death of my childhood. I didn't have a perfect home growing up, but when they divorced, as an adult it felt like my childhood was cut and erased. It felt like that fat boy in school didn't have anyone to come home crying to. It felt like that gay kid in school now didn't have the love and support of his parents anymore. All the games we played as kids, the holidays, the family vacations, all down the drain. And now seeing my parents become different people while all of us adult kids continue to struggle to find ourselves and find a sense of balance... just feels bittersweet. I am happy for them, we as adult kids who have experienced some kind of life should understand them and should be forgiving, we should open our eyes more, but this doesn't mean I am not upset, that I'm not sad or feel forgotten.

No children should feel like they have to pick a parent... to think about who gets to hear from us or see us first. And for some time I felt scared that one parent would feel like I picked the other over them. I was scared to see one and not the other. For an adult child like myself, it didn't feel like I had two homes. It didn't feel like I had two beds, two holidays, or two of anything. It just felt like I had nothing. No home, no room, no bed, no holidays, it just felt like I had no parents. I stopped talking to them, I stopped asking how they were doing, stopped trying to figure out their problems. As adult kids of divorced parents, you hear everything possible about each parent from both sides of their families. And it's only natural. They have loved ones as well... but after some time you get tired of explaining. Tired of having to relive this divorce with each family member. Tired of it all because no one really understands how it feels to live in my home, to see and hear what I've seen and heard for the past 25 years. But their love and care for their person, whether that be their son, daughter, or sibling, is shown and for that I am grateful for. They are needed in the divorce process because their love, care, and support is what is needed to uplift the depression of a soul. Once the divorce was finalized at court I just exhaust myself from anything related to my parents. I was fucking depressed. I withdrew my status in grad school. Stopped my plans to start my non-profit. And I said to each of them that once the divorce papers are signed and official from the judge, their fate tied together is now over. Our fate as a family is done and hope that in the next lifetime we go find our own spouse, our own family. Adult kids of divorced parents often put themselves at a hold because..well things are just so fucked up. I was tired of worrying about how the other parent felt. Tired of trying to make them happy, fixing their life and their broken marriage. Tired of having to make my house feel like a home when it obviously doesn't. Because I had two other adult siblings and a young seven year old brother... Heck, for the first time he had to do a birthday without both his parents. And that hurt because as much as my parents disliked each other they were still together for us older kids for our birthdays. For a sweet, gentle, kind, and caring baby brother to go through this was just terrifying and hurtful.

For the first two - three weeks that my parents divorced, we didn't tell anyone. I filed the papers at court, got a court date, and my mom had already gotten her own place. Those weeks my little baby brother spent every night in tears. He'd go to sleep crying and still wake up crying. I had to pretend like everything was normal for him. To keep the same schedule, to still send them to school and pick him up and then take him to my mom. Later going to pick him up and just pretend like everything was fine. We did homework together. I bathed him, did his laundry, fed him... To eat dinner without either parent, to go to conferences not with a parent but with his older brother. Even before the divorce I took care of him like he was my very own child. And when the divorce came around I saw him cry for both parent, confused and afraid that they left him. And so I turned my focus to him, to the one that really needed the love and care. I didn't want him growing up having to pay for the mistakes of his parents because far too often kids make choices from things that hurt them in their past and I didn't want that for him.

I feel like for all children of divorced parents, divorce is life long. It's never really over for them. The devastation is disguised, it is covered with bandages but the scars are visible everyday. For parents who divorced, they are able to start a new life. Marry a new spouse and for those that can and want to, start a new family with their spouse. They experience freedom from their first marriage...but for their children we will always be split. We will always be torn. Forever. Because as kids we have no way to start with a clean slate..