DISCLAIMER: This whole post is kind of all over the place. I expect a lot of you to come out of this confused. I apologize ahead of time.
As a product of a divorced family, I can safely and surely say that we are broken. There are things that continue to be unsaid in my head that need to be expressed. Keep in mind, this isn't meant to bash anyone, I'm not trying to make anyone in my family feel badly for the mistakes that have been made, it's just a rant to make other people that don't understand sympathize with anyone that is a product of a divorced family.
I have said this before, but for those of you that haven't read any of my other posts, I will say it again. My parents divorced when I was 9 years old. I don't remember any fights, I don't remember any arguments between my parents, in my mind, we were a happy family. The news of a divorce was honestly a shock to me. There are still things that I don't understand about the reason behind this decision, but my understanding of the reasoning isn't a priority, and for this, I'm thankful.
Sadly, this kind of amicable split isn't the case for everyone. I was blessed with parents that kept fights between themselves and didn't drag my siblings and I into the whole mess. As terrible as it sounds, there are people (I don't feel like I can call them parents) that drag their kids into fights that have nothing to do with the kids. It's something that isn't necessary, it's something that affects the kids mentally, emotionally, and in some cases, physically. Using your kids as pawns against one another isn't healthy and it isn't what a good parent would do. No kid ever wants to choose sides, you're both their parents and they love you both, so to make them choose a side is basically setting your family up for a split.
There is something else that needs to be understood about children involved in a divorce, THEY NORMALLY AREN'T HAPPY ABOUT IT. Parents generally don't think of the kids when they split. Divorce is something that affects kids in every way, even if they aren't "kids" when the split happens, they are still affected by it. No one wants to see their parents separate, and parents that have not come from divorce themselves don't quite understand how much damage it can really cause. My father has no clue what it's like to see his parents go separate ways, but it left my sisters and I in a wake of disaster and collapse. That's what makes this all the more frustrating. He moved on, married, had another kid with a woman that is not our mother. He doesn't know that all this time it's felt like it's either her and her kids or us. It's an ultimatum that no kid should have going through their head. My mother knows what it's like to feel this kind of abandonment, her father basically wanted to give her up when she lost her hearing. I still don't think that she was thinking of us when the idea of divorce came up, but what can you do?
It's so hard to move on after something like this and to grow up with things like this is even harder. I don't expect anyone that hasn't personally gone through it to understand how painful it is, but maybe this will open the eyes of a few people that need the reality.
