Well, I don't blame myself. In fact, in this super awesome roller coaster ride known as The Year My Parents Divorced, I'm currently stuck in a loop of absolute frustration, asking the same question over and over again:
What did I do this deserve this?
Because I don't blame myself for my parents divorce. I believe they are two people with certain flaws that create a lot of friction--two people, who at some point, may have belonged together, but have not gotten along for a long time now. I believe that whatever is happening between them is because of them--their flaws, their judgments, their decisions, both right and wrong--and not me. I am not the one who didn't do the dishes or who acted unappreciative or who went a step too far too many times. I'm sure they'd both like to tell you that this situation is not their fault. But all I am sure of is that this year, this pain, is most definitely not my fault.
That idea really frustrates me. If I didn't do anything wrong, if I had absolutely no choice in this matter, why am I being forced to sacrifice and feel hurt again and again and again? I have no answer. Ultimately, all I can think about is how completely unfair this all feels.
From thought, I've only spiralled into a thousand thoughts of how my life sucks, how things that I've accepted about myself and my life for so long are actually really unfortunate. Like the fact that I have never had parents who loved each other. Ever. Not really. "Why!" I want to scream. Why does my life have to suck like that? And why, oh why, do I have to go through all this alone? And why does everyone else get to have siblings and I don't? I would give anything to have someone like that right now, someone to go through this whole mess with, someone who loves both my parents the way I do. Because, from now on, I am, officially, legally, fully, the only person who loves them both in the whole wide world. And that feels very lonely.
I don't know if this is just me--I suspect it's not--but I've always gone through life assuming that things were generally, ultimately, fair. Not always, of course--cancer isn't fair, poverty isn't fair, a million things aren't fair--but divorce isn't a chance thing like that. It is the direct result of decisions made by people. People who aren't me. Which, in my view, isn't fair. I can't help but feeling life isn't being fair to me right now.
I want to say that I'm not writing this post to whine. There would be not point in that. And, obviously, as lives go, my is probably not more than a little unfair. I was born into a life filled with loving, fairly well off parents, in one of the best countries to live in in the entire world. I am healthy, smart, what have you. I know that. But I wanted to write this post without that element of perspective. I wanted to document my exact feeling at this exact moment, two weeks before the big split, to document how it felt being sad, scared, and frustrated, in the eye of a tornado that is currently ripping through my life. To me, right now, there isn't much of a thing called perspective. All I can see is the wind whipping around me at a million miles an hour, stirring up pain and creating nothing but debris. I wanted to document the fact that right now, I feel like a piece of wood, sucked up by the wind, waiting to be flung off in an uncertain future.
I wanted to prove that this frustration I'm feeling is very real and very valid to me right now, no matter what a grander perspective might suggest. As Augustus Waters says:
This pain, in this moment, is real. And I guess I'm going to just have to feel it and question it and experience it. This is my life right now.
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