A Shattering Of Stability

Last Friday, my mom called me at work.

Do you want the piano?”, she asked.

Sure”. She must have detect­ed the curi­ous hes­i­ta­tion in my voice.

We’re going to be mov­ing soon”, she fur­thered. There was nev­er even a hint of mov­ing before, so I had to ask.

Separately?”

Yup.”

This is how I find out my par­ents are get­ting divorced.

My imme­di­ate feel­ing was that of resigned sad­ness, and a grow­ing resent­ment as a result of this sad­ness. I wished that they could­n’t affect me like this, that they meant noth­ing to me, but in the pit of my stom­ach, I know that they do.

It’s like won­der­ing if you’ll cry when your grand­moth­er dies, nev­er believ­ing that you will.

Until it hap­pens.

I should have seen it com­ing. A few weeks ago, she called to inform me that she was putting funds in my invest­ment account, so that she would have an acces­si­ble cache of emer­gency funds in case my dad ever left her. Like insur­ance, it’s anoth­er thing to have just in case, hop­ing nev­er to need it. Even in my ear­ly child­hood, there were mem­o­ries I’ve tried to block out. Bloody gash­es, divorce scares, plead­ing for us to stay togeth­er. All I ever want­ed from them was a nor­mal fam­i­ly.

Thumbnail: Parents 1

Thumbnail: Parents 2

Lately, even in the last few years, every­thing seemed to be going well. The last time I vis­it­ed, they were doing things togeth­er. Dancing. Eating. There was even talk of buy­ing a new car. Now the real­iza­tion is set­ting in. That was the last time I’ll have seen them togeth­er. Married. As hus­band and wife. I took a pic­ture of them that week­end, when we went out for dim sum. My dad was order­ing food from the menu, and my mom was pour­ing him tea, arms crossed over his. It’s the last time I’ll see them togeth­er like this, and the only pic­ture I have of them.

I don’t even want to think of what the annu­al fam­i­ly gath­er­ings are going to be like, or how I’m going to vis­it them, indi­vid­u­al­ly, dur­ing the hol­i­days. How I’m going to react if I find out they’re dat­ing again.

All I can say now is that I’m dis­ap­point­ed.

5 comments

  1. Welcome to life!
    I went thru 2 divorces..
    the first from my real father, when i was 5..after the date in divorce court, he took off, and dis­s­a­peared for 10 yrs.

    The sec­ond was when I was 23.
    From my step-father of 12 yrs..
    I was right smack in the midle.
    My mom did­n’t want him to know WHERE she was, so mes­sages were passed thru me.
    OH the JOY of it!

    Just be ‘hap­py’ that this did­n’t hap­pen while you were still liv­ing there as a teen.
    It’s a loss, one that must be griev­ed.
    LOVE the pho­to you took though
    I love the way you look at the world, as reflect­ed in your pho­tos
    you have an artists soul

    cheers, and (hugs) if ya need them.
    Amy

  2. The same hap­pened to me, only much ear­li­er in my life (I was 9). Different per­spec­tive, but some of the same under­stand­ing. I don’t know what else to say, but I had to com­ment.

  3. You’re right, I’m lucky to be going through this when I’m inde­pen­dent. Things would have been much worse if they went through it dur­ing ele­men­tary school.

    I find that there are two types of peo­ple whose par­ents divorced when they were young. Those who did­n’t know any bet­ter and grew up believ­ing that it was nor­mal, and those who grew up know­ing exact­ly what was hap­pen­ing. I was the lat­ter, and it would­n’t have been good.

    Thanks for the sup­port.

  4. that is tough. even when you’re old­er, it’s like hav­ing your ide­al of roman­tic sta­bil­i­ty absolute­ly smashed into a mil­lion pieces. but i guess that’s the way fam­i­ly mat­ters work out in life. i’m actu­al­ly more sor­ry that you had to find out about it that way. *hugs*

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