Broken Hearts

If you ask me what is the one thing that forever altered and shaped me into the person I am today, I would say my parents divorce. They married after medical school and soon had three children. I was six when they separated. I did not understand much at that point in my life. All I knew is that my dad stopped coming home and my mom was sad all the time. It was a very contentious divorce. My father left my mom for the nurse that worked for him. My family is ver much a cliche. It was hard not being a family but what was worse was seeing my mother suffer. She coped with it the only way she thought she knew how: Alcohol. Dont misunderstand me, she is an incredible woman. She got her medical license while at the same time raising three children, but it was hard for her. Seeing someone else living the life that was meant for you. Life in my home was not always easy. She would yell and was very angry. At the time I did not understand, nor could I comprehend the pain she was in. My father on the other hand started a new life. He bought a condo and continued the relationship with the other woman. He went on with his life as if nothing happened. My mother felt too much and my father felt too little. The other women is an interesting character to say the least, but that is another story for another day. As I grew up and matured I started to understand my mother’s behavior and why she did the she did. I’m not justifying or making excuses for her. She drank too much and it hurt us. It hurt when she crashed the car. It hurt she got pulled over by police while I was in the car. I resented her for a ver long time and because of the that there was a rage inside me that I could not control. So I got help and went to therapy. Therapist mostly talk bullshit, but once in a while they give useful advice. He told me that there is nothing I can do about my mother’s behavior or my fathers choices. You cannot change them so stop trying. Learn to walk away and most importantly stop fighting her. So that’s what I did. I stopped fighting her and started listening. I told her the pain I was in and how much It was affecting me emotionally. To my surprise she actually listened and starting getting better. Our relationship is not perfect and we still have our issues and we still fight from time to time. But at least now we can talk without judging each other. That’s the most important lesson I have learned; not to judge so harshly. What I wish my mother and father understood was that my heart was broken too. Divorce is not the worse thing in the world but it does change children in a lot of ways. It changed me, for better or for worse, I cannnot answer that yet. All I can hope is to do better and be better than them.