“Shazzie baby, sit down with me we need to talk. Today I received a letter from the lawyers, your dad…he has filed for divorce, do you know what that means?”
There was an awkward silence… “I just want you to know that, we are not going to live together anymore, your dad and I will be living in different places. I also want you to know that it is not your fault and that both your dad and I love you very much. Okay hunny?”
I saw my mom wipe her tears, all these words stabbed through me, as I watched my mother trying very hard to maintain composure trying very hard to be strong for me.
I remember feeling all sorts of emotions, it felt weird… a good kind of weird. I actually wanted to leap for joy; I had to contain this ecstatic feeling. I remember thinking…’why are you not sad?’
According to many sociologists and researchers, divorce is an intensely stressful experience for all children, regardless of age or developmental level; many children are inadequately prepared for the impending divorce by their parents. The pain experienced by children at the beginning of a divorce is composed of: a sense of vulnerability as the family disintegrates, a grief reaction to the loss of the intact family (many children do not realize their parents’ marriage is troubled), loss of the non-custodial parent, a feeling of intense anger as the disruption of the family, and strong feelings of powerlessness.
When I read reports such as these which are readily available on line, I thought, well, perhaps these feeling will come at some point…about eleven years later, I am doing just fine…I did not experience a sense of vulnerability, grief, anger or feelings of powerlessness. I knew that my parent’s marriage was over before it was over, in fact sometimes I prayed to God for them to get divorced. I often asked my mother why she did not file for divorce, but she was afraid of being a failure, and she deeply wanted me to have a ‘normal’ upbringing with both parents. I was miserable, we were a miserable family, and a divorce was the only way out. What I feared the most was that one of my parents (my mother) would leave the house in a coffin. So yeah when I heard of the divorce I knew that this was the best thing for all of us.
Even before I understood how relationships worked, I knew that that my parent’s marriage was in the gutter. It was poisonous slowly pecking away at my mother and my dad probably.
I was not excited about the divorce for sinister reasons; in fact I was excited for my parents. What this divorce meant as far as I was concerned was that, now my parents would begin to live. I wonder if you have any idea what it feels like to live in a house with two dead people, spiritually dead, dead, dead. Being the only child it was especially hard because I had to be the bridge that held the family together. This was eating away at me; it frustrated me, and made me really sad and angry. My parent’s marriage was truly volatile, violent and abusing in every aspect of the word. I remember countless times when I had to nurse my mother’s bruises, how I despised my father for making me go through this, not only was I left to clean up the blood stains, I had to witness the name-calling and verbal abuse till all hours of the night. If anything dropped in the house I got such a fright, I could never be sure if my dad’s rage had begun again. My mom and I both feared my dad, but she somehow believed that she could make it work and that he would once again be the man that she had married all those years ago. On the other hand, I had no doubt that it would only get worse and it did. So when my mom allowed me to look at the divorce papers, I fantasized about a bright future for my mom and I. We would finally find peace and happiness.
I think for me as a child, the hardest thing to witness was; what love is not, what a really bad marriage was and what the definition of living in fear was. I do not wish any child to go through this, ever. The problem is that many parents, just like mine, have this delusion that they are doing their children a favour by staying in a rotten marriage, who are they kidding? “let’s stay together for the children”, how about “lets spare our children from this disaster of a marriage”. As a child no emotion escaped me, I was very aware that my parents did not love or like each other for that matter. The worst thing was having to pretend to be one small happy family. More like skitso family! When we had visitors, we all had to play the ‘happy family role’, my dad was the leading actor in this, ever so brilliant for the part. Everyone loved my dad, my family thought he was so good to my mom, and my friends thought he was the best dad. I remember thinking ‘what the hell is going on? We are not happy!’ But I kept it in, put on my best smile and entertained like the perfect little child that I was. My mother also played her role as the perfect wife and hostess. As soon as there was a knock on the door, it was like camera, lights and action! And just as we waved goodbye at the end of the evening it was, cut were done for the day! Then things were back to ‘normal’ my parents did not even talk to each other unless there were visitors, if they had to, and when there were no visitors, I was the telephone line. Oh, when they did talk to each other they were arguing or fighting. This was my normal! Totally fucked up! But I got through it, and I don’t ever wish this upon any child.
This is no sob story just the plain truth…My parents divorce was the best thing that ever happened to me!
To go or not to go? Sitting I’m my book heavy office, the email confirming all the details, date, time and venue creeps up my mail box. All the information to get me prepared to meet Mr Thabo Mbeki…to go or not to go…