I Hate Divorce (from 2005)

I hate divorce. I hate the angst and heartbreak its victims must endure. To have thrown one's everything--might, mind, strength, and heart--into the creation of a solitaire unit to only have it regurgitated and vomited back into one's face is the ultimate insult.

The shock of hearing one's own worthlessness from the other--that despite having given one's all toward the good and well-being of this concept of oneness formed from the two--is devastating at the very least.

Nothing more needs saying after hearing the otherwise two innocent words It's over. Nothing in this life ever prepared me for those two simple words. Indeed, I had had horrible bouts with depression, paralyzing insecurity (not just during adolescence), and confusion. For at least a decade of my life (I am now 32) these three components combined and proved to be the rule of everyday life. The exceptions occurred while playing with my children or being alone.

I was about eight when my own parents divorced. Oddly, I have no negative remembrance of it. I am grateful for them for the manner in which they handled it. Yet, I remember many occasions on which I felt envious of friends and peers who, unlike me, had their families intact and spent their time together. Though a few years later, Mom would remarry and my brothers and I would have more of a "normal" family, I was still envious.

In fact, I still am. I regret growing up without my father at home. I imagine that for others whose parents have stayed together, there exists a firmer ground for them to stand upon. I imagine an anchor, so to speak, that can always be lowered during stormy times and trouble.

But there is more envy than this, I regret time not spent playing catch together in the backyard. Or times when Dad did not come to see me play ball (he lived 4 hours away). Doubtless there would've been times when he would've shown me how to just do things--things I would've hated doing, like painting the house or fixing the car, yet things I would always remember because "I learned it from my Dad." What I wouldn't give now to have been able to hear him say, "I'm gonna put my foot up your ass!" a few more times than our eight years together allowed him to. (By the way, he never once kept that promise.)

My greatest source of concern is my children. They will now have thrust upon them much of what my brothers and I had upon each of us. Though circumstances are different, times change, and they seem to have many advantages which we did not, one fact remains the same. Their mother and father will not ever live with them together again. Talk about finality.