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When my parents divorced five yrs ago they had four kids:
L. - 3 yrs old
T. - 12
R. - 17
me - 20
My dad was the more devastated at first, but improved when he fell in love again & remarried. My mom now is bitter, emotional, and borderline delusional, repeatedly dragging him to court for more $, forbidding L to call her stepmother mom, insisting "she's just some woman your father hooked up with."
While it was going down, I saw that everyone talked frankly (ie, emotionally, bitterly, angrily, sadly) around L, thinking she couldn't understand. But she could certainly pick up on all that negative emotion, and the effects on her have been that she has seemed emotionally disturbed, to varying degrees, w/out really being able to express that verbally. For a couple of yrs she had an eating disorder, refused most food & when she did eat would often have panic attacks, screaming she was going to "get sick." She's a lot better now, largely due to dad & stepmom's nurturing in my opinion.
T is inscrutable. He rarely talks to us, though he was always that way. Mainly he milks both parents' attempts to bribe him & win his favor through computers, huge bedrooms, disciplinary leniency, etc. He's very much caught in the middle, trying to be loyal to both.
R has all but divorced the family. He is extremely resentful toward my dad and does not accept the "new" family as his family (2 half-sisters). He alternately ignores dad and asks for large sums of money, or borrows a car, treats those things irresponsibly, and than rages at dad for taking them away. I think he is under a misunderstood suspicion that my dad cheated or wronged mom, and takes her side, though he's not close w her or anyone. He has cited the divorce, and the infidelity of his highschool girl (which happened at almost the exact same time) as the 2 biggest events in his life. Since then he has clung fiercely to each girlfriend he's had.
I find it hard to gauge the effect on myself. At first I tried to mediate, and convice them to stay together. My view of my entire childhood & family life was shattered. Then I despaired. I once believed in such things as the "One" and didn't know what to replace that with in my views of relationships. Everything suddenly seemed very fragile. I love my stepmom and new sisters and admire my dad's relationship with his new wife very much, and don't feel any emotional separation or difference between them and my full-blood relatives. But I have deep disdain for my mother, who barely works part-time and blames my dad (who has a debilitating physical illness) for her poverty, and whom I perceive as continuing to torture the entire family out of selfishness & self-pity. We talk seldom, and are awkward with other when we do. |
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