Him

During my parents’ separation/divorce, I started to catch onto something I very much disliked.

When my dad moved out, he moved into a cabin my mom had rented for him when she knew she was leaving him. I mainly stayed at my mom’s house, with the occasional sleepover at dads.

 When we moved to our new town, my mom ended up getting very involved in committees and made a whole new group of friends. They all had dinner parties and played games, ya know the normal “couple’s get together.” When my parents split, there was another couple that was going through the motions of divorcing as well. I didn’t notice it at first, but my mom was seeing someone. Can you guess who?

I knew him, hell I babysat for his own kids.

Slowly things became more and more obvious.

One day we were out on my mom’s friend’s boat, and I really didn’t want to be there. I knew he would be there, and I wanted no part of it. I sat on the boat the whole time reading my book, pretending to be far, far away.

All of a sudden I heard a lot of giggling. I snapped around and there my mom was in the water, flirting with this man. “Are you kidding me?! Ew, can you please not do this in front of me?!”. They separated so quickly, like two teens being caught with the door closed. And my mom just dismissed it. Acting like what I saw was all in my head.

My parents weren’t even divorced yet, yes they had been separated for some time but, still, they were technically married. And here she was seeing this man. I didn’t know what to do. Do I tell my dad? Or do I keep my mouth shut and let things play out on their own? I couldn’t understand how in the middle of a divorce from someone you’ve been with for over twenty years and loved, that you could be seeing someone else so fast.

 One day my dad and I were having lunch together, and I told him I needed to tell him something. I thought my dad deserved to know the truth, but as always my dad was a step ahead.

He knew…he knew! Then he told me everything. He had hired a private detective to follow my mom. He got her phone records, he had photos, he also had someone hack into her emails. Yes, a total invasion of privacy, but can you blame him? My dad also told me information that I have no idea how he got, but what he knew; he was going to show the court.

My dad fed me a lot of information about whom my mom was seeing, things I probably shouldn’t have known about. It made me loathe him even more, and my dad didn’t want me near him. Dad wanted to get custody of me with this information. 

 During this time, my dad had seriously sobered up. So my dad and I were for the moment on good terms. Yes, things still sucked, but for the time being, we were okay. For once in a very long time, I felt things were going to be okay with my dad. I wanted at that moment to not be near my mom, I wanted to live with my dad, so I said I’d go with what he wanted.

I kept trying to get my mom to admit what she was doing. She made it worse by not talking about it. She laughed one time when I brought it up and said they were just friends. I was fed up.

“No! You’re not just “friends,” and I’m not an idiot! It’s so obvious! I don’t know why you won’t just tell me the truth!”.

It hurt that she would lie to me. 

 Austin and his girlfriend heard us fighting. When mom left, they came into my room, and I broke down.

“Can we please go back to when things were okay? Before we knew dad drank? I just want things to go back to how they were. I want us to be a perfect family again!”

It felt like I was pleading with him to make everything okay again. My brother was good, he let me cry, and Austin said he felt the same way. Thank the heavens I had my brother, someone to understand how I felt. I just wanted things to be normal. But what was normal anymore? If only my mom just talked to me, explained things. Maybe things would have been different.

 It would take a whole year before the divorce was finalized.

My dad told me he wanted to move back to Danbury. I screamed inside just a little. I asked if I could go with him, and he said yes. He knew I wanted to leave badly, I had always wished we never moved in the first place, and he knew that. I’d still spend time at my mom’s too, but my primary residence would be with my dad. I thought maybe things could be different.

And they were, for a while. Like I’ve said before living with or loving an addict is like being on a roller coaster. 

 I still wish my mom had just talked to me. I realized later, much later than I should have, that my dad had fed me lies of what he wanted me and my brother to think of my mom’s boyfriend. I believed everything he told me, so I judged this man for a very long time. If she just explained to me, told me what was going on maybe, just maybe I wouldn’t have hated her so much. I let these incidents overrule all the good she’s done. I resented her. First, I felt she abandoned me, and then she kept this huge lie, and I hated her for it.

 Talking to her now as an adult, I can somewhat understand why it happened. Doesn’t mean I don’t still think it was wrong in the way it all went down. But I can see as she’s explained it to me how it happened. We talk about it a lot, and I remind her that I’m sorry for how angry I was.

But I was also put into the middle of a lot, and it’s hard to let go of things that make you feel so vulnerable. I’ve finally forgiven her truly, and a big part of that has been therapy and writing these posts. It’s taken a very long time to let that go, but now that I have, it feels as if a huge weight has been lifted off of me.

The quote “She’s strong, but exhausted.” By R.h Sin resonates with me for my mother. She had to hold everything together for so long, and that’s a lot to ask of one person.