A kid called towel

I never understood why I wasn’t the glue strong enough to keep my parents together.

As an only child, in my infantile mind, the logical and rational reason for my parent’s divorce; was me. I mean who else was there to blame?

At age seven, I was old enough to feel the ravenous pain of divorce but far too young to understand the complex adult reasons at the root of its cause. Just like one in two children, growing up I was a victim of divorce, and I use the word victim with all its connotations and deep meaning, intentionally. It has taken me most of my life to understand what I experienced as a child. The impacts of its turmoil have affected me in more ways than I would care to admit, or have even realised.

It’s hard to describe, but I remember once being asked as a kid what divorce was like and eight-year-old me, in my infinite wisdom, said it was like the weather. I wasn’t wrong, it truly was. That’s exactly how I recall it.

Divorce is a great storm. It tore through our house like a hurricane picking up furniture, smashing picture frames, slamming doors and turning tables over. The same winds brought the water. So much water. Floods of torrential tears. Like rains that lasted for weeks, downpours came when least expected often in different places - the bedroom, the kitchen, in the car, along the street or kneeling in church. Sobs of a Father. Wails of a Mother. My own unheard tears of fear and confusion.

This tempest of feeling was accompanied by the roaring heat of intense arguments that burnt everyone involved. Heat that scorched the earth on which I walked and created fires as photos and clothes were burnt and the smoke of celluloid memories filled the house.

It was a climatic disruption that lasted years, three years all in all. And as a kid, three years was nearly half my life. It was certainly, all the life that I could remember. When do you even start making proper memories? I don’t know. But it feels like the first memories I made, I have of life, took place during the storm of divorce.

As long as I was able, I’d been counting arguments between my parents. As long, I was able to do my timetables I could divide the number of arguments by the number of times I’d seen my Dad pack his bags and leave; only to return a few weeks later.

I’d watch my Dad, correction - my hero, walk out on Mum and I so many times. And every time he came back, he said he was back for good and I believed him. At first, my Mum did too. But he just couldn’t do it. She eventually called time on it all, like a boxing referee does a fight. Ultimatums were given but from my ringside seat, the cliched top of stairs, I knew the knockout had come. We weren’t a family anymore.

I remember sometimes, just like boxers, they would argue and fight without even noticing I was there. Sometimes I was a prop the fights. To and fro. From one to the other. The see-saw son.

Other times, they only noticed me after the fight was over. One of them might have left, stormed from the house, and the other remained. They needed their crutch child to hold them up. They needed their towel to wipe them down and comfort them. That’s all I was after some fights, the towel.

I guess some people’s coming of age stories might be about the magic of their first kiss or the loss of that ever so important (not really that important) big V. But my parent's divorce as a kid, was my first real lesson that life wasn’t all lollipops and toy cars. Life likes beating on people. And you have to learn to fight. The younger you do that, the better.

Divorce is so common (36.6% of all marriages in the US end in Divorce) that it is easy to trivialise it. But when children are involved this can never be done. To a child, Divorce is carnage. It’s a dismantling of your entire existence and perspective on life. It takes two people, who you idolise, look up to, who are your heroes and turns them into villains right before your eyes. You are forced to pick sides, forced to choose, forced to love one more than the other. It’s utter chaos.

Of course, there are situations and families where ultimately divorce is salvation, its freedom, it’s an escape from an abusive partner or parent. But as the child, as the literal physical and mental consequence of those two people, it seldom makes sense. Whether by nature or nurture, whether genetic or not, the chances are that in most cases of divorce, even the most complex, nothing is as complicated as the feelings the child (or children) feel towards the two people they see as their creators and protectors.

I knew other children who went through divorce. Sometimes, if you’re young enough, you might be fortunate and escape its real emotional destruction. It's just loud noises around your cot.

If you’re a bit older you might know what words like affairs, cheating, and adultery mean. But chances are, even as the smartest teen around, you still don’t understand them. You're still too young to distinguish between the shades of grey of adult life. I’ve always thought older kids, mates from school, who went through divorce were much more likely to paint it black and white, and depict one parent as a clear villain. And let’s be honest, it's usually Dad.

The issue I had though, I was too young to understand the intimate details of what had been done. Who ‘they’ really were? Over time, I learnt more details. Even to this day, the picture is constantly clearing into focus.

No two divorces are the same. Each household has different factors to deal with. The cause and the effects varying, and the magnitude of destruction can be measured just like an earthquake on some kind of emotional Richter scale.

For years, and even now, the impacts of my parent’s divorce has left me with questions about how I have lived, how I have grown up.

Wasn’t I good enough for them?

Why wasn’t I the catalyst to start a new romance for them?

Grandad did it, Dad did it, is it in the blood of us to be unfaithful?

Does it explain my promiscuity and attitudes towards long term relationships?

Is it why now, at nearly 40, I am only just engaged? Do I finally trust the commitment of marriage? Do I believe in love again?

Do I even want kids? Would I ever risk putting any soul through what I experienced?

I know what this sounds like. It’s the middle-aged whining of an over-privileged white man, isn’t it? Boohoo baby boy! Mommy and Daddy split up. Get over it! It happens to loads of us, right? Right.

“Divorce is like the weather,” I said. “Because after the storm comes the sunshine.”

As an eight-year-old, that’s what I said to my teacher, or some therapist, I forget. But, that’s how I know, this is my coming of age. It was the first time in my life that I truly learnt the concept of hope.

It breaks through the clouds in the air like the sun and like buds, in spring new things begin to blossom. New flowers open and a smell in the air signals another season, new life and another chance.

It was in this spring after my parent’s divorce that my Mom met my Step-Dad and the man she and I would both love unconditionally. A little later still in this hopeful spring and my little sister would be born as my Dad too started his new family.

And it was in summer, both literal and metaphorical, with the warmth on my face that I realised that divorce had destroyed one family but in doing so created two.

I love them both.