DENIAL

The moment I heard the words, "Your Mother and I are getting divorced," my heart skipped a beat.  It skipped a few, I am sure of it.  It was the last thing in the entire world that I was expecting  to hear and I was totally unprepared to grasp its true meaning.  I didn't scream, I didn't cry, I stayed silent.

I was in shock.  My body sat still but my heart was overloaded with emotion.  Soon after, I entered into a stage of grief know as Denial.  Although, at the time, it didn't seem like denial because my relatively tranquil life was suddenly exploding with unknowns.


Denial went something like this:

This can't be happening, not to me.  Not to my family.  Maybe my parents didn't have the perfect marriage, but nothing terrible enough to merit divorce.  

My Dad is simply having a mid-life crisis.  He is crying out for help.  He is having crazy thoughts but he will come down to earth eventually.  He will realize that divorce is a huge mistake, I am positive.

My Mom will figure out a way to fix this situation.  She can't be weak now, I won't let her, and together we will overcome these setbacks and create an even better family.

No, this is just a rough patch in life, but everything will turn out okay.  My parents will be fine.  Better than fine.  Now that everything is out in the open, all their marital issues, everything that was held back for lack of communication over the years will help them develop an even healthier and happier marriage.  So really, this is a good thing. 

If I analyze the situation enough, rip every little detail to shreds and piece it back together coherently, my parents will see something they hadn't seen before and fall in love again.

I fought the idea with my head hoping that I could will the situation away if only I squeezed my brain hard enough.  My head was spinning in search of a solution.  I was supposed to let my parents work out their own issues but I couldn’t control the urge to somehow find a way to take control of the situation and mend my broken family back together.  I thought my parents just needed help.  I felt sorry for them.  Although, this all changed.  As each week passed and my parents remained en route to divorce, I began to feel something uglier.  I exited the land of denial and felt for the first time in my life, intense and uncontrollable anger.

 

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The Feeling Super Barefoot Forum

There is one thing I am certain of when it comes to being an Adult Child of Divorce.  

When you realize that there really are other people out there who also have ALL these emotions, imagine the same outrageous thoughts, feel the wrath of itchy skin, get very heavy boots, fill buckets of tears, imagine crashing cars into trees, are tempted into throwing dishes, sob to no one in public bathroom stalls, take their anger out on cuddly bunny rabbits and become mini-monsters, have lost the meaning of trust, have found the meaning of anger and have questioned the very essence of life, you actually start to feel a little better.

I guess it's good to know we're not alone.  I thought I was alone, and a lunatic, but now I know I'm not.  I say, what better way to learn this for yourself than to cyber-forum-discuss it with complete strangers from around the globe?  Exactly!  Once again, my geniusness will better the world.

I hope this forum will give readers a chance to talk about the issues that they choose, instead of leaving it to me to ramble on about my horribly wretched life.  Not to worry though, I will still be bantering on about Me Me Me on my home page, but this is your chance to talk about you.   

Welcome to my Feeling Super Barefoot Forum! 

 

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Letter to my Readers

Dear Readers,

I woke up this morning and decided to end this blog.  I tried to call my Brother, who has supported and encouraged me to keep writing since day one, but he had to go to some infinite-variable-organic-rocket-science-genius-only Math class.  He did not have time to discuss the lifespan of my blog.  I am still a little peeved by this but I guess school comes first.  Anyhow, he will be rich no doubt and I will live in his garage and play my drums with my invisible band and write on my blog all day.  

By lunch, I decided I was helping millions and could not betray all my loyal readers.  Also, I got comments today, which I love, and I felt oh so popular.  

I tried to talk the dilemma over with my boyfriend but he was super busy today reviewing engineering diagrams in search of some mystical form of alternative energy to prevent the next apocalypse.  I started to make a Pro and Con list but decided to watch It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia instead.  

By 5pm I came to the realization that no one cares about my blog-dilemma and that they never read my blog in the first place.  (Other than my Brother.) I went so far as to start a new blog about happy silly things.  I made a link to that blog in the previous post.  I know you didn't take the time to visit it because there is a stat counter.  I am a little peeved about that too, but no use harping on that now.

I know this is not the professional way to have a breakdown about my blog, but I am at wits end.  Is this blog worth my time?  Does this blog scream, "Get yourself some therapy asap."  I am confused about the tone of my blog, is it sad, funny, cynical, LOL-worthy?  Am I making a mockery of my own misery?  What was I thinking the day I started this place.  This may be my last post. And yes, that is a threat.  But joking, sort of.

Oh, and my name isn't Rev.  It's Tali.

Sincerely,

Tali

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The Day My Parents Created a Mini-Monster

I'm not quoting my parents but this is how I remember it. I could have made it up, it's been a while.

In your comments, please tell me if I should submit this post to the MoMa for review.  Also, please be honest because if you encourage and I am rejected I will blame you, find you, follow you around in public and when you least expect it, scream ABUSE, slap you in the face and run away. Wink Emoticon.

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RSVP Miley Cyrus

It's become habit to enter "walking on eggshellz," "acod," etc., on Google in search of my blog.  I do it all the time.  I seldom find my blog before page twenty something of the search engine's results, but today I found something else.  I found a People Magazine article racking up revenue from Miley's misery and possible Facebook Status Update to "ACOD."  I really don't know anything about Miley Cyrus, although I now know that Trish allegedly cheated on Billy Ray. Skank.  Whatever, I won't judge, but People Magazine will and lucky for them they make a boatload of cash from publicizing this tentative divorce.  They are going to hell with their millions.

I wonder if Miley is as disappointed as I was with Google's lack of ACOD resources.  How many times a day does she search for way to cope with her parents' divorce?  People Magazine reports that she is not taking sides (kudos Miley, but we all know that isn't possible) and that she "has been upset recently."  Understatement of the century, unless she has a heart of coal.  She might, I don't know her.

Anyhow, I wonder if she will search the term ACOD and stumble upon my blog.  That would be pretty sweet.  I would trade one thousand hits from around the globe for Miley's subscription to my feed.  Sorry guys.  I don't know the first thing about her but I am mesmerized by her fame.  I'm a groupie at heart and it doesn't matter what your talent, or lack thereof according to the Hannah Montana Haters Club.

Miley, if your reading this, divorce sucks.  Also, please RSVP.

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The Death of a Marriage

My brother suggested that the four of us see a therapist together, a family session.  His thought was that it was as important as ever to keep all lines of communication open between all of us.  Brilliant. 

Four days later, sitting together for the first time since the “meet divorce” family meeting, we waited to be therapyized.  Truthfully, I respect this particular therapist for agreeing to see us considering it wasn’t the norm.  I can imagine that it is hard to handle one suffering patient, imagine handling four.

A lot happened during that meeting, yet there is one part that stayed with me for a long time.  Towards the end of our session, the therapist recalled a moment she had during a previous one.  She told us about one recently divorced patient who felt she was grieving a death, although no one had died.  She wanted time to mourn.  The patient had experienced the pain of losing a loved one, perhaps a parent, and every year she lit a candle of remembrance.  This year, she imagined lighting that candle for her family.  The end of a marriage is like the death of a marriage. 

Her story stayed with me because the idea of a loss means that grieving and mourning happen genuinely.  It’s not just the loss of a marriage, but of the glorified past and lastly the whole notion of a family unit itself.  All those things were lost.  What she said legitimized those feelings of deep pain and emotions.

I listened; I watched my father lose patience.  At that moment, I was angry with the therapist for associating our situation with the pain of death; something I knew would set my dad off.  My brother, mother and I felt the pain of immediate loss and shock; my dad did not.  He constantly downplayed the significance of his decision and said we were overreacting. He hadn’t said much during the session and I was happy my dad agreed to see a therapist to begin with.  What was she doing?!  She was losing him for sure.  As she concluded her story, it was clear she had made the mistake of telling it at all. 

My dad disagreed calmly, as I knew he would, and said that the divorce was not at all like the tragedy of a death.  Even if it was, he felt that our situation was different than the typical “divorce.”  He couldn’t live in the same house as my mother anymore; it was that simple and had nothing to do with my brother and me.  In fact, my brother and I were his greatest joy.  I was a college grad pursuing a career in law and my brother was a Computer Science major at a top University, he was proud of our accomplishments.  As parents, him and my mother raised us in nurturing environment full of love and mutual respect for one another.  My parents were leaders in the community and had worked together to help with charity events as well as people close to us overcome tough times.  Our family was special, always there for one another.

Divorce was simply a transition like any other, not a death of the family.  He spoke about the positives in our lives, the good times my family had, and emphasized why there was no connection to death.  He defended the “good family.”  We were not raised in a broken home, but a home that valued family first.  Although the divorce would be a change for my brother and I, we were fortunate to have had a wonderful family life growing up and it was important for us to remember that. 

As he finished speaking, I felt my brother’s presence sitting next to me on the couch and wondered if he felt as heavy as I did.  We were silent.  We waited for the therapist to respond.  The therapist listened to my father, looked at him and replied, “I’d like to point out, for the past few minutes you have been speaking in the past tense.”

 

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