Sunday, April 26, 2009

Long term effects

Divorce sucks. It isn't just horrible while you go through it. It isn't just horrible while you're a child. No, the consequences are with you for the rest of your life. Every time you think that, finally, you've figured out a way to live around the awful fact, something happens to make you realise that things in your life will always be broken and fractured. Relationships never heal fully after a divorce. Family life will never be whole again. Ever. No matter how much you wish it, or pray for it, or work towards it. The fact of the matter is that a broken family is broken forever.

Blended families are just as bad. In a blended family, you're still part of another broken one. No matter how great your blended family is (and some never work), that broken family you're part of will continually impact upon you, whether you like it or not. Whatever limited happiness you may have found is continually on the brink of destruction.

(I guess it's much the same for those who lose a parent while they're a child, and then their other parent remarries - particularly if the person they're marrying already has kids or a family of their own.)

One would think that, at 33, I'd gotten over my folks' divorce. In many respects, I have. Similar to losing Zoe though, the impact of that divorce continues to ricochet through my life. It doesn't take much to make me remember that I'm always going to be an outsider in my own family because I don't belong anywhere. My half-brothers have each other. My step-siblings have each other. I belong nowhere. I have no-one. And it will always be like that, until the day I die. It doesn't matter that I know my brothers love me. It doesn't matter that I get on really well with several of my step-siblings and consider them my blood family. It doesn't matter that I love my parents. This THING will always come between us and tear us apart. Always.

Edited to add: The thing that really set me off last night is that now the whole divorce and blended family saga is starting to affect Janel. I could be okay with it if it was just me, but now she is starting to suffer with it too. She's too young to understand why she's not welcome at certain family gatherings. Actually, I don't understand that either, how it is that we can't all be one big happy family, but at least I can understand what divorce is. It's so unfair that she has been thrust into the midst of all this &%$£, and there's nothing I can do to stop it. I can try to shield her from it as much as I can, but I know that's actually not enough. So that's why I got so completely mad about it last night, why it really got to me. Normally, I would niggle at it, but it wouldn't get me so upset. Because Janel was upset about it though, it really got to me, because it's just so unfair & there's nothing I can do to fix it or make it better or heal the situation.

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