One of the most life shaking experiences I have had was going through my parents divorce. When I was in 9th grade my parents sat my siblings, Mary and Max, down to tell us that they were selling our home and getting a divorce. At the time I felt like this was going to ruin me. I had no idea that someday I would be able to look back on this negative experience and be thankful it happened.
Just like most divorces, you can always see it coming. My parents knew about a year and half before they sat us down that this was coming, due to the fact they both started to act different. They started trying to convince us that the other one was the sole reason as to why things were not perfect anymore. Being young, my siblings and I did not know what to think. We would hear all these awful things about my Father only to have him turn around and tell us horrible things about my Mother. We felt like we did not know the truth, it was like being stuck in a cave. My parents kept my siblings and I in a cave chained to their lies. The only things that kept us listening to them was the fact that we could not deal with what Plato would call our “shadow”. In this sense our shadow was dealing with the fact that our parents were not to be trusted.
Our parents seemed to devote all of their time with us to talking crap on the other one. For my 16th birthday my Father was going to buy me a new car, when my Mother heard of this she ran out and bought me a car. Although I am very thankful for the car and how faithful it has been to me, she bought the car with missing pieces. This did not matter because she can forever say she bought it and that my Father did not. They used my siblings and I to get back at one another. This was hard to take since we were young and just wanted a normal family.
Once we moved out of our house and the divorce was finalized, it took a second to get adjusted to everything. My parents decided to have split custody, so my brother and I were forced to live out of a suitcase and sleep on couches. After about a year of doing this I became very ill. The doctor told my parents that moving back and forth would not be ideal for my health so I would need to pick a parent to live with full time. Naturally our parents bombarded us with false accusations of the other one. Finally my brother and I made a decision, one that still haunts me today, we decided to live with my Father.
Moving in with my Father was my light. The truth of what happened between my parents slowly started to unravel. I realized what it was like to basically be my Mother. My father made us do everything! He would come home everyday upset from work and would go off the deep end if there were one thing out of order in the house. It was like walking on eggshells. This was something I had never realized while growing up. I suppose I noticed it because my Mother was not there for him to take his anger out on. This is not to say that my Mother was innocent when it came to whom to blame for the divorce. She had her fair share of crazy antics that slowly drove my Father away, like I always tell them it takes two to sign divorce papers.
When I finally saw what had happened between my parents, I felt I understood the divorce more. I became more aware of how my parents acted and treated not only each other but also other people. Seeing the truth behind my parents divorce has been a blessing, not only has it helped me get over what happened but it also helped me to understand people and situations in life. It has given me a life skill. Even more so than that it helped me become closer with my siblings and form an even stronger family bond with them.
Although I have seen the light to my parents divorce and now understand what were lies and what were truths, I still seem to get sucked into the drama it still causes in the family. I see why Plato talks about how the prisoner after seeing the light returns. For me I return because it is my family. If someone is hurting someone I love when they do not deserve it I stand up for them. I feel that this is not a bad reason to return as long as I remember who tells the truth and who does not.
