Chapter 4
My parents’ relationship began to deteriorate quite rapidly. Fights escalated and lasted for much longer. Affection, the byproduct of love, no longer existed. Those who understood the symptoms could see the inevitable. I would not. Self-preservation can be blinding. As my parents distanced themselves from each other, I became more depressed and binged. I was not above the actions that had led to my suicide attempt the year before. I believe that my parents knew this and tried to hold their relationship together long enough for my older brothers and me to regain our emotional equilibrium.
Depression, chemicals, and emotional trauma led me to make decisions that, in retrospect, I wish I had not made. I sought to hurt myself worse than someone else could hurt me; that would lessen the sting of the pain that they inflicted. My angry outbursts and abusive verbal assaults proved inadequate to protect me from my parents’ inevitable divorce. The people I loved most were in the throes of an emotional separation that had ended long before their physical separation on Christmas Day. The pain I felt after coming home to my father’s empty closets must have been similar to the pain he experienced while packing his bags. In reality, the date didn’t matter. The separation would have come to pass whether on Christmas Day or any other. To choose another day would not have lessened the sorrow I felt for the loss of our family as I had known it. What it did give me was a target for the sorrow that began to fester into rage.
Although my father could be harsh and unyielding at times, he was also loving and compassionate to me. The combination could be confusing, and it was not until I became a man myself that I understood how one person could possess both traits. The love he felt for his family was indisputable and his absence did not diminish that fact. That is what confused me most. We fished, hiked, and camped together. He shared his gift of music by playing his guitar. In retrospect the things he gave me far outweighed anything taken by his empty closets, though it didn’t feel that way at the time.
For years, I used Christmas Day to elicit a specific response from those who heard my story. As a victim of life’s circumstances, I fed off of the good intentions of others to survive. This is a form of abuse employed by addicts to manipulate and deceive. I had to find a way to keep my self-destruction going by turning anger to bitterness, igniting my deep sorrow into rage, and making my father’s absence into something far worse—abandonment.
People internalize divorce differently. In a household with three boys, each of us responded to the same set of events in a different manner. Though I can only relay my own experience, my brothers all carried the pain of the separation into the years ahead, fueling their exploration into their own shadow. They chose to process their pain through avoidance; in time, they were forced to confront their own pain. For many years, I believed that I walked alone in much of this. I assumed that I was the sole inheritor of the pain associated with the divorce. As a result, I discounted the feelings of others in my family. In my self-centered and attention-craving behavior, I limited my family’s ability to process their own pain. Like an emotional leech, I took whatever my family had left to offer. Now, I regret that I didn’t allow my brothers to grieve. I wish that I had found a way to share their pain and taken a supportive role. Instead, I forced a wedge in our relationship, one that grew as our lives moved forward.
How do you describe your mother and ever do her justice? I will begin here. The remainder of my story will help to fill in any blanks I leave. My mother is an incredible human being. During my preschool years she was my greatest friend. As I grew older and my two older brothers began grade school, my mother and I spent our days running errands together and filling up on yogurt cones from the health food store. That was our daily ritual. Looking back, she seemed aware that these times would soon end. “I love you more than all the stars in the sky,” she would say. “I love you more than all the sand on the beach,” I would tell her, each of us looking to outdo the other. This was our game. There was no winner. She said things that made me think and wonder. We shared secrets, laughter, and tickles. My life was full of the love and affection that is thought to be a protector against life’s savagery. If love and affection could solve every problem that parents face on behalf of their children, then I would not be writing this book. Love is just part of the solution; love helps children to heal from life’s inevitable hardships.
