Mother's Lament

I never know how to put into words how I feel about the divorce. I don't know if I know how I feel about it enough to describe it even in mediums that are not words. I don't know whether to be happy, hopeful, angry, hurt, sad, or anything. I mean, no one was completely in the right, no one was completely in the wrong. My dad cheated much more than any normal person would tolerate and was very much emotionally unavailable and pretty much had no interest in my mom physically and no desire to make her feel loved, beautiful, or cherished. My mom would rarely be direct in telling my dad what she wanted and what she didn't want because she wants to please others and help them better themselves so much. She probably stayed so long because she thought she could help my dad become straight or make him love her.

I don't know if my mom is any happier now that she is single. She doesn't have to feel constantly rejected and incompetent at being an attractive, interesting wife. But she still seems a bit depressed and is very stressed about work and money and whether she should be dating Ernie or not. It seems her unhappiness has just shifted focus sometimes. She talks often about how she is sad about the divorce. She feels bad about dad being alone. She feels like my struggle with addiction and Mary's panic attacks are the effects of the divorce and she filed for the divorce, so she feels that my issues and Mary's issues her fault.

Tonight she even said that she does not want Mary and I to have the "legacy of divorce" -it's a little late for that, it's pretty much unavoidable to not have your own marriage in a low more danger if your parents were divorced. She often laments that she would not have divorced my father if she had known it would be this hard on Mary and me, that she didn't expect it to be this devastating on the family. The family was literally torn apart, of course it is going to be devastating. It took a lot to not cry in front of my mom. I didn't want her to know how much it hurt me when I actually let myself think about it. I didn't want her to feel even worse because my crying would confirm that everything she said is pretty true or partially true.

Even though my dad and I don't have much of an emotional bond, he doesn't bring up stuff like that, stuff that makes me cry. He avoids things like that. He talks about books and work and exercise instead. I don't know. I guess it's better to have my mom who really has a connection with me.