Jen's Journal

As damaging as it is for parents to stay in an unhealthy relationship, it is equally damaging for children to witness their parents falling out of love. It’s never really a surprise for anyone if you pay attention, and as a ten year old I noticed things weren’t going well with mom and dad.

First, they hadn’t slept in the same room for years claiming that there wasn’t enough space in the house for them to have a room to themselves. Then there was the shouting at eleven at night because that was the only time both of my parents were home from work.

It became a nightly routine, like brushing my teeth and doing my homework, except no one reminded me of these things because they were too busy fighting. That was just what went on inside the home. On the outside when we hosted parties I remember my dad always having too many drinks and passing out before the night was over. 

    He was a sensitive drunk, as my mother used to say. He was a small man, so by his fifth beer he started telling anyone who would listen how much he loved his children. Most of his children, anyway.

There was me, younger brother, and younger sister that were all related to my dad. When he got drunk enough he didn’t recognize my brother as his own, claiming that they didn’t have the same color of skin. It’s comments like these that I still remember today because it divided our household.

There was my brother and mother who carried their heritage for all the world to see, and there was my dad, sister and me who could pretend to be white if we really wanted to. I didn’t understand much about skin color then, but I knew it mattered enough to cause conflict in our home. 

    And so it went on like this for a few years, the fighting, the crying, the accusing. Until finally my mother had enough. He gave my dad a few days to find a place to live and pack his life up. He found a home with his sister, and stayed there for a while.

The weeks afterwards were tough on all of us. My mother had to provide for us on her own, and there were weeks where the fridge was as empty as our stomachs. I was in middle school at this time, listening to my friends talk about all the things their parents do together and how happy they all were.

There was an article we read in class about how kids with single parents tend to turn to drugs and alcohol, things I didn’t comprehend then. I understood drinking, and what it did to people who were sad, but I didn’t understand what it had to do with single parents. 

    I felt like an outcast in my friend group, and I couldn’t explain it to my family because they had enough to think about. I read a lot of romance novels before this, and afterwards I had a hard time believing in romance at all.

I spoke to my dad frequently afterwards and I remember him saying that he still loved my mother very much, and that he would always love her. And he did until his very last breath. I was confused then, how could two people love each other but not be together? 

    I had many similar questions all throughout my teenage years. I stayed away from it because if I learned anything from my parents relationship is that getting hurt is inevitable. I didn’t kiss anyone until I was eighteen years old.

Call it fear, caution, doubt, whatever it was I purposefully stayed away from relationships for a while. The first time I ever dabbled in writing I wrote a story called Love Was Born to Die. I was fifteen, and still struggling with the idea that two people could love each other so much but be reckless together.

It made me doubt the entire idea of love. I made up theories, like what people call love is just human selfishness. You like a person because they make you feel happy, and you selfishly want them around you for that reason. It was just theories, for I had never experienced it myself. 

    Just like that theory, I read about hundreds of other reasons people continuously choose to be with someone. I still have doubts about this topic and probably always will, but so will the hundreds of millions of people that write about this every single day.