Daily, I question my parent’s ability to parent me. I typically ask myself, what did I do wrong? I understand that I didn’t cause my parents’ divorce, but that doesn’t change the facts; my parents were told by their therapist that having another child might help their marital dilemmas. Nine months later I was born, and less than a year later, they were getting a divorce. No matter what anyone tells me, the fact of the matter is, I didn’t work.
If you were to think practically, a baby demands attention. It never brings the focus onto the parents. So, how could I have saved my parents failing marriage? This is the question everyone poses, and then begins the ‘there was nothing you could do’ speech that my entire family has recited to me multiple times. I am my mother’s daughter. Seven doctors and three psychologists sat down with her and explained how the lack of oxygen to my brother’s brain while he was in the womb was not her fault, but she didn’t believe them. She blamed herself for his disabilities, and when the judge asked her if she was fighting for custody of her children, she simply stated that she just wanted me. No one could change her mind, and no one can tell me differently either. Maybe if I had just been different, I wouldn’t have to be living in-between a doorframe, with each foot in a different household.
Not only did my parents make me feel as if I was the rope in their personal tug-o-war game, they never showed me how to share a part of me with someone else. I have never once questioned the immeasurable amount of love my parents have for me, but I have wondered about the idea of marriage. My mom’s second marriage crumbled to the ground in under two years, and she died six months after her third wedding, so no one knows how that marriage would have turned out. My dad got engaged three weeks after my mom died, so of course I hated her immediately. Both of my parents displayed childish behaviors in some ways. I can’t help but wonder: why have children if you’re not going to teach them based on knowledge acquired from your mistakes?
Five years later and I still don’t believe in marriage. My mom was my best friend first, and my mother second. While that order of priorities gave us an indescribable relationship, it didn’t make for great parenting. My father, who didn’t start raising me until I was ten years old, didn’t know how to accept me. I wouldn’t ask for different parents. I am proud to call myself their daughter. But through their many flaws, I have come to realize that I have to surround myself with people who can grow along with me and believe in whatever mountain I may be climbing. These people may not be my flesh and blood, but that doesn’t change the fact that they are my family.
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