Disclosure

I was three years old when my parents decided to get a divorce.

I say “decided” as if they had much choice. My dad cheated on my mom. Asshole. I would have divorced him, too. I suppose they could have tried to make it work if they wanted to, but I’m mostly glad they didn’t. As I was growing up I got to really understand my parents’ personalities. For instance, my mom, much like myself, loves change and adventure, she’s traveled all over the world; but my dad, he is quite the opposite. He does not like going anywhere he doesn’t feel perfectly comfortable at, his house is his temple. When I was little I loved looking at pictures of my mom in all these awesome places and I would always ask her where my dad was, “He always stayed,” she told me. To be honest, I couldn’t even picture how they got together in the first place.

For the most part though, I can’t remember living with my parents together. I get flashes every now and then but sometimes I’m not sure if they’re just part of my imagination. I remember we lived in a three bedroom apartment, that I always thought was huge and it was my favorite place in the world. When it was almost time for my dad to get home I would climb on a chair and look through the peep hole on the door and if I saw him coming I would quickly hide and then jump out to greet him. When my dad left our apartment, for a while I didn’t know where he was living. I would see him often but I didn’t know where he called home. One time I finally got to spend the night with him, he picked me up at home and off we went. I was excited to see his place. We drove into an old car repair shop. It was very dark and I was confused but I grabbed my backpack and my teddy bear. We went through a door that led to a very little room.  I noticed there was only a bed, a dresser and a TV. It wasn’t pretty. The bathroom floor was wet and dirty, no curtains in the shower, and there were spider webs all over the place. At least I can’t remember what it smelled like. After I made my dad get rid of the spider webs so I could use the bathroom, we laid in bed and turned on the TV. I still remember we watched the Lion King together until I fell asleep. For some reason this is a very precious memory of mine. I guess I was just happy to be with him. But, in the morning when he dropped me off at home I told him I didn’t like where he lived, because it was dirty and I didn’t want to go back there. As I write this, it kills me to remember how I said that to my dad. I can’t remember his reaction, knowing him he probably didn’t make a big deal about it in front of me, but I can only imagine how hurt he must have been. I didn’t have a clue what he was going through. I told him to get me again once he moved somewhere nicer. Asshole.

Eventually, my dad ended up marrying “the other woman.” I call her by her name now.  When my dad moved into a nice apartment, years before he married the other woman, I would spend the night with him often. In the morning, he would help me get ready for school, but I hated how he would wake me up early. My mom used to dress me in my sleep and wake me up just before we had to leave. Also, I thought my mom did my hair better. My dad would try. I always wanted my hair in pigtails at the time. He did his best. Every day when I got back to my mom, she would ask me “Was there a woman in the apartment too? Don’t lie to me.” I told her no, and I wasn’t lying, at first. After a while a woman was there too. She would do my hair in the morning. Whenever my mom asked me I would still say no because I was afraid she wouldn’t let me see my dad.

I don’t remember how old I was when my dad told me he was moving away. He got a job in another city about 6 hours from home. The news crushed me. No more sleeping over at his place during the week. I was sad. Before he left I gave him my favorite teddy bear “So you think of me every day” I said. I know it’s been long over 15 years since then and that teddy bear is still in my dad’s closet. I check every time I go visit him. Today, my dad’s house is like a second home to me but it wasn’t always like that. His wife and I didn’t get along for the longest time. We were very alike in some ways and it was like we were always fighting for my dad’s attention. She would make fun of me sometimes for the way I acted around him. We always got into arguments and my dad was the mediator. The year before I was moving away for school, we all sat down and talked things out. I was glad we were in good terms then because at the end of the day she’s with my dad every day, I know she loves him and she takes care of him.  They’ve been together for over 20 years and their relationship has always been pretty stable. Like every couple, they fight sometimes, but it never takes long for them to get back at making their very corny remarks about each other. They call each other ‘Vida’ and ‘Cielo’. That’s Spanish for ‘life’ and ‘heaven’. I think it’s sweet.

They have a good relationship, one that might have influenced the way I behave in relationships if I had grown up with them. Maybe I would have learned to keep my fights short and sweet and move on. Our parents’ relationships affect our own behavior in relationships in the future. It only makes sense, since we grow up with them. We see the way they act, the patterns they follow, how they talk to each other, all those things. Are they clingy? Are they distant? Do they show their affection often? It all affects how we behave in the future and the things we prefer in relationships, whether we realize it or not. I didn’t realize this. But someone brought this to my attention, as if I really needed to think about this. My dad’s relationship with his wife could have influenced the way I would behave in relationships later in life. But I mentioned this before right? I lived with my mom.

After my dad left, my mom was single for a couple of years at least. I must have been six years old when she met some guy. Later, he would become “my sister’s dad.” That’s how I call him. He is not my stepdad, he’s not my mom’s anything, he’s simply my sister’s dad. I don’t quite remember when or where my mom and this man met, but I know my cousin introduced them to each other.  For some reason, I do remember this though: I woke up in my mom’s bed one morning but my mom wasn’t in bed with me anymore. Don’t ask me why but I decided to check if she was in my room, it was the biggest mistake ever. I opened the door and she was in there with this man. I will spare you the graphic details, but we’re all adults here. I think you can guess what they were doing. I was in kindergarten. The image was horrifying. Hadn’t they heard of locks? Then again, I had heard of knocking. My mom yelled at me to get out and I did. I went back to her bed and pretended I didn’t see anything. I wish I hadn’t. That man kept hanging around the apartment for days, weeks, maybe even months, I can’t remember. After a while they decided we would move in with him. And his mom. He lived with his mom. I repeat, he lived with his mom. Back then I hated him because he was making us move out of the place I had grown up in. I had to leave all of my friends behind. Friends who I never really saw again, and never really missed anyways. But my hate towards this man just kept developing throughout the years. I’m the first one to say that hate is a strong word and I rarely ever support people using this word towards other people. So, believe me when I say I hate my sister’s dad I mean it. God knows I’ve tried to forgive him for the things he did to me when I was a kid, but I refuse. The older I get and the more mature I am, the more hatred I feel towards him and what he did to me. It’s one thing to be a scared kid and not know what to do in some situations, some things are hard to understand and it’s easier to pretend nothing happened. But as an adult you can better evaluate someone’s actions and what he did to me, and the way he disrespected and mistreated my mother for years doesn’t deserve my understanding or forgiveness.

At the time we moved into his big house with his nice mom I was only six years old. I call his mom grandma. I like her very much. She has two sons: my sister’s dad and her other son who lived in a different city with his family. He was good and kind. I call him uncle. I could not understand how these nice, sane, good people could be related to my sister’s dad. It never quite clicked. I wouldn’t say I was unhappy though, I never really felt that way. I had a good life for the most part. School was good, I made new friends who I loved. The house we lived in was a dream house and it did feel like home. The patio was really big, we had a huge mango tree in the back and in the front yard 5 huge palm trees I adored. My room was the size of the living room of the apartment we used to live in. And my favorite part, there was a mirrored wall in the living room. For hours I would perform the most amazing concerts in front of that mirror. Yes, I was happy. But there was a resentment in me that kept growing stronger over the years. Towards my mom, towards my grandma, towards my sister, who was born when I was nine. But especially towards this awful man.

At first I felt bad for my mom. Everyone on her side of the family did. How could she not see this? Was she blind? This man didn’t deserve her. This man was a mean drunk who didn’t really care about anything. I do not remember him ever having a stable job. Ever. But my mom stayed, no matter what, she would always stay. Everyone tried to intervene; my aunts, my cousins and I would talk about ways we could get her to leave but nothing worked. They made me tell her what this man had done to me, which is something that up until this day I don’t feel comfortable saying out loud or even in writing. But I told her and I told my dad. This had to be it. How could she stay with that man after I told her what he did so many times? There was no way. For a few weeks we left the house and moved in with my aunt. But guess what? We came back. She came back to him. Why mom, why would you do that? I’ve never known what he told her, maybe he said I was lying and maybe she chose to believe him. I don’t know, I’ve never asked, chances are I never will. Another time she almost left him, he came home drunk at night and put a knife to his throat in front of me, my mom and his mom and cut himself enough to bleed. That night when it was all over, I went to bed and pretended that hadn’t just happened, only to be reminded in the morning by the stains of blood on his clothes in our laundry basket.

When I was a kid I couldn’t understand why my mom stayed with that man. Can you? It doesn’t make the slightest sense. It was as if she depended on him. She needed him. I didn’t understand why. I do now. Like I said, we both are adventurous beings, I’m a dreamer like my mom, and I’m also very emotional. My mom is extremely trustworthy and very spontaneous. So am I. Thankfully, I have a little of my dad too. My dad is extremely practical and down to earth, and like him, I’m very driven and very goal oriented. I’m analytical, I think of possibilities and consequences often before making a decision. I’m organized and I love having structure and direction. But the traits of my personality that mostly come from my mom have shaped the way I behave in relationships. Thankfully I do have a little bit more of common sense. Thanks dad.

I had my first serious relationship when I was 17. It lasted over two years. We thought it would last forever. When my ex and I started dating years ago my mom was thrilled. My mom loved my ex. He was perfect in her eyes. He was perfect in my eyes for a while too but he was very different from me. He liked things I had no interest in whatsoever. He wanted things I couldn’t envision for myself. For years, I went along with everything. My mom said he was “a good guy, you can’t let him go. Compromise.” I did, I compromised. But he didn’t. I knew I had to end it. I did several times. “Fix it,” my mom would say. “You don’t know what it is like being alone, you say you’ll be okay but you won’t. You need someone.” On and off our relationship kept going. We finally decided to take a temporary break that soon after turned permanent. For a while I was okay. But it didn’t take long for me to start feeling like I had made a terrible mistake. I would think about a future without him and I would have anxiety attacks. Suddenly everything was wrong. Without realizing it I had developed a very strong dependence on him. I would text him and tell him I needed him. I really needed him. Somehow, how different we were and all the different things we wanted didn’t matter anymore. The only thing that mattered was that I needed to be with him again. I felt lonely, which, sure, is normal after a break up, but it was in a very unhealthy way. I didn’t want to leave my room, I didn’t want to eat. Sometimes my friends would make me and I would go to dinner looking like a complete mess. I didn’t care. My mom insisted we should try to get back together. I told her I was trying.

When I saw my ex again, I quite literally begged him to give me another chance. I told him I had changed my mind about everything, I wanted everything he wanted, I’d do anything he wanted. I would move to the country and live in the middle of nowhere, it wasn’t a problem, I would work for his family’s company so we could stay close to everyone; skiing all the time? Of course, that was my new favorite sport, I would take every Iowa winter with grace for the rest of my life, I promised. I was willing to compromise everything I wanted in life because I felt I needed a man. This man. I wonder where I got that from. I’m so glad soon enough I came back to my senses. Don’t get me wrong, he was an amazing person, kind, nice, sweet. He never treated me wrong or disrespected me. But our goals in life were too different and that drove us apart. There are so many things in the world I want to see, and so many places I want to go to. He wasn’t willing to do any of those things with me. But what if we had gotten back together? I might still be with him. I might still be with someone who I knew I didn’t want to be with. Someone who I knew would make me give up my dreams to help him accomplish his. Someone who ultimately didn’t make me happy anymore. But that loneliness I felt, that dependence I had and that need for having somebody almost ruined me.

I think that’s what ruined my mother.

I’m thankful that I’ve had the strength to end relationships that I knew didn’t make me happy.  But it’s still a continuous struggle. I keep going back to guys who don’t deserve me. In my mind I know exactly why I shouldn’t be with them. But for some reason I still want to be with them. Everyday I’m fighting through it. I have made some great progress because I am  wrapped up in the idea of being independent right now, but I have my moments of weakness. I understand the root of it all better now, and the awareness helps me fight through it. But it doesn’t make it go away. I have to live with it. It’s all part of me now. A lot of times I do resent my mother for not being strong enough to fight through the loneliness and the dependence. She has two daughters and I don’t think she realizes the consequences her behavior has on us. I’m often scared for my sister. I make sure I talk to her whenever I can and I try to set a good example for her. But she’s not growing up with me. Our mom and her dad is who she sees every day. Yes, my mom is still with my sister’s dad. As crazy as it sounds she has stayed with him all these years. Mom, I wish you were stronger. I know I’m trying to be. That’s all I can hope for now. But, sometimes I wish I’d lived with my dad.