Senior Reflections (Part 4)

RECAP TIME. The last four years of college have been a big change.

I started out with thinking I was already pretty fully adjusted. Then I went through transition. Then my parents got divorced in the summer after my freshman year, making the next semester feel like an additional transition time. That summer and even the spring leading up to it, I had to act as a counselor, giving advice to my parents. After all, I was filled with the gift of Wisdom and spewed it like wildfire before I left. However, THIS IS NOTHING A CHILD EVER WANTS TO BE FOR THEIR PARENTS. My mom told me a few details of their sex life (once again, nothing I ever wanted to hear about). My dad became drunk in front of the children for the first time in my memory. I was sworn to secrecy on some things by either parent. These and other things (which I may have blocked out of my mind) were SOOOOO contrary to everything I had been taught up to this point.

That summer was also when my family (including divorced parents) went on what my mom called their “Divorcimoon” to Italy. There, in one of the most romantic places in the world, St. Mark’s Square, in Venice, my mom talked to the children (except Alexandra, who was kept out of the loop a lot) about our feelings on the divorce. My oldest brother voiced that he wondered why it hadn’t happened sooner. I couldn’t even speak. Once again, it went against EVERYTHING I had ever been taught. Divorce is birthed through sin. That’s how it happens. To this day, my mom claims immense relief over it, but I saw her and my dad. Any relief from either was remarkably temporary, and it cost us whatever stability there was in the family. Four years later, the family has been trashed from it. In order to go through with divorce, my mom changed her mindset from selflessly raising the children to concentrating on herself. That may have been well and good except that two of the children weren’t finished being raised (and raising kids was what kept her stable in a lot of ways, ‘cause your own problems aren’t as big when you have bigger ones to look at). The youngest sister still had two years of high school left (which, by the way, were her very worst, combined with teenage rebellion phase). My dad has since made bad investments and we are financially in the gutter. All siblings except the oldest sister smoke marijuana regularly, youngest sister is crazy and can’t hold a job or stay in school. Oldest brother lives for karaoke, video games, and gambling. Other brother has destroyed his reliability with anyone. He has a job but works the very minimal amount, and also won’t stay in school. My mom has a committed boyfriend (probably soon-to-be-husband), but SURPRISE! His humor is VERY similar to my dad’s, especially when he becomes critical of how disorganized my mom is. And she is only more emotionally fragile after everything. Basically, she’s trapping herself into a similar problem, and once again, she won’t know how to solve it.

Fortunately, I also met some of my best friends from school during that semester. That Christmas (2010), I learned to avoid blaming either of my parents, and instead saw them as people who were simply struggling with the consequences of their sinful actions, my dad’s being a longstanding ordeal of doing little to change his ways despite marital counseling, and my mom’s being the part of taking actions over her frustrations (though she certainly contributed to marital trouble).

(I'm tired of writing for now.)