Crisis in the "family"
My mother, at the age of 53, decided that she wants to divorce my father. She has been married to him for the past 29 years.
She tells me this while we're chatting in her kitchen, she standing next to microwave, me stealing cookies out of a box.
It was never easy for both of them but me and my brother always defended our mother.
The truth is they are the most incompatible people on this Earth. My father being the awful complicated person he is, so mean to even me and my brothers, and my mother being... well, just being herself. She never quite knew how to handle him, her solution was always scream at him and throw old quarrels at his face.
They don't talk quietly for years now, it's all screams and silences, and since they still live together, the situation is driving my poor baby sister mad. If she talks to father, mother gets jealous, if she goes out with mother, fathers doesn't talk to her for a week. Don't I know it... I used to live there too not so long ago.
It's past the point of taking sides. We know it's very hard for our mother. My father never lifted a finger at her but he puts a lot of pressure on that house and he is very violent psychologically speaking. He can make ME cry with a few words, his usual way of making himself the victim and us the monsters. Very convincing, I swear I almost believe I'm that bad!
Now my mother wants me to help her with the lawyers and all... I can't help thinking it's too late and I feel bad for it. It's not too late for my sister.
When I was 10, I told my mother she should get a divorce but "Goodness, no!", what would everyone think? A divorced woman with two kids, she would be so ashamed! Not to mention my grandmother would kill her!
And now... almost twenty years, a new daughter and hundreds of fights after that, she has decided.
And it had to happen in the period of my life when I'm finally getting along with my father.
And I... I am just scared.
She tells me this while we're chatting in her kitchen, she standing next to microwave, me stealing cookies out of a box.
It was never easy for both of them but me and my brother always defended our mother.
The truth is they are the most incompatible people on this Earth. My father being the awful complicated person he is, so mean to even me and my brothers, and my mother being... well, just being herself. She never quite knew how to handle him, her solution was always scream at him and throw old quarrels at his face.
They don't talk quietly for years now, it's all screams and silences, and since they still live together, the situation is driving my poor baby sister mad. If she talks to father, mother gets jealous, if she goes out with mother, fathers doesn't talk to her for a week. Don't I know it... I used to live there too not so long ago.
It's past the point of taking sides. We know it's very hard for our mother. My father never lifted a finger at her but he puts a lot of pressure on that house and he is very violent psychologically speaking. He can make ME cry with a few words, his usual way of making himself the victim and us the monsters. Very convincing, I swear I almost believe I'm that bad!
Now my mother wants me to help her with the lawyers and all... I can't help thinking it's too late and I feel bad for it. It's not too late for my sister.
When I was 10, I told my mother she should get a divorce but "Goodness, no!", what would everyone think? A divorced woman with two kids, she would be so ashamed! Not to mention my grandmother would kill her!
And now... almost twenty years, a new daughter and hundreds of fights after that, she has decided.
And it had to happen in the period of my life when I'm finally getting along with my father.
And I... I am just scared.