Threats of Divorce

There were bottles of alcohol stashed around the house, the random clinking of a glass lofting into the livingroom from the garage. Gin hid in the closet, rum under the sink, an evasive game of hide the bottle played out to its chaotic crescendo every evening. The absence of seeing bottle into glass into mouth did not hide the end result of the game. "I haven't seen him have a sip all night but look at him." I just nodded, yeah look at him I thought, sure he was a little rosy, more talkative, a hint of confrontational, but a mostly functional alcoholic. He had just recently retired the expansive day stretched out with no required activities. Stealthy sipping somewhere, self medication for who knows what, well probably self medication for the addiction, and why not? He didn't have to go to work and even when he did he still had made it on time, held a high position and was respected by all his co-workers. It was here on the home front where he struggled. Where they always struggled. I felt like she was at that point where if he would breathe too heavily he would be chastised. Years and years with a person can produce such an effect. But she was right he had a problem it just seemed like it was an acceptable problem, but maybe because I seperated myself from their fights and the enviornment I grew up in. My defense was apathy, some sort of removal from the reality present with no presence, but that was back then. They have long since divorced, to nobody's surprise. As far as I could figure they had not been together for most of my life, when my sister moved out my mom had moved into her room. She said it was because of his snoring but I knew better. They had never really shown any signs of affection that I could recall, they had always seemed more like aquaintances. As a kid I had been bracing myself for their divorce for years. One time my mom had come into the room where me and my sister were watching tv or coloring, something like that and had sat us down for the talk. Her eyes were teary and she choked on her words as she told us that they were going to get a divorce. This was after the alanon meetings and the yelling matches, the precursors to such an event. They had been following the correct procedure, toleration, confrontation, back to toleration and then into full out disgust for each other, the path of any normal relationship right? Well either way they had put in their time, tried for our sake, which I never knew how to feel about. Should you drag out a bad relationship just because you think the kids want to view such a disaster or should you cut your losses, disband a household and pull out the only foundation children like me and my sister had known. We kind of wanted them to get a divorce, for their sake, it was obvious even to us at such a young age they would be better off apart. I remember me and my sister crawling into her lap, the tears we all shared, probably more based on the fact that she was crying over the reason she was crying. Kids don't like to see their parents cry no matter the reason. So we had the talk and were informed of the possibility and in our minds it was not just a possibility but it was a stated truth, our family was going to be broken up. We thought about this and we looked at the truth and knew how we had felt before, that they would be better off this way, and we accepted it, we still had each other, my mom and my sister, we would be alright, I had never lived in an apartment, it would be a change of scenery and it almost smelled like spring, like a new beginning was creeoing around the corner. Almost.....because nothing ever happened, they stayed together. They moved right back into toleration and all talk of a divorce disappeared. It's weird to have come to peace with an idea that is such a big and seemingly important idea and then to have it not come to fruition. I felt weird almost hoping for the divorce to come. But it never did and we maintained our charade of normal family, chugging along for years. Sure there were flare-ups, tensions existed and they still didn't act like there was any love between them but they stayed together. As far as we were concerned though the marriage was dead, it was just a very thin blanket stretched across our family shambles. It was like telling someone there dog had died, having them mourn the dog and then saying oh we were wrong, the dog is just injured really badly. What do you do? What does a kid do? You can't say no dog I already thought you were dead you have to stay dead, no you have to take it back and live with it, a badly limping dog that sometimes you wished was dead but just hobbled around the house, sleeping in the corners of the house sometimes out of sight. Sometimes forgotten, until there it was hopping down the hall, the sight of its existence somehow sad but comfortable. My sister and I used to wonder if it was for financial reasons they stayed together, but we never asked them. We couldn't just walk up to them and say so uhhh about that whole divorce thing? what ever happened to that? We exist within the existence we are given. But after years of dragging a flatlining marriage out, they finally decided to admit defeat. The timing did kind of make me think the relationship was based on finances again just because the divorce came after they stopped paying for my college and I had found my first permanent job with benifits and that sort of fluff. Free from the burden of their two children maybe they agreed it was time for them to start living for themselves. Which if that is the case i feel incredibly guilty and sad for them. Their suffering should not have endured just for our sake, I mean me and my sister had been over it since we were kids, since that talk with mom. Please tell me that you did not sacrifice so many years of your lives thiking that maintaing a sham of a marriage would be better for us. We could have cared less if they had broken up, being repititious, the marriage had been dead to us for a very long time. Hopefully they really wanted to make it work or they had some other reason, because even if we would have cared, staying in a bad relationship is probably worse than a divorce. Divorces are clean, clear cut lines, an easy way to sever the threads that haplessly strung a family together. What we went through was murky, unstable, and confusing. So for whatever reason, maybe the fact that we were both independant and they had both just retired, they decided to go their seperate ways. Which is where we stand today. I am still adjusting to their new lives and the new people they seem to be. My mom just joined a new gym and she told me about the guys that perked up in their seats when she walked by. It was kind of disturbing, especially in the early days when the dates first started happening. To grow up with a seemingly asexual mom, never seeing affection towards guys or never having dealt with suitors, it was a difficult period of adjustment. But hey we are both adults and whatever makes her happy right? I always wonder what it would have been like if the first divorce had happened and I had actually been living in the same house with her, while she met these guys for dates. I pictured angry teenage years, sabotaging potential suitors and defending her against these predators. The guys would have to appease me to be accepted by her. But the timing of the real divorce created a completley different atmosphere and habitat for these dating activities. Potentials would not have to figure me or my sister into the picture, I had no teenage angst left over and I figured myself to be a resonable adult...... gonna cut from work to be continued, if i am still feeling it