I suppose it’s time that I wrote about my parents’ divorce. In fact, it is very much overdue, since the divorce was final many months ago. I guess I just didn’t really want to analyze how I felt, because the way I felt about it did not paint a very pretty picture. Imagine if you all the primary and secondary colors as paint and just splashed a bucket of each against a blank white wall. That would be a good definition of how I felt. A random amount of every emotion splattered everywhere in all directions. And sometimes the whole picture was beyond my comprehension. I would look at it helplessly and wonder what in the world was going on. I could maybe focus in one thing, but other than that I felt confused, abandoned, and, most of all, lost. It was if my mom and dad were leading me through a wilderness and about halfway through they went in their separate, opposite directions, leaving me in the middle, struggling to decide what to do, whether to chase after my dad and confront him or to go to my mother’s side and try to comfort her. Or find my own path and let my parents try to find me somewhere in the middle between themselves. I keep going back to the day my dad moved out, the day of New Year’s Eve, and holding my mom (who rarely cries) as she cried, and trying to figure out how I felt then. It felt like all the emotions flooded in, that all the walls and levies had fallen through and the waters came every side. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, and only two options at the time: sink or swim. Or at least stay afloat. I felt the warm splash of pity and sorrow for my mom and the pain that she was dealing with. And then searing wave of rage and anger came and left me bitter at my dad. Finally, before all the other seas of emotions hit, the cold slap of a reality tsunami washed the hope from my heart and replaced it with the suffocating residue of despair. What direction would we go? Where would we find a safe haven from the storms that racked our lives? What strange waters would we float through to get there? Eventually, the storm subsided to a constant drizzle, but we still wandered.
Flash forward almost a year, and the rage remains. That doesn’t surprise me. Rage is the emotion that only takes a spark and a small amount of fuel, and before you know it, that little flicker of a flame turns into a bonfire. And it’s the hardest emotion to control. It doesn’t help that I see all of the mistakes, the unfinished projects that he left behind. The Thunderbird, the Dodge Ram, the Nissan pick up, all the decent vehicles he bought himself compared to the junk heaps he bought me. The promise that he would help pay for my college is left practically unfulfilled. The house, the shop, and all the little things that he said he was going to complete; they just went by the wayside. All the material stuff wouldn’t matter had he been a good father. Heck, I would settle for a decent father, but what I got is a half-hearted father. He expected me to be him, to follow in his footsteps. I will never set a single toe in his path or allow my shadow to even graze anywhere near it. He was my role model in the worst way a father could be. I saw with clear, sober eyes the things he did to such gross measure that the slightest thought of it repulsed me. I remember so many late nights, crouching at the top of the stair, listening to my parents fight, listening until their voices grew hoarse and raucous. I remember looking into his eyes whenever got home from the bar and seeing that strange blank and wild look on his face like we were meeting for the first time. I remember the times that he would say, “I love you,” with that look on his face, and wondering if that was Jim Beam talking or my dad. I knew there was truth in it, like everything he said when he was drunk, but his actions did always agree with what he said. I wish I could that he was a good man and believe it, but I see the things he has done and what he is doing. I remember him telling me that there was no other way. No other way? There were decent ways to go. How about marriage counseling? Or getting a divorce BEFORE you start seeing someone? Or owning up to what you did? Maybe stop pretending that your kids abandoned you when you were the one that alienated them, when it’s the other way around?
I look in the mirror and I see myself, but I also my father’s face when he was my age. My relatives tell me every time I see them that I look so much like him. And I wonder whether I will end up like him, but I remember something. I am his son, and he is my father, but I am not him and I’m not going to end up being “Roger, Jr.” or “Roger, Revisited and Revised.” What I really wonder about is if he knows what he’s missing? What he traded in for momentary happiness? Not just me, but Molly, and Jake and Leslie and their family, little Ryanne Reese, and now Braden Paul, he traded it all for something else. I watch Ryanne run around and I wonder how many times he has seen her. And what about newborn Braden? Has he seen his grandson since he was born? There are so many questions I wish I could ask him, but the truth is I could ask any time I wanted. All I have to do is pick up my phone and call him. I haven’t forgotten his number, but has he forgotten mine? How many months have gone by since we last talked?
But, in truth, I am writing this for one purpose: to let it all out, to let the words and be what they are so they’re “no longer inside of me, threatening the life they belong to.” This is me making peace with myself and my rage, taking away the fuel and watching as the flames slowly burn themselves down, because in the end, the person that is burnt the most by my rage is myself; because to whatever safe shores that I’m swimming to, I won’t reach them holding onto my baggage of rage and anger; because I never can be really happy with this rage still in my life. They will only slow me down and take me under with them. It is time to let the rage sink to the bottom, and swim with a hopeful and light heart. It’s time to let go.