The Split

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I remember one of the happiest days of my life. On this day it was not for any reason. I was in college. I was on my way to a degree. I had a girl I loved more than anything and friendships that would last an eternity. It felt like everything was going to last forever as I was driving home to visit my parents.

Everything was perfect.

I got home and my parents were in our dining room together. I saw my mom and just squeezed her with the most generous hug I had ever given. She said to me “You never hug me that way.” I just could not help it. I was happy.

“We need to have a talk with you.” She told me.

Me, my mom, and my dad all sat together. My mom spoke and told me “Your dad and I are getting a divorce.” My mind become a blur.

It was devastation.

They went on and assured me I would still be loved and supported, and as much as I tried to understand and listen, something else within me was happening.

I was quiet and absorbed what they said. Then I stood up to go behind our counter and started to cry. I broke down even further with no control. This crushed the thing that kept me strong. The bond between my parents. It hinged certainty on all the things I had going on in my life.

I went to the bathroom, cleared my mind, and forced myself to stop crying. I let myself be devastated for less than 1 minute.

“It’s time to be a man.” I had thought. I was 22 years old and no longer a kid. Too old to no be able to understand.

I shoved it down and pretended it had not gotten to me. I had to be strong. For what? For them I had thought. It wasn’t about me anymore. It was about them and supporting what they needed.

That’s what a man was supposed to do. Or so I was raised.

I called my girlfriend at the time and told her what had happened. Not that I had cried and was hurting, but only my parents had told me about getting a divorce. She thought I was kidding because I wasn’t showing any emotional response about it. Like it didn’t affect me. Like it was normal.

It took less than 60 seconds to bury it. To do what I thought was best.

From that point forward I began to toss a lot of things away. Not all at once, but slowly. That way people wouldn’t recognize it. Not even myself. I attended my college classes less and less, and arguments with my girlfriend became way more frequent. I became bitterly ugly towards the person I loved most in my life at the time. Later on, I’d break up with her over a phone call and pretty much close her off from then on.

After that I quit wrestling for the team I was on. I didn’t think I was leaving much. There was no scholarship. No incentive. Nobody questioned it. Although, that is where the foundation for all of my friendships came from.

I eventually flunked out of school. I just stopped going and caring.

Do I now blame my parents for what they were going through? Not at all. I can grasp the challenges of our culture and hurdles a married couple go through. What I see now as a “culprit” is doing what I think a man should do.

Hide your pain. Don’t show your pain. Pretend everything is okay. Suck it up.

All of that took less than a minute.

How do I feel about that now? There was a lot of work to do. Especially coming into the recognition of how much I neglected myself. Nowadays my parents made it through and are still together. It could not have been easy for them. But what I did in order to protect myself was the harm. It’s not a matter of anyone’s fault, but what I see is how I responded with what I knew best at the time. Which wasn’t, well, best.

What I think is best now (and so scarce in our world) is the ability to be open.

To be allowed to be going through difficult emotion/s without having to put up a defensive guard. I still do that. It’s something I thought was what made me strong and invisible. It only acted to keep me separate from people.

A lot of my emotions have healed and passed, but I find it important to express my story. What this brought me and what I learned from it. A lot of people walk through life without validation of their struggles. It acts to reinforce this pattern of becoming stones to each other.

It’s not your responsibility to fix anything that has gone broken.

It’s cliché, but the truth is that those things were meant to be broken. I believe I wouldn’t be the person I need to be, in the world we live, if I had gotten everything I wanted on my own terms. I needed to be broken. That is the truth.  

I still go through the patterns of hiding my struggles. I stop caring from time to time. I give up in ways people cannot see. I share not because I’ve gotten all the way through it, but more so because I still experience the devastation. To share allows me to do things differently. To stop hiding and blaming anything. To take responsibility and to be honest. That’s more than “being a man”. It’s being human.

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