The Diary of Queen Mothy |
The Night that Changed Me written @ 7:41 PM on January 28, 2002 My father thinks I hate him, and I don't know why. I have theories, and most of them just have to do with the simple fact that I'm growing up. I think the problems in my relationship with him happened a year and a half ago(hard to believe it was that long and not yesterday...) It was about a week after my 16th birthday in the spring, Sunday night. My parents had gone out for a while, leaving my brother and I home alone to tend to our own affairs. I finished my homework and took a shower. When I finished taking a shower and was dressing, my brother knocked on the door and said in a voice that was unlike him, "Sam, go downstairs and go see Mom. She's crying." I stopped for a moment and thought about it. I had this nagging feeling in the back of my head that something ungodly had happened between her and Dad, but my innocence directed me to consider otherwise. I finished dressing and with a sinking heart I descended the stairs where I saw my mother, confused and distraught, standing in the kitchen crying and trying to be strong at the same time. "Mom. What's the matter?" Just by looking at me, she broke down. "Nothing, Sam. It's just that your father and I are having marital problems." She couldn't have disguised the truth anymore. In the span of a moment, her pain and anguish washed into my heart. An invisible hand popped the bubble that protected my innocence with a sharp pin: my parents were not, and had never been, perfect people. In that moment, I decided I was the one who had to stay strong, and yet the feeling of shock, dismay, and an old nightmare that had suddenly come real had shook my faith by the foundations. I tried not to cry, to act as a pillar of strength for my mother as I embraced her-- and in doing so embraced the truth-- but I broke down and let the last bit of child in me leave my body and soul in the form of tears. Divorce was a concept that was suddenly real. And for me, who had always loved her parents and respected them for all the things that I have ever done and sacrificed for me, it was the most traumatic moment of my life. My dad came home not too long after my mother, and when he saw my mother and I crying together, he broke down and sobbed, pleading, "Please don't tell me you told them. Please don't tell me you told them. I didn't want them to know!" Well, my brother and I knew, and we both lost something that night. The Reno household from that moment on was a tumult of emotion that had reared its ugly head with such a force as to make the angels in Heaven weep. Still, I tried to be strong. Even though I was crying, I tried to be logical and not emotional. "How did this happen? Why didn't you tell me sooner? How? Why? When did this suddenly fall apart?!" I thought by thinking through the stages of the problem that I could find an answer and a way to correct it. But there was no controlling any of our emotions. My dad was terrified that I would learn to hate him, that I would lose all trust in him, that he would lose us as children." It's hard to explain what went on that night without going into a mad typing fit as I sit here and try to relay all that I felt, observed, and said that night that ultimately changed me in a way. Things that stand out in my mind are seeing my parents cry together, hearing my mother's fitful sobs muffled behind walls. I stayed up for a long time after we had retired to our rooms in shame and grief. I was thinking through my life, thinking through the newest hurdle my family had to overcome, and praying to God. I said to God, "You have given me everything I could ever hope for and more. I am a very lucky girl. In fact, I have been raised in such a way that a divorce would be the worst thing to happen to me. And because of this, I should not be crying. I should stay strong. I should reason with myself that I am very lucky and that I should not be crying because people my age have gone through much worse situations and problems than I. To pray to You and ask to prevent this from happening seems selfish to me. Still, the truth hurts." What followed after this night was a very hard seven or eight months when my family's fate was not certain. It was full of tears behind closed doors, anger that I channeled through an essay I wrote but never showed to my father, acceptance that my parents were not perfect people and were not made of iron, hating to stay at home, avoiding certain subjects of conversation to avoid awkwardness, embarrassment when we sat down to watch a movie and was subjected to the scenes of happily married husbands and wives and children who were born with smiles. A year and half after this, my parents are still together, but God knows what will happen after my brother and I go to college. A year and a half after this, I've had some growing up to do, and Jonathan has never voiced his thoughts on anything. A year and a half after this, it's taken some time to restore faith and come to terms with myself and others. Katharine doesn't know how much I envy her. And yet, a year and a half after this, I've had to change my views about my parents. Since that night, I don't look at them quite the same way. My father especially. I've learned to acknowledge that he works a lot; he always has. Also we share very little in common, unless I've won an award in art or have a major role in a play, whereas he's the assistant coach of my brother's hockey team and throws a hissy fit every time the Steelers lose. He's become a negative person and rather depressed in mind, and I like to see infinite possibilities and live for the sole joy of living everyday. I have come to learn that I share very little in common with my father. Is there any shame or wrong in this? I love him all the same; that has not changed. The only thing that has changed is the way I think about him as a person. He would like a relationship like the father and daughter from "Father of the Bride." He wants me to talk to him more often. He thinks I only talk to him if I want money, which can't be any further from the truth. I have no need of his money. He wonders why I don't kiss him goodnight anymore. He wonders why I challenge his authority on almost a regular basis (it's because he's misinterpreting things and his negativity is affecting his judgment! I swear it!), and some of the things he does and says outrages me. There is definitely psychological depression in him, and he denies it vehemently. Or used to. Now no one says anything to him about it anymore. He keeps talking about the days when I used to have a meek little girl's voice and would play doctor with him. And he's begun denying that I was ever Daddy's Little Girl. We argue more, from issues as to what's going on my life to national events. And these things couldn't hurt me or scar me more deeply than if someone had shoved an iron stake into my heart. My views of him have changed, but my love hasn't. And yet he thinks I hate him. My wounds from that night still have not healed. I try my best to be the person I used to be before that horrible night, and it's impossible! I'm too deep in change. I am almost a true adult. All I need now is to turn eighteen and be able to vote to make me legal. I don't know what to do. All I would love to do more than anything is to sit down and talk with him in private and say everything that has been on my mind and heart. But I don't have the courage. And I can never get out what I truly want to say because I begin to cry uncontrollably. I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do. I don't know how to change.
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