My stomach does flips and feels like it’s twisting itself into one big knot.  I try not to focus on exactly what they are saying, just let it be noise and not words that fill me with anger and anxiety, burning a hole in my insides.  Eventually, the noise ceases, but I am left with a knot in my brain and my stomach that proves tricky to untie.

I don’t remember a time when my parents were together.  It’s actually really hard for me to imagine that they once were.  I guess that’s a good thing because I don’t remember any fighting between them, and I’ve already had my fair share of that.  I can only remember bits and pieces of when they first split.  I was too little to understand what was happening, and my parents never actually sat my brother and me down and told us what was going on.  I wasn’t certain that the way my family lived wasn’t “normal,” but in the back of my mind I knew something wasn’t right.  However, that was where it was, the back of my mind.  I didn’t think about it often.  I had other important four-year-old things to be thinking about.

            I can recall one memory of my mom dropping me off at my dad’s precisely.  I remember thinking that my surroundings were close to my dad’s.  I anxiously watched the neighboring houses to my dad’s pass by my window, quickly out of my view.  Just like any five-year-old, I wasn’t a fan of long car rides, and I can’t deny uttering the phrase, “Are we there yet?” countless times, but I wanted that car ride to last forever.  It’s not that I didn’t want to be with my dad.  I didn’t want to leave my mom.  Before we reached our destination, I turned to my mom and begged her to stay with me.  I think she was afraid to say no, or maybe she was more afraid of the question that would follow: why?  So she didn’t say no.  She came in the house and slept with me in my bed.  I was ecstatic.  It was like being told,“It’s okay, bring it in tomorrow” by a teacher after a long night of stressing over not doing your homework.  I slept the best I had ever slept that night, all my worries disintegrated.

Obviously, that feeling couldn’t last forever.  The next day when I woke up, my mom was gone.  My heart sank, but I moved on.  I knew she had gone back to her house, and I had to be at my dad’s house, away from her.  Often I felt guilty for wanting to be with my mom because inherently that meant being away from my dad.  I felt like a rope in a constant tug-of-war.  Except this wasn’t a game, this was my life.  I developed a perpetual anxiousness that was burning me up from the insides, stemming from my guilt.

Another memory I have that is part of how I pieced things together is this one instance when my brother and I were sitting in the back of my mom’s boyfriend’s (I didn’t know that he was her boyfriend then) truck.  I can still smell the smoky aroma, and I can see the dirt in the cracks of the seat.  I can feel the burn in my stomach as I breathed in the truck’s musty air.  When we arrive at our destination, I can still hear my mom’s voice as she speaks to a man, pointing to Donald, the driver of the truck, and describing him as her boyfriend.  I know there are gaps to this story, but the important thing is something clicked that day.  I didn’t know it then, but I think there’s a reason why I still remember that moment.  That was the day I started to understand the differences between my family and others’ families. I asked my mom when she got back in the truck if that was really her boyfriend, and of course, they both denied it. 

I still don’t understand why no one actually told me what was going on.  Yes, it would have been harder on them, but it would have been easier on me.  Although, that’s the same for this whole situation.  Yes, my parents weren’t happy together, and splitting up was the easiest thing for them; but what about me?  The same question started to pass through my mind every day.  Eventually I deemed my mom as selfish.  She was the one who broke up with my dad.  She was the one who had a boyfriend, who I also began to resent, or to be blunt, hate.  And did she ever once stop and think about me?  I’m the one who has to live my whole life different from my friends.  I’m the one who has to listen to her boyfriend and her fight.  And most importantly, I’m the one who has to live with all this guilt.

Subconsciously, my parents were asking me to choose a side.  My dad definitely took a long time to cope with his anger after they seperated.  He used to get so angry over little things, and like always, I was at the receiving end. I didn’t know why he used to get so angry, but I knew that it made me queasy.  I couldn’t handle any more guilt.  I didn’t know who to turn to because my dad was already angry with my mom, and I didn’t want my mom to be angry with my dad.  So for a long time, I didn’t tell anyone.  The guilt consumed me.  I was fatigued of being stuck in the middle. 

Every time my dad blew up at me like that, he would apologize profusely.  He definitely felt remorseful, so I didn’t want to tell him to stop because I knew that he wanted to.  I realized that didn’t matter, though.  He kept making me feel this way, and I couldn’t take it anymore.  I had to say something next time.  I really tried to be brave, but I was nervous.  I had to force the words out of my mouth, but I did.  I told him to stop.  I channelled my anxiety into anger, and he listened, but after that my anger took over.  I was angry with my mom, my dad, my mom’s boyfriend, basically my life. 

What I found out about being angry is that it makes your whole life miserable.  It’s like clinging to a cliff, and if you let go, you’ll be happier, but you’ll feel like you somehow gave up, and I wasn’t a quitter.  I held on for so long.  Every time I tried to let myself fall, my mom and her boyfriend would fight, or my dad would yell at me, and there I was again with an even tighter grip.  This was their fault, I kept telling myself. 

Slowly, I let go of my anger.  I think my dad did too for the most part.  My mom and her boyfriend got better.  As I grew up, I realized that I wanted my parents to be happy, and that it was possible for me to be happy too, if I let myself.  From this experience, I learned that only I have the power to feel something.  I’m the only one who can make myself feel happy, sad, or angry. I can’t blame other people for my unhappiness.  I use this in all aspects of my life, and every time I catch myself clinging to that cliff, I let myself fall because I know there is comfort at the bottom.

-Casey Van Nostrand