Mom, Dad, Please Divorce.
-Signed, Your Child
If I hear someone say “I cant divorce, because of the kids” one more time I might scream. While in rare cases, parents have somehow kept their fighting to themselves, most of the time, trust me, kids know, and suffer for it.
Domestic Violence takes many forms: chronic arguing and yelling, controlling behaviors, intimidation, threats of suicide or murder, threats involving weapons, and serious injuries. It can be emotional, physical, verbal or sexual. Or multiple things.
According to Psychology Today, “Compared with other kids, those who have witnessed DV experience far greater incidence of insomnia, bed wetting, verbal, motor, and cognitive issues, learning difficulties, self-harm, aggressive and antisocial behaviors, depression and anxiety, as well as, most troubling, adult domestic violence, with boys often becoming offenders, victims, or both, and girls more likely to become victims.”
Some of my earliest memories was of my parents fighting. I’d literally wake up, every day, to them yelling and screaming at each other. Despite my door being closed, I could still hear them. I was already a child with severe depression and anxiety. So this didn’t do me any good.
I asked my mom, when I was older, why she stayed as long as she did, and she told me that she did it for me. I responded with “Uh uh, don’t blame this on me.” Its funny, too, because I remember telling both of them they shouldn’t be together and shouldn’t ever have gotten together at least a few times in my childhood.
Should she have stayed for me, her child? The U.S. Department of Health & Human Services Office On Women’s Health says “Children do best in a safe, stable, loving environment, whether that’s with one parent or two. You may think that your kids won’t be negatively affected by the abuse if they never see it happen. But children can also hear abuse, such as screaming and the sounds of hitting. They can also sense tension and fear. Even if your kids don’t see you being abused, they can be negatively affected by the violence they know is happening.”
I grew up at the intersection of a few things: I had a serious medical condition, I had undiagnosed mental illnesses, I was a Jehovah’s Witness, and my father was abusive. So my world was really… interesting… to navigate through. There was a lot of stress in our lives that probably contributed to our situation. No excuses, but still reasons.
Being a Jehovah’s Witness definitely contributed to my parents staying married. Divorce was really not an option with them. Abuse specifically wasn’t on the short list of reasons. There were consequences to going against the “laws” of the religion. “Worldly” marriage counseling was definitely out of the question. If you had problems you took it to the Elders, the group of men who were the respected leaders of the Kingdom Hall (Church).
Their fighting was a daily constant for me. In the morning before school. After school when they got home from work. In the evening when they were fighting about what was for dinner because my dad was picky as hell and my mom was sick to death of it. At night when they would fight and my dad would literally kick my mom out of bed and she’d sleep with me the rest of the night. I was put in the position of trying to manage their emotions at that point. I was a child, not a therapist, and I shouldn’t have been put in that position.
There were many times I had to step in and try to deescalate the situation. Who does that? Who puts their children in the position of being the mediator? I remember one incident, where they literally went on a high speed chase through our neighborhood. I watched them go around the block a bunch of times; also saw my dad try to run my mom off the road. I stopped watching and went around the house locking and basically blocking off every entry to the house so that they wouldn’t be able to get in without me letting them. It worked. When they finally stopped and came home they had the gall to be mad at me for locking them out; they tried to gaslight me saying that what happened was no big deal. Why was I making such a big deal about it they asked. I told them, through the screened in window, that is they wanted to come back inside they had to stop this craziness. Of course they agreed, barely. I had to let them in. The craziness did not, obviously, stop there though.
Another incident, which also shows how brainwashed I was in the religion, was when they got into another fight and my dad started strangling my mom, lifting her off the ground against our pantry doors. I was in the kitchen. Right there. I screamed at him and grabbed the phone. I told him I was calling an Elder we knew well. He finally put her down. I told the Elder what happened and gave the phone to my father. We ended up going to the Elders home so they could have a counseling session. I have no idea what was said, but it made things better for a few days. That’s it.
This is all just to say, children know. They hear you. They see you. They may even model their future behavior on your dysfunctional relationship, and get into their own dysfunctional or abusive relationships. Its better for children to have two healthy, happy adults taking care of them separately, then two adults creating a hostile home environment together.
