Growing Up in a Bitter Divorce: How It Shaped My Adult Life

You know this post, right? Veronica Lee commented on it: "Your story shows how deeply childhood roles echo into adulthood."

I think she's right…

As a kid, I always longed to finally be "grown up." By that I more or less meant "of legal age": no longer dependent on others (my parents), but free to make my own decisions. I always figured my problems would be over by then, that I could leave everything behind me and finally start my real life.

Of course, that turned out to be a big letdown! By the time I was a teenager, I already understood that things at home weren't exactly "normal." But you know, this was the '80s, and back then it was actually fashionable, even progressive, not to be too conventional in that respect. Plenty of families were splitting up, and kids grew up with one parent or, like me, got shuttled back and forth between the two. I believe that was generally considered a "good solution" at the time. And maybe in some cases it was; I don't know. In any case, people said it was better for children than growing up between two parents who were constantly fighting.

That's never how I experienced it. Because now that they were apart, my parents were still fighting. They were in what you'd call a bitter divorce, and they fought it out through me.

When I was at my mother's, I had to sit through endless tirades about how terrible my father was.

And when I was at my father's, I had to answer for my mother's behavior, not only to him but also to his girlfriend, and then to the two of them together, as one united front.

As a child, I didn't have the presence of mind to say: if you want to know how my mother makes her decisions, ask her. It never occurred to me to say I couldn't speak for my mother. Instead, I felt compelled to explain her behavior and, if need be, defend it too. Which in turn brought down the wrath of my father and his girlfriend on me.

This is just to give you a bit of a picture. Because you can probably imagine this wasn't everything, that there was a lot more going on. The reason I'm telling you this is to expand on that comment from Veronica Lee.

As a child, I had hoped that once I was grown up, I'd finally get to start my real life. That real life never came.

Because what I didn't realize back then is that life isn't made up of finished chapters. Mine certainly isn't! Or, well, you could see it as a series of chapters, but they were never truly closed, in the sense that I've never managed to leave everything that came before behind me. Each chapter is always a consequence of the one before it, or at the very least builds on it.

And what my parents completely forgot in all their fighting was to raise me. I got no guidance whatsoever, even though guidance is exactly what a child needs. That's one of the things I've struggled with the most in my adult life.

Let me give a small example. I once worked at an office where everyone gathered for a coffee break at 10:30 a.m., a tradition in many Dutch companies and organizations. The colleagues sit together around a big table, and there's often a cookie tin in the middle. When I took my third cookie to dunk in my coffee, I suddenly noticed the appalled looks on my coworkers' faces. What had apparently never sunk in for me was the unwritten social rule that everyone takes only one cookie from the tin. In the Netherlands, taking more than one is often seen as greedy, inconsiderate, and rude.

Now you might say, "Such a petty little incident. That's hardly something to lose sleep over, is it?" But this is just one example of one little incident, and of course there were a great many more like it. Those little incidents pile up and harden into a "reputation." What I always found the worst was that people often assumed I had bad intentions, when I wasn't aware of doing anything wrong. It was pure ignorance. So yes, I did lose sleep over it, many times.

Because people don't just think you're "bad," they think you're "weird." You get shut out socially. When there are parties, you're not invited. That much I can live with. (In fact, these days I'm relieved when I'm not invited; you can read about that here.)

But what's so painful, and above all so stressful, is the bullying. You can watch it take shape. It begins with a small, venomous or belittling remark. If you don't come back right away with the right response, something light and quick-witted that says you're not taking it personally, then you're the punching bag. It escalates, and before you know it, you're dragging yourself to work every day with a knot in your stomach, wondering what you'll have thrown at you today.

When I think back on those times, I wonder where I even found the strength to get up every morning and walk myself to the slaughter. I was a single mother myself by then, and my daughter was already a young teenager. I simply had to put food on the table.

I was 37. Even at that age, I still hadn't figured out a lot of those unwritten social rules. And of course it didn't stop at little things like taking one cookie too many. There were also much bigger things that went completely off the rails because of the lack of parental guidance in my youth, but those are for another time.

I'd like to close this post with Johnny Hallyday: "Pour moi, la vie va commencer" (loosely translated: "For me, life is finally about to begin”).

If this resonates with you, if you recognize something of yourself in it, then, given how vulnerable the subject is, I won't casually ask you to tell me about it in a comment. But if you'd like to share something yourself, you're of course more than welcome to.

Photo: Immo Wegmann

PS By the way, did you know I publish a mini-magazine on Substack every Saturday? It's free to read, and if you like, you can take a look at an issue here.