And the thread? I just wanted to be seen. Loved. Fought for.
Years passed. My parents divorced their second spouses. They remarried each other
after 20 years. I went through two divorces and bankruptcies of my own. I lost a
child. And somewhere in all of that heartbreak and healing, we began to talk. Not just
surface-level conversations, but real ones. About marriage. About love. About
divorce. About how hard life really is when you’re trying to do the right thing and
don’t even know what that looks like yet.
We started sharing life lessons like peers. Like
humans. And something began to shift.
That’s when the deeper conversations started. The
ones about what happened during my childhood—
about the decisions they made, the battles they
were fighting, and the parts of their stories I never
saw because I was too young or too hurt to
understand. I learned that it wasn’t my dad’s fault
the marriage ended. He was devastated. And rather
than fight, he retreated emotionally. He couldn’t
bear the idea of failing again so he allowed much of
his 2nd wife’s behaviors.
That’s when I saw him—really saw him—for the first
time. Not as the father I had put on a pedestal. Not
as the villain I made him out to be. But as a man. A
human man doing the best he could with what he
had. And when I saw him in that light, my heart
softened.
Then came the moment that cracked everything
open.
We were at the river for a family trip. I had gone out
drinking with friends and came home around 1 a.m.
My mom pulled me aside and said, "Your dad needs
to talk to you."
We sat on the bed together. He was tense. Nervous.
He told me there was something he’d been carrying
for over 30 years. An accusation—something I had
supposedly said as a child. He never brought it up
because my mom had told him not to. But it haunted
him. He carried it in silence.
I was completely shocked. Shocked that someone
said I made that accusation. Shocked that he never
asked me about it. Shocked that he’d been living
with that pain for three decades.
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