Under the doormat

When you’re eight years old and blindly do whatever your parents ask you to do, you are often subjected to random acts of totally uncomfortable things. For example, when I was little, my mom and I would jump in the car and drive to my Dad’s. She’d then ask me to pick up a check from under my Dad’s front door mat. I wasn’t allowed to knock or make noise, which can be kind of tough when you’re eight. But I did what was asked because that is how I was back then. I got out of the car, tiptoed to my Dad’s door, and looked under the mat. Unfortunately, 99.357 percent of the time the check wasn’t under the mat, which required me to walk to my Mom’s car and tell her, dreading the reaction I’d seen so many times before. Then we’d go back home to call the Dad who didn’t answer the phone. This would go on and so on, and we’d eventually get said check, and I would maybe get a glimpse of Dad.

I want to put a disclaimer here—I am not a sad sack about all of this stuff, and this was healed many moons ago. At this point in my life, I look at it as something that just happened but as something that shouldn’t have, and I want to share it with you for that reason.

Putting our littles in the middle of these big things sucks. It’s a super drag for them that often leaves them with lasting complications in the future. If I were to write a TV show about divorce and kids in the 1970s, it would be very funny in many ways because, sadly, too many people can relate to it. But for everything other than a TV comedy, it would be so much more beneficial if we stopped putting kids in the middle. For everyone’s sake, it’s so much better for parents to take responsibility and recognize that kids are NOT part of the break up and SHOULDN’T be playing an adult role as an errand girl/boy, therapist, or even our friend. Let the kids live a little—chances are their life is a bummer with just the break up to deal with.

So take it from an adult child of a hideous, selfish, ugly divorce. Leave the kids out of it.

Much love,

-Jacqui