Not exactly to do with divorce, however…
One of the most traumatic moments of my life occurred on Thanksgiving Day 2000 when I was 17 years old. The consequences of that moment went on to tear my family apart, and nothing has ever been the same since. It was so bad, that I am almost crying just typing out these words. So I can relate to not feeling merry on the holidays. What to do when people cheerily say, ‘‘So how was your Thanksgiving?’’
How to respond?
‘‘It was an absolute nightmare during which I ached for days and nearly drowned in my own grief. But overall, considering I wasn’t hospitalized or seriously suicidal or anything, I suppose it went better than expected. Thanks for asking.’’ Ha ha, no. We keep these things to ourselves. We post them on anonymous message boards and pretend we’re normal, because we wouldn’t want to appear… ya know… ungrateful.
But I hope it can be some small comfort to you that I am a person who thinks you have no moral obligation for things ever to feel okay, because maybe they won’t ever really be the same.
I can’t offer much support regarding divorce. My mother divorced 4 times and I don’t remember any of them being particularly traumatic. My mother’s divorces were not painful at all… it was her marriages that were painful. I didn’t realize how horribly traumatic divorce can be until I met my husband and witnessed the nightmare his parents put him and his sister through.
My point is, some of us have to work extra hard around the holidays to stay afloat, and I used to believe that I was terribly unique in this regard, but I’m coming to realize that everybody secretly hates the holidays. It’s sort of like getting married… every family issue you ever had just sort of explodes in your face and is magnified times one billion.
So holidays are generally a tug-of-war between my husband and I… him trying to drag me out of the house when I really quite frankly don’t feel like being grateful or doing much other than sitting around the house moping. He always wins, and I usually end up secretly enjoying myself.
I have fought it with every ounce of strength in my being, but I appear to be stuck in this habit, every November, of just completely falling apart.
However, I WILL say that this year’s grieving period, though sudden, was short (3 days, and it tricked me!) and actually kind of healing in a way, and I bounced back faster than I ever have, with minimal losses and rather substantial gains. I’m still nears tears when I allow myself to deeply think about it, but it doesn’t demand all of my effort and energy 24/7. I am amazed to say it, but for the first time since That Day, I am actually looking forward to the holiday-- four day weekend baby!!! It doesn’t feel tied to the past, it’s just here in the present, what it is. Thanksgiving 2007, with my husband, his wacky hilariously dysfunctional family and all the amusing trappings thereof. All that matters is what I’m doing that day, not what I did 7 years ago. I was just a kid then. It’s all dust in the wind.
To try to answer your question a bit more directly, my husband’s parents went through a very painful divorce when he was 19 and his little sister 12, and though he’s perfectly capable of enjoying the holidays with the new arrangements, 5 years later his parents’ drama still manages to partly ruin things. This is probably why this time of year has been consistently been hard – it’s bad enough dealing with your own crazy family, but then to inherit another one? Yeesh.
I don’t know how insane your parents are being about the divorce, but I’ll bet the answer to ‘‘how long til things feel okay again?’’ is roughly equivalent to the answer to the question, ‘‘How badly are your parents handling it, and are they likely to knock it off anytime soon?’’
