Written by Billie Bhatia
Divorce at any age isn’t easy to navigate. But what happens when your parents split up as an adult? Stylist columnist Billie Bhatia weighs in on the breaking up of a family unit.
My parents have just told me and my brother that they’re getting divorced. We don’t live at home any more, so it probably shouldn’t be affecting me as much as it is, but I’m so upset. I never imagined this could happen. I love going home for Christmas and we still take holidays together – I feel so sad this will never happen again.
So much of my identity is wrapped up in being part of a family unit. Before I am anything else – friend, journalist, purveyor of expensive trainers – I am Billie the daughter and Billie the sister. So I understand why the idea of your unit breaking up is affecting you so much.
I post a lot about my family on Instagram. The picture I’ve painted is a very narrow lens on reality. (Because that’s how social media works, right?) To the outside world that picture is a family full of love and laughter. But rest assured that is not the full landscape. We have ups and downs, and I’ve been privy to enough conflicts that could well have ended in divorce.
When I was younger, I would sit on the stairs to eavesdrop on my parents’ arguments and bawl my eyes out to my sister, crying that I couldn’t possibly cope if Mum and Dad split up. The part that crushed my heart the most was the thought we might not be a family unit any more. It was always Bhatias vs the world, and I refused to accept any other reality. What would we do at Christmas? Who would we live with? How would Dad survive when he doesn’t know how to do anything?
I was horrified by stories of friends traipsing up and down the M1 on Christmas Day to see both their parents. It sounded so miserable I couldn’t compute that the reason for this was because the parents were miserable. Why didn’t parents just stick it out? Wasn’t it more hassle to get divorced and work out the logistics than stick together even if it wasn’t working?
In my early 20s, when I was still living at home and divorce was threatened again, my heart sank but the tears stopped flowing. I had got to the point where I understood divorce. While we might know them best as Mum and Dad, parents are individuals. Ones who sometimes reach the end of their road together. With age and some life experience, I realised that the people who raised us were entitled to their own happiness too – and often that isn’t with the person they, and you, thought it would be.
That isn’t to say that divorce isn’t still upsetting. But rather to say, if I were in your shoes, I would feel the same – devastated, but with an element of understanding. There’s always been another idea that terrifies me as much as my family unit breaking down, and that’s change. And I think that’s what’s plaguing you more now.
Your world has been cracked in two, with nothing ahead but change. But that won’t always be the case. I can’t pretend to know why your parents decided to divorce or whether it’s amicable, but I have faith in the knowledge that, in time, this change won’t feel so overwhelmingly large. Christmas won’t be the same, but it could even be better – a celebration where your parents have found their own contentment, with you still at the centre of that.
One of the most heart-breaking lessons to learn is that parents aren’t perfect. I grew up idolising these two flawed human beings as infallible people who always knew right from wrong. But of course, no one is perfect. There is a switch that flicks when you finally recognise that parents are human, not heroes – people who fuck up as much as you do – and once you see it, you can’t go back. It’s devastating. And you are entitled to feel as sad as you do about your parents’ divorce. But you can also choose to move forward from it. To support your parents as they have supported you and embrace the change, for the bad and the good.
Ask Billie anything on Instagram @stylistmagazine
Images: Getty
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