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Like Father Like Daughter

“Your mother and I are getting divorced.”

I was in shock. I couldn’t believe that my family-the ‘perfect’ four children, two parents family-had been ripped apart by these simple words.

The teachers at my small private school had always described my family as “The Brady Bunch.” We seemed perfectly happy and were always together. Every morning we all arrived at our school and hopped out of the family van, our blonde hair bobbing as we skipped into the school. Our parents were there for every sports game we played, every play we starred in, and every academic thing we did.

That was all about to change. Sixteen years of living a perfect family life and now it was over. My parents left us with empty promises of, “We will still be a family,” and “Nothing will ever change.” It was all a lie.

I stormed up to my bedroom and slammed the door. The wind from the motion blew the pictures off of my wall: pictures of my family smiling at the beach, playing in the back yard, and posing in front of our lit up Christmas tree. I picked them up, ripped the rest of them off of the wall, and shoved them into a KSwiss shoe box and threw it into my closet. I couldn’t think about the fun our family used to have.

I grabbed my composition book and started angrily scribbling away. I wrote about how I hated my parents, how selfish they were being, and wondering what the hell was I going to do now that I was a divorced kid. After writing out my angry feelings, I flipped through the rest of my journal. It was full of proclamations of my love for this boy and that boy, hatred for my teachers, and gossip about my best friends. I hated how shallow I sounded. Up until this divorce nothing bad had happened to me, but I lived my life like a traumatized teenager. In a fit of rage I grabbed every notebook and journal in my room and shoved it into my pink plastic butterfly trash can. I grabbed the trash can and brought the entire thing to the dumpster and left it there, a gift for the garbage men the next morning.

Looking back, I wish that I had never thrown away those journals. While they were immature and shallow and by no means wonderful pieces of writing, they were a piece of me, and my writing. There are times when I wish I could go to my closet and grab my journal box and flip back to the entries about my first crush, first kiss, and even fights with friends. But I couldn’t now. Now I keep everything I write; stupid little limericks scribbled on syllabi, quick rants about my roommates, and long entries about an inspirational thing I experienced during my day.

A few months after the announcement of the diorce Tarin, my sister, and I were driving home in the family van. She was digging in the glove compartment for some change so that we could go to Sonic and get slushes. Instead she found a small blue notebook, filled with my dad’s handwriting. She had found his journal!

I pulled over and parked behind a red Volkswagen and grabbed it from her. She stared at me, in disgust that I was going to betray my dad’s trust and read his journal. I didn’t care. I wanted to know how he felt about the entire divorce situation. At least I thought I did.

I was skimming through the thin, slanted, black words until I came across something that made me sick. There, in the same handwriting that had written sick notes, signed permission slips, birthday cards, and scribbled notes on lunch bags, was written five words I will never forget reading. “My wife cheated on me.”

I literally almost vomited. I couldn’t even drive home. How could my dad keep something like this from us, from his own children? Needless to say, all the anger I had about the divorce was immediately transferred to my mother. I felt like she had not only cheated on my dad, but she had cheated on the family. The only person whom she had thought about when having an affair was herself. I didn’t know what to do about the entire situation. But, I was left with thinking, “How could my dad hide something like this?” How could something this big remain hidden for so long?

The answer was clearly in front of me. He could hide it so well because he wrote about it. He got it out of him by writing it all down. He wrote about it in a place where he expected it was going to remain private forever. He could freely write what he thought and felt and no one would see it. Strangely, I was inspired by this event to restart my writing hobby.

Reading that my mother wasn’t the woman I had grown up admiring was not the thing that I thought would trigger my happiness. But it was. Well not at first. At first, I was angry. I wrote about my anger daily, and was able to hide it from my family, who assumed that I was still just a little mixed up from the divorce. They didn’t know the half of how I really felt.

Being a sixteen year old girl was traumatic and confusing enough. Adding a divorce, a cheating mother, and a broken family to that could definitely break a girl down. I was angry. I was hurt. I started writing it all out. My school notebooks were full of my feelings rather than notes about world wars or isosceles triangles. I started being able to hide everything from everyone with the help of a pen.

This way of writing had both its ups and its downs. I was becoming a writer that much was obvious. I wrote daily and my writing was improving. I no longer was stopped by writers block, or the fear of saying what I wanted to say. Words seemed to just leave the pen and appear on the page without me even thinking. I realized that this was not publishable writing, or even something that was interesting enough for someone else to read, but they were writings that were only a few steps away from being to the point that others could enjoy it.

The down side didn’t have to do with my writing at all. It was more about myself. I thought I was getting rid of the bad feelings when I was writing it out, but that wasn’t the case. Instead I learned that it was unhealthy to not be able to actually get feed back on my feelings and actions. It was entirely too easy for me to pretend that things weren’t really happening if I could write about them

It was writing that helped me to escape from the fights with my best friends. It helped me to vent about break-ups. However, it also helped me hide one of the most disturbing things that I ever experienced. Something that I should probably not have hidden.

Every junior in high school experiences pressure. Pressure to impress family, teachers, and friends. When my parents added a divorce to the things that I had to worry about I cracked. I don’t blame what I went through on my parents divorce, but with all the commotion of that I was able to hide it easier.

Half-way through my junior year I crumbled from everything that I had to deal with. I became bulimic. It might have been a cry for attention; it might have been me just finally giving in to the pressures of being thin and beautiful. Regardless of why it happened, it did. I didn’t tell anyone what I was going through. People could tell that I was bothered by something and that I was upset, but all they knew was that I was going through my parents divorce. Because I could write about how I felt I never had to tell anyone.

Eventually people realized that something else was going on. I was constantly tired, rapidly losing weight, and even passed out at tennis practice. Still no one knew about my disorder. Our principal just recommended I go talk to a therapist about my feelings. Angry about the audacity of my principal thinking I needed professional help, I turned to my notebooks. I read what I had been feeling through the past few months and was disgusted. I knew that what I was doing-binging and purging-was wrong, but I kept doing it.

I hid behind my writing and used my writing to hide my feelings. I had taken that from my dad. I thought that he was able to be as happy as he appeared because he wrote out his feelings. So I did the same thing, I realized that writing couldn’t make you happy by hiding your feelings. After my experience with an eating disorder I stopped using my writing as therapy. I still use writing to express how I feel, but my pieces are a lot less full of emotions. I have progressed from writing only from my heart and feelings and now write more about my ideas and thoughts.

Writing can be an escape. But I would not recommend using writing as therapy. It feels good to get your thoughts out, but realize that when you write you are just venting. You are not actually fixing anything.