My parents have decided to wage wars against each other, again. Despite being divorced for close to 20 years, they have to yet again, use me like a pawn and put me in the middle and I’m so over it. I’m 24 weeks pregnant and I have to deal with their issues, AGAIN.
Basically my mom asked my dad for help with my baby shower, and he threw a big thing because he hates my mom and refused to be involved. My mom then decided if he wants to treat her like that after all the pain that she bared for him that she refuses to be at my wedding if he is there, and he’d already made my wedding into a thing because of the “I wont talk to your mom bs”. My parents act like children when it comes to each other and it frustrates me to no end.
I’m a girl, and like most girls, I’ve dreamed of a wedding for a long, long time. So much so that when my fiance, my wonderful, perfect, everything I ever wanted in a fiance proposed I pretty much had it all planned out, right down to the colors. My fiance breaks his back to make me happy and give me everything I’ve dreamed of (hence the fact that I’m pregnant when I was told that wasn’t going to happen).
When I dreamed of getting married, I always imagined that my mom would be in this room full of windows and she would fasten the loops around the satin buttons going down the back of my dress, and she’d cry when I was all ready to walk down the aisle because I’d be so beautiful. And then I imagined that she’d find her seat right at the front, and my dad would walk me down the aisle and give me away to my soon to be husband. They would sit together, and they would cry because I’m their only daughter and I’m getting married.
And I imagined that at the reception, I would do a dance with my father, while my husband would dance with my mom, and then we would switch off and he would dance with his mom, and I with his father. My parents would both give speeches. They would be involved in this wedding.
And by some miracle, after a lifetime of thinking there wasn’t anyone out there for me, I found my perfect man. And while plenty of people have so unkindly given me their not asked for opinions on the subject, HE is perfect, and I have no doubt that he was the man I was made to marry. No man has ever put a woman first more than this man does. He does everything in his power to give me everything I’ve ever dreamed of.
And because of that, he has forced me to not cave into my hopes of eloping and avoiding this drama and said we are having a wedding no matter what. And while I think that is heroic, it also is the source of major anxiety and nightmares about our wedding to be. At this point I don’t even want to think about us getting married because the only way I can handle this without choosing sides is to say neither of them can come and I won’t do that. And so I have to pick a side, and I have to pick which parent means more, and which relationship means more, and which dreams I’m willing to give up on more. And when the baby comes, I’ll have to do the same thing for their birthday party, every single year.
And so when my fiance proposed I was overjoyed because I knew one day, we would get married and it would be the best day of my life. And now? Now I’m sad when the thought even crosses my mind because my parents will not both be there and there isn’t anything I can do to fix it because they both just put me in the middle of their 20 year old hatred for each other and its PETTY. They BOTH did wrong in their marriage. They both messed up, I was there, I witnessed it. I remember way more than either of them probably want to. They both cheated. They both lied. They both treated each other poorly for no good reason. My first Valentine’s Day with my fiance, I thought I was going to break at any moment because all I could think about when I looked at the perfect bouquet of flowers my fiance had delivered to my work was the time my father smashed a crystal vase full of flowers and jumped up and down on them on Valentine’s Day. So he can claim she was SO horrible, but HE IS NOT VICTIM> And then there’s my mom, who was a control freak admittedly, and i’m a lot like that. And so while she can claim that he’s been so horrible, SO HAS SHE. But they both refuse to see what THEY did, and only what THE OTHER did. It’s been 20 years, I’m an adult, and for god sakes I want the special days of my life to be magical, not riddled with pain because my parents are unwilling to love me enough. And with this little life growing inside of me, I don’t care what their father does to me, I WILL NEVER do this to them.
And so this weekend, I snapped at my fiance and said “either you let us elope, or you fix this and get both of my parents to agree that they will both come, and they will be civil or I will never marry you” and I meant it. What kind of person does that? A hormonal and devastated pregnant one does. And honestly all I can say is, I hope that they are proud of themselves for basically destroying some of the best days of my life because they haven’t already done that enough by getting a divorce when I was sick and afraid I was dying, by running away with a family member to have an affair to start that divorce, by dating unkind people that forced them to put their relationships over my wellbeing, by missing my sports events (looking at you dad for giving up my whole life for the women you spent 10+ years with), by refusing to sit together at school events that you both managed to attend. By waging about a million wars and involving me in all of them. My entire life since the divorce has been me in a loyalty contests. And as a step mom, and soon to biological mom, I ashamed of both of their behaviors because it is unnecessary. My fiance, myself and his ex wife make it work every day because CHILDREN don’t ask to be DIVORCED.
