This isn’t your typical Valentine’s Day post. There isn’t going to be pink hearts or sweet tarts here. This is about the truth. And even though it’s scary to write about, telling the truth is healing. Sometimes writing the truth feels like cold plunging. The anticipation is terrifying, but the aftermath is exhilarating.
A few weeks ago, I found a love letter from my father addressed to my mother. He was twenty seven years old at the time of writing it. The same age I am now. Immediately, I began to cry. I did not know this version of my father. He didn’t exist in my mind until I found this letter. From my understanding, my father was always bitter and cold with my mother. They were in their forties with two children already by the time I came into their lives. So of course, things can change. Love between two people can change. But it was the first time I saw my father as capable of this sort of affection — something he’d never showed me or my family very well.
In the letter, he wrote about how much he loved her, and wanted children with her, and their future together. It made me emotional to picture my father sitting at a desk, penning this letter stuffed with so much heartfelt emotion. Over time, it almost just became easier to accept that maybe accessing this part of his heart wasn’t possible, due to trauma or whatever reasons I could come up with. So as you can imagine, having to pivot and change the way I see him, and the demise of their marriage, has been hard. It is not something I ever expected to have to do.
My parents separated when I was eight and then eventually divorced when I was eleven. This was traumatic for me in the sense that the family unit I was accustomed to changed. It was also traumatic for me because not only did I lose my family as I once knew it, I also lost my childhood home. A place I deeply loved. My mom did a good job of masking what wasn’t working between them. Like I said, I came a decade after they’d already had two children. A lot of time had passed and I never saw them happy. By the time I was old enough to understand, I could tell my parents’ relationship was different. They didn't hug or kiss like the other parents I saw, but I was too young to understand why. Their way was simply all I knew.
Eventually my mom and I moved to the suburbs after living in the country for my whole life. Of course, through my lens, this was really difficult. I can only imagine how hard and heavy the decision to finally leave was for my mother.
My parents were married for nearly thirty years before separating. It took guts for my mom to call it quits. There was infidelity and things I probably still don’t even know. The truth might slowly be revealed or maybe it never will. I don’t need to know everything — I suppose the main point is all that matters. They didn’t work out. And as much as that pains me to say, not everything does. I know that now.
Jacob and I have been married for almost five years this September. Marriage was not something I pictured for myself as a little girl. I just had my sights set on other things. Probably because my idea of marriage was confusing. The two people modeling it the most for me weren’t doing a very good job of it. However, I wanted to be different from them. I fell in love and I wanted it to truly stick. I wanted to prove the statistics wrong. And I still do.