Why is it that when people divorce someone always comes out looking like a douchebag?
My parents are divorced. It’s a fairly new development that started when I was 22-years-old. The divorce was finalized when I was 23, so all this pretty much happened in the past four to five years (And for those of you doing the math that means that at the time of this post I am 27-years-old which I am well aware of means I am getting old).
My mother may not be an angel 100% of the time – see “The Mystery of the Disappearing Toaster” – but we all have our moments. And she’s been there for her kids, never stopped calling, texting, or god forbid, stopped sending them forwards!
That last year I was in college wasn’t easy for me. My friends all know exactly how hard it was on me. My dad threatened to stop paying for my college (Yes, we’re a spoiled middle class family and I did get college paid for), he turned my cell phone off, told me it wasn’t his problem if my car died in the middle of BFE, went to Kevin’s high school soccer games and stood off from the crowd talking to his girlfriend on his cell phone before leaving at halftime, got mad at my sister for defending my brother and then at me for defending my brother and sister.
And then a couple of year passed and I simply stopped hating my dad. Now mind you, I didn’t love him, I just simply stopped feeling altogether. It was much better to not feel anything than to carry around this ball of ugly negative feelings. I also found out that all that hate that I had for him, it was yet another way he was affecting my life, that he was controlling me. It was true that in the previous years, he had been a good father, we had fun together as a family and a ton of good memories to supplement that time we had, but that was all over now. He was gone. It was as if our lives had turned into a bad sci-fi movie and some alien had inhabited my father’s body. Or had he become a life-sucking zombie. Either way, you have to eventually learn to let go of that person and move on.
And I had.
Then a year passed and he called for reconcile.
He came at me honestly and I relented, slowly lowering my defenses – bringing the pit bulls back from the electrically charged walls (of the Jurassic Park caliber), allowing my archers to put down their arrows, and telling the sharpshooters to come down for a drink as I lowered the drawbridge and opened the heavily barred door.
And slowly I began to know my father again and think that maybe his days of a douchebag were over.
BOY WAS I WRONG!
I’m not going to go into the specifics, but let me tell you this – he called my mother and lied to her, then got pissed at me because I was pissed at him for making shit up about me.
Why did he lie about me?
Andrea, MY SISTER, had pissed him off. Things were said that she wasn’t entirely happy about, so she told him she wasn’t comfortable with his girlfriend (who just so happens to be the entire reason my parents are no longer married; i.e. she’s responsible for his douchebageryness) and that pissed him off and caused him to lie about me.
This happened on January 17, 2009 which also happened to be the night of my father’s surprise birthday party for turning 50. He didn’t speak to us and I have not had a phone call or text from him since (He has since resumed communiqué with the brother and sister, but it is limited to say the least).
Another funny thing, during his escape from the Land of Douche Bag, he used to send 1 to 5 different forwards every other day. In honor of Michael Scott, we dubbed my dad The King of Forwards.
Anyway, I didn’t realize it, but a couple of weeks had gone by and I got a forward from my grandmother. Without even thinking about it, my eyes scanned the return receipt and I saw that it was sent to her from my father who had sent it to her, his girlfriend’s parents, and my brother.
Yes.
Not only was I caught off from texts or phone calls, but I was also caught off via email.
Like the Soup Nazi would say – NO FORWARDS FOR YOU!
What else could I do? I laughed! And then proceeded to call all of my friends and see if they could believe the ridiculousness of my father’s grudge (Remember: He’s mad because I’m mad that he lied about me).
Anyway, back to this whole business of one person in the divorce being a douchebag. To say my dad is a douchebag is a whole point of view thing. While 95% of everyone who knows my family may agree with me, I’m well aware of the fact that the other 5% may think I’m the douchebag (These percentages are guesstimates, in actuality it could be higher that I’m the douchebag).
And it’s entirely possible.
I do idolize Maleficent, the wonderfully evil sorceress who tried to kill Princess Aurora AKA Sleeping Beauty with a spell and a spinning wheel (Thanks to meddling Meriwether the death became sleep) and then she turned into a dragon and NEARLY killed Prince Charming (again with the meddling fairies).
It’s sad to see a family member comfortably settle down in the Land of Douche Bag, and it seems to happen to quite a few spouses after a divorce (Once again, the party who becomes a Douche Bag Resident is subject to POV), but it does happen.
Maternally and paternally, my family wasn’t the first or last one to crash and burn. Counting my mom, dad and their sibs, my family is 3 for 3 on that front. Which means that 3 people have become douche bags (and if they already had residences there, they became an even bigger douche bag). In fact, I even had an uncle’s ex that knew I worked at a bank try to tell my dad I was stealing his sensitive financial information.
This was total crap for a couple of reasons. One, I am an intelligent person. And being the intelligent person that I am, I know the bank tracks any information that my computer screen shows me. Two, knowing my dad is a vindictive cunt (sorry, sorry) I refused to cash checks from his company to his employees (this did happen a couple of times) because I know he’d be a complete douche about it. Three, even if I was a complete moron, we have training modules we have to do every year that deal with privacy and the sensitive nature of it, so I would’ve known that printing out his accounts and taking it to my mother’s attorney was illegal.
This same ex-aunt also tried to cuss out my sister because my mom supposedly was to do some favor for her. Cussing out my sister? Why? My sister never agreed to anything for that dried up, nasty bag. And now I’m sure the only thing my sister will agree to do for her is to shit in a bag, light it on fire, place it on her doorstep, ring the bell, and then wait for her to come out.
And that right there is the real tragedy of divorce - the dried-up, old husks people become once the dust has settled. Those that become the “douche bag” seem to be so negative and unhappy with their lives, that only thing they feel they can take any joy in is making everyone else’s life miserable too – even if the person was completely innocent (what else would prompt my sister getting cussed or my father lying about me).
They are both miserable people and have turned completely selfish from it.
Maybe this doesn’t always happen. I’d like to be positive and think that some can escape from the clutches of divorce without a stop off in the Land of Douche Bag, but I haven’t seen it happen yet.
And my immediate family isn’t the only one with Douche Bag-induced problems. Friends married to divorced-spouses also experience pain brought on from these selfish parties, and friends with divorced parents sometimes can’t get along with one parent.
But let’s be optimistic.
And consider this a warning:
If you marry, there’s a 50/50 chance it will fail. If it does in fact fail: DON’T BE A DOUCHE BAG!
PEACE!
No comments:
Post a Comment