Tag: divorce

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Coping with Loved Ones, by Ricky

          Children do not “cope” with loved ones – they “survive” loved ones.  Babies survive being accidentally dropped when they are covered in soapy bath water or are squirming at the wrong time when a parent’s attention is distracted or any number of similar circumstances.  Most parents love (and would never deliberately hurt) their children, but legitimate mishaps do occur.
          Young children cope by using survival instincts, like staying out of sight of a raging parent, if they can.  Some hide under the bed; some escape to a friend’s house or apartment.  Some assume an adult role and make coffee for their hung-over parent.  Others care for younger siblings to the exclusion of their own social needs.  Some turn to illegal drugs and alcohol, while others just run away from home.  Unfortunately, some must do all of the above to one degree or another.
          Once a child’s brain develops increased capacity for reason, logic, and problem-solving, survival skills can grow into rudimentary coping skills.  Skills like thinking ahead to possible consequences for one’s actions (for example, do not do anything that might make mom or dad angry).  Trying to become the perfect child is another example.  Another skill is to keep secrets by not telling your parents anything that would upset them even if you only think some information might upset them and make them angry.  Closely associated with keeping secrets are the twin skills of avoiding telling the whole truth or outright lying.  These two skills can lead to major consequences when discovered by parents.
          One type of survival-mechanism children use is totally involuntary and effective but can leave permanent damage to a child’s physical or emotional development.  I am referring to the case where the situation a child is in, is so terrible that the child’s subconscious intervenes, and mentally the child “goes” somewhere else in their head.  Other situations may not be so terrible, but still cause a child mental, emotional, and physical pain.
          At the age of 9 ½, when I was told about my parent’s divorce, my mother’s remarriage, pregnancy, and my new stepfather and stepbrother, I developed the classic symptoms of shock along with depression.  Then my father, who was the one who told me about the divorce, left the next morning.  After spending the weekend moping, crying, scared, and confused, my subconscious “turned off” my emotions dealing with loss.  I became emotionally incomplete, which has a major impact on my life even to this day.  Perhaps not feeling negative emotions actually helped me survive the confusion over my orientation, having to babysit my siblings instead of attending after-school activities, and so forth during my high school years.
          Survival and coping skills learned in childhood and adolescence, can serve an adult well, if developed properly.  Are there any straight or GLBT parents who have not experienced challenges when raising children through their various stages of development?  Things like: potty training; the terrible two’s; the 2AM “Daddy. I want a glass of water.”; the midnight through 6AM feedings every two-hours; “All the girls wear makeup.  Why can’t I?”; diaper changing ad nauseum; underachieving at school; overachieving at mischievousness; various childhood illnesses; dental and doctor appointments; conflicting school and family activities; “I hate that food item!”; “Can I have a $20 advance on my allowance?”; “Sir, this is officer Bob.  Could you please come to the police station and pick up your son?  He’s had a bit too much to drink for a 13-year old.”; “Mom, now that I am 12, can I have a 16-year old boyfriend?”; “Mom.  I’m bleeding between my legs.”; “Son, do that in private or at least lock the bathroom door.”; “No you can’t watch a PG-13 movie until you are 13 and no R-rated movies until you are 30.”; “Mom, Dad – I’m gay/lesbian.”; and a host of other such issues too numerous to list.
          How does an adult cope with those challenges?  You do the best that you can with the knowledge and skills you learned as a child in how your parents manipulated you.
          But there are some of life’s challenges that no one can really prepare for.  Divorce is hard enough on the adult but especially devastating for a child or even adolescents.  Some adults and children have friends to be a social support during the stressful times.  Others turn to their religious faith for comfort.  Some just get depressed and withdraw and many children take their own life.
          My most stressful time was when I was temporarily caring for my wife’s mother, an Alzheimer patient.  Her regular caregiver (and partner) needed to take a month-long vacation.  My children and I split up the time with me taking two-weeks and the others taking one-week each.  The first night I stayed with my mother-in-law, she decided that she was in my apartment and spent much of the time between 1AM and 6AM (while I was asleep), packing her things and loading her car so she could drive to her house (the one she sold several years previous).  For the rest of the two-weeks I was there, I was in survival mode and not much good for anything. 
          I left my car there for my children to use while there, and I took the train back to Denver.  The train took 3-days to go from Jacksonville to Denver by way of Washington DC and Chicago.  I needed every one of those days to decompress and relax.
          Even knowing what to expect from an Alzheimer patient, who can really prepare for the reality.  I truly understand how loving children can place their Alzheimer parents into a nursing type facility, as the stress is tremendous.  What I do not understand is how the staff of those facilities can provide the care they do without shutting off their emotions.
          People do not really cope with situations.  They maneuver about mentally and physically until the “crisis” passes and they become survivors.
         
© 14 October 2012 
About the Author 

I was born in June of 1948 in Los Angeles, living first in Lawndale and then in Redondo Beach.  Just prior to turning 8 years old in 1956, I was sent to live with my grandparents on their farm in Isanti County, Minnesota for two years during which time my parents divorced.
When united with my mother and stepfather two years later in 1958, I lived first at Emerald Bay and then at South Lake Tahoe, California, graduating from South Tahoe High School in 1966.  After three tours of duty with the Air Force, I moved to Denver, Colorado where I lived with my wife and four children until her passing away from complications of breast cancer four days after the 9-11-2001 terrorist attack.
I came out as a gay man in the summer of 2010.   I find writing these memories to be therapeutic.
My story blog is: TheTahoeBoy.Blogspot.com 
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Strange Vibrations, by Ray S

Muse, where are you now? I couldn’t sleep last night when we
were in bed together because you refused to be still. Now you want to play hard
to get.
Quickly like the dawn of a new day my tardy Muse returns
upon our decision to go to the basement storage locker in search of some long
forgotten item that has suddenly become indispensable.
Muse distracted me from my mission by a strange change in
the atmosphere of the room. No, lights didn’t dim, floors and walls didn’t
creak, and there certainly were no vibrations. Nothing so spooky and corny,
just a compulsion to look into some old boxes filled with three generations of
family memorabilia, treasures and trash. Some best left to rest in dusty peace,
but the decision to dispatch some of it, as always it is, is more convenient to
ignore the stuff—out of sight out of mind.
A high school diploma, class of 1943—the prize from
surviving four traumatic years at four different high schools.
A 100-year-old, or so it seems, photo album with many faded
sepia photos labeled by my mother identifying people I never knew.
A picture of my father with some of his army buddies at
camp, pre-World War One. Looking closely, I could hardly recognize this pretty
young boy, but it was reassuring to have met this man in his early days.
Then a letter addressed to my mother from a dear friend
expressing her condolences when learning of my parents’ divorce. It was an
intrusion on my part to have read the letter to its conclusion, especially when
the friend indicated that the woman my father later married had been a mutual
acquaintance of all of the parties. Sometimes you learn more than you needed
to, but it did answer some questions and left more to remain unanswered—which
is just as well.
Reminiscent of this bit of drama, up from the depths of
another musty file of memories came the vibrations of the summer two weeks that
conveniently located me at YMCA camp, circa 1939. Oblivious of nothing more
important than trying to avoid getting knocked down with a mouth full of Lake
Michigan sand while playing King of the Hill, my parents took the opportunity
to drive up to camp for an unannounced visit whereupon they broke the news of
their decision to divorce. And this was the beginning of my new life as a kid
raised only by his mother and without the presence of a father to show him how
to be a man or something other than the pansy they were blessed with.
Hindsight being the disaster that it is, the vibrations of
all these many years have had their good vibes too. After Uncle Sam’s
contribution to my higher education, the ensuing attempt at a good middle class
married life with a wonderful wife and family, followed by my very own debutante
coming out part and joining the real GLBTQ world, the boxes can continue to
mustier or be more musty until little old Muse and I make another trip to the
strange and scary land of TMI [Too Much Information – ed.].
So much for the strange vibrations that result in too much
navel gazing and self-indulgence; it wasn’t fun while it lasted.
Fini.
© 23 May 2016 
About the Author 
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Normal, by Gillian

Well how in Hell would any of us know about normal? I was tempted to write just that and only that, but that’s taking too easy a way out. But normal, just by it’s definition of usual, typical, unexpected, is just not very exciting Oh, an occasional normal, as in temperature, or blood pressure, can be welcome, but on the whole abnormal is surely more interesting.
And maybe I’m just feeling irritable today, but I’m really getting sick of the New Normal. I found it to be an interesting and quite clarifying phrase once upon a time, but it has been, and is, so overused that it has become …. well …. normal. On the internet, of course, it abounds, usually capitalized: the New Normal of globally aging populations, of a slower-growing U.S economy or those personal New Normals we must find after the birth of a child, or a recovery from cancer, or suffering grief.
The Economist magazine recently headed a section, ‘America and Cuba – the new normal,’ and the New York Times entitled an article, ‘Puberty Before Age 10: a New Normal?’ I have to agree with Harvard professor David Laibson who said that people are “a little trigger-happy with the ‘new normal’ label.” Well, I say to myself, new things of any kind are often over-used at first.
But wait!
This phrase is apparently not new at all: rather making a resurgence. Believe it or not, and I did indeed find it rather incredible, a New York Times article in 2011* printed a graph showing the frequency of the term [new normal – ed.] in books printed over the last century. According to this documentation, it was even more commonly used in the 1920’s and ’30’s than it is now – at least in the printed word.
Then it lay pretty dormant until zooming to it’s current popularity since around 2000.
Anyway, whatever the reason and like it or not, we appear to be destined to be inundated with New Normals at least for a while, so I’ll add my own.
WE are the New Normal. And, yes, I do most sincerely believe that. No, I don’t mean that we in the GLBT community are suddenly going to find ourselves in the majority, but that we will become, if we are not already, normal. Looking at listed synonyms, that simply means we are usual, ordinary, customary, expected, even conventional. Of course NBC tried to suggest just that with the TV series The New Normal which aired in 2012 and ’13, and more power to them, but there is nothing more powerful than the personal. It doesn’t mean we will be universally loved, approved of, even accepted. But we hardly come as a surprise, let alone a shock, to many people these days. Yes, an individual coming out may still shock unsuspecting family and friends, but we, as a group, have arrived. And as more people get to know us individually we will become more usual and ordinary and, in many cases, perhaps seen as quite conventional. I believe that this will all speed up if the Supreme Court, which has finally said it will do as it should have initially, actually makes a ruling, and in our favor.
Even gazing ahead through such rose-colored glasses, there is danger. Not for any of us older folk, I think, but for the future of our community as a whole in years to come. Will we, in fact, cease to be a community if we become more integrated into society as a whole? Worse, will we find ourselves becoming boringly, numbingly, normal; adopting all the previously straight mores and strictures of society and settling for over half of our hard won marriages ending in divorce? I so hope not. My dream is that we will form relationships and love with strengths forgotten or abandoned by our hetero friends. Perhaps they will even learn from us, and together we can all find much that has been lost, or more likely never was. Or perhaps, as several psychological studies have suggested, same-sex relationships have certain integral advantages over those of opposite-sex couples. Women will always be from Venus and men from Mars and that’s an end to it. And that, I guess, would make any same-sex couple, just, inevitably, normal.
*http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/11/the-new-normal-is-actually-pretty-old/?_r=0
© 2 Feb 2015 
About the Author 
I was born and raised in England. After graduation from college there, I moved to the U.S. and, having discovered Colorado, never left. I have lived in the Denver-Boulder area since 1965, working for 30 years at IBM. I married, raised four stepchildren, then got divorced after finally, in my forties, accepting myself as a lesbian. I have now been with my wonderful partner Betsy for 28 years.