I feel a bit odd about posting here as my parents never divorced, but I’d like to share my story for the parents that stuck it out, the results were both good and bad. It might be lengthy, I apologize in advance.

My father volunteered to go to Vietnam right out of high school, only my mother turned up pregnant at the ripe old age of 15. He wasn’t permitted to go right then, and perhaps that was the source of some of the friction. My parents were madly in love, there is no disputing that, even when things were at their worst, love was never an issue. Luckily for them money wasn’t either, my father became head sawyer at the mill and made a nice income. But some of my earliest memories are of fights, there were good times to, but I the fights, and based upon the house we were living in, I was no older than four, my brother 2.

My father joined the military and we moved to Kansas. I remember the change in the living environment in two ways, 1) there were no more fights and 2) I could only get either a soda or an ice cream once a month. That was quite a change from being able to walk to the store every day to get candy or a soda. And we had to drink powder milk and homemade bread for most of the month because at that the military only paid once a month. Here they were dirt poor and no fighting. I found out later it was because my father was an MP and on call 24/7, there was no alcohol. Plus we lived in a dry county.

Fast forward 4 years later, I’m eight and all I remember is fighting, all the time. When we were older and no longer needed a babysitter, my mother would call and say go to bed. That meant dad was in a fighting mood. I was a natural target. I didn’t stay in bed when they fought, I would get up and start yelling he’d go after me, mom would try to get in between us, we both got hurt. Later, if she did talk about it, she’d say “why don’t you just stay in bed.” As I got older, I realized if I got my Aunt, his sister, she could settle him down with one phrase “your mother would roll over in her grave if she saw you.” That also meant the next time he got drunk, i.e. the next weekend he’d be mad as hell because he knew I was going to run out the door (he’d pull the phone out of the wall if I tried to use that) and run down the road to my Aunt’s, so he’d start on me as soon as I woke up.

He eventually quit drinking when I was 12, but he was mean as hell all the time. A dry drunk the councilor later called it. The trigger… my mother had a break down, attempted suicide and was hospitalized for 8 weeks; I threatened to shoot him with his own gun if he ever hit me again. My dad had already had an appointment to enter in patient detox, and it was for like 12 weeks. There was three weeks where the two of them were both in the hospital and I had to stay with my Aunt. I didn’t realize how much the war at home affected me until my cousin, who was also a police officer, came home after working afternoon shift, clomping upstairs in his heavy boots. I was out of bed, in the hall ready to fight. He was had no idea what was going on. We had this sibling rivalry type relationship and that was the first time I ever remember him being nice to me and it scared me.

My father was able to beat his alcohol addiction, my mother got help for her mental illness and the rest is **** and Jane material. He still had a temper and could pick me up by my ankle out of a chair when I was 18 and kick me in the butt, but his explosions were relatively few in the next 6 years. Through all of that they were still madly in love until his dying day. We all had a happy ending, right?

Except the first time my husband and I got into an argument and I jumped when he yelled and was prepared to defend myself; which totally offended him. I have never allowed my husband to discipline our children. I trust only myself to do that. And there is the fact that my brother also has an uncontrollable temper, and occasionally drinks too much; was also in the Service and saw things no one should have to and he’s trained to injure, and he happened to marry a woman that likes to strike when she’s angry. The last time she got pissed off at him and slapped him, he nearly killed her, literally, he nearly choked her to death.

At least in my house we were able to break the chain. My husband and I do not drink, and warn our children that alcoholism runs deep and wide in our family on both sides. But my brother and I paid a price for that undying devotion.

This is why I get SO upset when people say “oh they’re just kids, they don’t know, or they won’t remember.” I’m here to say, we do remember, and it DOES affect us for the rest of our lives. Wounds that deep don’t heal.

So which was the right answer? My parents didn’t stay together for the kids, they stayed together because they loved each other. I love and admire both of my parents, the fortitude it took to make it through the other side of that %#@&#! storm is amazing. I just wish that I hadn’t witnessed it.