Let's face it, having divorced parents sucks. As a child, your friends and classmates will envy you, because you get to celebrate your birthday twice with different households. If you're lucky, your parents stayed friends for the sake of their children; others aren't so lucky. Celebrating your birthday or Christmas as a child isn't all that great. Especially when you want to take your new iPad or that really neat bright yellow dump truck you have been dreaming of having over to the other house, and you're not allowed to. The envious feeling that your childhood self may have wished would be true becomes a harsh reality when your parents start to argue about whose house you're going to that weekend or finding that your parents are lying to you when they say that they have it all together.
The truth is...your parents don't have it together. They are just as lost and confused as you are and don't really know what to do next. Imagine this, you're with someone for years of your life and then all of a sudden you lose them. It's almost like losing a relative but instead of them dying you aren't allowed to be around them anymore. The struggle is you have to learn to live without someone who has helped you through so many things. Your parents have shared their lives together and now they don't.
There are many of us out there whose parents have gone through a divorce. It's hard to learn how to get through life going back and forth between houses. The great thing that comes out of most divorces; or at least in my case, is that I have learned to open my heart up to so many people. My heart hurt for the longest time and I felt abandoned and my parents probably felt like they failed me. Continuing to grow up in two different households was really hard, I felt like I was constantly being fought over. Now that I have completely grown up if I could go back to that time in my life...I wouldn't change anything that happened.
Finally, most people know that having divorced parents is hard. Many people may have a story like mine and realize how real everything becomes once your life feels like it is crashing around you. As people start to learn more about how divorce can affect someone's life, they will realize how special those two celebrations for every holiday are to a person.