It’s like getting blindsided by a tackle.

When air gets knocked out of your chest and you find it hard to catch your breath that came so easily before. Suddenly your life is turned upside down. Trust turned to deception. Love turned to hate. A child of divorce, a product of a misgiving between two people that couldn’t seem to make it right anymore. The feeling of, “If my parents couldn’t make it. How could I?” Forced to be placed in the middle of a battle field where it seems that you are the prize. No longer a person, but something to be claimed as an object; That this child is mine. A science experiment of two personalities that were never meant to be two halves of a whole. But here you are, a mixture of two souls that have bred love into hate. Your mind constantly surrounded now with the idea that love is merely a feeling that will fade over time. A socially constructed idea that we are monogamous creatures that have a mate for life. This concept that we have this person we search for our entire lives and they are the missing piece. The one who was meant to complete the puzzle piece.

Deep rooted issues, woven into the soul of who you are. The nights you sit awake staring at the wall listening to the words being thrown like knives from behind the door.

"She's just like you. Incapable of ever showing love."

It's a battle with my head and heart to let someone know the pieces of me, that even I'm too afraid to love. The constant thought lingering behind that everyone changes their mind. You can say it's a change of heart, but it's truly who you are when the mask comes off. This idea that someone could love the parts of me that were turned into hate. I put up walls to protect myself from the inevitable, that everyone leaves. Love is so blind to the misery. The feeling of abandonment, never worth the risk it would take. To let someone into the very dark place where I've hidden the pain. Masking the feeling of betrayal with drinks too strong and people of lust. Wanting to escape the reality that I will never be able to fully love. A part of me always hung up that I cannot trust. So badly I want to be free of the demons that keep bringing me back to this place of a broken love. But how can you ever escape the demons that were bred into your heart?

So a letter of precaution to the person who tries to love a child of divorce.

We love differently because love is a foreign concept to our souls. Be patient and be understanding that we are often too afraid to let someone know our broken parts. Our walls so high because we will always have a hard time being able to take off the mask that hides our scars. Isolated by our own process of self-destruction in the thought.

That we are merely just a mix of broken and jagged parts of two people who forgot how to love.