I was on holiday last week, which is why I wasn’t around for a week.
(What you didn’t miss me?)
Part of my week off was spent at the parental’s house in the country. Yep I am a country bumpkin, from, as best mate described it – Pride and Prejudice land. Its pretty, it’s rural, it’s in the bloody middle of nowhere. So there isn’t much else to do apart from drink. Or make a fool of yourself. These are not mutually exclusive in my parent’s house.
I do not have normal parents.
In fact growing up, I was the girl with the ‘cool’ parents, the ones that buggered off to places like China and India and a tour of South America and erm Graceland during our summer holidays leaving the sister and me in the care of various relatives and school friends. In fact the Mother is currently hightailing it around Fuji! We did get to have a beach hut at Scarborough every year so it wasn’t all bad.
They bought me booze and let me go to festivals and camping and having parties whilst they were on holiday (well until the sister had to do a yellow pages number on a mahogany table and someone threw up in my parents bed). They also spent (and still do spend) a lot of time on ‘the stage’, with my father in particular having a strange ongoing fascination with dressing as a woman…and an old woman at that (thats him on the left!).
It was an idyllic childhood.
Anyways, the parentals like a drink. I like a drink, the boy likes a drink, and there isn’t much to do at my parents apart from drink. So we drank…and when people drink inappropriate things are said.
Embarrassingly inappropriate things.
(For new readers a bit of background. I got married in 2000, separated ooh about 8 months later after he cheated on me and like a pair of hippies only managed to get divorced a few months ago, just short of our 10th wedding anniversary. This was all pre-internet age so the wedding pics cant be found online but there is one here you can laugh at)
Last weekend, my mother in her wisdom decided that the best time to inform me that she had found my wedding video whilst having a clear out. At the time we were sitting with a load of my school friends parents (and the boy) in the local pub. She didn’t just let me know quietly in my ear; no she yelled it across the table at me, hooting with laughter.
Sadly, no one else apart from her found it funny.
What may have become a funny joke in my mother’s eyes, something in the past, now forgotten about apart from to take the piss out of – is still a taboo subject, a shameful occurrence in my parents circle; no one wants a divorced child.
So, yes, the entire table turned towards me with sorrowful, embarrassed eyes; the fact I was sitting there with a gorgeous boy giggling away next to me was forgotten. I was dragged backwards to being the daughter whose marriage had failed. White trash, tainted, lucky to have found someone else who would accept me.
All those things have been said to me.
And it seems that I am to be never allowed to forget it. It was 10 years ago for god’s sake. Get over it.
I have.
The video is still at home. Intact. It’s in the loft, shoved into the box containing my wedding dress. Whilst I have moved on, i’m keeping both the dress and video as evidence of why I should never do anything anyone expects of me, never accept anyone else’s opinion on what I choose to do, especially if that means doing something that people may not approve of due to their own prejudices.
The one thing I have learnt from my parents – whilst they might embarrass me all the time – is the ability to accept and move on from the past; and have a bloody good laugh at it too.
It’s a shame most of the world can’t as well.
Do your parents/parent’s friends see divorce as the ultimate taboo?
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