The parents are fallible humans. You add some of the most extreme emotions one or both of them have ever felt and a considerable number of people forget “I’d die for my child” and … push said child/children under a bus. I don’t think they realise they are doing it until it’s done. And the enormity of that realisation is probably what leads to a great deal of re-writing of history. Some things are too big and awful to admit to, so creating an alternative reality is less salt in wound.
My parents were actually much better at putting on a united and business as usual front than your average parent. It turned out the affair had been going on for two years. None of us had any idea that there was even any tension. It very much seemed like it had always been.
It’s just they didn’t know one Sunday afternoon that I hadn’t gone out with my siblings, I was revising for my imminent O levels. My desk was up against the wall where their headboard was. And I overheard something said very quietly.
I barged straight in their room and and demanded to know who “she” was. They’d kept up a dam for two solid years and in a matter of seconds I hacked a fucking great hole in it.
Dam failures are dramatic. Once out, all that control was gone. I think they got swept away in the pent up waters and didn’t realise we were drowning. Nether of them came back. I never met the mum & dad I had, before I broke everything, again. Those people disappeared and two very different people took their places.
I’ve mourned the loss of one of my parents twice. Once when the waters came down, again when he died. I only found out the first time was grief when the second time came with the official title. I’m still on round one with my mum, round 2 isn’t far off.
It sits easier now. I was seeing them as their child, not seeing them as people. They hurt us very badly. Again and again and again. But I don’t think when they did it either of them were in their right mind. And once they’d both had time to adjust and paddle in calmer waters they couldn’t cope with the idea of more turbulence, so acknowledgment had to be substituted with memories that did not match what actually happened. I think I understand them better now than either of them understood themselves at that time and all the years that remained.
It’s one of those sliding doors moments. If I hadn’t stayed in to revise and reacted without taking a breath to think, there’s a reasonable possibility that they would have maintained self-control, the affair would have passed, and over time the marriage would have gained a second wind. They weren’t bad people. They were really good parents until I smashed the temporary facade so suddenly that they didn’t have time to catch their breath, let alone do any rapid repairs.