As a kid, I was never good at playing house. Ever. I would even venture to say that I was actively bad at playing house, which is a loaded statement. I should clarify and say that house is not a game that one can really be bad at. There are no rules, there is no winner, and anyone can play. So the fact that I struggled with it was just as pathetic as it was troublesome. House is and was, after all, the quintessential play-date game, and to struggle with it would be to struggle with all social interactions of my youth. After all, a game of house was never “just” a game, but something that could permanently set the tone for a friendship. For instance, two kids who could, without any hassle at all, decide who got to play the mom and who got to play the dad, were likely to form the strongest of bonds, while two kids who couldn’t cast themselves so easily (after all, no one really wants to play the dad, do they?), were more likely to be in an ‘on again/off again’ friendship. Come to think of it, any pre-teen drama between friends can probably be traced back to a game of house. This all may seem melodramatic, but such is the life of an elementary school girl.
My ineptitude, however, wasn’t because I was anti-social or stubborn, but because I had a really tough time getting into the game. As rare as it was for a kid whose favorite hobby was acting, I had trouble pretending to be someone I wasn’t. My issues (perhaps phobias) with house would present themselves subtly: I’d call a friend by their real name, and not the one that they had assigned themselves for the game, or I’d remind the other players that this was just a game, and take the wind out of their sails by delivering harsh reality checks such as, “well, you’re not really a doctor,” or, “we don’t really have kids.” All of this made me an undesirable play-date companion, and I knew it. I was totally aware of what I was doing, but I couldn’t control it. I hated the idea of living a lie, even if it was just pretend, and only lasted as long as recess did. Still, I was troubled by my lack of skill, and often wondered where it came from. Was it all in my head? Do I just need to be better at pretending? Does it run in the family?
Turns out: yes, it does. My parents weren’t good at playing house, either, and in the middle of my 3rd grade year, they told my siblings and I that they were getting a divorce. I’ll never forget the moment I learned: my two siblings and I all sat in a row on our worn out leather couch, our parents standing in front of us after having just called a family meeting. They stood there silently, trying to figure out what to say, while my older siblings and I tried to guess who had died, and whether or not we’d get to miss school. When the words finally came out, though, when we finally heard, “your father and I are getting a divorce,” I’ll never forget what happened next. Something fell over the room, and it wasn’t quite silent, nor was it anything you could hear, and yet it was the most distinct sound in the world. There we were, five people: a dad, a mom, a brother and two sisters, all getting lost in our own heads, all traveling in millions of different directions inside of our minds, and yet the instant those words landed, crashing over all of us was the unison sound of each of our lives changing forever.
No one cried. No one even asked questions. The three kids, or rather, the two teens and me, the baby of the family, all went to our rooms. I practiced saying the words out loud, to see what felt right. I’d look in the mirror and say, “my parents are divorced,” or, “my parents split up,” or maybe, “my parents aren’t together anymore.” I was sort of hoping I’d cry. I was sort of hoping that one variation on the phrase, when said out loud, would trigger me to crawl into bed, with stuffed animals tucked under my arm, and cry. I tried again, “they’re getting a divorce,” but nothing happened. I wondered what I was doing wrong. Kids are supposed to cry when they hear news like this, yet I didn’t feel a thing.
As the divorce progressed, my teachers were alerted. They would pull me aside to make sure that I was feeling okay, and every time they did this, part of me wanted to lie and say that I wasn’t. I was supposed to be upset, and I simply wasn’t. Or, at least I didn’t think I was. That said, a few months into the divorce, my teacher kept me after school one day so that we could talk for a few minutes. He had noticed that I hadn’t spoken in class, and he wanted to know if anything was wrong. I engaged in a staring contest with my knees, took a deep breath, and told the biggest lie I’d ever told. I said, “yes,” and I began to tell him how upset I was by the divorce. I told him I missed having my mom and dad in the same house. I told him I even missed their fighting. It was the kind of conversation that every kid should have with someone they trust, but the only issue was that every bit of it was false. With each word that left my mouth, I surprised myself even more, not only with how far my conscience had allowed me to go, but also with how significantly I seemed to pull at my teacher’s heartstrings.
Back then, I saw this interaction as the moment I crossed over to the dark side. I looked back on this day only to feel my stomach clench into a 20-pound knot. This moment, however, is the perfect explanation of how my parents’ divorce affected me. There I was, stuck, doing whatever I could do to ‘feel’ something. I had snuck around and read my parents books on how to coax your kids through the divorce, and the one piece of advice that all of these books had in common was that divorce was supposed to be a growing experience. I couldn’t pinpoint it then, but this so-called ‘lesson’ paralyzed me with fear. This was the cause of my numbness, and it’s taken almost 8 years to realize this.
If divorce is supposed to be a growing experience, then the kids who have gone through it are supposed to exit the ordeal with a new-found maturity and sense of self. This terrified me. I didn’t know who the older version of me was going to be, but I felt like I had to choose a side before I got there. My own, personal development suddenly became yet another battle of Mom vs. Dad. I would play scenarios in my head over and over again, each one seeming worse than the next. I have my dad’s eyes and nose, but what would happen if I inherited his humor? It was no secret that my mom had developed an aversion to his trademark crassness. Or, conversely, would my dad even want to be around me if I inherited my mother’s ability to be oversensitive? Growing up, it seemed, was accessible only after I navigated past a fork in the road. I had to choose, and there was no way around it. When one of my siblings decided to live permanently at one parent's house, I felt I was doomed. I wanted both of my parents despite of who I might become.
So, I played house. I did what my elementary school self hated the most. When I was with my mom, I pretended to be the daughter that I knew she loved, I was the overly cheery theater girl who was more naïve than anything else. When I was with my dad, I played the role of the spunky tomboy who liked to play football and use curse words. I wasn't thrilled with either version of myself, yet the game lasted for years. I was trapped in what seemed like a never-ending game of house, but no one knew I was playing. Even well into high school, I continued to play the game at home. But as I spent more time with friends, and doing extra-curricular activities, I found myself at home with much less frequency, and so I played the game in decreasing amounts. Despite these new identities I'd created, though, the numbness that I felt when my 3rd grade teacher asked me how I was feeling, persisted. Hard times would come and go, and I barely felt anything at all.
Suddenly, when I was 16, something changed. After 6 weeks, I was packing up to go home from summer camp. Usually, this is exciting. No matter how much a kid loves camp, the prospect of going home to good food, and a nice, long shower is invaluable. However, I was packing my bags for the last time. I had been going to this camp for 8 years, and I was finally leaving for good. I packed quickly, throwing clothes in wherever they would fit. My linens got stuffed into my sleeping bag, and my shower supplies, however nasty they looked, somehow made it into suitcase. I sat on my trunk, trying to pull the zipper, and then it happened. I cried. Wept, in fact. I curled up into a ball and cried harder than I ever have. I felt this gut-wrenching pain that was awful and dramatic, and totally foreign to me. I hadn’t cried in years. I was heartbroken, confused and humiliated.
I’ll never be able to completely explain why leaving camp was so hard for me. I love that place with everything I have, and no list could capture all of the things I cherish so dearly. But one thing I know for sure is that every time I went there, I became someone new. I grew up, finally. I was entirely uninhibited by the pains of adolescence, and I was unrestricted by my parents. I channeled both of them, and I channeled neither of them, and there was finally balance as I started to become my own person. Suddenly, as I sat sobbing on my suitcase, the heartbreak turned into happiness for a split second, as I realized I was finally playing the part of ‘me,’ and I was playing it for myself... and I loved it.
