The Best Part of Breaking Up by Heather McPeake

Author:Heather McPeake [McPeake, Heather]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-08-21T18:30:00+00:00

16.

When I was seven, I testified against my dad in court. I remember his posture more than anything. Slumped and defeated, like any moment he might crumple. He kept his face pressed into his hands the entire time, elbows propped on the table in front of him, so I couldn’t see his expression. To this day I’d swear there were tears in his eyes, though I never actually looked at him.

“Focus on me,” my mom’s attorney had said. “Just like we talked about.”

We’d gone through the directives a dozen times, and in the end, that’s exactly what I did. I sold my dad out.

It’s not that my dad had ever done anything wrong to me, but my mom and her counsel were incredibly convincing. Everything that my dad had perpetrated against my mom, they explained, he’d also done without regard for me. To me. They coached me say that I didn’t feel safe with my dad.

But I did, I told them.

Didn’t I?

They said I didn’t know yet how untrustworthy he was being, that he was manipulating me so that he could keep more of his money. They told me that my dad didn’t want me – or rather, they told me that my dad had said he didn’t want me to live with him. To a seven-year-old, that sounds a lot like the same thing.

On the flip side, he was telling me that my mom was lying in order to hurt him. Saying anything she could to destroy his life. That he loved me to the moon and back. That I had to believe him.

How was I supposed to feel about all this? It was a tornado, silently ripping its way through me. They were each begging me to trust them. In the end, I didn’t trust anyone, least of all myself.

I know there’s a big trend now about reassuring your kids the divorce has nothing to do with them. As a present-day divorce attorney, I’m a huge proponent of that trend, but I can tell you that kids are still quietly used as bargaining chips in too many situations. People love to act like kids aren’t people. They’re great to brag about, or pose for family photos, or attempt to conform to your agenda. It’s easy to get attached to that grand idea you had before they were ever born about how they were going to be with you: the activities they would participate in, the aspirational paths they’d pursue, the clothes they’d wear. And then we show up, and we’re our own people, with our own feelings and ideas, and things get complicated. Sometimes it’s subtle, and I can’t prevent all of it, but on the legal side? In the ones I negotiate? I try to make sure kids aren’t used as expendable trump cards. I never say things like, “We need you to speak up about this.”

And, for better or worse, I never let kids stay in the room while we discuss the particulars.

What my dad had

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