My name is Theo and I am eleven years old. My parents have been divorced for five years and I have a sister, Elaine who is thirteen. I live at my mom’s house for a few days and then I stay with my dad for the remainder of the week. Every weekend I alternate staying at each of their houses. It can get confusing and there are many times I don’t know where my stuff is. This moving back and forth is like a giant gust of wind that leaves me out of breath.

We all live in New Jersey, close to New York City and my parents reside within five miles of each other. I have been living with this divorce thing for most of my life and I have to tell you that it really sucks on the most part. My parents are always fighting about something that has to do with us kids. Every issue in our lives is up for battle. This includes: school activities, sports, how I spend I spend my free time, what friends I can hang out with, and how my hair is cut(how my hair is cut, can you believe this?) They don’t really ask what I want; they just issue orders which the other parent does his or her best to do the opposite of. Sometimes I wonder who is the child here-me or them?

My friends ask me how I deal with my parents fighting all the time. I tell them that I don’t really listen; I have learned to turn them off; it’s like I have a light switch inside my body and I can flick it off if I get tired of their screaming at each other. My therapist, which I go see every Thursday at 4PM tells me that all of this mess must be causing me distress. I tell him that I am handling it OK; after all, I am used to it because I have been dealing with this as long as I can remember.

When my parents ask me what I want, I usually give them the answer I know they want to hear. That way I don’t have to deal with my mom’s sad face when I disagree or my father’s outrage if I have a different opinion from him.

At least I deal with this better than my sister, Elaine. She smokes weed all the time and my parents seem to not notice the smell on her or the glazed look in her eyes. I tried to talk to Elaine about how she is destroying her life, but like everyone else, she doesn’t listen to me.

Elaine barley attends school and comes in at night when she feels like it. My parents don’t seem to be interested in trying to help her. They yell at her and she laughs at them. They threaten her with all kinds of punishments like juvenile hall or boarding school; but they never follow through with anything.

I often feel that I am invisible and my only purpose is to be an object placed in the middle of my parent’s divorce. I think they care more about having a victory over the other one than most anything else. I wonder if it is like this for all kids. I hope not.

Both my parents are Jewish and my mom tells me that I should want to go to Hebrew School. My dad hates organized religion and forbids me to go. Both parents say this issue is going to court like I’m supposed to be grateful for this or something. I just smile at them and move on. They have no idea what is going on inside me. I am really angry at both of them, but feel powerless to change them.

My grades are mostly C’s and D’s. My parents tell me that I am smart, but I don’t believe them. Along with telling me that I am intelligent, my mom says my grades are poor because my dad is too hard on me. My father says that I am not doing well because my mother doesn’t check my homework. Me, I have reached the point where I don’t care if either of them are right, I just want them to shut the hell up.

I have this deep secret that I won’t even talk to my therapist about. That secret is that I truly believe that my parents hate each other more than they love me. No one knows how many times I cry myself to sleep. Keeping secrets is hard business.

I feel like I have this secret life inside me where I feel pain, embarrassment, confusion and lots of feelings that I don’t understand. I like my therapist and want to tell him more, but I’m afraid that once I start talking, I won’t stop and when my parents really know how I feel mom will say, “Theo is having a difficult time because his father will not allow him to show emotion.” My father will say, “My son is upset because his mother always tells him bad things about me. She interferes with my relationship with Theo, perhaps if he didn’t spend so much time with her…..”and so on and so forth.

I want them to say, “Please stop fighting and for once in your life can you look into my eyes and realize that your putting me in the middle is killing me? The silly games you play with each other make me feel that I am only here for you to use in your war against each other. I don’t think anyone will ever win here.”

If it was up to me I would put my parents in a locked room with a therapist and not let them out until they learned how to agree on things. Maybe if they could think about me first before they focus on themselves this could really happen, but I doubt it.

You can read more about high conflict divorce here and here.

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