It’s been a year since Liz’s father left. A year of coming to terms with what that means, what it looks like in her family’s structure, what really happened and what she’s learned from it. I’m amazed and encouraged by the maturity that she shows a year later as she finally writes about what happened that night; the answers she’s able to give herself to the questions she asked a year ago. We all know, we’ve all heard the reports on studies done about parents splitting up and what it does to the kids but we don’t always hear from the kids themselves. I’m so glad that Liz shared her story with us.

I stayed on that couch, if I didn’t move, I didn’t have to face it. I could pretend. That was the only way to cope, those first few weeks, all you could do was pretend. Pretend dad was on a trip like they sent him on, pretend nothing is wrong, maybe you’ll trick your brain into believing that crock. The first month or two it was not uncommon to burst into tears. Dad moved his stuff out one day in March. I couldn’t bear to be home to see that, so the first time I ever drove alone was that day, up the street to sit in the vacant church parking lot until he left the house. I didn’t see him for at least another month. My brother moved in, my sister dropped out of nursing school, my mom became depressed, I don’t know what I did. I probably sat on that couch some more.

Nobody tells you how to react to your father leaving a seemingly stable, happy, marriage of twenty-five years.

All of it is very well written. It’s poignant but not sappy, truthful but not hurtful. The conclusions she comes to at the end of the post show insight and wisdom well beyond her years.