I can’t erase that copy of Divorce For Dummies from my mind.

It’s been over 10 years since I saw it for the first and only time. I had just come home from school one day, and that black and yellow cover was impossible to miss. It sat on the kitchen counter next to my dad’s work laptop. Initially, I thought that maybe one of my dad’s friends or co-workers, God forbid a family member, was getting divorced. And I felt terrible for them. I figured my dad was trying to do what he could to help by reading up on it.

And I stuck with that.

Did it make much sense? In hindsight, of course not.

In the moment, however, I had that one thought and distracted myself enough to move on with my day, as teenagers do.

Not long before I laid eyes on that book, I caught my parents fighting. That was in the kitchen, too. One day, I walked through the living room, already well aware that my mom was shouting. Right as I rounded the corner and looked at them, they stopped, of course. They had been arguing over the car keys. None of us said a word about it that I recall. My mom ended up taking the keys and going out through the laundry room and into the garage, slamming the doors shut behind her. I didn’t know where she was going and had no idea if she even left. She came back later, though, and I guess that’s all that mattered to me.

Around the same time, I heard them fighting one night. My room was practically across the house from theirs, and I could still hear them. Regardless, I got up to go into the hallway. I discovered my brother already out there, sitting on the tile floor. His room shared a wall with their closet. Who knows how long he had been awake. He and I sat there together, not whispering, not even looking at each other, just listening to our parents. My mom screamed a couple of times and spoke through clenched teeth. My dad talked a little louder than he normally did, yet he tried to calm her down. At some point, they stopped and, I assume, went to bed. I’m not sure which one of us siblings retreated to our room first.

I took my increasing sense of dread and shoved it deep down. As everyone does.

But then, before I knew it, the school year was done. I was halfway through high school already. Another summer had begun!

I think I was in my room when my parents called my brother and me into the kitchen. I remember my dad and him standing near the sink. My mom and I sat on a couple of stools at the island. She was in the exact spot where I saw Divorce For Dummies. And while I’ve forgotten the exact words my dad used, I’ll never forget that he was the one who told us.

My parents were getting divorced.

My mom said something about wanting to wait and tell us after we were done with our finals. I asked how long they had thought about doing this. She said they’d considered it for years.

“Years?” I barely managed to repeat the word out loud. I felt my mom’s hand on my back.

All of us cried, even my dad. I rarely saw him in tears. Or my brother. When my dad hugged him, he and I made eye contact. Even if either of us could speak in that moment, what would we have said? What was there to say, really?

Our parents’ marriage was over. Our family was broken.

In the following weeks, my mom moved out, one box at a time. Months went by, and both my brother and I were switching off between staying at her new apartment and our house.

He and I went to therapy together for a while. Sometimes, I can still hear him yell at me, demanding why I didn’t talk about the separation with the therapist. I hardly talked to my own friends and family about it, I thought. Why would I talk to a damn stranger about it? I hated every moment of therapy. I was numb every session.

What was quickly becoming the worst summer of my life so far ended up being the best in one crucial way. Almost three months after my dad told us what was happening, I started dating my high school sweetheart. We were in marching band together. We went on band trips sharing the same bus seat, we spent nights cuddling together in the same bed, and God knows that I still had an extremely hard time opening up about my family’s situation. On the rare occasion that I did, it was in uncontrollable bursts of pain. I remember sobbing in the back seat of my car more than once. My poor boyfriend wouldn’t leave my side until I was alright again. I hated feeling like a burden, as I have my entire life, yet I was so incredibly sad and angry, more than I had ever been.

I had a single person in the world I was comfortable enough to confide in.

It’s over a decade later, and he and I have been together ever since. Kevin can easily tell you, just as I am right now, that I continue to struggle with talking about my parents’ divorce. To be frank, I still have a difficult time sharing my thoughts and sorting through my feelings about anything. One side of me acknowledges that that’s merely part of who I am. Another side wonders if, specifically after the separation, I repressed my emotions even more than I already did.

For almost half of my life, I’ve had some version of this essay in my head. I was never sure how it would ultimately come together or if it ever would. I couldn’t even get it out at any time before this like I wanted to because there’s a lot that I still have to come to terms with, and I can’t do all of that here. This is just scratching the surface.

My parents’ divorce is the hardest thing I’ve ever been through. So far.

Eventually, I want to talk through it with both of my parents and my brother. I need their perspectives on what happened, why it happened, and how they feel about it after all this time. I want to give therapy another go, now that I’m not forced to. I believe I need to seek professional help, although not just about the divorce.

I want to tell Kevin everything and work through every inhibition I have. I have to tell myself everything. I have to work on myself.

I recently shared with him that I’m having a more difficult time coming up with concrete memories of my family before the divorce. The times we’ve spent apart are easier to remember than the times we were one family unit. I couldn’t say with certainty whether that’s due to the emotional trauma or whether my childhood memories, in general, are simply moving further away as they do with age. I haven’t told anyone else that until now.

Kevin’s been my husband for four years. I’ve often researched children of divorce and how their lives are affected going forward, including their marriages. I’ve read that children of divorce, like me, can be more likely to get divorced themselves, perpetuating the cycle. I’ve also read that this phenomenon is diminishing over time. Children of divorce can potentially recognize the aspects that didn’t work in their parents’ marriage and either avoid those things in their own or be better prepared to handle such things. However, I’ve read that children of divorce whose parents remarry are more at risk of divorcing, too. Looking up divorce statistics is a constant roller coaster of good news and bad news that I don’t like being on.

Kevin and I are starting a family of our own. And I grit my teeth at the thought of inevitably explaining to our children what divorce is and why their grandparents went through it. We’ll be forced to drag them through the same ordeal that we’ve endured, something they weren’t even alive to experience and yet will feel the impact of regardless. I wish we didn’t have to. I blame myself, as I continue to do when it comes to all of this. I’m wildly unprepared right now, but by beginning to process my own grief sooner rather than later, maybe I can work toward that eventuality. I have to.

For the past 10 years, I sort of let everything related to my parents’ divorce either float around in the ether, eager to forget, or fester underneath the surface, unable to let go. It’s been exhausting and excruciating, and I’m sick of it. For me, for my husband, and for the family we’re making, I need to ease the present and future anxieties and treat the past heartbreak, not hold it all back.

I’m finally ready to face this. I’m willing to take the next step.