my parents got divorced this week, but I got a new mattress

who's the real winner here?

Oct 17, 2021

I’m only going to talk about one thing this week because it’s super casual and not-at-all big news whatsoever and didn’t change my life at all and was really no big deal and is boring and you’ll probably get bored reading it after the first sentence.

This week, my parents officially got divorced, and my mom came out as queer in the only way anyone is allowed to: on Instagram and also on Facebook.

Soooooo, yeah, totally not anything exciting or life-changing or whatever.

The divorce was decided at the beginning of the year and took until October 14th to legally end. Why did it take so long, you ask? I don’t know. Lawyers? I don’t know anything about the law. They got divorced the day before what would’ve been their 27th anniversary. I feel like it was an opportunity missed to not make the divorce official on the 15th, but who needs the drama? It’s not like we do! We have so much drama in this scenario that we could hand it out like Oprah.

The divorce was a little shocking and very upsetting for me, and it made my entire year feel a lot harder than it needed to be. Trying to save money to move to New York while also having to move and throw out almost everything you’ve ever known in your childhood home did not really motivate me to figure out how I was going to get myself back to the East Coast. And having your parents get divorced when you’re 24? Way too Degrassi: The Next Generation for my liking. I had a really hard time with it. I felt like their marriage was something I could fix and had been working hard to fix for so much of my life, but as every adult has told me, This has nothing to do with you, and you shouldn’t feel responsible for it. But it’s hard not to feel that way a little, right? To be so aware of the dynamic in the home at such a young age made me feel like I had to make sure things were grounded; if I was the only one who noticed why things weren’t working, I had to be the one to fix it. Obviously, I would never be able to do that, and one day a therapist will prove it to me, but it really changed the way I dealt with the year. I couldn’t make decisions for myself, I wasn’t talking to many people, and I felt like a child. It was like my whole world was falling apart, and there was nothing I could do about it.

It has come to my attention that I am sweating profusely as I write this. I’ve never written anything so fucking personal in an email! My natural deodorant is not helping, but it never does. #sweatygirlautumn

Finally, I got myself to New York and was able to distance myself from everything. My dad moved to Florida (as you do), my mom moved in with her partner, and my brother went back to college. Sean (my brother) and I handled it all a little differently. He was able to distance himself faster than I was — I want to say it’s because I didn’t know how, but it’s really because I live for the drama. That’s a joke I do not live for this type of drama. I prefer to watch it on Succession shows instead. I couldn’t figure out how to move on from this, and I honestly still can’t. I have absolutely no idea how to live my life knowing my parents aren’t together anymore. I keep telling myself that since almost all of my favorite comedians’ parents are divorced, they’re actually doing me a solid. Hmm, where’s my list on how to become a great comedian? Two down — be very small, small enough where people feel the need to let you know that you are small. Check! Ah, yes, here we go: five down — divorced parents. Check!

So, the whole divorce thing already overwhelmed me to the point that I couldn’t even make regular plans. Hopefully, nothing else happens this year before I get myself to New York. But of course, my mom feels the need to add to my bountiful basket of anxieties. And she decides that the best time to add to it is on my day off at seven in the morning. “There’s something I have to tell you.” Now, I can’t tell you how I knew what she was going to say, but I knew it immediately. I had actually known for a really long time, but it was never something I thought about because I had married parents, and things weren’t going to change. I also don’t think my mom even knew herself, so there was no point in me asking her when I was 15-years-old. “I’m gay.” And I said, “Aha, that’s dope as hell.” I’m just k i d d i n g, everyone. Wow, we all reacted way too emotionally to my response; everyone, calm down! I said that I know and that I’m happy for her. And because I said that I knew and explained it, my mom has asked me at least once a week since April how I figured it out. I have explained so many times that the next time she asks me, I’m going to say that Rosie O’Donnell found me in a Golden Nugget and said, “Your mom is gay,” and then got back up, ordered stuffed French toast to go, and walked out of the Golden Nugget.

I want to clarify that I was only anxious about my mom coming out because no one else in our family knew, yet, and I wasn’t allowed to tell anybody. I understand that it’s my mom’s choice to come out to others when she’s ready, but it was really hard for me to have to stay quiet about why it was getting more difficult for me to make big decisions for myself — like moving to New York. There was no space left in my brain, and it felt like just the divorce on its own wasn’t enough for people to understand why there was no space. And to not be able to explain to them? Harder than figuring out how to put my apartment utilities in my name. I truly am so happy for my mom, and I’m happy for my dad, too. He’s off burning in the Florida sun because he is way too Irish to be living there, but he is also very much enjoying it. And my mom has finally figured out who she is and is so happy. And that’s amazing. But it’s also stealing my thunder of moving to another city to be a cool and hip adult and eventually becoming a writer for some cool and hip show. Hopefully, when I get to that job, she won’t come up with something else that’s life-changing because then I’ll know that she’s doing this all on purpose. But if that does happen, I’ll have even more content than I already do for the HBO original series I’m gonna write. If you couldn’t tell from this week’s newsletter, I have enough content for at least three seasons.