My parents should be divorced. They should have divorced 14 years ago, really, or 4 years ago. My mother stayed 14 years ago because she was scared of being alone with four children, the oldest of which (me) was 11 and the youngest was 3. Why she chose to stay 4 years ago eludes me to this day; I was 21 by then and had enough of a handle on real life that between the two of us we could have managed.
They aren't happy. Truth be told, sometimes it seems like they hate each other's guts. And it seems like every time I speak to either of them alone, the conversation ends up them complaining about the other and I feel like agreeing with either one of them is a violation of trust against the other. I don't like being around either of them alone any more, although my mother realizes that I don't like feeling caught and tries very hard to police herself so that it doesn't damage my otherwise-excellent relationship with her. (My dad seems like he doesn't give a shit whether I like feeling caught, or whether it damages my relationship with him.) I live with them right now, as I'm working in the same town as my mom (within the same couple of blocks) and it makes no sense not to, but the longer I stay the less I want to. It's coming faster and faster to a head.
I also work for an attorney whose main practice comes from family law: divorces, child custody battles, deadbeat dads that don't pay for their spawn, addicted parents or just shitty parents losing custody to the grandparents/relatives/state. Every single day, it feels like, someone else calls us looking for a divorce. Sometimes they come in sad as a couple and leave sad as not-a-couple. Sometimes they come in pissed off all by themselves. Sometimes - rarely - they come in blindsided, after being served with papers they didn't know were coming. We have a few where the couple started divorce proceedings a few years ago and STILL have not settled. In the Clerk's office, there are divorce files that are thousands of pages long.
Something that scares me is that my parents will be divorced by the time my wedding rolls around. I know plenty of people have gotten married with divorced parents, and that it isn't impossible and certainly isn't the worst thing on the planet to have to deal with at a wedding, but it isn't something I ever wanted to do, nor really expected to do. I honestly thought that I would be more likely to have to put up with one of them having passed before I had to deal with divorced parents at my wedding. But what scares me worse - much worse - is that they will be in the midst of some huge god-awful fight of a court battle (because my dad assures me that it WILL be a huge god-awful fight of a court battle every time he doesn't get his way/gets called out on his shit), and they will be so far from speaking terms that I will have to choose between them. And truth be told, if it came to that I wouldn't choose my dad. He's a great dad, but his poor decisions 22 years ago (after, mind you, 12 years of marriage) started this whole mess and while I don't think he needs to have to live them DOWN, I do think it's fair that he have to live with the consequences of those mistakes.
FI is coming to live with us soon, or at least so I had hoped until this morning. Now I'm thinking about trying to see if we can find somewhere cheap away from my parents' house and the constant tension.
(Someone give me some cheese and the world's tiniest violin. I know I'm being a whiny little bitch and there are people on these boards who've had to put up with much worse. It's just something I can't really talk about anywhere and I had to get it off my chest a little.)