When you’re young, your parents tell you that they’re happy and that Santa exists and that a tiny, pink-winged fairy takes your teeth from under your pillow. Believe your parents. You’re only young once. You see your parents fighting, and you hide in the stairwell, so you can hear but not watch. Cover your eyes. Protect yourself; it doesn’t have to be real if you don’t want it to be. Take your little sister’s hand. She is scared too.

Your dad tucks you into bed. Ask him the important question. He says, “No, we’re not going to get a divorce.” Let him lie to you. The shadows on the ceiling of your bedroom tell the truth. You’re unhappy, your parents are unhappy, but it will get worse.

Allow your parents to sit you down on the couch with them. They tell you that they’re not going to be married anymore. Don’t cry; it is not your tragedy. Your parents are crying instead. Lose a little respect for your dad; he’s not supposed to be the one who cries. He’s supposed to be the strong one.

It’s your most important birthday yet: you’re ten now. Your mom brings you the cake. Only one of your parents is there. Exchange a glance with your sister. See that she is too young to understand. Notice the way your mom looks around at the other parents with their happy husbands and wives. Wave at her; try to make her feel better. Know that it doesn’t work.

Your friends think it’s cool to have two rooms, two houses, two separate lives. Only your friends with divorced parents know the secret. Take the blue bag with your clothes back and forth to your houses. Never forget the bag on your travels. It holds your life.

The divorce was the first black mark of change, and your cats’ deaths are the second. You lose Bobby in the house shared by your parents, and Acadia in your dad’s house. Cry for the loss, and cry for the change. It is not the first time, and will not be the last.

Grow up, and grow up fast. It is time to decide where to go to college. Go far. You are done with choosing between your parents; it has to be both of them, or neither. That is the only way to start putting your life back together. Go to college across the country. Visit your parents, but don’t visit often. Don’t stay at your parents’ houses. You’re done choosing. Instead, choose yourself.

Marry young. Marry the man you’ve been dating for a year, the man you met at college, the man you moved in with after five months. Know it’s too soon, but don’t speak up. Don’t ruin it for yourself. Introduce him to your parents, realize that you’ve married a replica of your father. Then realize that you’re making the same mistakes he did.

Have a kid, or two, and that’s when the fighting starts. Unconsciously unite your children through their shared hatred for you and what you’re doing to their family. You’ve started the cycle again, and your children will follow in your footsteps someday. Keep yourself together as long as you can, living with the man you’ve come to despise. Hold onto the railing with all your strength until your first kid goes off to college, and then let go and fly. You don’t need your husband anymore. Break free, you’re free, now run! No divorce, no, it’s just another mistake.

You’re not enough for your youngest daughter. She can’t stand life without her older sister, the only person she thinks understands what she’s going through. Because of your divorce, her sister was her only steady family. She’s too young to realize that you were lost without your sister too, when you went off to college, that it was practically unbearable to leave her behind in a broken home without you there to remind her that she was loved. Because of what you’ve done to your daughter’s family, you’ll never be enough for her. You’ll never been enough for yourself, either.

Both of your kids are at college, as far away from you as possible, and your mother is dead. She never remarried like your father did, because she never thought that she was ever good enough for anyone. When you were little, you tried to convince her that she didn’t need to remarry, because you desperately wanted to believe that just you and your sister were good enough for her. But she didn’t understand, and she never stopped looking for someone else. Someone besides you.

Your face is sagging and wrinkled by the time your father dies. You cry most of all for him. Both of your kids have already started their first marriages, and they don’t know what’s waiting for them behind the curtain of ignorance. With your divorce, they’ve only seen a glimpse. You believed that you could change your fate, stray from your parents’ path, break the chain, but you didn’t. You couldn’t. Neither will your children.

Life is on fast-forward now. You see the tragedies all around you and it’s quiet; blissfully peaceful. Realize that your own death means you’re finally done with the endless game that is life itself; you won but you also lost, because to win, you have to know how to play. Realize that the only winner is the creator of the game himself. But don’t welcome death when it comes. It’s there to drag you kicking and screaming across the finish line.