Big bad ugly word

Divorce: total separation; disunion

My mother called to tell me it's official. My mom and my step-dad are getting divorced. They've been separated since whenever the last time I posted and said she told me that "lovely" piece of news in October? Probably since before then, realistically they've been separated since my stepdad started his acting studio in San Francisco two years ago. But my mom got her fancy job and doesn't need him anymore... It's probably for the best, they don't really make each other happy anymore but I really just feel like screaming at them or forcing them to reminisce with me all the good times we had since they've been together. Maybe that's why I need photographs of everyone around me all the time. I don't want to forget. They've been together since I was four-and-a-half, maybe five. Which means they were together for sixteen years. And contrary to my mother's current beliefs, it wasn't all bad. A lot of it was excellent. A lot of it we were a perfectly normal, well normal would be stretching it, but we were fucking happy. Not all the time of course, but we were a family. A family that had season tickets to our hometown college basketball teams (women's and men's), went to opening night of many a play that my stepfather directed, or acted in, went to my brother's acting and sporting events and even my (miserable) attempts at acting and sports (Basketball was the family sport and if you didn't play you recorded on video from the stands... aka my mother's post at most games). I only started playing because I wanted to be around my stepdad and stepbrother more often. My stepfather, counter to what my mother and her friends will say, is a good man. Hard to get along with or even get to know, but a good man. He was at every birthday and every performance I ever had. I've told you all this before but for some reason my mom still forgets. Frankly I feel sick. You don't just forget the most important events of your daughter's life. You don't forget the last sixteen or seventeen of yours? Do you? Maybe divorces don't all take place because of all the shit that went wrong. It's that you forget everything that went right.