Experiencing parental separation as an adult daughter

“In November 2022, my father disappeared from the face of the Earth for an entire weekend. When he closed the door to the house early that Friday morning, we all thought he was going to work, as he usually did. But he didn’t come back: we had no news from him on Saturday or Sunday. Nobody had seen him.

For context, for a while I felt like things were bad between my parents. Even though I didn’t follow the daily dynamic they both had at home, I realized on my trip to visit them in Curicó that, for example, at eleven o’clock there was no no topic of conversation, they remained glued to watching television. My mother constantly complained about not feeling supported and my father had been feeling depressed for a long time.

That day, when he didn’t answer the phone, we got worried. We imagine that something serious could have happened to him, especially since he is an elderly person, almost 70 years old. In fact, my sister was about to file a complaint about an alleged misfortune with the PDI. Until, during one of these attempts to locate him, he responded to us, as if nothing had happened. He told us ‘don’t worry, I’m fine, he’s coming to work’. After that, he never came home again.

The first few days, my mother thought she was going to get over it and that she was going through a crisis typical of her age. Then, over time, we discovered that he had actually gone to live with another person with whom he had probably had a parallel relationship for a long time.

I was shocked. At first I was very angry, not at myself, but at my mother. They had been together for over 30 years, so I didn’t understand what he was doing. I found him irresponsible and I wondered how at his age he didn’t have the courage to say that he didn’t feel good in this relationship and preferred to separate. It has only just begun.

As the months went by, my mother began to experience the breakup and I had to see her suffer a lot. I remember one time we went to see Mon Laferté and as soon as the concert started, she was already crying her eyes out. I had deep grief that I had to contain in my most intense moments of anger and pain. I was the only daughter the two had as a couple, so I became their confidant even though I was also clear that my bond with my father was going to be there forever. This bothered me because I wanted to know how he was doing, but at the same time, support my mother’s suffering. In the end, both put me at a crossroads: I didn’t know which side to stand on because, before being a pillar of support, I am also a girl.

This unexpected separation had repercussions on my relationships with others, particularly with my boyfriend with whom I have been with for three years. Not because we had any particular problems, but because of the way It changed my view of love. Now I began to see everything more fragile, I no longer had confidence in the strength of the bonds. I thought that if there was a conflict, it was easier to end it than to sit down, talk, and work it out together. It was a shock that broke me on every level and made me question the way I experienced my relationships. I asked myself, “What am I doing with my links?” Do I ask my partner and friends how they are?

All these thoughts I started having, I think, are related to the fact that I had to experience this separation as an adult daughter and not as a teenager. At 27, it is believed that family relationships are stable and that even if parents have problems and tricks, they will put up with it, because they have been doing it for years. It came to me saying, “You know what? It’s not like that, relationships can end at any time’ . Additionally, I felt like others didn’t understand the pain I felt because everyone I know with separated parents had gone through this process as children. Living with separated parents was normal for them, but not for me. When one is an adult and also independent, one assumes that these situations affect to a lesser extent. But that wasn’t my case. So I found myself isolated.

We stopped talking to my father for eight months. I didn’t want to have contact with him because I didn’t feel ready to hear him talk about his new life. Maybe it’s true that time helps things calm down, because as the weeks went by I wrote him a WhatsApp and said “Hello, how are you?” Like nothing ever happened. It was my way of reconnecting with a relationship that was never that close, but existed before the separation. He was very happy to hear from me and late last year he insisted on seeing me.

We met at the Curicó bus terminal after the New Year, January 1, 2024. Very contrary to what I expected – I thought I would almost hate him and I would vomit my anger at him – I was very happy to see him. It’s been a long time since we last met. Physically, he felt much better. I was happier. As soon as he could, he hugged me, asked me how I was, and wished me a happy new year. We talked about trivial things, but never the main topic because we both understood that now was not the time. When he said goodbye to me, in the middle of the hug, he said, “I know there are a lot of things I need to apologize for.” I replied that there would be time to talk about it.“.

Francisca is a journalist and is 27 years old.