[generic_hippie]

the divorce was hard on me, I was the newly appointed older child after the trauma had seen my elder brother and sister leave home is search of greener pastures

Suddenly I was in this new role of shoulder for both parents to cry on, well, drunken rage and idiot self-pity on would probably be a more accurate description than cry on, but you can imagine what it was like.

when they first actually seperated and it got really hard. My younger sister was four years behind me and got to spend a lot of time with my mother's sisters.

I got to spend a month at a time with each parent who would share with me intimate details of the betrayals they felt they had been subjected to, each full of the same bitterness and anger and each relying on me for somewhere to vent, (not to mention the spying and shit they expected me to do on each other).

Fast forward five years to our next family gathering, a Christmas dinner and we were all doing particularly well by our standards, (until mother's new boyfriend phoned to wish her well). I got really drunk that night and chose to call a policeman names so I wouldn't have to pay for a motel.

The last time we were all together was at Dad's funeral five years after the last supper, 1989. My brother couldn't deal with his grief and broke my nose.