20 years ago

There are days in your life that cause a seismic change for you, the life you are leading, the goals you have for yourself and or your life, this change causes you to veer off the road you were on and find a new path. 

One such day occurred for me 20 years ago today, 20 YEARS!!! 20 years ago my then husband told me he wasn't in love with anymore and it wasn't all his fault. Full stop, record scratch, seismic shift in my life. And pain, oh the pain of heartbreak, the pain of anger, the pain of embarrassment, the pain of failure. 

I knew this day was coming, I know it every March, some times I remember the year sometimes I don't. This year I know the year. I think because I realized it has been so long and because talking about it doesn't make me angry anymore. When the 10 year anniversary of this day arrived, I called my ex to wish him a happy anniversary. I thought I was over it and it was funny to call him on this day that changed my life. But looking back I still carried anger with me. This year I don't want to talk to him, I don't need to relive this day. Instead I am going to look at all all that has changed in 20 years. 

20 years ago I was in college with a 4 year old in preschool. Today I have a steady job that I am pretty good at, if I do say so myself, with a 24 year old out in this world plus a 5 year old who is in preschool. 

20 years ago I moved us in with my grandmother sharing one room and a twin bed. Today I have a house I purchased 10 years ago that has room for all of us. 

20 years ago I was broken and angry and lost. Today I have the love of a man who sticks by me even when times are tough and I get a little crazy. 

A lot has changed over these 20 years. I like my life now, I love my life now, I like the person I am, I like the relationships I have with family and friends. I like that I still have my son's family in my life, that his grandmother is also my daughters grandmother, not by blood but by love. I like that we have added to our family, my in laws accepted me and my son as part of the family. There isn't difference between him and my daughter, except that he is older and doesn't like to do all the kid stuff or vacation with us. I like that my family accepted my husband and his introverted ways into our family. I have a great husband and family. 

That seismic shift I felt 20 years ago wasn't a bad shift as I feared it would be. That seismic shift lead me to my husband, to my family, and to where I am supposed to be in life. So 20 years after that seismic shift I raise a glass to that shift and am thankful to where I am and who I am today. 

My Body My Choice

 At present Roe V Wade is being adjudicated again in many states and in the supreme court. This is such a hot button issue and it's driving me batty! 

I am PRO-CHOICE, I do not believe anyone has the right to tell me what I should do with my reproductive organs. It infuriates me that the states that are banning abortions are not putting any kind of clause into the laws for the woman's health. If the woman's health is in jeopardy that doesn't matter to these law makers, how is that even right? How can you be pro-life for a fetus but not the person carrying the fetus?  Why are there no clauses for rape? If the argument is a woman shouldn't have sex if she doesn't want to have a child, what if she is raped? she didn't want to have sex. What if a girl is being abused by a family member? Why are there no clauses to protect women from incest? What if carrying the fetus will cause the mother to pass away? Not all women are aware of issues before they get pregnant. 

What if the child tests for special needs that are beyond what the mother can handle? Are there programs in place to help the mother figure it out? Are their programs in place to support the child for the rest of their life? There are countless go fund me pages to help parents with special needs children get the help they need bc our health care system FAILS to help all. 

If you think about it a man can have sex with a hundred woman in a year and have 100 babies but if a woman has sex with a 100 men in a year she can only bring to term one pregnancy. Why are the laws being written to force a woman to carry a child to term. Why are the laws not being written to keep men from spreading their seed? 

A vasectomy is reversible so why not have all men get a vasectomy until they are ready to fully support a child? If a life begins at conception is that when child support starts? A man does have to be involved to conceive a child so when does his responsibility start? Probably not bc even though it takes a man to have a baby the woman is going to have to prove it's his child. Why is a woman's word not good enough? She didn't get herself pregnant. 

Are the laws that are being written including support for the poor mothers who have to bring a child to term? WIC and other social services? Are they including child care help? Are they including some sort of maternity leave reimbursement? What about health care help? Is funding being increased for foster care system if the woman chooses to give up the child? 

If these lawmakers truly believe life begins at conception they need to add help into these laws rather than just adding in ways to go after the DR's or women who choose to do what is right for themselves, their bodies, and their health be it physical or mental. 

As many people are standing up to fight for their right to choose whether or not to get this vaccination need to stand up for the right of women to choose what to do with their bodies. 

Growing up together. A mother / son story. An introduction

2020 was a difficult year, it is now in the rear view mirror but we are still in the thick of this pandemic, there is hope that the vaccine will help and get us back to normal. however we are closing in on a year of this pandemic and the reverberations are going to continue for a while I fear. 

This past month my son has been struggling, I believe 2020 has finally crashed around him. As it was getting colder and the virus was ramping back up we asked him to stop hanging out with friends. They were indoors and honestly we weren't sure where everyone had been, we needed to close our circle some. It stinks, really stinks. But I think that coupled with the darker days created a tailspin for him and he is now falling apart. 

For me this is one of my biggest fears, mental health problems scare me bc your mind can play tricks on you. When people pass by suicide loved ones often say we didn't know, they were always so happy, why didn't they reach out. I never wanted to miss a warning sign so when he started crying and said he couldn't go to work. I wanted to cry, all I was thinking was oh no it's happening and I don't know what to do. he claims he doesn't want to hurt himself and I don't see any signs that he does so I am hopeful that we can battle through this. I am praying that my armor is strong enough to hold him up as well as myself. 

He had a meeting with a second counselor, one he liked much better yesterday. He was telling me about the intake and some of the basic questions, one of which was about his childhood, I joked that he better say it was awesome. His response was really mom my dad left me, I had no one to turn to when I needed them. Talk about a gut punch. 

I have always thought saying not having a father was annoying, when I was in high school there was an instance were a group of boys decided to beat up two men as the men were on their way home from work, the men were related in some way, brothers or cousins. One man was able to get away the other unfortunately passed. Some of the boys were charged, the oldest of the group being 18 was charged as an adult. The lawyer for this young man blamed his lack of a father on his behavior and I was outraged. to me it sounded like the lawyer was saying a woman couldn't teach her son that it was wrong to beat a person to death. This occurred only a couple of years before I had my own son and a few years before I was raising him on my own. but it stuck with me. I will raise my son to know right from wrong, I will raise my son to be a functioning member of society. 

I know this isn't about me and that I need to be strong for him. I know that he can only see things that are wrong in his life rather than what is right. But it still hurts my feelings for him to act like all would be right with his world if he just had his father. I talked to my own dad about my feelings. I know that it is not fair to dump my feelings about this onto my son as he is struggling, we need to get him better and then I can work out my feelings. In the conversation with my dad I mentioned that my son told me a couple of months ago that until he understood the reason behind the divorce he wasn't sure he could trust me. In his mind his father left so he couldn't trust him and he wasn't sure if I was the cause so he wasn't sure he could trust me. his father and I split when he was 4 and he and I didn't have a conversation about things until he was 12. 

I told my dad that I did keep things hidden from my son. In my mind I have a personal life that is separate from my mom life. It was not my place to disparage his father. It was also not my desire for my son to see me out partying and living it up. I did but I didn't do it in front of  him, he was always with family, most of the time by his own choice, when I was out enjoying some much needed time to myself. My dad said that maybe it's time to tell my son about my experiences and what I did and why I did it so he would get to know me as a person and not just mom. 

This is a longwinded introduction to my story of growing up as I was raising my son. Maybe if I get it all out in parts I will be able to show it to him, he will be able to know more of the things that I did and why. Maybe, just maybe, this will  help him see his childhood in a different light. 

I am Pro-Choice

I am Pro-Choice, I choose to have my son at 17 and it was HARD and I had a great support system. I had my family, my sons family, my church family, friends, and later my partners family that were all supportive. It was still the hardest thing I have ever done. I cannot fathom why people feel its their right to put rights on someone else's body.

I don't understand why in 2019 women are still under attack. These laws that are being enacted against women, where are the laws against men? What is being done to stop men from making babies and leaving? Are there new laws being enacted to support the women and children after they are born? These laws are supposedly about children and saving them. Ok so these children have life, now what? You have made it so they must be born but have any laws been enacted to support these children once they were born?

Are there laws being enacted that force the men in these situations to take care of their children? It does take a man and woman to create life. My son's father stood by me when I had my son but 4 years later decided he was done and left. It took me a lot of time and money to get help from the state to make him pay what he was supposed to pay.

My situation whereas is annoying is not as bad as others but here is what I had to deal with. My ex left me when I was still in college, he was making 2 x's as much as I was when we divorced. I wasn't even making $20K a year. He didn't pay child support for YEARS!!! I had to put him into the child support system to get anything out of him. In putting him in the system I had to pay all the fees associated with the child support account I set up. There was a set up fee. There was an annual fee, there was a fee if more then $X was collected in a calendar year, there was a fee if the state had to take his taxes from him bc he was behind. All those fees were paid by me. He was given the credit for them in his child support, so for example if he owed $300 that month and the fee was $25 he received credit for paying $300 and I received $275. He never had to pay a fee so the child was always shorted.

Our divorce agreement also stated he would cover health insurance, that lasted maybe a two years and that is being generous but it was calculated as part of his portion of support even though I covered it since my son was 6. He was supposed to pay 60 % of out of pocket expenses, he paid $0. My parents helped me out if things go crazy like when my son needed braces. I paid for all of my son's extracurricular activities, no help from his father at all.

I know that my situation was annoying but by far was better than many other people face. So this comes back to my question, what is being done to support these children that are being born to mothers who didn't want to carry them for one reason or another? Are the foster care systems getting more funding? Are adoption policies being updated to make them easier for people who want to adopt to be able to? On the flip side if the mother chooses to keep the child what support is being given to her? Is the father being forced to pay child support? Are the child support systems being redesigned so that if the father moves states, like my ex did, that they talk to each other. My ex moved twice after our split to two different states. It took years to get it straight bc the states give each other months to respond to requests.

Where is the help after the child is born? There is so much more to life than just being born. There is so much more wrong within our country that needs to be addressed aside from regulating women's reproductive organs!

So... from my understanding (and I admit I could be wrong) vasectomies are simple procedures AND reversible. So why not create a law that makes men get a vasectomy until they have been deemed responsible enough to have children? That could help bring down the amount of unwanted pregnancies and would put some responsibility on the other partner of the pregnancy equation. 

I choose to have my son, I was lucky to have that choice. I have stood by my friends as they have had children on their own or with partners. I have also sat in planned parenthood an entire day supporting a friend who choose not to have a child. It is not my business what someone else chooses to do, nor is it yours to judge my decisions. I know plenty of people who disagree with me and that is fine everyone is entitled to their own opinions but your opinion does not get to regulate my body. If we cannot sterilize child molesters bc they have rights, then you should not be able to regulate my reproductive organs bc I have rights.

I am the dad from My Big Fat Greek Wedding

This year has been a difficult one for me. I have had this funk around me. I try to push through and I make myself go out and do things even when I HATE being out and with people. Becoming one with my couch has been much more enjoyable lately, not even pigging out just zoning out and watching netflix or some other TV shows. I think tonight I put a finger on what has been bugging me. I am so sad that my son is growing up and leaving me. In my head I can see the dad from My Big Fat Greek Wedding when he starts to whine, "why do you want to leave me" and I can totally understand that feeling.

Tonight we went to the band banquet, I drove myself and the kid came separately with his GF. Tomorrow we are all going to a baseball game. He asked for his and hers tickets tonight so they can drive together and I had to ask him if we could ride together. I even said I would ride with him, I don't need to drive, but I had to ask. IDK why this makes me want to cry but it surely does. That is when it hit me, this is going to be my life with him from now on.

He is going to continue to grow and become more independent and I am going to be on the sidelines. I know I have been on the sidelines for a while but now that he is driving and has a job my sideline position is growing and I am sad.

I was never a person to cry at life events, aside from funerals, but at happy events I don't cry at bc they are happy events and I don't want to cry during happy times. However at this moment when the child is moving on and growing up all I want to do is cry and bury my head in the sand. I have his senior pictures but have not been able to give them out. I have told people when his graduation party is but I have been unable to put out the official invite for this event. I am struggling and I think it's bc if I give out the pictures or officially plan the party it makes his growing up real and I am not ready.

Question: Why is he leaving me???
Answer: Because it's time and that is what happens when people grow up.

How do you change the way you are seen to others?

This past week there have been two comments about the fact that I was a teen mom. The first was really quite rude and the guy who made apologized immediately for it bc he knew he had gone to far. But it got me thinking that really after all these years my life is not defined by being a mom but being a teen mom. Then today my mom and I were discussing my brother. I was expressing my opinion that he is 31 and needs to grow up and take care of his stuff instead of dropping it on my parents like he is doing right now. She then says well you made a bad decision when you were 17. WOW nothing I ever do will be good or get her approval bc when I was 17 I got pregnant. Now mind you the brother who we were discussing got himself into trouble in hs too, he got expelled for a time, it was over turned but he too got into trouble. Does she bring this up with him? Does she hold things over his head? Nope she continues to clean up his messes and if I mention it she throws it in my face that I had my son as a teen.

And I let her get to me. As I am typing this, I have tears streaming down my face. I am not saying that for someone to tell me it is ok and the my mom is horrible. I am saying it to show that her opinion affects me and her words still have a way to cut me like a knife. For fuck sake the kid is about to graduate from HS he has a job and has a plan for his future but bc I had him when I was 17 he is tainted???

So let's look at what I have accomplished since I was 17. The last few months of my 17th year went as follows:
June: graduate high school
September: give birth
November: get married
January: start college

I took classes for 5 1/2 years to graduate. I also worked 30-35 hours a week and worked 5-6 days a week. I didn't take the easy way out. I worked. I have been paying my own bills since I got married.

I graduated from college a year after my ex left. I did have to work with a professor on a class a bit bc of the divorce but otherwise there was no delay in my studies, in fact I was able to graduate a semester before I thought I'd be able to. I worked my butt off. Yes my parents watched my son for me and paid for my degree (which they paid for both of my brothers to go to school too). The condition to watch my son was it had to be for school or work, they didn't watch him for me to go out and party. In fact I didn't go to a bar until I was 22 and with friends while my brother watched my son for me. My son was always my priority.

I was able to purchase a house when I was 31. My mother offered help with the down payment or rent at my last place but I declined I purchased this house on my terms.

My son may not have had everything he wanted and things were a struggle sometimes but I did have great family support. I had support from both my family, my son's family and the friends that have become family. And now I get support for my BF's family. I know that I am lucky that I have been able to accomplish what I have accomplished and that I wouldn't be here without the support of those around me.

But DAMN it was also me. It was also me that was going to school and working, sometimes 2 jobs, to help put food on the table. It was me that volunteered to be a team mom when the kid played baseball, it was me at his practices and games. It was me who drove to Delaware every weekend for a month to see him perform with the indoor drum line. It was me that volunteered with the band parents association and fundraisers for the band. This is all me, I did that.

So why does it matter anymore that I had him when I was young? Why have we not moved past this? How do I redefine myself as just a mom and not a teen mom? Why do I feel the need to qualify my accomplishments with an asterisk since I started younger than others and had help? I mean really haven't most people received help at one point in their lives or another?

I am not posting this for attention or to hear nice things about me, I am posting it as a reminder to myself that just bc I started young doesn't negate everything else I have done. My son is healthy and happy and about to graduate high school and I did that.

Mom life

I cannot imagine my life without my son but man some days I hate mom life. I hate all the fighting, I hate having to be the bad guy all the time, I hate have to micro manage him but most of all I hate that he is growing up. I was never one of those people who wanted to be a mom or dreamed of being a mom, that might be bc I had my son when I was 17 so I didn't have much time to dream about being a mom. But ever since I had him he has been my life. I have tried to be there for him, I have tried to be a active mother, meeting his teachers, being a team mom when he played ball, taking him to different skate parks when he was into that, and getting involved with the music department in his high school. I want to make sure that he knows that I am supporting him dreams. I want him to know that I will be there for him. Ever since high school started for him I have been dreading him graduating and moving away. I don't know why this has been so stressful for me. Its the natural progression of life, you grow up graduate and start life as an adult. I wonder if it has to do with the fact that my whole adult life has been being his mom, there was no time before for me to be an adult on my own so as he has grown so have I. Where will I be once he has graduated and moved out. Will I still be known as his mom? I know I will always be his mom and always be a mom but him graduating feels like a big part of my life is coming to an end, am I ready for this?

This might be why I think about having another child, since I still can and then that would delay me having to be an adult on my own for another 18 years. holy cow batman, this realization just came to me as I am typing this entry out.