The brutality of single motherhood is a living river with no beginning and no end. I am doing it all, and doing none of it well. There are days I open my eyes and have to box breathe myself out of a panic attack.
Will there be enough to pay the propane bill if they fill up my tank without telling me?
Can I pay for my son’s school clothes and have enough left for groceries?
What happens to him if something happens to me?
Am I spending enough quality time with him?
Why do I feel so empty and frantic all the time?
Did I follow up on that action item from the last meeting? Someone will throw me under the bus.
If I don’t log in now, they will question my work ethic and I’ll get fired.
Why hasn’t he reached out yet?
I need to fix that fence or the dogs will break out again.
I spent what I had in savings on the beach trip and I am so fucked if there is an emergency.
I wish someone would hold me and tell me this is going to be ok.
That is the average stream of consciousness in my head at any given moment. It is the silent juggling of all the things, the inability to focus on one of them, and the dirt and dog fur that keeps piling up under the kitchen table with no regard for human life and sanity.
Single motherhood is doing alone what so many do with partners. It’s having to be successful anyway, in a society built around the other half being present. It’s not wanting to be alone in this, but having standards high enough to know alone is better than tolerating whatever the fuck is going on with dating right now.
Single motherhood is watching other families through windows, outside looking in, and knowing I can’t give my son that experience. Mom and dad at the dinner table. Seeing me be treated well by a man who chose me. It is walking alone while my exes hold the hands of someone new and wondering what I did so wrong to be so repulsive. It is doubting myself so completely and still crushing whatever the day presents to me.
It is the lack of companionship.
It is the loneliness that seeps in at night.
It is falling apart and wanting to escape this life and knowing I can’t because all of this rests on me.
It’s giving time and energy to men who won’t stay and who just make life harder.
It’s pouring into others even when my own cup has long been empty.
It is feeling exposed and vulnerable in almost every way.
It is carrying all this alone and being crushed under it, and men walk by and only see my body and what they can get from it.
It is never truly resting, and never really relaxing.
“You used to be so much fun.” I say to the woman in the mirror and with my whole heart I wish I could go back to those days when I was fun and choose my life differently.
But it is also the satisfaction of learning how to repair the washing machine on my own. It is paying my own bills and buying my own groceries and never having to rely on someone who will let me down. It is the quiet on my phone where I used to anxiously check for messages.
It is the quiet in the rooms of the home I bought that has never known slammed doors, punched walls, or screamed insults. It is teachers telling me that my son listens very closely to everything I say, and he holds a conversation better than any other child his age. It is liquor staying in the house untouched for months where a bottle used to be downed and smashed the same evening it was purchased, because alcoholism doesn’t live here anymore. It is waking up and living every single moment the way I choose to live it without someone else telling me what I should be doing. It is no longer arguing over bills, arguing over school dropoffs, and having to negotiate volatile moods. It is not having to abandon myself for the sake of another adult ever again for the rest of my life.
Single motherhood is terrifying freedom. It is deafening peace. It is complete isolation. It is too many expectations stacked on one person’s shoulders. It is pride. It is grit. And I chose it. And I hate it. And I kind of don’t ever want to go back to that other kind of life. This is my life and these are the choices I made.
No one is coming to save me, but this time that’s ok. In my story, the princess saves herself.
Leave a Reply