Monday, July 1, 2013

You Think Being A Working Mom Is Easy? Where Did You Leave Your Brain?

    I have written about how I don't think moms should judge each other based on their stay home or working status. I think comparing difficulties in those situations is rather like comparing apples and oranges. I was a stay-at-home mom with my daughter until she was two, then worked for a year, and then quit and was a stay-at-home mom until she started kindergarten, so having been in both roles, I say that in my own experience, the stresses and problems you deal with are totally different and equally hard. I respect both, and just because I am a working mom, that does not mean that I look down on stay-at-home moms. I don't.
   That being said, I am not taking bullshit comments about how much easier being a working mom is, which is what fired up this response: someone has said it. And I am - in the most public way that I have available to me - I am calling bullshit. Being a working mom is not easy. I get to talk to people outside the home? I get more adult interaction? Fine. You know what I also get? I get to miss important milestones because I was gone, earning the money needed to keep a roof over my kid's head. I missed the last school open house because my request for time off was not granted. Know what else I miss? The assurance that my kid is being treated well. My daughter was in daycare, and she was badly mistreated by one of the workers. Having gone through that, do you think that this is ever NOT on my mind when I am not with her? Even when she is with family, whom I trust explicitly, they are not me. Do you know how hard that is? And not just for 'date night' but five days a week. I miss a lot. And when my daughter was younger, she told me that she wouldn't mind if I got fired because I would be home more. Do you think that my heart didn't break into a million pieces? So here you have just one of the hardships of being a working mom: the worry and the guilt of being out of the house so often.
   I don't have to depend on someone else for money? Well, I suffered from economical abuse, so I do understand that. Having to ask for money sucks. Not feeling like you contribute financially makes you feel small at times, so I do get that. Making money is one of the perks of working. But my money isn't extra. Some working moms work for the extra income,  but my my income is the ONLY income. If I don't work, no food, no apartment, no school clothes, and so-on and so-forth. But I don't have to ask some tightwad jerk, and I am assuming that if this is one of your arguments then you are with a tightwad jerk. I don't get this one from the women who are allowed access to the funds, some of you have good guys. So, we will say perk. The con? I've had a rotten day, people have been rude, the debit was down for two hours, someone cussed me out in English, someone else cussed me out in Spanish, someone else cussed me out in Russian, and I am exhausted, but I still have to go home and cook dinner. But the stove handle falls off the stove, so first I have to get out my handy-man tools and screw that thing back on. Again. I don't get to come home and put my feet up. My daughter has a cold, I have to make sure she gets her medicine, laundry has been waiting for me the last three days and I am getting to the point where putting that chore off is not going to be an option unless we want to run around naked, and something is clogging the toilet again, so I need to put that plumbing hat on. Days off? Those are chore days. Catch up on the house work days. Take daughter to appointment days. My motherhood duties do not get suspended because I work.
    And while I do not have to listen to all the soap opera and bonbon jokes, which is total bullshit, and I know that, I do have to listen to the 'good mother's stay home with the kids' cracks. Apparently, women like me are destroying the family structure. Because I deserve all the blame for America's divorce rate. Staying with an abusive, shiftless jerk who was sucking the life from me was the better option, how could I have not seen that? If I would have just let him finish convincing me that I was the lowest form of life on the planet, no one would ever get divorced again. Men and women wouldn't cheat on each other, no one would suffer partner abuse ever again, kids would always have two parents and neither of those parents would ever hurt them, and diamonds would fall out of all of our mouths when we spoke, and rainbows would burst from our asses when we shit. Everything would be sunshine and roses.
    I do not try to put my issues above anyone's; many of my closest friends are stay-at-home moms, and they have stress just as much as I do and they have just as many problems. I am not writing this to say that being a working mom is harder. I am not writing this to make my life seem like it sucks, because my life does not suck. I'm writing this to say that sometimes people suck, I hate judgmental assholes, and if you don't like my life fine, but ignore me, don't get in my face and try to convince me that I am taking the easy way out. If you think that, you don't know me, and you don't know the things I have been though, and you don't understand where I am trying to go. And if you are the type of person who is just going to pass judgement without an attempt at gaining some understanding and new perspective, then you are not the type of person that I want to know me. So let's just agree to leave each other alone.
   

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