My Single Mom Life

While Sebastian was at school today, Mark and I had a very long talk about a lot of things.
It started out with how he was feeling about some stuff, some issues that he didn't quite know how to bring up to me.
I told him the same thing that I have always told my sons, "No matter what you say to me, I promise I will not get mad at you, ever, I may hurt, but I won't get mad, and I PROMISE that I will NEVER stop loving you."

So he told me some things about how some people who have been in my life just a little bit longer than my sons have, just some of my extended family, really feel about me.
I am hated actually, and I can understand why, I really can.
I'm one of the only ones in my extended family who has never forgiven my ex-husband for the things that took place during all of the short years we were together.
He's a changed man you see, yet I have not forgiven him like they all have.
He's never asked for it, he's never apologized, so how can I forgive someone who has never apologized or asked to be forgiven?
I have not forgotten or forgiven him for the things that he's done to me or to my sons, he hurt my sons terribly, and I love them more than my own life.

The conversation with Mark went on for hours, things that I am being accused of doing, still, but now by them, people who live in Maine, thousands of miles away, people who never see me or speak to me unless I pay for us to fly up there.
I just love being accused of doing all kinds of drugs, not just the drugs that my doctor prescribes to me on a monthly basis, but hardcore street drugs, like cocaine, and heroin.
Did you all know that I was shooting up?
Between my toes so that there's no visible track marks on my arms or body?
Did you know that?
Did you know that they sit and talk about how I need to go in for some very serious opiate detox very soon?
I'm not to be trusted with money, ever, I'm a thief, a liar, a strung-out junkie and a horrible mother.
Did you know those things?!?

Yes, these are the things that I am told that I am and am doing, they are told to my sons who spend day after day with me, they would know if I was doing those things, they would see me doing those things, yet, at the very same time I am all of those things, I am expected to come up with enough money to fly the three of us up north to Maine every single year so that the teens can visit all of their family.
I am a disabled and single mother living on a very limited income, yet I'm supposed to somehow come up with ALL of the money to fly us all up there every year before the older relatives die ya know?
Does anyone, has anyone, EVER offered to help me buy the plane tickets for us to get up there?!
Hell no!
Have any of them ever come here to visit us?
Hell no!
It's expensive dammit!
And oh forbid that I say that I can't afford it one year, I am guilted so bad for it, but um, hello?!
Did y'all miss the part about me being a single and disabled parent living on a very, very limited income?!

I do the absolute very best that I can every single day of my life.
I pay the bills, I buy the food, I work as much and as hard as I can, I take damn good care of my sons, they have turned out really amazingly well, and believe me, it was not because anyone helped me, I did it all by myself.
People who sit in judgment of me, saying all of those horrible things, hating on me, yet my sons have turned out incredible, and that is because of me, so if I am so freaking bad, how did they turn out so damn good huh?
HUH?!?!?

I would really, absolutely, sooo TOTALLY LOVE for that Freaky Friday kind of stuff to be true.
I would love for all of the people who sit in judgment of me, to spend just 24-48 hours in my body, in my life, do what I do every single day of my life, live it.
Hell, spend a week inside my body, swap souls with me, live my life, and then at the end of it, I can guarantee that they will be BEGGING to go back to their own bodies and lives, and then maybe they will shut up and leave me and mine alone.
What's that saying?

"Before you accuse, criticize, and abuse- walk a mile in my shoes".