I must not be a ver good mother
When I was married, back in the 70's, I had two beautiful little girls. Unfortunately, I was married to an alcoholic who couldn't (or wouldn't, who knows) support us, and had to go to work in order to get money to support us. My youngest was 6 months old when I completed schooling and got my first real job. I made $103 per week, and the daycare wanted $72.50 per child per week, so I had to hire family members or friends (yes, I had friends back then) to babysit.
During the first 6 months of my employment I went through 9 different babysitters, and nearly lost my job because of the number of times that I had to leave work because the babysitter suddenly decided that they didn't want to babysit anymore. Well, most of those were in-laws, quite frankly, and the entire family had a bit too close an aquaintance with the spirit world, if you know what I mean.
From the time I met my now late husband until the time that we purchased our home together we lived in 6 different apartments. We had landlords banging on the door, power, telephone, or gas shut off, and near evictions in each place. Much of the time, this was while I was pregnant or right after I had given birth.
Years of instability and crisis, all the while struggling to stay on top of things and figure out why my life was like this because, believe it or not, it took me years to realize that it was because of him. Well, because of the alcohol.
And I had messes to clean up that were beyond imagination - both financial and physical. I can remember having to come home from a full day of work and do 3 loads of laundry each day during the week, every week, never catching up, having to, at one point, pry his dirty cloths out from under the refridgerator, while he was lying on the living room floor playing the atari games that he had spent most of his paycheck on that week.
My children suffered from all of this. Years and years of this. I was married for 16 years, and almost all of it was like this. Constant instability; constant work; constant mess.
I can understand why my children have no respect for me, because they blame me for it all. Their father was the fun one - I forgot how to have fun a very long time ago. I forgot how to hope a long time ago.
During the first 6 months of my employment I went through 9 different babysitters, and nearly lost my job because of the number of times that I had to leave work because the babysitter suddenly decided that they didn't want to babysit anymore. Well, most of those were in-laws, quite frankly, and the entire family had a bit too close an aquaintance with the spirit world, if you know what I mean.
From the time I met my now late husband until the time that we purchased our home together we lived in 6 different apartments. We had landlords banging on the door, power, telephone, or gas shut off, and near evictions in each place. Much of the time, this was while I was pregnant or right after I had given birth.
Years of instability and crisis, all the while struggling to stay on top of things and figure out why my life was like this because, believe it or not, it took me years to realize that it was because of him. Well, because of the alcohol.
And I had messes to clean up that were beyond imagination - both financial and physical. I can remember having to come home from a full day of work and do 3 loads of laundry each day during the week, every week, never catching up, having to, at one point, pry his dirty cloths out from under the refridgerator, while he was lying on the living room floor playing the atari games that he had spent most of his paycheck on that week.
My children suffered from all of this. Years and years of this. I was married for 16 years, and almost all of it was like this. Constant instability; constant work; constant mess.
I can understand why my children have no respect for me, because they blame me for it all. Their father was the fun one - I forgot how to have fun a very long time ago. I forgot how to hope a long time ago.
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