I just want to take a moment to express my feelings on parents (single parents specifically) and the hatred and less than appealing outlook outsiders have on them. I hear a lot of negative comments daily about single parents. Comments such as "Well, they should have made better judgement before choosing that person as a partner to begin with", or "Their child is going to grow up hating them because of their ignorant choices." I have heard more than these remarks but I will just leave these two up for a starter. I want to express with certain individuals that while some people failed to make the best judgement, that is not always the case.
*Note that this is my personal experience and it is not intended to justify the rights and wrongs of any specific gender.
I met my childrens father when I was 16 years old, a sophmore in High School. We hit it off really well and started dated a short 10 months later. As the months passed, we were deemed as the "Golden Couple" by not only our friends, but our teachers and families as well. We never argued and we always had each others back. We were a very giving couple. Even giving away our Prom King and Queen title and crowns away to a couple who was of less popularity than we were (High school is ignorant with labels). We stood beside each other throughout all of our hardships. I stood beside him when his best friend was murdered, when his mother was diagnosed with Lymphoma, when his grandmother passed from Dementia, and when he was struggling while juggling school and work to support his family during his mothers Chemotherapy. He stood beside me when my best friend, cousin, and sister died, he stood beside me when I battled with depression and self image issues, and he stood beside me when my brother was diagnosed with Leukemia. We never questioned each others loyalty. And at the end of the day, no matter how hard our lives seemed in the moment, we knew that we had each other.
We graduated High school together and went to separate colleges. People said the distance would break us, but it didn't. And soon after we graduated college, 4 years later, we were able to save up enough money to purchase our first home. We never got tired of each other. People often said that we took the "honey moon phase" to a whole new level and we were often used as an example of the 'perfect' relationship. Nothing we did ever made our love start to dwindle away into nothingness. Our life seemed perfect. We had the house, the Sunday dinners with both of our families every week, the perfect careers, and each other. We supported each other through everything, no questions asked. He was my best friend.
A year after we purchased our home he decided that we were ready to have children. Marriage was in our near future so I agreed to this. The idea of starting a family with him completely spiked my emotions. After all, I knew him better than I knew myself. And at that point we were 8 years into our relationship, and nothing had even began to come between us. Three short months later we found out we were expecting. We were overjoyed, but my excitement soon started to turn into fear and anxiety. The guy that I thought I knew so well started to become emotionally abusive and controlling. He wouldn't let me do anything anymore because he didn't want me to hurt the baby. He would often get stressed out and lash out at me for no reason. I spoke to my mother about it and she said that he could be simply taking on my emotional end of the pregnancy; where that has been known to happen in couples that are as close as we were. I brushed it off and dealt with it.
After we had our son things started looking up. We were back to normal and we grew even stronger as a couple. Our son was overwhelmed with love and affection and we never wanted to go anywhere without him. Our son is perfect. I lost all the baby weight like it was nothing and we got right back into our normal daily life. 10 months after I had my son I found out that I was pregnant again. This came as a shock, where we had taken precautions (I was on birth control). The doctors simply brushed it off stating that sometimes birth control just doesn't work. And this was when things started falling apart.
This loving man that I thought I knew so well became more and more emotionally abusive. Not only to me, but to our son as well. And eventually, it got so bad that I moved out of our home and in with my mother. My childrens father started using Marijauna; blowing loads of money on it ($200 a week). And the frequent visitations that we had together slowly started to fall to rare occasions. He started making excuses for not wanting to come see our son, and eventually he stopped calling.
When I went into labor with our daughter I called him and he came in. Surpisingly enough, he wasn't high. However, he wasn't the attentive man I once knew. He stood in the corner of the room on his cell phone while my mom and his mother held my hands. Soon after delivering our daugher I was diagnosed with preacclampsia due to the stress I was under. He did nothing but make my condition worse and was almost kicked out of the room several times for cocking an attitude with the nurses for no reason. He wouldn't even allow our son to climb up on the bed with me. Eventually I told him to leave and told him that I couldn't allow my children to be raised seeing his nasty behavior.
Months down the road he seemed to have changed. He had admitted himself in AA meetings and Anger Mangement classes and it seemed like his life was gradually putting itself back together. But only after a year of being back in the home the abuse started happening again. This time he started getting physical. He smacked my son in the mouth and then grabbed my arms, pinning them behind my back while he screamed in my face for "allowing that boy to fuck with his shit". I called my mother instantly and had her come grab me from the home because he even went to the extreme of taking my car keys and throwing them in the field.
It has been 2 1/2 years since I left him. My son is 4 and my daughter is 3. They never question me or ask me why their dad isn't around. I don't keep them from seeing him, but most of the time he simply doesn't want to. He still lives in our home, with his new girlfriend and her 2 kids who he moved in a week after I left. I get along really well with his new girlfriend and I refuse to put my hatred toward him on her or on my kids. My high school sweetheart turned abusive when we had kids. I often blamed myself for it, thinking that I did something wrong. But now, I realize that it was never my fault for the way he reacted. I didn't make poor judgement and it is not my fault that I am single mother. He changed when we had kids. It happens. And I can't exactly hold that against him.
I will always love him and think back on the good that we had. He gave me the best things anyone ever could; at the top of that list- My perfect children.
So next time that you want to judge a single parent and make rude assumptions based on what you see on the outside, just think about their lives for a minute. Being a parent is hard; being a single parent is just as hard. And in a lot of cases, it has nothing to do with poor judgement.
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