parenting – Mama of a Sweet Little Monster

Looking Back

October 16, 2020October 16, 2020 monsterbossmamaLeave a comment

There have been a few moments in these past few weeks that have had me going through my social media pages to find pictures that I want to show to someone or look at in order to remember something relating to them. For the most part, since my marriage ended in early May of 2019, I have managed to not spend much time at all looking back at the pictures taken prior to the date where I knew something was wrong with my marriage…May 5, 2019. What should have been a joyous day as I had just run my 8th half marathon and hit some goals that day. Only to find that my ex husband and son were not at the finish line nor did he answer any of my phone calls and texts I sent afterwards…and I later found out that he and my son were out for brunch the entire time with the woman who is now his girlfriend.

But I digress.

Today I was trying to find a picture of a truck that the ex and I took over ownership on from my grandfather. This involved me having to go way back in the picture collection to see if I even had one picture of that truck. I didn’t. But going through the pictures I noticed a trend that started in late summer 2015, when our son was born, and carried on until today. The trend was pictures I had taken of my son and posted. It’s not an unusual trend for a parent to take a boat load of pictures of their child. But for me, seeing these pictures made me realize how many evenings and weekends where these pictures were taken, where it was just me and my son. My ex husband was rarely, rarely there. I know when he was actually there with us as I would make a point of including him in the pictures. But there are so few of them with him in them. I know when I was married and our son came into the world that my ex husband very much left me as a solo mother as he pursued his career and networking. I thought I was taking a short term risk in life in order to support him and in time the successes of that would pay off. I didn’t know the payoff would be our marriage ending and me becoming a single mother. But I think part of me didn’t realize HOW often my ex husband wasn’t working and he still never ever came and played with his son or came along on hikes with us or to the pool with us. It was always that he needed to deliver something to someone…and would take hours to do it before coming home and falling down on the couch. Or he arranged a last minute meeting or a forgotten about a meeting and he had to go to. Or he would have some kind of home project on the go that would never get fully completed. There was literally always an excuse as to why he couldn’t come and hang out with his family. It always bothered me but I still continued to invite him to come do stuff with us. It would take going and doing something that actually interested him in order to get him to spend time with us. A simple trip to the public pool or going to a playground wasn’t good enough for him to come and spend time with us. It needed to be something that didn’t bore him. Anyone who is a parent knows that often part of parenting is doing things that aren’t necessarily exhilarating for the parent but you do it for the love of your child. All of my pictures for four years show how truly absent he was.

It doesn’t make me sad that he wasn’t there for these small moments. It doesn’t matter to me because I was there and I get to hold those memories of the conversations we had while walking in the pouring rain on the trails in the mountains. I get to keep the memories of his firsts while at the pool. Those are mine and only mine and his dad now has to live with knowing how much he missed out on.

What it does though is make me angry. Angry that for the first four years of my son’s life that it was all me who raised the amazing little boy he is now. And now that we are separated and sharing him 50/50, my ex husband gets to bring him around to his friends and his family and basically reap the rewards of my hard work. He gets praised for being such a good dad, raising such a great little human. He now looks like this rockstar dad in everyone’s eyes. It makes me want to straight up scream and shake all of them and tell them what a deadbeat he was before he was FORCED into having to become a day to day parent. I know that I shouldn’t let the words other people use towards my ex and his parenting get to me….but they do. And they hurt. Sure, now he’s a good dad to our son and he’s creating lots of good memories and actually parenting….but hearing people praising him for a year of good parenting after I went through four years of doing it all alone and never heard any praise from him on how great I was doing…it sucks. He is succeeding in many ways as a parent because of what I created when he abandoned us constantly in evenings and weekends. It’s tough.

I am mostly keeping my head afloat these days since it’s been about a year and a half since our split. But some days just one little moment can knock me down again.

First Day

September 17, 2020 monsterbossmamaLeave a comment

Along with the big milestone of turning 5 years old comes the even bigger milestone of graduating from daycare/preschool and starting real school for my little boy. This is a big moment for both the child as well as the parents.

Today was day one of my son having his first full day at school. He started his gradual entry into kindergarten on Monday and they jumped the kids into full days pretty quickly. Maybe it’s normal…maybe it’s not. I’m not sure. The road to get to this day has been a pretty rough one. Because not only is sending your child off to his first day ever of school a bit rough, but doing it in the middle of a global pandemic is even harder. We had no clue even if schools were going to be opening their doors in September here in Canada. My ex and I spent weeks talking back and forth on what the hell we are supposed to do if the schools don’t open. My son has aged out of preschool and daycare so that’s not an option. We live in a small town and finding a nanny is like finding a needle in a haystack. The babysitter who we hired for the last 1.5 months went back to school as well so she wasn’t an option. We were at a major loss on what we would do. And then there was the discussion of if we should even be sending him to school when Covid-19 transmission rates have been moving up faster than they have since the pandemic hit Canada. Do we take that risk? Both of us need to work so staying home with him was not an option. So we had to make an incredibly hard decision to send him off to school, to expand his “bubble” way beyond what we have been keeping it at and basically just stand back and keep our fingers crossed that we aren’t going to face the repercussions of that decision.

So we made it to this week and with nerves abundant for everyone, he started school. My ex took him for the three days of gradual entry as I need to preserve my vacation time from work just in case the schools do end up closing or he gets sick. He is a different kid with his dad and he isn’t as clingy so there was minimal issue with him on those gradual entry days. He became pretty happy to go into the classroom. He even made a new friend. He didn’t get assigned to the teacher that we had hoped he would, but that’s life. We have been told that all the kindergarten teachers at this school are great.

Today I was able to be there to drop him off at his first FULL day of school. There was a lot of whining beforehand of the “I don’t want to go to school.” “School is booooring.” “I want to stay home with you.”, etc. But I got his little butt out of the truck and we met up with his Dad, who wanted to be there for the milestone day. Not entirely sure why he bothered coming along as he basically stood off to the side with his nose in his phone, but whatever. Not my problem that he chose to not be overly involved. We walked to the outside door entrance to the classroom and sat down on the bench and chatted about all the exciting things he’s going to learn. I watched him as he carefully observed all of the other kids who are in his class. My son is very observant and is the kind of kid who will sit back and take a situation in before he jumps head first into it. So this is likely how he will go about carefully selecting new friends. Finally the bell went off and the kids all had to sit on a bench outside the classroom and wait for their teacher to come out. She came outside and was holding a fist full of yellow string. She had each of the kids give their parent a string and reminded them of the story they read yesterday. It was about the “invisible string” and that if a child gives a string to their parent, it then creates an invisible connection between the two of us even though mom or dad aren’t right there. Naturally Hunter didn’t want to take the string from the teacher and was acting shy. So the teacher gave me the string. I now have it tied to my keychain and sitting here on my desk at work. Reminding me of my sweet boy’s first big day at school. When it came to the teacher getting the kids to line up and get ready to enter the class she announced that she was going to walk all the kids through what they are going to do every morning with their bags and how to unpack them each day. She then asked that parents not come into the class this morning so she could get through this instruction. Understandable. But not understandable to my little boy who had visions in his head of showing the classroom to me. Cue the tears. He was the last in line to get his hand sanitizer and walk through the door of the classroom. He turned around and his teacher started to close the door. He burst into bigger tears and was saying “mommy don’t leave” repeatedly while stretching out his little hand to try to get me to hold it. I just kept saying “you’re going to do great and will have so much fun!” repeatedly while the teacher gently grabbed his hand and directed him into the classroom. As the door shut behind her all I could hear was him crying out for me. I peeked in the window and I saw her talking to him while he stood there sobbing and rubbing his eyes. Heart.breaking. My ex muttered something like “He’ll be fine. It’s par for the course.” and he started to walk off. I followed behind him as I had nothing to say to him. He obviously picked up on how upset I was and he reminded me of how well my son did on the first three days of school and how he’s a kid who has no problems making friends and that he will be perfectly fine. I mumbled back a “Yeah, I know. It still hurts the heart though.” and then we went our separate ways.

I got into my truck and started to drive to work and spent the entire 40 minute drive trying to fight back tears. My tears aren’t from being upset that he was crying. Rational me knows he was likely completely fine moments after the door closed and had the distraction of new classroom rules and direction. What is hard on my mama heart is that today marks the day where some of my biggest fears that came to surface the moment he was born, are now a possibility. I am terrified of the world that our kids are growing up in. It is scary and so unknown for me. With social media and cellphones it’s just fucking terrifying. My biggest fear for my son is that he will be bullied. I am straight up terrified of the possibility that my spirited, gentle, loving child’s soul can get crushed by a bully. I know I have resources and good friends who have had kids who have been bullied who I can lean on….but my spirit just can’t take being crushed because some child chooses to be mean to mine. I also am fearful that he will be excluded by other kids while trying to make friends. He has no issue making friends and literally makes them everywhere he goes….but it’s still an irrational, yet rational fear I have. I want my little boy to have a solid group of friends as he grows older. I know life isn’t perfect and friendships change constantly as we get older, even as adults, but I want him to be excited to go to school to see his friends. I want him to have kids to come to his birthday parties. I want him to have kids nearby that he can go outside and play with. And I’m so, so, so hopeful that I don’t have to one day soon have my little boy in tears because nobody wanted to play with him at school during recess. I understand both of these things are completely out of my control, and I can only do my best at caring for my son and supporting him. But I get so nervous about them happening to him and I will probably forever live in a little bit of fear over it.

Parenting is fucking hard. And the whole new roller coaster of emotions that come with a child starting school makes it even harder. I’m now counting down the minutes until I can get in my truck and drive back to the school and pick my little boy up. Hoping and keeping my fingers crossed that he had such a good day that he can’t wait to go back tomorrow!

Back At It

July 20, 2020 monsterbossmamaLeave a comment

I took a fairly long break from writing about anything on here. In fact, I wasn’t even coming on here to read any words written by others either. Life continued on and the desire to write anything seemed to dissipate along with it. But I now realize how much writing out my thoughts regularly is actually quite therapeutic even if no one else is reading them but me. And that’s ok.

Since I closed this down and stopped writing, I hit multiple milestones in my new life as a single mother. The first big one was what would have been our wedding anniversary. We would have celebrated six years married. My mom was considerate of how tough that weekend would be for me and she bought tickets to a concert for all of us (mom, dad, sister, brother, their partners) so I took a road trip and visited them for it. I spent a lot of the time there trying to not explode into tears at any given moment. We went out for dinner before the concert and I sat quietly at the table, miserable over the fact that I was the only one there without a partner in my life. I felt like I stuck out like a sore thumb because I didn’t have someone sitting next to me. I wished more than anything in the world to have someone to just glance over at and smile with.

The next milestone was the first Christmas without my husband around. I tried my best to follow some of the customs in order to keep my son happy and excited about the upcoming visit from Santa. I put up a tree and decorated the house. My dad so kindly strung lights on the bushes in front of my house. I shopped for gifts from Santa for my son. My ex and I have an agreement at this point that we will alternate Christmases with our son, so last Christmas I had him. We went over to where my parents live and spent Christmas with my parents, siblings, their partners and my son’s one cousin. By all intents and purposes it was a fine time. I put a brave face on even though inside my heart was hurting a lot.

The next milestone was Valentines Day. I’ve never been a fan of the day, even when married. But more than anything this year I wished I had even the option of choosing to celebrate the day or not. But there was no option. There was just being alone. I am thankful that my son’s preschool made little gifts for the parents and that they understand that my son comes from a split home and he was given extra time to make two Valentine’s Day gifts for each parent. I got to celebrate the day with him by going through his little paper bag that had adorable Valentine’s Day cards in it all from his little friends. We sat and pulled out one at a time and I read them to him and he excitedly talked about the pictures.

And the next milestone was Mother’s Day. Fuck, that was a hard one. Mother’s day 2019 was basically the day when my ex husband told me he couldn’t “do this” anymore and said that he thought our marriage was done. I spent the day in bed crying and feeling pain like I never have before. I vowed that Mother’s Day 2020 was going to be way better. It wasn’t. I got a migraine around 11:00 in the morning and had to call my ex husband to ask him to come and pick up our son earlier than scheduled. I had a few hours with my son on Mother’s Day and then he left. We had a really good day together the day before so I have chosen to focus on that being Mother’s Day and not the actual calendar day being Mother’s Day.

Not only was Valentine’s Day a hard one, but it was also the day that we accepted a very generous offer on the sale of our house. I knew the day would come that I would have to move out of it as it was way too big for just me and my son being there part time. The house wasn’t on the market but there were very motivated buyers who loved it. I negotiated with our realtor having a very long closing date on it so I could find somewhere to move as well as purge and pack an entire house on my own. That brings us to the next milestone….the day I moved out of the house and into a smaller rental, while I wait to see what will happen with the Canadian housing market when the second Covid-19 wave comes through. June 8th I moved out of the house. I think I had so much time to wrap my head around leaving and so much time to build up excitement over having my own space to create new memories in, that the move out wasn’t as hard emotionally as I thought it would be. I thought I would cry as I closed the door to the house that one last time, but I didn’t. I held my head up high, walked out to my truck and drove down the street without even looking in the rear view mirror. I am proud of myself for that.

All in all, I have come a very long way in my journey into the life I never, ever expected myself to be in. I have accepted that the marriage is over and that in many, many ways I am way better off for it. My ex and I have more or less found a decent place in regards to our co-parenting situation. It is still awkward in many ways, but we are fighting less and working as a team more. It’s still not perfect, but I don’t think any co-parenting situation this early after a separation ever is. I still have my fears and concerns that he’s not telling me the full truth about everything going on in his life financially. We still don’t have a formal separation agreement signed, despite me pushing for it over and over again. I will keep pushing for those things.

My biggest struggle right now is loneliness. With Covid-19 hitting full force and isolation and social distancing being in place since early March, I’m beginning to feel the effects of it. I have worked every day since it started so I am lucky to be someone who still has held on to my job. But it’s exhausting with basically my life being going to work, parenting, going to work, parenting, etc, etc, etc. I already struggle because I don’t really have any friends in the town I live in thanks to me working in the city and having to commute every day and then there being nothing going on in the evenings to try to make friends. So tie in with that Covid-19 where everyone reduced their “bubble” size to only their family and that has left me very isolated. Of course I facetime family and have texted friends. But it doesn’t make up for actual in person interaction. My gym closed so I lost even those few days a week where I got to be social with my trainers and other people at the gym. So the loneliness has hit hard. In January and a bit of February I dated a man who lived in the city and we had some fun times going on dates when we were both kid-free. We even went away for a weekend together, which he promptly dumped me after. I knew in my heart that he wasn’t the right fit but I guess my loneliness was trying to convince me otherwise. What hurt most about the dumping (if you can call it that as we never were actually anything “official”) was that in the phone call he raved about what an amazing person I am but he just wasn’t feeling it. ie: he wasn’t attracted to me. It feels pretty shitty to hear from someone that you have such a great personality, but you’re not attractive. My self esteem took a nose dive then. I took a few months to focus on myself and I removed the dating apps from my phone. Eventually I put them back on and started the painful endeavor of dating again. I went on only one socially distanced date with a guy who was lovely and sweet, but there was nothing there for me. He asked me on a second date and I had to let him down gently. A while later I received a message from a guy that immediately made me smile and laugh. It quickly resulted in us messaging constantly for days. But the only downside was that he lived not only in a different town, but also a ferry ride away too. But the connection was starting to form as we moved from texting to phone calls. I won’t get hugely into it, but his life wasn’t a walk in the park. He has been through a lot. But despite that all he was so positive and encouraging and amazing. Stuff kept happening that made it difficult to arrange a meet up time. I won’t go into that either. But we spent three months talking daily to one another. It was getting to the point where I was feeling feelings that I haven’t felt in a long time. And we hadn’t even met. He felt the same way. But recently, in the last 2-ish weeks, his life has taken a not so great turn with illness and some other stuff going on and basically last night he messaged me saying that he thinks it will be the best for me to forget him and walk away. He said that his life has been and always will be a challenge and that while he is numb to it and can push through it, he said it isn’t fair for him to bring me into it and for me to have to endure what he does. He said by telling me to walk away, he is protecting me from a life he thinks I don’t deserve. He said that I am one of the most incredible people he has ever met and that I deserve the world and that tying myself to him would drag me down and put strain that I don’t deserve on me. Anyone reading this might be confused about all of this because you don’t know the backstory to it all. But I’m not going to blast everything about him on here. It’s his story to tell…not mine. Needless to say, I’m pretty heart broken today. I tried to argue back with him saying that it isn’t his choice on what I can and can’t endure in my life. And it’s not his job to protect me when he doesn’t know what I am capable of handling. I tried to tell him that contrary to what he believes about his life, he does deserve to have the support and kindness of someone and that he can’t spend his life pushing people away because he doesn’t think they can handle when his life turns upside down. But I think he’s gone now. I cried myself to sleep last night. I have spent the better part of the last three months learning about him, sharing things about me, creating a connection that was apparently stronger than I even knew. And now I’m expected to just walk away and pretend that he never came into my life. Pretend that I didn’t start to see the possibility of a really great future with him. Go back to the dating apps and somehow try to put myself out there again. My heart is struggling and I obviously need to give it time to let it heal before I do actually try to meet anyone.

I feel that in many ways I am ready to bring someone into my life. I have my home more or less set up. I have found acceptance in the fact that my marriage ended. Mentally (prior to what I just wrote about above) I am in a pretty good spot. Physically I’m getting back on track to taking more care of my body. It’s just the loneliness that is crippling sometimes. I feel like I am surrounded by people who have someone. Sure, they want to strangle their partners on any given day, but I don’t think they know how lucky they are to have a partner who is sticking around despite those hard moments. They don’t have to experience life as a single mother. I already have being a curvy woman in an incredibly active and fit town working against me in many ways, but I also have the fact that I have a child as part of the challenge too. Having a child immediately decreases the amount of “fish in the sea” to choose from because a lot of men don’t want the burden of someone who has a child around. Go through the dating apps and it’s amazing how many people talk about going on sporadic adventures, road trips, and basically things that you can’t do when you are a single mother. Men who have kids already may be into someone who has one child herself, but it is added complication when schedules can’t align due to child custody agreements. And I’m not even entirely sure how much I want to date someone who has kids, given that I have always been a “one and done” person when it comes to children in my life. So my “sea” is looking more like a pond than anything. Add in the fact that I have an attraction to men who are ambitious and driven so that shallows out my pond even more because I live in a small town full of people who are getting by just enough so they can go mountain bike or rock climb. My pond is not what I would like it to be. But I’m not rushing to bring the wrong person into my life. I’m not interested in ignoring my gut when it comes to someone and forcing them to fit, only because I’m lonely and am screaming out for physical touch and someone to laugh with. But….fuck….this loneliness is crippling me some days. It sends me into a pretty big downward spiral, especially when I see other people in love, doing things with their partners. It gets even worse when I think of my ex, who destroyed my world by leaving and not working on our marriage, even has someone in his life. I deserve it more than he does…but here he is….taking summer vacations with her and her family, going out on dates and giving her the life I think I deserve. Not with him…but with someone else. It’s just hard to stomach the fact that the person who caused so much pain in my life is so moved on and has the support of someone every day. Meanwhile there are days where I’m feeling like I’m drowning with having no support or help around.

Separation/divorce is hard. It’s incredibly isolating and lonely. Sure it is great to have family around, but without them having gone through it themselves, it is hard for them to even know what to say or how to support me through the struggle moments. They try their best and I will forever appreciate that. But there are days where all I need is a really big, long hug. To be held while I just let it all out. I take the good days with the bad days. They are all learning experiences. If I can’t fathom getting through an entire day, I take it hour by hour until eventually the day is done and I can focus on the next day being a better one. I can’t control it all, but what I can control, I will try my hardest on.

This ended up being much more long winded than I had intended. Apparently I needed a release. I don’t feel much better by doing it, but I’m sure deep down it has somehow helped. So…here’s to hopefully taking more time to write and hopefully not all of it will be doom and gloom seeming.

Life Update

November 19, 2019 monsterbossmamaLeave a comment

It is hard to believe that I’ve now been a single parent for six months. Half a year. It is actually crazy to think about how much time has passed. In a lot of ways it has been a big adjustment, but in some other ways it has been surprisingly smooth sailing.

The parts that have been smooth sailing have mainly been the care for my little boy. Because for the last year prior to my husband leaving, he was absent in a lot of ways, physically and mentally, as a parent. So I took care of a lot of the day to day work for our son. Bath times, lunch packing, food cooking, cleaning up, entertaining, clothes purchasing, bedtimes, you name it, I did it and had minimal options of having someone back me up. So when my son is with me on my days, it’s basically business as usual. I still conquer all of those things. The only time where I feel the absence of a partner is when I’m not feeling well or when my son has pushed me to the edge in a way that only a 4 year old can, and I sit and wish to have someone to “tap in/out” with before I say or do something I will regret. Thankfully those times are few and far between. Most days I feel like I’m rocking being a single mom. I am scheduling like a boss, planning ahead, entertaining, getting my son starting to help with chores, teaching him independence, breaking the rules when necessary and also keeping firm on the rules when needed.

What has made it easiest is having a little boy who is incredibly adaptable. He has shown how adaptable he is from day 1 of taking him on his first trip at only 2 months old. My son has taken to this change in life with relative ease. We were warned that when he started the new routine of going back and forth between our two homes that he may start to act out or get angry or upset when it came time for the swap. We were told that the first few days of being with the new parent that he could be difficult and stubborn. But that hasn’t been the case. He now will ask me how many sleeps he has with me or if it’s a mommy weekend or a daddy weekend coming up. And when he gets his answer he simply just nods and carries on talking about something else. I won’t lie though, on Sundays when it is time for him to finish up a weekend with me and go with his dad at 6:00 on Sunday, those hand overs are not easy. He always very happily leaves his dad to come to me, but the other way around isn’t as simple. He will cling to me and say he doesn’t want to go. He will cry and try to hide somewhere in the house. He will insist on having endless tight hugs. It isn’t easy on any of us. We have tried different ways of doing the hand over. We have done it at my house, we have tried me dropping him off at the apartment, we have attempted meeting at a playground (neutral ground) and we have tried to meet outside his favourite restaurant so he can go for his weekly ritual sunday dinner with his dad. Every.single.one results in me down on my knees on the ground and him clinging to me with his arms wrapped around my neck and him sobbing about not wanting to go. It has nothing to do with him not having fun with his dad or his dad being a horrible person to him. It just has to do with the fact that he is a mama’s boy through and through and has been since day 1. And even if we have a rougher than usual weekend, he still wants to be with his mom. And while I feel bad for my ex-husband having to hear his son saying that he doesn’t want to leave, it secretly makes my heart happy that I’m still clearly the preferred parent. Of course, once he goes with his dad, he’s always fine within a couple minutes and is back to his normal happy self. So that is why we try not to stress too much about this once every two weeks difficult hand-over.

As for me and how I’m doing. Well every day is different. I can feel confident and happy being alone and mostly in control of my own life one day and then the next day I’m down at rock bottom where I am fighting tears all day long, mourning the loss of my marriage, family and future. Sometimes the harder days will stretch into 2 or 3 days of misery. I have been doing a fair amount of reading relating to grief. Specifically grief relating to a marriage ending. A lot of specialists say that far too many of us try to spend our time distracting ourselves from the pain and not actually allowing ourselves to truly feel the emotions that come with it. And that it is actually truly healthier to let the emotions of the hard days consume me. To not push them aside but to instead learn to feel them, understand them and then work through them. By distracting myself from them I’m not actually focusing on working through the hurt or the loneliness. I’m just shoving it aside for another day for it to come crashing down on me. That isn’t progress. So for the last few weeks I have been letting myself feel whatever emotion is happening for the day. Some days it really sucks because I want to feel anything but miserable. But those days make me appreciate the days where I am in a better head space.

Because of my realization that I need to work on my own mental health, I chose to end things with the guy that I had been dating for about two months. As wonderful as a human being as he was, I realized that my heart was not truly, truly into it. There were many things about him that made him an ideal partner. But he became too intense, much too quick for me. I thought it was what I wanted and I thought it was making me happy. But over time I realized that I was just keeping him close in order to distract myself or fill a void that was missing. That I actually felt anxiety every time he would mention he loved me (which came on much too soon for my liking) and I knew, deep in my heart, that I didn’t and likely wouldn’t feel the same way. Little things he did started to annoy me and I found myself pushing him away more and more. It was when I lied to him about having a migraine in order to not have to hang out one evening was when I realized that it wasn’t the right relationship for me and I needed to end it before his heart got even more invested. There were also other things about him that I realized I was compromising on just simply in order to have a man around. He wasn’t as manly as I prefer a partner to be. He was gentle, kind, sweet, which was wonderful, but he wasn’t someone I could go camping with in the back country or do repairs around the house and didn’t carry a masculine confidence about him. Physically I stopped being attracted to him as he was quite thin, but with a bit of a potbelly, and zero muscle to him. I find it a little unattractive when I am stronger than the man I am dating. I typically prefer men to be burlier than he was. I’m not against tall and thin, but I don’t want to feel like I’m going to break the guy I’m seeing. So, in the end, I realized I was compromising too much of myself in order to have a relationship with him. I stopped caring for my own mental health in the time he was around and that was the biggest thing. He was another distraction. While he allowed me to feel my low days, I also felt (not by him) pressured to push them aside so I could be more fun when he was around. That shit isn’t healthy at all. I do not regret those two months spent with him one bit. He was the perfect person to bring into my life to make me feel comfort, kindness, affection and happiness again. He allowed me to be able to trust and know that there ARE decent men out there and that I’m not completely ruined because I am now a single mother.

So…I’m back to being single again. And it’s pretty lonely. I don’t have any friends in the town I live in and everyone I know live just too far away for a drive to go out for dinner or hang out. The weekends I don’t have my son with me can get a little depressing because of that. I spend a lot of time sitting on my couch drinking a glass of wine alone and watching back to back episodes of Friends while telling myself that I should be being productive and also fighting the desire to eat everything bad. I already promised myself that this Saturday I am going to get OUT of the house and take my book somewhere and have a glass of wine and read. Even if it’s still essentially the same thing that I would be doing at home, at least I will be out and around other people. I need to meet some other women in town but I’m not even entirely sure how to. So not only am I keeping an eye out for a future man, I’m also having to try to keep an eye out for future new friends.

The one thing I have been failing at the most though is my own physical health. I have gained back the 12 pounds that I had lost because I have been eating like garbage and not exercising enough. I keep telling myself that this week will be the week that I get back on track, but then the weekends hit and it’s a downward spiral. So instead of trying to go all in all at once, each week I’m implementing small little changes in hopes that they will eventually amount to a bigger change. And I truthfully looked into hypnosis to try to help with my emotional eating I do but crossed that option off my list as it’s super expensive and truthfully ridiculous seeming! I have to deal with this shit on my own.

As for the house that I’m still living in. We were all full speed ahead with preparing the house to sell it. I was working my tail off decluttering and organizing inside the house and unloading a lot of stuff to the thrift store in town. My ex husband came and emptied a ton of stuff out of the garage which allowed me to get it set up really nicely with my ATV and snowmobile nicely tucked away inside and then plenty of space for me to create a workout area with my weights and spin bike. There is still some organization that needs to happen inside the house but the biggest jobs are the three my ex has to take care of and they are yard work in the back yard, completing the unfinished driveway and ripping up the incomplete back deck. He has seemed to stall out on his part of things and he has stopped asking me or pushing me for timelines on what I think I can get done. The original plan was to get the place on the market for the Fall, but we are now heading into the end of November and the place is nowhere near ready. So I don’t know what the plan is. And…honestly…I’m not pushing it because a big part of me dreads having to spend every day cleaning the house to ensure it is continuously ready for potential showings. Not only that, but it means that I will have to start the full-time job of house hunting for myself which, in my little town, is an almost impossible task given that every house in my price range is being sold even before it has a For Sale sign up in the yard. It is all pretty stressful and I know it is my inevitable future but for the moment I’m just going to stick my head under a rock and pretend it doesn’t have to happen quite yet.

So that’s that. Life has carried on. Sometimes good and sometimes bad. But I’m trucking along as best as I can.

“Man Up”

September 27, 2019 monsterbossmama1 Comment

Back in March, before my marriage ended, my (ex) husband, son and I loaded our ATVs up on the trailer and we met up with friends of my (ex) husband so we could head up the mountain for a ride. It was a gorgeous day and perfect for our first ATV trip of the season. We pulled up at the spot, unloaded our quads, geared up and headed off into the trails. It was a great ride with a little snow to work through. We stopped for a little breather and lunch at a place right by the river. My son took a shining to the male friend of my (ex) husband and was hauling him around to throw rocks into the river. At one point he decided he wanted to go really far from where we had parked, so he asked the friend to come along with him. I wasn’t worried. I could still see where they were going and took it as an opportunity to relax and get a break. Eventually we all got back on our quads and continued up to the spot that was our final destination. Once we got there we got off our quads and sat down for awhile to enjoy the beautiful view. My son naturally started to get tired as it was a long day of riding at that point and he had eaten all of his food but was still hungry. He got whiny then the whining turned into crying and a couple tantrums…as every 3 year old would in that situation. I was trying to get his helmet back on him and get him to get back on the ATV so we could head back home but he wasn’t having any of it.

It was then, at this exact moment where I decided that I did not like the man who I had allowed my son to go off with at the river. This man, who I barely know and who does not have kids of his own, came over to my son, crouched down to his level and calmly started talking to him. I thought this was fine as it was a distraction for him. But then he said this line which will forever be ingrained in my memory because it made my blood boil in seconds….

“Remember what we talked about by the river? How you need to man up and stop crying.”

Blood.fucking.boiling.

I immediately turned to my (ex) husband to see if he heard it, and he clearly hadn’t as he was busy packing up our stuff into the box on his ATV. I looked back over to my little boy who was now standing there with tears streaming down his face, wiping away at them and nodding “yes” to this man. I stomped over to them and shoved myself between him and the man, picked him up and took him over to where my ATV was parked. I then very quietly had a talk with him about how it’s ok to show his emotions and work through them. All the while my hands were shaking with rage over the choice of words this man chose to use in an attempt to “parent” my son.

We got home and eventually got our son to bed and then when we climbed into bed I took a few minutes to figure out how to approach the subject with my (ex) husband. Eventually I took a deep breath and told him about what had happened and how it made me feel. He listened to my side of it and my reasoning behind why I hate the “man up” line and then responded. I was a little shocked when his response basically was neutral to the situation. Where he said that his friend had no right to try to parent our son, but at the same time he felt as though I was overreacting to something that is just a saying. He asked me if I wanted him to talk to his friend about it, but I was too surprised by the lack of him siding with me that I shook my head no and then went to sleep. In the months following that moment I brought it up again with him and after some further discussion he became more on my “side” regarding the situation and the use of that phrase. I don’t know why he couldn’t do it from the start, but that’s besides the point.

I was not raised in a family where men were encouraged to show their emotions. But they also weren’t discouraged from it. We just never really talked about it. The boys of my family just all happen to be more in tune with their emotional side which I guess comes natural from genetics. So the whole “boys will be boys” or “man up” culture that a lot of guys my age were raised in wasn’t really part of my vocabulary back then…or now. Now that I am raising a little boy in a very different world than what I was raised in, I try to keep up to speed on what can negatively affect my son and what I need to do in order to talk to him about certain things that could hurt, upset or close him off. We see a lot of information everywhere on the internet about how to raise strong, opinionated, successful girls. Articles about how to teach our daughters how to be respected are everywhere. But finding stuff about raising an emotionally connected son isn’t out there or in our faces as much. It feels to me as though the two types of learnings for raising well respected girls and also raising emotionally connected boys go hand in hand. I will devour any information I can find on raising strong, emotional boys because I believe that in every person there is a perfect balance of standing up for what we believe in or holding our ground when we know we have been taken advantage of and also being able to show true empathy, kindness and sad emotion. Despite our marriage not working out, this is an area of parenting that my ex husband and I both agree strongly on.

My goals for raising my son are for the future teenager and adult he will become. In high school I don’t want him to be the bully…but I also don’t want him to be the bullied. I want him to be the strong boy who stands up for and supports the bullied. I don’t want him to be the teenager making crass remarks about girls who have bigger chests or may be heavier in size. I want him to be the one who finds beauty in all types and can speak respectfully about that beauty. As an adult I want him to be a go-getter for his career. I want him to drive his own path to his success (whatever that may be). But I also want him to be the family man who knows that in order to run a happy household and be a good husband and father that he needs to respect his wife/husband and come home and help out and listen to anything she/he has to say even if he feels it’s mundane. I want him to be able to open up to future partners even when he feels vulnerable. But then I want him to stand strong and opinionated when the time is right. And all of these things that I want for him do not involve the use of the phrase “man up” or any other phrase that encourages boys and men to shove their feelings and emotions deep, deep down and be what society expects them to be.

It is clearly evident that the use of two words from a relative stranger 6 months ago have really, really struck a nerve with me. I do not want my son around anyone who projects that kind of attitude on him. I am lucky that this man that said it is not someone my son sees often so he is not someone who will create any influence whatsoever on his little growing brain. So because of this, I have tried to let it go. But sometimes something triggers my memory of the moment and I end up on a tangent about it and need to release it all one more time.

It is my job to mold the little human that is my son and I know that I am going to have a battle on my hands to create the well rounded boy/teenager/adult that I want to see in him. But I am going to damn well try my hardest.

Sharesies

July 12, 2019 monsterbossmamaLeave a comment

Ok….I survived the first week of our new co-parenting schedule and did it with only minimal tears. So I consider that a success. Truthfully though, I did get to see my son twice during it. Once because my husband was scheduled for a meeting that he wasn’t aware of and there was no way he could change it, so he asked me to help out and pick our son up from daycare and take him to the birthday party that happened after. And last Sunday my husband asked if I wanted to spend a little time with our son because I said I was struggling that day. So I picked him up and we went swimming, ice cream and then a little trip to the dollar store to pick up some new bubbles and a small toy. So it wasn’t as though I didn’t see him for the five days he wasn’t with me. This won’t be normal though. There will be times where during those five days I will only get to see him through video calls. We do have an agreement in place that if one of us is having a tough time when he isn’t with us then we are open to that person to come and spend some time with him. The only stipulation to that is that it is to go out and do something. Not to bring him back to the house that he isn’t staying at. It could get confusing for him to be at the house he isn’t currently staying at and it would cause some challenges convincing him to leave that house in order to go to the other one. Even with me picking him up on that one day this week it caused some confusion and there were some tears from him because he didn’t want to go to the apartment, he wanted to come home with me. But we worked through it as best as possible. With lots of hugs and kisses later, he happily walked into the apartment, holding his dad’s hand and talking about the birthday party.

So I now have him for Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday this week. Then he goes to his dad for two days and then back to me for three days then back to his dad for the weekend. Basically our sharing agreement we came to looks like this:

Husband: Monday and Tuesday

Me: Thursday and Friday

Wednesdays are alternating days where one week he has him for Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and the following week I have him for Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.

Weekends: alternating

It isn’t perfect by any means and some people would look at it and think that it is too much upheaval for a little boy. But we had a very thorough conversation with our counsellor about it before committing to it. She said that right now it is important for our son to get a lot of time with both of us. She said that is still incredibly connected to us and we need to ensure he feels he is getting equal love and time with both of us. She mentioned that this kind of schedule allows him to have a strong bond with both of us as well. She also said that because he is so young and doesn’t understand what is going on, by having shorter timeframes where he is with us means that he won’t go into a deep place of missing the parent he isn’t with and making it difficult for the parent he is with. That it is easier to tell him on a Tuesday that he will see his mommy on Wednesday after daycare instead of telling him that he has to wait all the way until Sunday, if we were doing a one week on one week off agreement. Basically she was saying that at his age his attention span is short for so many things, so having shorter times with each parent will be beneficial to his development. A friend of mine told me that her neighbour has a similar sharing schedule with his ex-wife and he told her that their daughter is thriving way more and is far happier than when they were trying to do swapping weeks. Our counsellor also confirmed that other couples she counsels do similar sharing and it has worked well for the child.

We have both agreed that we will give it a couple months of sticking to it and if we find it isn’t working then we will reassess the plan. We also know that once he starts kindergarten we will likely have to go into a more consistent week on week off schedule. The counsellor said that at that stage it will be easier to do with him as he will be older, his brain will be more developed in a way that understands things and he will be more independent. Basically he won’t be as reliant on being around his parents. Which is hard to believe as that’s only a year from now and he is still so incredibly dependent on me. It’s like he re-fuels himself by sitting on my lap and having a quick cuddle. But the counsellor assured us that moving to that sharing schedule will be harder on us than it will be on him. She said that emotionally we will struggle to not have him around for 7 days, but that because we plan to have him in extra-curricular activities/sports that we can always make an arrangement to swap turns on taking him to those things or if it’s a game, we can both be there for it. There is no reason that we can’t both stand on the sidelines of his soccer game on a weekend and cheer him on even if it isn’t our own weekend with him. That is still a year from now and so much can change in that time, for better or worse, so I don’t really like to think much ahead on it as it just starts to give me anxiety and stress that isn’t necessary right now.

On my weekend of “freedom” (I put parenthsis on that because physically I was free from parenting duties, but emotionally I was definitely not free) I had made myself a list of things I wanted to get done because of not having to work around entertaining an almost four year old. The list was likely overly ambitious, but good to have. I had:

mow the lawn – didn’t happen because it rained 90% of the weekend
plant my new succulents into planters for my front step – also didn’t happen because of weather
buy new bedding for me – it did happen but i have not put it on the bed yet. my heart isn’t ready for that change quite yet
set my son’s room up to accommodate the new dresser i ordered – partially happened
declutter the giant kitchen island – achieved
tackle the laundry war on my dining table – 70% achieved
meal prep for the week – achieved
carpet clean the giant stain on the stair landing thanks to one dog’s explosive issues one night – not achieved
swim laps at least twice – definitely not achieved
watch a movie (yes this was on my list) – achieved x 2 as I treated myself to going out to a movie in theatre too! First movie I have seen in in theatre in over 3 years!
pedicure with my cousin – achieved
drink some wine – achieved

That was the general idea of my mental list I had made. I am pleased with the few things I did accomplish and I am almost more pleased that I allowed myself to use the time to actually just sit and relax without feeling the pressure of having to get things done or the guilt of not playing with my son. Not only that, but I also accomplished something that’s been bothering me for a really long time. In my son’s closet I had bags upon bags of clothing he grew out of. I hauled all the bags downstairs and sorted them all into sizes and then into seasons followed by grouping shirts, shorts, pants, etc together. I then took pictures of everything and posted things for sale on the Facebook buy and sell pages. I put almost everything up for $1 each, which was a little painful when I knew some of the items were only worn once and cost more than $20. But it’s the only way to get rid of things quickly. My Sunday afternoon quickly became all about managing the sales as people were snapping the items up incredibly fast. I was answering messages, bagging and labeling everything and updating the posts to say what had sold. It was a full-time afternoon job because I had so much to get rid of! I really enjoyed doing it as I put Friends on Netflix and wore sweatpants and totally vegged out while doing it.

Going forward I will continue to try to set goals to achieve over the weekends I am child-free. They may range from going for a drink with a friend to ensuring I exercise to tackling the crawl space cupboard which became a shoving all the crap into zone or going through my son’s playroom and getting rid of broken or unused toys. It will help to give me something to focus on that is positive while I am missing my little boy.

But man, was I ever happy to have him back under my roof with me yesterday!

What I Won’t Miss

June 25, 2019 monsterbossmamaLeave a comment

There are a lot of things I”m missing about my husband since his departure from our home and marriage. But the one thing I won’t miss is his lack of respect for our house space and the time I take to keep it clean.

I went away for a weekend with my oldest friends and my husband was on dad duty but he also took our son away to see his grandma for the weekend. They were in the house for Sunday afternoon and Monday morning though. When I got home around 4:00 on Monday and I walked in the door I was instantly hit with a weird smell. Nothing horrific, but just a different smell than what I’m used to in the house. I realized that I didn’t take the garbage out prior to leaving so that was likely the culprit. Hot house + full garbage can = stinky. But then I walked a little further into the house and was met with a bombsite of toys everywhere, blankets strewn about, a few dishes left on the coffee table and a filthy floor. My heart just sank because it was so disheartening to arrive home to this when I was so happy to be back.

I will admit that right now the house is in a bit of disarray. Our dining table has become the clothes folding table and because of how life has been for the last almost two months, the clothes have then remained covering the table in neatly folded piles. My husband will be moving a bunch of stuff out this weekend into his apartment and so there have been stacks of things in various areas waiting to be moved. It also doesn’t help that our one dog, who goes on daily hikes with a dog walker, must be rolling in sand and dirt while on the hikes because I cannot, for the life of me, keep the floors clean. So, not that I’m making excuses for my husband, but it is kind of one of those situations where someone recognizes a mess and they subconsciously add to it. It’s kind of like my desk at work. When I’m super swamped my desk becomes a bit of a paper war. If I don’t deal with it within a few days then people see the space as a chaos zone and they start leaving other stuff around and it adds to everything I have to deal with.

So when I saw this chaos, I dumped my bag and launched into cleaning mode. I knew I had two hours before our son was being dropped off. I tidied up all of the toys. I folded and removed all the blankets and extra pillows that were on the couch (because it appears my husband couldn’t bring himself to sleep in the bed that we used to share and he chose to sleep on the couch instead on Sunday night), I put the dishes in the dishwasher, wiped down counters, opened windows to get some air flow, lit some scented candles, vacuumed the floor and then mopped it. I then went upstairs and tackled the basket of laundry that was growing in my bedroom as well as the mountain of clothes I was piling on top of my dresser. The dining table full of clean laundry is still in that state and I likely won’t touch that until my husband packs up all of his clothes off of it.

Once I finished up everything I had done, I stood back and felt a lot better about things. Not great, but an improvement on what I had walked into. I am not entirely sure why I felt so much disappointment in the way he chose to leave the state of the house. It isn’t abnormal whatsoever. It is one of the things I have been asking him to try to work on for the last two years. He would say that he would, but then I would continue to walk in the door after work to breakfast dishes still on the coffee table, our son’s PJs from the night before scattered on the ground, toys everywhere, socks that he took off the night before still crammed into the crevices on the couch, and just general mess around. I tried numerous different directions to try to get him to work on it from saying we have a very expensive house that we just did very expensive renovations on and we should want to keep it looking clean. Or I would try the route of how important it is to teach our son that once he’s done playing he should clean up after himself. Just as he does at daycare. I even tried leaving it all and let it build up and build up to see if he would touch it or get the hint. But nope. Nothing worked. He would often say that getting our son out the door was a disaster full of meltdowns and stubborn child moments and he got distracted. Yet I somehow, when doing the daycare drop off in the morning, was always able to get out of the house with our son without it looking like a pig tornado had hit. In the end I was always feeling like my evening spent cleaning was one step forward and three steps back because of his lack of effort. Unless he would go on his once every few months random cleaning spurts, this became the daily norm.

But once he is in the apartment as of next week, it means that I won’t have to stress about having his messy ways around. I will actually be able to stay on top of the war that is keeping the house clean with a 4 year old and two dogs. I won’t have to feel annoyance because he disrespects my time and efforts with cleaning. If there’s a mess, it will be only myself to blame on it. and that is enough of a driving factor for me to continue to try to keep it clean and organized. I cringe to think of the state his apartment will be once he is in full-swing of living. But what gives me a little stress about that is that when our son is with me, he will be (as much as possible) encouraged to clean up his toys when he’s done, put his dirty dishes in the kitchen and his dirty clothes into the laundry room. But I can’t control what he is allowed to do when at his dad’s home. So will I be fighting a battle every time he stays with his dad and comes back to my place? I guess this is something we are going to have to discuss with the counsellor at our next session. How to ensure he has the same kind of rule base at each home so there is no confusion for him and doesn’t cause either of us any unnecessary stress having to deal with it.

Even though I am still supremely upset by this whole situation and the way life is playing out, I can’t deny that I am somewhat looking forward to being able to maintain the house in a way that makes me feel like coming home doesn’t require half an hour of cleaning before I can do anything else.

I Don’t Even Know You

June 18, 2019 monsterbossmamaLeave a comment

“I feel like I don’t even know you anymore”

A line loaded with heaviness that I heard from my husband on Saturday when we met for a short while to discuss how we are going to move forward with sharing our time with our son. This line came after I got upset because this whole change is going to be far easier for him as he has his work and numerous friends and activities to keep himself occupied on the days that he won’t have our son with him at his apartment. I got upset because the past almost 4 years my life has been committed to raising our son and ensuring that my husband has it relatively easy with an open calendar so he can be taking last minute work meetings or networking events without having to worry about us. But it turns out that me doing this has completely backfired on me.

Because I have literally put everyone else in my family before me, it made me struggle to make new friends when we moved to a new town, I didn’t take up any hobbies or activities, I allowed everyone else’s health and fitness to come before my own. Despite occasional encouragement from my husband, I allowed myself to get engulfed in the life of a full-time working mom who was too tired to take on anything more. And the whole while I said to myself that it is just a temporary thing as the husband’s schedule will start to become more consistent over time and our son will become less dependent on me.

Apparently this was another bone of contention that my husband had building in his frustrations against me. Because he seems to really be getting good at this blame game and is spending time pointing out to me all the ways I failed to focus on our marriage or myself. It’s like he’s trying to justify his decision to leave by digging and finding whatever he can find that has irritated him in the last four years. He isn’t being aggressive when he brings these things up. He is almost masking it in a way to encourage me to take this time to find myself again.

But when I hear things like this I just want to rage at him. I want to tell him that millions of women, in the first years of having their first child DO get caught up in the struggle of motherhood and finding that balance between being a mom and being themself. It is completely common. There are some women that are amazing at keeping going with that balance and I remain envious of them. But what my husband doesn’t seem to understand is that part of the reason I became this way is because HE put me in this position. HIS work schedule and commitments made it so that I took on the role of number 1 parent for the most part. But if I say this to him he will now tell me that his schedule was always flexible and all I had to do was ask. Which I actually snort laugh over because the man never ever made himself seem flexible or able to move things around. If I ever asked about something that he had booked with something else, I seemed like I was being a pain. Or in the last year or two when I got migraines and he had to move his schedule around so he would be able to take care of our son so I could be in pain in bed, he made me feel like a giant inconvenience. So of course I wasn’t going to bother asking. It’s easy for him to say that his schedule was always flexible, but history has not proved that to me.

The first 2-3 years our son has been 100% a mommy’s boy who wanted mommy to do EVERYTHING for him. It would take me having to leave the house in order for our son to let his father play with him or help him with anything. Often if I would leave I would then get the text message from the husband asking when I thought I might be home as he had XYZ he needed to go do or that our son was crying for me. My husband would try to do things or help our son when I was around and it would just end in disaster where I would get called in to deal with the situation. There came a period of time where my husband was so broken from being rejected by his own son so often that he eventually switched off. Much to my frustration. Which only enforced the feeling of me having to step up and yet again be all consumed in our son’s needs while also trying to find ways to tell my husband that he can’t just switch off and wait for the day our son wants him.

So with all of this, how on earth did he think there was even an opportunity for me to get involved in some hobbies? I was plunked right into the centre of motherhood and I became stuck because I literally had no other option.

But what makes me the most frustrated about this line coming from him is that every day there are women who lose themselves in the role of motherhood. And every day there are men who stick by their wife’s side as she navigates the rocky terrain of motherhood. They love and support her through it because she is their wife. She grew a human being in her body for them. She nourished a child from her own body for a year (or more) for them. She is the one who the children call out to in the middle of the night and she is the one who gets up because the husband didn’t even wake up to the cries. She is the one providing comfort when the child is upset. It is a damn hard job and a woman can only do it to the best of her abilities if she has a supportive partner by her side. But apparently that was too much to ask for from my husband. Instead he failed to recognize our very different roles when it came to parenting and decided that even though he saw I was struggling, to instead allow himself to grow away from me and then point out that I lost myself. I lost myself with his unintended encouragement. But he feels good about himself because once in awhile he would suggest that I get out of the house and have some alone time. Or that he organized for me to start going to his fancy gym and got them to agree to hire a child minder for our son so I could go. Or that he said twice to go and take a spa day on my own. Or that he has taken our son on a couple road trips together or left for camping early so that I could get a break. But in his head he feels he tried incredibly hard to get me to find friends and hobbies.

My counsellor said that I can’t allow myself to sit and focus on what has happened because that won’t change. I cannot change the fact that for the last four years I have allowed myself to be there for my beautiful son while my husband pursues all of his interests. I cannot change that our son preferred me over him. I cannot change that I have become more comfortable staying at home instead of going out to late night events. I cannot change that we didn’t have enough date nights. I cannot change that I found a comfort zone that I struggle to get out of. None of it I can change. But it is really hard to try to focus on moving forward when my husband wants to remind me of what cannot be changed in an attempt to encourage me to find myself again.

Because if we really want to get down to the brass tacks about this. I don’t even know my husband in a lot of ways anymore. When I slipped off the “wife pedestal” and he placed me on the “mother of his child pedestal”, he changed too. I was no longer the number 1 in his eyes. His son was. Which I understand. But gone was the man who would come up behind me and hug me. Gone was the man who would randomly bring me flowers home. The man who used to enjoy cuddling disappeared. The man who would apologize first after a petty argument vanished. He became replaced by a career driven, money focused, constantly irritated, stressed out, busy, more aggressive (not in a physical sense but emotional sense), more distant man. A man I essentially would tip toe around to try to keep the household a positive and light place. But he is a man who somehow expected me to push through everything and continue to fill all the roles of Wife, Mother to his Son and Independant Me when I didn’t have all the support I needed to do that.

So here I am now. About to embark on a child sharing situation where I am going to have numerous days where I will be going home to an empty house. And he is suggesting I find some hobbies to fill those days instead of me sitting at home crying into a bag of chips and binge watching TV. It is hard. I don’t really know what I’m supposed to do. A small, teeny tiny part of me is thinking that it will be nice to have a break from motherhood. But then the moment I feel that way my heart crushes because it isn’t just a short break because they have gone away. It is likely a permanent thing where multiple days of the week I won’t be getting the joy of picking my excited son up from daycare and reading books before bed. Daycare pick ups are truly my favourite part of the day as he comes racing to the fence screaming “MOMMYYYYYY” when he sees me walk up and then body slams my legs into a giant hug. How do I go 2-3 days without having this moment? The one thing that can make the day better. It hurts. But it is a reality I have to face and be strong with.

I truly am sitting in the “Everything Sucks” category right now and am fighting, fighting, fighting to keep the three words my counsellor encouraged me to keep going with….”I GOT THIS”.

“Perfect” Timing

June 10, 2019 monsterbossmamaLeave a comment

In the middle of the previously posted wedding weekend debacle, my son chose an opportune time to ask me a huge question.

Picture this:

The bride and groom are up at the alter, vowing their lives to one another, everyone is smiling and focused on the newlyweds….

….and out of nowhere comes a little squeaky voice from half way to the back of the church. That voice says….

“Mommy…where do babies come from?”

*insert embarrassed mom face here*

Thankfully because everyone was so focused on the wedding it appeared that nobody actually heard the question. But it was all I could do to try to not burst out into laughter over his timing of asking the question. When I later told my Dad about it, he asked me if I pointed to the two people at the alter and said “It all starts right there.” Yeah, my Dad thinks he’s a comedian.

I ended up whispering to my son that I will get him a book that will explain it to him since I know that they exist and I know that I will have an incredibly hard time trying to explain it to him myself. I’m just not that well versed in how to educate an almost four year old about the birds and the bees! So I will do what I know others have done and I will order a book that explains it all properly without me going into stories of lies about how a stork delivers the baby.

Not only has he hit me with the big question…he has also sporadically started saying he wants a baby brother. I know it is likely because there are a few kids at daycare who are siblings, and we also have a few books that we read where there are siblings in them. So he’s starting to pick up on those things and recognizing that he doesn’t have a sibling. The first time he asked me this was when his dad and I first started the downslide to our marriage and the question stung hard. He then asked it about four more times since but he hasn’t in a couple weeks. Every time he asks I tell him he won’t have a baby brother because we already have two awesome doggies and all of our love is focused on him right now. He seems to buy it and goes on playing. I have not told his father that he has been asking this as it will only pain him even more given that one of his major issues with our marriage is that I had decided I didn’t want a second child. But I’m sure the day will come where our son will ask him this question too. And I know he will handle it in a tactful way that I have. I truly don’t believe he understands what he is asking for when it comes to having a sibling, and he’s just saying it because of the books and daycare. But I definitely need to make a plan for how to arm myself for when this question comes when he’s a bit older and actually wants a proper answer from me.

I have no idea why his timing is so on point for asking the hard hitting questions when life is going through this difficult stage.

Wedding Weekend

June 10, 2019 monsterbossmamaLeave a comment

This past weekend I packed my son up and we ripped out to the airport right after daycare/work to try to catch our 7:00 flight to another city for my little cousin’s wedding. This was a wedding that my husband was planning to come with us to, but because of our “situation” (as I seem to be calling it more and more often these days) he decided to not make it awkward for everyone by coming and pretending to play happy family and be forced to stay in a hotel room with us when he hasn’t even been living at home for over two weeks now. So he backed out and I decided to still go.

I guess I kind of had rose coloured glasses on for how I figured things would go. The airport was a bit of a nightmare with an energetic 3.5 year old. We checked in via the machines they have, because nowadays you don’t stand in a forever lineup waiting to check in and get boarding passes from the workers. My son kept trying to push all the buttons on the machine and I was (for the first time of many on the trip) that mother snapping firmly at their child, loud enough for everyone in the vicinity to hear because he just would not listen to me. Turns out I had to check the car seat bag into the oversized area and then I had to check the large rolling bag into the regular bag area. But once we walked half away across the airport to check the second bag, I was told it was too heavy and needed to go to back to the oversized bag area and check it there. Cue sweat starting to roll down my back and my anxiety and patience levels growing worse. We got the bags checked and then made our way to security, not before having to haul a screaming, crying little boy away from various toy stores and shops that have candy in them. We then got bumped ahead of the security line because of having a young child. I thought things were turning around. But then we stood, and we stood, and we stood waiting to see people’s stuff move through the conveyor belt thing to be checked by security. My son was trying to hang off of the barrier things in the area, he was trying to go touch the unused conveyor belts and computers. He was throwing himself on the ground dramatically when I told him to behave himself. Nobody felt any need to let the impatient, ever growing line up of travellers know that the reason things were taking so fucking long was because there were student security people working. And I’m fairly certain it was their very first day on the job. It.was.painful. I watched the clock as our boarding time creeped closer and closer. Eventually our one bag, which was 100% compliant with every single rule possible, came through the conveyor and it got pulled aside for a secondary check. I was really trying my hardest not to be a bitchy traveller because everyone has to start somewhere in their job and one like theirs can be highly stressful or life changing if they miss something in someone’s bag. But did they really need to rip my well organized bag apart for friggin bobby pins?? Once through security I launched my son onto my hip and I speed walked through the airport and in what can only be world record speed, I bought us snacks, sandwiches, a magazine, a small airplane toy and a bottle of water for on the plane and made it to our gate with only minutes to spare. Or so I thought. We stood, and stood, and stood at the gate while my son continued to show his inability to listen to me, and we waited. I overheard the airline staff make a phone call to someone saying that we were now overdue to board and we still had no flight staff. Eventually the pilot came sprinting up to the gate and said he got stuck because of….you guessed it…security delays!! WTF?! I don’t even know how a pilot trying to make it to his job wasn’t fast tracked through. Eventually, and about 40 minutes late, we loaded the plane and left. My son was more or less good for the flight, besides me spending the entire time asking him to stop kicking the seat in front of him. Once we landed, got our rental car, loaded the car seat into it (which was another sweat inducing situation), the kid loaded in and the directions loaded onto the map, we made the 24 minute drive to the hotel. Where I then had to unload my son, go inside, check in, load the kid back into the car and then find parking in the area and then unload my kid again. By the time we laid down in the queen sized bed (which I thought I had reserved a king sized bed) to go to sleep it was almost midnight. FML. Longest.day.ever.

The next day was more brutal as my son woke up at 6 a.m. A 3.5 year old on 6 hours of sleep is NOT an ideal way to spend a day not at home. I tossed some toys at him and then had a long, hot shower and tried to mentally prepare myself for what was likely going to be a shit show of a day. We had some breakfast and then I took him to the nearby Toys R Us to grab a few little toys that we could bring to the wedding to keep him occupied. He was thankfully actually pretty good in the store and listened to my rules quite well. I was incredibly glad for that. But once we got back to the hotel and wandered over to the nearby playground the whining started. OH MY GOD THE WHINING!!! We made our way back to the hotel so I could get myself looking somewhat presentable for the wedding and he played with his toys some more. Eventually my parents showed up at our room and they started the horrific task of getting a 3.5 year old into dress clothes. My mom remained as patient as a saint and my dad kept a firm hand that my son actually listened to. I knew that the afternoon was going to be a disaster because the wedding ceremony was taking place bang on when my son would usually have a nap. The two block walk to the church was filled with a sobbing little boy who wanted desperately to be carried. I refused to give in because the kid is about 40 pounds and I wasn’t carrying him in my floor length dress and heels and large bag hauling all of his entertainment stuff. Once seated in the church I continued the sweat fest (note a theme for the weekend?) while my son clambered all over me, tried playing with my long hair which I never wear down, destroyed the top layer of my dress with the velcro from his shoes, and whined none stop, while inserting little “i love you mommys” into the mix. You know…just to make sure he has total control of my heart. Eventually it got to the point where my dad could see that I was nearing breaking point and he kindly suggested that maybe it was time to toss the ipad at my son because the ceremony was about to start. So I did just that and threw in a lollipop for good measure. We survived the ceremony and then my son and I booked it back to the hotel, with many tears and tantrums, so I could attempt to get him to nap for a bit before the reception. He napped for about an hour and my dad brought me a glass of wine to my room while I sat and watched something on tv and attempted to unwind until the next round of chaos.

Reception time. It was a dessert reception which meant no “real food” as I call it to my son. So a group of us sourced some dinner at a nearby restaurant. My son was relatively pleasant during dinner but only because my aunt was fully engaged with him and a sticker book I had brought along. He ate two large pieces of pizza and seemed to be coming around a bit. We drove to the reception spot and moody child returned. I barely spoke to a single person who I had hoped to catch up with. I didn’t even get a chance to say hi and congratulations to my cousin, the bride. My son had no interest in sitting at the table and playing with the colouring books and toys I hauled along. He just wanted to run around and touch literally everything in sight. They had a candy bar and despite my son not even liking candy, he kept wanting to play with the spoons in all the bowls. The drinking fountain was his next spot of choice for wanting to play at which was in a hallway outside of the reception space. I eventually got him to sit down at the table, with bribery of watching something on my phone so that I could hear the speeches. Despite there being a ton of tasty treats to enjoy at the reception, I had got myself one small piece of apple pie, with a plan to go and get a couple other little bite sized things, but because of the kid chaos, I didn’t even finish half of that apple pie. The one glass of wine I was allowing myself had two sips taken out of it before I lost interest in it too. It’s amazing what stress can do to the appetite.

I won’t get too much into the speeches that were made, but I will say that they hurt to hear. They were full of optimism about marriage, partnership, teamwork, endless love, compromise, sharing the load, ensuring one another’s happiness, working through the hard parts in order to enjoy the good, etc, etc, etc. All the same kind of stuff that was said at my own wedding. So it stung a lot hearing the things that a husband and wife are supposed to do but my marriage failed at and that my husband has chosen to not fight for. I felt my heart get heavier and heavier as the speeches went on, so when my son wanted to go wander around again, I gladly went with him despite my mom offering to take him.

Around 9:30 I was in quite the foul mood and I wasn’t having much fun. I had spent the day lying to my family about why my husband wasn’t there. I felt horrible doing it while keeping a smile on my face, pretending everything was ok. I don’t know if anyone read right through me, but I’m sure there is at least one person who did. I was exhausted and in no mood to party. I was hoping to get to have a little dance with my son, but he wanted nothing to do with the reception space because the music was so loud and hurting his sensitive ears. So 9:45 I pulled the plug and hauled him back to the car without saying goodbye to anyone but my parents, shoved him in the car seat and drove in a hailing thunderstorm back to the hotel. I got him to bed, had another long, hot shower and washed all the makeup off my face, held back tears, then climbed into bed and passed out cold.

We both slept until 9:00 the next morning until I was woken up by my mom calling to ask if we were going to come downstairs to the hotel breakfast. My son seemed in better spirits so we got ourselves dressed and headed to have some food. That went off pretty well. We then went back up to our room, packed up our stuff and then wandered over to the nearby playground again where my son played happily for awhile with my cousin’s son who is a year older than him. Eventually the inevitable 3.5 year old meltdown happened and he asked to go to the airport . So off we went, way too early, to head to the airport. We had a very long wait for our flight so I let him pick a toy airplane from the toy store, we bought a couple snacks for the flight and then we sourced out some lunch. The flight home, besides me being a complete hot mess and settling us into the completely wrong seats on the plane, which thankfully affected other people with kids so they were super accommodating and just swapped seats with us, the flight home was easy as my son slept the entire way leaned up against me. I read the magazine I bought for the first flight and then I closed my eyes and rested a bit too. Once off the plane it was back to nightmare child and irritated mommy trying to just survive. One of the wheels on my bag ripped completely off somehow once it was in the baggage handlers hands, so I had a three wheeled bag to haul around, and now the headache of making a claim on that. I did valet for my truck so it would be close and available once we landed, but when we got the key back and got to the truck, it was sandwiched in behind three other cars and I couldn’t get out. So I loaded the bags into the truck, grabbed my son and went all the way back to the valet service building to get them to move all the other cars. It took forever for them to get that sorted while I sat in the truck, trying desperately to cool it down all the while listening to my son crying about me not buying him the popsicle at the store in the airport. Then we had the over an hour drive home.

Needless to say, that despite knowing that I was going home to my disaster of a marriage, I was happy to walk in the front door of the house. My husband came and picked up our son and took him out to a playground and then to dinner and I got a break. But I didn’t exactly break. Instead I put my shoes back on and drove to the grocery store and pharmacy to get the necessities for the week. Then I came home and started cleaning because my parents are staying with me this upcoming weekend. Once my son was brought back home I had the lengthy task of getting him to go the fuck to sleep. He didn’t go to sleep until 9:45. I then crammed in a shower and attempted to wind down a little by reading my book before going to sleep too.

My mom asked me if I was happy that I made the trip for the wedding. I said that I am torn in my feelings on it as it was an incredibly difficult weekend with my son, who made me want to cry numerous times. It was very hard on the heart to be around so much optimism about love. It was difficult to lie to my family about the whereabouts of my husband. And I was completely wiped from it all. But that I was happy to have gotten out of the house to be around the people I love and to allow my son to have a change of scenery…despite his “antics” the entire weekend.

I survived. Barely. But I survived.