I’m trash, as my 20 year-old son recently told me. I’m also awful as he told me. As I reflect on my awful trashiness, I recall this:
- Washing his dirty underwear, and being the only parent to do so.
- Doing all the dirty, messy, complicated, demanding, responsible aspects of raising a child, as this was beneath his non-trashy, wonderful father.
- Working overtime since I didn’t receive child support from his father.
- Sometimes I took my son to work with me when his father didn’t show up for his limited parenting time. His father always had the next level of a video game to accomplish, to maintain his awesomeness. When he did utilize his parenting time, he usually had other people be with him. My son often stated his sadness and anger over not seeing him on his time and not wanting to go again.
- Taking my son to all his medical appointments, including his regular orthodontist appointments half an hour away, often with a screaming, protesting toddler. Such mundane, frustrating, boring parenting work was beneath his father, including paying for his half of the bills. Besides, the word sacrifice was not a word his father cared to know, embrace, or have in his vocabulary. That was for the little people, like me.
- I got an MBA, an education that had nothing to do with my interests or passions, in order to provide better for my son. I chose a direction of my life out of lack from his father, to step into the required roles of both, mother and father. Meanwhile, his father explored the glamorous, rewarding world of hedonism.
- I looked for any second I could to work overtime and finish my MBA from home to be there for my son, often studying before he woke up and after he went to bed. I accomplished this in super-human, but of course, still trashy ways.
- Having to leave work 45 minutes away to bring my son lunch or pick him up from school when he was sick, since his amazing, important father, who lived 5 minutes away couldn’t be bothered.
- Yet it is his father who has “been there” for my son, as my son has stated, and his father is now the one undoing the damage and trauma from awful trashy me, as he has elaborated.
- Considering the reality behind the label of “trash” I was given, I can consider new meaning for the word and proudly say “I’m awful trash,” just like Wonder Woman.