Misconceptions - The Single Dad View

This week I've been featuring guest posts by single mom writers I respect, who engage me in some way and who speak from the heart and gut. It would only be fair of me to now flip the coin over at and explore the daddy view. I'm all about fair play. Well, except when playing pool. I do like dirty pool. 

The truth is most single dads get a bad rep solely based on a few, or more than a few, slackerasses. Truth be told good fathers outnumber the bad.  I can't help but believe that good is the norm but sadly we focus on the bad, it's more entertaining, and I'm guilty of that myself. 

I gave my buddy Todd over at I Used To Have Hair his Single Mom - Single Word assignment and yet again I received a post back that nailed it. And he doesn't even have a vagina.    

I think it’s pretty safe to say that there are a lot of preconceived notions on what makes up a single dad. I’d like to firmly believe that it’s a matter of a few bad apples spoiling it for the rest of us.  I don’t know if that’s 100% accurate, but it’s something I tell myself in order to sleep better at night (okay…maybe not but I was looking for a dramatic opening).

Deadbeats. Bad role models. Never around. Won’t pay child support. Don’t know what they’re doing. Only interested in themselves and whatever new floozy they happen to be with on that particular weekend.

These, I believe, are misconceptions that all single fathers have to deal with on a daily basis. And these misconceptions not only come from the mothers of our kids, but they are also the general public’s perceptions of us.  The public, at large, has been taught that single fathers who actually care for and look after their children are a rare breed. 

I, for one, have had to overcome some of those misconceptions from my own ex-wife.  She never thought I would be able to look after our son in a way that she saw fit.  In her eyes, I wouldn’t be able to handle him crying or adequately feed him or ensure he got enough sleep every night.  This was actually in spite of the fact that I already had an eight-year-old daughter at the time from a previous relationship and she was turning out quite nicely.

It took a couple of years, but eventually she came to not only admit that I was a good father to our son but had actually exceeded her expectations as a parent.

I get the feeling that there are a lot of single fathers out there that have to battle against the same misconceptions…the same preconceived notions of how a man cannot take care of themselves so there must not be any way that they can take care of a child.  It can definitely be frustrating.

But the good news is that the world seems to be changing a bit.  Whether it’s simply because more single dads are getting the chance to shine or if there’s been some kind of “single father movement” brewing, the misconceptions are starting to disappear a bit.

A bit.

Just look at some of the more successful animated features over the past couple of years and you’ll see positive single father figures:  How To Train Your Dragon, Despicable Me, Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, Chicken Little, even Alvin & the Chipmunks. All of them showcase single fathers struggling to understand and love their kids in a way that will earn them respect, understanding, and unconditional love in return. This is definitely a turn-around from the days of seeing single dads being deadbeats who slept with anybody with a pulse, spent money on only themselves, and never even found out their kids’ names because they had run out on the mother while she was pregnant.

That’s not to say it doesn’t exist in today’s society, though. I know more than one fellow single mom blogger who has a horror story about their child’s father, so it’s not like the world of the single dad is all peaches and cream.

But before you assume to know how a single father should act, just keep in mind that there are a lot of us out there who not only love and take care of our kids…but we are out there every day fighting to overcome the public’s misconceptions on who we are and how we act.  We’re fighting to be the best possible male role models that we can be for our children.

Forgiveness

When going through my divorce I noticed that even among the single mom set there were smaller clubs within the club. For example there are single moms by choice, single moms by whoops and single moms by most unfortunate circumstance such as accident, illness or fuckery. Yes, fuckery. That is the club within the club I found myself in. The First Wives club, those whose "better" half dipped their chocolate in someone else's skanky whore infested peanut butter. 

I found that those of us in the super special my-ex-is-a-homewrecking-whore-fucker club tend to stick a little closer together. The grieving process is different. The cut is deeper. Not only are you dealing with the loss of a relationship but you're dealing with the loss of yourself - your confidence, your pride, your heart. You begin to question and doubt your judgement. Your brain, and all of your girlfriends, telling you that it's not you, it's nothing you did, it's all him, doesn't stop your heart from hurting. I found solace in other friends who had a similar ending to their relationship or marriage with their children's father. There is an unspoken kinship. There is just a certain feeling that bonds you, the knowing what it feels like and knowing that unless someone else has experienced it they can never know what that is quite the same way. 

My guest post today is by my friend Melysa who writes Sex, Lies and Bacon. She's a member of the my-ex-is-a-whore-fucker club with me and in the past couple of years I have watched her grieve, rage, evolve and shine brighter every day. I've watched her find herself again. 

I gave Melysa my one word Single Mom assignment. Hers was the hardest word of all. The one even I am not ready to write about yet because it's much too frightening. Forgiveness.

xoxo,

Single Mom Survives

“To forgive is to set a prisoner free, and discover that the prisoner was you.” -  Lewis Smedes

  

I became a single mother unexpectedly over two years ago when my child’s father decided to leave me for another vagina. Notice I didn’t say another woman because the truth is he didn’t stray to spend the rest of his life with someone who was, as Alanis Morissette so eloquently put it, an older version of me, perverted like me, or that, like me, would go down on him in a theatre. Ultimately, he strayed strictly for sex with someone else, which symbolized to him that he still “had it”. “It” being the freedom he longed for during whatever quarter-life crisis he was going through.

The events that led up to my separation were traumatic, to say the least. There was a lot of lying, some cheating, and if it weren’t for whatever tiny morsel of sanity I had left at the end of our relationship, there probably would’ve been a murder charge.

The period between wondering and knowing what was going on nearly killed me. I’m sure a lot of women who’ve been cheated on can relate. Your man starts to become distant. He starts coming home late. Maybe he’s not answering your phone calls or texts. Your intuition kicks in and you have a pretty good idea of what is happening. You halfheartedly confront him, not really ready for the truth. Luckily, at this point, you get no answers.

You start to question yourself and your abilities as a woman. What did you do wrong? How can you make it right? What if you were prettier, thinner, funnier, less of a raging bitch? Maybe you try to lose weight with the hope that he’ll once again find you attractive. Perhaps you start bending over backwards to please him in an effort to show him how good he truly has it with you. In other words, you’re grasping at straws in order to maintain some control over the life you lived, now spinning out of control.

Then, in time, when some common sense creeps back in, you get pissed off enough to make your move, because it’s become obvious that this man is having his cake and eating it too, at which point you turn yourself into some sort of undercover spy, complete with over sized sunglasses and bobbed wig, in an attempt to prove that you are not, in fact, insane and he is, in fact, double dipping between someone else’s legs.

Eventually, if you’re anything like me, you find the answers you were looking for, leaving you no choice but to face your biggest fear and learn how to stand, and raise a child, alone.

When the life you once knew and everything you believed in is gone, it can put you in a dark place. My dark place was my closet. I spent way too much time there in hiding amongst my stilettos and skinny jeans. I knew I couldn’t go back, yet I didn’t have the strength to move forward. Time stood still in that closet for nearly six months. That is, until the anger came; aimed directly at the man who had broken my trust and cast me aside like a pair of his whore’s panties.  

I swore to myself I would get revenge by becoming the sexy, successful, independent woman I always wanted to be, showing him everything he had lost and would never have again. Every time I started to feel sad and wanted to give up, I used the memories of what he had done to get mad instead. That anger picked me up off the ground and shook me back to reality.  It opened my eyes to the face of a little boy who needed his mother now more than ever. It gave me a reason to wipe away the tears, let go of my old dreams, and reach for new ones. Albeit unhealthy, that anger saved me.

Hating my ex made my transition into single motherhood easier. When times got tough, I blamed him. When there wasn’t enough money to pay my bills, I blamed him. When my son cried, I blamed him. When my vibrator broke, I blamed him. Life is so much easier when you have someone else to blame, isn’t it?

Before I knew it a year had passed and I was a million miles away from where I had been. I’d never thought I’d get there, but somehow I’d built a new life, all on my own. I finally saw the light at the end of the tunnel I’d traveled through, yet something was keeping me from reaching the outside.

That something was my past.

What I hadn’t understood was that all of the anger I used to fuel my journey toward independence was linked to the old. It didn’t matter how many steps I took forward if I was always looking behind me to get there. I realized I’d never be free to enjoy my new life until I figured out how to let go of my previous one.

For me, that meant forgiving the man who had hurt me.  

Forgiveness has never come easy to me.  The rare occasions that I had forgiven people, especially men, resulted in me being taken advantage of. Therefore, most of my life I’d believed that forgiving someone meant giving in. Translation: Losing.

I hate to lose.

But what I came to see was that the other times I’d forgiven people I’d done it for the wrong reasons. I’d done it for them, usually to ease their guilt or make their lives easier, even though I wasn’t truly ready to forgive them.

This time was different because I’d be doing it for me.

This time it was about letting go of the anger and resentment that kept me a prisoner, trapped in a cell full of memories and pain I no longer needed to survive. While they had helped me in the beginning, at this point they were only holding me back.

So I forgave him, and, more importantly, I forgave myself. I made a choice to let go of some control and wipe the slate clean, hoping to stop turning back when all I wanted to do was run forward. With my decision, and a deep breath, I finally reached the end of that long tunnel that brought me from past to present.

These days I focus on where I am instead of where I’ve been. I use my confidence, strength, and kick ass sense of humor to guide me. They’re a lot more powerful than my anger ever was.

I won’t lie and say forgiving my ex has been easy.  I still struggle with my decision from time to time. There are days I relapse and let the anger creep back in, raising my middle finger high as a reminder to me, and to him, that forgiving doesn’t mean forgetting.

But honestly, I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t. And neither would he.

Uncertainty

I've met some amazing single moms, and dads, while trucking down the road of single motherhood. Each and every one of them have their own amazing stories. We all share common highs, lows, fears, concerns and bartenders on this wild ride we're on. All of their voices deserve to be heard.

I have begun giving some of my favorite single parent writers an assignment. One word. One powerful word.

I've chosen a word for each of them that I know has played a role in their single parent life in a way I know they will be able to write from the gut about. So far the pieces I've received back from these writers are funny, touching, shocking in a hot-damn sort of way and inspiring. I can't wait to begin sharing them with you and I hope you love them as much as I do. 

Today's post is brought to you by a single mom I've had my eyes on for a long time because she's full of wonderful. She's the writer behind Lil Devil Mama (@lildevilmama) and the mama to one handsome little man. After reading the below I'm sure you'll agree she's pretty special.

My dear friend @SnglMomSurvives asked me to take a minute and write a post. Truly I am honored to be in such good company. But it wasn't just a post. It was a reflection on a single word. A word that means something bone shatteringly awful to me at this point in my life. Uncertainty. Ugh that word sucks. I hate it right now. Seriously, I just threw up in my mouth.

According to the genuis powers of knowledge over at Wikidpedia...

Uncertainty...The lack of certainty, A state of having limited knowledge where it is impossible to exactly describe existing state or future outcome, more than one possible outcome.

The timing for this post is god damn brilliant. It's one of those moments when you sit down on the floor, criss cross apple sauce and scream at the ceiling for answers but the stucco brings no damn answers. Why the genius timing? Last week I lost my job. I was told my position was being eliminated. The work I do every day sometimes until the dark hours of the evening was being eliminated. My hard work and daily grind was evaluated and my job no longer exists for no other reason than what I do apparently isn't valid enough to maintain paying me.

As a single Mama, I live with a shit ton of uncertainty every day. No joke. Remember that movie Ground Hog Day? Yeah, it's nothing like that because on the daily I never know what might happen. It's a crapshoot. The one stable thing I truly thought I could count on was my income and my ability to provide the basics for me and the Monkey, my little almost 5-year old man who keeps my days filled with the best parts of this life I've chosen. When we make these choices to raise our kids solo it's a leap of faith that at some point the answers will all fall into place at some point. Then you stop holding your breath or pass out whichever one comes first and you realize the answers are buried deep inside you. And yet if you start to pull those answers out of your soul there is still the uncertainty. It looms over every moment of every day. The questions swirl around your noggin like the flush of a toilet bowl. Will my son's Bio always be there? Uncertainty. Will my son learn that love is unconditional? Uncertainty.Will he know that I have done everything I can for him? Uncertainty. Will he understand that no matter what happens I must be away from his father? Uncertainty. Will he appreciate my choices I made for us? Uncertainty.

And now when the money runs out...how will we survive? How will we have food on our table? How will I pay for the roof over our head? How will I keep shoes on the Monkey's growing feet? How will I keep us afloat? How the hell am I supposed to do this? MORE FUCKING UNCERTAINTY!

It really is times like this that I wonder what the hell I was fucking thinking. I question every move I have made over the last five years. I push myself down into a corner and scream at myself for thinking I could be this woman. I berate myself for taking this little person away from his life he could have had and then I cry. Crumpled in the corner and hearing all the reasons why this is the worst decision I've ever made in my life. And then something happens and it reminds me that nobody puts Baby in a corner. Nobody damn it! Fuck uncertainty! My whole life I have been living on a shoe string budget and a wacky plan under my hat to make shit happen. This is how I roll. I thrive on this type of action. Mama was built for this kind of crap. When I was a kid my Mom taught that no one can fix it for you, you have to own your own shit and make it happen for you. And that's what I'm going to do. The day the Monkey was born I promised myself I would never let anyone run over my dreams to provide him the best life I could possibly afford no matter what and that is exactly what I will continue to do. How? I don't have a fracking clue!!! What I do know is that I can do this again. That's right we've been here before...when the Monkey was almost a year old I was jobless, living with my folks and working temp jobs to make enough to afford health insurance for the kiddo. It was shitty but we did it and we can do it again. *sigh*

Fuck this being a parent shit is hardwork. Uncertainty sucks. I hate it. Today is a good day. Yesterday sucked. Tomorrow is uncertain. I know that nothing is written in stone and that I can only choose to make the best of what is right in front of my today. I don't feel sorry for myself. Everything happens for a good reason. What that is right now I'm not sure and it still sucks. I've grieved the loss of a job I loved to do. I've been angry and experienced denial and felt the feelings drip away from my face in tears of rebirth. I guess that's what this next stage in my life can be. A rebirth of the next phase in my life. Cross your fingers I don't fall to hard on my face!

Say it with me kids....FUCK UNCERTAINTY!

All Hail the Stupid F?!cking Annual Employee Review

I hate annual reviews. This year our review rankings were broken down into categories such as Best, Great, Good, Mixed and You Better Start Looking for Another Job Asshole Because You Are Totally Fucked. To make review time even more interesting it always happens to fall during our busiest time of the year. I'm convinced they do this to see who will crack and who won't. I am further convinced nobody at Mega Corp actually reads these reviews.

I've been at my company since 1999 in the same position. I do it well, I'm paid well enough to make me content and for that I'm thankful, I have a  lot of experience and I don't altogether suck. I recently interviewed for a  management position, not because I applied for it but because I received an interview invite and decided I probably should not turn it down. I didn't get the job and to be honest with you I'm relieved. To have to manage people that come to your desk and say the dumbest shit they possibly can on a daily basis and not be able to look at them and respond with an "are you fucking kidding me" would just kill me slowly .

On a scale of 1 to I've-really-gotta-win-the-lottery my stress level at work right now is at about a seven so this morning I decided to test my theory that nobody at Mega Corp ever reads a review. You see I got a "Good" and to me that kind of "Sucks". I know, it's a mad world where "Good" feels like a C on a Home Economics test. I find the review system here to be complete bullshit and honestly it gives me one more reason to be thankful I'm not in management. Not being a suit is way more fun.  I wrote the below in the  "employee comments" section they give you before signing off on your final review. I've gone rogue. What the fuck do I have to lose, except the obvious.

"On a bad day I'm 'good'. On an average day I'm 'great'. Would I say I'm 'best' and without faults? Absolutely not. However, please send me a memo when 'awesome' is added as a category because I'd like to think I spend more time there than at 'good'. Thank you for employing me. Let's do this again sometime, like in a year. Does anyone read these reviews? If so, I'd really like to work from home one day a week. Let's see what we can do about that? Mmmmkay?"

I'll let you know soon if I need a new job. Until then I'll be hanging out in the supply room with my Swingline stapler looking for the last piece of birthday cake as I eat my feelings while contemplating my dead end job that I really should be very thankful for since without it I'd be living in a refrigerator box with a kid, two cats and a dog. And there's no wireless Internet in a refrigerator box.  



Save. Me.

10 Minute Bullshit Lunch Post

I’ve had no time to blog and quite honestly how does one call oneself a “blogger” if they don’t, you know, blog. I’m getting stabby. Lack of blogging makes me stabby and uptight and frustrated. Not unlike a complete lack of other-things-that-shall-not-be-mentioned-because-my-mama-reads-my-blog.


Weird or funny random shit keeps happening and I think to myself, “Self, that would be a totally funny blog post. Must get on that straight away.” And then I get home from work with the best of intentions to sit down and write right after I feed the kid, walk the dog, feed the dog, feed the cat, stop the cat from bitch slapping the dogs face and before I know it I’m all fuck-this-shit-I’m-done-with-this-day and off to bed I go.



I'm not even kidding, this a doodle I did in a meeting at Mega Corp yesterday. Obviously I work in the IT industry. Fuck my life.

 So this is my half wit idea – I’m trying a lunchtime post while eating lunch at Mega Corp. Just a mindless post with random, unedited, unproofed bullshit that really has no purpose other than it’s been on my hey-I-should-totally-throw-that-in-a-blog-post list. What does Mega Corp care? Mega Corp listed my phone number wrong on our company website so now my customers are calling an adult chat line instead of me. All it takes is one number being off people. That said, here is where we begin to insert the randomness.

I’ve realized that for those of us that are divorced we can no longer ever joke that we have the worst ex-husband on the block. Even though I don’t know your douchebag ex-husband there is no way he can be worse than Denise Richards' douchebag ex-husband. I can’t even begin to imagine dealing with the bullshit ex problems that Charlie Sheen brings about. I hate myself for even typing his name but it’s true. I wouldn’t exchange my ex issues for hers for all the pradda-jimmy-versaichawhatever shit in her closet. Poor single mama, I don’t care how fabulous it must appear from the outside to be that gorgeous after having two kids (or before for that matter), financially secure or how big a closet she has full of clothes that I could neither afford nor fit one thigh in. Nothing, and I mean nothing, can make up for the Sheen Douche Factor. It’s ok Denise, we’ve all made some questionable man choices. I don’t judge, I hug. Single mom pinky swear.

So in a pool of one hundred my NCAA bracket finished second. I may or may not have won some spare change that I may or may never see depending on when all of the slackers pay or don’t pay the piper in bananas or goldfish crackers or whatever it was that we may or may not have been wagering in this pool. I mean I wouldn’t ever win money in a big pool like that because that is probably totally illegal and I’m a well behaved single mom.

So I’ll be going to BlogHer for the first time this year. I recently came into some money. If you don’t know what BlogHer is it is a conference for women bloggers. LOTS of bloggers. A couple of thousand bloggers I believe. More women in one room than makes me comfortable to be honest with you. I plan on trying to figure out how to get my hands on Xanax four months in advance so that by the time the conference gets here I’m nice and passed out. I’m having High School flashbacks and my inferiority complex is already starting to manifest itself in a huge zit on the corner of my chin. Also, I need to whip the Medifast back out and get cracking again. This is worse than a high school reunion. It should be noted I skipped my twenty year reunion last year. Good news, I hear there is booze at this thing. Bad news, I’m not a big drinker so I’ll have to start training my liver soon. Good news, I get to San Diego. Bad news, I’ll probably also see the inside of the hotel toilet since I’m certain my liver pre-BlogHer training will get put on the back burner like everything else.

Did a guest post on Domestic Enemies of the Single Mom at Rants from Mommyland last week, or the week before or shit I’ve lost track of time. See, this is the mess I am. Anyway, I know, I can’t believe they acknowledge my existence either. They can actually spell and properly punctuate a sentence and shit. They are like… legit. And they know just the right time to do this and when doing this really makes something funny even funnier. And oh sweet Josiah do they know how to pick pictures that are so funny they send me to my I-might-have-just-peed-my-pants place. And they post every day. Every. Day. And it’s good every day. I want to be like them when I grow up instead of just phoning in a lame ass post like this one because I’m eating lunch and sticking it to the man on my lunch hour.