My Life as a Liability

I've always been a good girl.  Always on the straight and narrow.  Never making waves.

I've spent my entire life proving I'm worth it.

You see for most of my life I have felt like a liability to those who should hold me dear.  Namely my mother and my former husband.

And why on earth would I have this feeling?  With my mother, since my earliest recollection I have always been the source of worry.  My father was a drunk who couldn't hold a job and my mother was the sole breadwinner.  Mom was upfront with me when I was sixteen.  She told me she had never wanted children, never intended to have any.  Life with my father didn't exactly create an environment of stability. A child - me - complicated things.  With my birth, my mother not only had to worry about her own financial stability but that of mine as well.

My father brought the whole instability thing to fruition when he died at age 37.  Mom was stressed out during our life alone together and I don't remember a whole lot of joy, just existence.

Mom remarried when I was eleven.  My life as a liability hit an all time high because then was I not only my mother's little liability, I was a leftover, a residual, a reminder to her and my stepfather of her past unhappy first marriage.  She and my new stepfather were so devoted to making us a family unit that I wasn't even included, wasn't even invited, to their wedding.  I was left behind to stay with my grandmother.  I soon learned first hand what it truly meant to be the proverbial third wheel.

As I matured, the fear of my potential liability took on new concerns for my mother.  I was a naive girl, frightened of boys, actually.  I was never boy crazy and really never gave my mother any concern about my impressional teenage years.  Still in all she worried.  Well she needn't...I didn't date.  I was afraid of men.  Actually I felt intimidated by the opposite sex.  I wasn't good at the attraction thing, the flirting.  Funny but I'm still not. Guess my lack of self esteem comes into play here.

Still she worried about me bringing shame on the family I guess.  Screwing up.  Basically she worried that I'd become my father.

She actually came out and said to me once - warned me once - that she "wouldn't be able to handle" me "having a baby without being married".  Looking back, I don't even know what precipitated that whole admonishment other than the fact that I was a young adult and living on my own.  I had moved out at 21 and instead of applauding my sense of independence she said that "Girls stay home til they're married.  People talk about girls who have their own apartments."  Really?

Well she needn't have worried.  My missteps, my worries and issues were always borne totally on my shoulders...always.  Whether that be money problems or domestic problems.  I never went to my mother with my issues.  Never felt I could.

I also, apparently, was the reason I'm an only child.  Anyone who knows me knows I would LOVE to have had a sibling.  Never a question.  I hated being an only child.  A few years back my mother told me that my stepfather "would have loved to have had a child of his own" but that she was nearly 40 when they married and, besides, she was afraid I'd "go off the deep end."  Again - really??  Why not be honest with herself that she was 40, she wasn't really a kid person to begin with and she did say that she wouldn't have had anyone to take care of baby #2.  I would have been 11 or older if she had of had another child.  My aunt, her sister, provided care for me for 15 years - FREE OF CHARGE.  Yep.  She never paid my aunt, even when my mother could have afforded it, she never paid her.  And she never even acted thankful - blessed - to have such great care for me.  My mother always has had an entitled demeanor of sorts - but that's a whole another post.

And they say that women marry men like their fathers.  Well, I didn't really have a point of reference there insofar as a relationship is concerned so I did the next logical thing...I married a man like my mother.

For starters, things weren't always awful in my marriage.  We started out with some promise, had some great times.  But as the years wore on I began to sense a familiar pattern.  Familiar interactions...very familiar.  The whole 'because of you' or 'if it wasn't for you' dialogue.

Example:

I was very upfront before we even married that I wanted children (he already had two considerably older children) and that I wanted to stay at home with them.  My mother was never able to stay home with me and it was something I was adamant about when planning my own family.  So when our daughter was born I did stay home and we were entirely on his salary.  It became contentious.  I was told by him about "this thing that you're doing to our family."  Really?  How about how we were now also raising my 13 year old stepson because his mother said she couldn't handle him but oh, she didn't want to leave the house that my husband let her stay in because of their son and she wanted assurance that we wouldn't expect any financial support from her for her child.  F.S. consented to all because he wanted his son so badly.  And I was putting financial strain on our family?

The topper was four years later when I gave birth to our second child.  I'll never forget holding L.P. right after delivery.  He was so different from L.B.  So tiny, so different looks wise.  I was in awe of our new little sweetie.  My baby daddy?  Oh he too sat beside my hospital bed gazing upon our new bundle.  Tears in his eyes.

"I could have been home free."

Wow.  That remark was the lament that here was his youngest child and his youngest child from the first marriage was about to graduate high school - hence the 'could have been home free.'  Heartwarming.

The indifference I get/got from both ex hubs and mom is not lost on my children.  L.B. even said several years ago:  "Mom you need to divorce Dad and Grandma needs to kick the bucket."  Ah from your mouth to God's ears, Sweetie.  LOL.  I did take care of the Dad part.

I have a good sense of self.  My wonderful grandmother and aunt made sure of that.  They filled my world with love, support and kindness.  Mom?  Not so much.  Oh well.  If anything it made me the polar opposite in dealing with my own two children.  Hopefully they know by my words and actions how absolutely priceless they are to me and how over the moon I am at having them in my life.