Fuck.
Is that not the most obscene word on the planet?
For years I’ve covered my ears when I’ve heard it, felt its force reverberate through my head when I read it. For years I viewed it as nothing more than a vulgar word used by vulgar people.
I’ve since changed my mind. Fuck is the fine print on your grandpa’s reverse mortgage, the cockroach in your shower, the worm in your digestive track. It’s the only word strong enough to express how it feels when you realize you could have been an astronaut, a firefighter, or surgeon–a politician, federal judge, lawyer, or scholar–a lobbyist, engineer, banker, or broker, but chose instead to be a stay-at-home mom because you mistakenly thought it was God’s will.
It’s the realization that for your entire life you’ve only been using half your brain, renting out the other half to a church that thinks emotional manipulation and circular logic are meant to be used together.
I could have joined a string quartet and toured Europe. I could have moved to Hawaii and started my own kayaking business. I could have learned to play the guitar and taken song writing classes, performing in bars and restaurants until I caught my big break. Granted, my chances of making it would have been slim, but at least I could have attempted it without the guilt.
Then again, I may have tried to emulate one of my heroes. When I was a girl and learned about Jane Addams and the settlement house she founded in 1889 to provide the poor with resources to find jobs and housing, I knew immediately that if I had the funds, I’d want to do something like what she did!
But Jane was single. She never married. Never had children. Never raised a family. And if she had, she may never have started Hull House. I knew in my heart that any philanthropic dreams would play second fiddle to my role as wife and mother. If a man ever wanted me, of course. I was lacking in the self-esteem department. Maybe, if I’d not rented out my reasoning to the oughts and shoulds of this religious organization, I would have done more humanitarian work.
Truth is, I don’t know. The past is set and I can’t change it. All I can do is look at where I am right now and move forward from there.
On the positive side, I have good credit, no debt, a small nest egg, and a few skills. On the negative side, I’m at a huge disadvantage in the work force because I’m the primary caretaker of four small children. Teaching music is difficult because the hours conflict with homework time. Working as a freelance musician means working evenings and weekends, putting a lot of mileage on the car, and getting paid less than 12k a year.
The most practical approach is to go back to school and learn some skills in a field where there’s actually demand, but time is of the essence when your spouse is not supportive. When he blames you for not choosing a more useful career in the first place, and then criticizes your current plan for its potential to take you away from the children precisely because the skills you’re acquiring will actually be useful in the workforce, it’s enough to make you want to punch something.
When push comes to shove, I’ve come to see that staying home with your children is good and bad. Because on one hand, my kids know I’m always there. But on the other hand, being a stay-at-home parent also means that I’m expected to clean vomit off the floor in the middle of the night, cook each evening, do laundry for a household of six, ask permission to leave the home when my spouse is around, and meet his emotional and physical needs even though I’m reminded in subtle (and not so subtle) ways that because I’m not making money, nothing I do is enough.
I’m a leech.
Fuck.
Please God, give me my dignity.
-Submitted by Sophia Stone
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It’s the versatility of the word I enjoy. Few words can be an exclamation of disgust, horror, pain or frustration; and then be turned around and be used an outburst of joy, excitement and utter reckless abandon.
That said I feel your pain and hope you figure it out.
Solidarity, with both the sentiments and your choice of language. Affricate, vowel, stop: it’s a compact, angry word that sums up much pain and frustration in an efficient package.
I try to tell myself that the good things about my situation might not have come to pass without all of the stupid, uninformed, idiotic choices (and the bad things that came with those choices). Then I realize it’s kind of a pathetic attempt to compensate, and utter the aforementioned word a few times.
I love this piece.
“Fuck is the fine print on your grandpa’s reverse mortgage, the cockroach in your shower, the worm in your digestive track. It’s the only word strong enough to express how it feels when you realize you could have been…. ” Yes.
Thanks for being honest.
I have to admit its my favorite swear word. Guttural and sharp and effective
I am so sorry. I have no idea how to even help. I feel like I still feel that way. But my husband is supportive which is a million times different.
I’m so sorry this is real. At least at this point in my life I’m willing to believe you. Thank you for sharing this story.
This person has been inside my head!
I spent two and a half years married to an unsupportive husband. That wasn’t among the main reasons for the divorce, but it’s unbelievable how freeing I feel now that I’m a single mother of an infant. My daughter isn’t even two yet and it’s like the entire world is at my finger tips. Though we live in drastically different worlds (I live with my parents, and my mom has a business in her home and is willing to watch my daughter while I go to school and work a few hours a week at the local mall), it’s amazing how much better I feel despite the fact I know from the church’s perspective I’m “a broken home.”
Poignant.
I feel this is the voice of my mother and it breaks my heart.
My mom made sure all her daughters had professional degrees and careers, should we not want to exclusively be a SAHM. She’s been working now for 6 or 7 years, and even though we’re all grown-up, my dad is still not supportive. She shouldn’t be working. If one of us ever mentions continuing to work once/if we have children, it is apparently all her fault for being a bad example. Breaks. My. Heart.
I truly wish I had things like this to read, or people to be in contact with, back when I was juggling things like the timing of getting finger food on a highchair tray for 17 month old before new born erupted into demands to nurse…I figured out how to time it so as I nursed one side, older sibling had main course, then, while burping the nurser, I was able to orchestrate a dessert presentation for toddler. While toddler ate banana pieces, infant nursed other side.
But if there was ever a moment that was the “Ffffuckkkk” moment of them all. was when I was trying to go, well, to put it bluntly, #2 one morning-while nursing said infant while sitting on the commode, with #1 child (toddler) knocking at the bathroom door, going, “Mommie, mommie, mommie!” like Sheldon on The Big Bang THeory. Sitting there on that toilet, I said, to myself, “Well FFFFuckkkk me, someone shoot me or don’t bother, because I have gone directly to Hell!”
I have always preferred, “Fuck Me!” over the plain, “fuck”, because it is like, really, fuck me. Fuck or Fuck me is when you are finally ready to sit down to dinner and baby has a diaper blow out that requires a full on bath- RIGHT NOW!-forget eating that nice meal. Meal? what the hell is an actual meal? FUCK ME…it is when you have friends over (without kids) and the toddler decides to take a crap on the floor of their bedroom and not in the training potty, and guess what, you have to clean it all up, and discuss why “we need to use the potty, not the carpet”.
Yet for some strange reason, now that they are in high school, I sort of mourn the loss of those days, and wonder why I couldn’t have taken it in, savored it. Why did it take Prozac-what I liken to glue-cause it holds it all together- to make me laugh it all off and delete the word FUUUUUUCK from my vocabulary? Parenting is the hardest job we will ever have, but no one ever tells you that. I did have someone tell me that “the next five years will be the hardest ones in your life” when she saw me wheeling #1 in a stroller with #2 strapped to my chest in snugli thing. But it doesn’t stop at the first five years…it will always be a new level of difficulty for whatever reason.
Thank you for being so honest, I honor you!
It’s the only word strong enough to express how it feels when you realize you could have been an astronaut, a firefighter, or surgeon–a politician, federal judge, lawyer, or scholar–a lobbyist, engineer, banker, or broker, but chose instead to be a stay-at-home mom because you mistakenly thought it was God’s will.
This.
I still haven’t figured out how to get over my grief for this.
It’s true I never actually became a stay-at-home mom, but I spent my twenties with an eye single to that purpose. I wish you the best moving forward.
“…but chose instead to be a stay-at-home mom because you mistakenly thought it was God’s will. ”
I have a seven-year-old daughter. How do I help her avoid this? How do I teach her to make her own decisions when I take her to a church every week that teaches her to bury some of the best and brightest parts of herself? How do I teach her to value who she is when she is a grade ahead of the boys in her primary class, the same boys she will learn she is supposed to marry, but who will want nothing to do with her because she is too intimidating for them (sorry, now I’m projecting my past on her future)? How do I do it? How do I teach her to celebrate her gifts and not feel she is called upon to sacrifice them on the altar of her religion?