Badge of Honor

 

It’s 9 pm on a Wednesday night and I’m finally able to sit down for the first time all day. It’s Wednesday…but I’ve already worked 37 hours this week. My body is begging for sleep, but the laundry that is overflowing in the basement is beckoning to be folded, the kitchen table calls for me under a sea of crumbs and miscellaneous papers, and lunches are anxiously awaiting to be packed for tomorrow. It’s one of those nights where I don’t even know where to begin because there is so much that needs to be done and even the thought of it all makes me tired. “You wanted this, you chose this,” I try to remind myself when I’m feeling overwhelmed and ungrateful for the life I have chosen.  I chose this life. At 18 years old, I chose to become a mom. It wasn’t easy back then, and it sure as heck isn’t easy now. Becoming a young mom has been a beautiful journey, but it’s also been an excruciatingly painful journey.

 When I was 8 months pregnant, I was living out of my car. I vividly remember going to visit my mom and her saying to me, “You better find a place to live or the hospital is going to take that baby away from you.” There was no offering of a place to stay, no refuge for my baby and I; there was an empty cold car and the occasional shady motel. I was 18…scared, ashamed, and alone.  Someone once said, “when you realize you have no one to depend on, something inside of you just sparks. Something inside of you makes you go out and get it all on your own. Something like that has the power to totally motivate you,” and it did. I worked day and night to provide for my son and me. I knew that I had to set myself up for success. I knew that I had to give myself and my child a life so great that we would never need to depend on anyone other than ourselves again, and I succeeded. I was finally at peace with my past, or so I thought I was, until recently.

Recently, I became an aunt.  While it has been beautiful to watch my brother and sister-in-law morph into these amazing parents, it has also been deeply painful for me as well. As I listen to the anecdotes and how they take turns soothing their crying baby at all hours of the night, it is a painful reminder to me of all the lonely nights I spent trying to calm my newborn baby while fighting sleep deprivation all on my own. As I watch my sister-in-law get bombarded by her village of friends and family, all eager to lend a hand and an ear, I tearfully remember going home to a strange house with people I barely knew. At 19, no one warns you about postpartum healing…the stitches, the bleeding, the leaking. No one tells you about the baby blues and postpartum depression. I remember lying in bed, listening to my baby cry as I cried…wishing it would all go away. Wishing I would wake up from this nightmare. Struggling. Struggling in silence…all alone.

For so long, I have been able to bury those feelings. Those first few weeks and months of motherhood, I have buried deep down inside of me with the hope that I would never have to remember them again. Recently, however, I finished watching Maid which is based on the true story of Stephanie Land and it brought back all the emotions- if you haven’t seen it yet, you need to! The show portrays the struggle that a young mother goes through trying to leave an abusive relationship while having no means to support herself or her daughter. She is unable to get housing because she does not have a job, yet she cannot get a job because she doesn’t have childcare, an unfortunate and realistic conundrum that many single mothers face. It depicts the stereotypes that many people have about single mothers and is painfully accurate in showing how a minor inconvenience can cause a major setback in their life. People can be so ignorant and naïve in their opinions of young mothers and single mothers. In the show, Alex is in the middle of cleaning a lavish house when she faints from hunger; she literally has no money to afford food, yet the owner of the house treats Alex as if she is a lowlife and a drug dealer…because why else would someone accept the job as a house cleaner, right? People make speculations before even getting to know the real story.

One time, a woman at the restaurant I work at told me, “You don’t want to work your life away, your children are only little once,” as she orders a 300-dollar bottle of wine. The ignorance behind the “advice” stung me to my core; as if I like being away from my children 6 out of 7 days a week. As if I work there simply because I enjoy it and not because the extra income is not a luxury but a necessity.

The second runner up is when people like to tell me, “At least you’re young and you have so much energy.”  What they don’t realize, however, is that you are trying to build your life and your career from the foundation up. It’s a juggling act of trying to balance raising a family while also establishing your career at the same time and it’s never an even trade; you feel as if because you’re a young mom you always have to prove yourself to others. You overcompensate with field trips, elaborate birthday parties, volunteering for everything and anything, until your schedule is so jam packed that you’re sacrificing the little sleep that you already don’t get. “I don’t know how you do it” is a phrase I hear often, and I usually jokingly respond by saying, “I don’t know how to say no.” The truth is, however, I don’t want to say no and I feel like I can’t say no or else my shortcomings will just continue to be thrown in my face and used against me.

Judgements aside, the part about being a young mom that I will never get used to are the reactions and the comments I get when people find out I have three children and my oldest is 12 years old. “What were you, 10 when you had your first kid?” “How old are you, like 18?” “Wow, you started young!” I am most self-conscious of my age. I hate telling people my age because I know I’m going to get judged for the fact that I have three children. I feel like I always have to justify myself by following up with, “but I went back to school and finished college and now I’m a teacher.” It’s always, “I have three kids, but…” but what? Why do I always feel the need to justify myself? To prove my worth to other people? Why is life a constant struggle to overcome people’s judgment?  As if being a mom of three makes me less worthy than anyone else; as if I am less of a mother because not all my boys share the same blood. Why do we base our worth on the opinions of other people?

Those three boys, they are my heart and soul. They are my reason for being. Why do I feel embarrassment for the biggest blessings in my life? My sons saved my life. They taught me patience, hard work, discipline, and sacrifice. They held me accountable and responsible, and I will never be ashamed of that. I don’t wear young motherhood as a scarlet letter, I wear it as a badge of honor.