Get A Real Job

Years ago, when I first moved to Texas to be with the stranger I met online, I watched in confusion as he tore up my Subway job application. No, he wasn't doing it to be an asshole. He was promising me a dream wrapped up in a big red sparkling bow. He wanted to be the provider and wanted me to sit back and soak up my 'feminine energy'. He wanted me to be able to enjoy the peace of being a stay at home wife and mom.

A cinematic adventure played in my head as I saw myself learning how to cook, packing adorable notes into lunch boxes, hosting slumber parties for the kids, hanging up art work and spelling tests from school with gold star stickers, and shedding tears at school assemblies and plays. I was going to give my own kids the picture perfect childhood I never got to experience!

Life took that dream, laughed in my face, and handed me a cancer diagnoses during my very first pregnancy.

"Abort the fetus to save yourself," the doctors said. But she wasn't just 'a fetus'... she was my baby. I told them where to shove their advice and refused treatment. In an amazing twist of fate, her stem cells put my cancer into remission. The tumor stopped growing. We both nearly died on the delivery table... we both flatlined for a moment, but we both fought our way back.

That first year was incredible and scary and fun and all of the things. But before her first birthday even rolled around, I was pregnant again. I was never even supposed to live to see one child, let alone two. And before long... here came baby number three. Three high risk pregnancies in three years because apparently, I like living on the edge.

But by baby number three, my body was trashed. I was diagnosed with sciatica, I had severe heart burn even when only drinking water. I had fainting spells and my vagina felt like it was going to fall out onto the floor because of the pressure from the water weight. I was supposed to be induced on December 20th, but that never happened. On December 12th, I went into natural labor, and we drove 45 minutes to the hospital my midwife was working at that night.

My husband was excited because 13 is his favorite number. He was hoping she would be born on the 13th. So, I held her in. I watched the clock on the wall and began to push at 11:58 on December 12th just so he could have his favorite number for her birthday.

My reward was a lot less exciting. My midwife was leaving to go back to her private practice and introduced me to the nurses working this hospital. Most were nice. One was not. I had always breastfed my children but was hit with a mysterious stomach issue with my first. I was told to get a HIDA scan to check my gall bladder which in turn made me radioactive for 24 hours. In that time, I was told to pump n dump, which severely depleted my milk supply and it never returned to normal. I had supplemented what I wasn't able to produce for my other two babies.

This nurse refused to give me formula for my newborn baby, insisting I was listed as a breastfeeding mother and the baby would do what she needed. My baby was refusing to latch and was screaming and screaming and this nurse would not listen to me. "She knows what to do!" she told me over and over. She'd always come in when my baby had passed out from exhaustion and tell me how great I was doing. I explained over and over that she was passing out from exhaustion. She was starving. I was wrong apparently and this four day hospital stay left me so traumatized I never even went back for a post partum checkup.

After that came the post partum depression. With my husband taking on a new job with incredible pay seven hours away for weeks at a time and zero friends or family nearly, I was a zombie running on fumes in a new state. I was a shell of myself. I was isolating, not eating, and doing the bare minimum to keep my kids alive while I tried to stitch my own shattered brain back together without telling anyone. Not even my husband.

I survived. I still don't know how. I just know that somehow, I always do. I don't even know why.

For awhile, the illusion I had of being this amazing stay at home mom and wife became real. I was doing mommy and me workouts with the babies, taking them to the library every week, participating in every summer reading program where my son even won the top prize, going to the park, hikes, field trips, going to the museum, doing art and science projects. We were on fire.

Until my sister moved in. I don't even want to get into that can of worms again, but if you know... you know.

And here we are, still trying to pick up the pieces after losing everything. Our savings, our home, all of it.

Now, I'm homeschooling three kids across three grades inside a cage of a gated army community in a tiny town with no kid friendly activities, no homeschool groups, and one car that my husband needs for work. My youngest was just diagnosed with ARFID, so even meal time isn't fun. She's somehow surviving on Doritos and hashbrowns, and this will pass, according to nutritionists. It's not just a case of picky eating, it's like a war and if one food ever touches another, it's like stepping on a hidden bomb.

I don't even enjoy cooking half the time because of it. Pair that with my oldest daughters "texture issues" and pickiness, and my husband's new obsession with intermittent fasting... I hate cooking. I dread it. Which sucks, because I'm great at it. But I'm not going to eat entire dinners by myself while my husband inhales whole pizzas during his eating window.

Doing my daughters hair used to bring so much joy. In fact, I made tons of hand made bows for them. Every season and holiday... they had a matching bow. This year, my oldest daughter has swapped her bows for combat boots and demands to keep her hair ratty and in her face. My little one insists on telling me that she doesn't need her hair brushed or done because she wants to be lazy. A habit she picked up from my sisters kids.

The sweet simple stay at home mom moments I craved and dreamt about are slipping right through my fingers. And of course, I get to feel like an asshole for even complaining about it.

Because I get to be home. I have time to sit and write this piece while the laundry washes. I'm lucky. Most women don't get this. Especially not in this modern world. It's unheard of and I should feel ashamed for not having a real job.

I'm so grateful I don't have to work at Subway (a job I actually loved when I was 17 before I met my husband) and leave my kids with strangers. But being thankful doesn't mean I'm not exhausted right down to the bone. This is, hands down, the hardest, most relentless job I've ever done, and my salary is zero dollars and zero cents.

My worth often feels the same. My husband tells me all the time, he can do his own laundry or dishes... which I know, I'm not stupid. Just like I could go out and earn a paycheck... we all can. But telling me that when you pushed this lifestyle on me makes me feel completely worthless. Replaceable. Disposable.

What really rubs salt in the wound is the endless yapping from everyone else, particularly my dad. We don't talk much, but when we do, he never tires of telling me how much his load is paying. He is an over the road truck driver and boasts about his 4k paychecks. Then he loves to ask how much my husband makes (which I never tell him because that's weird) followed by asking me when I will get a real job and put my kids in real school so they don't 'grow up stupid'.

It's an infuriating double standard. Raising your own kids isn't a job, but being a nanny or running a daycare is. Teaching your own kids isn't a job, but doing it in a public school gets you a title. Cleaning your own house isn't a job, but when I was cleaning rooms at hotels and lodges, suddenly that counted as real work. Cooking for my family isn't work, but restaurant workers have jobs. Writing isn't considered a real job either, even though the royalties from my latest book (Get Your Kicks on Route 666) literally paid our car insurance last month.

If I went out and got a standard 9-5 right now, my entire paycheck would end up funding the daycare and tutors hired to replace me. But hey, at least I have a piece of paper with my name on it that has a dollar amount attached to it, right?

So here I am, fighting a constant mental war. Am I teaching them enough? Is my little one ever going to learn how to read? Are my kids being robbed because their awards are printed by mom instead of a school principal? I'm tired. I'm overwhelmed. I feel so guilty all the time.

I don't have a pretty sparkling red bow of my own to tie onto this story. I'm just a mom who beat cancer and stared death in the face, survived post partum hell, and is trying to figure out how to stretch a dollar and teach multiplication. My work is invisible.

But I'm still her for some reason... doing it every single day.