Days Like This

I hate him for days like this. I try so hard not to hate him, but it is day's, well really nights, like this that I begin to loathe his nearly insignificant existence.

I didn't make the choice to have these children on my own. He made the choice with me to have them, he made the choice without me to throw us all away. But there he is now, in his house, by himself, while I continue to make every sacrifice like I always have had to for my children. It is me who loses sleep to care for them, it is me who skips meals to feed them, it is me who foregoes buying clothes for myself so that they can have what they need.

I hate him at times like these because it is me who is up at 4am to change the bed sheets and bathe our 5 year old, it is I who is loving and caring for our sick 7 month old with a fever of 104 and inconsolable tears. Yet he gets to claim himself as father, he thinks he is fan fricken tastic.

I am the one being the parent here, day in and day out. But he boasts how beautiful his daughter is, how smart his son is, as if he had anything to do with those things. She looks just like me, every piece of her, because of me she is beautiful, not him. It is I who made sure to sacrifice everything necessary to make sure my son got the best education, and not just academically but social-emotional too, which lets face it, he had nothing to do with because he sees no value in education.

I hate him because he says how beautiful she is but rarely if ever noted me as beautiful. I hate him because he remarks how smart our son is but always viewed me as unintelligent.

I hate him because after having two kids I now have to find another someone to love and love me, with a body of a woman who has had two kids. I hate that I wasted the body I once had on a man like him.

Don't get me wrong, it is not being a mom that I hate, it isn't even being a single mom that I hate, it is that he gets to claim them as his product of love and care when it is all MY love and care that has gone into the incredible children that they are.

Most of all I hate him for the unfairest of reasons, for making me a fool for choosing him, not once not even just twice to have children with but choosing him again and again to be with me but he didn't have the decency to be there. I hate him for the way I now hate myself. I hate that I let him have even an ounce of power over me. Which isn't even his fault, it is my own for choosing him, for letting him, for even wanting him in the first place...it is no one's fault but my own for all of this. So really I hate myself.

I hate him for doing what my father did, robbed his children of a loving home consisting of both the parents that created them.

Ultimately I hate him for being the type of father his children will hate him for being once they have children of their own and make all the sacrifices and see first hand all the efforts their own father never put forth. But they won't hate him until long after they've gone through the phase of hating their mother that sacrifices every fiber of her being for them.