Am I Even a Real Mom Anymore?

Divorce makes me feel like a part-time caretaker

The thing with throwing a bomb on your life via divorce is that rebuilding means picking up shattered pieces and analyzing them before deciding where they go.

I’ve learned more about myself through my divorce and life after than I ever did in years of contemplation, self-help books, and therapy combined.

It hit me like a punch to my soul when I realized my parents never said they loved me. I spent the first chapter of my life learning how to live with the aching hole inside of me, always feeling different (the undiagnosed autism didn’t help).

In my second chapter, I married the wrong person. Reading old diaries confirmed that it wasn’t a good idea, even back then. I made a vow to someone who often acted like he didn’t even like me. I grew to resent friends who had happy marriages (even if half are secretly bad, there had to be plenty that are healthy and happy).

It just became a part of who I was: I’m different. I don’t get the same nice things other people get. It’s not a victim mentality. It’s more like, I have blue hair when everyone else doesn’t. It is what it is.

Not having these things felt like destiny.

When my son was diagnosed with a chromosome disorder at 14 months, the same mentality went through me again. Everyone else was experiencing the joys of raising a neurotypical child as they hit milestones; mine was spent for years dealing with insurance and therapies hoping my son would eventually hit any milestone.

Let me make this clear: I adore my son. I don’t have a “whoa is me” mentality when it comes to the disorder. I’m saying that when my son was diagnosed, my brain thought this was the usual standard fare for my life’s path.

While I’m not someone anyone would call as traditionally maternal, my kids filled so much of my heart that needed caring. It was the kind of love where I was needed and they only knew a world where I was in it.

Divorce destroyed their world. I didn’t think I’d only have them 50% of the time. My ex-husband rarely ever got to work from home in his line of work and it required him to get home late every night. I assumed I’d have the kids 90% of the time and get the house.

Covid changed everything. Now we’re 50/50 because Joseph finally works from home. And he got the ginormous house.

That means half of my life right now is spent without the two people that love me. I don’t mean love me like my friends love me. I mean the kind of love that bonds people together.

Since my breakup almost two months ago from Jeremy, I realized that I want a loving relationship. I’m done thinking that it’s okay to never have a healthy relationship or be with someone that makes me happy. However, wanting it is making me crazy.

I’m not desperate, but I’m anxious. It vexed me, not knowing why I was in desperate need to find the perfect partner with Jeremy gone (who, to fall in the same patterns, was a guy who didn’t fully love me). I was never like this when I first began dating again.

I finally get it.

For half of my present existence, I lose the only people that love me and I go back to feeling completely unloved. It’s not just sitting in an empty house. It’s sitting in an empty house feeling like I could get hit by a bus and after a week of crying, everyone’s lives would go back to normal.

I don’t matter in anyone’s life when my kids aren’t around. There isn’t anyone who would fall to their knees feeling utterly gutted from my death.

Of course, my kids would be devastated. But when they’re not around, it feels like I’m not a mom anymore.

I didn’t have a normal upbringing like my peers around me. I had a secretly unhappy marriage for almost two decades. And now, I don’t have the right to be called a “mom” anymore because it’s only part-time and I’m not there for every moment that matters.

It’s like handing back a membership card in disgrace.

I’d like to think that my kids miss me when I’m not around. But I know they hate my tiny house compared to their dad’s massive one with a playroom the size of my first floor. Joseph is horrible with money and is most likely racking up debt but to them, they have a dad who buys everything they want and their lives feel fun.

Yesterday, he sent me a video showing the kids playing with their friends. My son had two friends over and my daughter had one. There’s no way my tiny house could accommodate five kids. I don’t have the money to buy the fun things they were playing with or building.

My daughter had a sleepover at his house. He set up two kids’ teepees with string lights for them in the playroom. The girls were beaming.

I know, I know. Kids need love, not stuff. But they also need fun in their lives and unfortunately, my naïve self learned that requires money. It’s hard to make memories when your house doesn’t have anything to do other than iPad games and everything outside costs wads of money.

When they’re with me, they constantly ask when they’ll be back at Joseph’s house. They’re the only source of love that I have and it’s immeasurably painful. And I experience it week after week.

I’m screwed when they become teenagers and can choose which house to stay in.

Keeping a positive mindset is tough when it feels like life dangles a carrot but never gives more than a bite, especially when everyone else has baskets of the orange vegetable. Comparison is the thief of joy but it’s impossible to not feel deep pain when everyone around you is married, has kids, great jobs, and their parents visit their grandkids on the regular.

Meanwhile, my kids are time shared with my ex-husband. They’re like library books with due dates because they’re not all mine.

I can’t control my custody schedule. I can’t go back in time for a do-over of my childhood and make my parents show affection.

With those two areas in a stalemate, all I have in that trifecta is the chance of finding romantic love. It scares me that like so much else in my life, I’ll get a fleeting moment and nothing more.

What is it like to feel safe with a partner? What is it like to get excited to see them and they feel the same way? What is it like to feel like you’re on the same team? What is it like to have that connection?

I want to love and care for someone else. I want someone else to feel that way about me. I was in a marriage where I was the defacto bitch and battleax. Even with good intentions, Joseph accused me of doing things for the wrong reasons. Asking him about his day resulted in him insisting I was only asking to rub it in about his miserable job.

I briefly saw the person that I want to be in a relationship when I was with Jeremy. It felt good to be sweet and nice. It felt good to care for someone. The same way that I care for my kids because I want what’s best for them.

My feels like it’s going to burst from my chest because it’s experienced life on the outside and it gets caged every few days per the marital settlement agreement. I wish I had someone to give that feeling without having to take it back.

Since my divorce, I haven’t had a single weekend without my kids where I didn’t cry from missing them. I’m scared that one day I won’t. I caused the mess in their lives and will always, should always, feel guilty.

My kids seem a little older each time I have them. It’s like I’m missing so much of their lives that they’ve grown another inch or lost more of their babyish facial features. I’m missing their childhood. I’m missing their growth.

I don’t feel like I have a right to be called a “mom” anymore. I’m an imposter among the moms who have their kids full-time and everything in their lives is dictated by their children’s needs.

It’s the same feeling I had when I was married. We’d attend social functions and I pretended things were fine. It felt like a game of Clue and someone would eventually yell, “It was Jennifer in the Library with the Candlestick!”

My mantra for my divorce was to live a life of authenticity. And yet, believing I’m a “real mom” feels fake and inauthentic.