Metamorphosis

All the shit I've seen in this world, yet I never cease to be amazed by the ever more creative methods devised by shitmeisters to spin out even more shit and the true depths of the depravity involved with said shit-spinning.

At 19, I did what far too many ignorant teenagers do: I got knocked up. I got knocked up again at 22. Single with two little ones, I found myself between that proverbial rock and a hard spot. The future was not looking real bright, but that's what happens when you let yourself be led by hormones instead of thinking and leading with your head. One of the true definitions of character, though, is in how you deal with your actions: By taking responsibility for what you've done or choosing to lay blame at everyone else's doorstep. I chose to correct the condition of my ignorance. I went to school and got an education. I was reduced to standing in line at the local welfare office because I needed help, but I regarded it as a stepping stone on the way to making a better life for my family - the way it was meant to be used, rather than thinking of it as an entitlement. I worked - a lot. I was carrying a full load in college and working a full-time and 2 part-time minimum wage jobs - the reason I only received Medicaid for my kids and $63 a month in food stamps - nothing more. Finally, with a little perseverance, I landed a job working in a doctor's office; only to be told I "earned too much" to even receive Medicaid for my children (I still haven't figured out how $8 an hour for a family of 3 is too much, but whatever).

My eyes were opened when my kids and I were told to fuck off but I then come across a patient who had moved to the US and bragged that he had gotten government assistance to open his own restaurant - yet he received Medicaid.

I live here my entire life, a third-generation American citizen, but no one gives me money to open a restaurant, and my kids and I are told I make too much money to receive Medicaid; but this guy gets to come over here from the wild blue yonder and collect all this and more - at my expense... and brag about it.

That was 1995, and that was when I went to the Secretary of State office and changed my voter registration from Democratic to Republican.

Fast-forward 10 years, and I am the married mother of 4, trapped in my husband's "baby mama drama." She was someone who (quite literally) laid on her dead ass and collected a monthly check from the government and food stamps and Medicaid and all other manner of handouts - up to and including some county agency buying her a car (which she then turned around and sold). Unfortunately for the children, they were an incidental - a means of collecting that money and an inconvenience to her in every other way.

True definition of character:

Calling yourself a mother when you only want your kids around for your convenience.

Letting your current "flavor of the week" beat them into the local emergency room, then telling the doctor they had a seizure and fell down the stairs.

Finally losing your kids to their father but getting them for a weekend visit, beating them black and blue and telling them you have to do that "to make your daddy go to jail" then getting pissed when they refuse to tell the ER doctor daddy beat them with a hammer.

Letting your "flavor of the week" sexually abuse them while you sit on the fucking computer "chatting," then threatening them that if they tell they'll be in trouble, so they have to say someone else did it; getting busted and instead of even trying to pretend you didn't know he was raping them (like you insisted you didn't know the other one was beating them and said he was beating you, too, when you were facing felony charges and prison time), insisting to CPS and police officers that "their real father has influenced them," never questioning that maybe the sick bastard you shacked up with really MIGHT have stuck his dick in your 6-year-old daughter because "I love him and he would never do that."

Telling all your Internet "friends" all the horrible and shitty things your "ex" has done, convincing one of them to make death threats to him, when they are in fact things you have done yourself.

Let's not take responsibility, when it's just so much easier to just blame everyone else.