Everything I thought I had turned out to be smoke and mirrors.
My husband turned out to be an unfaithful sociopath who chose his mother over me.
I had my heart broken, and the pieces put through a meatgrinder then set on fire.
I found the thing I truly want to do with my life, only to have it torn from my grasp before I even had a chance to get started.
It was a year of loss, disgrace, and shame.
I poured every ounce of faith I had left in the world into a man and his magical dream, and when it turned out both the man and the dream were too good to be true it destroyed both of us.
I don’t think anyone will ever understand how desperately I needed it to be real, that dream of his. How badly I needed something to hope for, a future to believe in. I don’t think anyone will ever understand how much it cost me to admit to myself that it is never going to happen.
Someone asked me recently how I got from where I started to where I am now. “You must have had some kind of drive,” she said, to have gone from such horrible poverty to being a lawyer.
I did it by always believing tomorrow would be better. I kept going, every single day, because I believed that as long as I kept trying to be a good person and do the right thing, tomorrow would be better. I spent my whole life believing happiness was just around the corner. Out of sight, but not out of reach.
I don’t believe that anymore.
Forty is over now. Today I turn forty-one. I fully expect that this will be the year I wind up living in a tent under an overpass.
Actually, that’s not true. If it does come to that, I’m going to go live in a tent in my ex-husband’s backyard. He can explain to the kids why mama is sleeping outside and/or being arrested for trespassing. Although that second part will be kind of difficult considering my name is still on both the mortgage and the deed. It was his fucking job to take care of me when I fell apart. He should have to face the shame of his failure to care for me. Literally and figuratively.
It’s important to note that it isn’t myself I’ve lost faith in. If it was still just a matter of getting up every day and doing my best I would probably be okay. But my loss of faith is systemic and pervasive. Every day I open the New York Times app and read about mass shootings, a judiciary that is slowly stripping women and minorities of their hard-won rights, and the absolute shit-show that is this year’s presidential election.
I am 110% certain that, given the option, the VAST majority of Americans would vote “none of the above” come November.
Instead we are being forced, once again, to choose between two ancient, senile white men who don’t really give a shit about what is best for the future of this country because neither of them will be around to see it.
If the christian god really is watching over the United States, he’ll bless both of them with an aneurism and leave the rest of us in peace.
Too harsh?
I don’t fucking care anymore.
My children are going to come of age in a post-apocalyptic wasteland.
Thing1 will be okay, I think. In addition to being white and male, he’s also good looking, creative, resourceful, and astonishingly intelligent. He’s also a bit ruthless, if I’m being perfectly honest. At a parent-teacher conference, his kindergarten teacher literally cried and said “this child is going to change the world.”
That bitch would later stick her nose in my divorce and write a letter to the court giving my ex-husband credit for my invisible labor. *I* was the one making sure the class always had snacks. All that thoughtless bastard did was carry those snacks into the classroom when I handed him the boxes and instructed him to. Unless there is actual abuse going on, teachers need to stay the fuck out of domestic matters, because they don’t actually know what is really going on in a relationship. But I digress.
Thing2 is the one I worry about. He is ever so slightly atypical. Maybe a bit more than “slightly,” if I’m being honest. At his parent-teacher conference Norman would not shut the fuck up about how Thing2 was not as academically advanced as Thing1 was at that age. Poor kid was three years old and his own father was calling him out for being less intelligent than his brother. The response from Thing2’s teacher is burned into my brain, as it both elated and terrified me. I think about it all the time.
“First of all,” she said, “he is meeting all of the developmental benchmarks we hope to see at his age, and that is what you should be looking at instead of comparing him to his brother. Second, your child sees the world from a different angle than any of my other students. He notices things none of the other children notice, and he applies those observations to life in his own way.”
I left my children behind because I was not capable of providing for their physical needs and Norman was. But it is no secret to anyone that Norman and his mother openly treat Thing2 as second class. As less than. I hear comments on it all the time from my friends and family, and I have personally witnessed Mrs. Bates tormenting the poor child because she thinks it is funny.
Norman and his mother think teasing is a good thing that teaches the weak to be strong. I have told them repeatedly that it isn’t 1975 any longer and what they are doing is now considered bullying and abuse. They told me I need to get a sense of humor and learn how to take a joke. Their treatment of me is why I left. To see them repeating their patterns with my youngest child is horrifying, and at the moment I am powerless to stop it.
I believe we have entered into the apocalypse. I believe life will continue to worsen for the vast majority of Americans, myself included. I am tired. I feel hopeless. I feel defeated.
And that is why I write.
Not for myself. For my children.
I have read a LOT of post-apocalyptic dystopian novels, and what I have noticed is that the ragtag group of rebels who strike back against the forces of evil and save the world are almost always young people. Which makes perfect sense, because they are the ones to whom the future means the most. The young are the ones with the most to gain, the most to lose, and the most to fight for.
Forty nearly did me in.
Forty-one may actually finish me off.
All I have left to give is my voice, shouting into the infinite void that is the internet. And so I write. In hopes that someone younger and stronger will pick up my sword and join the battle.
Maybe I’m not entirely out of fight just yet after all.
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Love from the Apocalypse
Forty was a long, hard year.
Everything I thought I had turned out to be smoke and mirrors.
My husband turned out to be an unfaithful sociopath who chose his mother over me.
I had my heart broken, and the pieces put through a meatgrinder then set on fire.
I found the thing I truly want to do with my life, only to have it torn from my grasp before I even had a chance to get started.
It was a year of loss, disgrace, and shame.
I poured every ounce of faith I had left in the world into a man and his magical dream, and when it turned out both the man and the dream were too good to be true it destroyed both of us.
I don’t think anyone will ever understand how desperately I needed it to be real, that dream of his. How badly I needed something to hope for, a future to believe in. I don’t think anyone will ever understand how much it cost me to admit to myself that it is never going to happen.
Someone asked me recently how I got from where I started to where I am now. “You must have had some kind of drive,” she said, to have gone from such horrible poverty to being a lawyer.
I did it by always believing tomorrow would be better. I kept going, every single day, because I believed that as long as I kept trying to be a good person and do the right thing, tomorrow would be better. I spent my whole life believing happiness was just around the corner. Out of sight, but not out of reach.
I don’t believe that anymore.
Forty is over now. Today I turn forty-one. I fully expect that this will be the year I wind up living in a tent under an overpass.
Actually, that’s not true. If it does come to that, I’m going to go live in a tent in my ex-husband’s backyard. He can explain to the kids why mama is sleeping outside and/or being arrested for trespassing. Although that second part will be kind of difficult considering my name is still on both the mortgage and the deed. It was his fucking job to take care of me when I fell apart. He should have to face the shame of his failure to care for me. Literally and figuratively.
It’s important to note that it isn’t myself I’ve lost faith in. If it was still just a matter of getting up every day and doing my best I would probably be okay. But my loss of faith is systemic and pervasive. Every day I open the New York Times app and read about mass shootings, a judiciary that is slowly stripping women and minorities of their hard-won rights, and the absolute shit-show that is this year’s presidential election.
I am 110% certain that, given the option, the VAST majority of Americans would vote “none of the above” come November.
Instead we are being forced, once again, to choose between two ancient, senile white men who don’t really give a shit about what is best for the future of this country because neither of them will be around to see it.
If the christian god really is watching over the United States, he’ll bless both of them with an aneurism and leave the rest of us in peace.
Too harsh?
I don’t fucking care anymore.
My children are going to come of age in a post-apocalyptic wasteland.
Thing1 will be okay, I think. In addition to being white and male, he’s also good looking, creative, resourceful, and astonishingly intelligent. He’s also a bit ruthless, if I’m being perfectly honest. At a parent-teacher conference, his kindergarten teacher literally cried and said “this child is going to change the world.”
That bitch would later stick her nose in my divorce and write a letter to the court giving my ex-husband credit for my invisible labor. *I* was the one making sure the class always had snacks. All that thoughtless bastard did was carry those snacks into the classroom when I handed him the boxes and instructed him to. Unless there is actual abuse going on, teachers need to stay the fuck out of domestic matters, because they don’t actually know what is really going on in a relationship. But I digress.
Thing2 is the one I worry about. He is ever so slightly atypical. Maybe a bit more than “slightly,” if I’m being honest. At his parent-teacher conference Norman would not shut the fuck up about how Thing2 was not as academically advanced as Thing1 was at that age. Poor kid was three years old and his own father was calling him out for being less intelligent than his brother. The response from Thing2’s teacher is burned into my brain, as it both elated and terrified me. I think about it all the time.
“First of all,” she said, “he is meeting all of the developmental benchmarks we hope to see at his age, and that is what you should be looking at instead of comparing him to his brother. Second, your child sees the world from a different angle than any of my other students. He notices things none of the other children notice, and he applies those observations to life in his own way.”
I left my children behind because I was not capable of providing for their physical needs and Norman was. But it is no secret to anyone that Norman and his mother openly treat Thing2 as second class. As less than. I hear comments on it all the time from my friends and family, and I have personally witnessed Mrs. Bates tormenting the poor child because she thinks it is funny.
Norman and his mother think teasing is a good thing that teaches the weak to be strong. I have told them repeatedly that it isn’t 1975 any longer and what they are doing is now considered bullying and abuse. They told me I need to get a sense of humor and learn how to take a joke. Their treatment of me is why I left. To see them repeating their patterns with my youngest child is horrifying, and at the moment I am powerless to stop it.
I believe we have entered into the apocalypse. I believe life will continue to worsen for the vast majority of Americans, myself included. I am tired. I feel hopeless. I feel defeated.
And that is why I write.
Not for myself. For my children.
I have read a LOT of post-apocalyptic dystopian novels, and what I have noticed is that the ragtag group of rebels who strike back against the forces of evil and save the world are almost always young people. Which makes perfect sense, because they are the ones to whom the future means the most. The young are the ones with the most to gain, the most to lose, and the most to fight for.
Forty nearly did me in.
Forty-one may actually finish me off.
All I have left to give is my voice, shouting into the infinite void that is the internet. And so I write. In hopes that someone younger and stronger will pick up my sword and join the battle.
Maybe I’m not entirely out of fight just yet after all.
Welcome to the apocalypse.
See you on the other side.1
Becoming Alternative is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, please consider subscribing to my substack at https://becomingalternative.substack.com/ or making a one time gift at https://venmo.com/u/rmfontenot
https://youtu.be/oBrkbWSB3Ls?si=XE-ABbdsspis6BOD
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