Angry and exhausted.

Saturday, April 12th:

I’m angry and exhausted.

I was not supposed to be a single mom of an almost three-year-old son and the sole caregiver of a dozen beings.

A part of me hates myself because I lost it on my son twice in the past week. I had two anxiety attacks where I hyperventilated, and one happened in front of my son. But there is no one to step in and give me five minutes to reset myself when my son defies me for the 111th time in 24 hours.

Coincidentally, we re-watched the “Sheepdog” episode of Bluey, Season 3, Episode 11. Typically, my son watches SuperKitties. I’ve watched or heard the two seasons of SuperKitties 27 times. But I convinced him the other night that we should watch Bluey, and the episode that was queued up next was when Chili needed twenty minutes away from Bluey and Bingo. Bandit steps in and pretends to be a Sheepdog to keep the girls away from Chili.

But I don’t have anyone to step in and give me a twenty-minute break from my child.

I’m alone in this desert city. No partner. No family out here. No close friends. Just me.

Everyone always says, “It takes a village to raise a family.”

Well, where the fuck is my village?

Where the fuck is my partner? Who not only is going to give me twenty minutes to reset myself after the constant demands and defiance of my tiny dictator but one who is also going to defend & protect me?

The last time my son saw his father (or so I thought. More on that later, or three months from now when I may have an opportunity to write again) was in January, a week before my birthday.

I caught the virus that went around earlier this year and took even healthy people down for an entire week. One of my coaches caught it before I did; she didn’t coach or train for the first week of January. I was sick for a whole week, and even by the end of the second week, I was still at about 80%.

I dropped my son off at daycare and came back home to rest. That early evening, I had to take Apocalypto to the vet, and by the time I started to feel really unwell, it was too late to cancel his appointment.

My son’s father, J, called me three times that afternoon: once at noon, again at 12:30, and then a third time at 13:45.

14:25 - Me: I don’t feel well, please stop calling. I am trying to rest today.

14:27 - J:  Just trying to help but what ever

15:39 - Me: If you want to come over tonight and spend time with him so I may continue to rest, that’s fine. But I plan to leave the house around 4:00 p.m. to pick him up because I made an appointment for Apocalypto to get testing at 5:15 p.m. today because he needs a new script to get more of the k/d food.

15:41 - J: Okay would you like to pick me up before you get him

I only ask cause it's almost 4

If not I can come over later tomorrow

15:53 - Me: You can’t get a ride here?

15:54 - J: I can take the bus now and hopefully I'll be there when you guys get back

16:04 - Me: Okay

Bring clothes for tomorrow, just in case.

16:09 - J: Okay

16:32 - J: I should arrive in 45ish min

17:02 - Me: Well, we’ll be at the vet’s.

17:02 - J: Okay

17:05 - Me: I don’t know where your bus stops at, but you could come here.

17:06 - J: That would be third stop, but who are you taking

17:11 - Me: Apocalypto

I wrote that before.

17:12 - J: Sorry I over read that

Your side door was unlocked

17:27 - Me: I wanted you to come here because it’s going to take a while. We’re not even in a room yet.

If you are drunk, leave my house right now!

17:30 - J: I've told you three times that it is not easy for me to find a place

17:30 - Me: What are you even talking about now?

If you are drunk, leave my house right now!

17:32 - J: I’m not drunk

(He called me, and I explained why I wanted him to come to the vet’s office. And then I told him to leave my house.)

17:38 - Me: Just leave my house, please!

You called me three fucking times today when I was trying to rest.

17:42 - J: I called during times I thought you weren't at the gym

I'm sorry I don't know you didn't feel well I'm here now to help

I've let the dogs out and just hanging out I got the message late to when I called the time before a voice message starters up and that's why I sent the first message

17:45: (J sent a photo of Pavlina resting her head on his lap.)

How do you expect me to get up

17:50 - Me: You called me when I would’ve still been at the gym.

17:51 - J: I thought you finished around 11 I'm sorry

17:51 - Me: If I don’t answer or reply back, it’s because I am busy.

17:52 - J: I mean my calls were spaced out I didn't try to call back to back

You have to admit I'm very reliable when it comes to you contacting me

I should’ve known he was intoxicated after the three phone calls that afternoon. And I definitely should have known he was not sober when he called me multiple times when I was at the veterinarian’s office. But I was not operating at 100% mentally, so I did not pick up on the signs that J was drunk.

On the second phone call, he asked me, “Wait, are you there to put Apocalypto down?”

“No!” I answered, exasperated. I told you he needed to get tested again so I could order more of his prescription diet.”

I told him to leave my house immediately if he was not sober. Of course, he lied and said that he had not been drinking.

He called a third time, but we were finally in an exam room. The virus had really settled in that day, and I was tired not only from being sick but also from being a parent—the exhaustion that becomes every parent’s companion as soon as their child arrives. I ignored J’s last call, finished the exam, paid, and drove home.

J got our son out of the car seat, and I carried Apocalypto in his travel kennel. I released him once we were inside. I put the kennel back in the garage, returned inside the house, did not say a word to J, and went immediately upstairs to climb into bed. J knew I was pissed, and I did not have the energy to say anything more than what I had already told him when we were at the vet’s.

I streamed a show and tried to rest, but I never fell asleep, probably because my nervous system would not let me. Sure enough, around 8 p.m., my son opened my bedroom door and said, “Daddy’s sleeping.”

I went downstairs, and J was drunk, snoring. And most of us know what an intoxicated person sounds like when they’ve been drinking heavily. Plus, his face was flushed red. Before I woke him up, I decided to look in the book bag he brought with him. I did not find empty bottles, but I did find three full minis in his bag, which meant he had been drinking and was planning to continue to drink.

“Hey! Wake up! You need to leave.”

“What?” he mumbled as he woke from his drunken sleep.

“You need to leave now.”

“Why?”

“Because you've been drinking, and the only reason I agreed to allow you to come here and spend time with our son is because I am sick.”

“I haven’t been drinking.”

“Yes, you have. You passed out, and you didn’t even feed our son dinner.”

“I thought you would do that.”

The anger arose so fiercely inside me that I could feel my body heat up. I told him to leave again, and he commented to our son like a teenager, “Oh, Mommy wants me to leave. I guess I have to go.”

He made a big fuss about me telling him to leave, and I got more upset. I repeated, “You need to leave!” several times before his Uber finally arrived.

J continued to provoke me and repeated that he wasn’t drunk. When he was finally at the door about to exit my house, I came at him with such intensity and clenched fists at my sides that he asked, “What? Do you want to hit me? Come on! Go ahead!”

At that point, I was screaming at him to “Get out!” and I was already anxiously filled with tears because he wouldn’t leave immediately.

I realized later that my nervous system had gone into fight mode when I approached J at the door. We were in the area where he had slammed me against the wall back in 2020, four months after I met him after returning from a party where we both drank and after he first told me about his first son. In the area where he pushed me hard enough that I had to sit back into the loveseat that was luckily behind me, but in view of our son, who came running over to me and yelled in a worried voice, “Mommy?” And then J threatened, “Here. Take him before I punch you in your fucking face,” because I called the authorities on him.

My mind recalled all those moments as J continued to provoke me until he slammed the door behind him. I certainly was not about to take flight because it was MY home, and he needed to be the one to leave.

***

It is a betrayal that feels both visceral and deep. J committed the worst thing a man could ever do to me: he cheated on me after I gave him another son. Another opportunity for him to be the father he could be if he learned and tried to heal.

J knew how I felt about reproducing. He knew that my Wall Street ex, AK, was the only person I allowed my mind to entertain the idea of being a wife and mother. Yes, I was married to a different man when I met AK, but as I’ve said several times before, I had a quarter-life crisis. One evening, when I went to his Manhattan apartment to care for his cats because he had left to return home to Michigan, I told him my worst fear. But he surprised me and came back to his apartment while I was there, and as we fucked and made love, I confessed my fear of being left and abandoned after giving birth to a child. I knew I would be at my most vulnerable then. But AK reassured me as he wiped my tears away and told me that a child would represent our love for each other.

Twelve years later, a different boy would bring my worst fear to life. J left the house without saying goodbye or goodnight to our son and me, lied and told me he was going to the gym, and drove MY old VW to cheat on me with someone he met in rehab.

I got no sleep that night because I didn’t hear from him after he messaged me, “I’m going to be later than I thought,” at 23:30.

J knew how anxious I got because AK would disappear from me towards the end of our relationship. He would come to Vegas, gamble, ingest more coke, most likely hook up with women, and ignore me the entire time he was here. I remember working one night at an expo at the Kosher K steakhouse in Brooklyn, and there was a restroom just a couple of meters from my workstation. Every time I used the restroom, and before the night got busy, I would slice about an inch-long cut into my epidermis for every hour that I didn’t hear from him. I have very faint scars down my right thigh and left side as reminders of how unhealthy I was, of how toxic that relationship was.

But J was drowning in his addiction, and not only did he cheat on me, he totaled my VW on the way to cheat on me. There was no one there for me as I held our 14-month-old son and had to call my insurance company and triple AAA. I reached out to a friend who lives near me but wasn’t available, which I completely understood because she has three kids. J was still so wasted that he passed out at the slot machines in the gas station. I had to pick him up at nine in the morning. He finally called me at 6:45 and told me to get him, mentioning that something had happened to the car.

One of the gas station attendants kicked him out. I had to juggle being on the phone, watching our son wrangle a drunk 6’4” tall man into my car, and watching my son observe his father drool on himself in the backseat. And before that, I knew I had to take video evidence of what he had done to my VW.

He is so fucking lucky that he didn’t kill anyone or himself.

But no one was there for me. No one to hold me when I got home or the day after and say, “I’m so sorry.” There was no one for me to cry to.

Remember, my best friend ghosted me the month my son turned a year old and immediately following J’s release from his first stay in rehab? I lost my son’s father. I lost my best friend. I lost the closest friend I made in the adult industry, someone who is a few years older than me and is also an adopted Asian-American. I was also blocked by the boy I briefly dated in 2020 before I met J. I lost my son’s father and three friendships.

I am so tired of being lonely. I’m exhausted from constantly having to defend and protect myself. I’ve been in survivor mode since I was five years old.

***

I told the man I currently adore that I enjoy being around him because he is calm and quiet. He also does not consume alcohol, which is obviously a huge attraction to me, given my dating history of people with an addiction. A couple of months after we met, I told him I felt safe with him. He told me one night, “ You are mine. Nobody else’s.” Those words triggered a memory of when AK said that to me.

A part of me is attracted to a man who wants to claim me, declare me his own, not be ashamed to be with me, love me, choose me every day, and protect and defend me because I am tired of always fighting with my back against the ropes and no one in my corner to back me or cheer me on.

***

My son challenges me nearly every minute that he is around me. Psychologists and behaviorists say that children defy their parents more than anyone else but are well-behaved with others because they know we will love them unconditionally. We are their safe space, and it indicates that they are securely attached. But I have no one around me to give or support my authority. No one to say to him when he is being a defiant little shit and saying, “You would not be here if it weren’t for your mother, so listen and do as you are told.”

Instead, I got an alcohol-addicted baby daddy who got drunk and called me a whore, who told me that no one wants me because I’m old and have a child; a few days before my 40th birthday (the night I was sick and he refused to leave), who has threatened violence towards me, and has been violent to me.

I should have walked away when he slammed me against that wall and I was black and blue down my right side from my temple to my forearm. But I was not mentally healthy then, either. Being an empathetic person, I often blind myself to red flags because I see the pain in others, and I try to care and love them despite their flaws. I usually neglect or sacrifice parts of myself because I’m still trying to train my brain to know that I deserve a safe, intimate, unconditional love.

***

I’m angry and exhausted because I am the only one carrying the weight of parenthood AND being the sole monetary provider. As soon as I finish a house chore, I have to switch into work mode, or my ADHD brain has to attempt to do both simultaneously. I’m pissed that J never got a second part-time job despite my several suggestions to do so while I was pregnant because I knew I would not be able to work for 6 to 8 weeks after giving birth to our son. I’m pissed that he never came home with a gift for our unborn child even though he worked fifty meters from the second-hand store, Me & Mommy to Be. I’m pissed that I had to return to entertaining beta cucks and strip & fuck myself on webcam six weeks after I gave birth. I’m pissed that I was put back into a position of doing what I have to do, to provide for my family and me.

I hate that I do not get to be the mother that I know I ought to be, that I should be able to be. I never get to soften into motherhood. I do not get a partner to share the beautiful and hilarious moments that come with being a parent as you watch your child grow. There is no one to record the spontaneous dance parties my son and I have in the kitchen.

I started tearing up one night a few weeks ago as my son marched down the hallway to get more pillows for his pillow fort in my room. ‘I have no one here to share this with,’ I thought. No one to replay the memories of our child’s innocence twenty years from now, when they will be off to college and/or exploring more of the world.

I get none of that.

When these thoughts enter my mind, I am reminded that I have been unable to evade my loneliness. It has been my constant succubus since childhood.

***

I despised myself for quickly losing patience with my son as he refused to listen to me, after repeating myself several times, after being used as a punching bag, after being screamed at when he had a tantrum, after his constant demands and being yelled at because I am not fulfilling the demands immediately after they are uttered from his mouth, and I am already in the middle of washing dishes or making dinner. I hate that I do not have more time to play with my son and teach him about the beauty of being alive.

I’m also envious of mothers who have reliable, loving partners. More than half a dozen people are either currently associated with Camp Rhino or were associated with my gym and had a child within the same year as I did. I am the only one who is a single parent.

I began taking Conceptual Physics at CSN the fall semester after my son was born. I wanted to nurse him and be with him for most of his first year. J would go to work, and I would stay home with our son. On the days I had class, I would drive to campus and attend class, and if class finished in time and I did not have to study for an exam, I would try to attend the 5:30 pm CrossFit class. Sometimes, I would linger after the CrossFit class ended to catch up with friends. But I usually received a message from J asking when I was returning home.

I did not lose the weight I gained while pregnant as fast as others did because J did not give me the time or understanding of my need to work out for my mental and physical health. I work out as much as I do because it helps my overactive brain focus. The gym is also where I can have social interactions with like-minded people. I am shy and an introvert, so I do not need an overabundance of socialization, and I may not say more than, “Hey, what’s up?” to friends and acquaintances whilst at the gym, but it provides enough for me to refill the necessity of human interaction.

I would often return home and have to make dinner. The only whole meal J would make was breakfast, but I was usually the one who made dinner. When J had chicken, he cooked it independently, but I usually cooked vegetables and starch to go along with the protein, so I still had to cook. He could only heat up fries in the oven. When I asked him to cook rice, he would often mess it up by adding too much water or forgetting to add salt.

J often ordered pizza when I did not feel like cooking, and he was too lazy to cook. I am lactose intolerant, and I am from New York.

When we ordered take-out from somewhere besides Pizza Hut, I would often be the last one to eat. I do not like eating out of plastic or cardboard containers, so I would retrieve the plateware and silverware for us to eat. But often, my son would want to nurse while I tried to consume calories for us because babies need to be fed constantly. After J was full, he would take K so I could eat. But he never volunteered to allow me to eat first or wait for me to eat with him.

I am angry and saddened by the fact that my son did not get to witness my first HYROX races back in February, be there when I finished the half marathon or the Spartan races, or watch me do a DEKA event. I have no partner to tell me, “Good job,” after I complete these physically demanding events, and no one to be there with my son for him to at least say those words to me.

***

I am my own protector and defender. Me, myself, and I are the only cheerleaders I get after completing a race or competition. Have I not been through enough that I finally get a partner who loves me unconditionally?

I want to make love to a beautiful man. Support him as he supports me. Love him in a way others have either been unable to or failed to do. And he loves me the way my body and mind have been starving for since I became a woman. A man who will defend & protect me, as I will do the same for him. Someone to watch my son learn about life with. Maybe give him a child to deepen our love and affection for each other and our family. And possibly prevent my son from feeling the aches of loneliness that come from being a minority only child in this country, years upon years of rejection, and loved ones failing you time and time again.

I am exhausted from carrying the weight of loneliness with no end in sight. But I know I will proceed forward through the heartbreaks, the tears, the disappointments—all of it—because I always have. I always have. Alone.