Disposable Children

I can’t tell you how this makes me feel. It’s unreal.

I have had more children that called me “mom” than the three I gave life to…I love teenagers. I love the whimsical romance of the poetry of a teenaged girl, the stunning brightness of a technical teenage boy on a computer. The mechanical accuracy of a young man working on his first car; I love the dedication of a young man ready to serve his country for the love of it. I admire the quiet intelligence of the hunter sitting in the woods waiting for a buck to walk by and joy of his first real triumph. I admire the artistic beauty of an uncluttered mind. I appreciate the clarity of the song bird whose voice rises clear and stingingly fresh from the back of the choir, searching the crowd to find my face and impress me. They are young adults with open minds and yet they children.

And it is why the intolerance and stupidity of parents stuns me.

It’s something I can’t believe.

More than once I have had children sleeping on my couch because a parent can’t cope with their child being a teenager and more than one child have I taken in because Mom or Dad can’t seem to get it together enough to be grown ups.

I had one girl who lived with me, finished high school and got her drivers license while living with me, who had never known a real mother and was astonished that when the test instructor asked her who was “Mom” I volunteered and said, “Me, I’m her mom”. She just stared at me, stunned that I would claim her as my own. The poor thing always had a look on her face like a dog that had been beat too much.

I had another who couldn’t stand living with her mother and stepfather on the weekend. She was on my couch so much that we would buy her favorite food every week because we knew she’d probably be at our house.

One time we weren’t told about someone sleeping on our couch and my husband got up in his underwear and got some milk in the middle of the night to find a teenage girl of unknown origin staring at him.

I had another whose parent didn’t want to frankly be a parent anymore and would anything to “get rid” of his kid. His daughter had four months to go before high school graduation and he was already done. We occasionally had custody of his daughter.

I had a boy going into the Marines lying sick on my couch, because he didn’t want to go home the night before. I heard someone coughing and got up and gave him Robotussin. My daughter told me, that he told her, that even his own mother wouldn’t have done that for him. I did that for him and I didn’t even know him.

My children brought other kids home so often that there were times I would have to ask my children “Who is sleeping on the couch?” or “Would you please tell me before someone is coming over to stay, so I don’t walk out in my pajamas?”

That’s how common it was.

Disposable children.

With despicable parents, that squat and give birth and walk away after they are no longer cute. If it was legal they would tie them up outside and feed them once a day and make an unheated box for them to live in?

Here’s the thing, if you don’t want to have children but want to get married or have this ungodly promiscuous lifestyle…Then get yourself fixed because, like a cat, you’re going to have unwanted children following you around wanting to be fed and clothed and like a cat, you’ll get to a point where you don’t want to deal with them sucking off you anymore, so you’ll either ignore them, or verbally or physically abuse them until they go away.

But, it only takes weeks for kittens to be weaned, at four weeks they are essentially equipped to handle the world; whereas, human children can be weaned but cannot handle the world for a couple decades or more.

And I’ve seen a cat try to jump through a screen door to get to her kittens whereas these supposed “parents” wouldn’t even sacrifice a weekend for these children- let alone jump through a screen door to save their young.

If you do want to get married and just want to put off having children, that’s fine, and if you just find yourself having a pregnancy that is unwanted, for the sake of the entire world, give the baby up to some family that would want it and love it. Don’t keep it because it’s a nice accessory to wear on your arm. This is a life long commitment that lasts longer than the eighteen years that the government tells you to keep them. That magic number was made up by draft boards, and is too young for anyone to be able to decide what’s right, wrong or sideways for them.

I have seen children who are intelligent and their parents are proud of their achievements, come to my front door with gashes in their head because dad was drunk and couldn’t take junior’s alleged mouth anymore. I don’t care who you are, that’s not cool. I’ve seen honor students, with blazingly bright futures….thrown to the wolves because Mom and Dad couldn’t handle raising their child anymore because they were a teenager.

What couldn’t you handle?
What could be so important that you couldn’t deal with a brilliant, talented child being a teenager? What is so awful about a child who has a little bit of a difficultly in school…A little bit of a difficultly? A pierced lip, a brightly red dyed crop of hair? That’s difficult? What has made you so self-important as to think that you can just brush off this person’s feelings and thoughts because you thought that they were unworthy of your time? WHO MADE YOU SO VERY IMPORTANT?!?

Here’s what makes me so very angry? What fills me with such rage that I wish to go ahead and do violence to someone? What makes me, a gentle, warm human being, filled with compassion and patience, ready to verbally slaughter you!!!!

I wish you could-LIVE MY LIFE!

And here is why. I would in a heart beat if God told me he would grant it, gladly give my right arm, all my talents and gifts back to God….Give them back….My art, my voice, my love of music, my love of history, my self expression through writing, my photography, my eyesight, my legs….Give them back willingly, I’d cope with my dysfunction, ….IF I COULD MAKE MY AUTISTIC SON MARTY, AN TYPICAL NINETEEN YEAR OLD MAN.

Not especially talented, not especially brilliant, not especially anything, just average….

And you have thrown that away, simply because it’s inconvenient for you.

You’ve beaten the joy out of it, you’ve destroyed it’s fiery brilliance and made it a pathetic creature with your words….And yet it exist and wants to be loved and is functional and intelligent and will grow up and walk and work and breathe and have children and get married. You’ve stomped it bloodily into a writhing pulp of massively dysfunctional thought process that will lead me to sort the rags of what is left of their self-esteem and try to sew it into a person again. You unthinkable piece of human refuse.

LIVE MY LIFE! LIVE IT! For one day, alone. Live it, for a week, live my life with an autistic child who will never live alone. Whose destiny is unsure? Live with the chaos of it. The inconvenience of it, the time it takes, the energy it sucks and heart ache of it. The pain of watching your child look so very average and be so very disabled…Live with someone who may never know what a wonderful thing it is to dance at prom, or drive a car, go on a date, wear a cap and gown or go to a party and have friends.

LIVE MY LIFE!!!

YOU’RE THE BANE OF SOCIETY INCARNATE!!!!

And the heartache you will carry later in your life, you totally and fully deserve.

Be alone in your old age………….You’ve totally, seriously, in ginormous ways… earned it.