Last week, a friend posted on Facebook directly after I posted about having a takeaway. It really offended and upset me. I’ve tried to rise above it and ignore it, but today I figured that if it’s still bothering me after five days, I should say something. I remembered one of the Five Regrets of the Dying by Bronnie Ware that really struck a chord with me:

I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.

Ware describes how suppressing feelings to maintain peace can lead to resentment, and argues that honest communication can either improve a relationship or reveal that it isn’t healthy.

My friend expressed frustration about people who receive benefits despite, in her view, being capable of working. She acknowledged that some single parents genuinely cannot change their circumstances, but felt angry when she saw examples of people on benefits spending money on takeaways, expensive meals, holidays and other luxuries. She compared this with her own situation, saying that she and her husband work hard yet still struggle financially and worry about paying their bills. She felt it was unfair that some people who could potentially work appeared to have a more comfortable lifestyle than those who were working, although she also emphasised that she would not want to give up her job because of the importance she places on her self-esteem.

I replied.

Until you have been a single parent, you cannot judge fairly. You can complain about how unfair life is, but maybe while you’re doing that, you can stop and consider all the things you didn’t think about in your accusations. How being a single parent brings challenges that you will NEVER face as part of a couple. How most people, including me, don’t choose or want to be single parents, but often it’s awful circumstances that make it happen, sometimes so awful that your self-esteem is at rock bottom, and you have to spend years dragging yourself up from the gutter, often with no help or support. Maybe you can consider how we do the job of two people on our own, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, three hundred and sixty-five days a year, and that even during the worst, most stressful times in life, we still do it all alone. Even when my child was lying in intensive care for five days, I was still alone, with literally no shoulder to cry on and no one to hold me up when I felt like my knees would give way from sheer terror at what was going on in front of me.

Bear in mind, then, that after all that, after days, weeks, months or years of doing the work of two people – and I’m talking about the real work of raising good, well-behaved, polite, intelligent, well-rounded, balanced and, hopefully, happy children, as well as all the housework, all the DIY, the gardening, all the money management, all the taxi runs that the kids need at all hours of the day and sometimes night, all of the illnesses, operations, emotional support, everything that children need you for – after all of that and more, you’re alone.

Alone.

Every night you climb into bed alone. There is no one to talk to, no one to cry with, no one to take your anger and fears out on. The biggest fear that keeps me awake night after night is, ‘What if a fire starts? How will I get all of the children out of the house alive on my own? What if I just can’t do it because that really is more than a one-woman job?’ Do you want to think about that for one minute? There is just you, and you have to deal with not only your feelings of stress and fear on your own, but also your feelings of loneliness, alone, too. The odds of not being alone in the future are slim because you’re a good single parent who doesn’t abandon her kids to go out all the time, and even if you were, you most likely wouldn’t find a man because a lot of men have been conditioned to think that all single mums are only after a man to support them and their kids. So you know, this is it. This is my life for the long haul.

On top of all of that, what you want most in the world, more than love, more than riches, more than flat-screen TVs, more than holidays and takeaways, is for your children to be happy, even though they know something is missing from their world, as well as yours, and you do all you can to make that happen.

You make the choice to be the parent that didn’t go off to have a fun life, only seeing the kids when it suits, or not at all, in some cases, and you think that the best way to do that is to be a stay-at-home parent because, at least that way, you’re showing your children that you love them unconditionally and you will be there for them whenever they need you, every single time they need you, without exception. Before school, after school, when they’re home ill, when they have numerous days off for teacher training or polling day or whatever else the schools or government decide is a good enough reason to shut the school, and, of course, the long holidays for which you can’t afford childcare and you can’t leave them because you’ve made a vow to always be there for them.

You feel deep down you’re doing the right thing, even though the government doesn’t support your choice, your family doesn’t support your decision, and your friends don’t either. Can you imagine how alone we single parents who ‘bleed the system’ must feel in this world? Can you imagine for one second how hard it is to stand for what you believe in more than anything else, yet have no one supporting your cause? Can you imagine how tiring it is to do the job of two people on your own, to do it with no support and with accusations and hate flying towards you constantly? How shit it is when people ask what you do for a living, and you hold your head up high and say, ‘I’m a stay-at-home mum,’ only to then be shot down with a look as if to say, ‘Is that it?’

And, you know what they’re thinking . . . the same thing that most people think, the thing that you think about single mums. It doesn’t matter how good a mum you are, in this world, if you’re doing it alone and, worse still, asking for some financial help to allow you to do a good job, some people will not see beyond that point.

Do you know what some of us try to do in an attempt to pay back a little of what we receive to enable us to be the best parents we can be, given our circumstances? Do you know what I do? I help others with no expectation of pay or reward; I do it out of the kindness of my heart and because I want to do what’s right. I babysit for other mums when they need help. I help out people in need, some in desperate need. I shop for people, I call on neighbours, and I use the skills I do have, which I may have learned from being a single parent, to help those who may not have the same skills. I may only be a single parent, but I have skills that are not recognised traditionally in the workplace, but which do benefit others, so I use them to volunteer help where I feel I can. I help out where I see help is needed; I just don’t shout that from the rooftops, until now, because I fear I’ll still be criticised for it in some way.

Sometimes, some of us even spend our time studying and learning all that we can so that we can try and start our own business, working from home, so that we can get off the system and still be that one parent who can be relied on not to let the kids down. But that doesn’t happen overnight; it can take a long time to learn the skills you need or to get a business going properly. In the meantime, you have to put up with various friends and family (you’re not the first, you won’t be the last) making assumptions and thinking the worst. Whether your status was aimed directly at me or not is irrelevant because it affected me deeply.

Do you know, sometimes you start to think, ‘I’m going to put myself first, and I’m not going to cook tonight. I’m physically exhausted, I’m emotionally drained, and we’ve gone without the things that really matter for years and years, so I’m going to buy my children a takeaway, and then I’m going to have a (cheap) night out because I’ve bloody well earned it!’

No matter what I do, no matter what choices I make, which I think are best for my family, I still get attacked for it.

Try living in my world; it’s not as rosy as you like to think it is because a takeaway or a night out does not even begin to make up for all that is missing from mine and my children’s lives.