I'm just gobsmacked about this. I recently became a single mom to my son. You can look thru my post history to see the whole situation but long story short – his dad / biological father was abusive, a leech and a horrible person all around. He abused me and outright neglected my son because he was a “stay at home dad” while I worked two jobs to pay the bills and he was conning his parents into paying his “portion of the bills” and ended up spending it on only fans and league of legends. I ended up leaving him and bouncing between a woman's shelter and hotels when I got paid. I had some really really dark thoughts. My son is what kept me going through it all.
I am literally scraping by with what I can. I had to rent a room from a practical stranger, I only got approved for WIC (which I know I should be grateful for because it does help save on formula) and my son receives Medicaid. I make too much for SNAP or TANF working my two part time jobs and I'm having to pay for a licensed daycare during the week (during my main job) and hire a babysitter on the weekends when I work my second retail job. My ex trashed the apartment we were sharing – I'm talking about cutting mine and my son's clothes up with scissors, drawing on the walls with permanent market, taking jars of spaghetti sauce and smashing them so broken glass would be everywhere so I've had to start from scratch basically. I'm sleeping on an air mattress and my son is in a used pack n play I got from my buy nothing group on facebook. The only clothes we have are what the women's shelter could let us take with us and what I was lucky enough to score from fb. Like between what WIC allows for fresh fruit and veggies and what I can get from my local baptist church on Saturdays a lot of the time I don't eat more than one meal a day
I decided to try and donate plasma today because it was my first day off from both jobs in weeks. I made sure my son's babysitter was okay with it and told her I'd pay her extra when I get paid next Friday. I went through the questionnaire they give you, did the finger sticka nd when they weighed me, I weighed 108 pounds. The women said I couldn't donate until I weighed 110 pounds or more. She said I needed to “eat more” and joked about me eating a “stick of butter a day” which just didn't sit right with me. I wanted to ask her “Lady, why do you think I'm trying to donate plasma?!” I wouldn't be here on my day off if I didn't need the money
I thought I could get ahead a little by doing this. It's my son's first Christmas and we're away from his father and while I know he's young and won't remember squat, I wanted to do this often enough to be able to do something special for us both. I shouldn't work two jobs (granted one I can only work 29 hours at, and the other is a weekend retail job that I work anywhere between 8-16 hours) and I've applied to other jobs just to get an outright rejection or to be ghosted or never hear back. I just want to provide for my son, and have our own stuff, our own place and not have to worry about buying actual groceries will put me in the negative or getting myself a new bra or my son some new clothes. I know I did a good thing by leaving his sperm donor but I didn't think it would be this hard. I still have nightmares of my ex kicking me in the stomach and screaming in my face. I really can't wait for not just my life to be better but for my son's to be better as well. I just want to give him everything he deserves and this felt like a kick in the pants today.