An Introduction

My name is Jennifer and I'm a first timer so please go easy on me! My life isn't that exciting or fabulous or any of the things I thought it would be when I was young and full of crazy dreams.
I'm 30...ish. I have 5 kids. Brandon, 14, Blake, 12, Bradley, 10, Brett, 9 and Giselle, one week. Yeah, I know, what was I thinking? I'm am now unemployed but even when I did have a job I couldn't afford to move out of my mother's house. So I'm a single mom with no job and live off my mother. How pathetic is that? But I refuse to go on welfare! I'm adamant about it because I have always looked down on those who were healthy and able to work but were just too damn lazy to get off their asses and work. Even McDonald's hires. There are no excuses.
I do plan, however to go back to work in January. I had a job I absolutely loved in international sales for a small company. Unfortunately, the boss was seriously bi-polar and called people stupid and worthless and liars at the drop of a hat. I was among those people and being pregnant at the time, I decided that environment was not for me. So I quit. I had no qualms about it until I realized that now I really am a pathetic person. At least before I had a job.
This is not how I envisioned my life when I was in high school. I was in honors classes with a dream to go to college and study French and become an interpreter for the US Embassy. Then, in a whirlwind, came my sons' father.
Now HE was a total loser but at 17 all I cared about was that he had a car. I didn't care that he drank and smoked pot as long as he took me where I wanted to go when I wanted to go there. Seven months into the relationship I found out I was pregnant. I was okay with it. I wasn't in school anymore but college could wait right? He, on the other hand, didn't even really acknowledge it. We were living together by then, in seedy motels or whatever he could afford at the time when he had his beer bought and paid for. I was miserable, but I thought the baby should be raised by 2 parents. Hey, give me a break! I was only 18. And stuck on stupid for 8 more years. We had four sons together and he is still a deadbeat. He wants to be friends with me now even though he physically, mentally, emotionally and sexually abused me all that time. Maybe he has forgotten, but I sure as hell haven't.
Anyway, after leaving him, I came to my mother's with the plan to leave in 2 years. I had a good job but didn't make enough money to support my family. Their father never paid me child support despite the fact that I took him to court countless times. I kept hoping the fear of jail would make him pay up. It didn't and the state never held up their end by putting him in jail for back child support. The jails were filled up.
So 2 years after leaving him and giving up hope of ever finding a life of my own and a little happiness, a great guy comes into my life. He was my best friend's brother. The funny thing is in high school we were so mean to each other and had you told me that ten years later we would be dating I would have laughed! That lasted about a year and half. I ended it with him because he seemed to be more interested in my boys than in me (and I don't mean that in a Michael Jackson sort of way). In hindsight, maybe that wasn't a bad thing.
I started to date a little more, and was more careful about the guys I would accept dates from. I had a whirlwind romance and was actually engaged to one man. Things seemed to be looking up until one day he confessed to cheating on me with his ex-wife. That was my one rule. You don't cheat on me. I ended it immediately.
So then some friends from work invited me to a club in town and I went. I was still a little crazy and not to discretionary but I met the most amazing guy. It was lust at first sight, on both our parts apparently. Things got heavy really quickly and before I knew it I was crazy head over heels in love with Robert. I had never felt this way about anyone in my entire life! Then one day last December I got a phone call I will never forget. Another woman called me and asked me about my relationship with Robert. I told her we'd been dating for nearly a year. That's when she proceeded to tell me she'd been dating him on and off for five months and that we had actually met in a club. She had come up to us a few months before and was really nasty to Robert in a way that I didn't quite catch. He explained to me at the time that she was someone that he had talked to one of the few times we had broken up. I bought it, hook line and sinker. Especially when he introduced me as his fiancee. That was new to me considering we hadn't even discussed marriage. I was confused that night, but let it go. Until that fateful December night.
So we talked. Forever it seemed. I was so angry with him because he always said he could never cheat because his ex-wife had cheated on him and it really hurt him and he didn't want to do that to anyone. I was also really hurt. At first, when I confronted him he denied it. He had a lot of nerve because I heard proof on her voicemail and where her car had been parked the night before in his driveway because of the fresh snow. There were tons of other signs but I blew them off as paranoia. So after a week of talking to her (and to this day I don't know why I did that) I talked to him. I mean, really talked to him. He told me to follow my heart. If I didn't want to see him he'd walk out of my life and never bother me again. I sat on that for a few days and called him. I told him I loved him. I mean completely over the moon, fireworks in the sky, loved him. I had never felt that way about anyone in my life and I didn't know if I would ever find that kind of love again. I gave him another chance. Two and a half months later I found out I was pregnant. I was scared to death to tell him. I was afraid he would think I trapped him. I didn't honestly! I was on the Pill. I took it religously. It was the antibiotic I took for my flu that did it.
He kept on insisting I had done it on purpose. I vehemently denied it. Here I am 30ish and my youngest son is 8. Why the hell would I do something stupid like that? So to prove to him that I really didn't need anything from him I dropped my sons off with the deadbeat and ran away to Kansas. 800 miles from home. He called me later that night and asked me to come over. I told him that it wasn't possible then explained why. He then told me to come home. To this day I'm not sure if he really wanted me to or not. But I came back. Part of me regrets it only for the fact that I still don't know where I fit in his life. He doesn't share his feelings with me, he doesn't speak of any kind of future together, nothing. I told him a day at a time works for me but it doesn't. I want the future I envisioned as a teenager. Maybe someday.