My ex-husband ruined my whole life, and even in my fifties he won’t let me rest in peace! We had been married for a year at most, not even till our anniversary. We originally got married because I was expecting a child. My son wasn’t that much of a desired child, and the baby’s crying and huge expenses didn’t suit his daddy, so he left the two of us. My mother told me to file for child support, because it was very difficult to raise a small child alone. So I did.
Until the age of thirteen, I was completely in charge of my son’s finances, providing him with everything he needed and not limiting him much. My salary and the money that we got from my husband were not always enough to buy the latest equipment for the child, but I really tried to make sure that he did not need anything. It turned out that my son found his father online and kept in touch with him. That’s how he found out about child support and that it was me who was managing it, not him, and he asked his father to transfer the payments to his children’s card. My son did not want to hurt me, but he hurt me with his action. He didn’t take into account the fact that I somehow have to pay for the apartment we live in, provide him with groceries, and even buy him a new phone, because he was saving his father’s money for enrollment.
Over time, my resentment subsided; after all, he is my own child and he is very pragmatic about his future. I began to encourage his desire to enter a good university, and I was doubly happy when he got on scholarship. When he lived in another city in a dormitory, both my husband and I used to send him money on his card, and it turned out that he was not a spender at all, saving and saving whenever possible. And on my fiftieth birthday he gave me a real present: he told me that he had bought a house in the countryside.
– We’ve never had a country house, so let it be,” he said, showing me pictures of the purchase. – Someday you will be able to live there. There’s gas heating and all the amenities in the house, and there’s forest and nature all around.
– Where did you get all that money? It looks brand new!
– It’s from Dad’s alimony, what you sent while I was at university, and mine, the money I earned,” my son was very proud of himself.
It wasn’t for nothing that he was the one who managed the finances and saved to end up buying things that I could never have afforded us. I resented him, believing that he didn’t think about anyone but himself, while he was taking care of both of us all the time.
